McComb vs. Harlem: A Matter OF Identity
Larner, Jeremy
... a man's advantage, sometimes not only may, but even must, consist in his desiring in certain cases what is harmful to himself and not advantageous .... what man wants is simply independent...
...As Eula Lee wrote: It was a confusing situation...
...The lesson of McComb vs...
...What makes a man Want to fight for freedom...
...conference room to discuss the events of the night before...
...There's some truth in Malcolm's conception of Christian submission as part and parcel of Negro slavery...
...Their trip itself seemed an example of promise...
...She was challenged—not by McComb, but by a delegation from the MFY youth group, YAAG—to produce a program...
...But the Harlem kids knew full well that they were already left out...
...Even the boys from YAAG squirmed uneasily at the accusation that whites had compromised them...
...Are they gaining anything by it...
...But not for Harlem...
...Non-violence is the key, passive resistance is the key for now...
...The cops have machine guns, gas bombs, power hoses...
...In an increasingly technical society they are drastically behind in education long before they leave elementary school...
...Why don't you come with us, man...
...Proudly he invoked "leaders like Nkrumah in Ghana, Nasser in Egypt, Ben Bella in Algeria...
...I want neither integration nor segregation, just an equal chance...
...They knew it couldn't...
...they feel they weren't achieving anything by being non-violent...
...As Dostoevsky shrewdly tells us, "it may be by his curse alone he will...
...yet they share a sense of lines crossed, important beginnings...
...Why not...
...Malcolm himself was most articulate—but in the manner of a publicist or a preacher rather than a political leader...
...1ST GIRL: "Remember in McComb when they broke into the National Guard Armory...
...When the committees reported, the general meeting was directed by a young woman in her twenties—a HARYOU-ACT worker who turned up the next day as Malcolm X's secretary...
...Negroes didn't get any of those guns...
...Out of all the organizations in the United States, the Muslims are the only one who are all black...
...Implicit in everything they said that day was the challenge: Why should I accept more denial and restraint...
...He will launch a curse...
...What's happening now in Africa is gonna happen here in another ten years...
...To this reporter, much of what Malcolm offers—both to Harlem and to the romantic radical—was contained in his incantation of that phrase "a real strong man...
...The important aspect here is verbal...
...I had a better understanding of what it meant to really be trapped...
...But that won't do no good," said one boy in bitter conclusion...
...because a curse gives "satisfaction," as the girl said...
...IV When the McComb kids went to hear Malcolm the next day, these same young men and women were waiting for them and made an abortive attempt to keep out the COFO leaders...
...2ND BOY: "The power structure doesn't have any more guns than the Negroes...
...These Harlem students have a spirit of hopelessness," Eula Lee told Bunche...
...I'm already ruined...
...We got some Toms in the room right here...
...Right...
...Innocent Negroes been getting killed for a long time...
...someone wanted to know...
...Inevitably, there was one question Malcolm had to answer—even though he kept the adults in the audience from asking questions...
...Harlem is that so many in the Movement, leaders included, passionately need that "satisfaction...
...In a situation that makes them so easily feel like piano-keys, they would rather lose than do without it...
...He will launch a curse upon the world, and as only man can curse (it is his privilege, the primary distinction between him and other animals), it may be by his curse alone he will attain his object—that is, convince himself that he is a man and not a piano-key...
...They do not delude themselves that their victories are anything but partial...
...Their leader felt compelled to rally them: "Two wrongs don't make a right...
...A girl had said, "You're doing just what Mr...
...1ST GIRL: "What's your dead body gonna prove...
...Once the Civil Rights Bill passed, they engaged in sit-ins to integrate local facilities...
...But Landess took them back, again and again, to the central question: "Can it win...
...Throwing garbage cans is just what Mr...
...in his hand he held a pamphlet titled "Road to Revolution," published by the Progressive Labor Movement—a Maoist group with an active office in Harlem...
...If nothing else, the white response in McComb tells them that the order of the South has been shaken...
...I1 That night the kids from McComb went down to Mobilization for Youth on the Lower East Side to present a play about Mississippi...
...You too can be "a real strong man...
...Malcolm could only hint that "brothers" were being "trained" and "organized" to retaliate "by whatever means necessary...
...Did I want to go back to Harlem...
...if we go into Mississippi .. . if you ask us to come...
...From the back of the room, an older man interrupted: "We have to learn politics, guerrilla warfare, make some plans for violence...
