BLACK POLITICS IN CRISIS
Marable, Manning
BLACK POLITICS IN CRISIS BY MANNING MARABLE For a quarter of a century, "black politics" has meant Democratic politics, and the black electorate has been the most progressive electoral bloc....
...White respondents were, by contrast, much more favorable to laissez-faire solutions to economic and social problems than blacks, and strongly opposed to extensive state intervention in the private sector...
...rate is 67 per cent for all black female-headed households...
...Consider the careers of James Bevel and Ralph David Abernathy...
...As Major Owens finally recognized, CORE has "become a vehicle for the opposition, and Innis is an agent of the opposition...
...Abernathy and Bevel, perhaps unwittingly, have become key pawns in this strategy...
...As the Great Society fell apart, however, the question of group interests became more complex...
...Washington retreated from the political arena, tacitly accepted disfranchisement of black folk, and acknowledged the unequal status quo...
...The right-wing sect of Lyndon La-Rouche has also initiated a campaign to recruit black supporters...
...only 29 per cent of the whites agreed...
...The sad conversion of Abernathy and Bevel to CAUSA's agenda highlights the expanding role of the Unification Church within the black community...
...The political response—especially the Jackson candidacy—was really a social-protest movement manifested inside the electoral arena...
...The plight of black communities worsens every time housing, health-care, and jobs programs are reduced or eliminated by the Reaganites of both political parties...
...In at least five states, blacks provided the margin of victory for Democratic Senatorial candidates...
...Williams has condemned what he calls the "use of racial quotas for the purposes of redressing historical grievances" and urges the creation of a sub-minimum wage to promote black employment...
...In May, Bevel and Aber-nathy were the key participants in a two-day "Freedom Rally and Convention" sponsored by CAUSA and held in the impoverished Lawndale section of Chicago's west side...
...Less charitably, some black journalists bitterly ridiculed Abernathy as a modern-day Judas or Uncle Tom...
...Lucas received only 31 per cent of the vote but helped to reinforce the Republicans' public commitment to black candidates...
...His pragmatic advice to blacks was that they should break their fifty-year allegiance to the Democrats...
...Our work today is not to change the minds of white people, but to involve ourselves in the lives of black people...
...Yet CAUSA recently reprinted an early speech by King critical of communism, which provides a suitable ideological cover for their growing activities with blacks...
...A vote for Lyndon Johnson in 1964, from a black perspective, was an endorsement of voting-rights legislation, expanded welfare programs, increased educational opportunities, and other liberal reforms of immediate and direct benefit...
...When he delivered that message to the San Francisco convention of the National Urban League last summer, he received a standing ovation...
...In 1974, for instance, Moon stated his ideas on racial characteristics: "Orientals can contribute in the spiritual aspect, white people can contribute in the analytical, scientific aspect, while black people can contribute in the physical area...
...The collapse of white centrist liberalism and the concurrent Reaganization of both major parties have isolated and frustrated black leaders and their community...
...Jesse Jackson's Rainbow Coalition won no major concessions in the Democratic Party platform in 1984, but in post-election analyses party regulars were quick to blame him for their failure to attract white middle-class voters...
...Twenty years later, the AFL-CIO commanded less than 20 per cent of the American working class, and more than half of all white trade unionists voted for Reagan in 1984...
...The recognition by many blacks of their status as second-class Democrats, as well as Jackson's inability to solidify the Rainbow Coalition at local levels and the stampede to the right by white Democratic leaders, have led, in some quarters, to a renaissance of black Republicanism...
...in 1984, Walter Mondale's share was only 34 per cent...
...Only 7 per cent of all blacks identify themselves as Republicans...
...Unlike Sowell and Williams, who often isolate themselves by their extreme laissez-faire rhetoric, Woodson maintains considerable credibility among black business and political leaders...
...Non-Jewish whites voted for the Republican candidates by roughly 53 to 47 per cent...
...Within a few years, he was overshadowed in the civil-rights field by his charismatic junior lieutenant, Jesse Jackson...
...The totalitarianism of rigid racial stratification The Rainbow Coalition has the potential for uniting pie educated black middle class with blacks who remain unemployed, impoverished, or within the working class...
...And as a black politician, Lucas was astute enough never to isolate himself from Detroit's black middle class...
...Blacks as a social group have not received political benefits from the Democratic leadership commensurate with their high levels of electoral support since 1940...
