A Spartacist Pamphlet 75¢

On the ivil Rights Movement

·~~i~;~~·X523 Spartacist Publishing Co., Box 1377 GPO, New York, N.Y. 10116

------,.,," ._-- 2 Table of Introduction

Contents When on I December 1955 Rosa open the road to freedom for black Parks of Montgomery, Alabama re­ people. With this understanding the fused to give up her seat on a bus to a early Spartacist tendency fought to Introduction ...... 2 white man, she sparked a new and break the civil rights militants from the convulsive period in modern American Democratic/ Dixiecratic Party and to history. For over a decade black forge a Freedom/Labor Party, linking -Reprinted from Workers Vanguard struggle for equality and democratic the mass movement for black equality No. 207, 26 May 1978 rights dominated political life in this with the working-class struggle against country. From the lunch counter sit-ins Ten Years After Assassination capital. and "freedom rides" in the Jim Crow The reformist "left" groups, particu­ Bourgeoisie Celebrates South to the ghetto explosions in the larly the Communist Party and Socialist King's Liberal Pacifism .... 4 North, black anger shook white racist Party, sought actively to keep the America. explosive civil rights activism "respect­ Amid the present anti-Soviet war able" and firmly in the death-grip of the -Reprinted from Young Spartacus Nos. 115 hysteria of the Reagan years, it is white liberals and black preachers. For and 116, February and March 1984 important to recall an aspect of the civil example the SP was hand in glove with The Man That rights movement which is now easily the establishment black leaders in Liberals Feared and Hated forgotten. It was the eruption of black viciously redbaiting the militant pro­ struggle against Jim Crow whioh shat­ tests in the North against the Wool­ Malcolm X: tered the Cold War/McCarthyite cli­ worth's chain, notorious for segrega­ Courageous Fighter for mate of the early 1950s. America's tionist practices in the South. A. Philip Black Liberation ...... 12 posture as leader of the "free world" was Randolph, Bayard Rustin, CORE and brutally exposed as peaceful demonstra­ others worked to scuttle the campaign tors were set upon with police dogs, tear of lunch counter sit-ins and militant -Reprinted from Spartacist No.4, gas and cattle prods for demanding the picket lines at Woolworth's, pushing May-June 1965 right to vote and use public facilities. instead impotent legalism, pacifism and Malcolm X ...... 14 And many of the young veterans of JFK's 1960 presidential campaign. the civil rights struggle came to identify The black liberal misleaders. like with the fighters against racist Ameri­ King, kept the civil rights movement -Reprinted from Workers Vanguard can imperialism abroad, from Castro's bound to the capitalist order, centrally No. 327, 8 April 1983 Cuba to Ho Chi Minh's Vietnam. through support to the Democratic While the civil rights movement Party of liberal liars and racist Neither Nationalism Nor Liberalism, challenged white racist America and Dixiecrats. Today under Reagan reac­ But Revolutionary Integration ism ! gave rise to a generation of young tion the partial and even the token gains SNCC: "Black Power" and radicals, it did not open up a new period of the civil rights movement are being the Democrats ...... 23 of black equality and advancement. For dismantled and attacked. And while the a decaying capitalism cannot meet the black Democrats pay homage to the sit­ promise of black freedom. The civil ins and mass protests of 20 years ago, rights movement came up against this they oppose struggle to defend black fact harshly, especially when the move­ rights in the present. Thus Jesse Jackson ment came north in the mid-1960s. The told black students, "You cannot serve hellish conditions of ghetto life, the the age of those who sat in, you cannot mass chronic unemployment, the racist serve the age of those who rode the police brutality-these cannot be solved flaming buses," as he urged them to by anew civil rights act, only through campaign for that all-time loser, Walter thoroughgoing social revolution. Mondale. The Spartacist tendency originated in * * * * * the period of the civil rights movement, This pamphlet tells the story of the and was shaped in that struggle. In civil rights movement, in opposition to opposition to both the liberal pacifism self-serving liberal mythologizing and of Martin Luther King and the growing falsification. Each of the three articles tendencies toward nationalist separa­ reprinted focuses on one of the main tism, we stood for revolutionary inte­ political poles during this stormy period Krationism-the fight for assimilation of black history: Martin Luther King, of black people into an egalitarian Malcolm X and the Student Nonviolent socialist society. There can be no social Coordinating Committee, better known revolution in this country without as SNCC. united struggle of black and white "Bourgeoisie Celebrates King's Liber­ workers led by a multiracial vanguard al Pacifism" traces King's career from Fifth Printing party, and there is nothing other than a the 1955-56 Montgomery bus boycott, October 1992 workers revolution which can at last where he emerged as the leading 3

national spokesman for "nonviolent direct action," through his growing rift with the young militants of SNCC. It details King's efforts to bring the civil rights movement north, culminating in the abortive open-housing march into the murderous lily-white suburb of Cicero, Illinois in 1966. The defeat in Cicero signalled the coming white backlash and the 'death of the civil rights movement. A few years later King himself became a victim of that backlash when he was assassinated by a white racist while supporting a black sanita­ tion workers strike in Memphis. For some time the black liberal establishment and its reformist hangers­ Vote Spartacist on have sought to associate Malcolm X with Martin Luther King as if they had been close comrades-in-arms. I n reality, Malcolm X was an implacable political enemy of King's liberal pacifism with its degrading appeals to the "conscience" of America's racist rulers. At a critical moment in contemporary American history Malcolm X became the personi­ fication of black militancy, the voice of Richard Bradley's the angry black ghetto. Despite miscon­ action against ceptions and false ideas inherited from Confederate flag of his past as a ghetto hustler and later a slavery embodied Muslim minister, Malcolm was a man of SL commitment to exceptional moral integrity, courage black liberation and intellectual honesty. "Malcolm X: through socialist Courageous Fighter for Black Libera­ revolution. tion" is a tribute to this remarkable and admirable man. Workers Vanguard The story of SNCC is the story of that pamphlet, issued in 1983, is now in its Hradley's action against the banner of generation of young black militants fourth printing. slavervand Klan terror earned him the forged in the heat of the civil rights That pamphlet took as its theme the solida'rity of the city's decent people and battles. Through their own bitter experi­ Spartacist League's slogan, "Finish the the wrath of the Democratic mayor, ences they became disillusioned with Civil War!" The slogan was prominently Dianne Feinstein. King's turn-the-other-cheek pacifism raised at the November 1982 Labor/ During the heyday of the civil rights and with Democratic Party electoral­ Black Mobilization, when 5,000 mili­ movement in the late 1960s, the SF ism. Finally, under the slogan of "Black tants, mainly black trade unionists and administration had in fact been forced Power" the SNCC militants broke with youth, mobilized by the Spartacist to remove a Confederate flag from the liberalism as they knew it, but soon League, stopped the racist-terrorist display. The reappearance in Civic came to embrace the illusory alternative KKK in the streets of Washington, D.C. Center of that hated symbol was a sign of despairing nationalist separatism. The slogan expresses our Marxist un­ of how far the partial and token gains of Nationalism was to be a dead end road derstanding that the promise of black that mass movement have been re­ for a generation of black militants. emancipation raised by the American versed. Feinstein was as well sending a "SNCC: 'Black Power' and the Demo­ Civil War was betrayed by the capitalist message to her cohorts of the Democrat­ crats" points, above all, to the road not ruling class; to fulfill that promise ic Party whose convention was soon to taken-the struggle for revolutionary requires a proletarian revolution in be held in SF integrationism through a multiracial America against the racist capitalist That "Dixie Dianne" Feinstein was communist party with a strong black system. forced (finally) to accept the removal of leadership component. We dedicate this This theme was taken up again last the vile banner of slavery, and its pamphlet to the young black workers year when Richard Bradley, a leader of replacement with a historic Union flag, and student radicals of today, so that the Spartacist League and a founder of is a small, symbolic victory for all they can better find that road, the only the Bay Area Labor Black League for enemies of racism. We of the Spartacist road to black liberation. Social Defense, climbed a 50-foot l.eague are proud of our comrade flagpole to rip down the Confederate Richard Bradley and proud that, as an * * * * * flag from an official display at San inseparable part of our struggle for the The Spartacist League is pleased to Francisco Civic Center. Bradley was emancipation of the working class, we publish this pamphlet for Black His­ dressed in the uniform of aU nion Army are also the vanguard of the fight for tory month (February) 1985. Our first sergeant, a reminder of the 200.000 black freedom. "Black History and the Class Struggle" black soldiers who fought for the lJ nion. -February 1985 4

reprintedfrom Workers Vanguard IVO. ]()7, 2fJ M(l\' 1978 Ten Years After Assassination BOURGEOISIE CELEBRATES KING'S LIBERAL PACIFISM

Ten years after he was assassinated in expensive: and most of all, that the cheap concession to an enraged mi­ Memphis nearly every black ghetto in future of these ghetto youth in racist nority population. But as the spectre the U.S. has its renamed Martin Luther capitalist America appears even more of a political mobilization of the King Avenue, its King school and desperate as their jobless rate climbs ghetto masses against their oppressors asphalt playground. The day of his birth above 50 percent. has grown dimmer, even "saints" is now institutionalized as a national While the anniversary of the King like Martin Luther King become holiday. Young black school children assassination is the perfect occasion for expendable. are carefully taught the political gospel mythologizing, it is indicative that this The ten-years-after assessments are of M.L. King, Jr. as the martyred em­ year the festivit ies were actually smaller not able to completely cover up reality, bodiment of the civil rights move­ than ever. The purpose of the celebra­ so they have sounded this refrain: King ment-the prophet of "nonviolence" tions has always been to dilute the brought us a long way-we've got a long and "patient moderation" which all memory of that original"Martin Luther way to go (presumably along that same black people who yearn for equality King Day" which sent shivers of fear "glory road"). The major chord is that ought to follow. thlough America's ruling class: the King and the liberal civil rights move­ It is no wonder then that the tenth ghetto explosions which swept the ment won increased democratic rights, anniversary of his murder has been the country upon the news of his death. On and the minor chord is the rendition of occasion for further mythology. It docs the night of 4 April 196X hundreds of the "economic miracle" of a racially not seem to matter to the mythmakers thousands of black people took to the harmonious "New South." Thus the that the ghetto school named in his streets, leaderless and without political New York Times (3 al1fl 4 April) pub­ honor is probably less integrated today focus, in outrage over the cold-blooded lished a two-part article entitled, "The than it was ten years ago, that the murder of the man who was seen as the Legacy of Martin Luther King," in parents of its black schoolchildren are leader of blacks in struggle against their which the "New South that King made" more likcly to be unemployed, that their oppression. A nervous bourgeoisie once is presented as a bouquet offresh liberal housing is even less habitable and more pushed this holiday as a diversion and magnolias and hlack elected officials: '"A strcet named for Dr. King in Selma, racial harmony in Hirmingham. bur­ geoning black powcr in Atlanta: These an: the triumphs of political change in the South." The important and real partial gains made for blacks during this period exist largely in the realm ofjilrmal democrat­ ic rights-resulting in desegregation of public facilities, voter registration as well as a degree of school integration. Hut even the liberals must acknowledge November 1983, that these real gains have not eliminated over 15 years the "handicap" of being black in white after King's capitalist America. Down the street assassination, from the office of Atlanta's black Reagan signs bill mayor, Maynard Jackson, the unem­ creating holiday in his honor. ployed still hang out in doorways. And Among notables as a veteran civil rights activist inter­ present are viewed for the Nell' York Times "Lega­ Coretta King cy" article bitterly remarked, "What and Edward good is a seat in the front of the bus if Kennedy. you don't have the money for the fare'!" The fact is that the "social miracle" of the "New South" is based on the old refrain of the "community of interest" --" 5

ness to the ruling class. For its part the reformist left has a diflercnt reason tor feeling it was a blessing King died when he did. The Communist Party (CP), for instance, claims that King was shot down just as hc was embarking upon a revolutionary course. His last trir to Memphis to support the sanitation workers strike and his opposition to the Vietnam War are citcd as proof positive of his growing rartisanship on the side of the working class. King did come (Jut against the war. it only for a negotiated settlement, and that orposition was to cost him his privileged relationship with LBJ. Un­ doubtedly King was feeling rressure from more militant black SNCC youth who saw Vietnam as a racist war. However, hc anticirated the important current of bourgeois defeatism in Freed/Magnum demanding that the guns for Vietnam be Martin Luther King, Jr. with well-wishers in Baltimore, 1963. Civil rights replaccd by government butter for the movement's promise of formal legal equality fueled black masses' hopes black poor. "The Great Society has been for a better life. shot down on the hattlefields of Viet­ between oppressor and oppressed, one Of course, Andy Young (whose readi­ nam," he said in New York City. which harks back to the days when the ness to sellout was so famous that even But to hcar thc CP tell the story, you plantation owners insisted that, unlike King jocularly called him 'Tom") would think King was some sort of cutthroat Northern capitalists, they claimed his reward in a more temporal crypto-Marxist by the time he goes to "took care" of their slaves. More cur­ realm, at the doorstep of the capitalist Memphis: rently the working premise is that what class. For the liberals King's murder "Ill' ~llidcd thc 1l10\TIl1Cnt lor libera­ is good for business is good for the poor. makes it somewhat easier to blame the tion. ' .. He began to sec the relationship If Jimmy Carter is the supreme being of failure of the civil rights movement on bclwccn the class struggle and the struggiL' lor cqual right:;. He also saw the "1\iew South," and Martin l.uther an assw,sin's bullet rather than on their Ihesc struggles <\', part of the worldwide King its messiah, the non-unionil:ed own political misleadership. After all, o;truggiL' "gain.,t impcrialisll1·-lI.S. workers remain outcasts ill this land of what kind of symbol would King have Imperialislll in the lirst place." milk and honey. "Racial harmony" is madc had he lived on" H is pacifism was --f)lli/} If "rid. I April 1979 today enforced by "hlack rower" Mayor tlttcrly discredited by the ghetto cxrlo­ This sounds more likc the M.L. King of Jackson who smashed the 1977 strike by sioTls, his preaching of reliancc on the J. Edgar Hoover's imagination than the Atlanta's largely black sanitation work­ capitalist state was exroscd as the onc who actually existed. In fact, King ers with a brutality that rivaled Hull federal troors bloodily sLlrrressed thesc would be no more suitable for such an Connor. upheavals. As a preacher of poisonous honorcd rlaee in the "progressive Self-serving King mythmaking is hy hourgcois ideology King had lost I,;, rantheon" than is Ralph Abernathy had no means restricted to the liberals whose ercdihility and thus outlived his usdul he lived to slosh around in the mud in rurpose is rather ohvious. Reformists on the left have joined this pilgrimage to the King shrine to stay in close touch IF THE. IS AtN 8LOCO SPILLED IN THE STJUTS. with the "progressive forces" t hcy ta iled LET IT BE (J(R BLOOD! then and now. They add left "miracle stories" to the case for liheral canoni/a­ tion. And there is an odd intersection of the liberal and reformist myths with regard to King's assassination. For different reasons they both agree he died just in time. Certainly the most cynical statement on the subject was made by the purest product of that movement-the King aide who made it to the top as black front man for U.S. imperialism. As Andrew Young said in a 1977 Play/un' interview about King's assassination: "Hc 'Was \cn lortunatc ... rcalh. It was a blcssin·g.. Martin had lionc all hc could. Hc was misunderstood. God tkcidcd Martin had had cnough. It was timc to go on homc alld claim his Cop brutalizes black man in Watts, 1965 (left); Muhammad ~Reaks cartoon rcward." lambasts M.L. King's pacifism (right). 6

aatlon311st activity, ana.intereste to coord!n::! tc this p:rO ...... :l:J '. Th' d in countcrintelll"ccce for the periodic progr:~s :ie'tt l.S ~;cnt ~111 be- rCSPoD~i]:)le" Agent tlorkin:; tbis type; c;J.s:r: requested, but c:!c!l -of. hO eill~ for.culation of counteriotell' uld p:lrticip~te in the l.gence oper~tio~s.

