Fighting for a promised land
FORTY YEARS AGO this April Martin Luther King was
assassinated as he demonstrated in support of a sanitation workers’
strike in Memphis, Tennessee. His death sparked riots in over 100 cities
across America. Ten years ago (in the article below) HANNAH SELL
looked at the life and ideas of the civil rights leader who inspired
millions with his vision that a fundamental change in US society was
possible. (First printed in Socialism Today No.27, April 1998)
The lessons of Martin Luther King’s life are
perhaps even more pertinent today than they were a decade ago. Following
the successful passage of the Civil Rights Act in 1964 King recognised
the limitations of the victories that had been won, declaring that the
gains of the movement were "limited mainly to the Negro middle class".
He argued that the movement had to go on to fight poverty, saying: "Now
our struggle is for genuine equality, which means economic equality. For
now we know that it isn’t enough to integrate lunch counters. What does
it profit a man to be able to eat at an integrated lunch counter if he
doesn’t earn enough money to buy a hamburger and a cup of coffee?"
Towards the end of his life he recognised to
effectively fight poverty means to challenge capitalism itself and
suggested that, "maybe America should move towards democratic
socialism".
Today the poverty suffered by the majority of
black Americans remains unchanged, as Hurricane Katrina brutally
revealed. Official census figures from 1996 show that 24.3% of US black
people live in poverty compared to 8.2% of whites. The recession
currently hitting the US will dramatically increase the numbers, black,
white and Latino, who will be left in dire poverty. It is estimated that
two million could lose their homes in the coming year as a result of the
housing crisis.
At the same time the black middle class is
larger, and far more prosperous, than was the case in the 1960s. For the
first time, there is the real possibility that a black man, Barack Obama,
could become president of the United States. Obama claims the mantle of
the civil rights movement, linking his candidature to the struggles of
the 1960s, to the "teenagers and college students who left their homes
to march in the streets of Birmingham and Montgomery; the mothers who
walked instead of taking the bus after a long day of doing somebody
else’s laundry and cleaning somebody else’s kitchen".
Many of the children and grandchildren of those
civil rights activists are indeed inspired by the idea of president
Obama. Unfortunately, however, there are many parallels between Obama
and the white leaders of the Democrats that Martin Luther King initially
supported but then, on the basis of bitter experience, came into
conflict with. Like the Democrat establishment, Obama is largely funded
by big business. Seven of Obama’s top ten donors, for example, are
amongst the giant financial institutions responsible for the US
sub-prime crisis and all the human misery it is causing.
The lessons Martin Luther King drew from his
experiences, particularly the need for a united struggle of the working
class, black and white, will be understood and built upon by a new
generation in the coming years.
AT THE TIME of his assassination Martin Luther King,
like Malcolm X, George Jackson and other black activists of the time,
was becoming a major threat to the US establishment. There is still
widespread suspicion that the establishment ordered his killing. James
Earl Ray, who was convicted of the killing, consistently claimed he was
innocent, a claim supported by King’s family. Today evidence is
increasing that people linked to the state machine were involved.
The problems black Americans faced then remain
today. Laws may have changed but the economic discrimination for the
vast majority has not. A small minority has gained wealth and power, but
the average black family’s income is $23,482 compared to $37,161 for
whites. Police racism and brutality remain a part of everyday life – 80%
of complaints against the police come from blacks or Latinos. The
lessons of Martin Luther King’s life remain as pertinent today as ever.
Martin Luther King came to prominence during the
battle to smash the Jim Crow laws.(1) These laws stated that black
Americans were ‘separate but equal’. In reality this meant second-class
education, housing and jobs. Discrimination affected every aspect of
life in the black communities. In addition, although black people had
the formal right to vote, in the Southern states a conscious campaign of
vicious and unrelenting violence took place to stop them registering to
vote.
This had been the situation since the American civil
war. There was a North-South divide. In the North a more economically
advanced industrial capitalism had developed. The wealth of the Southern
states had been built on the slavery of millions of black people,
brought in chains from Africa to work on the cotton plantations. The
plantation owners’ rapacious need for more land had brought them into
conflict with the Northern capitalists. In the war that followed US
president Lincoln initially had no intention of freeing the Southern
slaves. Under pressure, following heavy defeats from the Southern army,
and enormous sympathy for the slaves amongst the Northern working class,
Lincoln was forced to declare the freeing of the slaves.
The declaration itself had a major effect in
undermining the Southern economy as hundreds of thousands fled the
plantations. Most went to fight for the North. As they marched forward,
they seized the land from the retreating plantation owners.
