Article Contentsp. 51p. 52p. 53p. 54p. 55p. 56p. 57p. 58p. 59p. 60p. 61p. 62p. 63p. 64p. 65p. 66p. 67p. 68p. 69p. 70p. 71p. 72p. 73p. 74p. 75p. 76p. 77p. 78p. 79Issue Table of ContentsSociological Forum, Vol. 10, No. 1 (Mar., 1995), pp. 1-194Front Matter [pp. 187 - 191]A Note from the Editor [pp. 1 - 3]ESS Presidential Address, 1994Shifting Boundaries: Doing Social Science in the 1990s--A Personal Odyssey [pp. 5 - 19]The Power Elite and Elite-Driven Countermovements: The Associated Farmers of California during the 1930s [pp. 21 - 49]Interorganizational Influences on the Founding of African American Organizations, 1955-1985 [pp. 51 - 79]Women against the State: Political Opportunities and Collective Action Frames in Chile's Transition to Democracy [pp. 81 - 111]Beyond Recruitment: Predictors of Differential Participation in a National Antihunger Organization [pp. 113 - 134]Medical Malpractice, Social Structure, and Social Control [pp. 135 - 163]Notes and InsightsElite and Upper Class in Philadelphia, 1975 [pp. 165 - 173]Review EssaysPreface [p. 175]Some Thoughts on Recent Efforts to Further Systematize Goffman [pp. 177 - 186]Errata for Schooler and Wilkinson [p. 193]Back MatterInterorganizational Influences on the Founding of African American Organizations, 1955-1985Author(s): Debra C. MinkoffSource: Sociological Forum, Vol. 10, No. 1 (Mar., 1995), pp. 51-79Published by: SpringerStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/684758Accessed: 15/02/2009 17:40Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available athttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unlessyou have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and youmay use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use.Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained athttp://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=springer.Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printedpage of such transmission.JSTOR is a not-for-profit organization founded in 1995 to build trusted digital archives for scholarship. We work with thescholarly community to preserve their work and the materials they rely upon, and to build a common research platform thatpromotes the discovery and use of these resources. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected] is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Sociological Forum.http://www.jstor.orgSociological Forum, Vol. 10, No. 1, 1995 Interorganizational Influences on the Founding of African American Organizations, 1955-1985 Debra C. Minkoff2 This paper examines the relationship between traditions of social action and patterns of organizational development, using data on the formnation of national African American protest, advocacy, and service organizations between 1955 and 1985. Following research in organizational ecology, Poisson regression is used to examine the association between organizational density and organiza- tional formnation across strategic formns. The results provide some support for the idea that interorganizational influences are important in shaping the con- tours of the African American social movement industry. Outside funding, in- ternal organizational capacities and protest levels also play a significant role. KEY WORDS: social movements; organizational ecology; civil rights movement; African American; voluntary action. INTRODUCTION Accounts of social movement development and decline are often rich with stories of activists, descriptions of state repression and the contraction of political opportunities, and analyses of the ebb and flow of resources and popular support. Many such studies are also attentive to the organiza- tional influences that shape the timing, nature, and duration of activism, especially in terms of providing infrastructural support for movement emer- gence and promoting a united (albeit multivocal) front for movement pro- gression (see, for example, Jenkins and Ekert, 1986; McAdam, 1982; 'An earlier version of this paper was presented at the 1992 annual meeting of the Eastern Sociological Society. 2Department of Sociology, Yale University, P.O. Box 208265, New Haven, Connecticut 06520- 8265. 51 0884-8971/95/0300-0051$07.50/0 0 1995 Plenum Publishing Corporation52 Minkoff Morris, 1984, 1993; Staggenborg, 1991). From this perspective, organiza- tional diversity is a critical component of the trajectories of social move- ments, although the link between social movement organizations (SMOs) and the social movement industry (SMI) requires more systematic attention, a point suggested early on by resource mobilization theory (McCarthy and Zald, 1977; Zald and McCarthy, 1980).3 While both organizational and movement-based factors are acknow- ledged as important, most research emphasizes political and resource con- siderations when detailing the development of social movement industries in the contemporary United States. By contrast, this paper examines the role played by organizational traditions and dynamics in social movement development, using data on the formation of African American member- ship organizations between 1955 and 1985. More specifically, I follow Zald and McCarthy (1980) and organizational ecologists (Hannan and Carroll, 1992; Hannan and Freeman, 1989) in emphasizing how competitive and supportive organizational interactions among African American protest, ad- vocacy, and service organizations play an integral role in establishing the current contours of this social movement industry.4 Such interactions are themselves driven by organizational dynamics at the population (or indus- try) level over and above the particular social, cultural, and political con- straints that "channel" distinct forms of organizational activity (McCarthy et al., 1991; see also Clemens, 1993). In this paper I argue that to understand the development of the Af- rican American SMI since the mid-1950s we need to examine the compo- 3According to McCarthy and Zald (1977:1217-1218) a "social movement organization" (SMO) is "a complex, or formal, organization that identifies its goals with the preferences of a social