The Negro Revolution
Howe, Irying
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...It also shows how telling was Dr...
...In practical terms, the tactic of nonviolence is particularly suitable for a drawn-out struggle...
...Where has this gentleman spent his life...
...Kennedy does not seem to have much appetite for a good clean fight over principles...
...Meanwhile, only a few days after the President's proposals, the usual division of labor seems already at work in Congress...
...But as Walter Lippmann has remarked, Mr...
...There were times," added Dr...
...but there is hardly an issue being raised, or a significant political tendency within the liberation movement, which has not been present in American Negro life these past seventyfive years...
...Under these circumstances equality of opportunity (even if we had it...
...Let him speak about the legalities, but also and even more about human rights...
...About this there are some interesting things to say...
...Last April I had sent a letter to the New York Times with a similar proposal...
...It is time—time, indeed, after this last excrutiating century...
...In a similar way, the disruption of civic life caused by mass arrests does further damage to Southern economic prospects: it discourages new investments by the Northern-controlled corporations which prefer an atmosphere of social peace...
...He hires them for their menial tasks by the day and lays them off at whim...
...Any Negro leader who publicly accepted such a proposal would have soon found himself minus a good part of his following...
...Interview with Baldwin by Nat Hentoff, New York Herald Tribune, June 16, 1963...
...For him it was a political fiasco, for them a moral triumph...
...They have known only two kinds of white men—the boss and the cop...
...The Reverend King was pleading that a word from the President, or better still, a personal appearance in the South (maybe even in a Negro church...
...The pressures kept mounting...
...Indeed, this speech by a President of the United States may fairly be considered an historic turning point...
...He didn't get the point at all," said Baldwin...
...steady pressure from radicals and liberals...
...He is profoundly troubled by the demoralization of Negro life, and he warns of the disasters that could result...
...Be that as it may...
...Better, thus far, than any other group, they can speak for the Negro community as a whole...
...But if there were such a plot the outcome might not be very different from what seems the likely fate of the President's legislation...
...But the President remained silent: it is a cool family...
...But when the Administration covertly turned to the big corporations in an effort to have them patch up a truce in Birmingham, it was far from naive...
...it may soon cause an explosion...
...Kenneth Clark, a participant) that since "the FBI uses Southern agents in investigations of civil-rights abuses, the role of the FBI is coercive rather than protective" in relation to Negroes...
...the gradual transformation of the South into an industrial society in which the more blatant forms of discrimination prove costly...
...For that, the Negroes must be given special help, special privileges, if you will —in jobs, in the unions, in the universities...
...It is a clear and unambiguous (if belated) recognition by the President of the revolution, and that the United States must go along with it and not oppose it...
...Morally, it provides reinforcement for the embattled Negro communities, at least for all but the most depressed and deprived sectors.* To * One of the gravest problems here is the growth of a sector of "unemployable" youth, demoralized and consequently at times delinquent, which seethes in every 207 an unarmed racial minority that must cope with the ruthlessness of state and local power, which means the ruthlessness of Southern sheriffs and deputies, the tactic of passive resistance brings strength, endurance, conviction...
...most Americans simply chose not to see it...
...Children, he felt, should not be thrust into the battle by their elders...
...About the pecksniffian whinings in behalf of "moderation" that have come from James Reston it is pointless to say anything: he is on the way to becoming Krock the Second...
...They are often, as men of the cloth, in morally and tactically advantageous positions...
...Speaking before a protest rally in Washington, D. C., Robert Kennedy said, "There is no discrimination here at the Department of Justice...
...Events move fast, and a quarterly is not exactly the ideal medium in which to follow them...
...he speaks in the tones of bitterness which the more militant Negroes would only magnify...
...the appearance of African states which stimulate pride in American Negroes...
...Involved here is the whole problem of the American economy, for as Walter Lippmann remarks, "the hard truth is that while the Negroes are making these demands, the country is in fact short of good schools, good housing and good jobs...
...the profile of courage might be damaged a bit...
...But the cop is much worse...
...Kennedy was told (to quote Dr...
...Is such a public gesture unprecedented...
...They simply cannot and should not accept the President's presumptuous request that they now abandon public demonstrations and wait upon the generosity of Congress...