If King couldn't bury civil rights militancy in impotent pacifism, the racist American bourgeoisie was more than willing to bury it with guns, clubs and hoses. Above: Birmingham, 1963. Hoover's COINTELPRO memo (right) drips with the blood of martyred black leaders (Malcolm X, Fred Hampton, George Jackson) who sought to lead the movement beyond King's politics of liberal prostration.

front of the Capitol in the "Poor economic roots of black oppression. the program were heard from disciples People's Tent City." The fact is that the And from carlyon the preacher of who feared the King image was not civil rights movement had died he(vre nonviolence and reliance on the liberals heing properly worshipped. Along with King was shot. This is what makcs his was challenged bv more militant forces Southern Christian Leadership Confer­ dcath so "timely" for Andrew Young. in "the movement." Thc tragedy was ence (SCLC) president emeritus Ralph the CP and others who want to cash in that none of the forces in the emerging Abernathy. Hosea Williams objected to on the moral capital of thc "good old left wing of the civil rights movement his diminished role and tried unsuccess­ days" without taking responsibility for had grasped a political program which fully to organize a national boycott of the failure of that movement. could ll10bili/e a united proletarian the production. Supporters of Mann's The central theme of the bourgeoi­ army to liberate all the oppressed. by version included Andrew Young, Coret­ sie's hosannahs to Martin Luther King smashing the capitalist ~ystem which ta King and her lawyer, Stanley Levi­ is to present him as the symbol of a civil forges the chains of their oppression. son. all of whom are portrayed as playing key roles in the TV "docudra­ rights movement that went from success Docu-lie to success by the good old American rna." But for all the squabbling there way of pressure politics. The present Hy far the most publicized media was no disagreement over what ought to condition of the ghetto populace is event was Abby Mann's KinK, broad­ be the purpose of the program. As sufficient proof of the emptiness of this cast last Fcbruary over national TV for Williams said, "Our preoccupation is fairy tale. In fact King produced defeats six hOllrs on three successive nights. that King be presented as the greatest every time he directly confronted the Evcn belore it was shown, objcctions to peaceful warrior of the 20th Century. That's aH" (Po/itiks, 14 Fehruary). That's all? Mann's failure to take into account the left wing of the civil rights movement brought more serious ohjec­ tions from a number of ex-Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) memhcrs. Mann said he "un­ derstands" thc criticisms made by the King with former SNCC members (who organized Robert Kennedy, some of the projects Mann attributes NAACP's Roy solely to King). But he added in his Wilkins and defense: "This is the kind of film Martin Lyndon Johnson Luther King wanted" (New York Times, at White House, 16 February). He's probably right about 1963. that. Certainly the TV "docudrama" is the appropriate genre for slickly packaged contemporary myth making. Its dis-

11~r;I"J_"" __.""" ..#II",4i4i ...... "' ...... , __.'IIIMIIFt'..,A''''. ___..... _p~r .... 4_,.,. •• _ .... _____ '" 7

comfiting mix of fact and fiction, data liberal pacifism. The more the masses stunning victories for the hlack masses. and impression, history and fantasy all thrcatened to break out of these bonds. But the truth is that Martin Luther King serve to hlur rather than clarify an the more the liberals supported King did not hegin the civil rights struggle in already obscured reality. It captures the against spokesmen for more militant the U.S. And he certainly did not make cymclsm of post-Watergate liberalism strategies. possible the partial gains that character­ with its syndrome of exposure and Yet by the late 1960's the mood of the ize its tarly years. After World War II. cover-up and ultimate unanswered black population had become so explo­ the government found formal Jim Crow questions. King focuses on the govern­ sive that a fearful bourgeoisie tended to segregation increasingly embarrassing. ment's targeting of black leaders, allow Hoover a freer hand. After It stood in stark contradiction to the particularly the FBI's criminal COIN­ Harlem, Watts, Newark and Detroit integration of masses of hlack workers TELPRO program whose first com­ went up in flames, any black leadership into the industrial proletariat of the mandment was: "Prevent the rise of a began to seem a threat. And so they were cities; and it exposed U.S. pretensions as black messiah." systematically put out of action or champion ofa "Free World" both in thc In Ahby Mann's King the liberal view simply "eliminated." Malcom X had Cold War with Russia and in the of the FBI is given melodramatic import already been assassinated; SNCC leader jockeying for inlluenee in decolonizing with J. Edgar Hoover portrayed as the arch-paranoid villain sitting stone-stiff in a dark room clenching his teeth and planning to get King. No doubt this is true. As FBI agent Arthur Murtaugh of the Atlanta field office later told Kennedy assassination buff Mark Lane (in an interview for his book, Code Name "Zarro"): "The concentration of effort against King was grea ter than any single investigation that I saw take place at the bureau and I saw a lot of them in twenty years." But it is not the whole truth. Relying on Lane's research and theories, Mann paints a dark picture of the FBI to whitewash the role of the liberal gov­ ernment. In an early segment when then-president John Kennedy is asked what the government will do about attacks on civil rights activists, he says: "We'll do what we always do. Nothing." Fair enough. But by the end of the program John and his attorney general brother, Bobby, have been cast as warriors against Hoover, the FBI and Bus carrying Freedom Riders was firebombed when it entered Alabama. the Ku Klux Klan. This post-Watergate convention of the mortal combat he­ Rap Brown was in jail; within a Yiar Africa. By 1'147 the U.S. military and all tween Hoover and Camelot is phony in Chicago Black Panthers Mark Clark departments of the fedcral govcrnmcnt King and in history. and Fred Hampton would he murdered were desegregatcd, and when black Far from being reluctant "good guys" in their beds, while Newton. Cleaver aild soldiers came back from integrated the liberals differed with Hoover over Seale were hounded with arrests. units ill Korea they sworc they would no tactical assessments on how to best We may never know how much of the longer submit to Jim Crow. Even before contain the struggle for hlaek equality. post-Watergate liberal speculation the 1954 Brown VS. Board of Education The government's attack on the hlack ahout FBI involvement in the King decision, the National Association for movement, particularly against its most assassination is fact and how much the Advanccment of Colorcd People militant sectors such as the Black conspiratorial paranoia. But it is cer­ (NAACP) had won a number of legal Panther Party, was so intensive and tainly proper to make thc sinister victorits for school desegregation in the widespread that to suggest it was done connection with the government's South. without the knowledge of Kennedy or search-and-destroy missions against the It was with the arrest of Rosa Parks in Johnson is ludicrous. Indeed, liberal black movement. We demand to know Montgomery. Alahama in 1955 that the columnist Carl Rowan wrote that the whole truth about the King assassi­ movement that became known as the Hoover had leaked word to the press nation, the murder of Malcom X and civil rights movement dramatically that Bobby Kennedy had authorized the all-out secret police war against the overtook NAACP legalism and led to wiretaps on King's phone, a charge he Black Panther Party! Instead we arc the )Tar-Iong bus boycott. It was also repeated in a 19 June 1968 interview in dished up post-Watergate apologia for the event that thrust Martin Luther the Washington Star. But while for pacifist liberalism. King to center stage as a national Hoover the "black messiah" had to be spokesma n of pacifist Hd ircct act ion" for stopped by any means necessary, the From Montgomery hlack equality. Contrary to popular liberals increasingly saw King as the to Washington myth it was not King. hut Ralph man most capable of containing the civil The Mann docudrama presents its Abernathy. a less polished Montgomcry rights movement within the bounds of hero as the leader of a long march of preacher at a less esteemed church. who 8

was the d riving force hehind the re4ulring segregated seating on buses children up against the walls. But these hoycott. Ahernathy, E. D. Nixon (of the unconstitutionaL A voice from the hack dramatic scenes are only part of the local NAACP and Brotherhood of of the adjournment proceedings is story. Mann glosses over the black Sleeping Car Porters) and others reported to have cried out, "God population's fighting response to Con­ pushed King, the "new hoy" preacher of Almighty has spoken from Washington, nor and the racist thugs. In Birmingham the prestigious Dexter Avenue Church D.C." King's nonviolent philosophy was into the leadership of the hoycott for In Abby Mann's King the Montgom­ junked by the black masses who with reasons of security. As he himself cry hus boycott ends victoriously with sticks, rocks, knives and bottles fought confirmed in his hook, ,.,'(ride Toward the hero stepping aboard the newly­ back against the racists in the streets. It Freedoll1, "I neither started the protest integrated hus and the "New South" was at that moment-and not before­ nor suggested it," adding in messianic takes off. Coretta King's voice is heard that Kennedy sent troops to bases terms, "I simply responded to the call of as the hus pulls away: outside the city and announced that he the people for a spokesman." "When Martin hoarded that hus-the had taken steps to federalize the Rather than a spokesman for the tirst integrated hus--hc felt as though Alabama National Guard. he were Columhus discovering Ameri­ In Birmingham, pacifist persuasion people, in Montgomery King became ca. It seemcd to him then, anything was the spokesman for the policy of reliance possihle." was put away, but not before that tragic Sunday morning, 15 September 1963, on the federal government with a new King was riding high with his sermons when a bomb exploded in the Sixth cover of Gandhian passive resistance. on "soul force" and t he "capacity to Avenue Baptist Church that would put As religious philosophy it is claptrap, suffer," but Montgomery blacks were four little black girls into their graves. hut in the mouth of a Gandhi or King it left to face the racist flak-courageous­ For his part, King remained loyal to his was the bleating of the .I udas goat. King ly, but tactically, politically and morally god and his saviors in the government. wrote in the mid-1950's: disarmed. Following the Supreme And the government recognized it had a "I he Ncgro all ovcr the South must Court decision the racist terrorists comc to the point that he can say to his loyal representative in the field. Even crawled from their rat holes, put on their \\hite hrother: 'We will match your when his brother's home was bombed, sheets and picked their black targets. capacity to inflict suttering with' our King continued to "marvel" at how eapacit~ to endure suffering. We will The KKK staged a provocative night­ blacks could express "hope and faith" in meet your physical force with soul time torchlit procession into the black moments of such tragedy. lorcc. We will not hate vou, hut we will neighborhoods. Black churches were not ohey vour evil law~. We will soon Just how loyal King was to the Dem­ burned to the ground. Buses were wear y,iu' down hy purc capacity to ocratic Party was proved that summer sutkr'." attacked and burned in a campaign of in the fabled March on Washington. In ,,--quoted in David L. I.ewis, terror. Even King'S house was dynamit­ Mann's King and all King mythology Aing. A Critical m()grall/7I' ed; but angry blacks who rose to his ( 1(70) defense (and their own) calling for the March on Washington is taken as the victorious high point of "the While King preached that the nonvio­ protest action were told by King to love movement." In fact it was here that King lent resister had "cosmic companion· their enemies. helped engineer a "mass" political defeat ship" in his struggle for justice, it was !t was in Birmingham in 1963 that the for the cause of black liberation, clear that he saw as temporal political pacifism of King and the SCLC was treacherously tying it to the Democratic companions the liberal capitalist gov­ exposed in blood and death. Mann's Party. The numbers were certainly im­ ernment and its courts. After a year of King recreates the indelihle images of pressive, and so was the participation of unyielding struggle by Montgomery's that time-Bull Connor and his storm­ every important civil rights organiza­ blacks, it must have seemed to King part troopers; the police dogs set loose upon tion along with the liberal wing of the of the cosmic order of justice when the the crowd; the firehoses set at pressures union bureaucracy, most notably Wai­ Supreme Court declared the local laws sufficient to strip off tree bark, hurling ter Reuther's United Auto Workers. Marxists call for mobilizing the power of the organized working class as key to winning democratic rights for the op­ pressed. But this was not what the March on Washington was about. Rather it was an attempt to channel the movement into pressure politics for the passing of the civil rights bill and to cement ties with the Democratic Party. Even the most conservative civil rights leaders initially saw the march as a means to put the heat on the Kennedy administration, which was dragging its heels on the bill and other anti­ diserimination legislation. But when Kennedy called in the "representative leaders" for a conference, they quickly changed their minds. They changed their destination from the White House to the Lincoln Memorial, issued a new

AP march handbook deleting a "statement Selma to Montgomery: Alabama state troopers attack march on Pettus to the president" and the call to confront Bridge. King turned the next march around with a prayer. the Congressmen. They specifically

______""""

reprinted from ~parta('ist No.4, May-June 1965

The "Protection" of the FBI: A Prediction Come True

... the civil rights movement must turned against them in the interests of not to the Federal government, for realize that it cannot look to the racist oppression. The civil-rights protection. federal governmentfc)f "protection" of" movement will then find itself witch­ Hy developing now a party com­ any surt. If the past history of Federal hunted, its meetings raided and manding respect and winning gains interaction and collaboration with the supporters arrested by the same F. B.1. through the organization of black segregationist apparatus is not enough it is presently beseeching to protect it. power, yet a party without racial proof, the Selma case should make it The illusion of "nonviolence" spread exclusivism, Negro militants will lay clear that Johnson will mobilize by King and others is a criminal the basis for eventual working-class Federal forces and pass voting-rights disarming of black people, and is fusion. This fusion will come about bills only when he feels that the consistent with the role of these when the exploited section of the white interests of the American racist status "leaders" as agents of the power South is driven into opposition and in quo will benefit. Once the Negro structure. The movement must scrap desperation is compelled to forego people begin to assert their real power these illusions once and for all and color prejudice in order to struggle and independence, and attempt to use begin to organize the Negro people along class lines against its real these laws for their own political to defend themselves from violence. enemies-the owners of land and action, these same troops will be The movement must look to itself, industry and their state.

denied partIcIpation to "subversive" parade of victories with little or no many of the SNCC. CORE and groups and censored all speeches. challenge to King's leadership and NAACP youth council members were Although John Lewis of SNCC was philosophy of nonviolence. Here Abby not committed to nonviolence as an in­ invited to speak, he was pressured into Mann makes a most worshipful offering violable religious principle. They tended deleting from his prepared text the to that idol of liberalism at the expense to accept King's strategy as good coin. following sentence: "We cannot depend of truth. ror Mann the entire political and while they had illusions in the fed­ on any political party for both Demo­ struggle against liberal pacifism is eral government. their real commmit­ crats and Republicans have betrayed the reduced to an anachronistic dialogue ment was to the struggle for democratic basic principles of the Declaration of between King and Malcolm X in which rights for black people. Thus from the Independence." the latter is portrayed as a charming same events they learned different Although the 1964 Civil Rights Act demon of defeat while King is the inch­ lessons from the preachers! When the was a supportable declaration of mini­ by-inch realist. Basically, the liberals social explosions of the mid-1960s mal democratic rights, the march was put into the mouth of Malcolm a occurred they identified with the aspira­ meant to build support for precisely that strategy for race war and allow King to tions of the black masses while King party whose purpose was to sabotage point out that such a strategy would feared for the bourgeois order. any attempt by blacks to gain those amount to race suicide. In fact it was not As early as the April 1960 Raleigh, rights. Characterizing the march as the race war. but collective self-defense that North Carolina youth conference-out "Farce on Washington," Malcolm X was the issue for Malcolm X, for Robert of which SNCC would emerge--King wrote of the period which King came to Williams, the Deacons for Defense and was already warning that "the tactics of see as the high point of his career: many others. nonviolence without the spirit of nonvi­ "In '6.1 it was the march on Wash­ Through "creative editing," King fails olence may become a new kind of ington. In '64, what was it" The civil­ to show that not only was its hero violence." And by the following year rights bill. Right after they passed the opposed by more militant, courageous during the confrontation in Albany, civil-rights bill they murdered a Negro in Georgia and did nothing about it: activists, but that he was also pushed by Georgia ("one of the meanest little murdered two whites and a Negro in the left wing of the civil rights movement towns" in Carter country) King had Mississippi and did nothing about it. So into many actions for which he is now even more reason to be suspicious of the that the civil-rights bill has produced given credit. Mann gives SNCC the students--and they of him. nothing where we're concerned. It was onlya valve, a vent, that was designed to most cursory mention, buried under a It was here that the students ~aw that enable us to let 011 our frustrations. But mountain of King rhetoric, as the despite King's capacity to land thou­ the bill itself was not designed to solve militant wing of the civil rights move­ sands of activists in the jails, he was our problems." ment. And the Congress of Racial unable to dent the stone wall of racist ~George Breitman. cd .. Equality (CORE). which organi7ed the reaction. I n midsummer 1961, after sus­ Malcolm X Speaks (1965) first freedom rides, is not mentioned at tained and repeated racist attacks, with It was the felt need for a program to all. 3.000 Klansmen massed outside town, "solve our problems" which led to the Hut history is different from "docu­ the protesters began to fight hack. As he emergence of a left wing in the civil drama" and the developing split was to did so often in the future. King called for rights movement which challenged become all important to the fate of the a "moratorium" on -action. And the King. civil rights movement. The fight was militant black youth began to refer to only partly generational, and at root him derisively as "De Lawd." Civil Rights Movement Divided ideological. Certainly at the beginning Hut it was at Selma, Alabama in 1965 One of the more pernicious aspects of SNCC was a creature of the SCLC and that the tensions came to a head on the the King myth is the treatment of the (as its name clearly indicates) accepted Pettus Hridge. In the face of King's civil rights movement as a continuous its nonviolent strategy. But unlike King betrayal the song. "Ain't Gonna Let 10

