The Rise and Fall

of the
Civil Rights Movement
Photos of the 1963 Civil Rights March on Washington
http://static.howstuffworks.com/gif/civil-rights-movement-15.jpg

2008 Preface
This Preface was first published by:
http://www.blackcommentator.com/266/266_rise_and_fall_civil_rights_movement_shep
pard_guest.html

‘The House Negro and the Field Negro’

. . . Back during slavery, when Black people like me talked to the slaves, they
didn’t kill ‘em, they sent some old house Negro along behind him to undo what he sai
d. You have to read the history of slavery to understand this.
“ . . .There were two kinds of Negroes. There was that old house Negro and the fi
eld Negro. And the house Negro always looked out for his master. When the fiel
d Negro got too much out of line, he held them back in check. He put ‘em back on
the plantation.
The house Negro could afford to do that because he lived better than the field N
egro. He ate better, he dressed better, and he lived in a better house. He liv
ed right up next to his master-in the attic or the basement. He ate the same fo
od his master ate and wore his same clothes. And he could talk just like his ma
ster-good diction. And he loved his master more than his master loved himself.
That’s why he didn’t want his master hurt.
If the master got sick, he’d say, “What’s the matter, boss, we sick?” [Laughter] When t
he master’s house caught afire, he’d try and put the fire out. He didn’t want his mas
ter’s house burned. He never wanted his master’s property threatened. And he was m
ore defensive of it than the master was. That was the house Negro.
But then you had some field Negroes, who lived in huts, had nothing to lose. Th
ey wore the worst kind of clothes. They ate the worst food. And they caught he
ll. They felt the sting of the lash. They hated their master. Oh yes, they di
d.
If the master got sick, they’d pray that the master died. [Laughter and Applause]
If the master’d house caught afire, they’d pray for a strong wind to come along.
[Laughter] This was the difference between the two.
And today you still have house Negroes and field Negroes [Applause] I’m a field Ne
gro. If I can’t live in the house as a human being, I’m praying for a wind to come
along. If the master won’t treat me right and he’s sick, I’ll tell the doctor to go i
n the other direction. [Laughter] But if all of us are going to live as human be
ings, as brothers, then I’m for a society of human beings that can practice brothe
rhood. [Applause]
But before I sit down, I want to thank you for listening to me. I hope I haven’t
put anybody on the spot. I’m not intending to try and stir you up and make you do
something that you wouldn’t have done anyway. [Laughter and Applause]”
— Malcolm X
http://www.iowalakes.edu/Directories/faculty/burns/informative/
“Negro leaders suffer from this interplay of solidarity and divisiveness, being e
ither exalted excessively or grossly abused. Some of these leaders suffer from a
n aloofness and absence of faith in their people. The white establishment is ski
lled in flattering and cultivating emerging leaders. It presses its own image on
them and finally, from imitation of manners, dress and style of living, a deepe
r strain of corruption develops. This kind of Negro leader acquires the white ma
n’s contempt for the ordinary Negro. He is often more at home with the middle-clas
s white than he is among his own people. His language changes, his location chan
ges, his income changes, and ultimately he changes from the representative of th
e Negro to the white man into the white man’s representative of the Negro. The tra
gedy is that too often he does not recognize what has happened to him.”
— The Black Power Defined, Martin Luther King Jr. June 11, 1967
http://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/index.asp?documentprint=1139

I first wrote The Rise and Fall of the Civil Rights Movement essay in Septe
mber 2006. Due to the emergence of Barack Obama as a Presidential Candidate, in
2008, I feel the necessity to update this article.
In the last quarter of 2007 alone, Barack Obama and Hilary Clinton each raised a
bout $25 million apiece. During the course of the primary election fight they wi
ll spend Hundreds of millions of dollars! In fact, they are on a record setting
pace for total spent for Presidential elections. So far, “Hillary Clinton and
Barack Obama place first and second place in terms of the most money raised (at
$116 million and $102 million respectively). Republicans’ funds are less in compar
ison, with frontrunner John McCain raising $41 million, and Mitt Romney, Rudy Gi
uliani, and Mike Huckabee respectively at $88.5 million, $60.9 million, and $9 m
illion.” 1

.
http://themoderatevoice.com/wordpress-engine/files/caglecartoons02EB30CB48_29AF_
45B5_81B7_5CF93EE65A1A_.gif
The capitalist ruling class is voting, with most of their money, for a Hilary
/Barack “change” and a side bet on a McCain “change” to maintain the status quo. But the
re will be no change in how the government is run, whether Clinton, McCain, or O
bama win the election. Does anyone seriously propose that Obama or Clinton will
oppose the money and power that elected them? Or that Obama will remember where
he came from when his is elected, even though he does not come from the Black Co
mmunity in the United States?
Clinton and Obama state that they will somehow end the war against Iraq, but the
y vote for funding the war, while they vote for the cuts for much needed social
services and health, education and welfare. They say they oppose the racist drug
laws, but they do not oppose these in the Senate, where they both hold power. D
o people really believe that we will win national health care, in this country,
when social services are being cut or privatized by the government? The only tim
e when national health care has been won, anywhere in the world, has been when t
he working class has built their own political power, organized independently of
the capitalist class. As Frederick Douglas often said, “power only recognizes pow
er.” Where is our power? Where is own party? Where is our movement? - It is yet to
be organized. Social Security would never have been won during the depression i
f it were not for the rise of the CIO and a mass Socialist Party.
They have no real position on any question that opposes the status quo. One thin
g to which they give lip service is that they support the rights of Blacks. But,
while they are both opposed to the genocide and aids epidemic in Africa, they s
ay nothing about the Black genocide - the infant mortality rate amongst Blacks (
14 deaths per thousand), and the aids epidemic here in the United States, where
the majority of aids victims are now Black.
Dr. Ahimsa Sumchai in her article, Black Flight, about the gentrification of Bay
View Hunters Point (BVHP) in San Francisco, concludes her well written article
with:
“Thus, the appellants argue the BVHP Redevelopment plan fulfills United Nations wo
rking and operational definitions of a government sponsored genocidal campaign.”
Prior to Hurricane Katrina it would have been very difficult for the ruling rich
to remove the majority Black population of New Orleans. But as Greg Palast comm
ented on the divisions in society, in his article, Burn, Baby, Burn - the Califo
rnia Celebrity Fires:
“In 2005, while the bodies were still being fished out of flooded homes in New Orl
eans, Republican Congressman Richard Baker praised The Lord for his mercy. ‘We fin
ally cleaned up public housing in New Orleans. We couldn’t do it, but God did,’ he s
aid about the removal of the poor from the project near the French Quarter much
coveted by speculators.”
From New York to San Francisco and from Chicago to New Orleans - nationwide - th
e Democrat- and Republican-led Federal, State, and Local governments has been di
splacing the poor Black inner city populations to the countryside, leaving them
to fend for themselves.
Always remember, that the Democrats would have won the election in 2002, if they
had stood up for the civil rights of disenfranchised Black people. The lesson t
hat should be understood is that they do not support and defend civil rights, ev
en if it means the Presidency!
It is important to point out that the demise of every social movement in the Uni
ted States can be marked from the point that the leadership of the different mov
ements subordinated those movements to support to the Democrat Party as the less
er the lesser evil to the Republican Party. It is especially important, in this
day and age, to tell the truth that both of these political parties are owned by
the ruling corporate rich in this country, just as they own over 95% of the mas
s media. 2 It is their government - not ours!
What I wrote in 2006 is being proven true during the Barack Obama Presidential E
lection campaign. Some in the Black “talented tenth” are even calling ex-President B
ill Clinton, “the first Black President”. What a joke. “Slick Willie,” who very proudly
states that he ended affirmative action, was a proud enforcer of the racist drug
laws, etc., and who, when he was out of office, moved his office to Harlem as p
art of that area’s gentrification process!
In her recent Black Commentator article, Lenore J. Daniels wrote:
“The greatest danger to Black liberation in the U.S. is not conceding that our con
tinuing submission to Republicrat politics will result in our collective demise.
 Those who have subsisted on the morsels of private gains will find themselves r
egurgitated or excreted as waste upon the dump heap filled with the remains of o
ur humanity. Our lives now are so much waste for some, taken for granted by othe
rs, and treated with indifference by many. Deciding whether cooperation with the
Republicrats will finally, at last, free our children or sell them down the riv
er is not an option at this late date. It’s strange to hear us sing a new and a st
range song: ‘we don’t have a choice. We don’t have a choice.’ People, where have we been
all these 40 years, all these 400 years? The greatest danger to Black liberatio
n is for us to believe that Senators Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton will respec
t us as human beings. It would be foolish in this “post-racial moment” to think that
either of these two supporters of imperialism will suddenly change and hold thi
s nation accountable for its human rights violations within and without its bord
ers.”
In her February 7, 2008 Black Commentator article, Dr, Daniels, who was organizi
ng against slumlords in Chicago while Obama was working for them, states:
“No, Mike, you and Black America shouldn’t expect Senator Barack Obama to change! Ra
ther than working in the trenches with the people themselves and making the city
of Chicago accountable for the conditions Black Americans have to endure, Obama
has always invested his efforts with the authorities, whether it was with the D
aley Machine or with the moneyed foundations. He made a conscious decision to cl
imb the ladder to civic leadership and perhaps his decisions benefited him and h
is family but it did little to help the Blacks he found in dire straights on his
return to Chicago in 1991. To use Mumia Abu-Jamal’s words, ‘with a ‘brutha’ like Obama
who needs enemies?”’
From my experience in San Francisco, where the powers that be elected Willie Bro
wn, as the first Black mayor in order to start the final process of its gentrifi
cation in the Bay View Hunters Point area, the last Black Community in San Franc
isco, the ruling capitalist class is betting their money on Obama to overturn th
e gains made by the Civil Rights Movement.
Remember, the 13th amendment to the constitution did not abolish slavery for pri
soners. The Prison Industry is now a growing capitalist concern, while the major
ity of prisoners are non-white and poor. The racist drug laws provide labor to t
hese prison industries. It is not just segregation that is now coming back; slav
ery is also coming back through the prison system!
Footnotes:
1. The Democratic Party and the Business of Elections Following the Money Trai
l, by Anthony Dimaggio
2.The New Media Monopoly

