"BLACK POWER'' AND COALITION POLITICS by BAYARD RUSTIN Distributed by The A. Philip Randolph Institute 217 West 125th Street, New York, N.Y. 10027 Telephone: 666-9510 "BLACK POWER" AND COALITION POLITICS BAYARD RUSTIN HERE are two Americas-black and sttion to win a maximum of two congressional T white-and nothing has more clearly seats and control of eighty local counties. • (Car­ revealed the divisions between them than the de­ michael, incidentally, is in the paradoxical posi­ bate currently raging around the slogan of "black tion of screaming at liberals-wanting only to power." Despite-or perhaps because of-the fact "get whitey off my back" -and simultaneously that this slogan lacks any clear definition, it has needing their support: after all, he can talk about succeeded in galvanizing emotions on all sides, Negroes taking over Lowndes County only be­ with many whites seeing it as the expression of a cause there is a fairly liberal federal government new racism and many Negroes taking it as a warn­ to protect him should Governor Wallace decide ing to whjte people that Negroes will 11.0 longer to eliminate this pocket of black power.) Now tolerate brutality and violence. But even within there might be a certain value in having two the Negro community itself, "black power" has Negro congressmen from the South, but obvious­ touched off a major debate-the most bitter the ly they could do nothing by themselves to recon­ community has experienced since the days of struct the face of America. Eighty sheriffs, eighty Booker T. Washington and W. E. B. DuBois, and tax assessors, and eighty school-board members one which threatens to ravage the entire civil­ might ease the tension for a while in their com­ rights movement. Indeed, a serious split has al­ munities, but they alone could not create jobs ready developed between advocates of "black and build low-cost housing; they alone could not power" like Floyd McKissick of coRE and Stokely supply quality integrated education. Carmichael of SNCC on the one hand, and Dr. The relevant question, moreover, is not wheth­ Martin Luther King of scLc, Roy Wilkins of the er a politician is black or white, but what forces NAACP, and Whitney Young of the Urban League he represents. Manhattan has had a succession of on the other. Negro borough presidents, and yet the schools are There is no question, then, that great passions increasingly segregated. Adam Clayton Powell are involved in the debate over the idea of "black and William Dawson have both been in Congress power"; nor, as we shall see, is there any question for many years; the former is responsible for a that these passions have their roots in the psycho­ rider on school intergration that never gets passed, logical and political frustrations of the Negro and the latter is responsible for keeping the community. Nevertheless, I would contend that Negroes of Chicago tied to a mayor who had to "black power" not only lacks any real value for see riots and death before he would put eight­ the civil-rights movement, but that its propaga­ dollar sprinklers on water hydrants in the sum­ tion is positively harmful. It diverts the movement mer. I am not for one minute arguing that from a meaningful debate over strategy and tac­ Powell, Dawson, and Mrs. Motley should be im­ tics, it isolates the Negro community, and it en­ peached. What I am saying is that if a politician courages the growth of anti-Negro forces. is elected because he is black and is deemed to be In its simplest and most innocent guise, "black entitled to a "slice of the pie," he will behave in power" merely means the effort to elect Negroes one way; if he is elected by a constituency pressing to office in proportion to Negro strength within for social reform, he will, whether he is white or the population. There is, of course, nothing wrong black, behave in another way. with such an objective in itself, and nothing in­ herently radical in the idea of pursuing it. But in SouTHERN Negroes, despite exhortations from Stokely Carmichael's extravagant rhetoric about sNcc to organize themselves into a Black Pan­ "taking over" in districts of the South where ther party, are going to stay in the Democratic Negroes are in the majority, it is important to party-to them it is the party of progress, the New recognize that Southern Negroes are only in a po- Deal, the New Frontier, and the Great Society­ and they are right to stay. For sNcc's Black Pan­ BAYARD RUSTIN is executive director of the A. Philip Ran­ ther perspective is simultaneously utopian and re- dolph Institute. His previous contributions to CoMMENTARY include the now famous article, "From Protest to Politics: The Future of the Civil Rights Movement" (February 1965). •see "The Negroes Enter Southern Politics" by