...When people see no chance for improvement, they grit their teeth and learn to bear their misery...
...they bristle with courage and impatience...
...Equality of opportunity leads to equality of benefit only if the compared groups start at roughly the same point...
...The constant factors we all know: years of struggle by Negro minority groups...
...Clearly, maximum pressure will have to be mounted by labor, civil rights and other groups to push Congress into enactment of the President's program as a minimum offering today...
...That is why the decision of the Negro leaders to keep the heat on is an encouraging one...
...That he should have made such a request at all, shows once again how little he and his cohorts have grasped what is happening among American Negroes today...
...Kenneth Clark's judgment when he said Robert Kennedy probably represented the best in the "white power structure"—a state214 ment in which full weight must be given all three words...
...etc etc...
...And now they clearly miscalculated the nature and depth of the Negro movement, failing to see that it could not be contained by the usual manipulative tactics...
...they miss nothing except the fundamental trends of modern society...
...The most articulate and intelligent Negroes in this country are skeptical toward the whole "white power structure" (even, it is said, toward the Attorney General...
...If the Negroes were engaged in a revolutionary effort to overthrow our society, then the tactic of non-violence would soon prove to be inadequate...
...But there may be an advantage in standing back and trying to see these developments in a preliminary perspective...
...and it became clear that without decisive action there might be serious disorders...
...When those Negro kids marched off to jail, clapping their hands and singing "We Shall Overcome," they were learning for themselves a true lesson in citizenship...
...For the mass of Negroes American society does not deliver, and for many of them the conclusion must be that their own leaders, especially those "moderates" who council patience, also do not deliver...
...Clark, "when we just broke out into hysterical laughter...
...but it will not remove that distance itself...
...Well, aren't you...
...What then happened was that the Birmingham business interests, despite local "white supremacist" pressure, bowed to the wishes of Blough and his similars...
...The social steam within the black ghettos keeps accumulating...
...The steam has been building in these people for weeks...
...Two footnotes: • "A guest for lunch with the Attorney General remarked last week how struck he was at how Southern the scene was as Negro waiters bent to pour coffee while the Attorney General wondered aloud what Negroes were thinking...
...They expose themselves in the most dangerous places...
...These seem to us among the reasons for the recent intensification of the Negro revolt...
...and in the Negro religious tradition they have available a communal reservoir of psychic and emotional strength upon which to draw...
...The cop accosts them at any hour and arrests them on any pretext...
...hundreds of children were put in jail...
...American society is not blessed with a rich historical memory, especially in regard to problems that stir its guilt...
...The boss is none too good...
...But alone or with others, the Negroes are on the move, North and South, as never before...
...but they are not so good at spotting social revolutions...
...Some months ago, after the Cuban invasion troops returned to Florida, President Kennedy made a special trip to Miami in order to speak at their rally...
...For months before the recent crisis, Negro spokesmen in the South have complained that the government was 208 not giving them adequate protection, that the FBI was far too closely associated with the local racist police, that they could not get sufficient support from the Attorney General's Office...
...Well, here in Mississippi and Alabama is a cause involving freedom for ourselves...
...be quick to recognize and applaud this achievement...
...But as a consequence of the shame and outrage of American history, the Negroes do not start at the same point as the whites...
...The lesson of self-reliance, self-affirmation, militancy...
...I wish to propose a step which would dramatize the moral issue, encourage the brave Negroes risking their lives for rights all the rest of us take for granted, and perhaps give the Southern whites reason to pause...
...The achievements of the past few months were made possible by the work and sacrifice of thousands of pioneers, including a good many American radicals who often stood al• most alone in combatting the outrage of racialism.* Certain aspects of the * In a recent essay, "The Administration and the Left," composed for the New Statesman and Nation and otherwise marked by a sublime condescension, Arthur Schlessinger, Jr...
...Would it be impolite to wonder exactly what struck him as so funny...
...columnists like Walter Lippmann kept jabbing away at Kennedy's failure to speak out...
...would have a tremendous impact...
...It was the foul evasiveness by which our society made verbal concessions to its guilt while doing nothing to help those whom it kept down...
...The New Republic, editorial, June 15, 1963, emphasis added...
