Viewing page 60 of 100

This transcription has been completed. Contact us with corrections.

FREEDOMWAYS FIRST QUARTER 1968

stitutions of their oppression. Many members of the white community joined in the assault. The climax of this integrated approach to integration came with the 1963 March on Washington. By this time, however, the thrust in the black liberation movement was taking on new dimensions. The wisdom and necessity of integrating into a bankrupt social system were being openly questioned. At the same time it was becoming increasingly apparent that in the sturggle for black liberation, the goals and interests of the white liberal could not be congruous with those of Afro-Americans. For a brief (and sterile) period, the white liberal became a favorite whipping-boy of the black militants. The new leadership elements realized the futility of continuing to engage in this kind of exercise and turned its energies to the purpose of taking control of the decision and policy making apparatus within the people-based black organizations. We are now in a situation where two of these important organizations, SNCC and CORE, have elected to forego white participation and to direct their attention and efforts to developing self sufficiency within the black community. That ever dwindling number of whites who remain committed to the struggle are correctly being told to take the battle into the white community where a monumental task of proselytizing awaits them. Coupled with the rejection of the strategies and tactics of non-violence, this new wave of radical black thought and action has brought the United States to the edge of racial precipice. Certainly not since the end of the Second World War and possibly not in its entire history has the nation faced an internal upheaval of such magnitude. 

Across the breadth of this enormously powerful and widely despised land, live untold numbers of black humanity who have totally and irrevocably lost every vestige of hope that the nation is even remotely concerned with their plight. In turn they have severed their moral and spiritual attachments to the society. THeir numbers are larger in the slums that dot the nation, but there is also a not insignificant fraction who reside in the gilded ghettos of black suburbia. Today, in a very real way, these alienated blacks, wherever they are to be found constitute the most revolutionary group in the United States. The riot strewn cities attest to their numbers, their courage, and their determination. To some observers, this new breed of black militants is viewed as a novel type of urban guerrilla who has an instrumental role to play in the coming battle to transform
58