Article on "The Meaning and Measure of Black Power " Symposium in Negro Digest, 1966 November

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Negro Digest NOVEMBER 1966 A JOHNSON PUBLICATION 35c

The Meaning and Measure of BLACK POWER A Symposium featuring: JOHN O. KILLENS STERLING STUCKEY NATHAN HARE RONALD FAIR ANITA CORNWELL DUDLEY RANDALL and Others

An Epic Poem TO THE GALLANT BLACK MEN NOW DEAD

[drawing of a black forearm and clenched fist]

BLUEPRINT FOR AN OPEN SOCIETY By EDWARD W. BROOKE Atty. Gen., State of Massachusetts

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[column one] CONTENTS

Editor's Notes . . . . . 4 Blueprint For An Open Society Edward W. Brooke, 5 Attorney General, Massachusetts

Symposium "The Meaning and Measure of Black Powe"

Julian Bond . . . . . 20 Eugene Walton . . . . . 21 Anita R. Cornwell . . . . . 22 Conrad Kent Rivers . . . . . 23 Sterling Stuckey . . . . . 24 Brooks Johnson . . . . . 25 Francis Ward . . . . . 26 Nathan Hare . . . . . 27 Eloise Greenfield . . . . . 28 Ronald L. Fair . . . . . 29 Dudley Randall . . . . . 30 John O. Killens . . . . . 31

Special Article One Jew Looks At Black Power Howard N. Meyer 38

Humor Creeping Equality Must Be Crushed John Keefauver 42

Epic Poem To The Gallant Black Men Now Dead Dr. Vincent Harding 54

Fiction Will The Circle Be Unbroken?. Henry Dumas 76

Regular Features Perspectives (Notes on books, writers, artists and the arts), 49-52—Humor in Hue, 46—Poetry, 48 —On Record, 47.

NEGRO DIGEST November 1966

[column two]

NOVEMBER 1966 VOL. XVI NO. 1

Editor and Publisher: JOHN H. JOHNSON Managing Editor: Hoyt W. Fuller Art Director: Herbert Temple Production Assistant: Ariel P. Strong Circulation Manager: Robert H. Fentress

NEGRO DIGEST is published monthly at 1820 S. Michigan Avenue Chicago, Illinois 60616. [C] Copyright, 1966 by the Johnson Publishing Company, Inc. New York offices: Rockefeller Center, 1270 Avenue of the Americas, New York 10020. Los Angeles offices: 3600 Wilshire Blvd., Los Angeles, Calif. 90005, Washington, D. C. offices: 1750 Pennsylvania Ave., N. W., Washington, D. C., 20006. Paris office, 38, Avenue George V, Paris 8[e], France. Second class postage paid at Chicago, Illinois Reproduction in whole or in part forbidden without permission. Unsolicited material will be returned only if accompanied by a stamped, self-addressed envelope. Subscriptions $4.00 per year. For foreign subscriptions add $1.00. NEGRO DIGEST articles are selected on the basis of general interest and do not necessarily express the opinions of the editors.

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[column one] A Symposium BLACK POWER Its Meaning and Measure

Editor's Note:

We think that the racial situation in this country has reached a critical point long predicted by a line of writers from W. E. B. Du Bois to James Baldwin and Lerone Bennett Jr., and we feel that thoughtful consideration now must be given to the nature and direction of the struggle against racism. NEGRO DIGEST invited the following dozen people, all contributors to the magazine at one time or other, to comment on the following two questions in the belief that their ideas will be clarifying and provocative:

1. Is the Civil Rights Movement at the crossroads?—And, if so, what are the practical alternatives to it?

2. What is your own reaction to the term, "Black Power," and why do you feel that national press and the white public reacted as they did to the term?

JULIAN BOND Julian Bond is the former communications director for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee who has twice been elected a representative to the Georgia Legislature and twice been refused his seat by the overwhelming vote of white legislators. Mr. Bond's crime in the eyes of his white peers is his support of a SNCC statement opposing the war in Vietnam.

[column two] BLACK POWER as described by its initiator, Stokely Carmichael, Chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), is both a slogan and a political and psychological technique. As a slogan it has the value that others do; but as a technique for achieving change and rallying together the most powerless groups in American society—the Negro poor—it has enormous potential.

The national reaction to both the slogan and technique has been directed, for the most part, by advocates of a counter position in the white and Negro communities,

[column three] those who are spokesmen for "white fright."

Contending for the national title as leading spokesman for the "white fright" advocates is Eugene Patterson, editor of the Atlanta Constitution. Believing, as do most "white frighters," that Negro militancy equals riots, rape, and in a favorite phrase of "white fright" supporters "irreparable harm to the Negro movement," the Constitution under Patterson has devoted almost more editorial space in recent weeks to denouncing "Black Power" than he has to supporting his paper's hawkish position on the Vietnam war.

It is too easy to characterize the (Continued on page 81)

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[column one] BOND (Continued from page 2)

opponents of "Black Power" as weak-kneed moderates or even as clever "divde and conquer" manipulators who aim at destroying the surface unity that exists among the various Negro civil rights groups.

The "white fright" position in basically that American whites have admittedly been burtal and oppressive with 400 years of white power; therefore, Black Power iwll mean that Negroes will be burtal and oppressive "if they ever get the upper hand."

The masochistic wishful thinking (both deplored and welcomed as proof of the incompetency of Negro militants) springs from a desire to eliminate the miltant-and therefore uncontrollable - sectors of the Negro movement. It amounts to little more than a refinement of that McCarthy era's Red-baiting techniques and might well be called "Black-baiting."

But the best analysis of the "white fright" condition-and its reaction to "Black Power"- has come, strangely enough, from a white, metropolitan daily newspaper, the Boston Hearld, whose lead editorial, "Reexamining Black Power," on July 9, 1966 reads:

Black Power has claimed its first two victims. They are Vice President Hubert Humphrey and Roy Wilkins, exexcutive secretary of the NAACP. Both men, honored veterans of the civil rights movement, succumbed, [column two] temporarily at least, to the most ancient of maladies; the inability to adjust to a new idea.

The editorial desccribed Humphrey's criticism of Black Power as "racism" and "apartheid" and gave Wilkin's description of Black Power as "Black death."

It went on to say, "we find nothing subversive in (SNCC Chairman Stokely) Carmichael's remarks. On the contrary," saus the Herald "this type of thinking is both practical and traditionally American."

"Nor should the older generation of civil rights leaders object to the young Negroes wanting to run their own show with white men supporting rather than dominating the various organizations. This should be interpreted as a sign of maturity. It means that Negroes, having won their legal rights under the old system, are now ready to work twoard their goals under their own leadership like any other minority. This, too, is traditional. American history does not show that the Irish were content to be led by Yankees or that working men were content to be led by their employees.

"In short, we are suggesting that the older generation of civil rights leaders avoid the mistakes of Hubert Humphrey and Roy Wilkins and resist the urge to panic at the sound of Black Power."

[column three] The editorial ends with a warning to both white and Negro advocates of "white fright."

"We suggest that the older civil rights generation reexamine this new concept of direct action and concerntrate on the more thoughtful speeches of black power advocates. There young men are suprisingly [column four] realistic and are fully aware of both their capabilities and their limitations. And like it or not, they are distined to be the doers of the new era of civil rights. Whether they do good or evil depends in part on whether their predecessors encourage or repress them."

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