...No doubt, there are a good many others...
...It surges up from the very depths of our social life, from people who for decades had been cowed into silence or drugged into apathy...
...213 storming and repeated appeals to the people, can insure the passage of the President's bills...
...He called it "both naive and a shameful confession of unwillingness to protect the helpless...
...now they lead the host to righteous battle...
...And the surrounding presence of the Rostows, Schlesingers and Bundys doesn't help much...
...Does he not realize that a Negro child born in America is thrust into this battle the very moment of his birth...
...But suddenly, without forewarning, for they had been in no church rallies and ridden in no freedom rides, they saw Negroes defying the hated cop...
...I1 When the demonstrations first began in Birmingham, and even after Bull Connor unleashed his dogs, the response of the Kennedy Administration was—public silence...
...IRVING HOWE...
...the large-scale migration of Negroes to Northern cities where they can acquire some political power...
...So the hate built in these bitter souls and the courage built up too...
...The Kennedys seem very bright at winning primaries, pulling strings, maneuvering in Congress (getting bills passed is something else again...
...These statements, to be sure, were made before the President introduced his civil rights legislation into Congress...
...Just 01 the triumph of the CIO radically chonlJed the lives of millions of worbrs ITURN TO PAGE 2051 JOURNAL OF THE QUARTER THE NEGRO REVOLUTION continued from front cover previously helpless before the American corporate structure, so will the Negro revolution change the lives of millions of human beings who have suffered so long at the bottom of our social order...
...The cops often beat Negroes senseless in full public view...
...If people will struggle, they can attain...
...It was they, not the demostrating children, who were targets of hoses and dogs...
...Indeed not...
...It is of the very greatest importance to an understanding of American politics—and we are concerned with far more than Mr...
...Still in a minority and sometimes unseasoned, these young men will be among the leaders of tomorrow...
...The Negro revolution may be blocked here and diverted there, but it cannot be stopped...
...We were trying to say that this was an emergency for our country...
...A boycott quietly in effect for the past year in Birmingham cut the sales of retail stores by over thirty per cent, enough to drive a number of stores into bankruptcy...
...Post-ideological yet in some general way radical, they understand that even if the struggle in the South were won tomorrow that would not solve the Negro's problems but would only provide the conditions necessary for solving them...
...This never got over...
...but it will triumph...
...But what is there new in the present situation that would account for the confidence and intensity with which the Negroes have begun to fight...
...It is a highly instructive incident, and if we didn't have the Harvard contingent in the White House to educate us to a greater sophistication, we might almost take it as an illustration of the Marxist theory of power...
...That, at the moment, is far more important than his ill-timed scheduled trip to Europe...
...And why did it erupt with such militancy and passion...
...With or without anyone's help, the Negro people are on the way up to freedom...
...But they find it intolerable that a better life should seem yet not be within reach...
...How far ministers like the Reverends King and Shuttlesworth will be able to lead the Negro movement in the South, whether they will be replaced at some later stage, it is still too early to say...
...They mounted an invasion of Cuba without understanding how and why Castro could win a hold on the Cuban people, and without understanding that an American-sponsored invasion could only strengthen Castro's hold on the Cuban people...
...As James Reston reported, "Roger Blough of U.S...
...Speaking before a House Judiciary subcommittee, John Roche, national chairman of the ADA, said with a forthrightness few liberals could match that the negotiations secretly undertaken by Kennedy's agents with the Birmingham business interests represented "a ticket-fixing approach to racial problems...
...Now, with a high and marvellous anger, they take to the picketlines, the streets and the jails, brimming with the assurance that they sacrifice in behalf of their childrens' freedom, armored with the tough shield of non-violence, and above all, acting on their own, self-reliant and proud, little helped by the white liberals and barely understood by the Kennedy administration...
...The Dixiecrats prepare to filibuster...
...Sometimes cooperating with the ministers and occasionally more militant are those younger Negro leaders who have recently graduated from the Southern student movement...
...V1 The cant of "moderation" is at an end...
...And at this prospect, all decent men feel profoundly glad...
...writes: "The most striking and significant work 206 present-day Negro struggle may be novel...
...And these forms of help should remain in effect until the Negroes themselves declare the time has come when they are no longer needed...
