To the Editor:
Bayard Rustin’s “From Protest to Politics” [February] is the most perceptive—and potentially most important—piece on the civil-rights movement I have ever seen. To manage so inclusive and suggestive an analysis in a mere seven pages is something of a miracle. Congratulations to him and to you. May the article be widely read.
Martin Duberman
Dept. of History
Princeton University
Princeton, New Jersey
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To the Editor:
. . . How can Mr. Rustin be so sure that the Negro who, through capitalist “motivation” becomes economically successful, will in fact “favor a greater expansion of the public sector of the economy”? Could it not be that in a few years time the assimilated, prosperous Negro will emerge as a class very much akin to his white counterparts, who will favor very little other than . . . his own newly won class and economic interests? . . .
Mr. Rustin writes with a profound grasp of the economic and political realities of the civil-rights movement, but why does he not comment on the fact’ that the change from protest to politics could fatally transform the heart of the movement into an institutionalized minority Apparat, . . . thus forever losing the raw sweeping power of a million effective voices. . .?
Neil Abramson
North Hollywood, California
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To the Editor:
While there is much that is penetrating and thought-provoking in Bayard Rustin’s article, one suspects from his first sentence that he has become a “white liberal.” The “period in which the legal foundations of racism in America were destroyed,” was, contrary to Mr. Rustin’s assumption, the moment of ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment. Since the overthrow of the First Reconstruction we have been a nation of criminals, nothing less. Unless and until we have a “confrontation” with this, we shall never be prepared to pay the price of the crime. . . .
Howard N. Meyer
Rockville Centre, New York
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To the Editor:
In his plea that the Negroes seek an alliance with the liberal establishment in the present stage of the civil-rights movement, Bayard Rustin counsels what I believe to be a strategy of defeat. . . . He presents a picture of the Democratic party as the embodiment of a benign liberal consensus. All that is necessary is to drive out big business which, he unconvincingly states, “does not belong” in the same party with Lyndon Johnson and Walter Reuther. But Big Business does belong to the American consensus, which has as its fundamental aim the containment and not the satisfaction of legitimate Negro demands.
In assuming that the “forms of political democracy exist in America,” Rustin denies in effect that the future task of the civil-rights movement is to move to more profound forms of democracy, including the development of indigenous Negro leadership in a democratic way. Bayard Rustin himself would be an early casualty in such a development.
Marvin E. Gettleman
Dept. of History
Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn
Brooklyn, New York
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To the Editor:
. . . Bayard Rustin’s approach is quite ingenious, for he presents quite conservative and moderate theories in the guise of a newly thought-out social radicalism. In reality, his outlook would direct the movement into cooperation with the dominant system, and thus block its growth into a broader and more radical opposition to the existing structure and organization of American society. . . .
He accuses the radical black leadership of substituting a posture of militancy for a strategy, but this is unfair. The black militants, centered in the city ghettos, advance their concept of black political power as a result of their understanding that the American elite is doomed, and that protest groups which whites view as allies of the Negro cause are so integrated into the existing structure that they function as enemies of social change. These black radicals maintain that the goals of the Negro cannot be realized within American society as it now exists, and that by definition the Negro revolt must finally evolve to a revolutionary position. These militants do not seek to win power in order to become part of the structure. Rather, they seek to use the power of the black community, as James Boggs defines it, not to “put white men in office, to whom they can go and ask for things, but rather to develop their own power to dispose over things.”
An approach based on building up centers of black political power differs markedly from Rustin’s, though the proclaimed goal of both is to achieve a fundamental reconstruction of the entire society. Actually, the type of realignment which Rustin proposes can only occur if the Negro movement uses its power and its base in the Northern ghetto to force unacceptable alternatives upon the major parties, particularly by threatening withdrawal of the automatic endorsement given the Democratic party. . . .
Rustin would have us believe that coalition inside the Democratic party is more desirable than independent action outside of it. Cognizant of the fact that President Johnson is pursuing what he terms a “centrist course,” trying to hold both the Negro and Big Business as part of his consensus, he urges that the electoral mandate be seized by his mythical coalition to set fundamental changes in motion, and that reorganization of the consensus party take place so as to make it a vehicle for social reconstruction. But if the Democrats are assured of the unequivocal support of the Negro population, those in the center will not have to respond to the desires of those who are on the Left of the alleged coalition. With the assured support of this Left, the center will have to cater only to those on the Right, which is, in fact, the very course President Johnson has taken. . . .
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In practice, Rustin’s political approach leads to a direction quite the opposite of what he says is desirable. The depths to which the movement can descend if it follows Rustin’s advice is illustrated by what happened at the Atlantic City Democratic Convention. In theory, Rustin’s connection with the Freedom Democratic party was meant to break the stranglehold of the Southern Democrats on the party, so that the Democratic organization would be transformed into an organ of progress responsive to “coalition” forces. But his tactics led only to dependence on traditional Democratic politics of compromise.
By advising the FDP delegates to compromise and not demand that their entire delegation be seated in place of the illegal racist delegation from Mississippi, . . . he was asking the FDP to give up its very reason for existence—since it was precisely a Dixiecrat walkout that the FDP originally had in mind. As the FDP explained, “The compromise was an effort by the administration, led by President Johnson, to prevent a floor fight on the issue at the convention. The compromise was not designed to deal with the issues raised by the FDP in challenging the regular delegation. The FDP delegation came to Atlantic City to raise the issue of racism, not simply to demand recognition. It could not accept a token decision which has as its goal the avoidance of the question of racism.” . . . So Rustin joined Walter Reuther and Joseph Rauh in urging what SNCC leaders termed a “back of the bus” settlement. Accommodation to liberalism led to the uncritical support of traditional Democratic politics, and finally to disavowal of Rustin’s own tactic of realignment. . . .
One alternative to Rustin’s tactics would be the creation of black political centers based among the ghetto poor, combined with the building up by white radicals of a series of movements in the white community to parallel those developed by new Negro movements. . . . These processes, however, will be severely hindered if the movement gives up its independence and allows itself to be absorbed into the Johnson administration—and if the liberal ideology which puts coalition ahead of independent action becomes the movement’s guideline for strategy.
Ronald Radosh
Associate Editor
Studies on the Left
New York City