http://www.guardian.co.uk/theguardian/cartoon/2009/feb/26/president-obama-congre
ssional-address-steve-bell
Obama leading the Four Horsemen Of The Apocalypse — US Imperialism
Spreading War, Famine, Pestilence, and Death.

The Rise and Fall

of the
Civil Rights Movement
This article was originally publish on September 5, 2006, by Counterpunch.com un
der the title:
Where Will Blacks Find Justice? The Civil Rights Movement is Dead and So is th
e Democratic Party at http://www.counterpunch.com/sheppard09052006.html.
The first civil and human rights movement by and for Black people started during
the Civil War and the period of Black Reconstruction that followed. It was a ti
me of radical hopes for many freed slaves. But it was also a time of betrayal. T
hen President Andrew Johnson and the non-radical Republicans, in collusion with
the Democratic Party, the party of slavery, sold out the early post-war promises
for full equality and “40 acres and a mule”. Instead, the promise of equality was s
oon replaced by the restoration of the property rights of the former slave owner
s in the South. This was accomplished by the Compromise of 1877
“Worse Than Slavery” “Compromise—Indeed!”

http://www.harpweek.com/09Cartoon/BrowseByDateCartoon.asp?Month=January&Date=27
Harper s Weekly Cartoons by Thomas Nast Depicting the Plight of African-American
s
During Reconstruction and His View of the “Compromise” of 1877

Terrorism
How did they accomplish this betrayal? The answer is simple—terrorism. They used
police and terroristic Ku Klux Klan violence. These extra-legal activities laid
the basis for the overthrow of Black Reconstruction and the institutionalization
of legal segregation (Jim Crow) in the former slave states. To enforce Jim Crow
, Black people were, for decades, indiscriminately lynched and framed.
“This was the status quo in the United States until the United States Supreme Cour
t came out with its “Brown v. Board of Education” decision http://www.americanpoliti
cs.com/121898ImpeachmentDebate.htmlin 1954, mandating the right to equal educati
on. The successful yearlong Montgomery Bus Boycott in 1955-56 reflected the new,
more militant mood among Negroes (the name given to Black people by the ruling
class). This new mood was a product of the rise of the Black Liberation movement
s in Africa, the confidence gained by the Black working class during the rise of
the CIO, and the respect, knowledge, and expectations of democracy gained by Bl
ack soldiers during the Korean War.” 1
(For more information about the boycott read my article: 50 Years Later: Lessons
from the Montgomery Bus Boycott.)
Thus the struggle against Jim Crow had begun, and with each victory to integrate
and enforce the 1954 Supreme Court decision, the mass of Black people gained co
nfidence in themselves and that the fight for racial equality could be won. In t
he early sixties, the movement grew stronger as young people from the universiti
es spearheaded the ‘freedom rides’ and sit-ins throughout the South to oppose Jim Cr
ow and enforce the law of the land, which the local, state, and federal governme
nts had refused to enforce.

http://timshorrock.com/?p=219

In the spring of 1963, the struggles in Birmingham, Alabama, led by the Black
working class, garnered international attention when police commissioner Eugene
(“Bull”) Connor unleashed powerful water hoses and German shepherd police dogs agai
nst the demonstrators. Terror and violence gripped this city, while the world wa
tched. Indeed, it was the national and international embarrassment that forced P
resident Kennedy and the government to begin to take governmental action.

http://www.phawker.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/02/police-brutality-small.jpg
Dogs Attacking Birmingham Black Citizens in 1963

http://www.myspace.com/proudtobeblacknews
After Birmingham, the March on Washington was called. In the space of a few week
s a huge demonstration built. This demonstration was the largest social action i
n the United States since the mass strikes that led to the rise of the CIO in th
e 1930s and late 1940s. This mass action led to the passage of the Civil Rights
Act in 1965.
At that rally, the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) Chairman Jo
hn Lewis was prevented from delivering his prepared speech by the march organize
rs. It was a notable omission.
In this speech, he was going to say:
“. . . . We are now involved in a serious revolution. This nation is still a plac
e of cheap political leaders who build their career on immoral compromises and a
lly themselves with open forms of political, economic and social exploitation.
What political leader here can stand up and say ‘My party is the party of “principle
s”’? The party of Kennedy is also the party of Eastland. The party of Javits is also
the party of Goldwater. Where is our party? “ 2
But if Lewis could be prevented by the March organizers from offending the liber
al Democratic establishment from the stage of the Washington march, they could n
ot prevent the civil rights movement from embracing a growing militancy and desi
re to expand the struggle to embrace a larger vision of social change.
Unfortunately, the momentum that was gained from the March was lost during the 1
964 Presidential election campaign, when the major civil rights groups called fo
r a moratorium on demonstrations in order not to embarrass then President Lyndon
Baines Johnson during the election campaign against the “greater evil” Barry Goldwa
ter. (Both were defenders of Jim Crow prior to the 1963 March on Washington.) Th
e movement never fully recovered to this subordination of the struggle to “lesser
evil” political action.
http://www.historycentral.com/sixty/60 s/March.jpg
“The March on Washington for Jobs and Justice was the largest social action
in the United States since the union strikes that led to the rise of the CIO
in the 1930s and late 1940s This mass action led to
the passage of the Civil Rights Act in 1965.”
While the struggle in the South was specifically against Jim Crow, the struggle
in the North was against de-facto segregation. The images of the dogs etc. on TV
being used against Blacks in the South subsequently gave rise to the Black Nati
onalist movement in the North. The rise of the Black Muslims and Malcolm X was a
reflection of the mood in the majority of the Black ghettos in every major nort
hern city, where the economic and political power of Black people was more conce
ntrated and greater than in the rural south. The rise of the nationalist movemen
t consequently generated heated debates within the movement between the strategi
es of peaceful disobedience and righteous self-defense.
In his latter years, Malcolm X saw the Black struggle as a struggle for human ri
ghts, and, notably, as an anti-capitalist economic struggle. As he explained at
the Militant Labor Forum in the fall of 1964:
“It’s impossible for a chicken to produce a duck egg… The system in this country canno
t produce freedom for an Afro-American. It is impossible for this system, this e
conomic system, this political system, period… And if ever a chicken did produce a
duck egg, I’m certain you would say it was certainly a revolutionary chicken.” - Ma
lcolm X (“Not Just An American Problem”) 3

http://barrysheppardbook.com/
Malcolm X speaking at the New York Militant Labor Forum, 1964
Photo by Eli (Lucky) Finer
Unfortunately, Malcolm X was assassinated in 1965 before he could build an org
anization to follow in his footsteps.
Following the assassination of Malcolm X, Stokely Carmichael, later known as Kwa
me Ture, became the new leader of SNCC and is credited with starting the moveme
nt for Black Power. In Lowndes County Alabama in 1965, he helped the Lowndes Cou
ntry Freedom Organization (LCFO) to form their own party. The symbol of the part
y was the Black Panther and they were called the Black Panthers because of that
symbol. The Alabama Democrats retaliated against this movement by evicting share
croppers and tenant farmers, and attempting illegal foreclosures against Black P
anther supporters. They even threatened to kill any African-American who registe
red. Thus the political activities of the LCFO inspired the formation of the Bla
ck Panther Party in Oakland, Calif. And, in the course of time, Black Panther Pa
rties arose throughout the country.