...As one girl, Eula Lee, later wrote: "I had heard the bombs and rifle shots of McComb, Mississippi, and seen the crosses burn in front of churches and homes, but never before had I seen such an open attack as the one from Harlem...
...After the meeting I asked Landess—who had had some bad experiences with Mississippi whites—if he saw any similarities in attitude between rednecks and black nationalists...
...Nor had Malcolm offended them: "[He] said many things that I felt but was afraid to say," wrote Eula Lee...
...Which, of course, is exactly what the urban ghettoes of the North are all about...
...Self-destructive as this line may seem, it struck a chord in most of the young people present...
...Afterwards, the McComb boy had told Landess he never wanted to go back to HARYOU...
...Then you've reversed yourself...
...When COFO came to McComb, these kids were warned by black and white alike to stay away from the Freedom House...
...To fight back...
...2ND BOY: "You're gonna die anyway...
...What shocked Thelma and her friends was to find that even to raise such questions of strategy was to convict oneself of treason in the eyes of their new acquaintances...
...The audience joined in the singing—and the best-received song was a Rock 'n' Roll number with words, music and professional guitar accompaniment by a boy from McComb named Arthur Jackson, who the next night won the amateur talent show at the Apollo...
...Writing on the Harlem riots in Freedom's Journal last summer, editor Thelma Eubanks said, They are expressing their feelings by rioting...
...Yet one of the girls said, "If our homes must be bombed, let them be bombed because we participated, and not because we were neutral...
...During the summer in McComb, Landess had worked at the Freedom School, teaching English and Negro history (others taught math, French, biology, chemistry, art and typing...
...Hey, man, what you doing tonight...
...Why not revenge...
...By this time the McComb kids were so battle-weary that only about half could be collected to come, and a few more slipped away as the group walked to the Hotel Theresa...
...In the discussion that followed I thought I saw new signs of respect for McComb...
...We're for integration 100...
...if they would "answer violence in its own language," "we'd have the whole world on our side...
...What man wants is simply independent choice, whatever that independence may cost and wherever it may lead...
...If there's a war, who's gonna win...
...No, no," he protested...
...How can you combat that...
...They don't talk about it or think about it or justify themselves...
...Things may go slow for the next ten years...
...You want to make him respect you you hit him back...
...A friend of his came by and they fell to discussing the skin-color of Africans, reassuring one another that many "pure Africans" had light skins...
...What will be the results...
...We catch those rich white folks on the subway...
...The secret is that black masses the world over are uniting in "insurrection against white o-pression...
...No," he said...
...Because they can be black only to a point...
...Right...
...When opposition developed from the MFY kids, the HARYOU boy, with a triumphant smile, repeated his credo about garbage-can warfare...
...He didn't have to probe for long...
...what he offers is identity...
...He doesn't talk that way when he talks to me alone...
...The hero for this claque was a tall boy in a HARYOU blazer, who got up to announce that every white in the Congo should have been put to death...
...Replied Thelma Eubanks: "You haven't come nowhere—you should come to McComb...
...He continued: "You say we should overcome, we should overcome, but we ain't come nowhere...
...Our definite progress on the civil rights front is in ironic contrast to the lack of any significant program to create real economic democracy...
...We can't compromise...
...Nevertheless, Landess pressed him today...
...The Negro teachers of their all-black high school ridiculed them and assigned them extra homework...
...This waiting bit is crazy...
...they look to the future with a feeling of aching inadequacy...
...prodded Landess...
...The people of McComb should wake up and realize that the young people are going to move ahead with or without their help," Billy Givens wrote last summer in Freedom's Journal, the McComb Freedom House newspaper...
...We beat them and take their money...
...On their fifth night in New York, the McComb kids met with kids from Harlem's HARYOU.* Reportedly the uproar broke out when Thelma Eubanks from McComb asked how come, when Negroes in Mississippi give up their lives trying to vote, most Harlem people don't even bother to register...
...III The next afternoon the kids were at ACT, to confer in small groups on specific problems and to see if they couldn't work out a joint action program which both sides could agree on...
...I'd like to take 'em, put 'em in a sack, dump 'em in a river...
...And a "militant" young man had insisted that if they were really "serious," the McComb kids should "do like us...
...And many had to defy their own parents to participate in COFO activties...
...Mario Savio of Berkeley taught Spanish...
...You know you can't do anything with whites...
...The bitter despair of the ghettoes is a force which tends to push many rights groups in the direction of racist rhetoric and defeatist gestures...
