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Name: THE RISE AND FALL OF BLACK POWER The activists in this case sought to change the way black people were treated in the American society. Segregation in terms of housing was a major issue that the activists were fighting against. Neighborhoods were divided among the white and the blacks with the whites strongly resisting any infiltration by the blacks. They also hurriedly moved away when blacks started encroaching on their residences. Some politicians also perpetuated this by ensuring that housing schemes remained purely black or white. Discrimination in employment for the black minority was also a problem. The labour unions for instance ensured discrimination against the blacks by making it hard for them to obtain union cards. Brutality by the police against the blacks was also a major concern. Extra judicial killings against the blacks were commonplace. The movement in this case took the form of different individual activists who came up with outfits such as the Civil Rights Movement and SCLC through which they instituted efforts at different times and in different areas of the USA to fight the ills. The result of the movement was that black American people gained a new sense of belonging amongst themselves that empowered them to explore their culture hence bringing about more creativity in music, fashion, art and literature. From the text, it is clear that when people are united for any course, they cannot be defeated. As it is said, unity is strength. The Watts riot and the march in the North show that the black people were operating on a united front to beat the prejudice and other ills against them. The Nation of Islam also believed in the unity of the people by suggesting that the liberation of the black people would come from their unity and cutting off the rest of the world from their affairs. The unity of the people also needed not to be pegged on agreeing on everything but having even one thing in common sufficed. For example, the black Americans applauded King and Malcolm X even though they did not agree on their ideologies of non-violence and Nation of Islam respectively. The suggestion by Malcolm X that the traitors among the black American society needed to be weeded out showed that unity among the black Americans needed to be upheld at all costs. 11 The Rise and Fatt of Bl,acfr, power RrorrNc 0n the evening ofAurysl summer heat wave, a AND THE rl, 1965, as Los Angeres swerrered in a smog-raden California over a Gsnrro Rrvorr Buick at Avalon Avenue Ht;h*";"p;;-l offi..., L;Mril;r, pu,ed In the driver,s seat was Mar_ quette Frye' a twenrv-one-year-ord brack man; beside brother, Ronald. Marqrette'hrd younger from high school, possessed a';uvenile record, and was currentry rinemproyed. several "screwdrivers'" his ^aiiz,"ls*"r. ,.";;;;ar"*, hil ,;;-il Having recentry downed driving ,h", administered a sobrierv Minikus "riJ*uly erratic, urd test, Frye iu.a ir. gathered as more porice rived' and Frye's mother, arRena ,".r.. slramed or emloldened by his mother,s presence, tutu.q,,.tt. He cursed th. poli."m.rr. "lr a...*a r.y.,;Jr.i ,i. f.""_. T.rrior, ,"."r,"J ,r.H;1il:i,l*?t ther truck, or roughry nl:: q:r*i, h"il;;, ,;;H. rrl ,r*rr. ,he altercation unfolded. ", i1,,, seems thar a porice orncer ilj::Til:ffi:$ff Tfi g';*i'"s-,eiled s y" ,fffi;:,:lj,lffil,To like "irI selma!" that!,,,,Morhe.r,r.t f""ar r.r.oop".uri*r ..rr,]l ei_ their disapprovar. ,uleave "They'd never treat a whlte woman like As olficers moved to disperse the onlookers, what began as the routine ar_ rest of a drunk driver turned ;.rto u .ioi. in""f., began flying,,, reported Los Angeles Times' the "then wine ard bottres, oiJun"..,., pieces of wood-anything ,t u, "hurri, "outJu;1";;.,, six consecutive days of ur_ ,"hiG =BETTER DAY COMING ban violence followed, with rioters looting and burning stores, attacking firemen, battling the police, and assaulting white people. Labelled the "Watts riot," after the black section of south Los Angeles in which it erupted, the violence ranged over forty-five square miles, destroyed an estimated $200 mil- lion of property, led to 4,000 people being arrested, and left thirty-four people dead.z The bloodiest race riot since the Detroit outbreak of 1943,Watts dwarfed the 1964 disturbances in New York, Philadelphia, and Rochester. Although black leaders had been ritualistically warning that the Northern ghettos were combustible, the destructiveness of the Watts riot, and the fact that it occurred amid the palm trees of Los Angeles-not the popular image of a tlpical ghetto-shocked everyone. The McCone Commission, however, appointed by Governor Pat Brown to investigate the riot, tried to downplay the significance of the outbreak by calling it "senseless." This was criminal vandalism, it argued, not purposeful protest. The commission's report made light of racial discrimination, virtually exonerated the Los Angeles Police Department, and criticized the Civil Rights Movement for having weakened black respect for law and order. The commission blamed the violence on a small, unrepresentative minority of unemployed young men, many of them recent migrants from the South, who were on the criminal fiinges of society. Only 10,000 people, it argued, had engaged in riotthe very most, 5 percent of the area's black population. Watts had been an "insensate rage of destruction . . . engaged in by a few but bringing distress ing-at to all."3 The McCone Report's "riffraff" theory however, badly misstated the riot's significance. If the figure of 10,000 was accurate, critics pointed out, then 40 percent of all the rioters had been arrested-a claim that was plainly absurd. On the basis of postriot interviews, social scientists more plausibly estimated that 15 percent of the population-80,0O0 people-had rioted, and reckoned that a further 34 percent had approved of the riot as they watched it unfold. Critics of the report also disputed the contention that the riot had been purposeless: most blacks defined it as a protest which, they believed, would draw attention to their grievances. Bayard Rustin pointed out that the rioters acted with a degree of deliberation and rationality: they attacked property rather than people, singling out white-owned stores that they regarded as exploitative. Sociologist Robert Blauner likened the outbreak to a "mass rebellion against colonial status." Perhaps the most striking aspect of the riot, apart from its sheer destructiveness, was the lack of remorse felt by the local black population. Despite the fact that all but a handful of the dead were black people, most blacks in The Rise and Fall ofBlack Los Angeles Power Zg7 did not conclude that the riot had been a tragic mistake. Even those who disapproved of the riot felt sympathy for the rioters, placed most of the blame upon the police, and believed that the riot had drawn attention to black grievances. Many blacks felt a positive pride in having seized control of the streets and given the police-universally loathed for their racism and bru- tality-a bloody nose. "The mood of Watts last week smacked less of defeat than of'victory and power," noted Newsweeh.a This celebratory unrepentant attitude boded ill for the civil Rights Movement. Ever since the much smaller riots of 1964, King had been weighing the possibility of taking the scLC North, applying the methods of nonviolence ro the problems of the ghetto. In moving North, however, the scLC had to contend with apathy, skepticism, and outright hostility. I/vhen Andrew young and James Bevel tried to explain nonviolence to black youths in Rochester, New riot there in 1964, they got nowhere. "what is all thisJesus crap?,, asked one nonconvert. Now, visiting watts, King evoked the same cynical response. Gerald Horne describes a typical encounter. "With his rolling cadences King began,'AIl over America . . . the Negroes mustjoin hands . . .,,And burn,, added a heckler." Shouted another: "Go back where you came from.r,5 The rioters' cries of ttBurn, baby, burn!,, and ,,Get whiteylrt seemed to express a visceral hatred ofwhite people. Sensational reporting by the news media may well, in fact, have exaggerated the depth of that hatred: some whites were beaten up during the watts riot, but not a single white person died through the direct action of rioters. The rioters directed their wrath against the police, not white people in general. Nevertheless, watts brought into the open a widespread hostility toward whites that had been festering beneath the surface in the Northern ghettos-a gut resentment ofwhite people that seemed far more intense in the North than in the South. only a few months earlier,Newsweehhadreported that'(Far from being an York, after a explosively frustrated mass," blacks were "caught up by an exhilarating sense "more deeply committed than ever to the strategy of nonviolence." Judged by the gains of the civil Rights Movement and the of progress" and were beneficence of the Johnson administration, they had every reason to be. But appearances were deceptive. the south in The civil rights reforms had been designed with mind; the legislation ofJohnson's "Great society," especially the much-ballyhooed "war on Poverty," raised black expectations but offered no route out of the ghetto. The situation for many blacks in the North had not improved at all, and in some respects it was deteriorating.o _BETTER DAY COMING SncnncarroN AND DrscnrurNATroN rN THE Nonrn Some urban experts believed that the difficulties faced by blacks in the North were akin to those experienced by European immigrants half a century earlier: in both cases, the arrival of large numbers of impoverished rural folk created overcrowded slums and caused political tension. Certainly, the scale of the continuing black migration was bound to strain the urban fabric: about 4 million blacks left the South for the North between 1940 and 1965. The black population of New York increased from 6 percent of the total population to 16 percent; that of Chicago, from 8 percent to 27 percent; that of Los Angeles, from 4 percent to 18 percent; that of Detroit, from g percent to 29 percent; that of Washington, D.C., from 28 percent to 63 percent. Sheer numbers, argued Professor Philip M. Hauser, "made the Negro in-migratory stream relatively unassimilable-economically, socially and politically." Like the immigrants, blacks would eventually climb up America's economic ladder, but "it requires time-time measured in human generations rather than " Time, however) was not operating in a benign manner. The latest and largest waye of black migrants had started during the Second World War, when an enormous increase in industrial production eliminated mass unemployment and created new opportunities for black people to enter the blue-collar workforce. These were the kind of factoryjobs that had provided generations of European immigrants-Poles, Czechs, Slovaks, Hungarians, Italians, Greeks, and others-with stable employment and decent livelihoods. years. But the black migrants gained a toehold in the industrial economy at precisely the time when advances in technology were eliminating blue-collarjobs, and when changes in the organization of industry shifted employment away from central cities and towards suburbs, small towns, and green fields. Moreover, many employers imposed skills tests on job applicants that previous generations of immigrants had never had to face-a considerable handicap to Southern migrants who had been educated in some of the worst schools in America. Many migrants did, to be sure, achieye a degree of ecorromic securiry and the proportion of black workers classified as "white-collar" increased from 10 percent in 1940 to l8 percent in 1960. For a large segment of the black working class, however, wartime employment gains did not last. In 1948 black unemployment stood at a low of 5.9 percent, a ratio of 1.7 compared to white unemployment. By 1954, however, almost l0 percent of black workers were jobless, double the rate among whites. Black unemployment stayed at twice the white level for the rest of the decade and throughout the 1960s. Equally --1 The Rise and Fall of Black powcr discouraging was a sharp decrine in brack participation in the workforce, especially among men: from g7 percent irr lg+s io zz percent twenry years later' A growing number ofyoung black mares between tt . ug", oirixteen and twenty-four dropped o.ut of legal^employment. Many of them joined gangs and engaged in criminal activities.8 The problems faced by blacks in the North were undoubtedry complex. still, white prejudice, which often derived from the crannishness and conservatism of recently arrived ethnic groups) herped to isolate bracks and retard their progress. Racial discriminatlo, in .