Chicago, 1966: Civil rights demonstrators under King's leadership sang hymns as thousands of stone-throwing racists stopped march in its tracks. Nobody Turn Me 'Round," rang with attacking economic problems, King ideology of Carmichael and the black painful irony for the returning march­ simultaneously launched an attack nationalists. Both failed to see the need ers. Responding to Justice Department against his left flank, striking out to mobilize the power of the unions, pressure, King stopped the Selma-to­ against "violence" in the black move­ through challenging the racist, pro­ M ontgomery march, knelt in prayer and ment. He had already directed his fire at capitalist labor bureaucracy: King and turned it around. With Selma there was CORE's stall-in at the 1964 New York the SCL.C because they were committed open talk of King as sellout and coward. World's Fair and a trip to Harlem that to the Democratic Party; Carmichael To the song "We Shall Overcome," the year had resulted in his car being pelted and the black nationalists because with young militants began to counterpose, with rotten eggs while the crowd the defeats and sellouts of liberal "We Shall Overrun." chanted, "We Want Malcolm." He knew pacifism, they had taken the road of he would not get much besides suspicion black separatist militancy which ig­ King Goes North from CORE and SNCC in his Palmer nored the "white working class." It was in Chicago in 1966 that the House negotiations with Mayor Daley. The situation came to a head with the premises of the liberal civil rights The most subtle apology for King's projected march into the lily-white movement came most clearly into liberalism comes from those who agree suburb of Cicero. King was under explosive collision with economic and that the civil rights movement was pressure to make a show of militancy; social reality. Northern ghetto blacks finished in the North, but attribute the SNCC was anxious to show its mettle; had lived with "equality under the law" failure to the unbreachable divide be­ the racists got ready. Nazi leader George for years and it was abundantly clear tween the ethnic white neighborhood Rockwell came to town amidst consid­ that King had no program to fight the and the black ghetto. Nationalism erable fanfare to recruit among the causes of racial discrimination rooted politically tied blacks into the ghetto, Cicero residents. The white working­ deep in the economic and social struc­ despairing of a successful struggle class communities had already made ture of capitalist society. And despite against the segregation of minorities at clear that they would not allow blacks to the reformists' claim that King was the bottom of the economic ladder. Yet march through their streets when King moving left when death overtook him, in the North was also the integrated was stoned to the ground earlier in what grew out of the Northern experi­ workplace, the integrated union, the Marquette Park. No one doubted the ence was not a turn toward the working possibility of an alliance with other racist terror that would meet the class, but Jesse Jackson's "Operation exploited sectors against the common planned King-SNCC march. But two Breadbasket," the quintessence of black cnemy. But this fighting alliance did not days before it was to occur King signed capitalism. mean the empty "unity" of black liberals the Palmer House "Summit Agree­ By the time King arrived in Chicago with liberal labor bureaucrats. In ment" and backed off in exchange for a the civil rights movement was already Chicago the struggle for racial equality formal agreement on housing. irreversibly divided, not the least over meant directly confronting the Daley For the militant wing of the civil the ghetto upheavals which had burst machine. and the Reuthers, Rustins and rights movement it was Selma all over upon the political scene. The emerging Randolphs were not about to mount a again. SNCC on its own led a march of black nationalists were enraged by the campaign against this Democratic Party 200 people into Cicero on September 4. support King and the preachers gave to kingpin. What was needed was a pro­ There were triple that number of the vicious police repression. As King program of class struggle; what King Chicago police and thousands of Na­ said of Watts, "It was necessary that as offered was a program of class tional Guardsmen. The marchers were powerful a police force as possible be collaboration. courageous and sustained many injuries brought in to check them" (Nell' York Chicago blacks were presented with and arrests, but they had lost. It was all Times, 16 August 1965). the choice of two dead ends: the liberal over long before it began. The racists While talking in vague terms about pacifism of King or the no less defeatist had out-mobilized them in the streets. 11

Nearly a decade later busing was such an active intervention into SNCC the present reformist stance toward defeated in Boston for much the same and other components of the left wing of King is dictated by desires to once again reason: the labor movement was not the civil rights movement. The RT saw get close to the liberals. Thus the SWP, brought into the struggle on the side of the crucial opportunity for the crystalli­ for instance, in the most cynical fashion integration. Responsible for these de­ zation of a black Trotskyist cadre. Its not only talks about a "New Civil Rights feats were the labor bureaucrats, the 1963 opposition document, "The Negro Movement" as it tails after the mori­ black liberal leadership and the pseudo­ Struggle and the Crisis of I.eadcrship," bund hyper-legalist NAACP, but at the socialists who tail after them. read in pa rt: same time it continues to support the "I he rising upsurge and militancy ofthc residues of the black nationalist wave. Class Power and Civil Rights hlack revolt and the contradictorv and I n fact. hoth movements are dead, but King and the coalition of black min­ conluscd. groping nature 01\1 hat i~ now these shameless reformists continue to thc Idt wing in the lllovement providc isters of the SCLC had never intended to tile revolutionary languard Ilith fertik support all of their most treacherous unleash a movement of the black soil and many opportuTlities to plant the aspects--calis for federal troops to masses. Their civil (ights movement was seeds or revolutionarv socialislll .... We "protect" black schoolchildren, reliance meant as a gesture by the "talented must consider non-iillcnention in the on "peaceful, legal" means to pressure crisis or leadership a crlmc or the worst tenth" to pressure the capitalist govern­ sort." the capitalist state, support for govern­ ment for legal reform. They saw the In part it was for this fight that the RT ment union-busting "Affirmative Ae­ Democratic Party as the natural politi­ was expelled from the SWP while that tion" schemes in the name of civil rights. cal vehicle for legislative pressure and already degenerated party continued its Marxists must not disguise King's black political expression. They saw the criminal abstcntionism. Within a few liberal pacifism and the dead end it courts as their main ally and ultimate battleground. But when the black, masses moved onto the stage of U.S. history, the SCLC's role became one of fearful containment. It was different for SNCC whose young activists identified with and encouraged the organization of black social power. An orientation toward different class forces began to show early, if only sociologically, as SNCC turned toward "grass roots" local or­ ganizing and King continued his reli­ ance on the federal government. The Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP)-which grew out of the SNCC voter registration campaigns-revealed all of the contradietions of a militant civil rights organization lacking revolu­ tionary programmatic alternatives. The MFDP shared King's illusions in the party of Kennedy and Humphrey, illusions it paid for at the 1964 Atlantic City convention when the J ohnson/ Humphrey machine crushed its attempt Wo to unseat the Jim Crow Mississippi del­ Norfolk, Virginia unionists march for school busing, May 1983. egation. Out of this experience the Lowndes County (Alabama) Freedom years the opportunity would be lost--­ represented in the struggle against racial Organization was formed with a politi­ with the hardening of the black nation­ oppression. We must break through the cal thrust independent of the capitalist alist mood, the terrain would be sealed myths of "passive resistance," crack the parties. off to comm u nists for severa I years, with mask of "King the Peaceful Warrior," In the end no sector of the civil rights many thousand~ of black radicals lost to and present a revolutionary analysis of movement was able to decisively break the revolutionary movement. the failure of the civil rights movement out of the confines of liberal politics. Yet I-ar from being a transcende:1tal to provide a program for fighting the throughout this period literally thou­ leader of a united movement, King wa, social and economic oppression of sands of its left-wing militants were in one of the political poles against which blacks under American capitalism. It is rapid political motion. That this motion the left wing ofthc civil rights movement not through liberal "docudrama" that was not intersected by communists with was defined. Yet there are those on the the new generation of youth will a program to broaden the fight for \cft who still yearn for the "good old discover the true story of that pcriod. democratic rights of blacks into a days" of a "united" civil rights move­ While the reformists cover for King to struggle for black equality through ment, and toward that end they falsify camoutlage their own treacherous united class struggle was a major set­ the movement and the man who tracks, the task of creating a black back for the U.S. proletariat. symboliled its liberal. religious wing. communist cadre requires destroying I n the early 1960s the predecessor of It is ironic that the rehabilitation of politically the exalted symbols of the Spartacist League, the Revolution­ King within thc left was begun hy the passivc defeatism and reliance on the ary Tendency (RT) within the Socialist black nationalists on the basis that "no bourgeois state which led to the death of Workers Party (S WP), fought for just whites ought to critici/.e" any black. But the civil rights movement. • 12

reprinled./i·ol1l Young ~/)artacus Nos. 115 and //(). "'ehruan' {lilt! Jtarch /I.)X4 The Man That Liberals Feared and Hat

"Malcolm was our manhood. our now mourn him as a "great loss to the Bayard Rustin. the kind of "socialist"' living black manhood! This was his movement." Something like this has who\ apt to be funded by the CIA. In meaning to his people. And. in happened to Malcolm X. 1963 Rustin was chief organizer for the honoring him. we honor the best in The white rulers of this country hated March on Washington. which Malcolm ourselves .... " Malcolm X and responded with un­ dubbed "the farce on Washington." Yet -Ossie DavIs. disguised malicious glee to his violent not long after Malcolm was killed 27 ~ebruary 1965 death. The director of the official United Rustin claimed. "Malcolm was moving Nineteen years ago the most admired States Information Agency. Carl Ro­ toward the mainstream of the civil rights and respeeted. the most hated and wan (who is black) dismissed Malcolm movement when his life was cut short"' feared black man of his generation was X contemptuously as "an ex-convict. (/)(}\1"fI the Une [197(1). Corpses can't assassinated while speaking at Harlem's cx-dopc peddler who became a racial protcst. Rustin's line has been taken up Audubon Ballroom. Lenin once ob­ fanatic." The obituary editorial in the by other rcformist fakers. At the rally served that while a revolutionist is alive liberal New York Times (22 Februarv last August 27 (actually a pray-in for the and fighting. the oppressor class perse­ 1(65) vilified him as "an extraordinar~' Democratic Party) to commemorate cutes him. hounds him. vilifies him. and twisted man. turning many trlJ~ the 1963 March on Washington. Sam circulates the most vile slanders about gifts to evil purpose": Marcy's Workcrs World Party carried a him. But after he's dead sometimes an " ... his ruthless and lanatical belief in bannCf depicting King and Malcolm effort is made to co-opt his memory. violence not ollly Sl't him apart lrom the together. And Jack Barnes' Socialist responsible leaders of the ci\ il rights Workers Party ran speeches by Mal­ to portray him as a well-meaning. if movement alld th.: oVCfwhelming ma­ misguided. do-gooder. The same people joritv ot :-Jcuroes. It also mal ked him colIn and M LK in the Militant, but who savagely attaeked him when alive for r;otorict)~. and lor a Violent end." /lot Malcolm's scathing attack on the Time In other words. they think he got what '63 March and King's rose-colored he deserved. "dreams." Today the flame of Malcolm The "responsible" civil rights leadcrs. X is being prostituted in the service of needless to say. fed into the ruling class Demoeratic Party liberalism. which the hysteria against Malcolm and the Black real Malcolm X fought to the end with Muslims. Martin Luther King declared all the force of his extraordinary their views "hordered on a new kind of personality. race hatred and an unconscious advo­ At a critical moment in eontcmporary cacy of violence." Malcolm returned the American history Malcolm X was the compliment. denounci ng King as a voice of black militancy. His impor­ "twentieth-century Uncle I om" whose tance and appeal lay. in particular. in his "primary conCl:rn is defending the white intransigent opposition to the "white man." man's puppet Negro 'leaders'."' as he Now and for Sllllle timc past. how­ called them. Martin Luther King told ever. an effort has bcen made to identit\ the world that blaek pcople loved the Malcolm with the "respectable" black white oppressor and would answer the leaders whom hc despised. One of the racists' bombings and beatings with "Detroit Red"-Malcolm X at age 19. most despicable of the whllle lot i> Christian forgiveness. He hoped in this

.~,------13

way to shame the Northern white liberal dead-end menial jobs (shoeshine boy in Nation of Islam originated in Detroit in establishment into moving against a dance hall, sandwich man on the the early 1930s out of the same social Southern Jim Crow by demonstrating railroads), then drifted into Harlem soil which produced Garveyism: the the moral superiority of black people to where he became an all-purpose hustler uprooted black Southern peasantry the KKK killers and their confederates nicknamed Detroit Red. At one point thrown into the Northern ghettos under like George Wallace and Bull Connor. during World War II he was a steerer for conditions of economic desperation. It The idea that blacks had to prove to the a Harlem madam specializing in kinky was a typical religious sect of the "good white massa" that they were sex. Her clientele came almost entirely oppressed, promising apocalyptic re­ peaceable folk and god-fearing Chris­ from the upper echelons of white demption: 'The last shall become first." tians enraged Malcolm to the depths of society: It taught that American Negroes were his being. It was degrading. Like the " ... these weren't college boys, these originally members of the lost tribe of sheep reminding the wolf when it's time were their Ivy League fathers. Even Shabazz stolen by slave traders from the for dinner. Malcolm X cut through grandfathers, I guess. Society leaders. holy city of Mecca. The original race of Big politicians. Tycoons. Important the sanctimonious claptrap and foot­ friends from out of town." mankind was black. Then 6,000 years shuffling hypocrisy of the "respectable" - The AU/ohioRraphl' of ago the big-headed scientist Yacub, black leaders like a sharp knife going Ma/m/m X ( 1965) rebelling against Allah, grafted the through a tub of butter: white man ("the blue-eyed devil") Twenty years later Detroit Red, now "J ust as Uncle Tom, back during slav­ through a series of fiendish experiments. Malcolm X, would flay the white ruling ery, used to keep Negroes from resisting Thc white man was fated to subjugate class when its spokesmen talked about the bloodhound or resisting the Ku and oppress the black man for 6,000 Klux Klan by teaching them to love the "loose morals" of ghetto blacks. year~. Now the white man's reign was their enemies or pray for those who use Detroit Red was finally busted in about to end. his fall being signaled by them spitefully, today Martin l.uther 1946 for running a burglary ring in the King is just a twentieth-century or World War I. Boston area. He might have gotten off modern Uncle Tom,. or religious II ncle Although the Nation of Islam consid­ Tom, who is doing the same thing toqay lightly except that he had involved a ered the white man to be the personifica­ to keep Negroes defenseless .... couple of white, upper-class Cambridge tion of all evil. the sect opposed in " ... but the masses of black people women, who got their kicks hanging today don't go for what Martin l.uther principle any struggle against racist around the black lumpen milieu: King is putting down." oppressIon. Elijah Muhammad in­ "Nobody wanted to know anything at -Interview in l.ouis E. l.omax, structed his followers to respect existing When the Word Is Given ... all about the robberies. All the\' could ( 1963) see was that we had taken the white authority and not get in trouble with the man's women ... white man's law. Some prison officials Within months after Malcolm spoke "l.ater, when I learned the full truth welcomed black convicts converting to these words, Harlem erupted in the first about the white man. I rel'lected man\' the Nation of Islam for the Muslims of a series of ghetto explosions which times that the average burglary sentence shook white racist America. for a first offender, as we all were. was demanded an absolute eschewal of Malcolm X was the voice of that about two years. But we weren't going heroin, a break with the lumpen/ hustler to get the average-·_·no! for our crime." milieu of petty criminal ghetto existence angry black ghetto. He spoke for the [emphasis in original J desperate and angry ghetto masses -Ihid. and stressed literacy and self-education. because he had been one of them. When Malcolm's conversion was associated he spoke of the hell the white oppressor Malcolm was sentenced to ten years with a total intellectual transformation. had made for black people in America, in prison and served seven. He was so He became a voracious reader, so much generally hostile his fellow inmates of the torments-psychological as well so that he damaged his eyesight. He read as material-they suffered every day, he called him Satan. Then suddenly Satan everything but concentrated on world converted to the Nation of Islam. A had been there. history. What he learned about the Eu­ brother and a sister of his had intro­ ropean colonization of Africa, Asia and Detroit Red Becomes Malcolm X duced Malcolm to "the natural religion the Americas reaffirmed, in his mind, forthe black man." Elijah Muhammad's Elijah Muhammad's teaching that the Malcolm Little was born in Omaha, Nebraska in 1925. His father was a Baptist minister and an organizer for Marcus Garvey's "Back to Africa" movement. His mother was a West Indian. Her mother had been raped by a white colonialist. This accounted for Malcolm's reddish hair and relatively light complexion. Reverend Earl Little was targeted by the local Klansmen as a "bad nigger," and shortly after Malcolm was born the family moved to Lansing, Malcolm X with Michigan. When Malcolm was six his then-mentor father was killed by the Black Legion, Elijah the local version of the Klan. The family Muhammad, soon disintegrated as his mother broke leader of the down and was institutionalized. Mal­ Black Muslims. colm then experienced the typical pattern of foster homes and reform schools. As a teenager he worked at the usual '" 11rt 14