...At first the Harlem kids seemed sincerely to want to communicate...
...what man wants is simply independent choice, whatever that independence may cost and wherever it may lead...
...To the Negro who in truth cannot wait ten years to begin his personal future, he says—you need not plan or bargain or squeeze, and why should you control yourself...
...It won't solve our problems, they insisted...
...the McComb kids were still reeling when I joined them the next mornin at the U.N., where they were to meet Ralph Bunche...
...2ND BOY: "You could start something and then they'd chicken out...
...the kids were still smarting...
...in this country...
...They discover them selves thinking and acting in ways which for their parents would have been suicidal...
...Finally—without benefit of COFO help —they went back to school this fall and organized a successful boycott against the rule prohibiting lunches brought from home or bought in any place other than the school cafeteria...
...We got to act for ourselves...
...Civil rights reporter Nat Hentoff tells a relevant anecdote...
...One of the HARYOU boys had drawn him aside the night before...
...I'm on your side, but...
...Landess pointed out...
...The youngsters had a kind of slow steadiness to them...
...Still, I thought it strange that "a militant Afro-American" must embrace the great religion of the Arabs, who in their time sold whole tribes of black Africans into slavery...
...The McComb kids for their part were withdrawn: their experience has given them small inclination for debate...
...With special awe he informed the kids that "Zanzibar has a real strong man...
...But we're going to fight until we win...
...Did I want to face the the accusing stares and be called a white man's fool...
...You let a man hit you, he'll keep right on with a passion...
...They are still rioting...
...It was as though a valve had been turned...
...Though the text was written by a full-time COFO worker, it left a great deal of leeway for spontaneous acting and the singing of "freedom songs" and spirituals...
...After talking with Bunche, the kids stayed on in a U.N...
...A boy who had not spoken told a story that was obviously disturbing him...
...The McComb kids received a rude shock in New York...
...Those fake strong men, the whites, will back down before you...
...Outside the Harlem boys blocked the sidewalk and heckled the McComb kids as they walked to the bus stop with white and black COFO workers...
...It seems that when Che Guevara visited New York he was approached by young enthusiasts who asked for advice concerning guerrilla activity in the United States...
...The interest is hysterical because they need something NOW—and they're not getting it...
...If innocent folks get killed, maybe we oughta do that...
...The feeling I get in Harlem is that this talk of violence is mainly defensive...
...Of course they are not innocent about the distribution of power in Mississippi...
...Their New York guide and discussion leader was Ira Landess, a young man who teaches English at one of the "problem" high schools in New York...
...LANDESS: "Let's get it to the point of war...
...I think he feels better when he talks to me...
...Six of the others, in unison: "Why rush it...
...Charlie wants us to do," argued one McComb girl...
...There was one claque of boys from Uptown who cheered and jived at each boast of violence, jeered and sneered whenever a white person started to speak...
...We don't believe in compromise...
...Reeling, but not toppled...
...They left still committed to non-violence and eager for their Harlem friends to return the visit next summer...
...3RD Box: "They didn't break in...
...Well, what about that...
...Get up to the roofs and drop a garbage can on their heads...
...He was selling a mystique rather than a plan of action...
...Her question provoked a torrent of abuse, and • At the time of the McComb visit, HARYOU and ACT—two youth employment community organizations—had recently merged into HARYOU-ACT to receive a federal grant, but still maintained separate offices...
...they know the chances they're taking...
...The COFO leaders who tried to speak were hopelessly inarticulate and confused...
...Garbage cans can't stand up against guns...
...Meanwhile the workshops were in session...
...The questions tended increasingly toward abusive pronouncements as to what "we" would do to "them...
...The trouble was that any practical ideas concerning Harlem—e.g., voter education, self-help programs, selected lobbying—involved looking ahead for a number of years...
...His admirers applauded wildly, slapped each other's hands...
...In the hall, a New York teacher introduced me to a Negro boy who was a member of an interracial social club...
...Because I might get in a fight...
...I noticed the tall boy with the HARYOU blazer leading one group...
...The audience—composed of Negro kids from the neighborhood who'd been active in MFY community programs plus HARYOU visitors—reacted enthusiastically, especially when an actor brilliantly burlesqued the quavering "Yassuh" of an Uncle Tom...
...I think we ought to join with these kids from McComb...
...1ST BOY: "The power structure...
...One of the McComb girls told me that a Harlem boy was phoning her every night...
