LETTERS
Editor: I have just finished reading Paul Feldman's extraordinary article on "black power" in the January—February 1967 DISSENT. It is certainly the best discussion on the subject I have seen,...
...the established turned to its best weapon, the Negro professional...
...There are countless other organizations which united Negroes and whites in the South in the Populist tradition...
...If they did not base their appeal on the economic needs of the poor, they could never get elected...
...It alone has made my subscription to your magazine over the last couple of years more than worthwhile...
...Insofar as Prof...
...What have they done lately...
...Wilcox despises accuracy and glories in a simplistic demonology, he will offer them only purgation...
...Editor: I would like to dissent from an other...
...One example is Thomas E. Watson who, in 1892, wrote on "The Negro Question in the South," advocating unity between the Negro and poor white but who repudiated everything he said years later...
...In the thirties there came into being another interracial movement that challenged the power structure of the South...
...Stay loose...
...The article is a testimony to them at the expense of the youth of Harlem...
...If Prof...
...Anyhow, you have far outpaced any and all of these other magazines by publishing this enormously useful article...
...Perhaps it could have been said that the STFU floundered because of its refusal to compromise on the race issue...
...Beryl Banfield's behavior at I.S...
...201: "I sit on a man's back Choking him and making him carry me, And yet assure myself and others That I am sorry for him And wish to lighten his load by all means possible— Except by getting off his back...
...It is certainly the best discussion on the subject I have seen, and probably the best article on the civil rights movement I've read in over a year...
...Huey Long was perhaps the last of the older Populist politicians...
...This statement by Tolstoy best describes what happened at I.S...
...Among these were the I.W.W...
...The Southern Populist party lasted longer than its Western counterpart and persisted until its back was broken by the enactment of poll tax laws disfranchising the poor whites, as well as Negroes...
...Yes, Shanker is a union leader and Banfield— like Prof...
...He was a pioneer organizer of Southern sharecroppers during the thirties, one of those men who lived out their socialist convictions in their day-to-day work...
...We are delighted to see that H. L. Mitchell is still at it— good luckl—ED...
...There were other revolts in the South that were directly in line with the Populist tradition...
...The Communists of the thirties held that the STFU was neither fish nor fowl—because we organized people at the bottom of the agricultural ladder, without regard to whether they were small farm owners, tenants, sharecroppers, or wage workers, Negro or white...
...201 helped transfer the victory into defeat...
...Note: The writer of the above letter is too modest to identify himself...
...Who cares about Beryl Banfield's former commitment—or even Al Shanker's...
...Presumably all three pursue extra interests other than the education of ghetto children...
...Yet these interests need not conflict: I tried to show how Banfield and Shanker—among others— have a great stake in educational improvment...
...which organized the lumber mill workers in the piney woods of southwest Louisiana just prior to World War I. The worst of racists like George Wallace, and others such as Orvil Faubus of Arkansas and perhaps Lester Maddox of Georgia, base their appeals to the poor white in both the rural areas and the new industrial centers on a kind of bastardized populism—help the poor man, but keep the Negro in his place...
...35K, writing in the Negro Teacher's Forum in December, 1966...
...To be honest, I must confess it remarkable that an article of this sharpness and insight should have survived the homogenization that I find characteristic not only of your magazine, but, each in its own way, of the New Republic, The Nation, The Reporter, etc., as well...
...wise excellent article in your January— February issue by Paul Feldman, "Pathos of Black Power," in which he erroneously stated that "The Southern Populist movement, in which poor whites and Negroes were organized into separate groups, floundered on the rock of race prejudice...
...This was the Southern Tenant Farmers Union...
...Because some of us were too stubborn to quit when we were licked, that movement continues even today— with remnants in the South organized in the Agricultural And Allied Workers Union Local of the Amalgamated Meat Cutters, based on Negroes and whites, small farmers, and wage workers in the fields and in closely related industries...
...Its leader, Cesar Chavez, though perhaps more influenced by Saul Alinsky, got his baptism of fire in a strike of cotton pickers in California led by our Union in 1949...
...Al Shanker appears to many educational activists as a John Cassesse in academic robe...
...The Longs in Louisiana have always gotten the votes of the poor, although (to their credit) let it be said they have not used race prejudice...
...201 is best described by Leslie Campbell, J.H.S...
...Professor of Social Work Wilcox provides a sad illustration of the impasse my article sought to describe...
...While many of us were Socialists, we owed more to the Populists than we did to the Marxists...
...The Negro teachers at I.S...
...But apparently innuendo is his idea of "staying loose...
...The Populist party was an agrarian political coalition of Western farmers, Southern farmers, tenants, and share croppers, Negro and white alike, which offered a real challenge to the Southern "Power Structure" of the late 19th century...
...Editor: Jeremy Larner's article in the JanuaryFebruary 1967 issue—"Harlem: Turmoil in the Schools"—was either ghosted by Beryl Banfield or Al Shanker...
...Many of the Southern agrarian rebel leaders, being politicians, returned to the Democratic party and became the worst of the racists...
...Wilcox will discover that Al Shanker took considerable risks to support the Civilian Review Board...
...The youth of Harlem" need education and opportunity...
...Another group directly descended from the STFU is the current AFL-CIO United Farm Workers Organizing Committee in California and elsewhere...
...While there were no doubt separate organizations on a local level by race, this movement actually floundered on the "Cross of Gold" speech by William Jennings Bryan that won him the Democratic nomination for the presidency in 1896 and split the Populist party...
...Wilcox—is a Negro professional...
...If he ever reads the article, Prof...
...Each has its own style—but each reads as if all the articles were written by the same person and as if all its contributors had nearly identical points of view...
...Wilcox has evidence linking Shanker's activities with those of the PBA's Cassesse, he should publish it—or apologize...
Vol. 14 • May 1967 • No. 3