Stokely Carmichael
Speaking to Black Power and Change Conference
October 1966, Berkeley, CA
http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/stokelycarmichaelblackpower.html

http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/stokelycarmichaelblackpower.html

http://www.docspopuli.org/articles/Yuen/BPP_logo.html
Flyer for "Black Power and Change" conference rally at UC Berkeley, October, 196
6

Due to the mass mobilizations by the civil rights movement and the Black reb
ellions in the inner cities, by 1968 legal segregation, Jim Crow, was destroyed.
Blacks acquired the right to vote and access to jobs through affirmative action
programs, to make up for the past discriminations. There was hope for a better
life in the Black Community. However, after Martin Luther King, struggled agains
t de facto segregation in Chicago, he realized that the struggle for economic eq
uality was a more difficult fight than the struggle against Jim Crow. At this po
int he began to take similar anti-capitalist positions as Malcolm X.
Both Malcolm X and Martin Luther King opposed the Vietnam War prior to their ass
assinations. At the time of their assassinations, both Martin Luther King and Ma
lcolm X were embarking on a course in opposition to the capitalist system. It is
clear from reading and listening to their final speeches that they had both evo
lved to similar conclusions of capitalism’s role in the maintenance of racism. Tha
t is why they were assassinated. (For more information read The Assassinations o
f Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X. 4
It’s now known that during the rise of the modern civil rights movement, the gover
nment, led by Attorney General Robert F Kennedy, was spying on the movement and
its leadership. In the 1970’s, the “Cointelpro” disruption operations by the governmen
t against the civil rights movement, the antiwar movement, and radicals and soci
alists, during that period, also became public knowledge. Under “Cointelpro” the dif
ferent United States spy agencies used informers, agents, and agent provocateurs
to disrupt organizations. One purpose of this program was to “neutralize” Malcolm X
, Martin Luther King, and Elijah Muhammad,” in order to prevent the development of
a “Black Messiah,” who would have the potential of uniting and leading a mass organ
ization of Black Americans in their quest for freedom and economic equality.
IN 1967, King clearly wrote his outlook for the struggle to gain economic equali
ty:
“There is nothing but a lack of social vision to prevent us from paying an adequat
e wage to every American citizen whether he be a hospital worker, laundry worker
, maid, or day laborer.
“There is nothing except shortsightedness to prevent us from guaranteeing an annua
l minimum-and livable-income for every American fam
“There is nothing, except a tragic death wish, to prevent us from reordering our p
riorities . . .
“The coalition of an energized section of labor, Negroes, unemployed, and welfare
recipients may be the source of power that reshapes economic relationships and u
shers in a breakthrough to a new level of social reform.
“The total elimination of poverty, now a practical responsibility, the reality of
equality in race relations and other profound structural changes in society may
well begin here.” 5
At that time, the stock market was below 1,000 points. Today, it is above 10,000
points, and yet there still is no social vision for paying an adequate wage and
the minimum wage has dropped 42% since 1968.
Unlike Malcolm X, whose assassination cut short his organizing plans, King was o
rganizing a movement to obtain his stated goals when he was assassinated. In fac
t, he was in Memphis to build that “coalition of an energized section of labor, Ne
groes, unemployed, and welfare recipients” in support of striking municipal sanita
tion workers.
If such a force had been launched, the whole power of the antiwar and civil righ
ts movement in the 1960s could have transformed the labor movement and become “the
source of power that reshapes economic relationships and ushers in a breakthrou
gh to a new level of social reform.”
To combat the rise of the Civil Right Movement, the “war on poverty” was first launc
hed in 1965 along with the concept of “Black Politicians”. Malcolm X described this
process in his Jan. 7, 1965 speech “The Prospects for Freedom”, at the Militant Labo
r Forum, in New York City (A complete audio of the speech can be found at http:
//www.brothermalcolm.net/mxwords/whathesaid23.html) :
“They have a new gimmick every year. They’re going to take one of their boys, black
boys, and put him in the cabinet so he can walk around Washington with a cigar.
Fire on one end and fool on the other end. And because his immediate personal pr
oblem will have been solved he will be the one to tell our people: ‘Look how much
progress we’re making. I’m in Washington, D.C., I can have tea in the White House. I’m
your spokesman, I’m your leader.’ While our people are still living in Harlem in th
e slums. Still receiving the worst form of education.
“But how many sitting here right now feel that they could [laughs] truly identify
with a struggle that was designed to eliminate the basic causes that create the
conditions that exist? Not very many. They can jive, but when it comes to identi
fying yourself with a struggle that is not endorsed by the power structure, that
is not acceptable, that the ground rules are not laid down by the society in wh
ich you live, in which you are struggling against, you can’t identify with that, y
ou step back.
“It’s easy to become a satellite today without even realizing it. This country can s
educe God. Yes, it has that seductive power of economic dollarism. You can cut o
ut colonialism, imperialism and all other kind of ism, but it’s hard for you to cu
t that dollarism. When they drop those dollars on you, you’ll fold though.” 6
After the assassination of Martin Luther King and the subsequent rebellions in t
he inner cities protesting his assassination, the Democratic Party’s “war on poverty”
started laying dollars on any potential Black leaders and grooming Black Candida
tes.
John Lewis, formally of SNCC, became enlightened, he forego the Black Panthers a
nd saw the Democratic Party, symbolized by a jackass, as his party. Most of what
W.E. B. Dubois described as the “talented tenth” were bought off by this process. T
he more radical concepts that Martin Luther King and Malcolm X had developed at
the time of their deaths disappeared from the scene. No one took up where they l
eft off. The governmental policy, directed towards the ‘leaders’ of the civil rights
movement, of the carrot (dollarism) and the stick (assassinations) had proven t
o be successful.
A last chance at rebuilding the movement was the first National Black Political
Assembly on March 10,1972. “Eight thousand African Americans (three thousand of wh
om were official delegates) arrived in Gary, Indiana, to attend their first conv
ention, which was more commonly known as the ‘Gary Convention.’ A sea of Black faces
chanted, ‘It’s Nation Time! It’s Nation Time!’ No one in the room had ever seen anythin
g like this before. The radical Black nationalists clearly won the day; moderate
s who supported integration and backed the Democratic Party were in the minority
. 7 It gave birth to the “Gary Declaration” which stated:
“. . . A Black political convention, indeed all truly Black politics, must begin f
rom this truth: The American system does not work for the masses of our people,
and it cannot be made to work without radical, fundamental changes. The challeng
e is thrown to us here in Gary. It is the challenge to consolidate and organize
our own Black role as the vanguard in the struggle for a new society.
“To accept the challenge is to move to independent Black politics. There can be no
equivocation on that issue. History leaves us no other choice. White politics h
as not and cannot bring the changes we need.” 8
Unfortunately, Black Democratic Party supporters such as Richard Hatcher the may
or of Gary Indiana, Jesse Jackson, Ron Daniels, and even Amiri Baraka betrayed t
he hope from the Cary Convention. Instead of the course that was decided at the
convention, they led the way to support Black politicians and through them, the
Democratic Party. “Vote for Me and I’ll set you Free” became the slogan for the day an
d the civil rights movement became completely demobilized and with its “leaders co
-opted” into the system. From this demobilization, came the betrayal and atomizati
on of the movement.
As Malcolm X said in his New York City speech, Dec. 1, 1963: “The Negro revolution
is controlled by foxy white liberals, by the Government itself.” 9
At first, there was an illusion of progress; there was a rise in the number on B
lack politicians. There was an increase in jobs for black professionals in gover
nment, in industry, and on television. There was an impression that things were
getting better through the strategy of relying upon the Democratic Party to poli
tically secure, protect, and advance the struggle for racial equality.
An example of what was wrong with this strategy was clearly demonstrated when Ma
ynard Jackson was elected mayor of Atlanta Ga., in 1974.
At the time of Martin Luther King’s was assassination, he was willing to risk jail
and to organize a mass demonstration, in defiance of a court injunction and Nat
ional Guardsmen, in armored personnel carriers equipped with 50-caliber machine
guns, to help the striking Memphis municipal garbage workers. These workers ult
imately won their union contract, and thousands of ordinary working families in
that city got living wages that allowed them to educate their children, buy hous
es, live decent and dignified lives, and even retire.
In his last speech, he stated:
All we say to America is, “Be true to what you said on paper.” If I lived in China o
r even Russia, or any totalitarian country, MAYBE I COULD UNDERSTAND SOME OF THE
SE ILLEGAL INJUNCTIONS. Maybe I could understand the denial of certain basic Fir
st Amendment privileges, because they HAVEN’T committed themselves to that over th
ere. But somewhere I read of the freedom of assembly. Somewhere I read of the fr
eedom of speech. Somewhere I read of the freedom of the press. Somewhere I read
that the greatness of America is the right to protest for RIGHTS. And so just as
I say, WE AREN’T GOING TO LET ANY DOGS OR WATER HOSES TURN US AROUND, we aren’t goi
ng to let any injunction turn us around.
http://www.scholarspot.com/video/1318/1968-Martin-Luther-King-s-Prophetic-Last-s
peech-Remember

