well hello there welcome back to the
people's historian I'm Jason Kishineff
we were reading about the civil rights
movements in the 60s we're in the middle
of chapter 17 so again out of the 1967
riots in Detroit came an organization
devoted to organizing black workers for
revolutionary change
this was the league of revolutionary
black workers which lasted until 1971
and influenced thousands of black
workers in Detroit during its period of
activity the new emphasis was more
dangerous than civil rights because it
created the possibility of blacks and
whites uniting on the issue of class
exploitation back in November 1963 a
Philip a Phillip Randolph had spoken to
an afl-cio convention about the civil
rights movement and foreseen its
direction the Negroes protest today is
but the first rumbling of the underclass
as the Negro has taken to the streets so
will the employed of all races take to
the streets attempts began to do with
blacks what had been done historically
with whites to lure a small number into
the system with economic enticements
there was talk of black capitalism
leaders of the n-double a-c-p
and core co re were invited to the White
House James farmer of core a former
freedom rider and militant was given a
job in President Nixon's administration
Floyd McKissick of core received a 14
million dollar government loan to build
a housing development in North Carolina
Lyndon Johnson scuse me
Lyndon Johnson had given jobs to some
blacks through the office of
Makka portunity Nixon set up an office
of minority business enterprise Chase
Manhattan Bank in the Rockefeller family
controllers of Chase took a special
interest in developing black capitalism
the Rockefellers had always been
financial patrons of the Urban League
and a strong influence in black
education through their support of Negro
colleges in the south
David Rockefeller tried to persuade his
fellow capitalists now while helping
black businessmen with money might not
be fruitful in the short run it was
necessary to shape to shape an
environment in which the business can
continue earning a profit four or five
or ten years from now with all of this
black business remained infinitesimally
small the largest black corporation
Motown Industries had sales in 1974 of
forty five million dollars while
excellent corporation had sales of forty
two billion dollars the total receipts
of black owned black owned firms
accounted for 0.3 percent of all
business income there was a small amount
of change and a lot of publicity there
were more you mean there were more black
faces in the newspapers and on
television creating an impression of
change and siphoning off into the
mainstream a small but significant
number of black leaders some new black
voices spoke against this Robert Allen
wrote if the community as a whole is to
benefit then the community as a whole
must be organized to manage collectively
its internal economy and its business
relations with white America black
business firms must be treated and
operated as social property belonging to
the general black community not as the
private property of
or limited groups of individuals this
necessitates the dismantling of
capitalist property relations in the
black community and their replacement
with a planned communal economy if
you're FBI that's probably terrifying a
black a black woman patricia robinson in
a pamphlet distributed in boston in 1970
tied male supremacy to capitalism and
said the black woman allies for herself
with the have-nots in the wider world
and their revolutionary struggles she
said the poor black woman did not in the
past questioned the social and economic
system but now she must and in fact she
has begun to question aggressive male
domination and the class society which
enforces it capitalism another black
woman Margaret Wright said she was not
fighting for equality with men who sorry
Margaret Wright said she was not
fighting for equality with men if it
meant equality in the world of killing
the world of competition I don't want to
compete on no damned exploit
tibbe level I don't want to exploit
nobody I want the right to be black and
me the system was working hard by the
late 60s and early 70s to contain the
frightening explosiveness of the black
upsurge blacks were voting in large
numbers in the south and in the 1968
Democratic convention three blacks were
admitted into the Mississippi delegation
by 1977 more than two thousand blacks
held office in eleven southern states
in 1965 the number was 72 there were two
congressmen 11 state senators 95 state
representatives 267 county commissioners
76 mayor's 824 City Council members 18
sheriffs or Chiefs of Police 508 school
board members it was a dramatic advance
but blacks with 20% of the South's
population still at less than 3% of the
elective offices a New York Times
reporter analyzing the new situation in
1977 pointed out that even where blacks
held important city offices White's
almost always retain economic power
after Maynard Jackson of black became
mayor and Mayor an Alaskan step down
over salary after Maynard Jackson a
black became mayor of Atlanta the white
business establishment continued to
exert its influence those blacks in the
south who could afford to go dick to
downtown restaurants and hotels we're no
longer barred because of their race more
blacks could go to colleges and
universities to law schools and medical
schools northern cities were busing
children back and forth in an attempt to
create racially mixed schools despite
the racial segregation in housing
none of this however was halting what
Francis Piven and Richard Cloward called
the destruction of the black lower class
the unemployment the deterioration of
the ghetto the rising crime drug
addiction violence in the summer of 1977
the Department of Labor reported that
the rate of him unemployment among black
youths was thirty four point eight
percent a small new black middle class
of black
had been created and it raised the
overall statistics for black income but
there was a great disparity between the
newly risen middle class black and the
poor left behind despite the new
opportunities for a small number of
blacks the median black family income of
1977 was only about 60% that of whites
blacks were twice as likely to die of
diabetes seven times as likely to be
victims of homicidal violence rising out
of the poverty and despair of the yellow
a New York Times report in early 1978
said the places that experienced urban
riots in the 1960s have with a few
exceptions changed little and the
conditions of poverty have spread in
most cities statistics did not tell the
whole story
racism always a national fact not just a
southern one emerged in northern cities
as the federal government made
concessions to poor blacks in a way that
pitted them against poor whites for
resources made scarce by the system
blacks freed from slavery to take their
place under capitalism had long been
forced into conflict with whites for
scarce jobs now with desegregation in
housing blacks tried to move into
neighborhoods where whites themselves
poor crowded troubles confined in them a
target for their anger in the Boston
Globe November in 1977 a Hispanic family
of six fled their apartment in the slum
Savin Hill section of Dorchester
yesterday after a week of repeated
stonings and window smashings by a group
of white youths in what appears to have
been racially motivated attacks police
said
in Boston the busing of black children
to white schools and whites to black
schools set off a wave of white
neighborhood violence the use of busing
to integrate schools sponsored by the
government in the courts in response to
the black movement was an ingenious
concession to protest it had the effect
of pushing poor whites and poor blacks
into competition for the miserable
inadequate schools which the system
provided for all the poor was the black
population hemmed into the ghetto
divided by the growth of a middle class
decimated by poverty attacked by the
government driven into conflict with
whites under control surely in the mid
70s there was no great black movement
underway
yet a new black consciousness had been
born and was still alive
also whites and blacks were crossing
racial lines in the south to unite as a
class against employers in 1971 2000
wood workers in Mississippi black and
white joined together to protest a new
method of measuring wood that led to
lower wages in the textile mills of JP
Stevens where 44,000 workers were
employed in 85 plants mostly in the
south blacks and whites were working
together in union activity in Tifton
Georgia and Milledgeville Georgia in
1977 blacks and whites served together
on the Union Committees of their plants
when a new black movement go beyond the
limits of the civil rights actions of
the 60s beyond the spontaneous urban
riots of the 70s beyond separatism - a
coalition of white and black in a
historic new alliance there was no way
of knowing this in 1978 in nineteen
seventy-eight six million black people
were unemployed as Langston Hughes said
what happens to a dream deferred does it
dry up or does it explode if it did
explode and it had in the past it would
come with a certain inevitability out of
the conditions of black life in America
and yet because no one knew when it
would come as a surprise like the end of
this chapter which seems surprisingly
short so we'll end here and we'll pick
up on the next one
hope you enjoyed the reading however
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