reprinted/rom ~"parta('ist No.4. M(n-Junc /965

transitional struggle necessary to the creation of a successful mass move­ ment. Lacking such a program, he could not develop cadres based on MALCOLM X program. What cadre he had was based on Malcolm X instead. Hated Of all the national Negro leaders in killed? I n the literal sense, of course, and feared by the power structure, and this country. the one who was known any man can be killed, but why was the focus of the paranoid feelings of his uniquely for his militancy. intransi­ Malcolm particularly vulnerable? The former colleagues, his charisma made gence, and refusal to be the liberals' answer to this question makes of him dangerous, and his lack of frontman has been shot down. This Malcolm's death tragedy of the sharp­ developed program and cadre made new political assassination is another est kind. and in the literal Greek sense. him vulnerable. His death by violence indicator of the rising current of Liberals and Elijah have tried to make had a high order of probability, as he irrationality and individual terrorism Malcolm a victim of his own (non­ himself clearly felt. which the decay of our society begets. existent) doctrines of violence. This is Liberal reaction is predictable. and totally wrong and totally hypocritical. Heroic and Tragic Figure predictably disgusting. They are, of Malcolm was the most dynamic course, opposed to assassination, and national leader to have appeared in The murder of Malcolm, and the some may even contribute to the fund America in the last decade. Compared disastrous consequences flowing from for the education of Malcolm's chil­ with him the famous Kennedy person­ that murder for Malcolm's organiza­ dren. but their mourning at the death ality was a flimsy cardboard creation tion and black militancy in general, of the head of world imperialism had a of money, publicity, makeup, and the does not mean that the militant black considerably greater ring of sincerity media. Malcolm had none of these, but movement can always be decapitated than their regret at the murder of a a righteous cause and iron character with a shotgun. True, there is an black militant who wouldn't play their forged by white America in the fire of agonizing gap in black leadership game. discrimination, addiction, prison, and today. On the one hand there are the incredible calumny. He had a difficult Black Muslims? respectable servants of the liberal to define but almost tangible attribute establishment; men like James Farmer The official story is that Black called charisma. When you heard whose contemptible effort to blame Muslims killed Malcolm. But we Malcolm speak, even when you heard Malcolm's murder on "Chinese Com­ should not hasten to accept this to date him say things that were wrong and munists" will only hasten his eclipse as unproved hypothesis. The New York confusing, you wanted to believe. a leader, and on the other hand the Police, for example, had good cause to Malcolm could move men deeply. He ranks of the militants have yet to be afraid of Malcolm, and with the was the stuff of which mass leaders are produce a man with the leadership vast resources of blackmail and coer­ made. Commencing his public life in potential of Malcolm. But such leader­ cion which are at their disposal, they the context of the apolitical, irrational ship will eventually be forthcoming. also had ample opportunity, and of religiosity and racial mysticism of the This is a statistical as well as a social course would have little reason to fear Muslim movement, his break toward certainty. This leadership, building on exposure were they involved. At the political ness and rationality was slow, the experience of others such as same time, the Muslim theory cannot painful, and terribly incomplete. It is Malcolm, and emancipated from his be discounted out of hand because the useless to speculate on how far it religiosity, will build a movement Muslims are not a political group. and would have gone had he lived. He had in which the black masses and their in substituting religion for science. and entered prison a burglar, an addict, allies can lead the third great Amer­ color mysticism for rational analysis. and a victim. He emerged a Muslim ican revolution. Then Malcolm X they have a world view which could and a free man forever. Elijah Muham­ will be remembered by black and encompass the efficacy and morality of mad and the Lost-Found Nation of white alike as a heroic and tragic fig­ assassination. A man who has a direct Islam were thus inextricably bound up ure in a dark period of our common pipeline to God can justify anything. with his personal emancipation. In any history. event. at the time of his death he had No Program not yet developed a clear, explicit, and The main point, however, is not who rational social program. Nor had he Bay Area Spartacist Committee, killed Malcolm, but why could he be led his followers in the kind of 2 March 1965

white man was a devil created to op­ Soon he was made a minister, and in Iy other people's views and arguments press the black people of the world. 1954 was appointed minister of Temple however distant from his own. It was Years later, however, Malcolm's intense No.7 in Harlem. which he made into part of his unquenchable thirst for interest in world history and politics one of the sect's most successful and knowledge and understanding. would serve as a bridge from separa­ respected congregations. tist religious sectarianism to political A man of strong convictions and will Malcolm and the rad icalism. power, another aspect of Malcolm's per­ Civil Rights Militants On being paroled in 1952 Malcolm sonality impressed almost everyone who went to Detroit where he became an encountered him. He was fundamental­ Elijah Muhammad's Nation of Islam active member of the Nation of Islam . ly open-minded. He considered serious- had existed for more than a quarter

.-----,------~--- 15 century attraeting a few thousand followers and no serious interest among politically active blacks. Then in the early I 960s, at the height of the eivil rights movement, the Black Muslims suddenly exploded into the conscious­ ness of black and (to a lesser extent) white America. Why? King and the Southern Christian Leadership Confer­ ence (SCLC) politicized religion in the black community. The mainstream black Christian churches became closely identified with the Northern liberal establishment, specifically support to the Kennedy / Johnson administration. It had always been a basic tenet of the Nation that the black Christian preach­ er was the white man's main tool for keeping blacks subjugated. By this Elijah Muhammad meant nothing more than that Christianity prevented the black masses from discovering "the natural religion of the black man." But with the rise of the SCLC-Ied civil rights APt movement, the Black Muslims' condem­ Fight against Jim Crow in the South gripped black America; separatist nation of Christian submissiveness Muslims abstained from struggles. appeared to be something more, name­ a sacred cow and no one else-but no Thus the SWP beeame the most fawning ly, a political criticism of King's pacifis­ one-was saying these things. sycophants of Malcolm X (pages and tic liberalism and ties to the white ruling Here one might naturally ask, but pages of the Militant were given over to class. For example, in 1959 Elijah what of the left. what about those his speeches) while simultaneousll' Muhammad declaimed: groups claiming to be Marxist and tailing the "respectable" black leaders "You fear and love (the white Chris­ Leninist? Did n't they also denounce around King! Consider the 1963 March tians) though you arc even disgraced King's pacifistic liberalism and his on Washington, which had been co­ and killed by them-from your minis­ ters of their slavery religion down to the subordination to the Kennedy White opted by the Kennedy White House. lowly. ignorant man in the mud." House? No, they did not! The pro­ The night before Malcolm called a press -quoted in C. Eric Lincoln. Moscow Communist Party (CP) leapt conference to denounce it as nothing but The Black Muslims in America to King's defense against the Black a circus, a picnic. The SWP's line was, ( 1961) Muslims' attack: to say the least, different. The Militant Many black militants, who couldn't care "One docs not have to agree with Dr. (5 August 1983) ran a front-page banner less about the tribe of Shabazz, nonethe­ Martin Luther King's theory of'love thy headline that could have been dictated less could agree with this sentiment. enemy' to recognize the great contribu­ by King or Rustin: "All Out for Many more would do so in the next few tion he and his followers are making toward the fight for freedom. But rather Washington March to Win Jobs and years. than join with him in these great Freedom!" Whereas Elijah Muhammad contin­ struggles, the Muslim-inflamed press A few months later the difference has sct him up as a whipping boy." ued to emphasize the sect's religious between Malcolm X as a courageous nature, Malcolm X did not. Rather he -Claude Lightfoot, "Negro Nationalism and Black enemy of the American ruling class and attacked the "respectable" black leaders Muslims." Political Affairs. his craven SWP sycophants was ex­ with a hitherto unheard-of power and July 1962 -- posed in a far more dramatic way. incISiveness: Exhibiting typical Stalinist mentality, Nothing Malcolm ever said before or "The greatest miracle Christianity has black CP spokesman Lightfoot not only after so enraged white liberal America achieved in America is that the black man in white Christian hands has not condemned the Muslims for opposing as his response to the Kennedy assassi­ grown violent. It is a miracle that 22 the "anti-monopoly coalition" with the nation. He said it was a case of "chickens million black people have not risen up Kennedy Democrats, but also insinu­ coming home to roost" and added with a against their oppressors-in which they ated, "there is now evidence that they twinkle in his eye: "Being an old farm would have been justified by all moral are working with ultra-Right fascist boy myself, chickens coming home to criteria. and even by the democratic tradition! ... The miracle is that the forces." It was to be expected that the roost never did make me sad; they've white man's puppet Negro 'leaders.' his long-reformist CP would join in the always made me glad" (New York preachers and the educated Negroes liberals' hate campaign against the Times, 2 December 1963). The media, laden with degrees. and others who have Black Muslims. the liberal establishment, the civil rights been allowed to wax fat off their black poor brothers. have been able to hold But what of the ostensibly Trotskyist leaders all pilloried Malcolm for the black masses quiet until now." Socialist Workers Party (SWP)? By having-oh, how horrible--"mocked" [emphasis in original] the early 1960s the S W P had become the death of "our beloved prcsident." -Au/Ohiugraphy or Malmlm X a rapidly rightward-moving centrist Elijah Muhammad used the furor over A few years later this would be pretty party. Its opportunist appetites were the "chickens come home to roost" tame stuff among black (and white) especially clear and especially gross speech to suspend his all-too-famous radicals. But in the early 1960s King was when it came to the black movement. and controversial lieutenant from 16

speaking in public. No one could accuse the SWP of "mocking" the death of imperialist commander-in-chief Kennedy. Party national secretary Farrell Dobbs sent condolences to the widow Kennedy. The SWP not only kissed Jacqueline Ken­ nedy's mourning dress, but also tried to hidc behind the black robes of chief justice Earl Warren. Under the super­ head, "At the Moment of Crisis There Were Voices of Sanity," the MililanI (2 December 1963) ran as front-page headline Warren's hand-wringing state­ ment: "If We Really Love This Country We Must Abjure Hatred." No wonder black militants considered the SWP, if they considered it at all, a gutless bunch I not worthy to shine Malcolm's shoes. The great truth teller for black America addressing mass street rally in The rightward degeneration of the Harlem. SWP, especially its open theoretical revisionism over Cuba and its absten­ federal government and called for against federal military intervention. organi:ed, armed selFde{ense against which always supports the status quo. tionism and opportunism toward the "8) Against discrimination in unions black movement on the domestic ter­ racist terror. A resolution presented by and industries-especially companies rain, gave rise to a left opposition, the the Revolutionary Tendency to the with government contracts or subsidies. Revolutionary Tendency. This was the SWP youth group, the Young Socialist ''C) For drives for unionization. origin of the present Spartacist League/ Alliance (YSA) in 1963 stated: "D) For II1dependcnt political or­ gani/ation--makc voter regi,tration Spartacus Youth League. Malcolm "(jeneral demands in the south must be: meaningful." "A) For orKani;;ed self-defense move­ spoke for black militants when he -"'he ]'Ijegro Struggic and the declared. "we are ready to fight and die ments in southern cities-for the tactics of Robert F. Williams [a former black Crisis of Leadership," YSA in defense 01 our lives." Like Malcolm, IJi.lcliHion Bulle/in, Vol. 7. Marine who organi7t~d armed self­ we denounced King's turn-the-other­ dclense to protect the civil rights No.5, August 196.1 cheek pacifism and dependence on the movement In Monroe, North Carolina]: The SWP. however, refused to confront the black radical currents. covering its gutless abstentionism with a convenient "dual vanguardist" outlook which redefined the SWP implicitly as a "white SPARTACIST LEAGUE/U.S. LOCAL DIRECTORY party" whose only contribution to the black struggle was to enthuse over National Office: Box 1377 GPO, New York, NY 10116 • (212) 732·7860 'whatever the black people want.' The Atlanta Detroit Norfolk Revolutionary Tendency, expelled from Box 4012 Box 441043 Box 1972, Main PO the SWP in 1963-64 in the first political Atlanta, CJA 30302 Detroit, MI 48244 Norfolk, VA 23501 purge in that party's history. founded the Spartacist League in 1966. with a Oakland Boston Los Angeles few dozen members. The fledgling SL Box 29497 Box 390840, Central Sta. Box 29574, Los Feliz Sta. was too small to reach and influence Oakland, CA 94604 Cambridge, MA 02139 Los Angeles, CA 90029 (510) 8390851 more than a very small number of the (617) 492 3928 (213) 380·8239 masses of radicalized black activists. San Francisco Chicago Madison and unable to break down the hardening Box 77494 black/white line of the New Left radical Box 6441, Main PO Box 1492 San Francisco, CA 94107 movement which sealed us off from Crlicago, IL 60680 Madison, WI 53701 (415) 777·9367 (312) 663·0715 subjectively revolutionary black mili­ New York Washington, D.C. tants of the period, Cleveland Box 444, Canal Sl. Sta. Box 75073 As the young civil rights activists Box 91037 New York, NY 10013 Washington, D.C. 20013 became more radical, they found in Cleveland. OH 44101 (212) 267·1025 (202) 872·8240 Malcolm the one man who expressed boldly the thoughts and half-thoughts they were still afraid to voice them­ TROTSKYIST LEAGUE OF CANADA/LiGUE TROTSKYSTE DU CANADA selves. By 1963-64 a majority of the Toronto Montreal Vancouver Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) no longer believed Box 7198, Station A C.P. Les Atriums Box 27 t 7, Main P.O. Torollto, ON M5W 1 X8 B.P.32066 Vancouver, BC V6B 3X2 in nonviolence as a moral principle (416) 5934138 Montreal, QC H2L 4V5 (604) 687·0353 Many never had. But they were as yet (514) 849·6540 unwilling to publicly renounce pacifistic liberalism and break with King, whom they privately and derisively dubbed

