Martin Luther King jr. Special Edition_____
(CI|V jfortlanh (Observer
January 19, 2000
NOVEMBER FREEDOM DAYS
MOMENTS IN CIVIL RIGHTS
HISTORY
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State of Oregon
" We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the
great vaults o f opportunity o f this nation."
-Martin Luther King Jr.
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"In 1942,” John H Johnson re­
called, "m y m other and I w ere re­
cent graduates o f the reliet (w el­
fare) rolls. And 1 decided 1 was never
going down that road again.” H e had
a dream o f an idea - he w anted to
publish a magazine. For his dream ,
his m other risked hers - the furni­
ture she’d saved for and paid for w ith
a lifetim e o f work. In 1942, she
pledged her furniture as collateral
to em pow er her son with a $500
secured bank loan. T hat year, on
November 1, he published his first
issue o f N egro Digest. W ith its suc­
cess, he dubbed the date his “good
luck” day. O n N ovem ber 1,1945, he
launched Ebony. A nd on N ovem ber
1, 1951, cam e Jet.
On N ovem ber 5, 1968, in one
record-breaking d ay ’s testam ent to
the pow er o f the black vote un­
leashed by the 1965 Voting Rights
Act, seven black men and w om en
were elected mayor, nine w ent to
Congress (eight to the House and
one to the Senate), ninety-seven
were elected to state legislatures,
and four hundred w ere elected to
local governm ents in the form er
Confederate States.
Although no one had dared pre­
dict such sw eeping success, the
1968 results had been foreshadow ed
by the 1967 election and Carl Stokes
o f Cleveland, Ohio. A nd few could
denv the repercussions - pro and
con - from the slaughter o f the
John H. Johnson launched his publication. Ebony on November
1. 1945. In 1942. Johnson 's mother pledged her furniture as
collateral to empower her son with a $500 secured bank loan to
start up his business. Jackie Robinson. Mrs. John H: Johnson.
Jim Brown. Sammy Davis. Jr:, and Publisher and CEO John H.
Johnson (far,right) with Ebony's 2D", anniversary birthday cake.
trated every union issue from se­
niority and wage differentials to ap­
p re n tic e s h ip o p p o rtu n itie s. T he
A FL-CIO even segregated its con­
ventions in southern cities.
O nce the dependence o f black
g ro u p s on th e c o n trib u tio n s o f
w ealthy w hite industrialists had kept
African Americans out o f the union
movement. No longer. That bond
had been strained as the Civil Rights
m ovem ent attacked racist institu­
tions nationwide. Tw enty-five years
after founding the Negro National
Congress and the Brotherhood o f
S leeping C ar P orters, A. Philip
Randolph was president of
the Negro American La­
bor Council. As delegates
gathered in Chicago for
the Council’s convention
on N ovem ber 10, 1961
w here Randolph was the
keynote speaker.
Ed Davis was a trail­
blazer. In 1939, he opened
a Studebaker dealership,
the first African Ameri­
The nation was traumatized by the
can franchisee o f any U.S.
assassination o f its bright young
manufacturer. Bom into
president. John F. The Kennedy era was
a comfortable family in
notable in the war for Civil flights.
Louisiana, where his fa­
Photo credit: Moneta Sleet. Jr.
ther ow ned a 500-acre
farm and a Model-T Ford, Ed grew
O rangeburg students by the National
up
in love with the magic and new ­
G uard, a ssassin atio n s o f M artin
born potential o f cars. Those were
L u th er K ing Jr. an d R o b e rt F.
the days when seeing a car was as
K ennedy, and the appearance o f
rare as owning one. Following his
Fannie Lou H am er at the D em o­
love, at sixteen he left Louisiana to
cratic N ational C onvention. T he en­
attend Detroit’s Cass Technical High
ergy ushering Richard Nixon into
School and study auto mechanics.
the presidency on a “law and order”
But graduating during the Depres­
cam paign also brought a generation
sion era made it impossible to find a
o f blacks into party politics. A net­
job. After he was refused a job w ash­
work o f com m unity organizers had
ing cars on the ground that the gas
succeeded in forging the national
station owner was losing too much
Civil Rights agenda into an election
money in equipment and supplies,
platform .
the business skills he had learned
A m o n g th e h ig h lig h ts , N ew
from his father kicked in. He struck
Y ork’s Shirley C hisholm becam e
a deal to “rent” space for $ 1 per day.
the first black w om an elected to
The owner soon com plained, “you
C ongress. L ouis S tokes o f O hio
are making more m oney than I am .”
(brother o f Carl Stokes, C leveland’s
The owner didn’t see his own poten­
m ayor and W illiam C lay o f M is­
tial to increase sales to people who
souri w ere also new. And, in defi­
came in for a wash. Instead, his rac­
ance o f those w ho w ould hold back
ism got in his way. His concern was
the tide o f black electoral power,
who made more money. Davis was
H arlem returned its beleaguered
offered $15 a week plus ten cents
congressm an o f tw enty-three years.
for every car washed, and he took it.
