RACE, REFORM AND REBELLION The Contemporary United States Series Editors: CHRISTOPHER BROOKEMAN AND WILLIAM ISSEL PUBLISHED TITLES Manning Marable RACE, REFORM AND REBELLION: THE SECOND RECON STRUCTION IN BLACK AMERICA 1945-1982 Christopher Brookeman AMERICAN CULT U RE AND SOCIETY SINCE THE 1930s Leonard Quart and Albert Auster AMERICAN FILM AND SOCIETY SINCE 1945 FORTHCOMING TITLES William Issel AMERICAN SOCIETY SINCE 1945 Sam Rosenberg AMERICAN ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT SINCE 1945 Kenneth Fox METROPOLITA N AMERICA Michael Dunne AMERICAN FOREIGN RELATIONS SINCE WORLD WAR 11 Philip Davies AMERICAN GOVERNMENT AND POLITICS Rochelle Gatlin AMERICAN WOMEN SINCE 1945 RACE, REFORM AND REBELLION THE SECOND RECONSTRUCTION IN BLACK AMERICA, 1945-1982 Manning Marable M MACMILLAN PRESS LONOON © Manning Marable 1984 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without permission First published 1984 by THE MACMILLAN PRESS L TD London and Basingstoke Companies and representatives throughout the world Typeset by Wessex Typesetters Ltd Frome, Somerset British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Marable, Manning Race, reform and rebellion: the second reconstruction in Black America, 1945-1982. (Contemporary United States) I. Minorities--United States--Political activity I. Title 11. Series 306' .2'0973 EI84.AI ISBN 978-0-333-32011-2 ISBN 978-1-349-17657-1 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-17657-1 Contents Dedieation Vll Aeknowledgements VIll Editors' Prefaee IX Prefaee XI PROLOGUE: THE LEGACY OF THE FIRST RECONSTRUCTION 2 THE COLD WAR IN BLACK AMERICA, 1945-1954 12 3 THE DEMAND FOR REFORM, 1954-1960 42 4 WE SHALL OVERCOME, 1960-1965 66 5 BLACK POWER, 1965-1970 95 6 BLACK REBELLION: ZENITH AND DECLINE, 1970-1976 128 7 REACTION: THE DEMISE OF THE SECOND RECONSTRUCTION, 1976-1982 168 8 EPILOGUE: THE VISION AND THE POWER 200 Notes 213 Seleet Bibliography 227 Index 241 Dedication To all wornen of colour, everywhere, who ernbody the spirit of freedorn ... For Sojourner Truth, For Harriet Tubrnan, For Lucy Parsons, For Ida B. Wells, For Mary Church Terrell, For Mary McLeod Bethune, For ClaudiaJones, For Fannie Lou Harner, For the wornen fighters of the ANC, SWAPO, FRELIMO, PLO, PAIGC, and the Sandinistas, For Assata Shakur, For Sonia Sanchez, For Alice Walker, For Joan Little, For Angela Davis, For Sand ra Neely Srnith, For Toni Cade Barnbara, For Shirley Graharn DuBois, and for rny friend, co-worker, lover and wife, For Hazel Ann. VB Acknowl edgemen ts The author and publishers wish to thank the following who have kindly given permission for the use of copyright material: Harper & Row, Publishers, Inc. for an extract from Why We Can 't Wait by Martin Luther King, Jr. Copyright © 1963 by Martin Luther King, Jr. Hughes Massie Ltd on behalfofthe author, and Random House, Inc. for the poem 'Un-American Investigators' from The Panther and the Lash by Langston Hughes. Copyright © 1967 by Langston Hughes. Hutchinson Publishing Group Ltd and Random House, Inc. for an extract from The Autobiography of Maleolm X by Malcolm X, with the assistance of Alex Haley. Johnson Publishing Company Inc. for the poem 'Junglegrave' by S. E. Anderson from Negro Digest, 1968. William Morrow & Company Inc., for an abridgement ofthe poem 'Nigger. Can Vou Kill' and extract from 'Ugly Honkies' from Black Feeling, Black Talk, BlackJudgement by Nikki Giovanni. Copyright © 1968, 1970 by Nikki Giovanni. Every effort has been made to trace aB the copyright holders but if any have been inadvertently overlooked the publishers will be pleased to make the necessary arrangement at the first opportunity. Vlll Editors' Preface Mention the United States and few people respond with feelings of neutrality. Discussions about the role of the United States in the contemporary world typically evoke a sense of admiration or a shudder of dislike. Pundits and politicians alike make sweeping references to attributes of modern society deemed 'characteristically American'. Yet qualifications are in order, especially regarding the distinctiveness of American society and the uniqueness of American culture. True, American society has been shaped by the size of the country, the migratory habits ofthe people and the federal system of government. Certainly, American culture cannot be understood apart from its multi-cultural character, its irreverence for tradition and its worship oftechnological imagery. It is equally true, however, that life in the United States has been profoundly shaped by the dynamics of American capitalism and by the penetration of capitalist market imperatives into all aspects of daily life. The series is designed to take advantage ofthe growth ofspecialised research about post-war America in order to foster understanding of the period as a whole as weil as to offer a critical assessment of the leading developments ofthe post-war years. Coming to terms with the United States since 1945 requires a willingness to accept complexity and ambiguity, for the history encompasses conflict as weil as consensus, hope as weil as des pair, progress as weil as stagnation. Each book in the series offers an interpretation designed to spark discussion rather than adefinite account intended to elose debate. The series as a whole is meant to offer students, teachers and the general public fresh perspectives and new insights about the con temporary United States. CHRISTOPHER BROOKEMAN WILLIAM ISSEL IX Preface This book is a his tory of a people and a VlSlon: the rise of Afro-Americans in political struggles in the United States since 1945, and their vision of biracial or multicultural democracy and social transformation, in which other national racial minority groups shared. Most readers will be quite familiar with the general outline depicted here: the emergence of a powerful black industrial working elass and the demise of the black Southern peasantry; the successful effort to abolish legal segregation; the outbreak of Black Power, urban rebellion, and the renaissance of black, Chicano and American Indian nationalisms in the 1960s; the contradictory legacy of black electoral participation within the US political system, culminating in the election of thousands ofblack officials in the 1970s; and the white political backlash against black equality, the return of vigilante racist violence, and the election ofRonald Reagan in 1980. This introductory monograph departs from other standard essays on the period in several critical respects. In Chapter 2, I give particular attention to the relationship between the anti-communist 'Red Scare' of the late-1940s and 1950s with the evolution ofthe black freedom movement. It is my view that the Cold War, and most black leaders' accommodation to anti-communism, retarded desegregation campaigns for at least a decade. Second, throughout the work I pay elose attention to the various black nationalist organisations of the period, from the Nation ofIslam to the Black Panther Party. Most of the original and innovative political theory and programmes advanced by blacks have come from the nationalists whose views on integration are sharply divergent from those ofmore moderate black spokesmen and women. Finally, I suggest that the central issue which still confronts the black movement is not the narrow battle for integration or political rights, but the effort to achieve economic democracy, social justice, and a transformation ofthe entire Ameri can political economy and society. A Third Reconstruction at so me y,