The period immediately after the civil war was known
as the ‘reconstruction’. Following the defeat of the South, poor whites
and blacks fought together for the right to vote, for education and for
land, summed up in their slogan ‘40 acres and a mule’. The Northern
capitalists backed the movement up to a point, because it consolidated
their victory over the plantation owners. However, once they were
confident of their power they allowed Southern big business a freer
rein. The South then unleashed the Ku Klux Klan to carry out a reign of
terror on black people, as well as poor whites. The formal rights won
were diluted by the Jim Crow laws while ‘lynch law’ enforced the reality
of no rights for black people.
The civil rights movement
THE NEXT MAJOR chapter in the struggles of black
Americans, the civil rights movement, began in the 1950s for a number of
reasons. The second world war had an effect. A high proportion of those
who went abroad to fight were black. Not only had thousands of black
soldiers fought and died for US imperialism, they were struck by the
glaring hypocrisy of the war propaganda. Here was a capitalist class
claiming they had to go to war against the racism of the Nazis – while
in their own country vicious racism was the norm. In addition, the
labour shortage resulting from the war meant black people and women got
jobs in industry that were previously unavailable.
After the war US capitalism entered a prolonged
period of economic prosperity. This meant that many more black Americans
were moving from the rural South to the cities (mainly in the North). In
1940 half the black population lived in the cities, by 1970 it was three
quarters. Becoming part of the working class in the cities – moving from
isolated rural communities to massive urban centres – increased
confidence and the capacity to struggle. In addition, the increased
wealth and higher living standards of the white middle class made the
poverty and degradation of the vast majority of black Americans seem
even starker than before. Finally, the liberation struggles of the
masses in Africa and Asia, who were succeeding in overthrowing colonial
rule, provided inspiration.
Against this background the civil rights movement
began. In 1955 a 14-year-old black youth, Emmett Till, was brutally
murdered for supposedly whistling at a white woman. The two white men
accused of the murder were acquitted by the all-white jury; widespread
anger erupted. Later that year Rosa Parks, a garment worker in
Montgomery, Alabama, refused to give up her bus seat to a white man. She
was arrested and a boycott of the buses ensued. Martin Luther King, a
local preacher, came to prominence in this movement which, after another
year of struggle, forced the desegregation of the buses in Montgomery.
The movement gathered pace over the next eight
years. Students began to organise mass sit-ins in segregated cafeterias,
demanding the right to be served. Freedom riders rode long-distance
buses across the South demanding that facilities should be deregulated.
In Birmingham, Alabama, mass demonstrations were met by police
brutality. King was arrested and held in solitary confinement.
Eventually, forced to compromise in the face of the movement, the local
authorities agreed to desegregate facilities – only to renege on their
promises as soon as the demonstrators dispersed.
King’s organisation, the Southern Christian
Leadership Conference (SCLC), was one of several organisations that
emerged at this stage of the civil rights movement. Previously, the main
organisation campaigning for black Americans had been the National
Association for the Advancement of Colored Peoples (NAACP). The
leadership of this group concentrated on legal change and had succeeded
in winning a number of reforms, including the desegregation of schools
in 1954. However, without mass action it was becoming clear legal reform
was worthless. King’s organisation was based on the need for mass
action. He believed that non-violent mass protests were the way forward,
mistakenly thinking that Gandhi had defeated British imperialism in
India through these means. Other organisations, in particular the
Student Non-violent Co-ordinating Committee (SNCC), also organised mass
action on a similar basis to King, although they tended to be more
radical and have fewer illusions in the establishment.
The televising of police brutality in Birmingham led
to demonstrations spreading like wildfire through America. Under this
pressure president Kennedy spoke on national television in June 1963
saying: "And this nation, for all its hopes and boasts, will not be free
until its citizens are free. Now the time has come for this nation to
fulfil its promise. The events in Birmingham and elsewhere have so
increased the cries for equality that no city or state or legislative
body can prudently choose to ignore them". He went on to propose legal
changes to introduce desegregation.
In response, the civil rights movement called a
march on Washington, in which over 200,000 people took part. Originally,
the march was seen as demanding economic improvements – better housing,
jobs, education and pay – for black Americans. However, under pressure
from the Democratic establishment, it became a march to support Kennedy.
For example, John Lewis, chair of SNCC, had included in his proposed
speech the following statements: "We march today for jobs and freedom,
but we have nothing to be proud of. For hundreds of thousands of our
brothers are not here. They have no money for their transportation, for
they are receiving starvation wages... or no wages at all...
"This nation is still a place of cheap political
leaders who... ally themselves with open forms of political, economic
and social exploitation... The party of Kennedy is also the party of the
Eastland.(2) The party of Javits is also the party of Goldwater.(3)
Where is our party?...
"Revolution is at hand, and we must free ourselves
from the chains of political and economic slavery... The revolution is a
serious one. Mr Kennedy is trying to take the revolution out of the
street and put it in the courts. Listen Mr Kennedy... The black masses
are on the march for jobs and freedom and we must say to the politicians
that there won’t be a cooling-off period". Under pressure from
Democratic Party representatives all this was taken out of his speech.
