Viewing page 21 of 43

This transcription has been completed. Contact us with corrections.

History Will Be Our Judge
Richard G. Hatcher

As we look out over this vast and expectant assemblage, we can imagine how Moses and the people of Israel thrilled when they witnessed the parting of the Red Sea. We picture the jubilation of Joshua and his soldiers at that last trumpet blast. We experience the exultation of Noah when he gazed at Mount Ararat as the clouds parted and the sun shone down. We know the spirit of triumph and determination that infused Dr. Du Bois and his fellow warriors at the first gathering of the Niagara Movement.

Some of the white bourgeois news media have criticized us for welcoming all brothers and sisters. It is our convention. We shall determine who attends it. All Black people are welcome. Thousands strong, we warmly embrace Angela Davis and Bobby Seale. This convention can make history. Whether it does, will depend on what we do here today. We must emerge from this convention with an independent national Black political agenda, a dynamic program for Black liberation that, in the process, will liberate all America from its current decadence. Equally important, we must not leave this convention until we have built the mechanism to implement our program. Program must mesh with action. For this we must create a living organization. And as we deliberate, as we plan, as we work - the banner waving over our head must proclaim "unity." Without that unity, all is lost.

We support marches and demonstrations. We support sit-ins. We support trade union activity. We support legal defense. We support a cultural renaissance. We support radical action. We support all avenues to liberation. We know full well that political action is not the whole answer, but political action is an essential part of our ultimate liberation. And it is the political questions we shall pursue at this historic convention.

Our precious time together is limited. We must not waste it in fruitless dispute, ego trips, self-aggrandizement, or rhetoric uninformed by thought. Every word, every moment, we shall invest with the utmost meaning.

Keynote address delivered by Mayor Hatcher at the Black Caucus Convention in Gary, Indiana, March 11, 1972. Soon to be released by Motown Records Corporation on Black Forum Label.

134


HISTORY WILL BE OUR JUDGE        Hatcher

our political past

Poised at the exhilarating beginning of this historic convention, we must first probe our bitter political past. We dare not delude ourselves about the Black role in the political life of this country. A people bent on freedom can ill afford to harbor illusions. From Reconstruction to the mid-1930's, we nestled in the white bosom of the Republican Party - a warm home for some, perhaps; but a rocky be for the sons and daughters of Africa. In the mid-30's, we took up residence in the hip pocket of the Democratic Party, where we ledge uneasily to this day.

Our mythic heroes of Republican and Democratic stripe - Lincoln, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy, none of them moved in our behalf without tremendous pressure. Neither major party can claim our undying loyalty because of any blessings they heaped upon us. So starved were we for recognition that when Teddy Roosevelt appointed a Black man as collector of the port of Charleston, the editor of the Coloured American Magazine, overcome by this dubious honor, called it our greatest political triumph in 20 years. And he was probably right. Appropriately, the new collector was named Crum. That's spelled C-R-U-M.

Desperate for votes after the Civil War, Republicans hastened to recruit us. And vote Republican we did - at least twice saving the presidency for our new masters. Early reconstruction Republican Party platforms promised us real freedom, but the issue soon cooled, and so did the Republicans. The Hayes-Tilden Compromise of 1877, more than any other event, marked the end of our hopes for Reconstruction, and set the stage for the terror to follow. Hayes, a Republican, beat Tilden for the presidency by just one electoral vote, causing a political uproar. In exchange for letting Hayes ascend peacefully to the presidency, the Republicans betrayed us and agreed to pull federal troops out of the South leaving us to the mercy of our former masters. It matters little that Teddy Roosevelt invited Booker T. Washington to the White House for dinner. He also permitted Blacks to be barred from the Bull Moose Party convention.

Under another of our Republican leaders, William Howard Taft, federal employees were segregated - a practice which his Democratic successor, Woodrow Wilson, not to be outdone, expanded and improved. But we still hadn't learned all our lessons at Republican school. In 1924, W.E.B. Du Bois told us straight out. "Any Black man," he said, "who votes for the present Republican Party out of gratitude or with any hope that it will do a single thing for the

135

Transcription Notes:
---------- Reopened for Editing 2024-02-16 16:03:04