...Black votes amount to 20 per cent of the national Democratic bloc in Presidential elections, yet blacks are still treated as second-class citizens in the Democratic Party...
...For example, Republican Senator Jeremiah Denton of Alabama was firmly ahead of conservative Democrat Richard C. Shelby among whites, by a 61 to 39 per cent margin...
...Both Bevel and Abernathy ran unsuccessful races for Congress...
...The second March on Washington, twenty-two years later, called for a comprehensive jobs program...
...When welfare and education benefits are reduced to provide more funds for the Pentagon budget, how are the basic interests of the black community served...
...Despite great dissatisfaction with Blanchard's tenure, a substantial majority of blacks supported a white "lesser evil" over a black rightist who campaigned with the endorsement of evangelist Pat Robertson...
...In the 1980 election, Abernathy took a decisive step away from King's political legacy by endorsing Ronald Reagan for President...
...In 1986, blacks ran as Republican candidates for Congress in Arkansas, Massachusetts, Michigan, Georgia, Illinois, Ohio, and Maryland...
...few or no whites would be their patients...
...Few black Democrats have achieved statewide office, and those who seek such positions are often discouraged by their party's hierarchy...
...Ambitious black politicians now recognize that they can go only so far in the Democratic Party's hierarchy, and no farther...
...But times are changing, not least because many black politicians have asked what, precisely, blacks have gained from their faithful allegiance to the Democratic Party...
...Unless the black freedom movement quickly regains its capacity to take the offensive against the Right, the entire American Left may be isolated in the political wilderness for a generation...
...For forty years, the political mainstream of blacks has been consistently and sharply to the left of white America...
...The best such example came in New Jersey in 1985, when 60 per cent of the black vote was cast for Republican Governor Thomas Kean...
...Racial segregation created barriers that were repressive on the one hand and an asset to black solidarity on the other...
...Such criticism obscured the reality of a new conservative trend within sections of the black middle class...
...Desperate, a few black leaders have forged an unprecenented alliance with the ultra-Right while conutinunlng to pay up-service to the black community's traditional interests...
...The second, potentially far more dangerous, is an unprecedented alliance with extreme ultra-rightists while continuing to pay lip service to the black community's traditional interests...
...The Rainbow Coalition has the potential for uniting the educated and relatively affluent black middle class with the vast majority of blacks who remain unemployed, impoverished, or within the working class...
...Affirmative action pitted traditional liberal allies against each other, as conservative Republicans began to make successful bids for disenchanted white workers and Dixiecrats...
...But it is pure fantasy to suggest that social classes or even ethnic groups that achieve a level of political empowerment do not at least indirectly increase their capacity to realize their objective interests in the economic realm...
...Despite Shelby's right-wing views on most issues, he was considered more acceptable than the dangerous Denton...
...The official unemployment rate of blacks has generally exceeded 14 per cent in the 1980s, and more than a fourth of all black adults are permanently outside the labor force...
...Black attorneys normally had black clients...
...In the 1960s, Bevel was an important figure in the desegregation campaigns...
...I don't believe that we will produce strong soldiers by moaning about what the enemy has done to us...
...Black families would simply have to learn to survive on their own, without government support...
...By racial tradition, they are Democrats...
...But his strategy of alliances with conservative white capitalists and Republicans was fundamentally flawed...
...BLACK POLITICS IN CRISIS BY MANNING MARABLE For a quarter of a century, "black politics" has meant Democratic politics, and the black electorate has been the most progressive electoral bloc...
...Ebony magazine recently called it "perhaps the biggest crisis blacks have faced since slavery time," one characterized by "a series of economic upheavals, exacerbated by an epidemic of hard drugs and structural faults in the American economy, [which] have undermined the social infrastructure of black America...
...The Right's domination of the politics of white America has directly contributed to the growth of ideological and cultural conservatism among blacks: "Black Reaganism...
...Bevel became a Republican Party leader in Chicago's black community and soon earned a reputation as a right-wing extremist...
...Ultimately, they accelerate the economic and social crisis that affects black people as a whole...
...In Maryland, attorney George Haley (brother of Alex Haley, the author of Roots) was an unsuccessful Senate candidate in the Republican primary...
...In this sense, Loury and Williams are buppie theorists: uncritical advocates of capitalism and consumerism, opponents of fundamental social change...
...Although Kean's analysis begs many questions and obscures the distinction between the respective social-class bases and programmatic orientations of the two major parties, his general point is correct...