'-~,------.------_._- .. -. _. 17

"De Lawd." It was Malcolm who spoke But this was only one side-the American blacks arc no! a nation. They for them. [On SNCC's evolution sec positive side-of Malcolm's relation to are an oppressed c%r-caste integrated page n.] the civil rights militants. Malcolm was, into American capitalist society while Many, if not most, young black after all, a separatist, a man who forcibly segregated at the bottom of it. activists sympathill:d with the Cuban declared, "No sanc black man really Elijah Muhammad's call upon the and Vietnamese Revolutions. By the wants integration!" Yet masses of blacks United States gmernment to grant time Kennedy was assassinated in late were fighting precisely to get into several states for a separate black nation 1963, few black militants shed tears for previously all-white schools, all-white was more pie-in-the-sky than any of world imperialism's chieftain, the man public facilities, all-white neighbor­ King's dreams. Separatism is not a who ordered the Bay of Pigs invasion hoods, all-white jobs. In short, they program for social struggle in racist and the Green Berets into Vietnam. Yet were fighting for social, political and America. This contradiction became SNCC, James Farmer's CORE (Con­ economic integration into American clearer once Malcolm split from the gress of Racial Equality) and the other society. But how could Malcolm in good Nation of Islam and attempted to build civil rights groups were still dependent conscience have participated in the his own secular organi/ation. on the white liberal estahlishment and Harlem school boycotts for greater By 1963 the talk in and around the joined in mourning its "martyred hero." racial balance in the city's schools or in black movement was that Malcolm was So when Malcolm made his "chickens the marches for open housing in lily­ not long for the Nation of Islam. It was come home to roost" speech, thousands white suburbs. Malcolm was a critic of an open secret that Elijah Muhammad of black militants applauded ... silently. the civil rights movement, a critic who was jealous of his famous and popular Malcolm had become the great truth expressed powerfully and effectively the lieutenant and upset by his political teller for black America, the one man feelings of the growing left wing of that notoriety. While the bourgeois media who told it like it is. Even some members movement. Hut he remained a man couldn't get enough of Malcolm, less of the black liberal establishment r~c­ looking over the battlefield from a and less about him appeared in Muham­ ognized that Malcolm had their num­ certain distance. However much the //lad ,..,'pcaks. the sect's official paper. ber. The actor Ossie Davis, who had young black militants admired Mal­ Malcolm had revned Elijah Muham­ emceed the March on Washington. said colm. they still marched against the mad as the man who had saved him Malcolm succeeded "in making Uncle racists with King and Farmer, not with from a social hell. And Malcolm was a Toms. compromisers. and accommo­ the minister of the Nation of Islam's man for whom personal loyalty meant dationists-·I deliberately include my­ Temple No.7 in Harlem. much. However. he became disturbed self-thoroughly ashamed of the urbane Malcolm personified to an extreme over the aura of luxury-loving compla­ and smiling hypocrisy we practice degree the fundamental contradiction cency around Elijah Muhammad and merely to exist in a world whose values of black nationalism. As a doctrine, his extensive family in the Chicago we both envy and despise" ("On Mal­ nationalism can sometimes attract headquarters. According to his own colm X," appended to AU/ohiographr). militant blacks deeply alienated from testimony, he was quite shaken by this racist society and who have no reports that Elijah Muhammad had If Malcolm had this kind of impact on illusions that it can be reformed. But sexual relat ions with his secretaries, an Ossie Davis. his effect on the young civil rights militants was electric. It was as if the black activists in SNCC, COR E and the other civil rights groups were The fight for the right doing legal work under a hostile regime, of organized, 'lw r while l\tIalcolm provided their illegal. armed self-defense, ARMED'SELF" undergn und press from exile. He said especially in the South, was and is key demand of DEFENSE fOR loud and clear what they hinted at using Spartacist program for black Aesopian language. rhe 1963 March on liberation. o Washington is a good case in point. As it became clear that the protest was being manipulated by the Kennedy White House, the SNCC militants hecame increasingly critical of the event. The March organi7ers forced SNCC chair­ man John Lewis to delete from his prepared speech a passagc considered especially offensive to the liberal estab­ lishment. The white power structure could still censor the leadership of 1964: §~artacist SNCC; they could no! cCllsor Malcolm. editor James He lashed out at what the March had Robertson becomc: addresses .. it I,,\t its rnilitanl'V. It ceased to oe united-front rally angry. it ceased to oe flo!. it ceased to oe called by Harlem uncompromising. Why. it l'\ en ceased Solidarity to oe a marcl1. It oecame a picnic. a Committee to circus.. " defend black ._ . .\la/colill X S,Il'ak.l. edited ov (icorge Breit ma n ( 1<)66) . masses against police riot. Malcolm's was the uncensored voice of black militancy. 18

SPARTA C) STFREE MARCH 1965 SPECIAL SUPPLEMENT

Report 12. ~ !!!.~:

SPARTACIST N!ITOR SUBPOENAED ll"~!illIT"~:!Y!!!

I ~_sp.rt.c:l.t statement on Viat Nam , INSIDE: __ lA,nat to He .. Yor'tt We1tare Str1kers AP Right: Black youth flee cops in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn. Left: Spartacist group targeted by state for defending black community against cop terror.

even having a couple of out-of-wedlock out of the struggle much longer. unless somebody bothers Muslims'." children. Rank-and-file Muslims were However much black militants admired [emphasis in original] -AutobioKraphy expelled in disgrace for adultery. When Malcolm, they were not going to join the Malcolm confronted the Messenger Nation of Islam. No way. They wanted Internally and discreetly Malcolm about this, the old con man cited biblical Malcolm to join them. As the leader of began to advocate that the Muslims examples: "You read about Lot, who the militant civil rights movement in abandon their policy of abstention from went and laid up with his own daugh­ Cambridge, Maryland, Gloria Richard­ the mass black struggles: ters. I have to fulfill all of those things" son, exclaimed in 1963, "you know, this " ... 1 was convinced that our Nation of (quoted in The Autobiography of could really be a great man if he could Islam could be an even greater force in Malcolm X [1965]). break himself from that sectarian thing" the American black mail's overall But even if the Honorable Elijah (quoted in Peter Goldman, The Death struggle-if we engaged in more a('­ tiot!.... I felt that. wherever black Muhammad had lived up to Malcolm's and Life of Malcolm X [1973]). Mal­ people committed themselves. in the high and puritanical standards of colm felt these pressures keenly: Little Rocks and Birminghams and honor, it is very likely Malcolm still other places. militantly disciplined "It could be heard increasingly in the Muslims should also be the 'e .... [em­ would have split from the Nation. He Negro communities: 'Those Muslims phasis in original] was too political, too engaged to stay falk tough, but they never do anything. -Ibid. But for the Muslims to have par­ ticipated in the civil rights struggles would have violated their very reason for existence. Elijah Muhammad in­ stinctively sensed that the direction his powerful lieutenant was moving, what­ Marxist Working-Class Biweekly of the Spartacist League ever Malcolm's subjective loyalties, would destroy his lucrative sect. So he o $ 7/24 issues of Workers Vanguard 0$3/3 issues of used the public furor over the Kennedy (includes English-language Spartacist) Women and Revolution assassination speech to try to silence o New 0 Renewal Malcolm's voice. Malcolm refused to be 0$2/4 issues of international rates: silenced and in March 1964 left the $25/24 issues -Airmail $7/24 issues--Seamail Espartaco (en espanol) (includes Spanish-language organization for which he more than o $2/10 introductory issues of Workers Vanguard Spartacist) anyone else had gained the respect of the black community. A year later Mal­ Name ______colm's voice was finally silenced by Address ______assassins. As we wrote at the time: "The official story is that Black Mus­ ______Apt.# ____ Phone( __ ) ______lims killed Malcolm. But we should not hasten to accept this to date unproved City ______State _____ Zip ______--;o:;-c. hypothesis. The New York Police. for BH2 example. had good cause to be afraid of Make checks payable/mail to: Spartaclst Publishing Co., Box 1377 GPO, New York, NY 10116 Malcolm. and with the vast resources of blackmail and coercion which arc at

'- 19

their disposal. they also had ample opportunity, and of course would have little reason to fear exposure were they involved. At the same time, the Muslim theory cannot be discounted out of hand because the Muslims are not a political group, and in substituting religion for science, and color mysticism for rational analysis, they have a world view which could encompass the effica­ cy and morality of assassination. A man who has a direct pipeline to (iod can justify anything." -Sparlacisl No.4, May-June 1905

The Last Year Once Malcolm had broken with the Nation of Islam it was expected that he would take his rightful place as leader of the growing legion of young black militants, Yet this did not happen. His Organization of Afro-American Unity was small, faction- and clique-ridden and never got off the ground. Why? In part because during this period Mal­ colm went on two extensive trips to the Flax Hermes 1967: Heroic struggle of Vietnamese against racist U.S. imperialism struck Arab East and the newly independent responsive chord among American blacks. states of black Africa. Certainly no one could criticize him for wanting to the angry black masses. The contention that Malcolm had explore the world outside white racist Alex Haley, the writer who helped beconle almost a liberal was made not America. And it was these trips abroad Malcolm with his Autohiography, was only by scumbags like Bayard Rustin which finally broke him from racially objective enough to record that Mal­ (the kind of "socialist" who's apt to be defined black nationalism. colm's standing among militant blacks, funded by the CIA and chief organizer It was during one of his African especially in Harlem, declined some­ for the March on Washington) but also tours in 1964 that Malcolm met with a what in the last year: by honest liberals like Ossie Davis, who SNCC delegation. As Clayborne Car­ "I n Harlem at large. in the bars and knew and admired Malcolm while he son relates in his In Struggle, for the restaurants. on the street corners and was alive. At the same time, the Socialist stoops, there could be heard more blunt Workers Party's George Breitman SNCCers: criticism of Malcolm X than ever before "Perhaps the most significant episode of in his career. There were, variously asserts, "he was a revolutionary­ their stay in Africa was an unexpected expressed, two primary complaints. increasingly anti-capitalist and pro-. encounter in I\airobi with Malcolm X, One was that actually Malcolm X only socialist as well as anti-imperialist. the Afro-American leader who had talked, but other civil-rights organi/a­ These labels fitted, even though he did recently broken with the narrowly tions were c/oiIlR. 'A II he's eI'er done was not apply them to himself" religious focus of F1ijah Muhammad's talk. CORE and SNCC and some of (The Last Nation of Islam. Even before the them people of Dr. King's are out Year 0/ Malcolm X [1967]). In reality, meeting, l.ewis and Harris had learned getting beat over the head.' The second Malcolm X was moving neither toward of Malcolm's considerable influence on major complaint was that Malcolm X liberalism nor toward Marxism. the African continent, for Africans was himself too confused to be seriouslv occasionally greeted them with 'skepti­ followed any longer. 'He doesn't know The argument that he was going cism and distrust' because, as one !fhal he believes in. No sooner do you liberal rests centrally on his dramatic explained, 'if you arc to the right of hear one thing than he's switched to renunciation of racism of any kind Malcolm, you might as well start something else'." [emphasis in original] following his pilgrimage to Mecca in packing right now 'cause no one'lilisten -"Epilogue" to AlIlohiographl" to you.' Malcolm, however, had re­ April 1964. In a letter home (which solved to abet the radical tendencies in Malcolm's rapidly changing and shocked and upset some of his follow­ the civil rights movement.... Ihe seemingly contradictory views in the last ers) he wrote: Nairobi meeting was followed by a year are also the source of the raging "There were tens of thousands of pil­ series of attempts by Malcolm to forge controversy which followed his death: linb with SNCC." grims from allover the world. They w c was Malcolm going? Every were of all colors. from blue-eyed Still the fact remains that at a decisive ink .ed party claimed Malcolm for hlonds to hlack-,kinned Africans. hut turning point for the black movement their own. His biographer Peter Gold­ all were participating in the same ritual. Malcolm was not there. InJuly 1964 the displaying a spirit of unity and brother­ man described the army of political hood that mv experiences in America police deliberately provoked a violent grave robbers who invaded Malcolm's had led lIle to believe could never exist outburst in Harlem, which had been tomb: between the ""hite and non-white." experiencing a rising tide of militant "His special affection has heen claimed [emphasis in original] protest. Hundreds of angry black youth hyl rotskyists. Maoists. I\krumists, - Malcolm X Spl'ak.\" , cd ited by ran through the strcets battling the cops (jarvevites. orthodox and unorthodox George Hreitman (1905) and chanting: "Malcolm! We want M uslirns, civil-rights organi/a tions A few months later hc wrote in an from the Urban I.eague to CORI- and Malcolm! Wait till Malcolm comes'" SNCC. and Adam Clavton Powell." Egyptian newspaper: "In the past I per­ But when Malcolm did come back he - "I Ill' nealh lIIlll l.ill' 01 mitted mysclf. .. to make sweeping provided no clear political guidance for Jlalcolm X . indictments of all white people, the 20

entire white race, and these genefil1iza­ "0 (l) tions have caused injuries to ~"me u whites who perhaps do not deserve to be c"o hurt" (Malcolm X: The Man and His Times, edited by John Henrik Clarke [1969]). In keeping with these principles Algiers, 1960: Malcolm publicly repudiated his earlier Demonstration for Algerian opposition to interracial marriage. independence But Malcolm's humanistic opposition from French to any form of racism had nothing to do colonial rule. with the alleged reconciliation to the Algerian American liberal establishment. Here is independence what Malcolm said just a few months struggle, Cuban before he was killed about the 1964 and Vietnamese presidential elections between Johnson Revolutions and Goldwater, which was generally caused regarded as a clear contest between impressionistic liberalism and conservatism: New Left radicals to see "I felt that it was for the hlack man only a question of Johnson, the fox. or U.S. imperialism Goldwater, the wolf. being overthrown '''Conservatism' in American politics from without. means 'Let's keep the niggers in their place.' And 'Iiheralism' means 'Let's keep the knee-grows in their place-hut tell them we'll treat them a little better; let's fool them more. with more promises· ... con game, of lambasting the Democrats the same one you support. the same one -A lIlohioKraphr as a Dixiecrat party. At a 1964 mecting you say is going to get you this and get you that. Why, the base of the Demo­ These are not the words of a man about in Harlem of supporters of the Mis­ cratic Party is in the South .... The head sissippi Freedom Democratic Party to JOin King, James Farmer, the of the Democratic Party is sitting in the NAACP's Roy Wilkins et al. at LBJ's (MFDP) he spoke eloquently against White House. He could have gotten illusions in the Democrats: Mrs. Hamer into Atlantic City. He inaugural celebration. Malcolm X re­ could have opened up his mouth and mained a heroic and intransigent "Likewise, the Democratic Part\', which had her seated. Hubert Humphrey enemy of all wings of the American hlack people supported recent Iv. I could have opened his mouth and had ruling class until the assassins' bullets think. something like 97 per cent. All oj her seated. Wagner, the mayor right cut him down. these crackcrs--and that's what thn here. could have opened up his mouth are, crackers-they helong to the and used his weight and had her seated. In particular, Malcolm never tired of Democratic Party. That's the party they \)on't he talking about some crackers warning against the Democratic Party belong too-the same onc you helong to, down in Mississippi and Alabama and Malcolm X on Racist America The text of this telegram to Rock­ physical retaliation from those of us color differences.' well. head uOhe American Nazi Party. who are not hand-cuffed bv the "So I told him, 'What you're telling was read aloud hy Malcolm X at a disarming philosophy of n~nvio­ me, whether you realize it or not, is puhlic rally of" the Organization of Icnce, and who believe in asserting our that it is not basic in you to be a racist, Afro-American Unity in Harlem on right of self-defense-by any means but that society there in America, 24 January 1965. necessary. " which you all have created, makes you Public Notice to a racist.' This is true, this is the worst The f()lIowing is an excerfJI from a George Lincoln Rockwell racist society on this earth. There is no rep/r to a queslion at (J Harlemj

•"'I~""'I 21

Georgia-all oj them arc playing the same game. i.yndon H. Johnson i, the head of the Cracker I'artv."

