chlams
11-21-2016, 07:48 PM
Not only did Black electoralism serve its purpose for the predominantly white ruling class—that of demobilizing the Black movement—but it coincided with the interests of Black middle-class politicians and their Black business backers. Between 1964 and 1986, the number of Black elected officials grew from 103 to 6,424. But at the same time, conditions for the mass of the Black population—workers and the poor—grew increasingly desperate. In fact, by the 1980s, a range of indices suggested that living conditions, job opportunities and poverty levels for Black America were worse than they were before the civil rights movement.
Kennedy and King
When the mass civil rights movement erupted in the late 1950s, a new day seemed to be at hand. In the 1960 presidential campaign, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) refused to endorse either Democrat Kennedy or Republican Nixon, planning instead to demonstrate for civil rights legislation at both party conventions.
However, Kennedy’s telephone call to the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. in a Georgia jail cell earned him a liberal, pro-civil rights reputation and the tacit endorsement of civil rights movement leaders.
Once in office, the Kennedy administration did nothing more than attempt to channel the militant movement into Democratic electoral campaigns. In the midst of the 1961 “Freedom Rides” in which civil rights workers rode buses through the South to force integration, the Kennedy administration set up, with foundation money, the Voter Education Project (VEP).
Attorney General Robert Kennedy met with representatives of civil rights organizations, telling them that “in his opinion voter registration would be a far more constructive activity than freedom rides or other demonstrations.” At the same time that the Kennedy Justice Department was unwilling
to pledge full protection to the freedom riders
against racist attacks, another department wing, the FBI, was conducting a slander campaign against King.
Moreover, the Kennedys hoped the VEP would divert attention from the undeniable fact that they had done nothing for civil rights in office. Having promised to eliminate housing discrimination “with the stroke of a pen,” President Kennedy refused to act. Instead, he pandered to the Southern Dixiecrats who wielded influence in Congress. His administration acted only when racist attacks on movement activists, such as those organized by Birmingham, Alabama Police Commissioner Bull Conner in May–June 1963, threatened “law and order.”
Moreover, Kennedy responded to movement pressure, which, fed up with his temporizing, called a mass March on Washington in August 1963.
Following Kennedy’s endorsement of the Civil Rights Act in June 1963, the administration worked side-by-side with march organizers to assure that march speakers would not criticize the administratior’s footdragging. The day before the march, the administration and conservative civil rights leaders forced Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee leader John Lewis to change his prepared speech. Lewis, arriving in Washington from the South where he had faced dozens of arrests and beatings at racist Dixiecrats’ hands, planned to condemn the administration’s initiative as “too little, too late” and to exhort marchers to “burn Jim Crow to the ground.” Lewis bowed to the pressure, but even his watered down speech included pointed questions: “Where is our party? Where is the party that will make it unnecessary for us to march on Washington? Where is the political party that will make it unnecessary to march in the streets of Birmingham?
LBJ and the MFDP
The Democratic Party was successful in many of its efforts. As the militant struggles of Black workers and students were cracking segregation in the South, the Democrats attempted to put themselves at the head of the movement—symbolized by President Lyndon Johnson’s cynical use of the phrase “we shall overcome” in a speech endorsing the 1964 Civil Rights Act. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, important reforms though they were, simply ratified in law what Blacks had already won in struggle.
In endorsing the two bills, LBJ was willing to countenance some disaffection among Southerners. But he was unwilling to alienate the racists in his party completely.
The 1964 example of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party provides the best illustration of LBJ’s duplicity. The 1960s Southern struggle for the right to vote—a fundamental democratic right which segregationist legislatures and racist violence had denied for decades—required much more than simply pulling a lever for some candidate. In many areas of the rural South, it required setting up political institutions outside the control of the Jim Crow Democratic Party that ran the Southern governments.
In Mississippi, civil rights workers created their own non-segregated political party, the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP). Within weeks of its
founding, the MFDP signed up 60,000 voters and nominated a delegation to represent it at the national Democratic Party convention in Atlantic City, New Jersey. On the grounds that it was the only freely-elected delegation in the state—the only one in which all of the state’s citizens could vote—the MFDP planned a floor fight to be seated in place of the all-white Jim Crow Mississippi Democratic delegation. But LBJ wished to avoid a floor battle that would damage the television image of party “unity” he wanted to project. More importantly, however, LBJ feared the defection of the “white South” to his opponent, Republican Sen. Barry Goldwater. As Democratic Texas Gov. John Connally put it to Johnson: “If you seat those Black buggers, the whole South will walk out.”