...But consider the case of Professor Paul Ramsey, a distinguished Princeton theologian and a man of good will, who wrote to the New York Times criticizing the use of children in the Birmingham demonstrations...
...the encouragement rendered by the Supreme Court decision on desegregating schools...
...When Major Cooper returned to earth, the President was obviously moved by the astronaut's courage, and he spoke of it immediately...
...that he has no choice but to be thrust into it...
...4) There is finally the little-discussed fact that in recent years the Negro has been gripped by a profound crisis in morale...
...King threatens mass disobedience and a possible march to Washington in case of prolonged filibuster...
...That it helped deflate Robert Kennedy was an incidental gain...
...Their scant education and few skills leave them only the poorest of jobs Birmingham has for Negroes...
...There results a disintegration of communal discipline, and in sheer desperation, a resort to various kinds of delinquency...
...01 valt I. leolM alld at lead as sllJ nlficont In morality as the rise of Industrial _,,'on · Ism Tn the thirtle., has begun to IW••p the country...
...When Whitney Young, head of the National Urban League, the most conservative of the Negro organizations, charges the Kennedy Administration with having "only reacted, not acted," and adds that "Their attitude has been: How can we keep people from revolting and demonstrating and embarrassing us...
...What follows from this...
...We could not get through," said Baldwin about the effort to persuade Kennedy that more than legislation or politicking was involved...
...Many of them have been exposed, in Northern divinity schools, to the "social gospel...
...They had always cowered before the cops and held back their hatred—to protect their skulls...
...If the President could take such extraordinary steps in behalf of what he designated as freedom in Cuba, why should he not act, with full dignity and drama in behalf of an American minority...
...and its lib212 eral apologists, who kept mumbling about the advantages of realistic backroom deals with Birmingham business over displays of democratic rhetoric, have been left flat-footed with their apologies...
...and that the only issue facing him is whether to accept injustice supinely or stand up and fight for his freedom and his manhood...
...Had he spoken spontaneously during the Birmingham crisis, one could have honored entirely the urgency of his moral reaction...
...And for this purpose, non-violence has been shown to be an admirably supple instrument...
...Kennedy, are you not the boss of the FBI...
...It is this development within the Negro community which explains the feverish urgency of James Baldwin's recent writings...
...And while the Southern power-holders may not be very sensitive to the claims of Christian morality, they understand perfectly well the value of a dollar...
...what mattered most was that it brought to public attention the voices of Negro intellectuals who are forthright and articulate...
...Later, upon putting forward this modest proposal to establishment liberals, I was told that the President prefers tangible gains to dramatic gestures-as if, at the height of the Birmingham crisis, a dramatic gesture would not have constituted the very greatest gain for the cause of freedom and equality...
...And they have every reason to be...
...So the non-privileged decided to make it a fight of their own...
...We are not suggesting that there is a cynical plot in Washington to let liberals propose and conservatives dispose...
...But we do already have a few central moments...
...As it was, both his speech and his proposals must be seen as in large measure a response to overwhelming public pressure and to a growing fear that anything less than such a response would result in social havoc...
...Steel got in touch with the moderates of his vast steel enterprises in Birmingham and appealed for compromise...
...1) There is the rise of a new Negro leadership...
...Neither Marxists nor liberals foresaw the development of the extraordinary men at the head of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference: life is always richer than theory...
...From here on in, they mean to "make it" on their own...
...but by now the Negroes have come to be skeptical of the whole government process, they know how little even the best of laws can mean...
...As Julian Bond, the SNCC spokesman, remarks: "We cannot, in good conscience, ask American citizens who have been denied their rights for 300 years to refrain from voicing their demands in any way they choose...
...It is a great, an exciting moment, and we, for our part, support their struggle heart-andsoul —with Martin Luther King and the Negro students entering the University of Alabama, with CORE ripping the veiled structure of inequality in San Francisco, with the brave young men helping Georgia Negroes to register, with Lorraine Hansberry telling off the Attorney General...
...that this was not a group of Negroes begging the white power structure to be nice to Negroes...
...Which may suggest that "his vast steel enterprises" have had a hand in the earlier perpetuation of Jim Crow in Birmingham...