-pLymenr, for ."";;i;, was commonplace, despite fair employment laws in most Northern states. The unions were often to blame. In the construction industry for example, it was virtually impossible for blacks to obtain a union ca.d. Limiting th" ,ir" of their mem_ bership, the craft unions accepted new apprentices on a friends-and-reratives basis, thereby perpetuating i white ,.oropory. The apprenticeship itself could last.up to five years, giving union offilciai. u.r,pl.;;p;;;;;;,y to dis_ courage black interlopers. Such practices ensured that th" pl.r*bers union was 99'8 percent white; erectricar workers 99.4 percent *hite; and carpenters 98.4 percent white. Even in unions with substantiar brack memberships, rike the UAW, blacks found themselves concentrated in lower_paid, ,,unskilled,, jobs, and underrepresented at the leadership level.e .."g":t"* was perhaps the strongest and most visible expression of raciar discrimination in the North. Despite the supreme court,s invaridation of.,,restrictive covenants" in r94g, resicrential ,"g."gutio., persisted in every city. supported by the vast majority of white hoi"o*.r..r, who viewed the proxim1ty.9f black people as a threat, the real estate industry covertlf operated a dual housing market, with the object of maintaining separation o'f th. .u".r. In practice, this involved preventing bracks r.or" r.iyi"g ;;;;;ri;; in areas occupied by whites. when the preszure of numbers b""ir," ,oo g.."ur, neighborhoods on the edge of the ghetto shifted from white to black-and rear estate agents often made rarge,profits by exproiting the panic selling of white homeowners' However, the black poprlutio., was not permitted perse throughout the city,large sections of people. to dis- which remainejoff-limits to black white politicians ,housing projects quietly reinforced segregation. They ensured that pubric were eirher all-black 1[,oI" located i., ttr. gh.iio; o. unwhite (those situated in white areas). Sporadic a*emprs ;il"g*" public housing evoked vehement white resistarr". urrd were soon abandoned. politicians also used urban redeveropment-the routing of expresswayr,-ro. ."u-- create physical ll:-,: federal government barriers between whire and black areas. Until t94g the had actively encouraged segregation; until 1962 it had silently acquiesced in it. segregation becaie even more solidry entrenched as B[,TTER DAY COMING whites moved to new suburbs. White-only developments like Levittown on Long Island, the model for postwar suburban housing, were built with the support of the Federal Housing Authority. Even after President Kennedy banned discrimination in federal housing programs-which the 1964 Civil Rights Act reinforced-the government did little to oppose segregation. As a result, the races lived apart and the ghettos grew; residential segregation was more rigid in the North than in the South. Segregated housing patterns produced "de facto" segregated public schools. School boards further discouraged integration by gerrymandering school attendance zones and permitting whites to transfer out of predominantly black schools. Whites in the North expressed their opposition to integration in no uncertain terms. In 1964, only months before the Watts riot, California voters passed Proposition 14, a referendum that repealed a recently enacted fair housing law. Voters in other states also rejected antidiscrimination laws. White determination to exclude blacks sometimes turned violent: in Chicago, black families who settled in white neighborhoods met with harassment, arson attacks, physical assaults, and at least a dozen riots between 1945 and 1964. In 1952 Illinois governor Adlai Stevenson called out the National Guard when the arrival of blacks in the satellite town of Cicero triggered rioting. The blacks departed and Cicero remained an all-white enclave of 70,000 people. Where housing was concerned, racial discrimination in the North lost its subtlety; it was raw and open. Tsr SCLC's CHrcAGo CAMpercN .q.Nl rnn Wnrrn Bacrlesn This is what the SCLC discovered in Chicago, where King led his first campaign in the North. After floundering for the first half of 1966, the SCLC focused its attack upon housing segregation, organizing marches in the city's all-white neighborhoods. It was a brilliantly effective tactic. By evoking the same kind ofviolent opposition it had encountered in the South-white mobs burned cars, hurled bricks, and bodily assaulted the marchers-the SCLC exposed the depth of Chicago's racial division and exerted intense political pressure upon Mayor RichardJ. Daley. Forced to the negotiating table, Daley accepted a "Summit Agreement" that consisted of promises by the city of Chicago, and by local real estate agents, to promote housing integration. Having defused the immediate crisis, however, Mayor Daley quietly shelved the Summit Agreement. King was bitterly disappointed by the betrayal. On one level, Daley simply outfoxed King. Yet the SCLC's failure in r The Rise and Fall ofBlack power 301 chicago had deeper *uf*'.1^llrthern organizarion accusromed to mobilizing small communities, the SCLC lacked thT know-how and the resources ro reach a massive black popuration of o"" a half used to dealing with one-dime.rsionar v,rains tit ;;; m,rii;;il: connor andJim crark, the scLC found Mayor Richard Darey "rg.rx* a sJde, skinful poritician, who J' opposed the civil Rights Morr.-".,rt utr, r.iJ*ords and smart than fire hoses a.rJ billy,.clubs. were chicago's brack L. Dawson, who nor were Srpp"rl"S gestures rather DaleS-and opporirg the SCLC, poriticians-erecred o'n"iutr,'tit o"ly.3jor.d . +;;;dmacy c;d;;il;; wiriam u"i;.r.r,l..luse they part of the Democratic rimachine," possessed patronage and fhvors to dispense or withhold. The scLC also found it ai{Hcurt ro adapr to jhe. hald-edged, more secular, urban culture of the North. The brack chx."h ru.k.d the prestige and influence thar it commandecr in the south. In the No_rth? many ical, disturbed bv the,r.,.rth gurgr,-, bi;;l;:;.-.d cyn;w. ;.;. ;;rticurarry ...utt.J;fi;i';..;;,";';#J, alienated. and impervious to the scl0s idealism. looted, raped: t..,..1ii.a"*f,ot.,r.igt,Uorhoods; fought with each other. ''[T]hose hard-eved brack boys L"d ;;?.;ct for anything or anybody. To them a preachrr *u' th.e next worse thing to a poriceman, and rerigion was for old folks and suckers, both of whom ffii.g"ra.d witrr a fine c-ooniempt.,, A serious riot that .."ptlg.in the west sial giitt, inJury 1966 sharpry,rumi_ nated the SCLC,s inability to influence ,ilr" gu.rgr. King, stranded in the middle of :r,lTd,and the riot area. tried, to Iisten, heckJing and cursing rtrp ,r* .p.r"aing violence. him.r,i people refused to The more profound reasons for the sclC's sorth.l, r."Jiry fa,ure, however, had to do had aroused the conscience in the yl;h1nt;;presidents down, to assist rhe :l::::i:1,"?::,y,jlg,ynf:"s cause ofthe civ, Rifhts Movement. similar violencr, bui they did ,ror gui., sympathy. Indeed, the Iiberals who had lauded with white people, not bracks. u,l scici;;"],1Tft1'*..-Jii *h; King a y"u. "urii..-and even marched beside him at Selma-now co'dcmnJd lis tactics u, i...rfor.,rible and p."r";;l;. Sympa_ thy for the civil Rights Movement Mason-Dixon line. ,....i',o'.uaporate when it crossed the Northern politicians attributed this rack of sympathy to a ,,white backrash,, h;i.;;;r";nd violence. A"";;;g to this rpr.uaofurti*hit. rhetoric ararmed basi_ cally well-meaning whites. Most whites mri.*a that demonstrations encouraged riots and should stop.By 1966, accordingto an opinion poll, g5 percent of all whites had come to th. co.r"r,^i."ir.", a."ro.r.rrurio.ri*.r.,,hurting the Negro cause." The number or*rrit" r*" in the North who believed that had been caused by brack theory the outbreak ofriots and ar _.302 BETTE,R DAY COMING that theJohnson administration was pushing integration "too fast" grew from 28 percent in April 1965 to 36 percent in August 1965 (after Watts), and to 52 percent in September 1966. "White people are scared and sore and the consensus behind improvement of the Negro's condition is running out-has run out," White House aide Harry McPherson wrote Johnson. The 1966 Civil Rights Bill, which proposed to ban housing discrimination, failed to pass. Shortly afterwards, in the midterm elections, the Democrats lost fortynine seats in the House and four in the Senate.Il Bayard Rustin contended that the Civil Rights Movement had to shift "from protest to politics," investing its energies in building support for a progressive agenda within the Democratic Party. Yet race was splitting apart the traditional New Deal coalition. In state after state, wrote pollsters William Brink and Louis Harris, elections showed "the defections ftom the Democratic party of the late-arriving Catholic minorities."l2 Few sensible people-and certainly not King-denied that rioting had set back the cause of racial equaliry. Yet while riots might have intensified the "white backlash," they did not cause it. In 1963, before any serious rioting had occurred, opinion polls documented the fact that "anti-Negro prejudice is widespread and deeply rooted in the U.S., extending to the vast majoriry of ordinary well-meaning Americans." North and South, most whites shunned social contact with black people, did not want integrated housing, and thought blacks were moving ahead "too f,ast." In 1964, when Alabama governor George Wallace, the symbol of Southern racism, campaigned in the Democratic presidential primaries, he won a third of the vote in Indiana and Wisconsin, drawing most of his support from working-class ethnic Catholics. Yet middleclass whites werejust as loath to associate with black people, constituting what Louis Harris described as "the strong silent partner to overt anti-black sentiment"-people who felt that "Negroes should be kept in their place."r3 None of this should have come as a surprise. Yet since World War II, politicians in the North had avoided the issues of white prejudice and racial segregation, fully aware of the fact that any effort to confront them would drive away white voters. They denied that racial prejudice in the North was comparable to racism in the South. In 1963 Mayor Daley even denied the very existence of ghettos in Chicago, asserting that different ethnic and racial groups naturally preferred to live among their own kind. This massive exercise in denial had been possible because the Cold War, and the general prosperity of the postwar era, had muted the voices of protest. As long as blacks in the North remained politically quiescent, racial divisions could be ignored. In 1963, however, when Birmingham sparkecl offdemonstrations in the North as well as the South, politicians suddenly took note of a rising "white back- The Rise and Fall ofBlack power Iash'" As historian ThomasJ. sugrue insists, that backrash ,,had deep roots -J.i ;,,.lTIf ,;i j.. in J#; ffi i *i ;1:: ", i,;ffi;;, ilffi;1J;,:i"i;*'ff '.i;Ii:;:d ; ;d;;.i,, a " ;ffiH .;ffi#il,T:,;;; " div i d e Police brutalitv brought Northern racisminto sharp focus. studies of the police indicatrd ihut urriort rrr...-q""*^'oru1 o*".rs harbored o,extreme,, or "considerable,, prejudi". ,gri"J;;i;; ; wingextremi,,s,o,p,",*;il.JbffiT*.rr:*,f r;1,ff,,,,":r,*ff to'Je ws, niggers u", a":"T,r,t:ri" ;o*rr r"oo.;ililU Wallace. Ma,y' perhaps "rJ fl[ most' rreared brack peopre ,f ir, fai-led to ristinguish uua,to*-ur;ail#;,'*d"on,.*pt, ..rorr.d ro viorence with or without provocarion. "rt's the pJi-ie .."1v i"r.1_o.opt" *J,,;i ,... *rr.rr*_ ton teenagers explained to between criminars wirite Horr.'uid. Hla.qr Mcpherrorl;,,.h.y g., lo.,r"-yJ, you in a station house and ..ulty when a police officer rr,", u.orrrd.,,,, the line of duty, he rarery ,""r.-;;J;'* " curred any adverse consequences. I.Los in_ Angeres, for example, the police arr.irrgilr;; and a half years preceding the ri.ti-r, *.it", G..jd Uorrr", .,twenty_seven . . . were in the back, twenty-five shot were unarmed, twenty-three were suspected of theft shot and killed sixtv-five peopre Watts riot. Of the r,". r,lJ""-mitted no c.ime at the time or ;:'ji]ff#ll?f::,"n.j:id rn au **,il;#:fffl""''"1ffiJ:jfij:ffiJ the shooting.,, lil:". 