CAPTURE SNCC_MILITANTS?
By Evelyn Sell.
Rev. Martin Luther King's call for a nation-wide economic boycott of Alabama has received a great deal of attention and much adverse criticism from political and business spokesmen, civilrights leaders and newspaper editors. Speaking over national television on March 28, King said that his organization, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference [scLc], would soon approve an recon= omic withdrawal program" to bring pressure for social reforms "on Wallace (governor of Alabama) and other officials responsible for the reign of terror" against Negroes.
The boycott would be maintained until at least fifty per cent of all Negroes of voting age in every Alabama county are registered and certified as voters by the United States Civil Rights Commission. King said labor unions would be asked to refuse to use or transport materials grown or manufactured in Alabama; consumers would be asked to abstain from buying Alabama goods; the federal government would be asked to withdraw funds from federal projects within Alabama and withdraw federal deposits in the state's banks.
Alabama businessmen quickly-cried out against the boycott plan. Crawford Johnson III, a soft-drink executive and president of the Birmingham Chamber of Commerce, declared, "If the boycott should be successful it can serve no other purpose than to worsen race relations,
President Lyndon Johnson withheld comment but cautioned, "I think we must be very careful to see that we do not punish innocents in this country while we are trying to protect all of our people," When asked what he would do if Johnson requested cancellation of the boycott, King replied, "I'm afraid I would have to say no to him,"
Tt might seem at first glance that Nobel prize-winner King intends to defy business and political authority in this country. A more careful study of King's past civil-rights activities and a realistic appreciation of the growing civil-rights tension in America would indicate, however, that King and the SCLC have been encouraged and groomed to help head off what is expected to be the longest, hottest summer of civil-rights demonstrations throughout the nation,
The hue and cry over King's proposed economic boycott has served to feature him as a fearless fighter and leader of the Negro people and has helped cover up the more significant plans announced by King a few days after the March 28 television appearance. Ina speech given in Baltimore on April 1, King stated that the SCLC would extend its work into 120 counties in seven southern states: Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Alabama
and Louisiana. Voter registration campaigns will aim at doubling the number of Negroes now registered in these states.
Manpower for these campaigns will come from the academic community. King explained, "The call has been sent to 860 key college communities, North and South, to recruit 2,000 volunteers from student body and faculty to spend 10 weeks" this’ summer working with the drive.
- Summer campaigns were also projected for a number of northern cities: New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, Detroit, Baltimore, Los © © Angeles, Washington and Cleveland. Rev. Ralph Abernathy, SCLC vice-president, said the Northern: protests would concentrate on slum housing, job discrimination and school segregation.
Rather than being aimed at racial discrimination, King's summer plans are aimed at the militants within the civil-rights movement -- particularly the youthful ranks of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee LSNCC] and the inhabitants of the Negro ghettos of the North who exploded so forcefully during last year's long, hot summer,
King's plans fit right into the pattern of preparedness undertaken by the federal government. Just prior to King's announcements, more than 400 mayors and municipal officials met in Washington March 30 for the first legislative conference of the National League of Cities. In a separate meeting the mayors of the nation's 100 largest cities were given special briefings by Vice-President Hubert Humphrey, Labor Secretary Wirtz and other top officials in the federal government. Humphrey told the mayors that he had appointed Leroy Collins, director of the new Federal. Community Relations Service, to head a special "summer task force" aimed at the , expected civil-rights demonstrations this year. ;
Collins urged the mayors to be prepared for Na new urgency" because the "frustrations may be greater in parts of the North than in the South." He warned the audience that they must get ready for “what happens...as the marchers from Selma [Alabama] return and the weather gets hot...If we don't find new ways [to cope with racial frustrations] the events in Selma may be pale in comparison," .
. One week later Rev. Andrew Young, executive assistant to Rev. Martin Luther King, told a Detroit audience that the SCLC summer program in the North was designed to avoid "rioting and outbreaks of violence,"
SCLC vice-president Rev. Abernathy commenting on the Northern program explained, “We hope to establish nonviolent channels in these cities that will enable the people there to express their discontent and their frustrations, We want to accomplish this through negotiations, but it may be necessary to demonstrate,"
"Negotiation" for King has always meant working with and through federal and local politicians and officials -- and by=passing real grass-roots organizations of the Negroes in the area, "Demonstrate" for King has always meant that Negroes "are going to suffer some more" from the beatings, tear gas and killings of racists. His philosophy of nonviolent mass suicide was clearly enunciated in Selma when he stated, "We have no alternative but to leave our opponents glutted with their own barbarity." This statement was followed by racist murders, bombings and heightened harass+ ment of civilerights workers, -
Attempts by SNCC workers in the South to defend themselves by such simple means as wearing protective helmets were denounced by King's assistants..ewho ordered the. youths to.march against armed .racists with bared heads and the promise to turn the other cheek when struck, .
