Separatism Desanctified

...Barbara Jordan (D.-Tex...

...It is, he asserts, "the opportunities . . . for self-determination and independence in politics that make black parties play such an important role in the new black politics...

...That decision may well have deprived Brewer of a victory that in all likelihood v/ould have ended Wallace's political career...

...History suggests, too, that the influence of the Gary Convention will be minimal and short-lived...

...In fact, the most ambitious undertaking, the Lowndes County Freedom Organization, was the most emphatic failure...

...Success in Lowndes County, Carmichael hoped, would act as a catalyst to precipitate a revolutionary impulse among the dispossessed and turn the American system inside out...

...He does not, for example, examine the consequences of Charles Evers' gubernatorial campaign, seemingly a disaster for blacks...

...Southern blacks do not look upon politics as a revolutionary gesture...

...They and other not-so-radical separatist kin preach the need for and feasibility of racially distinct mechanisms, from the grass roots to the national arena, capable of drawing the support of the black masses...

...Black political leaders certainly expressed no eagerness to embrace the quixotic Presidential candidacy of Shirley Chisholm...

...book publishers and magazine editors are turning to Julian Bond and Charles Evers to analyze how blacks fit into the political system...

...But despite its appeal to activists and ideologues, political separatism has evoked only the most minimal response from black voters...

...and Yvonne Burke (D.-Calif...

...The vision of a permanent, racially based political entity that could gain control of local governments and act as a national power broker has always been inherent to separatist dogma...

...most in fact were committed to Edmund Muskie, Hubert Humphrey or George McGovern well before the Democratic Convention...

...Even the Black Panthers proclaim that they have abandoned the bullet for the ballot...

...The weakness of Walton's book is its failure to give more than a superficial analysis of what black political parties imply for American politics today...

...The three newest black members of Congress -andrew J. Young (D.-Ga...

...Less and less do we encounter Julius Lester, H. Rap Brown and their ilk railing against white oppression...

...Separatist politics was a last recourse when the black franchise was suppressed, legally or extralegally, or when white candidates simply ignored black needs...

...But sncc failed in Lowdnes because many black voters, viewing its workers as troublesome outsiders, supported white candidates...

...And he avoids the question of whether the National Democratic party of Alabama was justified in urging blacks to boycott the close 1970 run-off primary between George Wallace and Albert Brewer...

...where they have supported a separatist party the ultimate purpose of the tactic has been to enter the mainstream normally, not violently or as an isolated entity...

...Walton reminds us that this century has seen the rise and fall of other national black organizations—such as the National Negro Congress in the 1930s-all victims of financial difficulties, factionalism or a fringe-group takeover...

...Conceived by Stokely Car-michael and other Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee activists, the LCFO was to have been the first step in a grass-roots movement that would transform Black Belt hamlets and Northern ghettos into black-controlled enclaves...

...In the words of Samuel Dubois Clark, quoted by Walton, whoever gained control of the Black Belt "would be governing ghost towns or cemeteries," given the area's poverty and continued out-migration...

...Ironically, even had sncc won in Lowndes and other counties with black majorities, triumph would have been illusory...

...Not one of the efforts to establish a political beachhead in the South has produced electoral results of any significance for blacks...

...A. Philip Randolph Educational Fund The literature of race relations, like the civil rights movement itself, has moved from protest to politics...

...He asserts that "black liberation, community control and independence are the watchwords as the '70s began to emerge...

...For many blacks "self-determination" and "independence" have become almost sanctified terms...

...Yet the overwhelming historical and statistical evidence in his brief volume dispels any lingering doubts about the effectiveness of separatist action in furthering black political or economic progress, suggesting that there is little future for racial parties in America...

...Save for a few scattered exceptions, black candidates for state and local offices have also campaigned through normal two-party channels...

...They may be the watchwords, but the objective situation is far different, as the last several elections have demonstrated...

...In 1972 they disregarded the slogans of the National Black Political Convention launched in Gary, Indiana, and gave the Democratic party their usual overwhelming support...

...Nor does Walton assess the relationship between separatist parties and the growing movement to forge a progressive, interracial Democratic party in the Deep South...

...An associate professor of political science at Savannah State College, Walton neither condemns nor celebrates separatism, though he appears to favor third-party alternatives for their consciousness-raising effects...

...reflect the integrationist tradition of the civil rights movement...

...Accordingly, it is not surprising to find the issue of separatism subjected to fresh scrutiny in Hanes Walton Jr.'s Black Political Parlies...

...This is a problem that dogged sncc throughout its cataclysmic career...

...Much of Walton's dilemma stems from his inability to come to terms with the quantitative evidence of the ineffectiveness of black political parties, on the one hand, and his inclination to defend black parties as relevant to what is happening in the black community, on the other...

...They cannot disguise the unbroken history of the failure of black third parties, however, or the lack of enthusiasm for separatist politics expressed again and again by the majority of black voters...