...Dellums puts it, "Maybe we've arrived at a point where this system does not serve us well...
...It says to the Right: "We have no ability to regain the public-policy high ground against you...
...The racial bifurcation in electoral behavior is also reflected in an October 1986 opinion survey conducted by the Joint Center for Political Studies and the Gallup Poll...
...When asked whether the Federal Government should secure a job and a good standard of living for each American citizen, 65 per cent of the blacks said it should, compared to only 24 per cent of whites...
...But Alabama blacks comprised 21 per cent of the state's voters...
...For many blacks, this notion has seductive appeal...
...In early 1985, the LaRouchites opportunistically sponsored a "Martin Luther King Jr...
...Shifts in demography and political culture, as well as the impact of Black Power and the debate over the war in Vietnam, slowly destroyed this coalition...
...You have one party that the black community has given 85 to 90 per cent of their votes to," he said, "and how much black leadership do you see in that party...
...Loury's argument, as presented recently in The Christian Century, is this: "It is time for the Negro middle class to rise up from its stool of indifferT ence, to retreat from its flight into unreality and to bring its full resources—its heart, its mind, and its checkbook—to the aid of the less fortunate brother...
...Currently, they vigorously oppose sanctions against South African apartheid...
...I don't see any gains...
...Despite all of its internal weaknesses, the black freedom movement has represented in practice the strongest and most articulate force for what in Europe might be termed leftist social democracy...
...The popularity of this mass movement was partially a function of the clarity of the issues...
...Among his recent books are "W.E.B...
...Last April, Abernathy joined black radical-turned-reactionary Eldridge Cleaver at a CAUSA conference in Los Angeles...
...Washington's political and educational achievements, including the establishment of Tuskegee Institute and the National Negro Business League, cannot be minimized...
...Despite the actual record, though, Woodson insists that civil-rights leaders have ignored economic issues...
...Lucas's background—former New York City police officer, FBI agent, and sheriff—appealed to the law-and-order constituency, and his fiscal conservatism and anti-abortion Blacks are recognizing their status as second-class Democrats— they have not received political benefits from the party commensurate with their high levels of electoral support...
...Abernathy was unable to keep up the momentum of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC...
...The Congressional Black Caucus was founded in 1971, but white Democratic leaders all but ignore it on most public-policy issues...
...And in Louisiana, Democrat John B. Breaux defeated Republican Henson Moore for the Senate by winning'85 per cent of the black vote...
...When Loury and other black conservatives today declare that "our work is not to change the minds of whites," they contribute directly to the destruction of civil-rights and affirmative-action programs...
...In this environment, a political realignment within that community was inevitable...
...Today, as the striking isolation of most black middle-class leaders from the main currents of white power and privilege has become abundantly clear, the voices of black neo-conservatism are gaining credibility and a modest base...
...The first is the black Reaganism of Sowell, Loury, and company, an updated version of Booker T. Washington's accommodationism...
...Most white Democratic leaders concur with central tenets of Rea-ganism: major reductions in social-welfare programs, huge increases in military expenditures, an aggressively anticommun-ist foreign policy, and so on...
...Most groups in this society," Woodson said, "didn't start off trying to achieve political equity...
...This is essentially the language and logic of accommodation...
...How can a poor black family pull itself up by its own bootstraps when it has no boots...
...At least 12 per cent of all blacks voted for Reagan in 1980...
...Deprived of King's guidance, however, both men foundered, personally and politically...
...Art Fletcher, the former executive director of the United Negro College Fund, joined Reagan's campaign staff...
...The early 1980s were a time of political upsurge in the black community—the 1983 March on Washington, the first mayoral campaign of Harold Washington in Chicago, the 1984 Presidential bid by Jesse Jackson—an upsurge that was part of a massive social reaction to the Reagan agenda and the triumph of the Right in national politics...
...The real problem is the inability of blacks and other liberal constituencies to construct an alternative political vehicle to advance their public-policy interests...
...Like European leftists whose faith in socialism has deteriorated, a growing number of black leaders are backing away from their assumptions based on social democracy in favor of the capitalist virtues of individualism and self-reliance...
...Moreover, Woodson hastily attempts to rewrite black political history as he juxtaposes the struggle for civil rights with black economic development...
...Washington never understood that the road of accommodation and black self-help, without a concomitant movement for equal rights and a struggle for social justice, led to a dead end...
...The most prominent black leader close to LaRouche is Roy Innis, who heads the remnants of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE...