“I Am A Man’
March 29, 1968: Scene in Memphis

http://web.commercialappeal.com/newgo/mlk/strike.html

In contrast, Maynard Jackson quickly demonstrated that he was not beholde

n to or a leader of the Black population that elected him, but beholden to those
who financed his election campaign and who helped his personal political and fi
nancial advancement. In Atlanta, Jackson, instead of helping city sanitation wor
kers, fired more than a thousand city employees to crush their strike. In this,
he had the support of white business leaders and the Atlanta Journal-Constitutio
n.
This contrast was clearly stated in the essay A disgrace before God: Striking b
lack sanitation workers vs. black officialdom in 1977 Atlanta :
“Memphis in 1968 best demonstrated this connection, where wildcat strikes by an al
l-black workforce against overtly racist city officials became a larger battle f
or black liberation and community self-management. This struggle eventually saw
the involvement of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and other civil rights establishme
nt figures. When Dr. King was assassinated the day after giving a stirring speec
h to assembled sanitation workers, victory for striking workers followed shortly
for much of American liberal official society sympathized with the strikers aga
inst the racist city officials. The city recognized the strikers’ call for union r
ecognition, nationally backed by the American Federation of State, County, and M
unicipal Employees (AFSCME) and conceded to demands for better pay and improved
workplace conditions. This scene repeated itself in St. Petersburg and Cleveland
later that year. This also occurred in Atlanta in 1970, where civil rights figu
res, some of whom were newly elected city officials, supported striking sanitati
on workers threatened with termination by Atlanta’s white mayor Sam Massell
“Fast-forward seven years to the Atlanta of 1977 and something strange, one may th
ink, happened. The script was flipped. The same black officials who supported sa
nitation workers against firings by a white mayor decided to replace striking ci
ty sanitation employees with scabs. This occurred with the full support of many
old guard civil rights leaders and organizations, allied with business and civic
groups associated with Atlanta’s white power structure during Jim Crow segregatio
n. What explains the apparent about-face by black officials?
“The Atlanta strike of 1977 shows the coming of age of a coalition of black and wh
ite city officials, along with civic and business elites, under the leadership o
f the city’s first black mayor, Maynard Jackson. Just seven years earlier Jackson
publicly sided with sanitation workers against a white mayor seeking to fire the
m. Jackson and some members of the civil rights establishment, in positions of l
ocal government by the mid 1970s, did not hesitate to marshal the forces of offi
cial society against the self-activity of black workers. They allied with white
business and civic elites, the same people that just a few years earlier openly
supported white supremacist segregation, all in the name of smashing the sanitat
ion workers’ strike by any means necessary.
“This showed the open class hatred of black and white elites against working peopl
e, a prominent feature of communities in Atlanta for generations.”
Similar fruits, from the political policy of supporting the “lesser evil” Democratic
Party, has led to a set back for the struggle for civil rights and equality.
“Lesser evil” always means “More Evil”— the Republican Richard Nixon, the “greater evil” in
68, would be the “lesser evil” to the Democrat Clinton (Bill and Hillary) in today’s w
orld!
No longer fearing a mass civil rights movement in the streets, the Democrats hav
e, for the past 30 years, shared responsibility for the gradual reduction of aff
irmative action and the victories of the movement.
From my own experience, the only way to enforce affirmative action, is if there
are quotas for employment in the workplace. The new Black politicians, along wit
h Jessie Jackson, came out against quotas in the 80s, helping to make affirmativ
e action more difficult. Various court decisions helped to reduce the effects of
affirmative action and to resegregate the nation’s school system. In 1995, Presid
ent Clinton, as the leader of the Democratic Party, drafted a memorandum for the
elimination of any program that creates (1) a quota; (2) preferences for unqual
ified individuals; (3) creates reverse discrimination (The slogan of the racists
); or continues affirmative action even after its equal opportunity purposes hav
e been achieved.” (A myth)
Actually, according to a recent article from the Boston Globe, at the elite col
leges, there is affirmative action for rich dim white kids. 10
The Democratic Party was responsible for the 1986 Anti-Drug Abuse Act which esta
blished a 100-to-1 sentencing ratio between possession of crack (mainly used in
the inter-cities) and of cocaine powder (mainly used in the suburbs). Under this
law, possession of five grams of crack is a felony and carries a mandated minim
um five-year federal prison sentence. For cocaine powder it is only a misdemeano
r for the possession of less than 500 grams of cocaine powder. The five-year fel
ony sentence applies if one has 500 grams in their possession. This sentencing d
isproportion was based on phony testimony that crack was 50 times more addictive
than powdered coke. The Democratic Party-controlled Congress then doubled this
ratio as a so-called “violence penalty”.
This has led to “affirmative action” in the prison system, where Black inmates are a
far greater in percentage of all prisoners than their percentage in the nation.
At the same time, many states are now preventing those convicted of a felony fr
om voting.

http://traevoli.com/pic/republicrats.gif

According to the Harvard Civil Rights Project, which recently was forc
ed to move to UCLA, the public schools have become more separate and unequal— the
 consequences of the last two decades of resegregation along economic, ethnic an
d racist lines. 11
Throughout this land, both the Republican and Democratic Parties are gentrifying
the inner cities, in the service of big business, and the poor are being scatte
red to the winds. It is how the rich are handling unemployment and poverty in th
is country. Recently, Black U.S. Senator Barack Obama (D-IL) went to Africa to p
ublicize the catastrophe of Aids in Africa. He should have also gone to the Blac
k Communities in the United States and publicized the crisis of Aids in Black Am
erica, where nearly half of the million Americans, who are living with HIV today
, are Black. In fact it has become a Black disease. 12
The bipartisan corporate “bankruptcy reforms” in the late 80s to the present have al
lowed corporations to lay off workers, rob pension plans, and tear up union cont
racts. Because Black workers are still the “last hired and first fired”, they have r
eceived the brunt of these attacks.
Overall, the rich have become richer, and the poor have become poorer.
Ben H. Bagdikian put it well in his “Preface to the Sixth Edition” of the The Media
Monopoly, after he explained that just six of the world’s largest corporations, co
ntrol 95% of the mass media, he wrote:
“The American economy [has been] undergoing an astonishing phenomenon that the mai
nstream news left largely unreported or actually glamorized in its infrequent re
ferences, the largest transfer of the national wealth in American history from a
majority of the population to a small percentage of the country’s wealthiest fami
lies.” 13
This process was facilitated by the fact that almost every “tax reform” from Kennedy
in 1961, to Bush in 2004, has resulted in the taking of wealth from the working
class and giving it to the capitalist class.
And yet, the Congressional Black Caucus echoes the “hype” from the government, the p
ress, and the Republican and Democratic Parties, that things are better today. T
he economic figures from the bipartisan wage-price freeze in 1972 to today demon
strate that this it is false illusion. he Congressional Black Caucus echoes the “h
ype” from the government, the press, and the Republican and Democratic Parties, th
at things are better today. And yet, racism continues to be an institutional pa
rt of the United States.
According to infoplease 14, Black households median income in 1972 was $21,311 o
r $97,201.78 in 2005 dollars, while white Households median income in 1972 was $
36,510 or $166,526.06 in 2005 dollars. In 2004 Black households had a median inc
ome in 2004 was $30,947 in 2005 dollars. White Households had the highest median
income at $47,957 in 2005 dollars. Significantly lower than the median incomes
for 1972. 15
These figures show that Black Households median income in 1972 was 58% of white
households median income and approximate 64% of white households today. This doe
s not represent progress, it represents that income for workers, Black People an
d other minorities has decreased since 1972. Black people now have an income of
64% of white households that has not kept up with inflation and has actually dec
reased by over 50% since 1972. 16 Since the working class and the poor have been
suffering an ever-increasing rate of taxation and concurrent cuts in government
services, the decline in real wages and their standard of living has been worse
.
In order to regain what has been lost and win equality rights for all, we must s
top supporting those who are oppressing us - the Democratic and Republican Parti
es - and go back to what made
all movements powerful. Which was relying upon ourselves and building our own in
dependent power.
In his book, Where do we go from here: Chaos or community?, New York: Harper & R
ow, 1967, King wrote the course that he was planning to take in the fight for ec
onomic equality:
“There is nothing, except a tragic death wish, to prevent us from reordering our p
riorities... The coalition of an energized section of labor, Negroes, unemployed
, and welfare recipients may be the source of power that reshapes economic relat
ionships and ushers in a breakthrough to a new level of social reform.
“…. The total elimination of poverty, now a practical responsibility, the reality of
equality in race relations and other profound structural changes in society may
well begin here.”
Such a coalition, as King envisioned it thirty-three years ago, is needed today.
In order to survive, we must begin the begin.

