The Negro Revolution (continued)
Howe, Irving
Will the strategy of non-violent resistance prove as successful for the Negro liberation movement in the future as it has in the past, or should it be replaced by new methods? If so, which...
...Mediate between whom...
...The murderers and the murdered...
...been able to test, beyond evasion...
...As Murray Kempton has remarked: "The children from Wilmington, North Carolina climbed back on their buses with the shining memory of a moment when they marched with all America—a memory to sustain them when they return to march alone...
...Should it press for Negro quotas in employment...
...Not for decades has any social awareness that we face a fundamental movement in the U.S...
...There are certain dangers...
...Yet the Negro movement would be making a mistake if, out of the understandable bitterness of some younger people, it were to be tempted to go it alone...
...To ask this question is to answer it: the Negro movement has worked out a course that in its essentials is both strong and good, powerful and right...
...Negroes themselves...
...When such talk comes from young Negro activists who have been tried beyond endurance, it is authentic: they have a right to speak their anguish...
...Should the liberation movement try to play a more directly political role...
...And what, in any case, could serve to replace it...
...Such efforts have an importance far beyond the immeBEYOND THE QUOTA There is much talk these days about a "quota" of jobs, etc., for Negroes...
...When the vet eran union leaders bemoan their inability to recruit devoted young organizers, they might try to imagine themselves as young Americans in the sixties, without ideology or program, dubious about political systems, but believing passionately in fair play and decency for all human beings...
...In short, where do we go from here...
...The oppressive white power structure and the terrorized Negroes...
...Pres...
...We do not think it will make this mistake...
...Some talk is heard these days about abandoning "non-violence...
...What the March Mostly they are problems of initial did was to give the country a sharper success...
...Should the Negro leadership insist upon transporting white children to predominantly Negro schools, even if this creates resentment among white parents...
...The demonstration in Washington is for ONTOLOGICAL reasons unruly...
...Is George Meany and all he represents a figure likely to evoke their loyalties...
...but no matter, it is going to be the work of the the problems remain...
...At the opposite extreme are those who would transform the Negro movement into an agency dramatizing their extreme alienation from American life and the progressive forces in our society...
...Now the Negro movement faces a time of stock-taking, in which the lessons of the past will be measured and strategies for the future discussed...
...But there is one "quota" which is oversubscribed...
...Summerpatriots can be found in all movements: here they are the genteel Toms who want to make out for themselves, edging their way into middle-class respectability or political office, and leaving the masses of poor Negroes in the lurch...
...Whatever idealism is to be found these days among young people is directed toward two central issues: Negro rights and peace...
...the liberation of the Negroes is not Some of them would phrase these going to occur in the legislative halls, questions differently...
...When this comes from Marxistic ideologues and sects, it is profoundly irresponsible: they are hoping to impose a frayed blueprint on a living movement...
...Do street demonstrations retain the value they have had these past months, or will they reach a point of diminishing returns...
...The people who told me these things are serious people, and I believe them...
...diate legislative vote: they are necessary for stirring the country, for educating people, for keeping the issue alive...
...Only a virTHE HIGHER PHILOSOPHY: Right Wing Dept...
...Howard Rosen of the Manpower Office of the Department of Labor, "22 per cent of the unemployed workers in the U.S...
...So I ask the question again, of the ADA and the Harvard liberals and UAW leadership and the liberal weeklies and all the other semi-demiKennedy supporters: Is it seriously your contention that the Administration has responded to the Birmingham terror in a way that satisfies your conscience...
...All the gov ernment of the U.S...
...It is a strategy that will surely lead to future victories as well...
...Let us simply ask our liberal friends: Is it genuinely your conviction that the Kennedy Administration has done what it could and should in response to the Negro revolution...
...Yet in their absorption with the daily life of the unions, they fail to recognize how deeply tarnished the idea of unionism has become even in liberal circles...
...are nonwhites...
...Is it genuinely your conviction that the Administration has responded to the cry for help coming from the Birmingham Negroes, responded in a way that satisfies the moral urgencies of this moment...