'Justifiable homicide'" rr" t.ir, their power even more. forcefurf. -...oi.i, doned al] restraint, treating casualties. art., tt .to,ii . ,.o-pted the porice to or.irg",h. riots themserves, they asserr abanrt. r",Ur*Lr'iu ;,..*ilff ,**,,lH,J-,f$iT: ;.ri" ;;;""h ff and conremptuousry ; .;t" il;in. A srarement by LApDdefied chief population, police forces iSrrr,rgbu,t"up the efforrs of liberar noriticians william Parker du.i,rs th. wutt. .ioi'rr"#"i"rsly berrayed ihe attitude of bhJk people, "w;';';;;p and they are on the bo*om.,, No wonder most blacks f.r."d urd ai***Jrfre police.16 the police roward Chicago was the O^:i:O .:,r.T1","; by the Civil Rights M,yemenr to mount a mqior campaign of nonviorent d'irect action in the North. Its fail_ ;T;::j:lT,;:11I::::*, : *. N_,r,^"r,.,a, r.""*, *r,1,J,"",,_ rv,, tole suscepr*r."irffifill;xi'l;ffirl,::: too deep, and roo violent, protest. For King, however,chi."g" *", r*.rurirr,"rrrliiffii* thut th" civil Rights Movement had badri,r"J.*ri^"r.d " the depth uid t.r,a"ity of racism' He also rearned ,rru, u r"r'r,ur,iJ*t"r.rr, of brack people vocary advocated violence, and that a smarer but st,r significant minority were ready to engage in it. The orohlem was not,;;;;t North-he ro-*undrd ua.rp.*i-.;;;";, King,s lack of support in the the ab,ity of a viorent minor- 304 BETTER DAY CONIING - ity to render his leadership ineffective. Nonviolent protest could only be sustained by hope and optimism. In the North, bitterness and disillusionment seemed to rule. As a Harlem high school student told a group ofvisiting high schoolers from Mississippi, "Tirrning the other cheek is a load of trash. Up here we understand what snake is biting us." This was the language of Malcolm X, not Martin Luther Kirg.t' Malcoll,t X .s'No Hts LncncY Malcolm X had been murdered six months before the Watts riot-gunned down by members of the Nation of Islam-at the age of thirty-nine. However, he had already established a formidable reputation as the leading black critic of nonviolence, the foremost black advocate of armed self-defense, and the black man who most effectively articulated antiwhite anger. In the early 1960s Malcolm X had represented an ideological counterforce to the Civil Rights Movement-one that was often invoked by civil rights leaders themselves for the purpose of frightening white elites. After his death, Malcolm became a heroic symbol both to advocates of violence and proponents of black nationalism. In the Northern ghettos, Malcolm, dead, often seemed more influential than King, alive. Given his longtime attachment to the small, cultist Nation of Islam (NOI), Malcolm,s influence seemed remarkable. Founded in 1930 by wallace D. Fard, and led since 1934 by Elijah Muhammad, the NOI's strange theology, strict discipline, financial demands upon members, and uncompromising re- jection of American society kept its support small-smaller than all but the most esoteric Christian denominations. Yet the NOI commanded respect and influence out of proportion to its numbers, largely because it sought, with considerable success, to combat the destructive influences of the ghetto by inculcating values of racial pride, sobriety, hard work, and self-respect into its members. It specialized in recruiting criminals, drug addicts, and prostitutes and transforming them into models of piety and puritanism-Malcolm X himself had been converted while in prison for burglary. Urging blacks to practice self-help and to build a separate economy, the NOI developed successful business enterprises by pooling the resources and efforts of its members. By 1959 the NOI boasted 30 temples in 28 cities. Left to Elijah Muhammad, the Nation of Islam would never have become a political force in black America. Characterizing white people as "blue-eyed devils," the NOI believed that blackpeople should separate from American society to form their own black nation-an unrealistic and unconvincing message. The Nation of Islam abstained fiom politics and refused to have anything _a The Rise and Fall ofBlack powcr to do with the civil Rights regarding its quest for inregration thoroughly misguided. Thus{ovgment, the NoI was iro.rpoliti"uiurrd nonrevorutionary. t'Like other successful messianic or revolutionary movements,,, writes histo_ rian George Fredrickson, "[it] created a separate world for its converts that isolated and prevented them from the pain of confronting the world outside.,,r8 Malcolm X had recoiled from thaiworld while .h.,iu*uy r.o- it, serving a prison sentence for burglary between 1946 and 1952. Born in rg25 in Omaha, Nebraska, Malcolm Littre's early rife made a striking contrast to that of Martin.Lurher King,Jr. King was .aised i., a tight-knit ru*]ty i. which parents and children had clearly defined roles, and *il... strict discipline, exerted by a stern father, had been baranced by love and security. Ki.rglr'fu*ity,..ro..,ver' was rooted in a strong institution, the church, and a stable communiry as Auburn Avenueo the heart of black Atlanta. By uny standard, Ki;;,, family model of success and achievement. Malcolmis childhood, bfcontrast, was scarred by instability, extreme poverry, and absence oramiiiaiaffection. was a His father, Earl Little, a devoted follower of Marcus Garvey, came from a family "riddled with criminality" and pragued by ,,serf-destructive violence.,, A jackleg preacher, occasional laborer, urr*d *o,rid-be businessmurr, gu.t died in a streetcar accident in r 9i I when Malcolm was six years old. Eight years later his mother, Louise, an immigrant from the British west Indiesjwal .o^rrir mental institution. The eight children separatedl Marcolm was praced in ajuvenile home run by_a white couple, then #th black foster parents. But he never settled down, and in r94r, at age fifteen, he went to live with his halfsister, Ella, in Boston, only to drift into u-Hf. of d*gs and crime.re strangely, but with a certain logic, King's bac[ground ted . to a in the segregated - t th gave him co,,fi d el,, .u.ii i,,," gru"u "",o, ".L tron as a partnership of equals. He accepted the strain of white blood in his ancfstry with equanimity, and there is little evidence that he suffered from self-hatred or felt conflicted over his raciar identity. lTi ::::::l,L:j,n." th J The Michiga., towrrs where M-alcolm grew up, however, failed to provide Marcolm with a cultural anchor, for black population was both too small and too diffuse. More-the over, Malcolm's close contact with white society-he was the only black child in.his class,-for example-exacerbated feelings of emotional insecurity and cultural confusion. Having experienced integration under the most distressing circumstances, he spent his adult Iife deniuncing whites as evil and seeking to build the secure black community that he never knew as a child. Prison, ironically, proved Malcolm,s salvation. First, he became an avid in being transferred to an institution that boasted the best prison library in the_state. "I only just finished trr. .ighth giade,,, he wrote his sister Ella, "but I've always been an eyes and ears (even an nose) on the side'" Now he deepened his quick-witted intellige.r". *ith serious study, reader and succeeded 306 BETTER DAY COMING especially in history philosophy, and religion. Second, Malcolm learned to practice self-discipline: restraint of emotions, a refusal to be goaded, was both a necessary survival tactic and a means of developing inner strength. "One good thing you learn how to do when you're in here, and that is how to use a little self-control." Malcolm soon came to equate self-control with an almost Hegelian belief in the omnipotence ofwillpower: If we could only most fully realize the importance and power of thought and thinking. It is the most inspiring Force in the universe. . . .Words that we speak cause vibrations that traverse the entire universe. . . . For one to control one's thoughts and feelings, means one can actually control one's atmosphere and all who walk into its sphere of influence. Such single-mindedness and self-confidence endowed Malcolm with extraordinary charisma. It also, however, caused him to exaggerate the power of the spoken word. In terms of racial leadership, Malcolm Little became a talker rather than a doer, a rhetorician, not a tactician.20 The third crucial event of Malcolm's prison years, his conversion to the Nation of Islam in 1948-49, not only gave him a new purpose in life but also enabled him to review his past so that the family tragedies and personal failures of his youth were caused by the deliberate actions of racist whites. His father had not accidentally stumbled under the wheels of a streetcar but had been pushed onto the track by members of the Klan-like Black Legion. His grandmother had been raped by his white grandfather on the island of Grenada. His mother had been committed so as to stop her teaching Islam. Both his parents, Malcolm convinced himself, had been Muslims. "We children were too young to fully ever know what was going down . . . but, Brother, these devils were even then stampinq out Islam." A strong element of fantasy, even paranoia, buttressed his new faith'21 After his release fiom prison in 1952 Malcolm X-the X stood for the Aliican name he never knew-became the most dynamic and successful minister in the Nation of Islam. He organized temples, raised funds, recruited new members, and acted as Muhammad's principal spokesman and representative. A 1959 television documentary o'The Hate That Hate Produced," projected Malcolm to a wider public audience: whites, for the first time, were exposed to the NOI's bloodcurdling rhetoric, and they came away both appalled and fascinated. Malcolm's debating skills and taste for publicity soon made him a familiar figure on the university speaking circuit, a regular guest on radio, and a man who could always be relied upon to provide newspaper reporters with good copy. The Rise and Fall ofBlack power 307 Malcolm presented himself as the authentic spokesman of the poor, op_ pressed black masses; a fearress truth tener who exposed the timidity and fu?oyiy 9f crvrl rights leaders.rike King; an uncompromising prophet whose jeremiads described the historic cri*eJ of the white .u"" irr-il their infamy. Few blacks failed to relish Malcolm's quick gift for phrasemaking, _repartee, and abiliry to best his opponents in debate. ,,He was ; ;.._.;;;speaker,,, recalled Roy wilkins, "the toughest man in debate that I,ve ..i.rzz Although whites usually viewed him as a "u".whoresale racist, Malcolm,s denunciation of white people as "snakes" and ,,devils, failed to offend blacks. Malcolm expressed the bitterness and anger, albeit in an extreme man?penly ,:.,,rLrj virtually every black person shared. ,,Deep in the heart of fh"k adult,".fames Farmer berieveJ, "lives some ofMalcolm and some of"rr..y King, side by side'" Malcolm "helped-us enormously," thought Roy wilkins ,by,,cata- loguing the-wrongs done Negro., irr rr.h'po*..irl hr;rug.i-;rt u, blu"k people could respect King without necessa.ily acceptinlg ,fr.-piir"rrprry so they could applaud Malcolm without lonvigl-e1ce, i" the Nati,on of Islam's theology. "Wh;; Malcolm spoke,,, writes George Fredrickson, "listeners . . . did not need to accept the riterar truth of his fantastic account ofhuman history but could uppr""iut. it instead as . . . symboti" .."a.rirg or the black experience.rr23 Four aspects of Malcolm X's message i ,r [ai.i"g proved particularry influentiar. The first was his strong emphasis on_raciar p"ride. This was nothing new, of course, having been central to Marcus Gu*"yi and early 1960s, however, it popurariry in the r920s. In the rg50s ..pr...rt"iu ,trit irrf contrast ,o irr. irrr"g.uriorr_ minded civil Rights Morrem"nt. Malcorm insisted that brack Americans had to purge themselves of the false consciousness racism, had distorted their_personarities, hidden that, througf, trr.i, du*.y urra t.rrii.rrir, ,"a ai- vided them among themselves- Light-comprexioned himself, vruiJom demned color conscio"rl.:., within"the group, prairing the treartf "orof ail blact *iih th" darkest skins and most African f:ph,including-especially-thor. rearures' "In some *ur_1i'wrote Farmer, "his appeal to the brack consciousness was as strong as Kingrsl in other ways, stronger.r, Malcolmrs appeal to racial pride had a particuiarry strong upp.ut to rower-class bracks who reintegrationist ambitions oirriiat.