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FREEDOMWAYS    THIRD QUARTER 1973

Gray* and others resulted in the Great Rent Strike in Harlem during the winter following the March on Washington. This idea spread rapidly to St. Louis, Newark and other areas as tenants in "public housing" withheld rent payments from the local housing authorities, as a form of community pressure to backup their demands for improvement in conditions and an end to the neglect of slum-lords and government alike.

The demand for jobs and job training and Blacks and Puerto Ricans in the skilled crafts of the construction industry in Chicago, Philadelphia and elsewhere marked another area in which major organizational effort was made. This emergence of organized mass movements in the North demanding quality education, jobs, and better housing represented a significant enlargement of our movement from its Southern civil rights base. In effect it marked the crystallization of a nationwide movement for full liberation from all forms of institutionalized racism. This mobilized nationwide movement spearheaded by Afro-Americans became the cutting edge of the general democratic struggle for a civil society in the United States which attracted a cross-section of the U.S. population. All groups which have experienced a "disadvantaged" social condition such as women and youth were attracted to and became participants in this general democratic struggle which has left its indelible imprint on the life of society today.

A summary conclusion to be drawn from all of this is that out of the struggle for human rights––the struggle for freedom––the Afro-American community has developed, over an historical period covering two centuries of this Republic, the fullest example of the struggle for consistent democracy; the most mature expression of the working-class democratic tradition to yet develop in the United States.

Today in this period of profound social crisis in the U.S society at-large the democratic tradition of struggle for human rights and progressive social development in our country is under sustained assault by every instrument of the cultural media controlled by the Establishment. Whether in films, the novel, drama or music every art form is being prostituted to negate the progressive tradition of the black population and its impact on American life. What is being systematically developed is a lumpenkultur as the values and the lifestyle of the de-classed elements are being promoted as the authentic expression

*Jesse Gray was recently elected to the New York State Legislature from Harlem.

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