Contemporary Black Civil Rights Activism Strategies in East Tennessee: Gaining Economic and Political Power in the Black Community

The purpose of this thesis is to explore the contemporary Black civil rights movement in East Tennessee to gain a better understanding of the strategies being employed to mobilize publics. Though an important aspect of the public relations field, in public relations academia there is a lack of research centering on activism. Little has been explored outside of organizational settings, especially since the rise of technology and increased interconnectedness of the world. To learn more about the movement in East Tennessee, the researcher interviewed eight leaders of the contemporary Black civil rights movement across the East Tennessee region. The researcher asked a list of five open-ended questions with the potential for follow-ups with prompts. Questions centered on topics such as goals and strategies, and the researcher followed the Attride-Stirling data analysis model for thematic analysis.

Throughout the analysis, several themes emerged. Basic themes included educating non-Black people on racial disparities and oppression, reforming the criminal justice system, developing unity among the Black leaders, and creating opportunity for Black people. The organizing themes that emerged included progressing power structures and creating allies and developing the Black community. The overarching theme of the movement is to gain economic and political power in the Black community. These findings indicate that in East Tennessee, while activists often rely on political and social events to spur the movement forward, creating a network of activists could help them more successfully gain economic and political power. The most important finding of this study is that more unity is needed in the Black contemporary civil rights movement for the movement to see the level of success that is desired.

Keywords: Contemporary Black civil rights activism, strategies, community, Black, racism, social movement theory, political process theory, resource mobilization theory.