-"tuss, and ,rr"" righi.;_skinned, ffl[|.ji. Malcolm also, like Garvey, stressed the African dimension of the brack identity. He was_hardly unique in looking to Africa: in the 1950s and 1960s, as states like Ghana, K..ryu, and Nigerla fro_ g.irirf, colonialism, and as bracks in south ,,ir.i"u "*..g"dupurrh.id, struglred ugui.rit ,h. civil Rights Movement drew inspiration from Af.i"urr latioruris*. Medgar ATl"1i _BETTER DAY COMING Evers named a son after Mau Mau leader Jomo Kenyatta; Ralph Abernathy named a son after Kwame Nkrumah, who led Ghana to independence, and Albert Luthuli, president of the African National Congress. To Malcolm, however, the rise of black Africa was part of a much wider revolt of darkskinned peoples against racism and colonialism-a worldwide revolution of such inexorable force that the dominance of the "white world" would be shattered by the power and numbers of "black, brown, red, and yellow." Malcolm drew inspiration from black Africa, yes, but also from the Chinese revolution, the Algerian revolution, and the Cuban revolution. "The black revolution is sweeping Asia, is sweeping Africa, is rearing its head in Latin America."25 Malcolm's third contribution was his outspoken advocacy of violence. Malcolm condemned nonviolence as cowardly and ineffective, insisting that black people had both a right and a duty to defend themselves and their families. "We believe in a fair exchange. An eye for an eye. A tooth for a tooth. A head for a head and a life for a life. If this is the price of freedom, we won't hesitate to pay the price." This was hardly an extreme view. Many blacks in the South believed in, and practiced, armed self-defense, sometimes on an organized basis. The NAACP endorsed self-defense as a constitutional right. The Old Testament lex talionis was thoroughly in accord with American tradition.26 Malcolm's position, however, went beyond self-defense. Despite his mockinnocent denials, Malcolm often insisted that violence had to be central to black liberation. Repeatedly, he predicted racial warfare, mass bloodshed, and a "day of slaughter . . . for this sinful white world." In one of his more chilling rhetorical flights, he argued that blacks needed their own "Mau Mau" in order to eliminate "Uncle Toms." In Kenya, the Mau Mau "started getting them one by one, all those Toms. One after another, they'd find those Uncle Tom Africans by the roadside. Today they're free. . . . That's the same thing that will happen here. We've got too many of our own people who stand in the way. They're too squeamish." In railing against black ministers, he urged that "Churches should be bombed and preachers killed." Seemingly endorsing ((If I go home and my indiscriminate retaliatory violence, he explained that child has blood running down her leg and someone tells me a snake bit her, I'm going out and kill snakes, and when I find a snake I'm not going to look and see if he has blood on his.jaws."27 The fourth ingredient in Malcolm's popularity was his appeal to black manhood. Historically, black men had found it difficult to establish a secure position as head of the family. Slavery discrimination, poverty, unemployment, and the disorganizing impact of migration had all contributed to family instability, and made the mother, in many cases, the main breadwinner and The Rise and Fall ofBlack Power J09 principal fount of authority in the family. women, more often than men, held black families together. The sociological literature of the 1950s and 1960s attributed many of the di{ficulties experienced by blacks in the Northern cities to the allegedly "matriarchal" character of the black family and the black man's lack of status. whatever the truth of the matter-and the notion of black society as matriarchal aroused fierce controversy-it was undeniably true that many blacks, men and women, yearned for the restoration of a ,,tra- ditional" family structure, with fathers clearly at the head. The Nation of Isofthe sexes that represented an exaggerated version of the "traditional" family: women obeying men, men protecting womenand guarding them against the sexual predations ofwhite men. , As the civil Rights Movement challengedJim crow, however, Malcolm X became dissatisfied with the apolitical stance of the NoI. Elil'ah Muhammad,s only proposed solution to America's race problem was the resettlement of America's black population inside a separate state. How that state would be created, who would furnish the land, and how blacks might be persuaded to lam practiced a division move there remained unanswered questions. Malcolm dutifully-parroted the separatist line, but with increasing lack of conviction. Elijah Muhammad,s se- cret dealings with white supremacist groups heightened Malcolm,s unease: like Garvey in the 1920s, Muhammad entered irrto secret negotiations with Klux Klan-talks to which Malcolm himself was u pu.tyl while attacking King and other civil rights leaders as "uncle Toms,,, u.rd *hil. preaching the need to retaliate against white racists, the Nation of Islam *u, tryirg tJ an accord with people who were bombing black churches and'killing 11acfr the Ku black children. Malcolm was ashamed and frustrated. The Nation of Islam, he believed, should be o'engaged in more action.. . . [w]herever black people committed themselves, in the Little Rocks and Birminghams and other places, militant Muslims should also be there.,,2S Thciturn, camera-shy, and devoid of obvious charisma, Muhammad concluded that Malcolm's populariry and ambition threatened his own control of the NoI. Malcolm, for his part,lost all respect for Muhammad when he discovered the extent of the latter's extramarital affairs. The final break came in the winter of 1963*64. Muhammad tried to bring Malcolm to heel. when Kennedy was assassinated, Malcolm commented: "Being an old farm boy myself, chickens coming home to roost never did make m1 sad; they,ve ul*"y, made me glad." Muhammad suspended Malcolm for ninety days and ordered him to cease all public comment. on March B, after it became abundantly clear that Muhammad was determined to breakhim, Malcolm X quit rhe Noi.2e Founding his own church, Muslim Mosque, Inc., and his own political group' the organization of Afro-American unity, Malcolm X cast about for a 310 BETTER DAY COMING new leadership role. Shedding the far-fetched dogmas of the NOI, he re- nounced the idea that all whites were "devils," embraced orthodox Islam, and modified his views on violence-although he called upon blacks to form 'orifle clubs," he made it clear that he advocated self-defense only, and that he knew full well that a violent uprising would be suicidal. He edged toward a rapprochement with the Civil Rights Movementl shortly before his death he visited Selma while King was in jail there. Elijah Muhammad, however, was intent on silencing him. If Muhammad did not direcdy order Malcolm's assassination, concludes historian Claude Andrew Clegg, "he had made it quite clear . . . that the slaying of his former minister had his implicit support."30 During his year of independence from the Nation of Islam, Malcolm failed to build either an organizational base or a plausible strategy for black liberation. Nevertheless, according to historian Clayborne Carson, Malcolm X was "the key individual in the transformation of Affican-American political thought" berween 1964 and 1966. Every element in "Black Power," the slogan populari zedby SNCC in 1966, was anticipated in Malcolm's speeches.3l Yet, ironically, Black Power repudiated the very qualities of the Civil Rights Movement-interracialism and nonviolent direct action-that Malcolm X had been struggling to accept shordy before his death. Apart from its celebration of racial pride, Black Power invoked the most destructive and unrealistic aspects of Malcolm's pre-1964 position: his bitter critique of nonviolence, his call for black separatism, and his denunciation of white people. Above all, Black Power adopted Malcolm's rhetoric of violence. To be sure, Malcolm's best-known phrases-"the ballot or the bullet" and "by any means necessary"-implied the possibility of peaceful liberation. But Malcolm made it clear that if blacks resorted to violence, whites would be responsible. Most important of all, Malcolm's rhetoric suggested that violence, or threatening violence, was a realistic strategy for black Americans. SNCC AND (68LACr Pownn" SNCC's embrace of Black Nationalism was rooted in its experiences in Mississippi. By 1966, SNCC's bruising and prolonged encounter with racism in that state had left many staff members physically attenuated, mentally exhausted, and emotionally drained. A condition called "battle fatigue," or simply "burnout," now merged with bitter disillusionment. The failure of the MFDP challenge in 1964 represented, for many, the last straw, demonstrating the bankruptcy of SNCC's political strategy. In addition, SNCC had become wracked by internal tensions, the most se- .The Rise and l'all of Black power Jl I rious of which was a division between blacks and whites. The Freedom summer had seen about 900 white students descend upon Mississippi. Many blacks resented the volunteers for their middle-class backgrounds, missiorary attitudes, superior education, as well as for the media intlerest they attracted. t'white workersr" complained one volunteer, *are often subjeci ,o ,"u.r" racial abuse and even violence from Negro workers.,, sexual rel"ationships between white and black staffmembers complicated and exacerbated inteiracial tensions. white female volunteers received persistent and aggressive sexual attentions from some black staff members. If they refused Jrich attentions, they might be abused as racists. "I always dreaded saturday nights,,, recalled one white woman, ttbecause we'd all meet in our apartment, and drink wine and then when the black guys got a little drunk,lhey,d pour out all their hatred-at... us 'white bitches.,,, The adjitio., of so many white staff members after the Freedom Summer compounded the problem, and made some blacks feel that SNCC had lost its basic identity.32 By 1966, SNCC was an exhausted, demoralized, and dividei organizarion. some simply withdrew from the struggle: Bob Moses changediis name, ceased speaking to white people, and emigrated to tnzanii. others, like chairmanJohn Lewis, clung ro their faith in nonviolence and still believed in the possibilities of liberal reform. But a growing number concluded that nonviolence had failed, that whites could not be trusted, and that the political system was rotten to the core. As SNCC floundered, some activists attempted to devise a new political strategy. In Alabama, stokely carmichael organized the Lowndes county hatred-racial Freedom organization (LCFO), a third party that sported a growling bhcl panther as its symbol. The LCFO embodied carmichael,s beli-ef that neither the Democrats nor the Republicans could represent black interests. c,you don't imitate white politicsr" he explained, ,,because white politics are corrupt. . . . Negroes have to view themselves as colonies, urrd .ight now is time follhem to quit being white men's colonies and become indeplndent.,, Meany]!le,in Atlanta, a group of sNCC sraffmembers led by Bilr ware argued that SNCC ought to become "Black staffed, Black-controlled, and Black-dnanced.,, white people no longer had any useful role in the civil Rights Movemenq in fact, their continuing presence was positivery harmful becJrse it perpetuated the myth of white superiority. _stated "If we are to proceed toward true liberation,,, the Adanta Project, "we must cut ourserves offflom white peopre. . . . we must form our own institutions . . . [and] write our own histories.,,33 In May 1966, in a chaotic election thar highlighted sNCC,s inrernal decay, a rump of staffmembers displacedJohn Lewis and elected stokely carmichael as chairman. The election did not indicate a wholehearted acceptance of the _.JI2 BETTER DAY COMING Atlanta Project's black separatism, which even Carmichael and his supporters viewed as extreme. It did, however, signal a repudiation of the principles that had guided SNCC since its inception in 1960. SNCC no longer had any interest, in the