...Eighty per cent of blacks polled said they will probably vote for the Democratic nominee in the 1988 Presidential election...
...And this misery is directly related to the Hobbesian social policy of the Reagan Administration...
...Sowell, a former Marxist, best articulated the black conservative approach in late 1980 when he said, "Cam-elot seems unlikely to return and we cannot bet the future of twenty million blacks on its return...
...The desegregation struggle was a populist movement that galvanized the near-unanimous energies and broad support of every segment of the national black community...
...Moore gained 60 per cent of the white vote, but it wasn't enough...
...Day Rally" in Washington, D.C...
...The church has donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to right-wing groups such as the National Conservative Political Action Committee, which opposes affirmative-action legislation and civil rights...
...I don't see any black county chairmen, I don't see black state chairmen for that 90 per cent...
...Black self-help has never, by itself, been a substitute for an aggressive civil-rights movement which seeks to uproot racism...
...What Abernathy, Bevel, and Innis share is a near-total lack of accountability to any significant working-class constituency inside the black community...
...It does not...
...Most blacks continue to take for granted a unity of political purpose and collective vision which no longer exists among black activists...
...Black doctors and dentists opened their offices in black neighborhoods because they had no choice...
...CAUSA was created six years ago by supporters of the Unification Church, in an effort to forge conservative links to educators, clergy, and local elected officials...
...The statistics speak for themselves...
...Again, the LaRouchites have been linked to a number of racist and extremist groups, including the Liberty Lobby, the Ku Klux Klan, and neo-Nazis...
...In last year's municipal elections in several cities, black candidates who had little or no prior knowledge of the group were recruited to run for public office...
...Each segment of the liberal alliance went its own way, leaving blacks politically isolated...
...Like the Unification Church, the LaRouchites work primarily through fronts, the Schiller Institute and the National Democratic Policy Committee...
...Woodson's basic argument—that "political power does not translate into economic power"—is an oversimplification...
...I don't see anything sacrosanct about the two-party system...
...Until that occurs, we can expect the continued defection of some black politicians and intellectuals to the Right and a deepening of the crisis inside the black electorate as a whole...
...Even Jesse Jackson has recently given verbal support to Tuskegee-like responses to racism...
...For more than a decade, Moon and his followers have pursued policies totally at odds with black interests...
...The black electorate has traditionally supported a progressive policy agenda that most European labor-party activists might recognize instantly as their own: increased unemployment programs, expanded public housing, national healthcare plans, major reductions in military spending, criticism of U.S...
...Between 86 and 89 per cent of the black electorate supported Democratic Congressional candidates...
...The first March on Washington, organized by trade unionist A. Philip Randolph in 1941, culminated in Executive Order 8802, which desegregated defense factories...
...As King's other proteges continued to make headlines—most prominently, Andrew Young—the flow of public events bypassed both these veterans, neither of whom exercised any clout within the Carter Administration...
...Only a few black politicians realize that the Afro-American community's difficulties cannot be resolved by jumping from one capitalist party to another...
...The confused and contradictory social strata they represent provide the fertile terrain for Black Reaganism...
...these former civil-rights leaders have simply found it convenient to advance conservative dogma in a conservative climate...
...Some black conservatives have operated from within the Administration—Bush aide Thaddeus Garret, Reagan assistant Melvin Bradley, Thelma Duggin, formerly the Republican National Committee's liaison to the National Black Voters Program, to name a few...
...The Coalition also may reach out to the traditional labor movement, to feminists, peace activists, and segments of the old liberal alliance that hold the greatest promise for a new progressive coalition in the 1990s...
...The white liberals who had campaigned for Eugene McCarthy and George McGovern gravitated to Gary Hart and his not-so-new ideas...
...Since the mid-1970s, Innis has championed the cause of Jonas Savimbi, the terrorist and leader of the Angolan rebel group UNITA, who is also supported by South Africa...
...How can a poor black family pull itself up by its own bootstraps, when it has no boots...
...Almost without exception, black Reaganites reject the traditional civil-rights agenda of affirmative action, government-sponsored social-welfare programs, and coalitions with liberal constituencies...
...stance won the praises of right-wing populists and mainstream Republicans even when he served as Wayne County executive in Detroit...
...And its essential contradiction was its necessary link to the Democratic Party...
...They have few direct or intimate ties with cultural and social institutions inside the black community...