http://www.muhammadspeaks.com/Police&KKK.gif
For a graphic video on how race relations have not changed in this country go t
o:
http://www.komotv.com/home/video/5001856.html?video=YHI&t=a
September 2006

Footnotes

1.http://www.counterpunch.org/sheppard11112005.html
2.The Militant , September 9, 1963
3.http://panafricannews.blogspot.com/2007/11/malcolm-x-40-years-then-and-now
.html
4.http://www.holtlaborlibrary.org/malcolmx.htm
5.King, Where do we go from here: Chaos or community?, New York: Harper & Ro
w, 1967
6.http://www.accuracy.org/newsrelease.php?articleId=987
7.http://www.aaregistry.com/african_american_history/1559/First_National_Bla
ck_Political_Convention_held___
8.http://www.blackpast.org/?q=primary/gary-declaration-national-black-politi
cal-convention-1972 .
 9.http//afgen.com/malcolmx.html
10.www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2007/09/28/at_t
he_elite_colleges___dim_white_kids/
11.http://civilrightsproject.ucla.edu/research/k-12-education/integration-an
d-diversity/schools-more-separate-consequences-of-a-decade-of-resegregation/?sea
rchterm=resegregation
12..12.http://www.blackaids.org/ShowArticle.aspx?pagename=ShowArticle&articl
etype=NEWS&articleid=203&pagenumber=1
13.The Media Monopoly (2000) Beacon Press, 25 Beacon St., Boston Mass 02108-
2892
14.www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0104552.html
15.All inflation calculations done at http://www.westegg.com/inflation/
16.http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0104688.html
17.http://www.scholarspot.com/video/1318/1968-Martin-Luther-King-s-Prophetic
-Last-speech-Remember
18.1968 - Martin Luther King’s Prophetic Last speech - Remember
19.http://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/index.asp?documentprint=1139
20.http://www.scholarspot.com/video/1318/1968-Martin-Luther-King-s-Prophetic
-Last-speech-Remember
21.1968 - Martin Luther King s Prophetic Last speech - Remember

http://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/index.asp?documentprint=1139

The Black Power Defined

Martin Luther King Jr.
June 11, 1967

http://www.lynnertic.com/category/heroes/
The Memphis Sanitation Worker Strike, 1968
Photo: Ernest Withers, civil rights photographer

