Notes on African-American History Since 1900
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- Who was James Boggs (1919-1993)
- Who is Grace Lee Boggs (1915- )
- Who was Ms. Fannie Lou Hamer and what was the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP)
- Revolutionary Internationalism and the African-American Student
Afterword In building a mass base of support from the bottom up, it is necessary to include all in the community and to have a commitment to include indigenous and local leadership. With the understanding of sisters Ella baker and Septima Clark, “resources, charismatic leaders, hierarchical structures (organizations, party’s, etc.), mobilizations, demonstrations, and organizing and political opportunities are not sufficient to sustain or even mobilize a movement.”360 Belinda Robnett, in How Long? How Long?: African Women in the Struggle for Civil Rights, goes on to explain: “SNCC’s philosophy and organizational shift away from the teachings of Ella Baker and the methods developed by Septima Clark destroyed the foundations of the movement. And SNCC, which had been the grassroots mobilizing force for the movement, collapsed in the early seventies.”361 While SNCC’s chairman traveled throughout the U.S. and around the world stimulating, arousing, and mobilizing the Black consciousness of African-Americans, it was reduced to a mobile agit-prop committee with mass charismatic spokesmen from the period 1966 to 1971. As a result, SNCC’s freedom organizations and other field organizations/projects suffered and/or deteriorated. SNCC became the opposite of what sister Ella Baker had previously advised. SNCC’s greatest error, an honest error, was its decision to leave its base, which it had built in the south. Unconsciously it fell into a media trap, when it raised the call for Black Power. Kwame Toure, in recalling the period in self-criticism: Flying across the country speaking, meeting with community groups, meeting the press on national TV, on college campuses, in churches. It was constant motion. I could not spend the time I had expected with SNCC in the field…362 Kwame Ture, in hindsight, realized this error of SNCC’s saying, “Politically it makes no sense to abandon one base before developing a new one.”363 He further reiterates, stating, “you cannot conduct serious political organizing in the media. The revolution will not be televised.”364 Robert Mants felt that SNCC went through four periods: The early period, 1960-1962 The period of desegregation: 1963-1965 The Black Power Era: 1966-1968 After the Storm: 1969-1971365 The importance of SNCC cannot be underestimated and the lessons to be drawn from it. Diane Nash said, “I think history’s most important function is to help us better cope with the present and the future.366 Who was James Boggs (1919-1993) James Boggs was born May 28th in Marion Junction, Alabama in 1919. Boggs came to Detroit, Michigan in 1937 and was employed as a worker on the motor line at the Chrysler Corporation’s Jefferson Avenue assembly plant from 1940 to 1968. He helped in the organizing of UAW Local 7.367 Boggs began working with C.L.R. James in (1951) writing for the Correspondence Newsletter and chairing the editorial board from 1955 to 1964. Though Boggs regarded C.L.R. James as his mentor, he clashed with C.L.R. in 1962 on Marxism and what was happening to the American workers. James Boggs was an "organic intellectual" developing his ideas from living struggles in the plant on the production line and in the community. He recognized that the developing changes in production had weakened the unions and, the next great movement was to come from African-Americans. Boggs began to discuss the effects of cybernation and automation on the American workers. "On the other hand, C.L.R., was in Europe living by ideas that had come out of an earlier struggle, saw Jimmy's analysis and his proposal that the organization undertake a serious study of the development of American Capitalism as a threat and a repudiation of Marxism. Those who supported JB on the issue kept Correspondence. Those who supported C.L.R. formed a group called Facing Reality (which was led by Martin Glaberman).368 In 1963 Boggs wrote, The American Revolution: Pages From a Negro Workers Notebook, published by Monthly Review Press. This work was the first work published by an African-American worker in the 1960's on the past, present and future direction of the American Revolution. Boggs stated: The struggle for black political power is a revolutionary struggle, because unlike the struggle for white power, it is the climax of a ceaseless struggle on the part of ‘African-Americans’ for human rights.369 Boggs saw that every issue, whether local or domestic, had international repercussions inherent in it. In 1963, Boggs chaired the Grass-Roots Leadership Conference in Detroit, where Malcolm X made his famous speech, "A Message to the Grassroots."370 Boggs with his wife Grace Lee helped in forming the Michigan Freedom Now Party. The Boggs helped in the national formation of RAM (Revolutionary Action Movement), dialogued with and advised Malcolm X along with African-American journalist William Worthy and Patricia Robinson. 