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CHICAGO NEGRO LABOR
AND CIVIL RIGHTS

Tim Black

Of recent years we have been exposed to a constant and sometimes monotonous barrage of demonstrations and slogans crying Freedom Now -- Freedom Now, and most lately the dramatic (and to white frightening) slogan of Black Power.

It is time, I think, for the Black Communities, their leaders, and their white allies to really begin to examine more closely the historical and contemporary context out of which these demonstrations and slogans grow, and the political and economic realities implied for their fulfillment. "We Shall Overcome--We Shall Overcome--We Shall Overcome Some Day," so the "theme" song of the Civil Rights Movement goes, but it gives little real indication of what specifically "We Shall Overcome," and when "We Shall Overcome" and, more importantly, how "We Shall Overcome" in any permanent or specific way.

This is not to criticize and minimize in any way the accomplishments of the past ten or eleven years with the advent of Dr. Martin Luther King (SCLC) and their militant counterparts, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE). They have done a remarkably good job, sometimes almost miraculous in relationship to the social, economic and political odds pitted against them. Likewise the old-line organizations, such as NAACP and the Urban League, national, state and local, scattered throughout the United States, have played an important supporting role for the militants' demands for "Freedom Now." These accomplishments for people so systemically and cruelly divided individually and collectively for centuries have been nothing short of sensational. A real display of this unitedness of purpose, if not of method, was displayed recently on "Meet-the-Press" TV interview in August of this year, when despite obviously strong efforts to

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Timuel J. Black, Jr. is President of the Chicago chapter of the Negro American Labor Council (N.A.L.C.). He has been active in the Civil Rights Movement in Chicago for a number of years.

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