The Home Front
BOHN, WILLIAM E.
THE HOME FRONT By William E. Bohn American Negroes On the March I feel as if I had a great secret to reveal to the white folks of this country. The other evening I attended a mass meeting of...
...One part of his address would have astonished my old friend Booker T. Washington...
...King began to be mentioned in connection with the bus strike in Montgomery, Alabama, the first reports of his activities were rather modest and apparently unimportant...
...But despite his lack of dramatic quality, I had a notion from early in those developments that here at last we had another first-class Negro leader...
...King exclaimed: "For the love of America we must win our struggle for equality...
...In India he talked long and seriously with Prime Minister Nehru and became more convinced than ever that it is Gandhi who shows the Negroes the way to a better future...
...I have always thought of Booker T. Washington as one of the greatest orators of my time...
...They belong to entirely different times and have quite different programs...
...It would be silly, of course, to compare Dr...
...Washington was a good leader of his people...
...The other evening I attended a mass meeting of Negroes, which was addressed by the Reverend Martin Luther King...
...In the few years since that bus strike in Montgomery, this persistent little man has managed to travel and make friends in Asia, Africa and Europe...
...When young Dr...
...I heard him often, always with interest and admiration...
...Believe me," he continued, "the billion colored people on the two great continents of Africa and Asia will never accept leadership from a country which refuses to give a fair deal to a large section of its population...
...King was merely the pastor of one of the colored people's churches...
...He sketched in rapid strokes the history of his people since then...
...Still, I felt convinced that in its time and place that set of ideas was useful and that Dr...
...Not enough has been made of the connection between these two dramatic events: For it was the descendants of the immigrants of Plymouth Rock who furnished the leadership for the emancipation movement...
...Washington and called his program Uncle-Tomism...
...Washington's time has there been a Negro with anything like the steady influence now exercised by this slight, gentle, soft-voiced preacher from Atlanta...
...He urged the Negroes to build themselves up, to acquire property, to enforce respect from their lighter-colored neighbors...
...He always spoke quietly, strongly advised against violence and went on foot wherever he went during those trying days...
...In a very short address the other night Dr...
...King's social doctrine...
...That great audience of colored folks made an overpowering impression: Spread out in a vast auditorium they sat close-packed and still...
...With this sort of program and leadership, our Negroes simply cannot be beaten...
...The great audience received this declaration of hope with thunderous applause—a sure pledge of agreement and support...
...King succeeded in including a wide sweep of historical instruction and some profound social teaching...
...Meetings in favor of the strike were held in his church and, of course, he made some of the necessary addresses...
...Not since Dr...
...His warm and rich flow of speech was, of course, backed up by his position among his people, his scholarship, his wisdom, his patriotism—and his dashes of effective good humor...
...A thousand or two white persons could not possibly have created such a weight of cummulative human personality...
...In general, his thought was: "We have come a long, long way, but we still have a long, long way to go...
...At one point in his address Dr...
...It seemed an excellent program for his day, but there came a time when it was not enough, and many Negro leaders spoke against Dr...
...All that those 50,000 Negroes did down there was to walk to work or to the stores...
...For the sake of our country's reputation and world influence we must win the struggle for Negro equality...
...Among all the Negro leaders of the time he seemed to be distinguished by gentleness and quietness rather than by loudness or conspicuousness...
...And if we stick stoutly to non-violent methods and never stop to rest, we are sure to win...
...But they are alike in that both have had great good sense and both have believed in promoting righteousness by peaceful methods exclusively...
...There turned out to be no law to force them to pay their fares and sit in the back seats of the buses...
...nearly all were dressed in black, and with dignity and good taste...
...This drawing together of India and America has a deep significance, for non-violence has now become the center of Dr...
...When they were not applauding or laughing at some jest they were absolutely still...
...King with his great predecessor...
...What he had in mind was the fact that all the world has become both self-conscious and power-conscious at the same time...
...Washington...
...They are alike, also, in having secured the faith of millions of their people...
...He referred to the importation of the first African slaves in 1619, just a year before the landing of the Pilgrim Fathers farther north...
Vol. 43 • October 1960 • No. 38