short term at least, in seeking common ground with white liberals, or in interracial coalitions of any kind. "Coalition's no good," Carmichael explained. "'Cause what happens when a couple of Negroesjoin in with a bunch of whitesP They get absorbed, that's what." Only when blacks could negotiate &om a position of strength should they enter into coalitions with whites. SNCC also rejected integration, dismissing it as a middle-class concern that had no relevance to the vast majority of black people. Integration was tokenism, Carmichael explainedr "a subterfuge for white supremacy." Given its new stress on black consciousness, SNCC expected white staffmembers to organize inside the white, not the black, community; it soon voted to expel them altogether. The new-look SNCC abandoned its commitment to nonviolence.sa The "Meredith March" ofJune 1966-a protest march through Mississippi initiated byJames Meredith, and then taken up, when Meredith was shot, by SNCC, CORE, and the SCLC-gave SNCC a means of publicizing its new stance. SNCC bowed to King's insistence that white people be allowed to take part in the march, because only King-who said he would quit if whites were excluded-could guarantee the media interest that SNCC planned to exploit. SNCC gained a point, however, when King accepted, albeit reluctandy, the participation of the Deacons for Deferlse, a group of armed men from Bogalusa, Louisiana. Then, when the march arrived at the SNCC stronghold of Greenwood, SNCC publicly and directly challenged King's leadership. After being arrested, Carmichael told a crowd that "Every courthouse in Mississippi ought to be burned tomorrow to get rid of the dirt." "What do you want?" he shouted. "Black power!" the audience replied. "What do you want?" he repeated. "Black power," they roared back again. Aghast, King tried to persuade Carmichael to abandon the aggressive-sounding slogan. Carmichael refused.35 Although SNCC did not really explain what it meant, the slogan "Black Power" spread like wildfire, in some way capturing the mood of a large segment of black America. The conjunction of the two words, and the assertive, defiant manner in which they were hurled forth, transcended their literal ttColored" and ttNemeaning. The term ttblack" had a particular resonance. gro" had always struck some blacks as weaselly circumlocutions that sought to deny the racial identity of African Americans. Moreover, white Southerners, ttNegror" pronouncing it ttnigro" even polite ones, tended to mangle the word ttBlack" ttnigra." More importantr embraced, rather than evaded, racial or even identity. It seemed bolder and stronger than "Negro"l it stressed the dark features of t}e majority rather than the light physiognomy of the elite. By promoting racial pride, Black Power represented, in King's words, "a psychological The Rise and Fall ofBlack Power Sl3 call to manhood" that performed the valuable function of overcoming deeply rooted feelings of insecuriry and inferiority. Blackness was somethingto celebrate, not be ashamed of. Indeed, the most obvious and enduring effect of the slogan was to consign the word Negro to semantic oblivion.Jo lvhatever SNCC meant it to signift the term "Black power,, appealed to a -civil growing sense of confidence among many black people. The Rights Movement had rarely discussed the matter of how black Southerners should use the vote once they had gained it. King's talk of creating a ,,beloved community" neglected the fact that blacks needed to develop a coherent political strategy for obtaining pow€r-or at least a share of power-as a group. Simply voting for the Democratic Party was not enough. Like Italian-Americans, IrishAmericans, andJewish Americans, blacks needed to exercise a degree ofpoliti- solidarity. The movement's stress on integration, moreover, might be relevant to the issues of public accommodations and schools, but segregation still defined much of the everyday lives of black people, both Norih and south. The cal civil Rights Movement had given virtually no thought to the future of black churches, colleges, businesses, clubs, and neighborhoods-to the survival of blacks as a distinctive communit2.Facing the reality of the ghetto, groups like coRE had already implemented local "community organiri.rg,, p.ojects that p.opl.. In some respects, therefore, Black power flowed from the success of the civil Rights Movement, and was a logical extension of it. Having achieved legal equaliry blacks needed to unite, and to organize e{fectively, in order to maximize their political and economic power. Defined in terms of racial pride, group solidarity, and the strengthening of black businesses, Black Power was an unexceptionable concept. Indeed, part of the explanation for the slogan's broad appeal was its vagueness and erasticity. Conservatives could define Black Power as black capitalism. Moderates could define it as electoral politics. Nationalists could define it as the cultivation of a separate black culture. Churchmen could define it as liberation theology. Its vagueness, however, was also its weakness; by failing io explain what Black Power meant, SNCC allowed critics to define it in the most negative terms. As soon as SNCC coined the slogan, whites rushed to condemn it. Time called it a "new racism" that was "almost indistinguishable from the wild-eyed doctrines of the Black Muslims." Black power poirrt.d toward sepsought short-term improvements in the living conditions ofpoor aratism and even "black Jacobinism." Even the New Repubh,c, usually sympathetic to black militancy, considered it "dangerously counterproductive.,, PresidentJohnson, vice President Humphrey, and Senator Robert Kennedy all criticized the slogan. "Racism is racism," intoned Humphrey, ,,and there is no room in America for racism of anv color.,,37 _.314 BETTER DAY COMING As well as alienating white liberals, Black Power split the Civil Rights Movement, shattering the fragile coalition that had proved so effective between 1960 and 1965. Roy Wilkins did not mince words: No matter how endlessly they try to explain it, the term "black power" means anti-white power. . . . It is a reverse Mississippi, a reverse Hitler, a reverse Ku Klux Klan. . . . we of the NAACP will have none of this. We have fought it too long. It is the ranging of race against race on the irrelevant basis of skin color. It is the father ofhatred and the mother ofviolence. It is the wicked fanaticism which has swelled our tears, broken our bodies, squeezed our hearts, and taken the blood ofour black and white loved ones. It shall not poison our forward march. A. Philip Randolph, Bayard Rustin, and Whitney Young: head of the National Urban League, also denounced the slogan, although less stridently. Of the major civil rights organizations, only CORE, now led by Floyd McKissick, supported SNCC. King, who considered Black Power to be fundamentally unsound, tried to keep the discussion within the realms of rational debate, and struggled to retain his position as a unifying force at the center of the Civil Rights Movement. He failed in both respects, as each side attacked the other in what Clayborne Carson has aptly called "more a clash of emotions than of ideas."38 President Johnson's continuing escalation of the war in Vietnam, beginning in the summer of 1965 and showing no sign of abatement in 1966, added to the fragmentation of the Civil Rights Movement. SNCC was bitterly opposed to the war, and in 1966 took a strong position against it. When former SNCC staffmemberJulian Bond, who had just been elected to a seat in the Georgia state legislature, endorsed SNCC's stand, the Georgia House of Representatives barred him. It required two Supreme Court decisions to remedy this egregious violation of the democratic process and allow Bond to take his seat. The NAACP and the Urban League, on the other hand, not only refused to condemn the war, but criticized those who did. By stressing their loyalry Roy Wilkins and Whitney Young tried to ingratiate themselves with PresidentJohnson and boost their political influence. King was appalled by the war, but for many months he kept his views largely to himself. When he found himself cold-shouldered by the White House in 1966, however, it became evident that even his rare and relatively mild criticisms of U.S. policy infuriated PresidentJohnson. In April 1967, when King finally condemned the war in forthright terms and aligned himself with the peace movement-"breaking the betrayal of my own silence"-the rI I I I I fhe Rise and Fall ofBlack power s15 .[ohnson administration branded him an ingrate, a poriticar enemy, a naive and to preside.,tii.aideJohn p. Roche, was manipu_ II lared *}t,::ll:Ir:j:""rding by "the Lrommunist-oriented ,peace, tnres.,, From then until Kingrs death a year later, aides,and ua"ir...ffi J onJohnson,s anger over King,s also condem.,"d?rg,, stand, variously caling him a I lf:,:'ly?y_1,* a tool, and aman who was hurting the Civil Rights Movement.ie I ""1,* r]r-o,r.,p.Ierally, the carnage in Vietnam fostered a climate of violence that I made * berret rn peacefirr reform-especiaily reform I nonviorent protest_ h:f to.sustain-' Blacks were dying in vietnam inthrough disproportionate numbersl I civil rights workers were being drJft.d to fight in a war they found repugnant; the government that condemied the vioreice of watts, N.*u.ry*a Detroit was visiting death and destruction on a faraway country inhabited by peopre ofa diflerent race. when the united stut., nuJ'u.".-.]r" ra"silulrar,,,rr,. civil Rights Miu"*.rrt greatest purveyor of violence in the worrd," the no Ionger sustain an ethic ofnonyiolence. "orrd THn AporHEosrs or VrornNcr uninterested in making Black power acceptabre to its critics, sNCc refused defensive. It relished,the noiorietv of Brack pffiievelred in the.publicity it generated, and gladly exploited the news media,s obsession with violence. Instead of refutirig that Brack power meant antiwhite violence, SNCC's fiery rhetoril"hu.g., fanied the flames or a" carmichael's speeches brimmed with "orrtroversy. what crayborne carson described as "purposeful ambiguity"-no specific threats of ,,vague vlorence, b;, il;;;f implications of future raciar reiribution.,, what was a statement rike *Move on over, or we'll move on over you, actually supposed to mean?a0 soon, however, carmichae|s cails ro. ,iot.r". r."u-. expricit. ,,when you talk of Black Power," he told one audienc e,,oyoutalk abouibringing this country to its knees. when you talk of Brack power, yr" ,ar a movement that will smash everything "i'building western civilization has created.,, sNCC workers discovered of Martiniq";;;;ychiatrist -writinls Fra,tz Fanon, who witnessed.the and ,rppi,.d Argeria,s struggle for independence from France. In his most fu,,,o,r, book,The Wrr;rtr; Earth, Fanon argued that violence,.fol "f-the c.olgnized people, was ,,clea.