The voter registration drives. in Selma and Marion, Alabama, were actually organized originally by SNCC*-- but taken over by King and the SCLC. The methods of SNCC. run counter to King's; SNCC sends workers into a Negro community to live and work with the people over long periods of time in order to help build an indigenous leadership and organization capable of transforming the political and economic situation in that area, Although SNCC has affirmed and reaffirmed its allegiance to the philosophy of nonviolence, its youthful leaders are much more militant and radically inclined than King's SCLC -~ so that King and his aides have had to repeatedly debate against SNCC criticisms of the.Johnson administration and SNCG threats of leading "the most massive civil disobedience this nation has ever seen,"
Since SNCC is a student organization and recruits its workers from college campuses of the North and South, it is important to remember that King's summer plans call for thousands of students to work in SCLC projects this year. In past summers most of the students going into the South for civil-rights campaigns were involved in SNCC Freedom Schools and voter registration drives. King's wife stated at an April 4 meeting in Detroit that "at least 5,000 students" were wanted for SCLC summer campaigns ~- and the students she referred to specifically were “the dedicated young white people who have previously volunteered for the freedom movement."
The question of-who leads the voter registration drives in the Negro communities of the North and South can have serious political effects in the near future. Once a Negro is actually registered to vote, the logical question -- which many are already asking -- is: "Who shall I vote for? What party should I support?" King was extremely busy campaigning for Johnson and the Democrats during the 1964 election campaign. SNCC, on the other hand, was involved in the Mississippi Freedom Democratic party which challenged the seating of the all-white delegation at the Democratic National Con=
vention and which is currently challenging the legality of Mississippi's congressional members «
Washington SNCC leader Jim Monsonis has said, "The established parties are both racist in the South and both closed to Negroes,' He talked about running third party candidates in "whole congres-~ sional districts all across the black belt which have Negro majori-~ ties." He concluded, however, on the subject of a third party, © "That's a question for the future. I don't think we know yet what to do.
-. In those activities which SNCC does carry out, however, they repeatedly come into conflict with the maneuvering and tactics. of King. During the critical days in Selma, Alabama, the SNCC leaders wanted to march to Montgomery despite federal court orders and Sheriff Clark's deputies. King rejected this plan and met with Leroy Collins, who worked out the compromise that kept the civil~ rights demonstrators in Selma -- barricaded in one section of Selma, actually -- until the march could be regulated and stifled by President Johnson's clever stratagems. Johnson ended up getting more. credit for the march to Montgomery than the courageous Negroes whosuffered tear gas, whips and clubs.
King proclaimed great victories when Negroes were allowed to kneel and pray for a few minutes in the streets of Selma and when President Johnson made a speech deploring the situation in Alabama, SNCCG members, on the other hand, continued to picket the White House. SNCC leader Monsonis commented, "There was a lot of feeling in Washington that you shouldn't demonstrate against the President because he had made a speech. But that same Monday, people were still getting arrested in Alabama. The original demand still had not been met. The question is whether you should keep pressuring or call it off when some segment of your demand is met, hoping for good will,"
King's summer plans in the South will bring him into increasing conflict with the more militant youth in SNCC. His moves into. Northern Negro. ghettos will pit him against already established civilerights organizations, newly created grass-roots groups led by local militants and strong black nationalist sentiments that favor self-defense. King has bitten off a very big job for this summer -too big, President Johnson, already under tremendous pressure because of nation-wide opposition to the war in Vietnam, is hoping to avert racial clashes by diluting the civil-rights movement with King's nonviolence philosophy and work-through-government-channels strategy. The stage is being set for a showdown struggle between the more conservative pro-administration civil-rights leaders and the militant spokesmen for the restless Negro masses,
King may very well start off with a few token victories handed to him graciously by local and federal agencies; he will probably be reviled and threatened by racist extremists, All of
Ble
these things will help build his image as the fearless civil-rights leader who deserves the support of all right-minded people, North and South, black and white. A clever plan of moderating civil-rights explosions was offered by the New York Times in a March 14 editorial:
“The United States has been extremely fortunate that the struggle for Negro rights has remained up to now under mature responsible leadership which always seeks peaceful solutions by legal. and - political means, If that leadership is to be vindicated,. then: those means must be seen to be working. Otherwise the young Negro. hotheads thirsting for a dramatic showdown for its own sake will he | encouraged, and the white demagogues and their police henchmen wii. be emboldened to new acts of violence and repression."
A clever plan -- in which Rev. Martin Luther King is striving to play his role, But no one has been able to write the script for the oppressed Negroes of the South or the seething ghettos of the North,