Negro Struggle
By Evelyn Sell
"More and bigger demonstrations" in 1964 were forecast by Roy Wilkins, head of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. In his year~end report December 28, Wilkins blamed Congress for "olaying politics as usual" on the civil-rights issue. “Congressional inaction certainly contributed nothing. .. It greatly enhanced the probability of more and bigger demonstrations."
Although he praised Kennedy for presenting the "most comprehensive. civil-rights bill ever submitted by a President of the United States,” Wilkins condemned the bill as inadequate,
The press, white and Negro, is now reviewing the civil-rights gains made during 1963, The list is a pitiful one: The percentage or Negro students attending schools with whites rose from 7.8% in 1962 to 9.2% in 1965, A% this rate, school integration will take at least another sixty-five years, For’ the first time, Negro students enrolled at the University of Alabama and the University of South Carolina. James Meredith became the first Negro to receive a degree from the University of Mississippi. After vigorous protests from the Negro community, the~ Detroit Board of Education threw out a history textbook that presented. a distorted and false picture of American Negroes, A more accurate pamphlet dealing with this subject is now used in Detroit!s high schools. After pickets disrupted construction work in Philadelphia, a few jobs were opened to Negro workers, Television now boasts two shows with a regular Negro performer and some advertisements are beginning to use Negro models, Add a few more jobs here and there, a few more "white only” signs taken off of bus depots and toilets and some small court victories and you have the total of civil-rights gains for 1963,
In order to get these trifles, Negroes participated in nearly 2,000 recorded demonstrations in forty states and the nation's capital, Some 10,000 demonstrators were arrested. Among the murdered were Mississippi NAACP leader Medgar Evans and the children killed by the bomb thrown into the Birmingham church. The two largest mass marches for civil rights in this country's history were held during 1963; the first record- ._ breaker of 250,000 people in Detroit in June and the even larger turn-out in Washington, *D, Coy during August. ;
High Point of 1963
The March on Washington marked the high point of the mounting civilrights struggle. Many hopes were raised by this mightiest of all demonstrations in the long battle, the least of which was that Congress would pass a meaningful civil-rights bill and the most extravagant that the slogan of "Free by '63" would become a reality soon. When the situation remained unchanged, a good deal of questioning and re-evaluating began
within the Negro movement. Discussion of new methods of struggle © widened, Independent political action, defense measures, an end to reliance on "friendly" whites -~ these were some of the topics discussed and debated hotly by Negro militants.
The assassination of President Kennedy occasioned only a very brief lull in this process of re-evaluation and regrouping of forces within | the Negro community. .
. What will 1964 bring? C. Sumner Stone, Jr., editor of Chicago's The Defender, made this forecast: "I expect all hell to break loose next spring when the snow thaws. The Negro is merely using the winter to store up his hatreds and frustrations and reflect on the many broken promises of 1963," °