-nsing llj:.:j,lP 1 that "frees the native from his inferioriry coniprex.,, By a force,, trr. ti;;;ui u. nup lrown replaced carmichael as chairman of sNCC in rg6z,sNCc,s rhetoric lost all restraint.at sNCC's rapid decline, mirrored by coRE, showed how difficurt it was ro H =il6 BETTER DAY COMING translate Black Power into a practical program that could win popular support.In the South, blacks gladly invoked Black Power, but grassroots activism remained firmly within the tradition of the Civil Rights Movement: boycotts, demonstrations, voter registration drives, political campaigns, cooperative busittcommunity action" programs- Most ness ventures, and government-funded blacks recognized that the South was changing for the better; they knew that talk of revolution was absurd. Separatism, too, held out litde appeal: when blacks constituted a minority in every state, and a m4jority in only 83 coun- ties, Carmichael's proposal that blacks form independent political parties seemed impractical. Even in SNCC's former stronghold of Mississippi,writes Dittmer, SNCC's o'strident black nationalism, . . . with its underlying John theme that whites no longer had a role to play in a black movement, did not attract a large following among local people." Many churchgoing blacks were o{fended by antiwhite rhetoric.a2 In the North, where urban rioting was an annual occurrence befween 1965 and 1968, Black Power seemed perfectly attuned to the mood of the ghettos. Even so, writes Clayborne Carson, SNCC proved "unable to transform racial anger into local movements that could be sustained." This was partly because SNCC mistook the riots for rebellions and falsely concluded that a revolu- tionary situation was at hand. But the riots did not necessarily indicate that most blacks were alienated fiom the political system: they were explosions of anger against police brutality that evoked brutal overreactions by the police and National Guard. lnsofar as they had a political purpose, it was to draw attention to racial discrimination and to extract concessions from government.43 As its income evaporated-it had depended on white contributors, most of whom stopped giving-SNCC withered away; by 1967 its presence in the South had virtually disappeared. FBI infiltration and dirty tricks helped to dig SNCC's grave, but the root cause of its demise came from within SNCC itself. As the historian Richard H. King has written, "[T]he tragedy of SNCC was exemplified in its tr4jectory from non-violence to violence, from indigenous community organizing to affirmations of solidarity with the Third World. It was stranded in a no man's land of the revolutionary consciousness without a revolutionary situation, a decolonized psyche outside a colonial setting." By 1968 SNCC was moribund.aa The ghetto riots, however, inadvertently encouraged what was, perhaps, the most self-defeating aspect of Black Power: a cult of the gun. Ironically, for all its bloodcurdling rhetoric, SNCC itself never resorted to violence in a serious or systematic way. Although Stokely Carmichael brandished a submachine gun on the cover of one of his books, it was a dramatic pose only. rI I I fhe power Rise and Fall ofBlack st7 I I Neither he nor orhers in sNCC were prepared to use guns in the service of advocated. ;"; ;;;i;ups were. l,n: ::':l:,io".,1:y panther I uD (Uruted slaves) and were party for self-Defense (Bpp) same state, california. Both uirio.r, or6u"r. r,u- the Black foundedin sale year, 1966, and in the II wereinspired by fe Marcorm X, and ,.pr.r..rt.d "o-p.rirrf t ,,ur,o','.jil;He I bestseller ;H*lI 3i*;' T):,:T::"'!:i:ro", of lg 67 Ouo f ss; r^ oy C tra;rman-';;; ;:;;;,?, i;l surprise ff "Tffi:: grr,, o; everybody,, lips. But thcse new groups were more likery to .rr" th.i. guns against each other than "y.. grows Black Power lP. . out of-the barrel of u against whites. The Black Panther party, founded in Oakland, California, by Huey p. New_ uld Bobby seale, espoused an eclectic mixture of black nationalism and l:" Marxism. It recruited ,[._ri-: ]""d "f ;;"ple as the Nation of Islam: in seale's words, "brothers offthe bl""k-brothers who had been out there rob_ bing banks, brorhers *,h. h.r{ b"." pi;;;g, brothers ,"lo frrJ-l.en ped_ dling dope, brothers who ain,t gorrru ,ui.-r" shit, brothers who had been fighting pigs [policel.',.consciorisry a.f"rii"g from orthodo* Muoir-, th. irot.'iu.r*,, to be the natural base of.a rev_ olutionary movement. vehemently cort -ft.,o.rs of groups that made raciar identity the center of their .orr"io,rr.r.rI_it d.rided US,s emphasis on African culture as "pork chop nationulrr-i-th. panthers denieithat they were anti-whire, Panthers considered this "rumpen and stressed their wilringness to alry with white radicars. The BPP's ten-point program combined revorutionary and nationalist demands; it includeJ the exemptio" ..fi*irt, of b;;i -en from military service, the release from jail of all black pri.o.r.rr, ."a to police ;;;;ir;;; United Nations-supervised plebis"it. "" to decide ,t "land, bread, housing, educatiorr-, . rr,r." of the ,,bla.k ce, and peace.r,45 "f"tfd"gj",t ofblack l*rli".;u"r.",, ""t*rm ,,,Y::.tl*-":?]i* glasses, the panthers exuded charisma sprinkling their talk with expretives and form of political rhetoric. They "oro.ry,,, u.,d btack beret, and dark sun_ Jil;;;;#;ffi;#. irrJr., rhey turned profanity into a pe.sorrin.Jth. cool, streetwise, hard-edged, which many young i., the ghettos aspired. The panthers -.r, :rug",t at_ tracted youths from the sffeet gangs and po'iiti"ir.d ,rr.,,. irr.y uil']r,.u",.a wider support in the brack cori.m"iw r, r""oilirg ghetto ," for needy".iiir""J""a, children, recruitng doctors and medical studentslo stafffree h.urth clinics, rror., egistration programs, and setting "orrarr"ii'.rg "rft.rurion schoors,, for black chil- leter police harassment, providing r... r..um.ts lren. "p The Panthers made flrrns, however, the focus of their identity and appeal. lhey collected a veritabre arsenal orpirtor., ,rrotguns, and rifles and, invok- H _ 3I8 BETTER DAY COMING ing the Second Amendment, carried them around in public, sometimes sporting bandoliers filled with shotgun cartridges. On May 2,1967,in a display of bravado that made national news, thirty armed Panthers strode into the state capitol in Sacramento to protest against a bill that proposed to restrict the public display of guns. "Huey understood a revolutionary culture," explained Seale, "and Huey understood how arms and guns become a part of the culture of a people in the revolutionary struggle."a6 Ostensibly committed to yiolence in self-defense only, the Panthers attempted to "police" the Oakland police, whom they accused of harassment, brutality, and racism, by shadowing their patrols. If the occasion called for it, the Panthers confronted the police by brandishing their weapons. Inevitably, such clashes sparked gun battles between police and Panthers-in one, Huey Newton killed policemanJohn Frey. The Panthers'slogan "Offthe Pig!" (kill the police) was hardly calculated to ease friction between the two groups. But the Panthers usually got the worst of it. Encouraged by the Nixon administration-"The Panthers are nothing but hoodlums," said one Justice Department o{ficial, ttwe've got to get them"-law enforcement authorities targeted the Panthers and cracked down hard. Between October 1967 and December 1969, writes historian Kenneth O'Reilly, "pa.ty members engaged police officers in more than a dozen firefights . . . and at least two policemen and as many as ten Panthers died." Over 300 Panthers were arrested in 1969 alone, "on murder, armed robbery rape, bank robbery drug trafficking, burglary and dozens of other charges." On December 4,1969,at 4 t.u.,fourteen Chicago police o{ficers burst into an apartment and shot dead Panther leaders Fred Hampton and Mark Clark. Hampton was asleep in bed; Clark fired a single round before being felled by a hail of bullets. Four others in the apartment were seriously wounded.aT The FBI also played a major role in destroying the Black Panthers. FBI agents tapped telephones, recruited spies and informers, and utilized a panoply of "covert action" techniques-the kind it had used against the Communist Party and the Ku Klux Klan-in order to disrupt the Black Panthers. One ploy was to embitter personal relationships inside the organization by spreading rumors of sexual infidelities. Another was the use of agents proaocateurs and "black propaganda" in order to incite violence between the Panthers and rival organizations. For example, a bitter feud between the Panthers and US, surreptitiously urged on by the FBI,left several people dead. Given the FBI's efforts to discredit the moderate, nonviolent King, it was hardly surprising that the Bureau targeted the Panthers. Still, in Kenneth O'Reilly's words, "Hoover's pursuit of the Black Panthers was unique . . . in its total disregard for human rights and life itself."a8 The Rise and Fall ofBlack Power 319 The repression of the Black Panthers was a classic case of '6overkill." The Panthers' talk of revolution was largely bombast, the kind of angry braggadocio that was typical of Black Power rhetoric at the end of the 1960s. The Panthers'violent language and fearsome slogans were not meant to be taken literally. The notion that the Panthers presented a revolutionary threat to America was absurd. Nevertheless, the Panthers were not wholly innocent victims. Although amateurishly inept as reyolutionaries, they took their political doctrines seriously. They amassed weapons and, for a time, went out of their way to provoke the police. They also found it difficult to throw off earlier criminal habits: the Panthers engaged in extortion, robbery prostitution, drug trafficking, and other illegal activity. They enforced internal discipline through beatings. They did not hesitate to inflict violence on, and even kill, informers, undercover agents, and other opponents. Huey Newton, the Panthers'handsome, intense, charismatic leader, became a cocaine-addicted autocrat who committed acts of brutal and sadistic violence, including murder. He died in 1989, shot by a drug dealer.ae The fate of the Black Panthers illustrated the dangers of organizing a political movement around guns. With no semblance of internal democracy, the Panthers depended upon the dictatorial authority, violently enforced, of an individual leader. Challenges to that authority invariably led to violent feuds and schisms that sometimes resulted in death. The Panthers) cornmitment to violence also made them especially vulnerable to the destabilizing tactics of the FBI. Adopting the conspiratorial methods of revolutionaries, but lacking the fanaticism of true revolutionaries, the Panthers developed a siege mentality. That feeling of vulnerability was easily exploited by FBI agents, who were past masters at infiltrating secretive organizations, and who had unlimited supplies of cash to buy informers. When internal discipline came to be viewed as a matter of life and death, the fear of spies and traitors tipped over into a destructive paranoia that fed upon itself. Finally, the Panthers fatally erred in believing that a revolutionary situation existed. In the view of historian William Van Deburg, Black Power was by no means a failure. It fuelled an upsurge of black consciousness that had profound and constructive psychological benefits. "By decolonizing their minds, cultivating feelings of racial solidarity, and contrasting their world with that of the oppressor, black Americans came to understand themselves better." Black Power also educated blacks politically, fostering grassroots activism as well as national political caucuses. Its greatest impact, perhaps, was in the realm of culture: Black Power embodied a new aesthetic that stimulated an outburst of creativity in music, art, literature, and fashion. ttBlack Power's unconquerable _.BETTER 320 DAY COMING spirit and its message of self-definition are visible to all who take the time to familiarize themselves with contemporary Afro-American culturer" writes Van Deburg.5o Others are far less positive, regretting Black Power as a tragic wrong turn. ttBlack Power was a dead endr" movenrent veteran Andrew Young believes. "It provided emotional release and the illusion of manhood, without the con- tent. . . . The advocates of Black Power had failed to master their own fears. With their posturing, they could trigger polarization but not genuine social change." To the historian Gerald Horne, Black Power promoted a cult of black masculinity that was anti-intellectual, misogynic, and violent; its "potent antiwhite character" further isolated blacks, rendering them even more vulnerable to repression and exploitation. Clayborne Carson made a similar assessment: "While failing to produce greater power to black people, black power militancy actually led to a decline in the ability ofAfrican-Americans to affect the course of American politics." Ultimately, Carson concludes, "the black power movement. . . promised more than the civil rights movement but delivered less."5l THn AssnssrNATroN oF MARTTN LuTHER KrNc In 1967-68, King had contended against the divisiveness and irrationality of Black Power by trying to forge an interracial coalition around the issue of poverty. Racial inequalities, he argued, were rooted in the structure of American capitalism; they could neyer be eliminated without a thoroughgoing reform of the economic system. King never explained how the white majority might be induced to support a radical redistribution of wealth and power in favor of the poor. Yet he believed that the issue of stark poverty, if skillfully dramatized through nonviolent protest, had the capacity to arouse the conscience ofthe nation and create the kind ofbroad consensus that President Johnson had tried, but failed, to mobilize for his own War on Poverty. The SCLC's Poor