...A Tom is a person who's got a black skin and thinks white, or a white who thinks white...
...You don't have the guns now—then make plans how you gonna get them...
...Maybe it's because He understands he's a man...
...Malcolm has no interest in democracy or in the difficult means of achieving democracy...
...But one can understand the psychology of such conversion when one sees certain young Jewish zealots at Malcolm's public speeches, grinning and nodding when he makes his anti-Semitic jokes...
...The meeting fell apart, and as the kids headed for the door several young men and women pushed PLM pamphlets into their hands...
...Do we want only Negroes involved in our move ment...
...Because violence is one of the white man's traits—and we want to turn away from being like them...
...What's the difference between the way a black person thinks and a white person thinks...
...a few even conceded that non-violence might be an appropriate tactic in some circumstances...
...Guevara began to laugh...
...Exactly what will you do about, say, Mississippi...
...another one burst out...
...What did he really think...
...Therefore, Malcolm told the kids, they were not really members of a downtrodden minority...
...Their Harlem counterparts—the small group of teenage Negroes active in civil rights organizations—taunted them, brutally derided them, accused them of cowardice and called them "Toms" because they believed in non-violence...
...They think we're jungle savages anyway...
...as if he and they shared some marvelous secret...
...Those few who are interested in politics even hysterically are braver than the many who stand hopeless in doorways...
...the boy blurted out...
...Givens and about half of the other kids who came to New York had worked on the McComb voter registration drive, helped organize protest rallies, and canvassed for social and economic surveys...
...Mississippi racists are drenched in violence, born and bred in it...
...Ten voices at once: "What's a Tom...
...The longer the discussion lasted, the more perceptibly order and effectiveness gave way to scorn and swagger...
...This earnest young man was embarrassed when I asked himn how he liked the club...
...The fight didn't break out till afterwards, when a panel of McComb kids entertained questions from the audience...
...Her answer was pure Malcolm: "We don't want to give our plans to the Enemy...
...Nor did the kids from McComb come to Harlem without apprecia tion of the differences they would find...
...From the others: groans] 1ST BOY: "Look at down in McComb...
...That's the only way we got places in Atlanta...
...Charlie wants you to do—lie down and get beaten...
...Nor must anyone accuse him of desiring integration...
...Proclaim that you'll fight to the death: then, and only then, can you respect yourself...
...One of them is Herbert Lea, Jr., whose father was murdered for trying to organize his people...
...Partly due to such progress, the tide of racial consciousness is swelling, and the various Negro action groups are in frantic competition to direct it...
...And then you ask yourself, are they wrong to hate...
...What did he think of such random violence...
...DosTOEVSIY, Notes from Underground Over the '64 Christmas holidays, 37 Negro high school students from McComb, Mississippi, were brought to New York by private funds raised by two COFO volunteers who had spent the summer teaching in the McComb "Freedom School...
...In Pike County there have been 37 bombings since June...
...But how can you fight these people who have all the guns...
...Whites can only be our friends to a point...
...It seemed to this observer that many of the kids admitted to themselves, for the first time, the attractiveness of killing a white man...
...But they did no harm...
...Eula was upset: "Such hatred and violence would have been unspeakable for a Negro in Mississippi...
...He himself had made a trip to Africa to line up support...
...V And so the McComb kids journeyed home again, from the frying pan to the fire...
...We're trying to do it without that, man," the McComb boy had replied...
...He only talks that way in a crowd...
...You oughta do that, man...
...That the young militants call him "Chief" seems insufficient when one considers not only that the Negroes are a 10% minority in this country but that as yet only a minority of that minority have committed themselves to civil rights activity even of the peaceful sort...
...Never...
...convince himself that he is a man and not a piano-key...
...They walked in...
...What is your program...
...One girl burst out bitterly in favor of violence, proudly flaunting her "black nationalist" convictions...
...One wonders what Malcolm can accomplish even in Harlem, where sometimes 500 people attend his talks...
...He wanted me to know that it was not his object to socialize with white girls...
...The discussion method was Socratic: Landess wanted the kids to let loose their reactions, to know them and test them...
...And the HARYOU boys shouted Right...
...Opening up a few menial jobs for dropouts does them no good...
...Guilty of playing his game...
...In order for us to get any satisfaction out of an or ganization it has to be in our terms...
...They had been assaulted before, I gathered, and kept their feelings deeply stored...
...I'll tell you what we do, man...
Vol. 12 • April 1965 • No. 2