Pat Wat­ ters, Dissent, July-August 1966. actionary-the former for the by now obvious rea­ their share, finally won enough power to over­ son that one-tenth of the population cannot come their initial disabilities. But the truth is that accomplish much by itself, the latter because such it was through alliances with other groups (in a party would remove Negroes from the main area political machines or as part of the trade-union of political struggle in this country (particularly movement) that the Irish and the Jews and the in the one-party South, where the decisive battles Italians acquired the power to win their rightful are fought out in Democratic primaries), and place in American society. They did not "pull would give priority to the issue of race precisely themselves up by their own bootstraps" -no group at a time when the fundamental questions facing in American society has ever done so; and they the Negro and American society alike are econom­ most certainly did not make isolation their pri­ ic and social. It is no accident that the two main mary tactic. proponents of "black power," Carmichael and McKissick, should now be co-sponsoring a confer­ N SOME quarters, "black power" connotes not ence with Adam Clayton Powell and Elijah I an effort to increase the number of Negroes in Muhammad, and that the leaders of New York elective office but rather a repudiation of non­ CORE should recently have supported the machine violence in favor of Negro "self-defense." Actually candidate for Surrogate-because he was the this is a false issue, since no one has ever argued choice of a Negro boss-rather than the candidate that Negroes should not defend themselves as in­ of the reform movement. By contrr.st, Martin dividuals from attack. • Non-violence has been Luther King is working in Chicago with the Indus­ advocated as a tactic for organized demonstrations trial Union Department of the AFL-CIO and with in a society where Negroes are a minority and religious groups in a coalition which, if .Uccessful, where the majority controls the police. Propo­ will mean the end or at least the weakening of the nents of non-violence do not, for example, deny Daley-Dawson machine. that James Meredith has the right to carry a gun The winning of the right of Negroes to vote in for protection when he visits his mother in Mis­ the South insures the eventual transformation of sissippi; what they question is the wisdom of his the Democratic party, now controlled primarily carrying a gun while participating in a demon­ by Northern machine politicians and Southern stration. Dixiecrats. The Negro vote will eliminate the There is, as well, a tactical side to the new em­ Dixiecrats from the party and from Congress, phasis on "self-defense" and the suggestion that which means that the crucial question facing us non-violence be abandoned. The reasoning here today is who will replace them in the South. Un­ is that turning the other cheek is not the way to less civil-rights leaders (in such towns as Jackson, win respect, and that only if the Negro succeeds Mississippi; Birmingham, Alabama; and even to a in frightening the white man will the white man certain extent Atlanta) can organize grass-roots begin taking him seriously. The trouble with this clubs whose members will have a genuine political reasoning is that it fails to recognize that fear is voice, the Dixiecrats might well be succeeded by more likely to bring hostility to the surface than black moderates and black Southern-style machine respect; and far from prodding the "white power politicians, who would do little to push for need­ structure" into action, the new militant leader­ ed legislation in Congress and little to improve ship, by raising the slogan of black power and local conditions in the South. While I myself lowering the banner of non-violence, has ob­ would prefer Negro machines to a situation in scured the moral issue facing this nation, and per­ which Negroes have no power at all, it seems to mitted the President and Vice President to lecture me that there is a better alternative today-a lib­ us about "racism in reverse" instead of proposing eral-labor-civil rights coalition which would work more meaningful programs for dealing with the to make the Democratic party truly responsive to problems of unemployment, housing, and educa­ the aspirations of the poor, and which would de­ tion. velop support for programs (specifically those "Black power" is, of course, a somewhat nation­ outlined in A. Philip Randolph's $100 billion alistic slogan and its sudden rise to popularity Freedom Budget) aimed at the reconstruction of among Negroes signifies a concomitant rise in American society in the interests of greater social nationalist sentiment (Malcolm X's autobiogra­ justice.