Black Liberation and the Foundations of Social Control

• Date: 01 September 2015
• Author: Andrew Gavin Marshall
• Published date: 01 September 2015
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/ajes.12109

Black Liberation and the Foundations

of Social Control

By ANDREW GAVI N MARSHALL*

ABSTRACT. In regards to funding for the civil rights and black power

movements in the United States, the major philanthropic foundations

pursued their primary goals of social engineering and implementation

of reforms designed to establish and maintain social control. They

operated in the ultimate interests of the wealthy corporate and financial

interests that dominated foundation boards and founders, promoting

incremental reforms in order to secure their own long-term systemic

interests.

Introduction

In the midst of the civil rights movement in the United States, large phi-

lanthropic foundations—such as the Ford Foundation, Rockefeller

Foundation, and Carnegie Corporation—extended financial and strate-

gic support for several civil rights organizations. These large founda-

tions represent the interests of the white power structure in the United

States, founded and run by wealthy families, industrialists, oligarchs,

and members of the foreign policy establishment.

Their support for the civil rights movement must be placed inthe his-

torical context of their overriding objectives and ideologies, with a

focus on social control, top-down reforms, social engineering, and the

desire to create and institutionalize a leadership cadre with whom foun-

dations—and the ruling class they represent—can work. While the poli-

cies and programs pursued by large foundations and philanthropy can

have tangible and positive benefits to groups and society as a whole,

their institutional and ideological restraints prevent them from

*Independent researcher and writer based in Montreal, Canada. Project Manager of The

People’s Book Project, head of the Geopolitics Division of the Hampton Institute, Research

Director for Occupy.com’s Global Power Project. Hosts a weekly podcast show at Boiling-

FrogsPost. <www.andrewgavinmarshall.com>;<andrewgavinmarshall@mail.com>

American Journal of Economics and Sociology, Vol. 74, No. 4 (September, 2015).

DOI: 10.1111/ajes.12109

V

C2015 American Journal of Economics and Sociology, Inc.

addressing the root causes of social problems, which are frequently

embedded in the ideological and institutional power structures that

foundations represent. As a result, foundation support for the civil

rights movement was directed toward more conservative (or

“moderate”) organizations, sidelining more radical and even revolution-

ary organizations, which were responsible for more of the actions and

direction of the civil rights and larger black liberation (or black power)

movement.

This essay examines the history of foundations as agents of social

control working on behalf of the interests of concentrated power.

Included in this history are foundation and philanthropic efforts in the

early 20

th

century to shape the social sciences at American universities

to construct an education for black Americans and Africans that was

designed to sustain the existing division of labor and social hierarchy,

in which the black population was at the bottom. In the post-World

War II period, foundati ons turned to supporti ng social science ed uca-

tion at home and abroad. That support was designed to create both a

domestic and foreign elite with a shared ideology and institutions. The

newly formed elite was supposed to be capable of working together to

manage changes resulting from European decolonization and to secure

Western interests in the midst of independence and liberation move-

ments around the world. When the civil rights and black power move-

ments emerged in the United States in the 1950s and 1960s, these same

foundations approached these domestic liberation movements with the

same objectives. Foundations supported the development and institu-

tionalization of an indigenous elite with which they could work. That

policy would enable foundations to absorb the demands and leaders of

the black liberation struggle into the existing power structure. The ulti-

mate aim was to prevent the emergence of a far greater threat to the

power structure itself.

The Big Foundations

The large philanthropic foundations emerged in a very specific histori-

cal context in the United States. They were established by the “robber

baron” industrialists who amassed great wealth and power in the late

19

th

and early 20

th

centuries. At that time, there was immense social

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