THE WAY WE JOIN TOGETHER
McCarthy, Abigail
I WAS IN Louisville this month when a tornado touched down and tore off part of the roof of the inn where we of the Church Women United finance committee sat toiling over our final report. Cars...
...Women's groups are not vital in the field of economics or government nor do they, except for some specialized groups, train their members to be...
...Institute in Marxi,t Thought June 24-July 12, 1974 "Socialism & Latin America" (Grad...
...He paused then said that I must not know about the latest letter to me...
...Unless they do, they will be the poorer and society as well...
...Judge Ben C. Dawkins of Louisiana exemplifies Hamilton's school of "Judicial Gradualism"--those conservative but honest judges who would order blacks registered when they had made a case of discrimination...
...Hamilton could have used Judge Cox's background to expand on the political nature of federal judgeships: Cox was the college roommate of Senator James Eastland, the powerful chairman of the Judiciary Committee who had expressed vehement hostility to all civil rights bills...
...Were women's organizations not only marginal, but anachronistic as well...
...In addition, women, especially those in church groups, have an organic way of reaching across economic and racial lines...
...The admonition was not necessary...
...Michael Walzer, professor of government at Harvard, and author of what he calls "a practical guide to movement politics" (Political Action, Quadrangle, 1971), has written that women are a key constituency of any new party or movement---civil rights or the peace movement, for example--and do important work in them, "work at which they are highly experienced," he adds...
...20525...
...Johnson was a judge sensitive to the subtleties of discriminatory acts such as registration slow-downs and the application of double standards in reviewing white and black literacy tests...
...He knew, you see, what he was supposed to be doing and where he was supposed to be...
...It is for less than 200 years that women have had the right of free association and then, for most of that time, in very restricted ways...
...Had she not been upheld by the Boston Female AntiSlavery Society, a group with four years' experience with public meetings, she might well have met with the jeering and social ostracism which had driven a few brave women from other platforms...
...The Journalists for Professional Equality were running a counter-Gridiron party which had posed a hard choice for politicians invited to both events...
...In the last letter I received, Father Jensen emphasized the confidential nature of our correspondence, admonishing me not to allude publicly to anything in his letters, either directly or indirectly...
...It was only the next day that coffee cups and saucers began to clatter in my hand and I knew that my nerves were beginning to register the freakishness of fate, the fact that death had passed by...
...Theirs has largely been the network used for reform, for the imposition of "non-masculine" and humane values for the general society...
...Unless we are all, men and women, to become simply economic units, it behooves women to find new ways of maintaining their networks, and of learning economic and political leadership...
...The reader is left hoping that Hamilton will expand on his well-laid political-historical foundation and draw up more detailed blackpower blueprints to guide the on-going struggle for full equality...
...Shortly after receiving the last letter, I received a call from a newspaperman in Washington...
...Coming in the context of an exchange of letters he had warned PEACE CORPS & VISTA NEED YOUI Volunteer your skills & experience in developing nations avnrsoas and U.S...
...He told the press of this...
...The question was compounded for me when I came back to a Washington mildly diverted by the newest tactics of women-journalists pressing for inclusion in the prestigious Griddiron Club and its annual dinner...
...He asked me if I had any comment on Father Jensen's letter to me...
...Join the universal strul~lo for human dignity--throulh education, skilled trades, agriculture, engineering, business, urban plannin|, medicine & other fields of community development...
...In this regard we are far from the goals of (Continued on page 197) 26 April 1974:182 tedious litigation necessary to demonstrate actual discrimination was the federal government, specifically the Justice Department...
...Rather Hamilton strongly hints that economic independence is almost a precondition to political freedom...
...too often they provide the money and the troops for male generals...
...The ongoing work is worth the time, if not one's final hour...
...Yet they yield leadership and policy to men...
...Father Jensen and I then entered into private correspondence concerning the series---discussing the approach, the format, writers that might be used...
...Of late, church women, traditionally the fund-raisers for special projects, have begun to administer their own money, cutting down on overhead and bureaucracy as they do so, but they still tend to think of political action in terms of primitive political pressure...
...I was upset at the thought even though I was aware of the cultural conditioning behind my reaction: women are marginal in our society and the work of their organizations is hardly serious...
...Cox, as presiding judge, took delight in delaying voter suits and frustrating them with procedural technicalities...
...The author postulates that the struggle for human rights must give greater attention to solutions that link political and economic concerns, but unfortunately Hamilton's guidelines on this point are sketchy and peripheral to his jurisprudential theme...