Rev. Adam Clayton Powell Jr., m i­
With initiative, he had created a job
nus his seniority, as a virtual fresh­
for him self when there was none to
man. D eterm ined to dethrone the
be had. it was that start that launched
powerful black congressm an, rank­
ing m ajority leader, and third in line
him on his way.
o f succession to the presidency, the
H o u se le a d e r s h ip h ad fo rc e d
In 1969, young Bay Area Califor­
Pow ell’s expulsion in a m ove that
nians seething over society’s ineq­
was suspicious on its face - a fact
uities adopted a tw o-pronged strat­
the Suprem e Court w ould later con­
egy to combat injustice. As Black
firm. In rally in g behind Pow ell,
Panthers took to the streets o f O ak­
Harlem voters - like their southern
land, Black Studies seized im agina­
cousins - w ere fighting for the fun­
tions on nearby campuses. With the
damental right o f a people to elect
first student generation to com e
the qualified candidate o f their own
from a land beyond the “Talented
choosing.
Tenth” o f W E B. Du B ois’s 1920s
and the “ Black Bougeoisie” o f E.
Franklin Frazier’s 1950s, a new era
In 1961, divide-and-conquer tac­
had begun. A Purdue student as­
tics had separated w orkers by caste
sessed the plight o f his generation.
who should have been aligned by
These black students, he said, were
class. U nions once positively influ­
“ sh arecro p p ers o f the A m erican
enced by the com m unist stand on
dream .” The assassination o f Dr.
workers ’rights and racial equity were
M artin Luther King forged a turning
now strictly Jim Crow and hostile to
point.
Nonviolence was out; self-
blacks. W hite suprem acy had infil-
1
1
defense was in. “ Integration into
w h at?” they asked, q u estio n in g
society’s basic premises. No longer
grateful for college acceptances,
“ Relevance!” w as their dem and;
“ Black Studies!” was their cry.
For perspective, K R O N -T V ’s
Like It Is asked three scholars - Drs.
Clair Drake, Nathan Hare, and A n­
drew Billingsley - to answer the
question “W hat is Black Studies?”
The program aired on Novem ber 15,
1969.
In 1970, in the midst o f the push
to add Black Studies and achieve
reform, Mills College, a private Bay
Area w om en’s school in Oakland,
awarded the nation’s first graduate
d eg'ee in Black Studies to Janus
Adams.
One o f A m erica’s great agonies
is this: although truth may not be
black and white, our history often is.
Som e m ay rem em b er the early
1960s. Some may remember the
early 1960s as Cam elot, but the
Kennedy era was notable for the
second Civil W a r -th e w ar for Civil
Rights.
On Novem ber 22,1963, as a trau­
matized nation absorbed the assas­
sination o f its bright young presi­
dent, reporters sought to put the
legacy o f John F. Kennedy in con­
text by interview ing key figures.
Responding, Malcolm X character­
ized JF K ’s m urder as “A case o f
chickens com ing home to roost.”
Tactless as it seemed to grieving
ea rs, it w as h a rd ly in a c c u ra te
Kennedy had launched the siege on
Vietnam, which Buddhist monks pro­
tested with public self-immolations.
His CIA had helped capture South
A frica’s Nelson Mandela. On the
homefront, his infamous FBI direc­
tor, J. Edgar Hoover, had approved
the wiretapping and sabotage o f Civil
Rights leaders.
Yet even with this racism-as-usual,
blacks knew that Kennedy’s inter­
vention during the 1960 election
had freed Dr. King from jail. North­
ern blacks who could vote, cast bal­
lots o f faith for Kennedy in the name
o f their southern cousins who couldn’t,
and that block vote gave Kennedy a
narrow inning margin over Richard
Nixon. As president, Kennedy lifted
his sights from the nation’s blood-
soaked racial landscape to denounce
segregation and decry the Birming­
ham church bombing that killed four
girls. When southern senators filibus­
tered for racism and “states rights,"
JFK ca st his p o litical lot w ith
segregation's victims. In so doing, he
might have also cast his personal lot
with its many casualties.
In the end, Kennedy did not deliver
on the promise for which blacks had
helped elect him. For all he offered in
glamour and hope, Kennedy too often
sacrificed black justice for southern
votes. It took his successor, a South­
erner, Lyndon B. Johnson, to break
the mold and enact the Civil Rights
Act (19640, Executive Order No,
11246 on affirmative action (1965),
and the Voting Rights (1965),
This is an excerpt from the book
"Freedom Days ". Permission for re­
print was given by John Wiley and
Sons. Inc.
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