When a people are mired in oppression, they realize deliverance only when they h
ave accumulated the power to enforce change. The powerful never lose opportuniti
es — they remain available to them. They powerless, on the other hand, never exper
ience opportunity — it is always arriving at a later time.
The nettlesome task of Negroes today is to discover how to organize our strength
into compelling power so that government cannot elude our demands. We must deve
lop, from strength, a situation in which the government finds it wise and pruden
t to collaborate with us. It would be the height of naiveté to wait passively unti
l the administration had somehow been infused with such blessings of good will t
hat it implored us for our programs.
We must frankly acknowledge that in past years our creativity and imagination we
re not employed in learning how to develop power. We found a method in nonviolen
t protest that worked, and we employed it enthusiastically. We did not have leis
ure to probe for a deeper understanding of its laws and lines of development. Al
though our actions were bold and crowned with successes, they were substantially
improvised and spontaneous. They attained the goals set for them but carried th
e blemishes of our inexperience.
This is where the civil rights movement stands today. Now we must take the next
major step of examining the levers of power which Negroes must grasp to influenc
e the course of events.
In our society power sources can always finally be traced to ideological, econom
ic and political forces.
In the area of ideology, despite the impact of the works of a few Negro writers
on a limited number of white intellectuals, all too few Negro thinkers have exer
ted an influence on the main currents of American thought. Nevertheless, Negroes
have illuminated imperfections in the democratic structure that were formerly o
nly dimly perceived, and have forced a concerned reexamination of the true meani
ng of American democracy. As a consequence of the vigorous Negro protest, the wh
ole nation has for a decade probed more searchingly the essential nature of demo
cracy, both economic and political. By taking to the streets and there giving pr
actical lessons in democracy and its defaults, Negroes have decisively influence
d white thought.
Lacking sufficient access to television, publications and broad forums, Negroes
have had to write their most persuasive essays with the blunt pen of marching ra
nks. The many white political leaders and well-meaning friends who ask Negro lea
dership to leave the streets may not realize that they are asking us effectively
to silence ourselves. More white people learned more about the shame of America
, and finally faced some aspects of it, during the years of nonviolent protest t
han during the century before. Nonviolent direct action will continue to be a si
gnificant source of power until it is made irrelevant by the presence of justice
.
The economic highway to power has few entry lanes for Negroes. Nothing so vividl
y reveals the crushing impact of discrimination and the heritage of exclusion as
the limited dimensions of Negro business in the most powerful economy in the wo
rld. America’s industrial production is half of the world’s total, and within it the
production of Negro business is so small that it can scarcely be measured on an
y definable scale.
Yet in relation to the Negro community the value of Negro business should not be
underestimated. In the internal life of the Negro society it provides a degree
of stability. Despite formidable obstacles it has developed a corps of men of co
mpetence and organizational discipline who constitute a talented leadership rese
rve, who furnish inspiration and who are a resource for the development of progr
ams and planning. They are a strength among the weak though they are weak among
the mighty.
There exist two other areas, however, where Negroes can exert substantial influe
nce on the broader economy. As employees and consumers, Negro numbers and their
strategic disposition endow them with a certain bargaining strength.
Within the ranks of organized labor there are nearly two million Negroes, and th
ey are concentrated in key industries. In the truck transportation, steel, auto
and food industries, which are the backbone of the nation’s economic life, Negroes
make up nearly twenty percent of the organized work force, although they are on
ly ten percent of the general population. This potential strength is magnified f
urther by the fact of their unity with millions of white workers in these occupa
tions. As co-workers there is a basic community of interest that transcends many
of the ugly divisive elements of traditional prejudice. There are undeniably po
ints of friction, for example, in certain housing and education questions. But t
he severity of the abrasions is minimized by the more commanding need for cohesi
on in union organizations.
The union record in relation to Negro workers is exceedingly uneven, but potenti
al for influencing union decisions still exists. In many of the larger unions th
e white leadership contains some men of ideals and many more who are pragmatists
. Both groups find they are benefited by a constructive relationship to their Ne
gro membership. For those compelling reasons, Negroes, who are almost wholly a w
orking people, cannot be casual toward the union movement. This is true even tho
ugh some unions remain uncontestably hostile.
In days to come, organized labor will increase its importance in the destinies o
f Negroes. Negroes pressed into the proliferating service occupations-traditiona
lly unorganized and with low wages and long hours-need union protection, and the
union movement needs their membership to maintain its relative strength in the
whole society. On this new frontier Negroes may well become the pioneers that th
ey were in the early organizing days of the thirties.
To play our role fully as Negroes we will also have to strive for enhanced repre
sentation and influence in the labor movement. Our young people need to think of
union careers as earnestly as they do of business careers and professions. They
could do worse than emulate A. Phillip Randolph, who rose to the executive coun
cil of the AFL-CIO and became a symbol of the courage, compassion and integrity
of an enlightened labor leader.
Indeed, the question may be asked why we have produced only one Randolph in near
ly half a century. Discrimination is not the whole answer. We allowed ourselves
to accept middle-class prejudices against the labor movement. Yet this is one of
those fields in which higher education is not a requirement for high office. In
shunning it, we have lost an opportunity. Let us try to regain it now, at a tim
e when the joint forces of Negroes and labor may be facing a historic task of so
cial reform.
The other economic leader available to the Negro is as a consumer. The Southern
Christian Leadership Council has pioneered in developing mass boycott movements
in a frontal attack on discrimination. In Birmingham it was not the marching alo
ne that brought about integration of public facilities in 1963. The downtown bus
iness establishments suffered for weeks under our almost unbelievably effective
boycott. The significant percentage of their sales that vanished, the ninety-eig
ht percent of their Negro customers who stayed home, educated them forcefully to
the dignity of the Negro as a consumer.
Later we crystallized our experiences in Birmingham and elsewhere and developed
a department in SCLC called Operation Breadbasket. This has as its primary aim t
he securing of more and better jobs for the Negro people. It calls on the Negro
community to support those businesses that will give a fair share of jobs to Neg
roes and to withdraw its support from those businesses that have discriminatory
policies.
Operation Breadbasket is carried out mainly by clergymen. First, a team of minis
ters calls on the management of a business in the community to request basic fac
ts on the company’s total number of employees, the number of Negro employees, the
departments or job classifications in which all employees are located, and the s
alary ranges for each category. The team then returns to the steering committee
to evaluate the data and to make a recommendation concerning the number of new a
nd upgraded jobs that should be requested. Then the team transmits the request t
o the management to hire or upgrade a specified number of “qualifiable” Negroes with
in a reasonable step of real power and pressure is taken: a massive call for eco
nomic withdrawal from the company’s product and accompanying demonstrations if nec
essary.
At present SCLC has Operation Breadbasket functioning in some twelve cities, and
the results have been remarkable. In Atlanta, for instance, the Negroes’ earning
power has been increased by more than twenty million dollars annually over the p
ast three years through a carefully disciplined program of selective buying and
negotiation by the Negro ministers. During the last eight months in Chicago, Ope
ration Breadbasket successfully completed negotiations with three major industri
es: milk, soft drinks and chain grocery stores. Four of the companies involved c
oncluded reasonable agreements only after short “don’t buy” campaigns. Seven other com
panies were able to make the requested changes across the conference table, with
out necessitating a boycott. Two other companies, after providing their employme
nt information to the ministers, were sent letters of commendation for their hea
lthy equal-employment practices. The net results add up to approximately eight h
undred new and upgraded jobs for Negro employees, worth a little over seven mill
ion dollars in new annual income for Negro families. In Chicago we have recently
added a new dimension to Operation Breadbasket. Along with requesting new job o
pportunities, we are now requesting that businesses with stores in the ghetto de
posit the income for those establishments in Negro-owned banks, and that Negro-o
wned products be placed on the counters of all their stores. In this way we seek
to stop the drain of resources out of the ghetto with nothing remaining there f
or its rehabilitation.
The final major area of untapped power for the Negro is the political arena. Hig
her Negro birth rates and increasing Negro migration, along with the exodus of t
he white population to the suburbs, are producing the fast-gathering Negro major
ities in the large cities. This changing composition of the cities has political
significance. Particularly in the North, the large cities substantially determi
ne the political destiny of the state. These states, in turn, hold the dominatin
g electoral votes in presidential contests. The future of the Democratic Party,
which rests so heavily on its coalition of urban minorities, cannot be assessed
without taking into account which way the Negro vote turns. The wistful hopes of
the Republican Party for large-city influence will also be decided not in the b
oardrooms of great corporations but in the teeming ghettos.
The growing Negro vote in the South is another source of power. As it weakens an
d enfeebles the dixiecrats, by concentrating its blows against them, it undermin
es the congressional coalition of southern reactionaries and their northern Repu
blican colleagues. That coalition, which has always exercised a disproportionate
power in Congress by controlling its major committees, will lose its ability to
frustrate measures of social advancement and to impose its perverted definition
of democracy on the political thought of the nation.
The Negro vote at present is only a partially realized strength. It can still be
doubled in the South. In the North even where Negroes are registered in equal p
roportion to whites, they do not vote in the same proportions. Assailed by a sen
se of futility, Negroes resist participating in empty ritual. However, when the
Negro citizen learns that united and organized pressure can achieve measurable r
esults, he will make his influence felt. Out of this conscious act, the politica
l power of the aroused minority will be enhanced and consolidated.
We have many assets to facilitate organization. Negroes are almost instinctively
 cohesive. We band together readily, and against white hostility we have an inte
nse and wholesome loyalty to each other. We are acutely conscious of the need, a
nd sharply sensitive to the importance, of defending our own. Solidarity is a re
ality in Negro life, as it always has been among the oppressed.
On the other hand, Negroes are capable of becoming competitive, carping and, in
an expression of self-hate, suspicious and intolerant of each other. A glaring w
eakness in Negro life is lack of sufficient mutual confidence and trust.
Negro leaders suffer from this interplay of solidarity and divisiveness, being e
ither exalted excessively or grossly abused. Some of these leaders suffer from a
n aloofness and absence of faith in their people. The white establishment is ski
lled in flattering and cultivating emerging leaders. It presses its own image on
them and finally, from imitation of manners, dress and style of living, a deepe
r strain of corruption develops. This kind of Negro leader acquires the white ma
n’s contempt for the ordinary Negro. He is often more at home with the middle-clas
s white than he is among his own people. His language changes, his location chan
ges, his income changes, and ultimately he changes from the representative of th
e Negro to the white man into the white man’s representative of the Negro. The tra
gedy is that too often he does not recognize what has happened to him.
I learned a lesson many years ago from a report of two men who flew to Atlanta t
o confer with a Negro civil rights leader at the airport. Before they could begi
n to talk, the porter sweeping the floor drew the local leader aside to talk abo
