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FREEDOMWAYS
FOURTH QUARTER 1966

split or/and to show cleavages among the national leaders Dr. King, Stokely Carmichael, Roy Wilkins, Floyd McKissick, and Whitney Young, the "brothers" were never more publicly solid together. They showed a unity of spirit and mutual respect for each other that were beautiful to behold and much to the chagrin of their "inquisitors" this display of unity was very good for the morale of Negroes watching, and educating to whites who believe that Negro leadership is farcical and deeply divided over the major issues of the day.

However, when we review the real concrete accomplishments of the past ten or eleven years we must ask ourselves the soul-searching question: How far have we really come, socially, economically and politically in relationship to the progress of the rest of the nation? That's a tough question to face, but I think we must face it and we must face it now. In view of the recent summer conflagrations all over the country and particularly in Chicago, and in view of the hard stand on civil rights legislation taken in by this Congress it is time to sit down and review where we are and "whither we go" and how. This is crucial.

It is the growing opinion of many people in the civil rights movement and their friends outside that though street demonstrations may still in some instances be needed we need to take a cold hard look at the political and economic plight and the potential of the Negro American and plan a program dealing with that plight and building on that potential. Without going into the statistics of the matter, let me say that both the political and economic plight of the average Negro in America is pitiful and tragic. At this moment he is on the bottom of the heap and going downward. Politically as he moves into the large urban complexes though his numbers grow his real political strength diminishes and is manipulated against his own interests by the white political "bosses" with helpful Negro "stooges." There are prosperity and plenty in the white community while at the same time there are depressions and scarcity in the Negro community. Dr. Deton Brooks, a Negro and the Director of the politically controlled Chicago Committee on Urban Opportunity (C.C.U.O.), reports that 700,000 of Chicago's over 1,000,000 Negroes live in families where the income is under $3,000 (the poverty level). Interestingly most of these people are not on welfare but work for this starvation income. Also 45 per cent of all Negro youth between the ages of 16 and 21 in Chicago are neither in school nor on a job. What dissatisfaction--what riot and gang potential! Chicago is probably not atypical but rather quite typical of most urban areas and

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---------- Reopened for Editing 2024-02-09 14:29:58