The Negro Movement: Beyond Demonstrations?
Brooks, Thomas R.
For radicals, it is good news. The civil rights movement is undergoing a change; the grit of protest is becoming a political pearl, as predicted by those who see the movement as a...
...Behind the usual generalities about the need for jobs, etc., there is really a lack of program...
...Such a plan would decisively weaken the impact of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act...
...Negroes, one suspects, responded to the mixture of the New Deal touch and cornpone in Johnson's political style...
...Galamison has been quoted as being willing to see the public school system de stroyed unless it is immediately integrated...
...Today, in the North, CORE chapters undertake such things as remedial reading programs and attempt to stimulate community organization around such issues as a needed stop-light or a play street...
...However, it will be a great temptation for President Johnson and the Democratic National Committee to woo back the Dixiecrats or at least some of them...
...The civil rights movement is undergoing a change...
...Black nationalism is one...
...Gray hopes to pick up 100,000 to 200,000 votes...
...As Rochelle Horowitz pointed out in New America, Jesse Gray failed to get his "hundred revolutionaries willing to die," while Bayard Rustin did gets his volunteers for positive, non-violent action...
...A. Philip Randolph has called for a "coalition of conscience" of civil rights, church and labor organizations...
...Goldwater and the Civil Rights Act are not likely to be present with the same force two years hence, and that may serve against continuation of Negro— and liberal—voter interest and passion...
...During the earlier phase of the civil rights struggle, Rustin points out, demonstrations did two things: they called attention to the evil of segregated facilities and cured it by integrating restaurants...
...But in a city where Galamison —and the civil rights forces—have been out-demonstrated by the Parents and Taxpayers groups, this position hardly makes sense...
...lina) and John Bells Williams (Mississippi) from the Democratic caucus...
...We sort of looked down on them as social-work types...
...When the moratorium ended on election day, no great rush into the streets followed...
...The election merely confirmed a trend set in motion by the passage of the Civil Rights Act and the subsequent peteringout of demonstrations...
...It might be sufficient to sustain the "coalition of conscience," but without propelling it into political action...
...Bayard Rustin has pointed to a "tremendous power in the Negro community that can be used politically, though it can't be used exclusively...
...Right now the Negro, like his brothers among the working class and unemployed, is waiting to see what Lyndon will do...
...It certainly would not have been so large had not President Johnson pushed the Civil Rights Act through Congress...
...Then we have some room to bargain...
...The present politics of the ghetto dooms alike—at least for now—Randolph's "coalition of con science" and Jesse Gray's bid for a black voting bloc...
...The unions, as an example, have already made a head count of the new Congress and determined that they can get the Taft-Hartley Act amended to do away with the states' right-to-work laws, a matter of only indirect concern for Negroes or, say, the churches...
...There is, moreover, the hard question as to whether or not the political groundswell among Negroes can be sustained through the 1966 Congressional elections...
...By and large, the debate over demonstrations qua demonstrations is fading away...
...The Negro voter registration drive creates— as in Mississippi — or fills — as in Georgia—a vessel for constructive action in much the same sense that in the 1930's the workers in mass production industries created and filled the new industrial unions...
...Negroes, he says, "are not basically revolutionaries...
...This is the significance of the victory achieved at the Atlantic City convention by the Mississippi Freedom Party...
...This almost universal response on the part of the established Negro leadership has been evoked by the powerful Negro political thrust in last fall's elections...
...we were the doers...
...His present plans are for selective boycotts which could well be useful in pointing up specific wrongs in specific places...
...At least some Negroes seem to share the myth that it takes a Southerner to handle Southerners on the race question...
...Yet a large turnout at the polls does not necessarily signify a movement of people...
...CORE's "new down-toearth" approach, on examination, turns out to contain a good deal more social work than politics...
...Should the Administration make the wrong decision, a protest from the North, where Negroes and their allies do have votes and power, could prove significant...
...at least it is anti-PAT...
...in 1964, 90 percent went Democratic...
...the present politics of the ghettos another...
...Last spring I had the opportunity to observe a CORE try-out in East Harlem, very much along present lines of social work cum community organization...
...And while some may overlap—like Medicare—they are not all in the same order...
...Can the poor be organized to help themselves...
...The Negro vote, a willingness to wait for a while, and the impasse brought on by unfocussed demonstrations— all these explain the current turn to politics on the part of the civil rights cadre and Negro leadership...
...Or, is it, as Bayard Rustin believes, possible to preserve the alliance that achieved the Civil Rights Act as a new political coalition...
...But they act as a catalyst, become revolutionaries in effect, because "what the Negro wants can't be given him unless we have basic change...