371 When the Boggs felt that RAM was not pursuing a constructive path of development, they attempted to guide the civil rights movement towards independent political empowerment and self-defense. In April of 1965 on the initiative of James and Grace Boggs, a meeting was called that included Nahazz Rogers from Chicago, Julius Hobson from D.C., Jesse Gray (Harlem rent strike leader of 1960), and other activists such as Bill Davis from Philadelphia who formed the Organization for Black Power (OBP). Though short lived, OBP proposed to develop bases of black power through independent politics. OBP's development influenced SNCC's development.372 SNCC (a year later, 1966) raised the cry of black power. The southern development of the Deacons for Defense in Louisiana and the 1965 Watts spontaneous rebellion in Los Angeles signaled a changing mood among African-Americans. Sensing there was ideological weakness in the emerging paradigm of the young African-American radicals, Boggs wrote a timely article titled,"Black Revolutionary Power” in the August 1970 issue of Ebony and authored another book titled, Racism and the Class Struggle: Further Pages From a Black Workers Notebook published by Monthly Review Press in 1970.373 Boggs and Malcolm saw eye-to-eye and he said, It is impossible for blacks to free or develop themselves without turning over every institution of this society, each of which has been structured with blacks at the bottom.374 Boggs felt the city was where most African-Americans were concentrated and it would be in those cities that African-Americans would constitute a majority of where the struggle for black power would occur. He emphasized that the struggle should be based on issues and terrain, which would enable the African-American community to create a form of liberated area out of what are occupied areas. Boggs also wrote: Manifesto for a Black Revolutionary Party, February 21, 1969 (Pacesetters Publishing); Awesome Responsibilities of Revolutionary Leadership, Uprooting Racism and Racists in the United States; But What About the Workers?; and, Liberation or Revolution; Black Power: A Scientific Concept Whose Time Has Come; and The City is The Black Man's Land. While he was writing, he worked with Ken Cockrel and General Baker of the League of Revolutionary Black Workers until its split and demise. In 1974, James and Grace Lee Boggs published the world acclaimed Revolution and Evolution in the Twentieth Century (Monthly Review Press, 1974). They also contributed to the founding of the National Organization for an American Revolution (NOAR) from 1979-1987 and were primary theorists for NOAR from 1979-1987. NOAR was an attempt to give direction to the movement as it was floundering. Boggs helped form We The People Reclaim Our Streets (WEPROS) and Detroiters Uniting. In 1984 he helped form Save Our Sons and Daughters (SOASD) and Detroit Summer, a community-rebuilding effort that brought city and suburban youth together on beautification projects. These efforts, which are still continuing, are efforts to give youth a purpose in the period of post-industrialization. Boggs passed away July 22, 1993. Kenneth Snodgrass in writing on Boggs stated: "Boggs use to say that since many of us probably won't see the transformation of the USA in our lifetime, it is imperative for committed people to transmit their knowledge, wisdom, and leadership skills to the next generation."375 There is no text that is a complete biography on James Boggs. Though James Boggs has passed, his widow Grace Lee Boggs continues his work. Who is Grace Lee Boggs (1915- ) Grace Lee Boggs was born June 27, 1915 in Providence, Rhode Island of Chinese immigrant parents. Ms. Grace Lee Boggs earned a Doctorate in Philosophy from Bryn Mawr College in 1940. "There weren't jobs for Chinese women in Philosophy" so she headed to Chicago to join the March on Washington led by an early organizer of the AFL-CIO, A. Philip Randolph. Ms. Lee began working, with C.L.R. James in 1941. She also worked with a young African student (Kwame Nkrumah). I first met C.L.R. in Chicago where I had gone to live after completing my graduate studies. I had just discovered the power of the independent black struggle through my participation in the March on Washington Movement, which forced F.D.R. to issue Executive Order 8802 banning discrimination in defense plant hiring.376
Grace felt the same as James Boggs that …any kind of revolutionary organization had to be built on cadres and that radicals ten to underestimate the critical role of class in building a movement. They swear that “without revolutionary theory, there is no revolutionary practice.” But for their revolutionary theory, they tend to accept ideas that have come out of other traditions rather than undertake the more difficult task of deriving our revolutionary theories from our own historical conditions and experiences.379 Grace Lee Boggs felt political revolutionaries should always speak a language people understand and should be able to get to the root of things. She also believed that political revolutionaries should be conscious of the need to go beyond slogans and be able to create programs of struggle that transform and empower participants. Grace Lee Boggs has always thought that at the heart of movement building is the concept of two-sided transformation: one of ourselves and one of our institutions. Grace Boggs co-authored Revolution and Evolution in the Twentieth Century and Conversations in Maine. In the fall 1993 issue of Third World Viewpoint, Remembering James Boggs, Grace Boggs stated: "The main weakness of the Black left has been its inability to focus on the youth, who are burdened by a very high unemployment rate and are targeted by the drug culture. Until the divorcement of the Black left from the youths is addressed, there is likely to be no real advance in Black radicalism." 