...Eighty per cent of all blacks concurred that "the Federal Government should make every possible effort to improve the social and economic position of blacks," while only 27 per cent of the whites agreed...
...Since 1968, Democratic Presidential candidates have never won more than 46 per cent of the white vote...
...We have to recognize that many [liberal] methods were failing before they even lost public support...
...Black Americans must begin to accept a larger share of responsibility for their lives," he said...
...As the numbers of college-educated blacks soared, a new social stratum began to break away from the working class and the poor—the black urban professionals, or "buppies...
...The buppies, unlike the older black middle class, do not live or work in all-black environments...
...Innis was supported by the National Rifle Association and endorsed by Bernhard Goetz, the controversial "subway vigilante...
...Opportunism is nothing new in black politics...
...It is true that specific social classes with political leverage may not wield similar authority in the marketplace, and vice versa...
...I don't see as many black legislators or mayors outside the black community...
...In Atlantic City, New Jersey, James Usry, the black Republican mayor, was re-elected in a nonpartisan race...
...The clearest evidence that blacks and white middle-class Americans live in separate political worlds is provided by the 1986 elections...
...The paradox of desegregation, in short, is the creation of a class of black parvenus who are at odds with the very concept of black solidarity around progressive economic and social policies...
...and the denial of democratic rights and civil liberties were odious to every black American...
...Coretta Scott King promptly attributed Abernathy's endorsement to sinister forces...
...We must ultimately be responsible for uplifting ourselves...
...According to a recent New York Times/CBS poll, the only other significant constituencies favoring Democratic House candidates nationwide were Hispanics (75 per cent), Jewish voters (70 per cent), and members of union households and government employees (63 per cent each...
...But this cult has also taken advantage of the current dissension and political malaise within the black electorate to gain adherents...
...His candidacy was also supported by Nathan Wright, the convenor of the famous 1968 Black Power Conference in Philadelphia, and by Georgia State Representative Hosea Williams, a past leader of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and organizer of the Poor People's Campaign of the late 1960s...
...If you have economic power," he repeats, "you vote every day with your money...
...I can tell you what's going on in my state...
...Facing conservative Democratic incumbent Governor James J. Blanchard in the general election, Lucas had a more difficult time...
...Two prominent black newspapers, Atlanta's Daily World and Cleveland's Call and Post, also backed the conservative Republican...
...Because of this country's failure to develop a strong socialist or progressive third party, blacks had no choice but to bring their agenda into the Democratic Party by World War II...
...Within the black community, class stratification increased dramatically between 1970 and 1985...
...Thus the black social-democratic constituency is in crisis partly because it has no effective allies...
...He justified this unexpected action by accusing the Carter Administration of a variety of sins...
...Abernathy was, of course, second only to King as a pivotal leader of the Southern struggle from Montgomery to Memphis...
...They went into business...
...Bevel was in Memphis with King five years later when he was assassinated...
...They are too young to have taken part in the sit-ins and massive desegregation campaigns of the 1960s and have no personal experience of civil disobedience...
...By 1985, both former leaders had been drawn into the political orbit of CAUSA, an anticom-munist front established by the Reverend Sun Myung Moon...
...When he ran for governor in the 1986 Re-publican primary, thousands of black Democrats crossed over to vote for him, and he won the nomination...
...But in terms of their own historical experiences and class expectations, they are next of kin to the new white petit bourgeoisie, or "yuppies...
...In 1986, Innis ran an unsuccessful campaign in the Democratic primary against black progressive Representative Major Owens of Brooklyn...
...To oppose Jim Crow was to strike a blow against second-class schools, segregated neighborhoods, and inferior social services...
...With 88 per cent of the black vote, Shelby narrowly upset Denton by 6,823 votes...
...No matter their political ideology, they often reiterate the ideals of black self-sufficiency, collective aid, and racial solidarity...
...As hundreds of unsuspecting blacks gathered, LaRouchites gave speeches in favor of Star Wars...
...Black entrepreneurs looked to black consumers for their sales...
...No one doubts that the black community is in the midst of a major social, economic, and political crisis...
...Adesperate people will turn to almost anything that promises some relief from oppression...
...More importantly, most blacks polled consistently favor activist-oriented and liberal solutions to public-policy issues...
...Black teachers were usually employed in all-black school systems...
...Moon's early public statements on race relations appear to have more in common with segregationst Lester Maddox than with Martin Luther King...
...More than 40 per cent of all black families are headed by women, and more than half of all black children live in poverty...