...Registering Negroes to vote in the South fills a vacuum...
...That, after all, was the lever most Americans tripped...
...One immediate problem presents itself...
...In retrospect, it seems to have been a very successful political bluff at a time when the demonstrations had begun to run their course and would in any case have tapered off...
...Ethnic politics...
...Of course, it was anti-Goldwater but it was also for Johnson...
...In the past these people were cut out of the civil rights movement...
...Who gets what is going to be the crucial question as Federal patronage begins to flow South...
...The basic deal, so to speak, that brought together the civil rights organizations, the churches, liberals and trade unions was consummated when the Act became law...
...We just let those people drop out of chapters...
...But, if recent history is any guide, it's the Adam Clayton Powells who are more likely to win the ghetto vote...
...He wants to see how much will come to him from "the Great Society...
...the police reaction was entirely out of proportion, reflecting hatred and panic...
...There are other, tougher problems...
...Two Negroes were elected to the state senate in Georgia and one to the state legislature in Tennessee...
...There is an opportunity now for rebuilding in the South a Democratic Party in the national rather than the sectional image...
...The question of how and where effective lobbying veers off into effective political action needs investigation...
...Louis Smith, a field secretary in CORE's northeast office, has explained what is happening: "In the past, CORE has been primarily a demonstrating group...
...This is true not solely because their political advice, such as it was, went unheeded, but also because of their insistence on demonstrations regardless of their relevance, value or costs...
...Even though there probably will be continuing debate within—and among —civil rights organizations over the value of this or that demonstration, or more pertinently, over what makes for an effective demonstration, the key question would now seem to be: what kind of politics...
...Can Negroes do the same...
...Each member of that coalition has its own set of priorities...
...The Negro," declared Randolph, "has developed a new sense of his political power...
...A lot of sympathetic people did not work for us because they were just not for things like picket lines...
...But my question has still to be answered...
...Many liberal Congressmen were also helped —Weltner and McKay of Georgia and Grider of Tennessee, for example...
...Obviously, demonstrations, perhaps not necessarily mass demonstrations, will be needed to test the provisions and enforcement procedures of the new Civil Rights Act...
...Also, demonstrations, as the unions showed in the past, can be a useful corollary to political action...
...But for East Harlem—and possibly for all the "Other" Americas, the real question is: what will they leave behind...
...Negro politics in the North are fragmentized beyond belief...
...In Cleveland, for instance, Negro groups, who sought school integration through demonstrations, are now trying to elect a new school board...
...Special interest groups—e.g., the prohibitionists, suffragettes and the unions —have all been successful in achieving many of their demands through lobbying...
...CORE abstained from signing the moratorium, but could in effect do little but abide by it...
...The Board of Education, ineffectual as it may be on integration matters, tends to be on the right side...
...James Baldwin vehemently insists that the Negro vote was "anti-Goldwater, not pro-Johnson...
...It isn't comparable, for example, with the mass unionization of workers in the 1930's...
...Effective action by the Federal government to protect our people in Mississippi, Louisiana and AIabama...
...The group broke up sooner than I expected, decimated by factionalism and possibly devastated by East Harlem...
...CORE has set up a political action department...
...Well, that phase of CORE's existence is over...
...To achieve our basic objective, you've got to go to the legislatures...
...For one thing, no one has yet stuck to it long enough...
...In many contests, the Negro vote was crucial...
...Such a program, I think, calls for effective lobbying rather than political action...
...In this situation, mass boycotts aimed at the Board would probably not succeed in rallying large numbers of Negroes and might well serve both to stiffen white resistance and isolate the more militant segments of the Negro population (In fairness, it should be added that Galamison is apparently beginning to recognize this...
...All Negro spokesmen properly qualify their new-found politics with the phrase, "demonstrations are still needed...
...But this is only a beginning...
...the grit of protest is becoming a political pearl, as predicted by those who see the movement as a potential catalyst for broad social change...
...And as for last summer's Harlem riots, they involved only a minority of Negroes...
...the same job in the North is apt to strengthen existing political set-ups...
...A politics of protest...
...And the very size of the Negro vote indicates something more than mere negativism...
...This, plus the Southern defection to Goldwater Republicanism, could permanently change the American political profile...
...If so, we can expect a sharp drop in Negro voting in 1966, a crucial election in which the new liberal Congress will be at stake...
...Since, however, this vote and its political organization is still modest, its pull may not be as strong as that of the entrenched Southern machines...
...We must," says James Farmer, "also continue to develop the muscle to back up our lobbying...
...Rustin's experiences in the streets of Harlem during the riots are much more revealing than the "revolutionary" play-acting of political sects trying to break into Harlem...