380 Grace always taught that cadre should never be content with merely interpreting American history, but must be engaged in the practice of struggling to change it; and our ideas, which should be an “organic” ideology, must come out of practice and the new contradictions which practice uncovers. October of 1963, the Grassroots Conference was held in Detroit, Michigan. December of 1964: Isiah Brownson of Brooklyn CORE announced Brooklyn CORE would engage in a “stall-In” to protest discriminatory hiring at the World’s Fair. On February 25, 1964, Cassius Marcellus Clay defeated Sonny Liston for the heavy weight championship. A battered Liston couldn’t answer the bell for the seventh round. Clay announced is name was Muhammad Ali and he was a member of the Nation of Islam. The Freedom Now Party (FNP) grew into a mass party in Michigan. It was an African-American third party which ran a statewide slate. Reverend Albert Cleague was a candidate for Governor on the FNP ticket. Due to internal strife it became defunct by 1965. Most of its candidates joined the Democratic party. As 1963 came to a close, expectations were high. In 1963 alone, some 15,000 people had been imprisoned for participating in demonstrations and over 1,000 civil rights protests occurred in the South in more than 100 cities. 381 During the Freedom Summer which SNCC had planned to challenge Mississippi racists politically, three SNCC workers, Cheney, Schwerner and Goodman were beaten, shot and killed. Robert (Bob) Moses, SNCC coordinator helped Fannie Lou Hamer form the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP) a state-wide multi-racial party to challenge the Mississippi (racists) regulars at the Democratic National Party Convention in Atlantic City. Who was Ms. Fannie Lou Hamer and what was the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP)? She was the youngest child of a Mississippi sharecropping family. She quit school in the sixth grade. However, she was determined to register and vote. She became a dedicated leader and powerful speaker on behalf of the rights of African Americans. She was a founder of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP) which sought to integrate the Mississippi delegation to the 1964 Democratic Convention. She led the MFDP delegation to the convention and demanded that her delegation be seated in lieu of the all white delegation. Her demands were ignored but her address appear on television to question America’s commitment to “justice for all”. The 1964 Mississippi delegation was an integrated body. In March 1964, Malcolm X left the Nation of Islam and began to advocate African-Americans using their voting power as a third political force and using armed self defense. Malcolm X formed an orthodox sunni Muslim Mosque, Inc. And later built the Organization of Afro-American Unity (OAAU). He developed a united front with Laverence Landry of Chicago, Reverend Milton Galamion of Brooklyn, Adam Clayton Powell Jr. of Harlem, and Dick Gregory of Chicago, and Gloria Richardson of Cambridge, Maryland to form ACT. Malcolm X also supported the MFDP in Mississippi, Dr. King and SNCC. Revolutionary Internationalism and the African-American Student The World of Reality and the World of the African American Student The world of the African-American student has changed tremendously since World War II. Prior to that time only a few Afro-Americans ever got a chance to go to college ever got a chance to go to college. African American college youth before World War II were from the established black middle class and established black middle class and very seldom associated themselves with the black working class. After the war and during the early fifties, more and more black working-class families were able to send their children off to college. Contradictions began to polarize among black students when this happened. The crystallization of these contradiction led to the development of the sit-ins, freedom rides, etc. black working-class families with bourgeois aspirations attempted to force their offspring into a society that had no place for them. The myth of “a college education and having made it” was finally beginning to crumble. For a generation the African American had figured that by obtaining a college education they would be integrated into the mainstream of American life. But what has happened is that the African American has produced a whole generation (war babies) that has made it to the top of capitalist society only to awaken to the hard fact of reality that there is no “pie in the sky.” Now, after all these years, the African American student is faced with the fact that he or she has to obtain a master’s or doctor’s degree before being able to survive in this society. With the rise of automation the African American student is faced with a new dilemma. The job market is shrinking, qualifications are getting higher and competition sharper. The African American student must face many contradictions when he/she leaves school and finds out that reality is subjective, since he/she is taught in the classroom that the world is objective. He/she is taught that the white world will accept him/her if he/she is qualified regardless of color, but he/she leaves school only to find a hostile, savage, white world. In many cases this has led to revolt among black youth. Most African American students, not being able to cope with the sharp contradictions openly, have created a little protest world of their own. This world is called the “hip society.” The hip society