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FREEDOMWAYS          THIRD QUARTER 1969

had been dramatic changes during the last two years of the Depres-sion, changes which demanded new tactics and a new strategy.  For better or worse, the politics of the nation had shifted to the left; the National Association had not."
  Herein lay the heart of the Scottsboro Case and the clash of those who differed as to the nature of the defense.  Far-reaching changes had taken place in the U.S.A.  Those had to be recognized and ap-praised.  The depression threw black and white masses in motion, fighting for their very lives.
  I must draw the Soviet Union into the picture.  Just as the great American revolution of 1776 had brought profound changes in the lives and struggles of the people, so, too, had the Socialist revolu-tion of 1917.  It was not alone the property of the Russian people.  Those changes had to be translated into political action in the Scottsboro case.
  
  The program of defense demanded mass action.  Subjectively, both the NAACP and the ILD wanted to save the lives of the Scottsboro boys.  But depending alone upon the Courts of those who had il-legally made these boys their victim would not accomplish that re-sult.  Only the people in action, threatening to take a decisive hand in government if the innocent boys were not released could de-termine the result, could bring about their salvation.
  That fight for life was a fight against racism in government.  New tactics and a new strategy had to be introduced in the liberation struggle.  The shift of the nation to the left demanded a correspond-ing ideological change that would further open the eyes of the masses.  "The National Association," as the author says, "had not changed."  It was not ready to clash head-on with those in power even though it knew them to be avowed racists.  It was not ready for mass action.  The change that history demanded was and remains a power change.
  Today, 1969, to present the bare facts of the Scottsboro Case is to hide what had been learned of the menace of racism from ex-periences with the Nazis, through their trial at Nuremberg, from the shocking facts bared in the Civil Rights reports of four presi-dents from the genocidal crimes daily being committed against militant black youth by the armed forces of city, state and federal governments.  As Scottsboro cannot be separated from the past, it must be linked with the present.  This is a period of mass struggle.  Its lessons must help us see a future which can only be marked by

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