_0 Malmlm X .\j)('uk., His explicit message to black America delivered at the Audubon: "Either party you align yourself with is suicide. Because both partics are criminal. Both parties arc responsible for the criminal condition that exists." The fundamental change in Mal­ colm's thinking in the last year did not concern American whites (that was secondary) but v.-orld politics. Hc believed that the dark-skinned. colon i­ alized peoples of the world had liberated themselves or were about to liberate themselves from Western imperialism: " ... the black revolution is world-wide in scope and in naturc. The black revolu­ tion is sweeping Asia, is sweeping Africa, is rearing its head in l.atin America" (Malcolm X S·pcaks). Hc defined the American black struggle as a Detroit auto workers strike Chrysler, September 1982. Black workers will colonial liberation struggle within thc play strategic role in socialist revolution to smash racist capitalist system. imperialist heartland: ..... the rcvolt of the American Negro is part of thc was an illlprcssionistic generalization of al or right-wing, black or white-with rebellion against the oppression and certain recent dramatic events. Algeria almost X-ray vision. He knew that the colonialism which has characteri/ed th is had just won its independence from U.S. Congress was a den of thieves. But era" (Ibid.). France in one of the bloodiest of all wars Malcolm had enormous illusions in the These views were far from unique to of national liberation. The Cuban ruling clites of Asia and especially Malcolm X. Rather they represented the Revolution was only a few years old as Africa and in the moral authority of the basic world view of New Left radicals of Castro boldly defied the U.S. colossus United Nations (a den of thieves and the early '60s, both blacks and whites. 90 miles from its shore. Despite U.S. their victims). This New Left vision of world politics military escalation. the Vietnamese Much of his energy in the last year revolutionaries were gaining. Nasser's was devoted to pressuring the independ­ nationali/ation of the Suez Canal was ent black African states to condemn the still a relatively recent evcnt. Practically United States government for racism in cvery month one of the British or the UN as they had condemned South French black African colonies was Africa. H is speech in Cairo appealing to granted formal independence. And the Organization of African Unity Mao's China had recently split with the makes sad reading as he implored this Soviet lJ nion and was presenting itself collection of bloodthirsty militarists. as the leader of the colonial peoples venal nationalist demagogues and tribal against Western impcrialism. To im­ chiefs: pressionistic radicals of the day, it ..... what makes our African brother, looked as if LJ .S. imperialism was about hesitate to bring the United State, to be overwhelmed by the rising"Third government before the United ~atioll.', and charge her with vi(li:ttlTlg til( World" (although this misleading term human right;, of 2::' millillTl ,\frj,'a1' was not yet in vogue). Americans') ... Malcolm X bclieved that the states of "We beseech the independent ArnC'an Asia and Africa were becoming power­ states to help liS hring PIH pl"lll",n before the lrnitcd '\;J.t~"m. on the' ful enemies of American imperialism grounds that the United States gOVl'rn­ and would u,e that power on behalf of ml:l1t is morally incapable of pi ,itc·('tiil!~ American blacks: ..... as the dark­ the lives and property of 12. 1D11110n skinned nations of this earth become Al'rican-Amencans." indepcndent. as they develop and be­ -Malcolm\' Speaks come stronger. that means that time is Fat chance that! These neocolonial on the side of the American Negro" (BI' regimes are dependent upon American A II)' Jleans Secc.I.wr\,. edited by George imperialism. Without the might and Breitman ll970 J). Here Malcolm's self­ potential for military intervention by taught conception, and misconceptions the U.S., without the millions of dollars about world politic,. his impressionism of military aid from Washington. the PubliC ry The Pan-Africanists' hero Kwame and imprc;,sionahility played him false. petty despots of black Africa would long Nkrumah dances with the Duchess He had a !!lIt sen,e of American social since have been torn to pieces by their of Kent on Ghana's Independence and political reality. He saw through own people. Day, 6 March 1957. American bourg.eois politicians-liber- Malcolm got the real relationship

------,.----.------""'""'Wm~_""11 22

between black Africa and black Ameri­ ca exactly backwards. It is not the "independent" African neo-colonies­ ruled by bloody military cliques, riven by violent tribalist enmities, ravaged by famine and pestilence, devastated eco­ nomically whenever the world market price of cocoa or oil or copper falls a few percentage points-that will help liber­ ate American blacks. Today the very idea sounds like a bad joke. No, it is the descendants of those black Africans taken into slavery in the New World who, as a strategic section of the American proletariat, can destroy the ultimate stronghold of capitalist im­ perialism from within. Then world socialist revolution and international Malcolm X's socialist planning will raise the impover­ memory is ished peoples of black Africa to the level honored by of the most advanced nations. partiCipant at militant anti-Klan American Workers Revolution mass protest in Needs Black Leadership Washington, 27 November 1982. Here we come to the heart of Malcolm X's political weakness, after as well as before he split from the Muslims: his failure to recognize class struggle as the progressive motor force of history. Malcolm is often spoken of as a genuine representative of the black masses. This the history and contrihutions of the liberals' game, to beg for a little, hat-in­ is only partially true. The social world of hlack man-I think manv whites would hand and his demand for freedom now he less racist in their fee'lings." the unionized black auto worker, steel inspired a generation of black militants. -BI' All.\' Aleaf1.l Necl'ssarl' worker or docker, who recognized H is call upon black America to stand up The struggle against racism in this common interests and had engaged in to the racist powers-that-be and his society is not basically one of proper common struggles with their white class scathing denunciation of the strategy of education but of class conflict. Or rather brothers, was alien to Malcolm's experi­ nonviolence earned him the enmity of the proper education comes through ence and knowledge. He had been a the rulers and their kept "respectable" class conflict. The labor movement ghetto hustler, then a convict, and then black leaders. But for us who see the stands as the one racially integrated and the minister of a separatist religious sect. fight for black liberation as strategic to a powerful force in this society. It is the For Malcolm, the fundamental and workers revolution against the whole strategic weight of black workers in the overriding division in American society hideous and irrational profit system, it is was black and white, not workers and labor movement which gives them the precisely his intransigent penchant for capitalists. He consistently emphasized potential leverage to topple the entire the truth and his uncompromising that blacks in America were outnum­ racist, capitalist system. Black workers, opposition to racist America that makes bered ten to one. That's why he sought armed with a revolutionary socialist Malcolm X a hero. But he did not his main allies outside of American program and organized by a communist understand the potential power of society. vanguard party, can lead backward, American blacks as workers to liberate True, in the last period of his life he even racist white workers in battles not only themselves but oppressed came to recognize there were genuinely against the ru ling class. peoples throughout the world. What is anti-racist whites and he welcomed their No one expressed the anger and the needed to release and direct that power efforts. But such whites that he encoun­ anguish of the oppressed black masses is the construction of a racially integrat­ tered were predominantly liberal or better than Malcolm X. As revolution­ ed communist vanguard. Shortly after radical student-youth, often motivated ary socialists committed to the fight for Malcolm was killed we wrote: by guilt over their privileged social black freedom, to finishing the Civil ..... ,uch a leadership will eventually he War once and for all through a third position. Clearly reflecting his experi­ forthcoming. rhis is a statistical as well American revolution, we solidari7e with ences with these white students (almost as a social certainty. This leadership, Malcolm's stand against the sick racism huilding Oil the experience of others all of his speeches to white audiences and racists permeating this society. He ,uch as Malcolm, and emancipated were on campuses), he viewed overcom­ from his religiosity, I~ill huild a move­ was the man who told it like it i,: that ing racism among whites primarily in ment in which the hlack masses and this system is maintained by and terms of individual enlightenment, not their allies can lead the third great enforces the brutal oppression of 20 American revolution. Then Malcolm X social struggle. Thus, in one of his last million black people, that its so-called will hc rememhercd hy hlack and white interviews (18 January 1965) he stated: alikc as a heroic and'tragic figure in a dcmocracy is a lie, that the politicians of "Iftheentire American population were d~lrk rcriod of our common history." both parties arc con mcn and el1l'mics of properly educated-hI pi "Ill' I 1\ "<\ (1- ~-,\j){/rI(/('i.\1 "io. 4, eated. I 1l1Can !!i\'C'n a tl! Pl,,'tlll\: III black freedom. II is refusal to play the May-June 1905-

• ...., .... - ... .- ...... ------23 reprinted/rom Workers Vanguard No. 327, 8 April /983

Neither Nationalism Nor Liberalism, But Revolutionary Integrationism! • "BLACK POWER" AND THE DEMOCRATS

The 5,000 demonstrators, overwhelm­ ingly black and working-class, who stopped the Ku Klux Klan from marching in the nation's capital last November 27 may have opened a new chapter in the struggle for black libera­ tion in America. Responding to the call of the Labor/Black Mobilization, in­ itiated by the Spartacist League, thou­ sands of anti-racists streamed from the Capitol to the White House, chanting, "I, 2, 3, 4, Time to Finish the Civil War-5, 6, 7, 8, Forward to a Workers State!" Our slogan caught on instantly, expressing the continuity of a century and a half of struggle for black freedom. After a decade of defeats, N ovem ber 27 pointed the way forward out of the impasse reached in the 1960s when the militant civil rights activists ran head­ long into the realities of black oppres­ sion in racist. capitalist America. The spectre of blacks and reds backed Election night, Lowndes County, Alabama, 1966. up by the power of labor sent shivers down the spine of the bourgeoisie. So iently departed for a "mayor's confer­ Black rally podium why Marion Barry their furor against "outside agitators," ence" in Los Angeles, leaving his cops to wasn't out there with us. Many demon­ the "Tarzan Trotskyists," was predict­ tear gas and club black youth. The strators had the same question, and a able. Despicably, a "socialist" cult-sect Walter Fauntroys and their reformist National Black Network talk show host based in Ann Arbor even echoed this hangers-on had their "free food" diver­ later asked rally organizers whether we with talk of "carpetbaggers." The sions, their pop-front gab fests at distant thought Marion Barry had sold out. bourgeois hysteria came not just from sites to try to channel the anger of the After all, Marion Barry was the first Reagan, whose attorney general had masses into "safe" directions. But they chairman of the militant Student Non­ vowed to protect the KKK and even failed ... and the Klan was stopped. violent Coordi~ating Committee brought in the FBI to back up city On November 27, a spokesman for (SNCC) in the early 1960s. And as was police. On November 27 Washington's the Southern Christian Leadership Con­ pointed out in a recent TV documentary black mayor, Marion Barry, conven- ference (SCLC) asked from the Labor/ in the Frontline series, "In the Shadow 24

of the Capitol," ex-SNCC activists dominate the D.C. city administration. Ivanhoe Donaldson, Marion Barry's deputy mayor and chief political advis­ er, was a SNCC organizer in Mississip­ pi. John Wilson, now a city councilman, used to run SNCC's draft resistance program. Courtland Cox is another top Barry aide. Frank Smith wasjust elected to the City Council, and so on. So ex-SNCCers are practically run­ ning the Washington city government, such as it is. But what has that meant for the quality of life in the Southeast D.C. black ghettos" As ex-SNCC staffer Charlie Cobb, narrator of the TV documentary, noted, "The guys in Anacostia don't really feel like they know Marion Barry anymore." Barry, who once led lunch counter sit-ins in Nashville, now tells the demonstrators who picket outside his office, "I can get more done in five minutes with my signature on a document" than they can with 1,000 people on the street. And just what are those documents he's signing? How is it that these "Movement people" Washington, D.C., 27 November 1982: Spartacist-initiated Labor/Black have now become the protectors of the Mobilization stopped the Klan. KKK, the administrators of racist budget cuts, the instigators of mass communists: how the left wing of the sophical or religious ideal of non­ expUlsions of black students at the civil rights movement, located mainly in violence as the foundation of our University of the District of Columbia? SNCC broke from liberalism only to purpose ... " SNCC at birth was a Marion Barry did not "sell out." disintegrate and become trapped in the constituent part of the hlack liheral dead end of black nationalism. SNCC was heterogeneous, and its estahlishment in the South, the youth is a comprehensive, vivid "moderate" wing never saw itself going In StfUJ,{glc group of what W. E. B. Du Bois earlier descript ion of the crisis in this crucible termed "the talented tcnth." Yet six beyond reforms "within the system." years later SNCC would infuriate liheral They and their seniors in Martin Luther of black radicalism. What Carson opinion hy raising the slogan "hlack King's SCLC were always looking to cannot explain is why it happened. To become something like the mayors of understand the impasse of the civil powcr," a nd shortly thereafter its new Atlanta and Washington, D.C. And righb movement. to open the road to chairman Huhcrt "Rap" Brown would they did. But what about the radicals the genuine emancipation of black declare. "the only thing "the man's' going like Stokely Carmichael (now K warne people in America. requires a material­ to respect is that .45 or . .'lX you got." Toure) who fought against the Marion ist analysis and Marxist program of What causcd ,0 radical a transforma­ Barrys and whose break from liberal re\ olutionary integrationism. tion during those six years" pacifism was expressed by the slogan Through hitter and repeated experi­ "black power"" While Carmichael and From Liberal Pacifism to ence the SNCC activists learned first­ his" All-African Peoples Revolutionary "Black Power" hand that the white liberal leaders-the Party" may not be administering the Thc appearance of the Southern civil Bohhy Kennedys, the Huhert Hum­ bourgeois state apparatus, they are rights movement with the 1956 Mont­ phreys and Walter Reuthers-were a lot totally irrelevant and frequently ohsta­ gomery bus boycott opened a new phase closer to Dixiecrat racists George des to today's black struggles. As the in postwar American history, ending the Wallace and James Eastland than they white sheets and burning crosses multi­ period of Cold War / McCarthyite hys­ were to the civil rights activists. They ply in Reagan's America, Stokely says, teria. Increasingly American society was saw information given in confidence to "It's a waste of time" to fight the Klan! polari/ed along the lines of for-or­ Justice Department "ohservers" passed So here you have the spectacle of two against Jim Crow. Ihe young liberal on to cracker sheriffs who naturally former chairmen of SNCC: one leaves activists, black and white, who threw used it to victimile SNCC organilers town ordering his cops to protect the themselves into the lunch counter sit-ins and supporters. There came a moment Klan, and the other tells the Howard and freedolTl rides were not sympathetic when a majority of SNCC had rejected and U DC students who were part of the to communism. but thev were breaking liheralism as they knew it, but had not thousands of black Washingtonians with the anti-Communist prejudices of yet emhraced black nationalism. Black who stopped the KKK November 27 their parents which had paralYled the oppression could not he overcome that their action was "a diversion." A struggle against racism. within the framework of hourgeois recent book, In Struggle-SNCC and SNCC was formed in 1960 at the democracy, however radical. The condi­ the Black A wakening of'the 1960s, by initiative and under the auspices of tions weighing upon the impoverished Clayborne Carson sheds considera ble King's SCLC. Its founding statement of urban ma,ses. South as well as North­ light on a subject of great interest to principles began: "We affirm the philo- terrori/ed, last hired/first fired, con-