is a result of conditioning and of the last hope that the American dream is true. The hip society transcends all class barriers among blacks and has its own social values and norms. The hip society is developed from the frustration of not being able to do anything about one’s condition and serves as a release from daily pressures. The hip society is built around the concept of manhood and womanhood, reflecting a lack of security and identity, and alienation. The man who can make the most women, dress the best and maintain his “cool” is considered a hero among his peers. The woman who gets the most “noses open” climbs the ladder with prestige men and can jilt a cat and not mean nothing to her; is supposed to be into something. The women play, but usually they are trying to “hook”, most of them go to college to find a husband. Expressions such as “into something, all that’s good, taking care of business,” express the sentiments of the hip society. Adherents of business, “express the sentiments of the hip society. Adherents of the hip society release themselves by being “hard,” digging jams (listening to jazz records), “getting off” (releasing frustration through dancing to rock ‘n roll), smoking pot, tasting (heavy drinking), “doing the thing or taking care of business” (loose sex morals, sometimes sex orgies). The hip society is a hedonistic society… It is built on extreme pleasure seeking, in order to forget about the reality of the hard contradictions the African American student must face. We must see that the Negro college is truly a “freak factory.” Built upon an escape from reality becomes a “professional” house that breeds prostitutes, perverts, and “freaks” (black people who think they are white). The world of the African American student is built around a complete escape from reality and tries to strengthen the concept of being able to make it in this society. It reinforces capitalism, takes an extreme patriotism and drowns itself in the internal strife for prestige. The African American student is geared to becoming more an all-American boy or girl than the white student. The African American student has to be extra good, “extra white,” neat, nice and respectable. In order to “make it.” Therefore, conformity to the social norms of the hip society becomes a protective measure. It warms the African American student that if he/she steps out of his/her armor he/she won’t be able to survive in the outside world. This is one of the reasons why stress is placed on begging hard, tough, emotionless-because of the unconscious realization of the rough road ahead. Contradictions of the African-American Student The African American student must face many contradictions. If his/her background is of the working class, then he/she faces the contradiction of becoming something that his/her family has oriented him/hr to both envy and hate. The concept of the black bourgeoisie not being able to “let their hair down,” be down to the nitty gritty, constantly alienates and antagonizes him/her. He/she also finds that in order to be successful in his field and be with people of his/her position, he/she must take on ways that they had previously considered “phony.” Another contradiction of African American students lies in failure to reach their aspirations. They sometimes realize that, because they are African American society has little or no place for them. The constant living a life, completing dream level (college) education and still having to struggle for human existence is the sharpest contradiction for the African American student. The more black students learn about the outside world the more they realize that there is little chance for them to make their goal; thus they settle for some lesser choice. This contradiction hits the African American students square in the face whether they want to admit it or not. The contradiction for the black students is beginning to polarize. This polarization has led to the sit-ins, freedom rides, mass demonstrations, black nationalist youth organizations and finally the riots in the summer of 1964. What is developing for our enslaved black nation is a generation with a completely new outlook. Out of this generation is developing the revolutionary intelligentsia capable of leading Africa America to the liberation. This has resulted from the fact that a social revolution cannot develop until all means of legal protest have been exhausted and the image of bourgeois democracy is destroyed. This is when a revolutionary intelligentsia is produced. With the rise of the ultra-right, Goldwater-Johnson and company, we see more clearly that for “the man” bourgeois democracy means and has always meant “enslavement.” What has happened to the “war baby” generation is that the contradictions in this system are beginning to crystallize within them. The “war baby” generation was the generation that was supposed to have “arrived” to get the “pie in the sky.” This generation is slowly but surely waking up and seeing that the pie in the sky was a trick bag. They also see that it doesn’t matter what they do, how qualified they are, they will never “arrive.” It was not until black America could develop a generation capable of being “on top” in the capitalist system, that the contradictions of the system could totally crystallize and a revolutionary intelligentsia develop. Hence the words of Dr. DuBois ring true: “A system that enslaves you cannot free you”. The High School and Junior High School African American Student Overt social protest for the African