...For those of us who have been raised in the ambience of the labor movement, who in recent years have defended the unions even when we knew something was radically wrong with them, and who retain strong ties of solidarity and gratitude for the improvements they brought in the lives of our parents and ourselves over the last few decades—for us it was a black day when the AFL-CIO Executive Board refused to endorse the March...
...That is to say, the demonstration has no definite purpose...
...Negroes form only ten per cent of the population, but according to Dr...
...could so far do, by way of response, was to send two white gentlemen as mediators to Birmingham, where they were met at the airport by other white gentlemen...
...There are divisions of opinion, as there must be in any democratic movement...
...and although it is widely thought that its sole purpose is to build pressure for passage of that bill, in fact the March would take place even if the bill were passed tomorrow.— Emphasis added.—The National Review, August 27, 1963...
...And to the Nemobilize the kind of energy and en-groes it gave a new sense of their power...
...tual break-down of American social life could warrant any other course...
...It was dreamed up before the civil rights bill...
...Will the strategy of non-violent resistance prove as successful for the Negro liberation movement in the future as it has in the past, or should it be replaced by new methods...
...I was repeatedly told that many unions played an important part in financing the March, that large individual contingents came from a number of major unions, that serious work is being done in many places by the unions to eradicate discrimination...
...It would be interesting if some political analyst who is close to Washington affairs would try to explain why it is that this Administration seems utterly unable to fight in domestic politics: is it that it really lacks serious convictions...
...and here the gesture of refusal has done enormous hurt to the labor movement...
...Did it "change tive participants of the Negro libera-a single vote...
...Yet cruel as it must seem to say so, the grief of a father, the anger of a community, is not finally at stake here...
...A foolish question—for tion movement are now discussing...
...What a country...
...they fail to recognize how utterly damaging was the decision, or lack of decision, taken by the AFLCIO Executive Board...
...At stake is the course of a great social movement which has already scored major successes, both practical and moral, through the strategy of non-violence...
...Given the fact that in many cities the problem of discrimination soon reveals itself to be a problem in economic power and privilege, is the stress upon legal rights sufficient...
...Which of us, seeing the dynamited body of his little girl on the street, would not find it hard to reaffirm nonviolence...
...Kennedy has even denounced the idea of such "quotas" as unAmerican...
...The other week I attended a conference of labor people and was struck at how uneasy and defensive they are on this matter...
...If so, which methods...
...Faced with candor and good spirit, these could be valuable, for the Negro movement is not the property of any organization or ideology, it responds to a multitude of problems, and many paths can lead to the common goal of freedom...
...The fact remains that it has done very little publicly in behalf of the Civil Rights bill...
...The barnstorming tours that should have been held to rouse the country, the speeches, North and South, that the President and his Cabinet members should have been making in support of the bill—these have not occurred...
...How pusillanimous the liberals can be, how inadequate the trade unions, how irrelevant the radical sectarians—all this we know...
...IRVING HOWE P.S.—I wrote these lines before the news came of the murder of six Negro children in Birmingham...
...And when it comes, as it recently has since the Birmingham murders, from responsible Negro leaders, it should be taken with the utmost seriousness as a sign that even men who are in principle committed to non-violence can be pushed too far...
...Imagine the response of a young Negro in Chicago or Birmingham upon hearing that George Meany could not find it in his heart to endorse the Marchl There are times in political life when it is precisely the gesture that speaks most clearly...
...How can the protest movement cope with the economic bases of discrimination...
...Is such a demand a way of proposing a kind of Jim Crow in reverse, or is it the only way of getting a rough justice for Negroes in employment...
...The leaders are too experienced and hard-headed, the participants too numerous and deeply rooted in American life...
...Concerning the role of the Kennedy Administration, most of what we said in our last issue seems still to be true...
...Or that it believes above all else in avoiding public confrontations...
...These are some of thusiasm that were shown at the the questions that the leaders and ac-March on Washington...
Vol. 10 • September 1963 • No. 4
