RACE, REFORM AND REBELLION

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 LTD

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

1. Prologue: The Legacy of the First Reconstruction

In two historie instances, Negro Americans have been beneficiaries

- as weil as victims - of the national compulsion to level or to blur

distinctions. The first leveling ended the legal status ofslavery, the

second the legal system of segregation. Both abolitions left the

beneficiaries still sufTering under handicaps inflicted by the system

abolished.

C. Vann Woodward, The Strange Career rifJim Crow

What is the object ofwriting the history ofReconstruction? Is it to wipe out the disgrace of a people which fought to make slaves of Negroes? Is it to show that the North had higher motives than freeing black men? Is it to prove that Negroes were black angels? No, it is simply to establish the Truth, on which Right in the future may be built.

W. E. B. DuBois, Black Reconstruction in America, 1860-1880

I

During two brief moments in history, the United States experienced major social movements which, at their core, expressed a powerful vision of multicultural democracy and human equality. The first was developed before the seminal conflict in American history, the Civil War (1861-65), and came to fruition in the twelve-year period of reunion, reconstruction and racial readjustment which followed (1865-77). Almost a century later, a 'Second Reconstruction' occurred. Like the former period, the Second Reconstruction was aseries of massive confrontations concerning the status of the Afro-American and other national minorities (e.g. Indians, Chicanos, Puerto Ricans, Asians) in the nation's economic, social and political institutions.

2

RACE, REFORM AND REBELLION

Both movements brought about the end of rigid racial/caste structures which had been used to oppress blacks for many decades. Both elevated articulate and charismatic black leaders from the AfroAmerican working dass and fragile middle dass. Both were fought primarily in the Southern US, although in certain respects both inspired major socio-economic reforms in the Northern states as weIl. In both instances, the Federal government was viewed as a 'reluctant ally' ofthe blacks and their progressive white supporters, whereas the opponents to black equality were primarily white Southern Democrats and substantial numbers ofwhite small-business and workingdass people. Both movements pressured the Federal courts and Congress to ratify and to validate legislative measures which promoted greater racial equality and an improvement in the material status ofblacks and poor whites. Finally, both movements eventually succumbed to internal contradictions, the loss of Northern white support, and the re-emergence ofthe South's tradition of inequality

a and racial prejudice as the dominant theme ofUS public policies vis

vis blacks. History never repeats itselfexactly, so it would be foolish to view the period of racial rebellion from 1945 to the present strictly through the prism ofthe past. Nevertheless, no real understanding of modern America is possible without an analysis of this nation's ongoing burden of race and dass, a social and economic dilemma which was created by almost 250 years of chattel slavery. The racial patterns ofthe present and the possibilities for the future are buried in that past, in the myriad ofsuccesses and failures ofthe Civil War, and the First Reconstruction. It is here that our assessment of modern American race relations must begin.

More than any other modern nation in the world, with the possible exception of South Africa, the United States developed from the beginning a unique socio-economic structure and a political apparatus which was simultaneously racist, stubbornly capitalist, and committed to a limited form of bourgeois democracy: a racistl capitalist state. In electoral politics, free blacks from the eighteenth century ohward found it di?icult if not impossible to exercise the franchise. North Carolina permitted some blacks to vote in 1667, for example, but repealed the measure in 1715. At the election ofGeorge Washington in 1789, no Southern state permitted blacks to vote. In the nineteenth century, Northern states passed anti-black voting restrictions as weIl. In 1823, New York established a stiffproperty qualification which effectively eliminated blacks from voting. Penn-

 ................
................

In order to avoid copyright disputes, this page is only a partial summary.

Google Online Preview   Download