•,",' 25 demned to a life of desperation in the SNCC was decided, as much as hv any taught hy the preachers. They had ghettos with their mean streets, lousy other single factor, hy the cri~lin,;1 illusions in the federal government, but sehoob, rat-infested hllusing---these ahstentionism of the ostensihlv Trotsk v­ repeatedly received object lessons in the could not he solved hy a new Civil ist Socialist Workers Part;' (SWI;). class nature of the bourgeois state, On Rights Act. Genuine elJuality for hlacks Defining itself in effect as a "white the frecdom rides, thc young activists is inconceivahle without socialist ITVO­ party," the SWP rejilSc£ito invohe itself watched how the FHI "observers" stood lution and the massi\C n:distrihution of in the Southern civil rights \truggles by taking notes as the sheriffs' goons society's wealth, possihle only through while tailing "the Movement" from the bashed demonstrators' heads (the socialist economic planning. outside. Here a histOrIC hut fleeting FBI of course was in cahoots with, The SNCC radicals came up against opportunity was lost to change the and often part of, the Klan). Carson the soeial revolutionary implications of course of hlaek struggle in contempo­ tells how, after Bob Moses first went the struggle against hlack oppressilJn, rary America. The history of SNCC is into Amite County, Mississippi in 1961, hut without the intervention of commu­ the story of the road not taken, the a black sharecropper who helped him nists they were not ahle to make the Icap only road leading to hlack liheration, was gunned down by a white state to proletarian socialism. When Sl\CC that of proletarian socialist revolution. legislator, E. H, H urs\. A black witness attempted to go heyond voting rights then told Moses he would testify at and access to puhlic facilities (which Breaking with the Liberals Hurst's trial, if promised federal protec­ hlacks in the ;-';orth and a numher of tion. Moses told this to a Justice Southern cities al ready had), the organi- SNCC emerged out of the lunch Department official who not only 7ation entered a prolonged crisis of counter sit-in movement which swept refused protection ("Justice" was only identity. James Forman, SNCC execu­ the Southern hlack campuses in the there to "observe"), but the identity of tive secretary in this period, later wrote, spring of 1960. It hegan when the this witness was passed on to the local "So long as we were working on voter registration and public accommoda­ tions, there was a hroad consensus under which everyone could move" (Thc Making oj" Black RCl'Oluliol1aries). So long, hut nlJ longer. During the critical period of 1963-66 SNCC militants faced three fundamen­ tal political alternatives: reintegration into the Iiheral estahlishment. the reactionary utopianism of nationalist separatism, or proletarian socialism (Marxism). Some, like Marion Harry, February 1960 lunch counter took the first road via LH.J's "Great sit-in, Society" poverty programs. However, Chattanooga, the most militant clements in SNCC Tennessee. went over to hlack nationalism, initially a small and isolated current in the organi/ation. Why did these young hlack radicals opt for nationalist separa­ tism rather than Marxism'! One important factor was their revulsion against the existing organi7ed ;-';orth Carolina A&T students sat in at racists and he was subselJuently labor movement, whose Iiheral face was Woolworth's in downtown (ireen,horo murdered. that of United Auto Workers chief (the city v. here ~() years later. the KKK / ;\;a/is would massacre five hlaeks and From Albany to the Walter Reuther, a man SNCC cadre had "Farce on Washington" good and personal reasons to despise. In leftists in cold hlood). I he SNCC general. the Meany/Reuther-led AFI.­ activists came out of the elite hlaek From Albany, Georgia to Lowndes CIO was, if anything, more committed ,chools like Morehouse College (Julian County, Alahama to the plantation to the racist status lJuo than were many Bond), Howard l! ni\ersity (Stokely country of Mississippi, SNCC was Iiheral Democratic and even Repuhli­ Carmichael), hsk (Marion Barrv) or radicalized hy its grassroots organizing can politicians. Iypieally the children of even Harvard (Hoh Moses). An exten­ of poor hlack sharecroppers which preachers, schoolteachers and funeral sion of hlack Iiheralism, the initial goal repeatedly hrought it into head-on parlor owners, the student radicals in was formal. legal elJuality--civil rights, conflict not just with the Dixiecrats, but SNCC were isolated from the mass of or "Northernizing the South." The the whole racist, capitalist state. Every the hlack working class and socially political strategy was to seek the support struggle drove them further away from above them (despite wearing farmers' of, and avoid antagoniling, the liberal the liheral premises on which they were coveralls, which hecame almost a estahlishment, hringing to hear the founded. The Kennedy White House uniform). These petty-hourgeois radi­ powers of the federal government which might be willing to integrate the bus cals had no conception at all of setting was controlled h\ this estahlishment. station hathrooms and drinking foun­ the base of the lahor movement against Hut if the SNC\' activi,ts at first saw tains, hut they were not about to make a the top. themselves as the future Martin Luther fundamental change in life in the "Black Hut who could hring them this Kings, soon their experience was teach­ Hell." whcre the heirs of slaveowners conception except Marxists? I he fate of ing them different lessons from those still lorded over the plantations and the

IIIII II 26

Dixiecrat politics, while the sons and In Albany, SNCC started referring to daughters of slaves, the terrorized black King contemptuously as "De Lawd." majority, scratched out a precarious At the August 1963 March on existence as sharecroppers, day laborers Washington, SNCC saw how the whole and maids. And as SNCC's organizing liberal establishment and particularly among the black masses repeatedly the liberal wing of the trade-union brought the situation to flash point, the bureaucracy was used by the govern­ government rushed in their black ment to put the lid on the exploding brokers to cool it, their CIA agents to black movement. The civil rights leaders co-opt it, their courts to indict it, their had initially called the march to put the troops to crush it. heat on Kennedy who was dragging his Albany, formerly the slave and cotton heels on the passage of the civil rights capital of southeast Georgia, marked bill. But when the president called them the beginning of the open split between into conference they quickly changed SNCC and the black preachers of the their tune, agreeing to change the march SCLC. In Albany SNCC sang "Ain't location from the White Hl)use to the (Jonna Let Chief Pritchett Turn Me Lincoln Memorial, deny participation 'Round," but after more than a year of to all "subversive" groups and censor all sustained struggle, SNCC found all its speeches. So, orchestrated straight from tactics-mass arrests, flooding the jails, the White House, the march would rallies, boycotts, vigils-failed to break be a giant liberal prayer lest to channel the grip of Jim Crow. "We were naive the masses safely back into liberal Democratic rolitics. King\ "\ Have a N~t'ional Guardian enough to think we could fill up the Unseated Mississippi Freedom Dream" speech celebrated "non­ jails .... We ran out of people before Democratic Party delegates at 1964 [Chief Pritchett] ran out of jails," SNCC violenn:." while the lISIA filmed the Democratic National Convention. staffer Bill Hanson said later. whole event for foreign consumption to prove how "peaceful change" was still hasic principles of the Declaration of In Albany, the SNCC workers who possible in America. Disgusted SNCC Independence." had tirelessly stomped the dirt roads, staffers took to wearing "I Have a The labor bureaucrats Walter Reuther gone door-to-door on the black side of '.:ightmare" buttons. and Malcolm X and A. Philip Randolph took the lead in town to win support for the movement, dubbed it the "Farce on Washington." pressuring Lewis (who was far from a were less than thrilled with King and While the popular front stretching radical within SNCC) to tone down his Abernathy's highly publicized weekend from Kennedy to Reutherto Kingcould language and criticism of the Kennedy jaunts into town to cool things out and all comfortably rail against the South­ ad ministration. arrange "truces" on their behalf. "Don't ern Dixiecrats. at the march SNCC's get weary. We will wear them down with bitter fury against the federal govern­ MFDP VS. Lowndes County our capacity to suffer," King told the ment had to be kept in check. There Black Panther Party black masses in Albany. But SNCC was would be no "communist" words like beginning to question King's whole As the culmination of SNCC's voter "masses" or "revolution" in Washington strategy of nonviolent resistance. In registration projects in Mississippi, that day, the "official" black leaders midsummer with 3,000 Klansmen 80,000 blacks who had been prevented vowed. They censored SNCC chairman massed outside town, Albany's black from registering as Democrats signed John Lewis' speech. deleting his conclu­ youth fought back with bricks and "protest ballots" as members of the sion that: bottles when the cops attacked a rally Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party "The party of Kennedy is the party of outside a black church. King declared a (MFDP). Atthe 1964 Democratic Party Eastland.. We cannot depend on any convention, the M FDP hoped their 68- "day of penance" for the "violence," but political party lor hoth Ikll10crats SNCC refused to condemn the action. and Repllhlicans ha\e hetla\'Cd the member alternate delegation would unseat the "regular" Jim Crow slate. With the Dixiecrats already vowing to bolt to Goldwater in '64, the MFDP was making a bid to the liberals for the Democratic Party franchise. As Carson put it, "The hopes of the MFDP delegation were based on the belief that they, rather than the regular, all-white delegation, represented the expressed principles of the national Democratic party." Surprise, they didn't. The MFDP was based in Ruleville, Mississippi, where Dixiecrat boss Sena­ tor James Eastland had his plantation. Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Eastland launched a per­ Ea nt "Either party that you align yourself with is suicide. Because both parties are sonal vendetta against SNCC for criminal. Both parties are responsible for the criminal condition that exists" registering the blacks off his estate. The (Malcolm X at the Audubon, 1964). Above, SNCC leader John Lewis story of Fannie Lou Hamer, who addresses rent strike rally in Harlem, 1964. became the MFDP's Congressional 27

candidate, was typical-the youngest of This is something Carson doesn't 20 children of black sharecroppers, she understand-the main weakness of his was evicted from the plantation where WANTED FSHi account is its SNCC-centricity, barely she had worked for 18 years because she INT••• TATI PL ••NT - KIDNAP._ touching on factors such as the ghetto registered to vote. When she moved in ROBERT FRANKLIN WILLIAMS "riots" or the influence of Malcolm X, with a friend in Ruleville, their house except insofar as they directly intersect­ was firebombed. ... ed SNCC. But "non-violence" died in The MFDP was really an outgrowth ., Harlem in the summer of 1964 and of the 1964 "Mississippi Summer . .;~ Watts a year later. Until then the civil Project," braintrusted and financed rights leaders could plausibly claim that through Allard Lowenstein, the sinister . . " their policies and outlook were support­ ~DESCRIPTION operative of Cold War liberalism. (As ed by the black masses, actively in the the New York Times wrote upon his South and at least passively in the assassination in 1980, "Most of the New North. But after Harlem and Watts, Left labeled Mr. Lowenstein as a CIA when it was clear that the explosions agent.") Working closely with Bob CAunOll were no isolated event, but part of a Moses, Lowenstein brought thousands pattern, it was clear that the whole "turn of Northern white college kids to the the other cheek" ethos had no relevance " yoU ".Vl '"FOUU,O_ to_CE~_'.~ T"" .u~_. 'LUSt .onn.[ 00 COoUCT South for the summer, hoping to you. LOCAL '" 0.,,(( HU'.OWf .unu IS U\T[O .no. to the embittered urban black masses. "restore faith in the system" by forcing a There was enormous pressure on the confrontation in which the federal official black leaders to denounce the government would have to intervene. "riots." So in '64 it was only the reds who Going into Atlantic City, the MFDP defended the Harlem ghetto masses had considerable support from N orth­ Robert F. Williams organized armed against what was in fact a police riot. ern state delegations. But Lyndon self-defense for blacks. FBI wanted Bill Epton of the Progressive Labor Johnson, still determined to keep the him, dead or alive. Party, organizer of the militant Harlem Southern white vote, offered Hubert Defense Council, was witchhunted by a H umphrey the vice-presidency on the killing in the county and had beat our bourgeois hysteria campaign which condition that he get the MFDP to back heads." The new organization took a included all the black establishment down. They lined up the whole liberal snarling black panther as its symbol, figures. The Spartacist group vigorously entourage-from Reuther to King to and soon came to be called the Black defended Epton and the Harlem youth. Lowenstein-to put the squeeze on the Panther Party. On the eve of the "riots" we had noted MFDP to accept the "compromise" by Although narrowly based on a single that the mass character of the black which they would get two "at large" impoverished rural Black Belt county, struggle in the North was posing a direct seats, while the entire Dixiecrat delega­ Lowndes was important because it was threat to the capitalist system and tion would be seated. Despite the organized in opposition to the Demo­ predicted that the cops would soon pressure, the SNCC leadership rejected crats. The Lowndes Black Panther crack down hard. Spartacist (No.2, the "compromise" and the racists were Party was also important for its open July-August 1964) called for block seated. As Forman wrote, "Atlantic advocacy of armed self-defense. Armed councils as a "basis for the organization City was a powerful lesson, not only for self-defense was a burning necessity for of self~defense." At a mass rally in the the black people from Mississippi but the black movement in the South. In New York garment center, called by the for all of SNCC and many other people Monroe, North Carolina beginning in Spartacist-initiated Harlem Solidarity as well. No longer was there any hope, 1959 local NAACP chapter head Rob­ Committee, we called for removal of the among those who still had it, that the ert Williams' courageous battle against rioting cops from the ghettos and federal government would change the KKK terror and his book Negroes With recognition of the ghetto masses' right situation in the Deep South." Guns became a beacon to militant to defend themselves against police In Lowndes County, Alabama Stoke­ blacks throughout the South. Indeed, occupation. ly Carmichael and the other SNCC James Forman, then a young Chicago In contrast, in Watts in the summer of staffers who stayed on to organize after Defender reporter, visited with Wil­ 1965 King declared, "It was necessary the Selma demonstrations of April 1965 liams just before Williams was forced that as powerful a police force as drew their conclusions from the bitter into exile in Cuba in 1961. In Lowndes possible be brought in to check them experiences of the MFDP. In George the SNCC workers were influenced by [the ghetto masses)" (New York Times, Wallace's Alabama where the words and defended the militant black share­ 16 August 1965). The Black Muslims' "white supremacy" were part of the croppers who owned guns and were famous cartoon captured King's spirit: Democratic ballot designation, SNCC willing to use them against racist attack. "If there is any blood spilled on the decided to register blacks for an inde­ By 1965 the Louisiana-based Deacons streets, let it be our blood." King's pendent party. As Carmichael said, it for Defense and Justice had spread to defense of cop terror to smash the ghetto was "as ludicrous for Negroes to join Alabama; black rallies in the county explosions was the ultimate proof of [the Democratic Party] as it would have were often defended by these armed self­ what his one-sided "non-violence" really been for Jews to join the Nazi party in defense squads. amounted to. For the SNCC radicals the 1930s." The local residents agreed. The Ghettos Explode this provoked a sharp break with King One recalled, "SNCC mentioned about and the whole liberal civil rights the third party and we decided we would But it was above all the Northern movement. For up until that point the do it, because it didn't make sense for us ghetto explosions which marked the end young militants, although many were to go join the Democratic party when of the civil rights period and had a never committed pacifists, had accepted they were the people who had done the profound effect on the SNCC militants. "non-violence" as a tact ic. They had ,- 28