People's Campaign recruited representatives of the poor-blacks, whites from Appalachia, Chicanos, Indians-in an effort to exert political pressure upon the federal goyernment. King proposed to take the poor to Washington, to house them in a shantytown, and to stay there, engaging in nonviolent demonstrations, until the government acted. Before he could put his plan into operation, however, he was shot and killed in Memphis, Tennessee, by James Earl Ray, a career criminal and convinced racist. King was not yet forty years old. His death triggered rioting in Washington, Chicago, Baltimore, Kansas Ciry and half a dozen other cities. King's staff and close advisers had always doubted the feasibility of the The Rise and Fall ofBlack Power 321 Poor People's Campaign. Nevertheless, buoyed by an inpouring of money and sympathy in the wake of King's death, the SCLC's new president, Ralph David Abernathy, decided to proceed with the protests. Without King's guiding hand and moral authority, however, the SCLC stumbled and fell. Dogged by incessant rain, inept leadership, and lack ofclear pulpose, the Poor People's Campaign was a shambles. Instead of being a shining symbol of the dignity of the poor, the SCLC's shantytown, "Resurrection City," became a gang-infestedjungle-an eyesore and an embarrassment. The campaign sputtered to a dispiriting conclusion, having achieved virtually nothing. The SCLC never recovered from the fiasco. \{hether King's presence would have made a difference is unknowable. Nevertheless, his death removed the one person who had the capacity to unify the black population, command broad respect from whites, and bridge the racial divide. It was an incalculable loss. Name: WHY DID THE US FIGHT IN THE VIETNAM WAR? The activists in this case were the Viet Mihn forces who were led by Ho Chi Minh, a communist. This is a movement that Ho Chin started when he was still a member of the French Communist party. The forces fought against the French colonialist and the threatened Chinese occupation. They were very popular among the people and managed to garner four million followers and have a 500 thousand man army in a span of just four years. They mainly employed guerilla tactics in their warfare and won against the American backed French army leading to the splitting of the country into two, North and South Vietnam. . Later on, they also joined forces with South Vietnamese guerilla armies to fight against the American supported Diem government. The issues they were fighting against were imposition of rule and authority by a foreign power and oppression. For instance, while the Vietnamese believed in communism, the French was against it and tried to impose their non-communism rule over them. Through their activism, the Viet Mihn caused America to be divided as there was not a consensus on whether to invade Vietnam or not. To the Viet Mihn, a people are supposed to govern themselves in their own way and not have any way imposed on them as different people have different values, cultures and belief systems. This can be seen by the Viet Minh’s resistance to French governance and the threatened Chinese occupation. Hanoi’s decision to reinforce the South’s guerilla warfare in spite of North Vietnam’s pressing economic and political problems further reinforces this. Ho Chi Mihn’s call for support from the United States of America citing Philippines, which had just been granted independence by the United Statesof America, further shows that the Viet Mihn believed in people governing themselves. Their interaction with the locals to enhance their guerilla tactics showed that they believed in the local people to be in control of their own affairs. - CHAPTEP 4 Wh,, DiJ thn UnitnJ Stotn' Fight in Vintno-? NrtrHrn you NoR I xNow rHr AurntceNs wELL, OF THEM . . . THAN orHER cAptrAltsr NATIoNS. THrY wtt-t- BUT wHAT wE Do KNow SUCCESTS THAT THEY ARE MORE PRACTICAL AND CLEAR-SIGHTED VtrrNnt'a Nor PouR THEIR RESoURCES lNTo ENDLESSLY. -Ho Chi Minh, in conversation with a Communist diplomat, autumn 19631 The Vietnam War was the longest war the United States ever fought. It also proved the most demoralizing for Americans, plunging the nation into its most bitter civil conflict in a century. Before the war ran its course, more than 58,000 Americans, and millions of Vietnamese, would die. Before the war ran its course, two American presidencies would be either directly or indirectly shattered by its consequences. Before the war ran its course, Americans would get used to thinking of each other as divided into polarized enemy camps: pro-war and antiwar, hawks and doves, and on from there to ever more scurrilous epithets. No legacy of the 1960s had as long and embittering an effect on the politics and culture of the United States as that left by the war in Vietnam. The war in Vietnam differed from other American conflicts in which the United States had fought for clearly defined strategic or territorial goals. In Vietnam, the rationale for fighting the war, like the battlefront itself, was constantly shifting. The most consistent explanation for why Americans needed to fight in Vietnam was the defense of the "credibility" of the United Statesin itself a murky, ambiguous goal. Viernam also differed from other American wars in which clearly defined lines divided peace and war, such as the Confederate firing on Fort Sumter in 186L In Vietnam no single event or decision clearly marked the beginning of the war. Arguments could be made to date the real start of the con67 68 Amenca Divided flict, or at least the point of no return, anytime from the mid-I950s until the mid-1960s. The roots of American involvement stretch back much further.2 Vietnam, a country that is roughly the size of New Mexico in square miles, stretches in an S-shaped curve along the eastern seaboard of Southeast Asia. Two fertile river deltas, the Red River in the north and the Mekong River in the south, fan out to the sea. A narrow coastal plain runs up the seacoast, while rugged mountain chains and high plateaus run north and south the length of the country's heavily forested interior. When Americans first fought in Vietnam, they did so, ironically, as allies of Vietnamese Communist leader Ho Chi Minh. Indochina, which includes Laos and Cambodia as well as Vietnam, had been colonized by France since the late nineteenth century, the richest and most important colony in the French empire. For over a half century the French ruthlessly suppressed any challenge to their authority in the region. Then, in 1940, France was itself conquered by Nazi Germany. The followingyear, French Indochina was occupied by Japan. French colonialists offered little resistance to the Japanese invaders, but Ho Chi Minh and the Communists formed a national resistance movement, opposing both theJapanese occupation and French colonialism. Within four years the Viet Minh had a half million followers, and a 5000-man army. In the closing days of the Second World War, a team of American intelligence agents parachuted behindJapanese lines in Vietnam to establish contact with Ho Chi Minh's forces. These troops, the Viet Minh, had proved themselves useflul to the Americans by rescuing downed American fliers. In July 1945 the Americans brought medical supplies and small arms to Ho, and trained his Viet Minh fighters in guerrilla tactics. Two months later, following the Japanese surrender, American advisers were with Ho when his troops marched in to take control of Hanoi, the principal city of northern Vietnam. On September 2,1945, Ho, a frail man with a wispy beard, whose bearing suggested more a scholar than a military commander or a politician, stood beflore a crowd of a half-million of his countrymen in a central square in Hanoi and declared Vietnamese independence. He chose to do so in words that sounded familiar to the American military men in attendance: "We hold truths that all men are created equal," Ho declared. "That they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights: among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness."3 Though he had borrowed freely from the American declaration of independence, Ho Chi Minh was by no means a Jeffersonian democrat. He was a hard-bitten revolutionary who had spent many years in exile from Vietnam in the service of the Communist movement. He was born as Nguyen Tat Thanh in 1890 in Nghe An Province in central coastal Vietnam. Though well educated, he signed onto a ship in 1912 as a common laborer and sailed over the next few years to Africa, Europe and North America. (During this period - Wy 69 FromGratd Expecrarions: The United States, 1945-1974by James copyright @ 1996 by oxford lJnfuersity Press, Inc. IJsed by permission of ox- Map of Vietnam. Source: T. Pdtterson. Did the United States Fight in Vietnam? ford Uni,rersity Press, lnc. 70 America Diyided he lived for nearly a year in Brooklyn, New York.) His thoughts, however, remained anchored in his homeland, and it was during this period also that he took a new name, Nguyen Ai-Quoc, which means "Nguyen the patriot" in Vietnamese. He would not become known by the name Ho Chi Minh ("He Who Enlightens" in Vietnamese) unril 1944. During the First World War and its immediate aftermath, Ho lived in Paris. There, in 1920, he joined the French Communist Party. Communist leaders in Moscow had issued a call for world revolution, including the over- throw of the colonial regimes of Asia and Africa. To Ho, the Communist movement represented a long-sought ally for Vietnamese independence. He rose quickly within the leadership of the international Communist movement, traveling to Moscow and China on its behalf. In 1930 Ho held a secret meeting in Hong Kong to organize the Vietnamese Communist Party. However, the party could not function openly in Vietnam. The French regularly executed nationalist and Communist opponents in Vietnam; Ho knew he faced a death sentence if he was captured. In 19,1I he slipped back into Viernam ro organize the Viet Minh to do battle with the Japanese and the French. Ho was a Communist, but his first priority was attaining Vietnamese independence. During the Second World War, he came ro hope that the United States, for reasons of its own, could be brought to support the cause of Vietnamese independence. America's wartime leader, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, was certainly no admirer of French colonialism. "[T]he case of Indochina is perfectly clear," he wrote to Secretary of State Cordell Hull inJanuary 1944. "France has milked it for one hundred years. The people of Indochina are entitled to something better than that."a Beyond vague speculation about establishing an international "trusteeship" to govern Indochina after the war, however, Roosevelt never spelled out any definite alternatives to allowing the French to reestablish their control of the region. The world changed swiftly in the monrhs that followed Roosevelt's death in April 1945, with the unraveling of the wartime alliance of the United srates, Britain, and the Soviet Union. In March 1947 President Harry Truman announced what became known as the Truman Doctrine, declaring it the policy of the United States "to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures."5 Never before had an American president committed the nation to a foreign policy that, potentially, involved an unceasing series of military interventions throughout the world. ln Vietnam, in the year following the end of the Second World War, the contending French and viet Minh forces faced each other in an uneasy standoff. In February 1946 Ho wrore Truman and asked that the united states become the "guardian" of Vietnam. Noting that the United States had recently granted independence to its former protectorate in the Philippine islands, Ho -Why Did the Ilnited States Fight in Vietnam? 