American student usually begins in the junior high school. By the time a African American youth reaches the age of 14, they begin to feel the contradictions of their relationship to this society. They are led to believe in school that they are white, “can make it if they try,” and after school he becomes black again and enters into the hip world. The feeling of being run smack into a brick wall” by the educational system is being felt by junior high and high school students. In the South more and more junior high and high school students are leading the movement, whereas in 1960 it was the black college youth who were the vanguard of the movement. We see in the North African American high and junior high school youth touched off the riots in Harlem and played a major role in the riots in other cities. If African American college youth are feeling that there is nowhere for them to go, then it will surely seep down to the black high and junior high school youth. The only role left for them is to rebel. Gangs Almost every African American community has gangs. Very few people understand the nature of these gangs and how they can be transformed into a constructive force for African American liberation. Gangs develop because African American youth have no out in this white man’s racist, capitalist system. African American youth have no room for expression in this savage society. They have no image of manhood or womanhood that they can identify with. African American youth know unconsciously that they are not a part of “the man’s” world. Thus in contrast, the hip world develops. The gang represents organization, identity and power for African American youth. Living in a hostile world they experience none of these things. The feeling of belonging, being part of something “boss” is a big part of a gang. This sense of identity leads to organization of a gang and from the gang’s strength and influence, comes its power. For Afro-American youth, especially boys, gangs are the only thing in the African American community that can give them a sense of power. This comes from the feeling of being powerless over one’s destiny (the man has control of that) and of being less than a man. Gangs are the most dynamic force in the African American community. Instead of fighting their brothers and sisters, they should unite. They can be developed into a blood brotherhood (African American youth organization) that will serve as a liberation force. The Outcast The outcasts are the socially, politically aware African American students who venture into CORE’s beat artist bag, freedom now, white and black together thing. One of the main reasons they become outcast is because they usually lose contact with the hip society. They take on white cultural values such as folk music, hootenannies, etc. Swinging out with “whitey” ain’t to cool. “Whitey’s out of it,” he just can’t dig what’s happening and when you’re with him “you’re out of it too.” “The square scene is where whitey’s at” he just ain’t got no soul. By identifying with whitey’s jive cultural values they lose their own black cultural hipness. The Outlaws and the Only Alternative for the African American Student The outlaws are politically hip African Americans who understand that this white man’s racial-monopoly-capitalist-imperialist system cannot reform itself and cannot ever grant the African American man freedom, justice and equality. They become outlaws because the average African American student is afraid to identify with them. The outlaws are called Revolutionary African American inter-nationalists. We are international revolutionary African American nationalist, not based on ideas of national superiority, but striving for justice and liberation of all the oppressed peoples of the world. We believe in the Constitution of the U.S. which was made to establish justice, but we realize that there can be no liberty as long as African American people are oppressed and the peoples of Africa, Asia and Latin America are oppressed by Yankee imperialism and neo-colonialism. After four hundred years of oppression, we realize that slavery, racism and imperialism are all interrelated and that liberty and justice for all cannot exist peacefully with imperialism. The Revolutionary action Black Nationalists advocate an revolution that takes the power away from the white capitalist oligarchy and puts it into the hands of the proletariat. We say with a movement of revolutionary and the help of the peoples of Africa, Asia, and Latin America, the African American can and must win if they are to survive. Unless the African American turns to self defense he will be exterminated like Jews were in Nazi Germany African American intellectual youth (college) must unite with African American youth in the ghetto; the message that Revolutionary African American Internationalists have for the African American students is UNITE. Directory: Documents -> Finder -> Black%20Liberation%20Disk -> Black%20Power! Documents -> The great global switch-off Documents -> Nonprofit grant application Documents -> The Truth about the Rwandan Genocide Documents -> Annual InStructional unit plan Documents -> Chaos equipment included Black%20Power! -> The Need (Importance) for Student Activism in the 21st Century Black%20Power! -> When and how I wrote toward black liberation part I and malcolm X and the black liberation movement Black%20Power! -> Notes on African-American History Since 1900 Download 3 Mb. Share with your friends:
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