Moving beyond civil rights
THE ISSUES THAT were buried on the Washington march
flooded to the surface in the months and years that followed. Legal
changes were made, but reality got worse. On 10 August 1965, the New
York Times commented: "The discontented point to several ugly paradoxes
that have accompanied progress on civil rights... The unemployment gap
between the races has been growing. The Labor Department reported that
Negroes constituted 20.6% of the unemployed last year although they only
account for 10% of the population...
"There is a growing conviction that civil rights
alone are not enough… Even in complete possession of his civil rights
the Negro would still face automation, urban decay, family
deterioration, entrapment in slums and de facto segregation of schools.
These are social and economic failures that transcend racial injustice
and minority grievances. They call for more drastic remedies, and there
are doubts among the more radical leaders that such remedies can be
found within existing political and economic institutions".
The frustration felt by black Americans at the
failure of the civil rights movement to provide fundamental change led
to a searching for new ideas. The Republicans and Democrats then, as
now, both represented the cynical interests of big business. No party
existed which fought for the working class, black and white. While some
people were attracted to the Cuban and Chinese revolutions and drew
inspiration from figures like Che Guevara, their belief that guerrilla
struggle was the main force for change had no effective application in
the cities of the US. In addition, the horrifically distorted and
Stalinist nature of the so-called ‘socialist’ regimes was abhorrent to
black activists. Without any clear alternative many different ideas were
thrown up.
King’s idea of non-violence was increasingly
challenged. On the one hand, it was becoming understood that to turn the
other cheek in the face of the might of the US state forces was
unrealistic and naive. On the other hand, the need for organised mass
protests was sometimes abandoned as well. The idea that spontaneous
uprisings and riots were enough to win was rightly argued against by
King.
A section, particularly of the most radical youth,
drew black nationalist conclusions – that the whole of white society had
to be written off. Some, seeing integration as a failure, raised the
idea of a separate black state. Others, for example Malcolm X, who had
initially drawn black nationalist conclusions, began to change his
ideas. At the end of his life Malcolm X had begun to turn towards
socialist ideas. Later the Black Panthers developed. The Panthers saw
themselves more consciously as socialists. Both Malcolm X and the
Panthers were revolutionaries in their determination and willingness to
struggle to change society totally. They understood that capitalism
offered no alternative.
King, by contrast, was for much of his life more
prepared to accept a slower pace of change and take the establishment at
its word when it made promises. However, in the face of reality, he too
was looking for new ideas. He argued that: "This revolution in values
must go beyond traditional capitalism and communism. We must honestly
admit that capitalism has often left a gulf between superfluous wealth
and abject poverty... The profit motive, when it is the sole basis of an
economic system, encourages a cut-throat competition and selfish
ambition... Equally, communism reduces men to a cog in the wheel of the
state. The good and just society is neither the thesis of capitalism nor
the antithesis of communism but a socially conscious democracy that
reconciles the truths of individualism and collectivism".
King’s idea was basically one of reforming
capitalism. He argued for state intervention in the US to carry out a
massive anti-poverty programme, including a decent minimum wage for all
and a huge social housing programme. This was utopian – he did not
understand that fundamental improvements could only be achieved if
capitalism was overthrown and replaced with a democratic, socialist
system. The only time in its history that American capitalism allowed
substantial economic and social gains for black people was during the
reconstruction after the civil war. This came about because, for a brief
space in time, the interests of the Northern capitalists on the need to
finally crush the plantation system coincided with the interests of
black people in the South.
In the 1950s and 1960s capitalism had no interest in
giving real equality. One of the organisers of the march on Washington,
Bayard Rustin, estimated in 1965 that it would cost $100 billion to
organise a genuine ‘war on poverty’.(4) US capitalism was completely
unwilling to undertake such a project. On the contrary, they relied on
black poverty to guarantee their profits.
King’s ideas were equally utopian internationally.
He argued for a massive ‘Marshall Aid’ plan of 2% of GNP a year for 15
years to Africa, Latin America and Asia. (Marshall Aid was the money
injected into Western Europe and Japan by the US at the end of the
second world war, which amounted to 1% of US GNP for three years.) Yet
big business in the US only carried out the Marshall Aid plan to
reconstruct Europe because they feared that Stalinism would increase its
geographical strength by taking Western Europe (it had already taken
Eastern Europe). In reality, even in the post-war economic upswing, the
US relied on poverty in Africa, Asia and Latin America to supply them
with cheap raw materials and labour.
