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FREEDOMWAYS                          FOURTH QUARTER 1968
was almost totally at the mercy of the white majority. In this process what John Stuart Mill described as "class legislation" was enacted. The needs of the minority were sacrificed to the tyranny of the majority. What people fail to understand is than in an allegedly democratic structure where numbers are of paramount importance, the minority group is constantly in jeopardy unless the majority group is both empathetic and just. When Black people in the process of achieving their rights violate the law the serious question to be raised is both why the law is violated and whose law has been violated. The allegedly democratic process has legislated Black people to attend segregated washrooms, drink from segregated water fountains and ride in segregated travel facilities. The legislative process in America has degraded and dehumanized and historically insulted the dignity of Black people. The tragedy that can befall the democratic process became painfully apparent in the Albany defeat of legislation designed to help the discriminated Black community in New York City extricate itself from the colonialist structure of the New York City school system. What is on trial is the total democratic process in which the rights and needs of the minority are at the mercy of a willful and insensitive majority. The majority people, like those on the front end of a long line, may feel that a line is a good thing. But there are others, like minority people, on the tail end of the line who may have a different idea. Unless our democratic process can function in a more moral and sensitive way it can only fail.
The alternative to legislative frustration has been violence. The nation has been the victim of violence from two camps. The ghetto communities have erupted in violence because the democratic process has failed; while invisible, and, perhaps, mythological conspiracies have indulged in violence because the democratic process might succeed. The hand of the assassin has reached the finest leaders our nation has been able to produce. It is significant that those who have been struck down were men zealously in pursuit of ideals and dreams without which no nation can be counted worthy. Malcolm X dreamed of Black dignity. Martin Luther King dreamed of a just and equal nation. President Kennedy dreamed of a new society. Medgar Evers dreamed of an emancipated South. Senator Robert Kennedy dreamed of a transformed world. 
In the wake of this unprecedented epidemic of violence and assassination strange sounds have come from Washington. Security was rushed to major political candidates omitting, of course, minor political candidates like Dick Gregory who probably needs protection
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