...I told him he was free to choose this approach but since our readers would quite possibly side with our own writers, it seemed to me the best opportunity for the CBA was to be found in a positive approach...
...Women have needed each other...
...His original concept was to counter those writers in our paper on articles they had written...
...It becomes apparent that enfranchisement is hardly a panacea for the economic ills of an oppressed people...
...Hamilton also shows how the success of the '57-'60 "'Judicial Approach" depended on the predilection of the presiding judge...
...Upon reflection it seems t0 me that THE WAY WE JOIN TOGETHER ABIGAIL McCARTHY their revitalization is equally as important as the pressure for place in professional groups...
...Information: Bruce Muzzle, ACTION, OCP Box P-5, Washing...
...He agreed...
...0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 McCarthy (Cont...
...02167 Commonweal: 197...
...I have made myself contemptible in the eyes of many," said one of these sadly...
...Hamilton juxtaposes Johnson's willing execution of the new laws with the open hostility evinced by Judge Harold Cox, whom Hamilton uses as a paradigm of "Judicial Resistance...
...Cars whirled and smashed in the parking lot and windows shattered before the storm veered off and swooped on the fair grounds across the way...
...Hamilton aptly contrasts the Eisenhower Administration's lukewarm leadership with the vigorous professionalism of the Kennedy civil rights specialists like John Doar...
...However, Johnson wanted the local officials to become reconciled to black voting and he skillfully avoided what would have been an odious intervention by federal referees...
...OOOOOO OOO CORRESPONDENCE (Continued ]rom page 179) This offer was accepted...
...Johnson would not hesitate to register applicants himself when inveterate prejudice was shown, and he set himself as a watch-dog over the practices of local boards...
...There were, however, a third group of Southern judges who, although segregationist in outlook, held a deeper respect for the rule of law and the constitutional mandate for universal suffrage...
...In addition to providing a history of Southern voting rights litigation in the early '60s, Hamilton also describes concrete instances of economic reprisals taken against voting blacks by powerful agricultural and financial interests...
...Father Jensen had released the contents of a letter to me to the news media, in it he had broken the agreement we had been trying to reach...
...They are a surprisingly large part of the support community for the migrant ministry, for the farm workers, for urban change, for international initiatives...
...In the hours that followed I discovered that the first reaction of those on the fringes of disaster is surprise and annoyance that things have stopped working---deliveries, planes, long-distance lines, water faucets...
...In 1838, at a time when women were legally classified with slaves and imbeciles, and when Paul's dictum about the shamefulness of women speaking in public was taken literally, Angelina Grimke, gentlewoman and abolitionist from South Carolina, spoke before the Massachusetts legislature against slavery and presented a petition signed by 20,000 women...
...Gera Lerner, The Grimke Sisters, Schocken, 1971...
...Judge Frank Johnson of Alabama serves as Hamilton's model of "Judicial Aggressiveness...
...such visionaries as Abigail Adams and the Grimke sisters...
...But, in a world of bewildering choices for women--and still more bewildering limitations--did I want to spend my last hour on the work of a woman's organization...
...Father Jensen submitted a tentative list of articles...
...ton, D.C...
...This letter reached me five days after it had been released to the news media, after it had been reported in news services and its contents discussed in secular and religious newspapers across the country...
...Our correspondence continued...
...It was through missionary societies, abolitionist groups, the temperance movement, and the women mill-workers' struggle that they began the slow march to social and economic equality...
...I considered the correspondence confidential...
...Expenses paid-medical, travel, vacation, living...
...Their organizations are still a way of identifying and finding each other...
...More often than not, that experience comes from their experience in women's groups...
...Johnson struck down overly-stringent registration standards even when they were applied across the board if the effect was to freeze the white dominated status-quo...
...The most distinguished of us rely on rights which are the fruit of other women's struggles---even for the basic right to come together...
...I remembered the retreat master's favorite, that irritating, self-righteous schoolboy saint, who, when asked what he would do if he knew he was to die within the hour, replied, "I'd go on playing billiards...
...Within their own groups they rely too much on personal influence and have little respect for process...
...The failure of women to assume leadership positions or to participate fully in decision-making often leaves the new party or movement rootli~ss, the ideological tool and sometimes the plaything of marginal men," says Walzer...
...One or two years...
...Credit) Inquire: Oliva Blanchette, Director BOSTON COLLEGE Chestnut Hill, MHs...
...In a queer way women of the organizations have always been on the cutting edge of social movements...
...Often the Justice Department would "train these judges" to recognize surreptitious methods of discrimination...
...I said I did not, that our correspondence was confidential...
Vol. 100 • April 1974 • No. 8