Martin Luther King’s legacy today
UNDER THE PRESSURE of the civil rights movement,
some action was taken by the establishment. Laws were changed and a
conscious policy of developing a black middle class was instituted. The
hope was that black ‘role models’ would create the illusion that the
American dream was realisable for all. Today, celebrities like Oprah
Winfrey are among the richest people in America. There are black judges,
police chiefs and politicians. The reality for the majority, though, is
worse than ever. Black men are three times as likely to be unemployed
than white men. Half those on death row are from a racial minority. In
50% of murders the victim is black yet only 10% of executions are for
the murder of a black person.
Even the legal changes won in the civil rights
movement, such as affirmative action programmes (for instance, where a
certain percentage of college places or jobs have to be given to people
from ethnic minorities), are under attack from the right. Although they
did not produce fundamental change their removal is a backward step. In
universities where affirmative action laws have been repealed, black
student numbers have halved overnight. At the university of California
law school one black student enrolled last year, compared to 20 the
previous year. The medical college rejected all 196 black applicants.
Campaigns have taken place across America to stop
the repeal of the affirmative action legislation. On this and many more
issues, like housing, pay and police brutality, there is a glaring need
for a mass, organised campaign today. The Democratic government is
making no pretence of being ‘radical’. Although Clinton is in favour of
affirmative action laws, his general economic and social policies, for
example his plans to destroy welfare, are resulting in increased poverty
for millions of black Americans.
As the black community rises up to fight for real
equality many of the same issues that were debated in the 1960s will
surface again. The collapse of the Stalinist regimes in 1990 and the
capitalist triumphalism that accompanied this led to a disillusionment
internationally that an alternative to capitalism is possible. The
leadership of the labour movement in the US has, even more than other
countries, failed to offer a way to fight back for black and white
alike. As a result, in the US today the idea of class action is not
widely understood. Nonetheless, increased poverty for the majority of
the population in the richest country in the world, combined with the
economic catastrophe that capitalism means today for the masses of
Africa, will lead to many seeking a socialist alternative to capitalism.
Despite the limitations of King’s ideas he was
prepared to fight for change and he had grasped one vital fact more
clearly than many others at the time. In arguing against black
separatism he called for a coalition with poor and working-class whites:
"Within the white majority there exists a substantial group who cherish
democratic principles above privilege and who have demonstrated a will
to fight side by side with the Negro against injustice. Another and more
substantial group is composed of those having common needs with the
Negro and who will benefit equally with him in the achievement of social
progress. There are, in fact, more poor white Americans than there are
Negro. Their need for a war on poverty is no less desperate than the
Negro’s".
On the trade unions he argued that "ten percent of
the population cannot by tensions alone induce ninety percent to change
a way of life. Within the ranks of organised labour there are nearly two
million Negroes. Not only are they found in large numbers as workers,
but they are concentrated in key industries. In the truck
transportation, steel, auto and food industries, which are the backbone
of the nation’s economic life, Negroes make up nearly 20% of the
organised workforce, although they are only 10% of the general
population. This potential strength is magnified further by the fact of
their unity with millions of white workers in these occupations. As
co-workers there is a basic community of interest that transcends many
of the ugly divisive elements of traditional prejudice".
King was a mass leader. In his lifetime the
establishment attempted to use him as a ‘reasonable’ advocate of black
rights. For example, in 1964 he was awarded the Nobel peace prize.
Typically, he gave the $54,000 prize money away.
Since his death the image of him as the moderate
representative of black activism has been immortalised, there is even a
national holiday in his name. The reality was very different. He was
dangerous to the establishment primarily because he inspired a
generation of black Americans to struggle. In his search for a way to
win real equality for the black community he began to draw the
conclusion that a serious battle against poverty and oppression had to
be fought alongside working-class whites. He understood the collective
power of workers in workplaces. At the time of his assassination he was
founding a movement against poverty. He was also becoming actively
involved in supporting workers in struggle. For these reasons he had
ceased to be a ‘reasonable man’ for US capitalism; instead he was a
major threat.
Notes:
(1) The laws that said black Americans were
‘separate but equal’ were known as the Jim Crow laws. They were based on
the Supreme Court ruling of 1896 in the Plessy v Ferguson case. This
effectively overturned the legal equality won after the civil war by
allowing state laws mandating separate facilities – providing they were
‘substantially equal’.
(2) This refers to the Democratic Party. While
Kennedy posed as a supporter of civil rights, Eastland was a far-right
Southern ‘Dixiecrat’ who supported segregation.
(3) This refers to the Republicans. Javits posed as
a supporter of civil rights, Goldwater was at that time a far-right
segregationist who ran a racist presidential campaign in 1964 and argued
that the racist right of the Democratic Party belonged in the same party
as him.
(4) In 1965 Bayard Rustin called for a war on
poverty, aimed primarily at the black community. His estimated cost
included $5 billion a year for the elimination of slums and a minimum
wage of $2 an hour. (New York Times magazine, August 1965)
|