...To Woodson's right stands Harvard professor Glenn Loury, perhaps the most prominent black conservative since Reagan's reelection...
...This is not nostalgia for Jim Crow...
...When black women and men are forced into jobs at sub-minimum wage rates, how can they sustain healthy families...
...Affirmative action, a central tenet of the civil-rights agenda, has created hundreds of thousands of job opportunities for minorities and women...
...The vast majority of blacks still define themselves as either "strong Democrats" (49 per cent) or "weak Democrats" (29 per cent...
...The poverty Manning Marable is professor of sociology and political science and senior research fellow of Afro-American studies at Purdue University...
...Gradually, alliances for civil-rights legislation were formed with organized labor...
...Bevel was a key strategist and stalwart for Martin Luther King Jr...
...Innis denies membership in the cult, but he recently acknowledged "an ongoing collaboration...
...In a recent interview, Woodson offered a thoughtful, if erroneous, critique of the strategic shortcomings of civil-rights organizations...
...At the zenith of the Second Reconstruction, in 1964 and 1965, the liberal coalition secured passage of the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act, as well as the War on Poverty...
...Robert Woodson, president of the National Center for Neighborhood Enterprise, is another rising star of the black Right...
...Yet another contributing factor to the internal crisis is the paradox of desegregation...
...More than half (56 per cent) of all blacks cited unemployment as one of the most important issues on the nation's agenda...
...The only black elected to the Senate during this period was Edward Brooke of Massachusetts, a liberal Republican...
...Blacks, unfortunately, have focused almost exclusively on civil rights for the past twenty years or so, as if applying civil-rights solutions would somehow translate into economic equity...
...As California Democratic Representative Ronald V. Black self-help has never been a substitute for an aggressive civil-rights movement...
...The black electorate will often vote for moderate Republicans, black or white, if they are perceived as friendly to blacks' traditional political interests and if they are running against Democrats who have little or no credibility among minorities...
...This reasoning has led many blacks to one of two strategies...
...The group's prime theoreticians have been economists, however: Thomas Sow-ell, Walter Williams, and Glenn Loury...
...nor his contemporaries within the leadership of the civil-rights movement anticipated the political and social problems that would be generated by their successes...
...Neither Martin Luther King Jr...
...With Marion Barry, James Lawson, and John Lewis, Bevel led the successful sit-in movement in Nashville...
...Black neoconservative theorists like Sowell and Williams were, at best, on the periphery of political respectability among blacks only a decade ago...
...If you have political power, you vote only once every two years...
...For too many years we have been crying that racism and oppression have to be fought on every front...
...intervention in Central America...
...During the Jim Crow era, the black middle class was small, but it was highly organized and organically connected with every element of black working-class life...
...A national environment of apathy toward the Afro-American condition translates into an insular political mentality among blacks themselves: "If our leaders are ineffective, if our organizations lack vision, and if the political system has turned against us, who will champion our interests...
...The number of black Democrats in Congress has risen from five in 1964 to twenty-two in 1987, but black legislators as a group have little power...
...We've been silent for too long in the name of black unity...
...What is more significant is the failure of most progressive-to-liberal black leaders and organizations to expose and criticize their behavior and their alliances with ultra-rightists...
...Social welfare programs, public housing, and education have been gutted...
...The crisis of black politics can only be resolved through the development of mul-ticlass, multiracial, progressive political structures—agencies of social change that bring together all elements of the black community...
...This conservative current is still weak but is beginning to gather strength...
...In the long run, though, success for such a coalition depends on a radical realignment of the Democratic Party—and probably a decisive split between the party's liberal and conservative wings...
...The actual number of black converts to the Moonies remains small...
...The political history of this rhetoric can be traced in part from the ideas of black nationalism as expressed by Martin Delany, Marcus Garvey, and Malcolm X. However, when this language of self-assertion is combined with a political alliance with conservative Republicans and a blind faith in the power of American capitalism, it becomes the anachronistic program of Booker T. Washington...
...DuBois: Black Radical Democrat" and 'African and Caribbean Politics: From Kwame Nkrumah to Maurice Bishop...
...This was the political reality behind the well-publicized switch to the Republican Party made by Michigan politician William Lucas in May 1985...
...in the difficult Birmingham desegregation campaign of 1963...
...Abernathy and Bevel drifted even further to the right after 1980...
Vol. 51 • January 1987 • No. 1