ut a matter that troubled him. After fifteen minutes has passed, one of the visi
tors said bitterly to his companion, “I am just too busy for this kind of nonsense
. I haven’t come a thousand miles to sit and wait while he talks to a porter.”
The other replied “When the day comes that he stops having time to talk to a porte
r, on that day I will not have the time to come one mile to see him.”
We need organizations that are permeated with mutual trust, incorruptibility and
militancy. Without this spirit we may have numbers but they will add up to zero
. We need organizations that are responsible, efficient and alert. We lack exper
ience because ours is a history of disorganization. But we will prevail because
our need for progress is stronger than the ignorance force upon us. If we realiz
e how indispensable is responsible militant organization to our struggle, we wil
l create it as we managed to crate underground railroads, protest groups, self-h
elp societies and the churches that have always been our refuge, our source of h
ope and our source of action.
Negroes have been slow to organize because they have been traditionally manipula
ted. The political powers take advantage of three major weaknesses: the manner i
n which our political leaders emerge; our failure so far to achieve effective po
litical alliances; and the Negro’s general reluctances to participate fully in pol
itical life.
The majority of Negro political leaders do not ascend to prominence on the shoul
ders of mass support. Although genuinely popular leaders are now emerging, most
are still selected by white leadership, elevated to position, supplied with reso
urces and inevitably subjected to white control. The mass of Negroes nurtures a
healthy suspicion toward this manufactured leader, who spends little time in per
suading them that he embodies personal integrity, commitment and ability and off
ers few programs and less service. Tragically, he is in too many respects not a
fighter for a new life but a figurehead of the old one. Hence, very few Negro po
litical leaders are impressive or illustrious to their constituents. They enjoy
only limited loyalty and qualified support.
This relationship in turn hampers the Negro leader in bargaining with genuine st
rength and independent firmness with white party leaders. The whites are all too
 well aware of his impotence and his remoteness from his constituents, and they
deal with him as a powerless subordinate. He is accorded a measure of dignity an
d personal respect but not political power.
The Negro politician therefore fines himself in a vacuum. He has no base in eith
er direction on which to build influence and attain leverage.
In two national polls among Negroes to name their most respected leaders, out of
the highest fifteen, only a single politician figure, Congressman Adam Clayton
Powell, was included and he was in the lower half of both lists. This is in mark
ed contrast to polls in which white people choose their most popular leaders; po
litical personalities are always high on the lists and are represented in goodly
numbers. There is no Negro personality evoking affection, respect and emulation
to correspond to John F. Kennedy, Eleanor Roosevelt, Herbert Lehman, Earl Warre
n, and Adlai Stevenson, to name but a few.
The circumstances in which Congressman Powell emerged into leadership and the ex
periences of his career are unique. It would not shed light on the larger pictur
e to attempt to study the very individual factors that apply to him. It is fair
to say no other Negro political leader is similar, either in the strengths he po
ssesses, the power he attained or the errors he has committed.
And so we shall have to create leaders who embody virtues we can respect, who ha
ve moral and ethical principles we can applaud with an enthusiasm that enables u
s to rally support for them based on confidence and trust. We will have to deman
d high standards and give consistent, loyal support to those who merit it. We wi
ll have to be a reliable constituency for those who merit it. We will have to be
a reliable constituency for those who prove themselves to be committed politica
l warriors in our behalf. When our movement has partisan political personalities
whose unity with their people is unshakable and whose independence is genuine,
they will be treated in white political councils with the respect those who embo
dy such power deserve.
In addition to the development of genuinely independent and representative polit
ical leaders, we shall have to master the art of political alliances. Negroes sh
ould be natural allies of many white reform and independent political groups, ye
t they are more commonly organized by the old-line machine politicians. We will
have to learn to refuse crumbs from the big-city machines and steadfastly demand
a fair share of the loaf. When the machine politicians demur, we must be prepar
ed to act in unity and throw our support to such independent parties or reform w
ings of the major parties as are prepared to take our demands seriously and figh
t for them vigorously.
The art of alliance politics is more complex and more intricate than it is gener
ally pictured. It is easy to put exciting combinations on paper. It evokes happy
memories to recall that our victories in the past decade were won with a broad
collation of organizations representing a wide variety of interests. But we dece
ive ourselves if we envision the same combination backing structural changes in
the society. It did not come together for such a program and will not reassemble
for it.
A true alliance is based upon some self-interest of each component group and a c
ommon interest into which they merge. For an alliance to have permanence and loy
al commitment from its various elements, each of them must have a goal from whic
h it benefits and none must have an outlook in basic conflict with the others.
If we employ the principle of selectivity along these lines, we will find millio
ns of allies who in serving themselves also support us, and on such sound founda
tions unity and mutual trust and tangible accomplishment will flourish.
In the changing conditions of the South, we will find alliances increasingly ins
trumental in political progress. For a number of years there were de facto allia
nces in some states in which Negroes voted to a moderate position, even though h
e did not articulate an appeal for Negro votes. In recent years the transformati
on has accelerated, and many white candidates have entered alliances publicly. A
s they perceived that the Negro vote was becoming a substantial and permanent fa
ctor, they could not remain aloof from it. More and more, competition will devel
op among white political forces for such a significant bloc of votes, and a mono
lithic white unity based on racism will no longer be possible.
Racism is a tenacious evil, but it is not immutable. Millions of underprivileged
whites are in the process of considering the contradiction between segregation
and economic progress. White supremacy can feed their egos but not their stomach
s. They will not go hungry or forgo the affluent society to remain racially asce
ndant.
Governors Wallace and Maddox whose credentials as racists are impeccable, unders
tand this, and for that reason they represent themselves as liberal populists as
well. Temporarily they can carry water on both shoulders, but the ground is bec
oming unsteady beneath their feet. Each of them was faced in the primary last ye
ar with a new breed of white southerner who for the first time in history met wi
th Negro organizations to solicit support and championed economic reform without
racial demagogy. These new figures won significant numbers of white votes, insu
fficient for victory but sufficient to point the future directions of the South.
It is true that the Negro vote has not transformed the North; but the fact that
northern alliances and political action generally have been poorly executed is n
o reason to predict that the negative experiences will be automatically extended
in the North or duplicated in the South. The northern Negro has never used dire
ct action on a mass scale for reforms, and anyone who predicted ten years ago th
at the southern Negro would also neglect it would have dramatically been proved
in error.
Everything Negroes need will not like magic materialize from the use of the ball
ot. Yet as a lever of power, if it is given studious attention and employed with
the creativity we have proved through our protest activities we possess, it wil
l help to achieve many far-reaching changes during our lifetimes.
The final reason for our dearth of political strength, particularly in the North
, arises from the grip of an old tradition on many individual Negroes. They tend
to hold themselves aloof from politics as a serious concern. They sense that th
ey are manipulated, and their defense is a cynical disinterest. To safeguard the
mselves on this front from the exploitation that torments them in so many areas,
they shut the door to political activity and retreat into the dark shadows of p
assivity. Their sense of futility is deep and in terms of their bitter experienc
es it is justified. They cannot perceive political action as a source of power.
It will take patient and persistent effort to eradicate this mood, but the new c
onsciousness of strength developed in a decade of stirring agitation can be util
ized to channel constructive Negro activity into political life and eliminate th
e stagnation produced by an outdated and defensive paralysis.
In the future we must become intensive political activists. We must be guided in
this direction because we need political strength, more desperately than any ot
her group in American society. Most of us are too poor to have adequate economic
power, and many of us are too rejected by the culture to be part of any traditi
on of power. Necessity will draw us toward the power inherent in the creative us
es of politics.
Negroes nurture a persisting myth that the Jews of America attained social mobil
ity and status solely because they had money. It is unwise to ignore the error f
or many reasons. In a negative sense it encourages anti-Semitism and overestimat
es money as a value. In a positive sense, the full truth reveals a useful lesson
.
Jews progressed because they possessed a tradition of education combined with so
cial and political action. The Jewish family enthroned education and sacrificed
to get it. The result was far more than abstract learning. Uniting social action
with educational competences, Jews became enormously effective in political lif
e. Those Jews who became lawyers, businessmen, writers, entertainers, union lead
ers and medical men did not vanish into the pursuits of their trade exclusively.
They lived an active life in political circles, learning the techniques and art
s of politics.
Nor was it only the rich who were involved in social and political action. Milli
ons of Jews for half a century remained relatively poor, but they were far from
passive in social and political areas. They lived in homes in which politics was
a household word. They were deeply involved in radical parties, liberal parties
, and conservative parties — they formed many of the. Very few Jews sank into desp
air and escapism even when discrimination assailed the spirit and corroded initi
ative. Their life raft in the sea of discouragement was social action.
Without overlooking the towering differences between the Negro and Jewish experi
ences, the lesson of Jewish mass involvement in social and political action and
education is worthy of emulation. Negroes have already started on this road in c
reating the protest movement, but this is only a beginning. We must involve ever
yone we can reach, even those with inadequate education, and together acquire po
litical sophistication by discussion, practice, and reading.
The many thousands of Negroes who have already found intellectual growth and spi
ritual fulfillment on this path know its creative possibilities. They are not am
ong the legions of the lost, they are not crushed by the weight of centuries. Mo
st heartening, among the young the spirit of challenge and determination for cha
nge is becoming an unquenchable force.
But the scope of struggle is still too narrow and too restricted. We must turn m
ore of our energies and focus our creativity on the useful things that translate
into power. We in this generation must do the work and in doing it stimulate ou
r children to learn and acquire higher levels of skill and technique.
It must become a crusade so vital that civil rights organizers do not repeatedly
have to make personal calls to summon support. There must be a climate of socia
l pressure in the Negro community that scorns the Negro who will not pick up his
citizenship rights and add his strength enthusiastically and voluntarily to the
accumulation of power for himself and his people. The past years have blown fre
sh winds through ghetto stagnation, but we are on the threshold of a significant
change that demands a hundredfold acceleration. By 1970 then of our larger citi
es will have Negro majorities if present trends continue. We can shrug off this
opportunity or use it for a new vitality to deepen and enrich our family and com
munity life.
We must utilize the community action groups and training centers no proliferatin
g in some slum areas to crate not merely an electorate, but a conscious, alert a
nd informed people who know their direction and whose collective wisdom and vita
lity commands respect. The slave heritage can be cast into the dim past by our c
onsciousness of our strengths and a resolute determination to use them in our da
ily experiences.
Power is not the white man’s birthright; it will not be legislated for us and deli
vered in neat government packages. It is social force any group can utilize by a
ccumulation its elements in a planned deliberate campaign to organized it under
its own control.