7l declared: "Like thel-1,!lni""r our goar is -full independence and full cooperarion with the UNITED srATES. we will do our best ro make this inde_ pendence and cooperation profitable to the whole world.,,6 In all, Ho addressed r l such messages to the American government. His movement received no material aid from the soviet Union, oJrrry other Com_ munist country in those years. some American intelligence officers who kept tabs on Indochina in the 1940s believed Ho had the iotential ro become rhe "Tito of southeast d5i3"-1[21 is, like Marshar rrto of vugorl*iu, he wourd steer an independent course in foreign relations, not behJldei to trr. Soviet Union. Truman never responded to Ho's entreaties. Indochina was a minor con_ cern to American policyrnakers. Their main concern was the defense of western Europe, where France was a varued American alry. The French, suffered a grave narional humiliation who had with their defeai ,.rd o..rrpution by the Nazis, had no intention of relinquishing control over their coloniar empire. To Truman and his advisers, there sermed no alternative to backing the French in Indochina. In November 1946 French forces went on the offensive against Minh' French warships bombarded the northern vietnailese the viet port of Haiph-ong, krlling 6000 civilians. The viet Minh abandoned the ciries to the French and fought back_from the countryside, using the crassic guerriila tac_ tics of stealth and surprise other armies were on the march in Asia. In october 1949 chinese Com_ munist forces led by Mao Zedong came to power on the chinese mainrand; afterward, arms and ammunitioi began ro be smuggred to the viet Minh across the chinese-vietnamese bordei. InJune 1950 the armies of commu_ nist North Korea swept over the border into South Korea. To American leaders, the events in China and Korea were ominously reminiscent of Hitler,s aggression in Europe in the late 1g30s; in 1g50 president Truman believed that the Korean invasion represented the opening shots of a Third world War. the experience of dealing with the Nazis in the I930s, _ American -From leaders concluded that appeasement only whetted th" upp"tit" of uggr.rro.r. The only way to deter an expansionist dictatorship, whether led by a Hitrer or a Stalin, was the resolute application of counterforce. It was with this un_ derstanding rhar Truman inJune 1950 committed America,s military might to the aid of the beleaguered South Koreans. For the first time, American soldiers were engaged in a fuil-scale shooting war against a communist foe. That same month, the United States began prorridirrg *ititury supplies to the French forces in Indochina. By L954 American aid hl'd irrc."ur"d'ti ,rr. p"i", where the united States was funding nearly B0 percent of the French war effort. The viet Minh proved a formidable enemy, and after a series of military . setbacks, the French switched commanders in Indochina. In May 1953, the 72 Amenca Divided new French commander, General Henri Navarre, declared, "Now we can see [victoryJ clearly, like light at rhe end of a runnel."7 The phrase would come back to haunt him. Seeking a climactic showdown with the viet Minh, the French commander sent 15,000 crack troops to a remote village in north- western vietnam called Dien Bien Phu. But in their overconfidence, the French neglected to occupy the heights surrounding their new base. viet Minh troops under the command of vo Nguyen Giap cut roads through supposedly impassable rerrain, and dragged artillery to those hilltops. on March 13,1954, they launched their offensive, cutring off the French garrison from reinforcement or retreat. Americans took part in the attempted resupply of the garrison; two American pilots were shot down and killed in the effort. A crisis atmosphere prevailed in washington as Admiral Arthur Radford, chairman of the Joint chiefs of Staff, proposed to president Eisenhower that the United states relieve the defenders by means of air strikes, possibly including the use of tactical nuclear weapons. several influential lawmakers, including senatorJohn F. Kennedy and Senate majority leader Lyndon B. Johnson, warned against intervention, as did Army Chief of Staff General Matthew Ridgway. No one wanred another costly land war in Asia. Eisenhower, who had been elected in November 1952 in part because o[ his promise to a war-weary electorate to end the Korean war, held back. surrounded and outnumbered, the battered survivors of the French garrison at Dien Bien Phu surrendered to the viet Minh on }y'.ay 7,1954. In the weeks that followed, a conference of western and Communist powers meeting in Geneva, switzerland, drew up an agreement to end the conflict. The Geneva accords provided for the temporary division of vietnam at the 17th parallel, with viet Minh forces left in control of the northern half of the country and the vietnamese emperor Bao Dai (an ally of the French) in control of the southern half. Nationwide elections were scheduled for 1956 to reunify the country. As president Eisenhower would later acknowledge, Ho Chi Minh was by far rhe mosr popular political figure in vietnam during the war and would easily have won a free election for national leader.s shortly before the fall of Dien Bien phu, president Eisenhower likened the Ioss of vietnam to the communists to a "falling domino": "you have a row of dominoes set up, you knock over the first one, and what will happen to the last one is rhe certainty that it will go over very quickly. . . . So, ttr" porsible consequences of the loss are just incalculable to the free world."e over the next few years Eisenhower committed substantial economic and military aid to shoring up an independent anticommunist regime in southern vietnam. Ngo Dinh Diem, a conservative nationalist from a wealthy background, emerged as the new strong man in south Vietnamese politics. He returned from years of exile in the United States and Belgium in 1954 to become prime minister under Emperor Bao Dai. Diem, an ardent Catholic, enjoyed the pa- W Did the Ilnited States Fight in Vietnam? 73 tronage of influential American backers, including Senator Kennedy and New York city's cardinal spelrman. In ocrober t9:ioiem organized a nadonar referendum that led to the creation of the new Republic of vietnam (south vietnam), with its capital in saigon. Diem was elect"d the republic,s firsr pres_ ident by means of a blatantly rigged erection. The followirrg ,r-rr,", he re- fused to allow reunification ele.tio* with northern vietnam to be held as scheduled by the Geneva accords. In the meantime, the Communists consolidated their own power in the Democratic Republic of vietnam (North vietnam), wirh irs capital in Hanoi. when Diem visited the United states in May 1957, President Eisenhower hailed him as the .,miracle man,, of Asia, who had saved southern vietnam from communist enslavement. without American aid, however, Diem could never have remained in power. In the mid-I960s the U.S. Defense Department undertook u ,op-r"...i study of the origins of American involvement the vietnam war. The authors of what be_ came known as the "pentagon papers" concluded, simpry, that ..South vietnam was essentially the creation the United States.,,ro As fears ofsoviet conquest ofwestern Europe subsided in the later r950s, the focus of Cold war competition shifted to wirat *u, u"girring to be called the "Third world," the less developed nations of Asia, Afrifa, uriLati., Amer_ ic-a' Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev pledged his country,r'rrppoa ro *wars of national liberation," and many in tire third worrd, tit curi.o in cuba, looked to the communist worrd for models of revolutionr.y" ,i*ggr. and economic development. But in south vietnam, the march of co*-,,,r.rism had apparently been stopped in its tracks. The country was emerging in the eyes of American policymakers as a "proving ground for democraiy,,ls th"n-s"rrator Kennedy called it.ll Edward Lansdale (head of the cIA mission in saigon), forged crose relations with Ngo Dinh Diem. Diem owed a lot ro t-anJaate, *i? n"tp"d o.ganize a mass exodus of hundreds of thousands of northern vietnamese catholics to south vietnam in L954. catholic refugees became Diem,s most reliable supporters-in a counrry with a rarge nuJdhist majority. Lansdare also- made generous use of CIA funds to buy off potential south vietnamese rivals to Diem. . The early days of American involvement in Vietnam were armost like an adventure-story. ogden williams, a cIA official who worked u, u, urrirtu.,t to colonel Lansdale in saigon, wourd later recail his time in vietnam with obvious nostalgia. First of ail, there was a strong *sense of mission,, shared by the military advisers and intelligence agents in the counrry: we were the nation that had won world war II and was honored throughout the world. To serve the United sures overseas was a dream in trror. aryf i"lurr" yo, had.very high standing-even low-level Americans did. we had enormous in that period. presrige 74 America Divided Americans had long cherished the belief that they had a special role to play 1n determining the future of Asia. Generarions of rehgious missionaries had dedicated their lives to redeeming China from pagan superstition and barbaric custom. The Communist revolution in China had brought the expulsion of those missionaries. But some of the same impulse lived on, in more secular form, among the young men like ogden williams who were sent to Saigon in the I950s with the goal of preserving the south viernamese from the political dangers that beset them from the north. And it didn't hurt that Vietnam was such an exotic destination: There was that sense of a young country, which was very inspiring. . . . There was very graceful, traditional culture, an enormously pleasant *ry oilif". saigon was an elegant city. The beautiful tropical foliage, the flamboyanr trees, the cabarets, the lovely slim women. . . . The whole thing was just elegant and romantic as hell. . . . It was always an enormous letdown to come back to the United states.r2 a Those who served in vietnam in those years knew, of course, that the Diem regime's methods of governing were less than democratic. His American-trained police arrested tens of thousands of political opponents, many of whom were tortured and executed. His government reclaimed land that had been turned over ro rhe peasanrs by the viet Minh during the first Indochinese war and distributed it to wealthy landlords and catholic refugees. But, in the name of shoring up an anti-communist ally, Americans in Saigon and washington were willing to overlook Diem's shortcomings. Certainly the North vietnamese Communists, who executed thousands of peasant landowners during "land re_form" campaigns in the mid-I950s, were no gentler in their own methods of governing. Given the choice, Americans belieied, no people would of their own volition choose communism over the politicai and material advantages offered by an alliance with the United states. what American diplomatic and politicar srrategists overlooked was that the vietnamese had their own way of looking at the world, one that did not necessarily coincide with rhe assumprions guiding policymaking in wash- ington. American policymakers looked at Ho and saw a communist; vietnamese peasants looked at Ho and saw a patriot. A thousand years before the start of the second world war, a vietnamese army had driven out Chinese invaders to establish an independent kingdom. Time and again in the centuries that followed, the vietnamese fought would-be .orqr,"iorc from china and other nations. vietnamese history was filled with stories of heroes and martyrs in the cause of independence, and Ho chi Minh and the viet Minh inherited their prestige when they chailenged and defeated the French in 1946-1954. Joseph Alsop, a prominenr American journalist and ordinarily a staunch supporter of cold war assumptions, toured viet Minh-controlled areas of southern vietnam in December 1954. He described it as an under- -7 W Did the United States Fight in Vietnam? 75 ground government (a "palm hut state") with a "loyal population" of nearly 2 million Vietnamese: At first, it was difficult for me, as it is for any Westerner, to conceive of a Communist government's genuinely "serving the people." I could hardly imagine a Communist government that was also a popular government and almost a democratic government. But this is just the sort of government the palm-hut state actually was.13 Few of Alsop's countrymen in the 1950s were prepared to look beyond the stereotypes o[ the Cold war in interpreting events in southeast Asia (and Alsop himself would later become a firm supporrer of the U.S. war effort in Vietnam). In opposing Ho, Diem could counr on the backing of most of the country's Catholic population. His other major source of support was the army, most of whose commanders h...
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