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April 5, 2019
It underestimates the value of confrontation and dissolves the confidence born of a partial victory by which new efforts are powered.
an ugly picture of stagnation in many areas, including income levels, housing and schools.
The struggles of the past decade were not national in scope; they were Southern; they were specifically designed to change life in the South, and the principal role of the North was supportive. It would be a serious error to misconstrue the movement’s strategy by measuring Northern accomplishments when virtually all programs were applied in the South and sought remedies applicable solely to
The historic achievement is found in the fact that the movement in the South has profoundly shaken the entire edifice of segregation.
The persistence of segregation is not the salient fact of Southern experience; the proliferating areas in which the Negro moves freely is the new advancing truth.
There could be no possibility of life-transforming change anywhere so long as the vast and solid influence of Southern segregation remained unchallenged and unhurt.
What distinguished this period from all preceding decades was that it constituted the first frontal attack on racism at its heart.
Since before the Civil War, the alliance of Southern racism and Northern reaction has been the major roadblock to all social advancement. The cohesive political structure of the South working through this alliance enabled a minority ...
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There are no illusions among Southern segregationists that these gains are
This change is itself a revolutionary event. This amazing transformation took place in one decade of struggle after ten
decades of virtually total disenfranchisement.
For hundreds of years Negroes had fought to stay alive by developing an endurance to hardship and heartbreak. In this decade the Negro stepped into a new role. He no longer would endure; he would resist and win.
His endurance was not employed for compromise with evil but to supply the strength to crush it.
This was the victory that had to precede all other gains.
They also reveal that no matter how many obstacles persist the Negro’s forward march can no longer be stopped.
Negroes have irrevocably undermined the foundations of Southern segregation; they have assembled the power through self-organization and coalition to place their demands on all significant national agendas.
In the pursuit of these goals, the white poor become involved, and the potentiality emerges for a powerful new alliance.
When legal contests were the sole form of activity, the ordinary Negro was involved as a passive spectator. His interest was stirred, but his energies were unemployed. Mass marches transformed the common man into the star performer and engaged him in a total commitment. Yet nonviolent resistance caused no explosions of anger—it instigated no riots—it controlled anger and released it under discipline for maximum effect. What lobbying and imploring could not do in legislative halls, marching feet accomplished a thousand miles away. When the Southern Christian Leadership Conference went into
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This is an important observation t speaks to organizing
Indeed, by the end of a turbulent decade there was a new quality to Negro life. The Negro was no longer a subject of change; he was the active organ of change. He powered the drive. He set the pace.
He is still at the bottom despite the few who have penetrated to slightly higher levels. Even where the door has been forced partially open, mobility for the Negro is still sharply restricted. There is often no bottom at which to start, and when there is, there is almost always no room at the top.
This was a decade of role reversal. The North, heretofore vital, languished, while the traditionally passive South burst with dynamic vigor. The North at best stood still as the South caught up.
The brunt of the Negro’s past battles was borne by a very small striking force. Though millions of Negroes were ardent and passionate supporters, only a modest number were actively engaged, and these were relatively too few for a broad war against racism, poverty and discrimination. Negroes fought and won, but our engagements were skirmishes, not climactic battles.
No great victories are won in a war for the transformation of a whole people without total participation.
Northern white leadership has relied
too much on tokens and substitutes, and on Negro patience.
He has to rise up with indignation against his own municipal, state and national governments to demand that the necessary reforms be instituted which alone will protect him. If he reserves his resentment only for the Negro, he will be the victim by allowing those who have the greatest culpability to evade responsibility.
Negroes hold only one key to the double lock of peaceful change. The other is in the hands of the white community.
Realizing that Meredith was often a loner and that he probably wanted to continue the march without a large group, we felt that it would take a great deal of persuasion to convince him that the issue involved the whole civil rights movement.
a brief conference Floyd, Stokely and I agreed that the march would be jointly sponsored by CORE, SNCC [Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee] and SCLC [Southern Christian Leadership Conference], with the understanding that all other civil rights organizations would be invited to join. It was also agreed that we would issue a national call for support and participation.
As I listened to all these comments, the words fell on my ears like strange music from a foreign land. My hearing was not attuned to the sound of such bitterness. I guess I should not have been surprised. I should have known that in an atmosphere where false promises are daily realities, where deferred dreams are nightly facts, where acts of unpunished violence toward Negroes are a way of life, nonviolence would eventually be seriously questioned.
I should have been reminded that disappointment produces despair and despair produces bitterness, and that the one thing certain about bitterness is its blindness.
Finally, I contended that the debate over the question of self-defense was unnecessary since few people suggested that Negroes should not defend themselves as individuals when attacked. The question was not whether one should use his gun when his home was attacked, but whether it was tactically wise to use a gun while participating in an organized demonstration.
Like life, racial understanding is not something that we find but something that we must create. What we find when we enter these mortal plains is existence; but existence is the raw material out of which all life must be created. A productive and happy life is not something that you find; it is something that you make. And so the ability of Negroes and whites to work together, to understand each other, will not be
found ready-made; it must be created by the fact of contact.
So Greenwood turned out to be the arena for the birth of the Black Power slogan in the civil rights movement. The phrase had been used long before by Richard Wright and others, but never until that night had it been used as a slogan in the civil rights movement. For people who had been crushed so long by white power and who
had been taught that black was degrading, it had a ready appeal.
It was my contention that a leader has to be concerned about the problem of semantics. Each word, I said, has a denotative meaning—its explicit and recognized sense—and a connotative meaning—its suggestive sense. While the concept of legitimate Black Power might be denotatively sound, the slogan “Black Power” carried the wrong connotations.
single individual or organization. One must look beyond personal styles, verbal flourishes and the hysteria of the mass media to assess its values, its assets and liabilities honestly. First,