Johnson turned to Democratic liberals like Minnesota Sen. Hubert Humphrey—who gave his support in exchange for a running mate’s spot with Johnson—United Auto Workers President Walter Reuther, and MFDP lawyer Joseph Rauh, to urge the MFDP to give up its demands. Humphrey’s lieutenant, then-Minnesota Attorney General Walter Mondale, won the civil rights leadership’s acceptance of a rotten compromise that allotted the MFDP two delegates—to be chosen by the convention’s Credentials Committee. With the civil rights leaders throwing their weight behind the liberals’ sellout, the Credentials Committee voted to seat the Jim Crow delegation.
The MFDP delegation voted down the compromise overwhelmingly, calling it a “back-of-the-bus” agreement. It staged a protest in the convention hall, seizing the Mississippi delegation’s seats until the Democratic leaders called on security guards and police to eject them from the convention center.
...
The 1967 urban rebellions and the prospects of more militant activity prodded the Democratic Party machines, particularly in Northern urban centers, to make concessions to Black sentiment. Radical commentator Robert L. Allen explained in 1969 that “from the liberal point of view, some concessions must be made if future disruptions such as the 1967 riot are to be avoided.” The election of Black politicians would not change the conditions of Black people’s lives in their jurisdictions, yet “Black people were supposed to get the impression that progress was being made, that they were finally being let in the front door.... The intention is to create an impression of real movement while actual movement is too limited to be significant.”
The Democratic strategy of cooptation succeeded quite well. Not only did Black electoralism serve its purpose for the predominantly white ruling class—that of demobilizing the Black movement—but it coincided with the interests of Black middle-class politicians and their Black business backers. Between 1964 and 1986,
the number of Black elected officials grew from 103 to 6,424. But at the same time, conditions for the mass of the Black population—workers and the poor—grew increasingly desperate. In fact, by the 1980s, a range of indices suggested that living conditions, job opportunities and poverty levels for Black America were worse than they were before the civil rights movement. Often, Black electoral victories proved hollow. Assuming the reins of cities and counties facing fiscal crisis, Black Democratic politicians were able to deliver little more than austerity to their Black working-class constituents.
...
http://www.internationalsocialist.org/pdfs/democrats_lesserevilism.pdf
Kennedy and King
When the mass civil rights movement erupted in the late 1950s, a new day seemed to be at hand. In the 1960 presidential campaign, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) refused to endorse either Democrat Kennedy or Republican Nixon, planning instead to demonstrate for civil rights legislation at both party conventions.
However, Kennedy’s telephone call to the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. in a Georgia jail cell earned him a liberal, pro-civil rights reputation and the tacit endorsement of civil rights movement leaders.
Once in office, the Kennedy administration did nothing more than attempt to channel the militant movement into Democratic electoral campaigns. In the midst of the 1961 “Freedom Rides” in which civil rights workers rode buses through the South to force integration, the Kennedy administration set up, with foundation money, the Voter Education Project (VEP).
Attorney General Robert Kennedy met with representatives of civil rights organizations, telling them that “in his opinion voter registration would be a far more constructive activity than freedom rides or other demonstrations.” At the same time that the Kennedy Justice Department was unwilling
to pledge full protection to the freedom riders
against racist attacks, another department wing, the FBI, was conducting a slander campaign against King.
Moreover, the Kennedys hoped the VEP would divert attention from the undeniable fact that they had done nothing for civil rights in office. Having promised to eliminate housing discrimination “with the stroke of a pen,” President Kennedy refused to act. Instead, he pandered to the Southern Dixiecrats who wielded influence in Congress. His administration acted only when racist attacks on movement activists, such as those organized by Birmingham, Alabama Police Commissioner Bull Conner in May–June 1963, threatened “law and order.”
Moreover, Kennedy responded to movement pressure, which, fed up with his temporizing, called a mass March on Washington in August 1963.