...The letter was refused, but here is the central passage...
...when he says that the Kennedy Administration's record in Civil Rights has been "inadequate" by comparison with the "miserable" record of the Eisenhower Administration—he is expressing sentiments that a great many Negroes feel, including those who vote Democratic steadily...
...1 Why did the Negro struggle erupt at this particular moment...
...V Even if the whole of President Kennedy's legislative package is passed in the next few months, that would be the merest beginning of what now needs to be done...
...protests poured in from all over the nation...
...but meanwhile it pushes the leaders into greater activity and a more desperate public stance...
...But what they want, by and large, is to enter fully, as equals, into the American social structure...
...2) There is the considerable success with which the tactic of non-violence has recently been developed in the South...
...It is therefore appalling that he chooses this moment to take a trip to Europe which is politically dubious in its own right...
...It would of the greatest political and intellectual value to have a full record of this confrontation...
...It bewilders the enemy, and may yet drive a moral wedge into the white middleclass...
...Although reluctant to detail fully his acute disappointment with what he regarded as the Attorney General's lack of moral urgency . Baldwin did nod affirmatively when a friend who had been at the meeting [with Robert Kennedy] said, "It's frightening to see power in the flesh and then realize how empty it is of almost everything but a concern with strategy for keeping itself in power...
...III Meanwhile another Kennedy was receiving an unforgettable lesson about American Negroes...
...The Left has been at its best when it has supported Martin Luther King and the Freedom Riders...
...Such a plan would provide the underpinning for the legal rights they will be winning for themselves...
...No one can now persuade the Negroes to accept anything but full freedom...
...There were further intimations that the Kennedy Administration was intervening under cover, in that crafy way the family seems to favor and certain liberals have learned to admire...
...That would be no reason to refuse it, but as it happens we do have a precedent in the immediate past...
...These men were not even American citizens, yet in the name of freedom, the President felt obliged to honor them...
...We were unable to communicate...
...Once the President make his speech declaring the issue of desegregation a moral imperative and proposing his civil rights legislation, it was quite as well-phrased as one could have predicted...
...they are far behind in social position, educational status, economic possibility...
...The truth is that the Negro struggle has been going on for decades...
...The Republican leadership has announced its opposition to the most valuable of Kennedy's proposals, that granting Negroes the right of access to private business establishments...
...The value, the drama, the sheer beauty of the way the Negro intellectuals confronted Robert Kennedy on May 24 cannot be overestimated...
...Apparently, his sense of moral urgency was still containable...
...It is worth noticing how myopic and finally unrealistic the usual sort of liberal realpolitik (ignorantly called "pragmatic") proves to be...
...Photographs were flashed around the world showing a police dog leaping on a Negro boy and a policeman kneeing the breast of a Negro woman...
...For what needs, most of all, to be done is to work out and put into effect a long-range plan for the socio-economic improvement of the life of American Negroes...
...If the government really helps the Negroes, well and good...
...The Administration, we learned from various columnists, had brought pressure to bear, first upon white businessmen in Birmingham to accept token desegregation, and second upon major corporate interests to apply their pressure on Birmingham affiliates...
...When Martin Luther King says that both the Democrats and Republicans "have betrayed the cause of justice" by collaborating with the Dixiecrats...
...and that is the outstanding historical development of these past few months...
...Candidates for replacements are not, in any case, unavailable...
...they demand not that our society abdicate but that it fulfill its announced claims...
...Let President Kennedy pay a visit to Mississippi or Alabama...
...but it shows once again that, with or without the best will in the world, Robert Kennedy does not grasp the depth and extent of the problem...
...It was always a lie, a supreme hypocricy...
...Let him tell the Negroes of the South that the government will not merely protect them when they try to exercise the vote, but that it stands behind them on moral grounds...
...They will not benefit from Birmingham's new deal because they will never be qualified, or acceptable, for jobs as clerks or salesmen...
...The White House minds are very shrewd...
...Some leaked reports had it that the President "could not intervene" in a local crisis: an evasion so pitiful that no one 209 took it seriously, for the crisis was not local and the President had many avenues for action...
...And involved here as well is the need to understand how inadequate is the notion of "equality of opportunity" for the American Negroes...