http://www.blackpast.org/?q=primary/gary-declaration-national-black-political-co
nvention-1972
Gary Declaration, National Black Political Convention, 1972
THE BLACK AGENDA

The Gary Declaration: Black Politics at the Crossroads

Introduction

The Black Agenda is addressed primarily to Black people in America. It rises nat
urally out of the bloody decades and centuries of our people s struggle on these
shores. It flows from the most recent surgings of our own cultural and politica
l consciousness. It is our attempt to define some of the essential changes which
must take place in this land as we and our children move to self-determination
and true independence.
The Black Agenda assumes that no truly basic change for our benefit takes place
in Black or white America unless we Black people organize to initiate that chang
e. It assumes that we must have some essential agreement on overall goals, even
though we may differ on many specific strategies.
Therefore, this is an initial statement of goals and directions for our own gene
ration, some first definitions of crucial issues around which Black people must
organize and move in 1972 and beyond. Anyone who claims to be serious about the
survival and liberation of Black people must be serious about the implementation
of the Black Agenda.

What Time Is It?

We come to Gary in an hour of great crisis and tremendous promise for Black Amer
ica. While the white nation hovers on the brink of chaos, while its politicians
offer no hope of real change, we stand on the edge of history and are faced with
an amazing and frightening choice: We may choose in 1972 to slip back into the
decadent white politics of American life, or we may press forward, moving relent
lessly from Gary to the creation of our own Black life. The choice is large, but
the time is very short.
Let there be no mistake. We come to Gary in a time of unrelieved crisis for our
people. From every rural community in Alabama to the high-rise compounds of Chic
ago, we bring to this Convention the agonies of the masses of our people. From t
he sprawling Black cities of Watts and Nairobi in the West to the decay of Harle
m and Roxbury in the East, the testimony we bear is the same. We are the witness
es to social disaster.
Our cities are crime-haunted dying grounds. Huge sectors of our youth -- and cou
ntless others -- face permanent unemployment. Those of us who work find our payc
hecks able to purchase less and less. Neither the courts nor the prisons contrib
ute to anything resembling justice or reformation. The schools are unable -- or
unwilling -- to educate our children for the real world of our struggles. Meanwh
ile, the officially approved epidemic of drugs threatens to wipe out the minds a
nd strength of our best young warriors.
Economic, cultural, and spiritual depression stalk Black America, and the price
for survival often appears to be more than we are able to pay. On every side, in
every area of our lives, the American institutions in which we have placed our
trust are unable to cope with the crises they have created by their single-minde
d dedication to profits for some and white supremacy above all.

Beyond These Shores

And beyond these shores there is more of the same. For while we are pressed down
under all the dying weight of a bloated, inwardly decaying white civilization,
many of our brothers in Africa and the rest of the Third World have fallen prey
to the same powers of exploitation and deceit. Wherever America faces the unorga
nized, politically powerless forces of the non-white world, its goal is dominati
on by any means necessary -- as if to hide from itself the crumbling of its own
systems of life and work.
But Americans cannot hide. They can run to China and the moon and to the edges o
f consciousness, but they cannot hide. The crises we face as Black people are th
e crises of the entire society. They go deep, to the very bones and marrow, to t
he essential nature of America s economic, political, and cultural systems. They
are the natural end-product of a society built on the twin foundations of white
racism and white capitalism.
So, let it be clear to us now: The desperation of our people, the agonies of our
cities, the desolation of our countryside, the pollution of the air and the wat
er -- these things will not be significantly affected by new faces in the old pl
aces in Washington D.C. This is the truth we must face here in Gary if we are to
join our people everywhere in the movement forward toward liberation.

White Realities, Black Choice

A Black political convention, indeed all truly Black politics must begin from th
is truth: The American system does not work for the masses of our people, and it
cannot be made to work without radical fundamental change. (Indeed this system
does not really work in favor of the humanity of anyone in America.)

In light of such realities, we come to Gary and are confronted with a choice. Wi
ll we believe the truth that history presses into our face -- or will we, too, t
ry to hide? Will the small favors some of us have received blind us to the large
r sufferings of our people, or open our eyes to the testimony of our history in
America?
For more than a century we have followed the path of political dependence on whi
te men and their systems. From the Liberty Party in the decades before the Civil
War to the Republican Party of Abraham Lincoln, we trusted in white men and whi
te politics as our deliverers. Sixty years ago, W.E.B. DuBois said he would give
the Democrats their "last chance" to prove their sincere commitment to equality
for Black people -- and he was given white riots and official segregation in pe
ace and in war.
Nevertheless, some twenty years later we became Democrats in the name of Frankli
n Roosevelt, then supported his successor Harry Truman, and even tried a "non-pa
rtisan" Republican General of the Army named Eisenhower. We were wooed like many
others by the superficial liberalism of John F. Kennedy and the make-believe po
pulism of Lyndon Johnson. Let there be no more of that.

Both Parties Have Betrayed Us

Here at Gary, let us never forget that while the times and the names and the par
ties have continually changed, one truth has faced us insistently, never changin
g: Both parties have betrayed us whenever their interests conflicted with ours (
which was most of the time), and whenever our forces were unorganized and depend
ent, quiescent and compliant. Nor should this be surprising, for by now we must
know that the American political system, like all other white institutions in Am
erica, was designed to operate for the benefit of the white race: It was never m
eant to do anything else.
That is the truth that we must face at Gary. If white "liberalism" could have so
lved our problems, then Lincoln and Roosevelt and Kennedy would have done so. Bu
t they did not solve ours nor the rest of the nation s. If America s problems co
uld have been solved by forceful, politically skilled and aggressive individuals
, then Lyndon Johnson would have retained the presidency. If the true "American
Way" of unbridled monopoly capitalism, combined with a ruthless military imperia
lism could do it, then Nixon would not be running around the world, or making sp
eeches comparing his nation s decadence to that of Greece and Rome.
If we have never faced it before, let us face it at Gary. The profound crisis of
Black people and the disaster of America are not simply caused by men nor will
they be solved by men alone. These crises are the crises of basically flawed eco
nomics and politics, and or cultural degradation. None of the Democratic candida
tes and none of the Republican candidates -- regardless of their vague promises
to us or to their white constituencies -- can solve our problems or the problems
of this country without radically changing the systems by which it operates.

The Politics of Social Transformation

So we come to Gary confronted with a choice. But it is not the old convention qu
estion of which candidate shall we support, the pointless question of who is to
preside over a decaying and unsalvageable system. No, if we come to Gary out of
the realities of the Black communities of this land, then the only real choice f
or us is whether or not we will live by the truth we know, whether we will move
to organize independently, move to struggle for fundamental transformation, for
the creation of new directions, towards a concern for the life and the meaning o
f Man. Social transformation or social destruction, those are our only real choi
ces
If we have come to Gary on behalf of our people in America, in the rest of this
hemisphere, and in the Homeland -- if we have come for our own best ambitions --
then a new Black Politics must come to birth. If we are serious, the Black Poli
tics of Gary must accept major responsibility for creating both the atmosphere a
nd the program for fundamental, far-ranging change in America. Such responsibili
ty is ours because it is our people who are most deeply hurt and ravaged by the
present systems of society. That responsibility for leading the change is ours b
ecause we live in a society where few other men really believe in the responsibi
lity of a truly human society for anyone anywhere.

We Are The Vanguard

The challenge is thrown to us here in Gary. It is the challenge to consolidate a

nd organize our own Black role as the vanguard in the struggle for a new society
. To accept that challenge is to move independent Black politics. There can be n
o equivocation on that issue. History leaves us no other choice. White politics
has not and cannot bring the changes we need.
We come to Gary and are faced with a challenge. The challenge is to transform ou
rselves from favor-seeking vassals and loud-talking, "militant" pawns, and to ta
ke up the role that the organized masses of our people have attempted to play ev
er since we came to these shores. That of harbingers of true justice and humanit
y, leaders in the struggle for liberatio
A major part of the challenge we must accept is that of redefining the functions
and operations of all levels of American government, for the existing governing
structures -- from Washington to the smallest county -- are obsolescent. That i
s part of the reason why nothing works and why corruption rages throughout publi
c life. For white politics seeks not to serve but to dominate and manipulate.
We will have joined the true movement of history if at Gary we grasp the opportu
nity to press Man forward as the first consideration of politics. Here at Gary w
e are faithful to the best hopes of our fathers and our people if we move for no
thing less than a politics which places community before individualism, love bef
ore sexual exploitation, a living environment before profits, peace before war,
justice before unjust "order", and morality before expedienc
This is the society we need, but we delude ourselves here at Gary if we think th
at change can be achieved without organizing the power, the determined national
Black power, which is necessary to insist upon such change, to create such chang
e, to seize change.
Towards A Black Agenda

So when we turn to a Black Agenda for the seventies, we move in the truth of his
tory, in the reality of the moment. We move recognizing that no one else is goin
g to represent our interests but ourselves. The society we seek cannot come unle
ss Black people organize to advance its coming. We lift up a Black Agenda recogn
izing that white America moves towards the abyss created by its own racist arrog
ance, misplaced priorities, rampant materialism, and ethical bankruptcy. Therefo
re, we are certain that the Agenda we now press for in Gary is not only for the
future of Black humanity, but is probably the only way the rest of America can s
ave itself from the harvest of its criminal past.
So, Brothers and Sisters of our developing Black nation, we now stand at Gary as
people whose time has come. From every corner of Black America, from all libera
tion movements of the Third World, from the graves of our fathers and the coming
world of our children, we are faced with a challenge and a call:
Though the moment is perilous we must not despair. We must seize the time, for t
he time is ours.
We begin here and how in Gary. We begin with an independent Black political move
ment, an independent Black Political Agenda, and independent Black spirit. Nothi
ng less will do. We must build for our people. We must build for our world. We s
tand on the edge of history. We cannot turn back.

Sources:
"The National Black Political Agenda," in Komozi Woodard, Randolph Boehm, Daniel
Lewis, ed., The Black Power Movement, Part 1: Amiri Baraka from Black Arts to B
lack Radicalism (Bethesda, Maryland: University Publications of America, 2000),
microfilm, reel 3.

Report on the New Orleans Black Political Convention

by
Manning Marable