BATTLES IN U.S.
By Evelyn Sell
The Justice. Department reported that there have been 1,340 civil-rights demonstrations in the United States during the last eleven months, an average of almost four a day. These demonstra tions have taken place in the north and south, from New York oity on the east coast to San Francisco on the west, They have involved from half a million persons, as in last August's March on Washing-. ton, to the twenty-one persons who staged a sit-in at the St. Louis city hall.
_ Some of the 1,540 demonstrations were organized by well-known, long-established groups such as the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People [NAACP], Some were organized by the new national civil-rights groups which sprang up in the 50's and 60's,- such as Martin Luther King's Southern Christian Leadership Conference [SCLC] and the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Conmit~ tee [SNcc]. Some were sponsored by small local groups such as the Group on Advanced Leadership in Detroit [GOAL], Some were completely spontaneous, ee
During these 1,340 demonstrations a wide variety of techniques were used to call attention to civil-rights demands and to force concessions from the white capitalist power structure, There were the sit-ins, sleep-ins, rent strikes, school boycotts, mass marches, picket lines and civil disobedience campaigns,
As these protests erupted across the nation an often-repeated wail came from the capitalist politicians, “We just can't understand it! We always had such good race relations. Whatever pro~ blems we did have we were gradually solving. It must be outside agitators who have come in here and stirred up our happy Negro community."
Listen to Cecil Creal, mayor of Ann Arbor, Michigan: “ann Arbor is way ahead in the field of civil rights and liberal thinking, way ahead of any other city in the state... and it really surprises me that some of these things are happening here when other cities just give lip service to civil rights, and we have taken the lead and actually done something in the field.*
_. Ann Arbor is a small town whose greatest claim to fame is that it is the home of. the nationally known, highly respected University of Michigan, There are 3,000 Negroes in town. For almost a year now Ann Arbor has been the scene of large demonstrations and mili-~ tant picket lines directed against discrimination in housing and jobs, against the city council and the police force and against segregated churches, These activities have earned Ann Arbor the new title of "Picket City" and this is what Mayor Creal is talking.
about when he wails that "some ofthese things are happening here,"
The past year!s activities were sparked off by the actions of a small nationalist youth group called the Direction Action Conmmittee [DAC]. Their militancy stirred the older civil-rights groups into more forceful activities,
"These young people are bitter," said Mrs, Emma Wheeler, NAACP president. "They want to see things accomplished and we can't show them any changes," _
DAC claims to represent the true feelings of the Negro community which has grown impatient with token civil rights and which has Little confidence in the nonviolent passive resistance philosophy of CORE [Congress of Racial Equality].
"Thatts why it's mostly white people on our picket line," explained Walter Blackwell, CORE director, "A lot of Negroes say they just canft take that ‘kind of action, they can't restrain themselves if somebody insults them or knocks them down."
Blackwell told about a "nice little white grandmother who came up to me and said, !I'tve been living here thirty years and we've always gotten along until you people started this trouble,'"
The CORE-leader commented, “She ignored the fact that Negroes are still packed in ghettos here, that every day people are denied jobs, Just because somebody made a protest and followed it through she thought it was trouble,"
“One of the major tasks of the Freedom Now movement has been to wake up all the "nice little white grandmothers" to the facts of life about racial oppression in this country. Those facts of life are that such oppression exists, that the Negroes are no longer going to put up with it and that changes must come about quickly or Negroes, through their demonstrations and civil disobedience, will make Jim Crow practices so expensive and unwieldy that the white capitalist power structure will find it easier to change the status quo than to Spend — ‘their time and energies in stifling the Negro revolt.
It was this "strategy of chaos," of shaking things up, of rocking~the-boat that was behind the recent stall~in at the New York World's Fair, Although the promised 2,000 cars did not appear on the highways leading to the Fair, the stall-in can be considered a great success in terms of drawing’ the attention of the world to the race situation in the United States. The newspapers and New York city officials were quick to call the stall-in a "fizzle" because the expected traffic jam did not develop. But the traffio jam failed-to materialize because tens of thousands of people stayed home rather than face the promised stall-in. Fair officials expec~
ted an opening day attendance of 250,000 to 500, 000 but only about 83, 000 persons aotually showed UD.
Stall-ins, - rent strikes, boycotts and marches -~- they all help throw the politioians! lies right back into their teeth, It was never true that "we always got “along so fine until a few agitators started making trouble." The civil-rights protests -~ 1,340 of them during the last eleven months ~~ have uncovered the * rotten package inside the "democratic" wrapping. They have served to edu-. cate a vast number of Americans and peoples throughout the world about the true nature of the highly touted American Way of Life.
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