...Kennedy's personal psychology or moral composition—that we recognize how decisive was the tremendous pressure from the Negroes in forcing the Administration to act, even to the inadequate extent that it has acted...
...IY As it turned out, the original strategy of the Kennedy administration could not be sustained...
...There is talk of a more "moderate" bill sponsored by Dirksen and Mansfield, to repace that of the President...
...Then he journeyed South and made a speech in which he cited many literary authorities, devoted all of twothirds of a sentence to the aspirations toward freedom held by certain unspecified citizens, but did not get SOME FACTS Negro male worker's median annual income: $3,075.00 White: (5,137.00) Negro female worker's median annual income: $1,276.00 White: (2,537.00) • Percentage of Negroes in skilled, managerial and professional class: 16 per cent White: 40 per cent 210 around to mentioning Negroes...
...Thousands of young Negroes cannot help seeing that the gap between their life-possibilities and those of white youth keeps growing larger...
...It was the laughter of desperation...
...and they, if no one else, have reason to take it seriously...
...It was not a new idea...
...Ministers in the Negro community had traditionally been voices of resignation...
...the "old-fashioned methods" so grandly decried by sophisticated liberals remain basic weapons for social betterment...
...and they understand as well that these problems exist not in isolation but as an extreme instance of what is wrong with our society as a whole...
...CORE, the NAACP, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, the Urban League—all have thus far insisted upon freedom of action, the right to continue protests when these seem appropriate...
...Economically, the accompanying device of store boycotts has proved a strong weapon, especially in view of the increased purchasing power commanded by Southern Negroes...
...of the American left . . . has been on behalf of the fight for equal rights in the United States...
...In the May 1112 battle at Birmingham these young Negroes made their resentments felt...
...The major corporations decided that it would be better to give the Negroes a few crusts in Birmingham— they have surely gotten no more— than to risk further social disruption...
...The pro-Kennedy New Republic is surely correct when it writes that "The President ought to travel and speak in the South, and not in the customary establishment places either...
...On the contrary, it showed a hard-headed awareness of the realities of social power...
...their commitment to non-violence tends to be ethical rather than religious...
...Any individual can come in here and get a job if he is qualified...
...No doubt...
...They know, as King says, that "the plight of the vast majority of Negroes remains the same...
...Kennedy, who in his day could 211 get pretty rough with Congressional witnesses when they refused to answer questions, refrained from saying anything at this point...
...that will make their struggle easier, though it will not remove the need for struggle...
...3) There has occurred in recent years a large-scale disillusionment among many Negroes in regard to the government, the white liberals, the whole of the "white power structure," as Dr...
...Kenneth Clark has called it...
...This makes the Negro problem part of a generalized problem...
...The New York Post reporter, Stan Opatowsky, has written a valuable description of them: . . . they are Birmingham's dispossessed, and the truth is that they will remain non-privileged even when the new day dawns...
...Bobbie Kennedy, the tough little rich boy who believes that everything can be managed if only you have enough power (or if only you are tough and rich enough), was routed by a handful of seemingly powerless Negro writers and artists...
...But the courage of the Negro children in Birmingham moved him to no similar public eloquence...
...Indeed, the application of passive resistance to the struggle for equal rights is perhaps the greatest achievement of American pacifism, and those of us who are not pacifists ought to urban Negro community...
...Only the most vigorous public campaign, including sustained barn...
...Robert Kennedy "just laughed...
...For white liberals the recent events have been a crucial test, and not all, perhaps not very many, have passed...
...He does not lack for speechwriters...
...How could a grown-up man be so innocent...
...American Negroes are fed up with the temperate advice of liberals to be "patient," fed up with all the rationalizations which inhibit them from an open and proud battle for their rights...
...Money talked...
...Later one of the participants urged that the President escort Negro students to the University of Alabama...
...and then Lena Horne put it to him straight: "Mr...
...can at best be a way of avoiding a further growth in the distance between white and Negro living conditions...
...The President retained his dignified silence straight through the most terrible days of the Birmingham crisis...
...Their movement will grow, will struggle, will suffer all the inner difficulties that all great social movements must...
Vol. 10 • July 1963 • No. 3