...But this is to take a somewhat dim view of the large and growing Negro vote...
...We've got to find the economic and social issues, not directly civil rights, that have an impact on the Negro community...
...If Sargeant Shriver's anti-poverty program is any indication, it will be precious little— but we had also better remember how little it takes in this country to buy off discontent...
...We'll lobby, negotiate but also we'll chain ourselves to the court house...
...It's up to us," a CORE spokesman told me, "to prove specific needs in order for them [the coalition] to go beyond their original commitment...
...For radicals, it is good news...
...Nor will it do to assume that success at one will lead to success at the other...
...We will continue to look for the dramatic and personal...
...Bayard Rustin argues that the change began when the civil rights revolution moved from public accommodations and symbolic school integration to the problems of slums and unemployment...
...Roy Wilkins has declared, "What we [the NAACP] are looking for now is political activity, flexibility...
...we must continue to register tens of thousands of Negroes, Puerto Ricans and Mexican-Americans...
...This is the Title which would forbid Federal programs which are discriminatory...
...The moratorium on demonstrations suppressed no eager masses straining to pour into the streets...
...Obviously there is nothing wrong with this, but it clearly won't do to confuse such worthy measures with political activity...
...Martin Luther King has announced plans for demonstrations in Alabama and Mississippi "based around the right to vote...
...In 1960, 60 percent of the Negro vote was Republican...
...While we can base a party in the ghetto," he explains, "we can bring in the mass of the people of unrest, progressives with no place to go, and people like Malcolm X who have expressed interest in independent political action...
...Today, however, in the attempt to deal with jobs, schools and housing, the Negro can't do both...
...It must be joined with others determined to wipe out poverty...
...After watching this particular group of youngsters —they were so very young and the slum so very old—I wrote: "Because they are so young, mobile and intel lectual, they will some day leave Spanish Harlem...
...Expulsion of Goldwaterite Albert Watson (South Caro...
...In stressing the essential role of CORE as a non-violent, direct action organization, its Community Relations Director Marvin Rich told me, "We'll go into politics our own way...
...This reliance on support from the North is not, however, enough to sustain political action on a national scale...
...There was a decisive shift to the Democratic Party...
...Is the kind of alliance that is frequently struck on Capitol Hill — and among logrolling Congressmen—the kind of alliance, say, that Bayard Rustin and A. Philip Ran -dolph envisage...
...We hope to see this movement [the rent strikes]," Gray has said, "turn into a political movement by summer...
...Attempts by super-nationalist or Maoist sects to spread the riots or turn them into "revolutionary" street actions, simply failed...
...Both Gray and Galamison, who are inclined to cry havoc, have had to postpone Armageddon because of "apathy...
...Finally, the Negro vote seems to me a rejection of black nationalism and its cousin, super-militancy...
...CORE points with pride to the election of Archibald Hill, chairman of its Oklahoma City chapter, to the state legislature...
...The attempt at fielding an all-Negro Party scarcely got off the ground...
...The very size of the Negro vote on the Democratic line offers one clue to the mood of "in-betweenness" among the civil rights organizations just before and after the election...
...He and his associates plan to place a ticket in the 1965 mayoralty and city council races...
...The monolith of the South was cracked and what remains is to drive home the wedge...
...He must use that power as does labor—to defeat his enemies and elect the friends of justice...
...If so, do they need allies...
...The tax laws should not be modified to provide lump sum grants to the states...
...This difficulty, in part, is illustrated by CORE's minimal political program...
...I stress all this out of a belief that the overwhelming Negro vote for Johnson indicates that the kind of leadership represented by Jesse Gray and the Reverend Milton Galamison is on the wane, at least for the time being...
...The defection of the extreme segregationists to the Republican Party forces the Democrats to regroup...
...In the North at any rate, the new political consciousness may turn out to be ephemeral...
...The burgeoning registration and vote of Negroes in the South will, no doubt, influence that flow...
...Along with them, they will take away some invaluable experience — for themselves and for whatever causes they choose to serve in life...
...The Southern Regional Council reported only 25 demonstrations around the country during the period of moratorium, as against 100 in the equivalent time a year before...
...When it comes to a new political development among civil rights groups, the South, it seems to me, has the advantage...
...Voter registration drives among Negroes were eminently successful both in increasing registrants —two million were added in the South alone—and in upping the turnout of Negro voters...
...The Negro is not in politics, for example, in the same way in the three major Negro centers— Chicago, Detroit and New York...
...Without it, the Democrats would have lost four more Southern states—Tennessee, Virginia, Florida and Arkansas...
Vol. 12 • January 1965 • No. 1