fought for "one man, one vote." But peared it now. Stokely, from Bronx how did "non-violence" and voter High School of Scien~e, was around registration answer the oppression of YPS!. and the SOCial-democratic How­ Northern ghetto blacks'! As Forman ard University N on-Violent Action later wrote: Group and for years had some of the "The basic ljuestion. "What is SNCC!' closest ties to white leftists.) had not yet been answered. Our long­ Although the nationalists were range goals had called for redefinition initially isolated, they quickly gained ever since Atlantic City. and especially since the 19M and 1965 Civil Rights ground for ther were the onlv ones with acts··-which made obsolete many a coherent ant'i-liheral ideo/~)gy. SNCC aspects of our early organizing work. hated in their guts the treacherous white Watts had exploded in August. 1965; liberals. the trade-union bureaucrats, could we still call ourselves "nonviolent' and remain in the vanguard of black the govcrnment agents with their croco­ militancv') II we were revolutionaries. dile tears and their money, their connec­ what was it that we sought to tions. all tantalizingly held out to wrap a overthrow"" net around the struggle and draw it back -James Forman, The Makingol under their control. The black militants Black Revolutionaries (1972) rejected integrationism which they identified with the ideological hege­ Crisis of Identity mony of the Bobby Kennedys and SNCC radicals had broken with Allard Lowensteins. They never became liberalism as they knew it. But where did aware of the program of revolutionary they go from here? Although he cannot inteKrationism-integration into egali­ explain it, Carson graphically describes AP tarian socialist society. Charles Sims of the Deacons for the prolonged crisis which broke out S~CC knew who they hated. But it Defense and Justice. after the MFDP debacle-the malaise, was a negative program. In the absence the complaints of "loss of will," the unite the entire black community of a revolutionary alternative, the endless conferences, the debates, the around the most elementary democratic nationalists won out in their call to therapy sessions. Psychiatrists came in demands, such as voter rights or access break all ties with the "white Establish­ and diagnosed it as "battle fatigue" after to public facilities. Hut in places like ment" in which they lumped together the grueling Mississippi summer. Soci­ Atlanta or Montgomery, they found the communists with the liberals, the ologists chalked it up to the problems of that the kind of things they were doing unions with the bureaucrats, thus elite black students "relating" to ghetto had been done, and done better. by cutting off the road to socialist revolu­ youth. It was not a sociological ques­ the Democratic Party lobby. or the tion for the black working masses in tion. SNCC had run head-on into the churches, and somewhat later by the America. It is a historic crime of the black question in capitalist America. poverty programs. They had to develop Socialist Workcrs Party that it refused The Waveland Retreat in November a social revolutionary program. I n the to go in and do battle for people who 1964 was symptomatic. For this confer­ absence of this, those who did not want were quite openly groping for a radical ence 37 papers were written analyzing to be merely co-opted into the liberal alternative to the liberalism of the SNCC's failure to act decisively after the Democratic mainstream were drawn to Hubert Humphreys and Martin Luther "freedom summer." The ensuing de­ nationalism. Kings. Inside the SWP the Revolution­ bates took up everything from Forman's The first nationalist locus in SNCC ary Tendency (R T)-the core of the position to turn SNCC into a profes­ was a circle around Hill Ware. a Pan­ future Spartacist League-fought for sional cadre organization to Bob Moses' Africanist who only entered the organi­ the party to seize this opportunity to win "anti-leadership" bent for local commu­ zation in 1964 and set up his own black Trotskyist cadres. An RT motion nity work. But around what program? operation, the Atlanta Project. Ware to the convention of the SWP's youth There was massive dissatisfaction with worked briefly building support for the group. the Young Socialist Alliance SNCC's penny-ante projects. What Julian Bond Democratic election cam­ (YSA), urgently insisted: good was integrating the lunch coun­ paign in Atlanta's Vine City ghetto. "I hc Illa"c, oj hlack workers and the ters, if you couldn't afford to buy lunch, (Bond, who had won election to the S'\CC kadcrship and ranks will not pragmalically comc to undnstand and they argued. I nstead of "stopgap meas­ Georgia state legislature. was refused adopt the scicnce 01 Marxism simply by ures which buy off revolution," SNCC seating by die-hard white supremacists.) virtue 01 their militancy and readiness should "take all the Negroes from the But the Atlanta Project soon split off to to gra,p all\ llletllOd', within their rural areas into the cities and force the work Vine City on a hard nationalist reach. "I he risill1! upslllgeand militanc~ (lIthe revolution," one member proposed. At basis. The Atlanta separatists argued hlal:k rnolt and the contradiclory and Waveland, a women's workshop was that whites could not "relate to the black conluscd. groping nature olwhat i~ now held protesting the relegation of SNCC experience," that their presence "dilut­ Ihc kit \\illg in the mO\cmcnl pro\idc women to office chores and their ed" SNCC and intimidated blacks from Ihl' rc\o\utionarl \ a Ill.(Uard with fertile exclusion from leadership roles. The expressing themselves, etc. But to most ,oil and mall\ orportl~nitics to plant Ihe Sl'Clb 01 IT\ olutionarv socialism. Our workshop was generally ridiculed; SNCC cadre, white staffers like Bob lask is to create a I rol~k vi,t Icndcncy in Carmichael notoriously responded that Zellner and Jack M innis were seen as an thc bJ'tlad kit willg oj ihc movcment. the proper position of women in SNCC integral part of the group. The Ware whilc buIldin!! that Ielt wing. .. was "prone." faction's motion at the March 1966 staff "I hc i\cgro Struggle and thc Basically SNCC was, within its own Cri,is 01 I.cadcr'hip." meeting to expel all whites was defeated Ihalt Rcsolution on Civil terms, effective so long as it was fighting by a majority which then included Ril.(hls. submittcd to the YSA. institutionalized Jim Crow and could Carmichael. (Although he's disap- AI;!!ust 1%3

... 29

The R 1"s resolutions were voted Adam Clayton Powell wa, sharp down and shortly after we were ex­ enough to ,ee which way the wind was pelled. The majority's position was that hlowing-he jumped on thc bandwagon no SWPer was needed in the South at declaring "hlack power" meant voting all, sinee SNCC would become revolu­ lor him. But white Iiherals were tionary on its own in the course of the horrified. struggle. When black RTer Shirley Initially, the "black power" move- Stoute received a personal written ment was contradictory. As we wrote: invitation from James Forman to work "S,,"l'C's empirical rejection of the with SNCC in Atlanta, the SWP had to more olwiou, hrands of reformism accede. But they sent down majority advocated oy white lioeral, and petty­ oourgeoi, Hlack 'leader.," ha, taken the agents to spy on her, and within ahout a lorm of a call lor 'Hlack Power: a month called her back to New York on a militant-sounding phra,e \\ hich fright­ pretext, refused to let her return to em the white lioerah and lIncle Tom" Atlanta, and would not even let her give I he concept-, implied in the SNC(, them a statement why! Thus as the SWP slogan of 'Black Power' arc radical enough to have C<1lI,ed thc oourgcoi, tailed popular black figures, searching prc"" and politicians to shower viciou, around for a "hlack Castro," they aouse on it. precisely oecause the ,logan actually forced militant party cadres out is a groping lor ,olutions (I/ilside the of this critical work. For the SWP's framework 01 the C

for "Organi7ed, Armed Self-Defense." right of the Panthers. In Oakland. ers never broke from nationalism and And we sought to translate this into California. the Black Panther Party for lumped the LJ A W into the white "power practice, organizing aid ("Every Dime Self-Defense had been inspired hy and structure." Thus even though it was Buys a Bullet") for the Deacons for took its name from Lowndes County. located in America's most strategic Defense and Justice. The Deacons were But in 196X the Panthers broke with concentration of black workers. it too black vets who sprang up in Jonesboro Carmichael over his anti-communist could not find the road to revolutionary and Bogalusa, Louisiana to protect and anti-white political line. At one power. working-class power. CORE workers there. As we wrote: point Carmichael refused to speak at a "The Deacons organi/ation is a tremen­ big "Free Hue)''' rally at the Oakland Repression and Co-optation dous step forward for the :'IJegro Courthouse (where Huey Newton was Hut if the bourgeoisie uniformly struggle. not only because it saves lives. imprisoned on frame-up charges of but also because it raises the level of denounced black radicals, they also consciousness of the civil rights move­ killing a cop) because he didn't want to recogni/ed that some of them could be ment by encouraging independent sit on the same platform with whites bought. Lyndon Johnson's "Great action and discouraging reliance upon from the Peace and Freedom Party. Society" poverty programs were ex­ the institutions of the bourgeois state." When he finally did show up, it was only tremely important in co-opting many. ---"Toward Arming the Negro to denounce all "white" doctrines such Struggle." SjJarlaci.l'1 :\0. 5. Carson tells how Marion Harry, who November-December 1965 as "Marxism." "Communism is not an was sent to Washington in 1965 as But we lackcd the force~. A~ a result ideology suited for black people. period. S:--';CC's representative. wrote back to of the criminal abstention of the SWP period." Carmichael raved. Hobby Seale complain that they were losing good when SNCC first began to break from felt compelled to reject this position organi/Cfs to the federal poverty pro­ Iiheralism the "black power" radicals from the podium, stating that Carmi­ grams. which \\-ere doing the same thing never found a bridge to the program of chacl was playing "the Ku Klux Klan's as SNCC but paying the staff a lot workers power. Increasingly in S:'\iCC game." better' Shortly after, Barry quit SNCC "black power" came to mean exclusion hlrman. who had heen increasingly to become head of PRIDE. Inc. Barry of whites and consolidation around a uneasy about Carmichael's hard "reac­ was typical of a whole layer of the hard separatist program. In December tionary nationalism" and seeing himself organi/ation that went this route into 1966 the remaining whites were finally some kind of Marxist, went with the the Democratic Party. expelled. Even then the vote was 19-IX Panthers in the split. After playing On the other hand. those who were so with 24 ahstentions. indicating how around with his "Black Manifesto" alienated that they couldn't he hought­ deep the bonds of comradeship had scheme. "orman brietly got involved the "Rap" Browns and a big layer of the heen. how wrenching the destruction with the important circle of black Panthers--were simply wiped out. As process. A few years later. as Carson radical workers springing up in and the ghettos exploded. the bourgeoisie obscrves. Carmichael's anti-"honky" around the Detroit auto plants. But the mounted a campaign to pin the riots on separatist diatribes put Sl'CC far to the I.eague of Revolutionary Hlack Work- black radicals (while SNCC leader

CORE's Floyd McKissick (left), Martin Luther King and SNCC's Stokely Carmichael lead march in Mississippi, 1966. When Carmichael raised the slogan of "black power" at this time, incensed liberal establishment went wild.

I II 11111111111111111111111111,111111 111111111111 II ______~ ______"'-----_ .. --,-,

... 0' 31

Brown rld\cd Into their halHh with his \erhal tClrorism). Duhhcd thc "Rar Br(1\\ n Act." an amcndmcnt to I.B.I's \ nting rights act madc it a federal crimc tn nnss ,tate lincs to start a riot. The kd, husted down the doors to S:\CC ullin:,. framcd ur the leaders on the \\ huil' ga Illut of riloll\ chargc,- arson. Big, violent, elemental outbursts against urutal police and consriran. nimilldl s~ndicalisrn---and cheating merchants show that talk of improved co~dit1ons for Black finally .Iw,t gunned them down in the people 15 a lie, Things are getting worse despite what preachers and politiCians say. 'Mech . .I. Ldgar Ho(ner's COI:\I U.­ PRO labekd Carmichael and Brown A turn must be made. Sure, it feels good to break loose a­ "\ ocitcrow, firebrands" and started gainst oppression. And Gov. Hughes shows himself an enemy of Negroes when he says he is most disturbed by the "holiday atmos­ Illming 111 Carmichael eseared to phere" in the exploding Black Ghetto. But when it's allover, only Africa (ha\ ing man ied South African some piddling junk has been taken home from crummy stores, And folk ,inger Miriam Makeba). but they many have been hurt and killed and all the old ways go on. ,hnt Brown and sent him ur for a long MeanWhile the cops got their kicks: they like smashing Black stretch in jail. I he Panthers. cOllling heads and gunning down Negroes. Hughe3 combined a race 31ur with slighth later. gnt the full brunt of the a lie when he said ... "The line between the jungle and the law might as well be drawn Lin Ne"ar~.:r The law of white racist, capitalist unlJrcL'Clkntcd c

Where Are They Now? In ('arson's "Whne Are Thcy Now')" 1. Stop voting in fake "liberals" like Gov. Hughes, Mayor Addon­ epiln!!ut'. \llU can sec three SNCC izio and their "Democratic" party of the racist ruling class. No genL'ratlolis. I he first gcnnation. who support to Black Republicans or Democrats either. really \\ere ~drnpl\ ~(llinger versions of 2. Build Independent Black Political Power--begin revolutionary Martin l.utllL'l King. ended up in the change; start taking over control in the Ghettoes. Lay the basis [)enwClatic I'artv----Marion Barry. for a Freedom Labor Party. Julian Bond. John Lewis. Charlcs 3. Defend the Black Ghettoes--every seriou3 and responsible wor­ Sherrod. I va 11 hoc Donald son. A midd le kingman should exercise his right to own a gun. layer. like .Iamcs Forman and Boh M os!:s (\\ ho. burned by I.owenstein. This leaflet gives views of the SPARTACIST LEAGUE, a multi­ brokc nil all rL'iatillns with whites and racial revolutionary socialist organization named after Spartacus, dropl1L'd out after MFDP) drifted back the leader of the great Roman slave revolt. For more information into acadcmia ---they wne not hardened write: Box 1377 G.P,O., New York, N.Y. 10001 or call 212/WA 5-2426. llatinllalists hut were too radical to be comfortable in the Democratic Party. I Read "BLACK AND RED: Class Struggle Road t:-~gr~-;ree~::;;-,-l And the hlack nationalists only became L__ :P~C_i~l S~_A_R:AC~S: ~~~~~~~~~, l~~_ (order from above address ~I morc so. Carmichael and his AAPRP arc the embodiment of reactionary utopian Pan-Africanism. Rap Hrown today i, a Black Muslim. This leaflet was distributed in Newark immediately after the July 1967 Although at one time Barry and ghetto conflagration. It put forward a revolutionary perspective to militant Carmichael represented polar opposites blacks bitterly and violently reacting against the failure of the liberal civil in S:\CC. nonetheless. as was seen on rights movement. In this context we raised the slogan of a Freedom-Labor :\ll\ember 27. their basic response to Party as a transitional demand to link the mass black upsurge with the today's ,truggle, i, to put themselves on organized workers movement. This demand was first developed by the the same side-t he side opposite the Spartacist tendency in the early '60s when it was directed at the movement black masses. There is indeed a symbiot­ for black democratic rights in the largely non-union South. With the ic relation between the black libnal evaporation of a mass black movement in the late 1960s, this particular estahlishment and the nationalist­ transitional demand came to be inappropriate. separatist scch. One is the wing of "the taknted tenth" who have made it in America; the othn is the wing who young black fighters was lost. What and race-conscious hlack youth. for aspirc to their own bourgeois state would 100 black Trotskyist cadre have black workers seeking emancipation power. Both of them are instinctively mcant in Oakland in 196X or in the from racial oppression a nd wage slav­ threatencd by real struggle for black \olatile conditions of Detroit auto at ery. November 27 as we marched. 5.000- liberation in America. that time') Surely the whole course and strong. blacks and workers led hy A decade ago when black militants rhvthm of the American class struggle communists triumphantly through the were groping toward revolution we did w(;uld look quite different today. streets of the capital. the resounding not have the organi/ational weight to We didn't have the weight to change slogan. "Finish the Civil War­ pm,e an alternative to the no-win choice the course then. Today. instead of the Forward to a Workers State!" pointed of liberalism or dead-end black nation­ "choice" between Carmichael and Bar­ the way forward to Black Liberation alism. A whole generation of dedicated. ry. there is a Marxist answer for class- through Socialist Revolution .• -- p, SpartaCist Pamphlet Black History and the .u~~ StruggleI

No.1 $.25 (16 pages) Includes: On the • John Brown and Frederick Douglass: Heroes of the \Civil Rights Anti-Slavery Struggle Movement No.2 $.75 (32 pages) Includes: • Ten Years After Assassination: Bourgeoisie Celebrates King's Liberal Pacifism • Malcolm X: Courageous Fightr:! for Black Liberation • SNCC: "Black Power" and the Democrats Black Soldiers No.3 $.75 (32 pages) I. Articles from Workers Vanguard in the detailing the grotesque racist bombing of Philly MOVE, :Jim ~row Military signature of the Reagan years. y

No.4 $.75 (32 pages) Articles from the press of the Spartacist League dealing with the military question and black oppression.

No.5 $1 (32 pages) Articles from the press of the Spartacist League concerning the continuing struggle to finish the Civil War and fulfill the promise of black freedom.

No.6 $1 (32 pages) Includes: • Toussaint L'Ouverture and the Haitian Revolution • Mumia Abu-Jamal Speaks from Death Row • Malcolm X on Klan Terror

Black Histor, No.7 $1 (40 pages) and the Includes: Class Struggle • Glory-A Review 10.1 • Black Troops In Battle Against Slavery • How Mississippi Burning South Africa and Rewrites History Permanent Revolution No.8 $1 (48 pages) Includes: • South Africa: Razor's Edge • Mandela Released • Smash Apartheid! For Workers Revolutlonl

Make checks payable/mail to: Spartacist Publishing Co., Box 1377 GPO, New York, NY 10116 USA