Following Kennedy’s endorsement of the Civil Rights Act in June 1963, the administration worked side-by-side with march organizers to assure that march speakers would not criticize the administratior’s footdragging. The day before the march, the administration and conservative civil rights leaders forced Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee leader John Lewis to change his prepared speech. Lewis, arriving in Washington from the South where he had faced dozens of arrests and beatings at racist Dixiecrats’ hands, planned to condemn the administration’s initiative as “too little, too late” and to exhort marchers to “burn Jim Crow to the ground.” Lewis bowed to the pressure, but even his watered down speech included pointed questions: “Where is our party? Where is the party that will make it unnecessary for us to march on Washington? Where is the political party that will make it unnecessary to march in the streets of Birmingham?
LBJ and the MFDP
The Democratic Party was successful in many of its efforts. As the militant struggles of Black workers and students were cracking segregation in the South, the Democrats attempted to put themselves at the head of the movement—symbolized by President Lyndon Johnson’s cynical use of the phrase “we shall overcome” in a speech endorsing the 1964 Civil Rights Act. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, important reforms though they were, simply ratified in law what Blacks had already won in struggle.
In endorsing the two bills, LBJ was willing to countenance some disaffection among Southerners. But he was unwilling to alienate the racists in his party completely.
The 1964 example of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party provides the best illustration of LBJ’s duplicity. The 1960s Southern struggle for the right to vote—a fundamental democratic right which segregationist legislatures and racist violence had denied for decades—required much more than simply pulling a lever for some candidate. In many areas of the rural South, it required setting up political institutions outside the control of the Jim Crow Democratic Party that ran the Southern governments.
In Mississippi, civil rights workers created their own non-segregated political party, the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP). Within weeks of its
founding, the MFDP signed up 60,000 voters and nominated a delegation to represent it at the national Democratic Party convention in Atlantic City, New Jersey. On the grounds that it was the only freely-elected delegation in the state—the only one in which all of the state’s citizens could vote—the MFDP planned a floor fight to be seated in place of the all-white Jim Crow Mississippi Democratic delegation. But LBJ wished to avoid a floor battle that would damage the television image of party “unity” he wanted to project. More importantly, however, LBJ feared the defection of the “white South” to his opponent, Republican Sen. Barry Goldwater. As Democratic Texas Gov. John Connally put it to Johnson: “If you seat those Black buggers, the whole South will walk out.”
Johnson turned to Democratic liberals like Minnesota Sen. Hubert Humphrey—who gave his support in exchange for a running mate’s spot with Johnson—United Auto Workers President Walter Reuther, and MFDP lawyer Joseph Rauh, to urge the MFDP to give up its demands. Humphrey’s lieutenant, then-Minnesota Attorney General Walter Mondale, won the civil rights leadership’s acceptance of a rotten compromise that allotted the MFDP two delegates—to be chosen by the convention’s Credentials Committee. With the civil rights leaders throwing their weight behind the liberals’ sellout, the Credentials Committee voted to seat the Jim Crow delegation.
The MFDP delegation voted down the compromise overwhelmingly, calling it a “back-of-the-bus” agreement. It staged a protest in the convention hall, seizing the Mississippi delegation’s seats until the Democratic leaders called on security guards and police to eject them from the convention center.
...
The 1967 urban rebellions and the prospects of more militant activity prodded the Democratic Party machines, particularly in Northern urban centers, to make concessions to Black sentiment. Radical commentator Robert L. Allen explained in 1969 that “from the liberal point of view, some concessions must be made if future disruptions such as the 1967 riot are to be avoided.” The election of Black politicians would not change the conditions of Black people’s lives in their jurisdictions, yet “Black people were supposed to get the impression that progress was being made, that they were finally being let in the front door.... The intention is to create an impression of real movement while actual movement is too limited to be significant.”
The Democratic strategy of cooptation succeeded quite well. Not only did Black electoralism serve its purpose for the predominantly white ruling class—that of demobilizing the Black movement—but it coincided with the interests of Black middle-class politicians and their Black business backers. Between 1964 and 1986,
the number of Black elected officials grew from 103 to 6,424. But at the same time, conditions for the mass of the Black population—workers and the poor—grew increasingly desperate. In fact, by the 1980s, a range of indices suggested that living conditions, job opportunities and poverty levels for Black America were worse than they were before the civil rights movement. Often, Black electoral victories proved hollow. Assuming the reins of cities and counties facing fiscal crisis, Black Democratic politicians were able to deliver little more than austerity to their Black working-class constituents.
...
http://www.internationalsocialist.org/pdfs/democrats_lesserevilism.pdf