Moderate And Militant Negro Leaders Now Sharply Divided

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31115, 19 July 1966, Page 14

Moderate And Militant Negro Leaders Now Sharply Divided

(From FRANK OLIVER, Special N.Z.P.AJ WASHINGTON, July 17. The great city of Chicago is an unhappy illustration of the fact that a potential Watts exists in all the Negro ghettoes of the big cities. Watts could have erupted again—and still may—or it could have been Harlem.

Black power is abroad in the land, and not many days before the Chicago riots exploded one of the most sensible and intelligent of Negro leaders, Roy Wilkins, denounced cries of black power which, he said, could lead only to black death. There are as many interpretations of black power among Negro leaders as there are leaders, but this summer their interpretations are of far less importance than is the meaning of this slogan to the masses of Negroes who have little or no education, almost no money, either no jobs or casual jobs, only slums to live in, and absolutely no understanding of the potentialities of the civil rights laws now on the books. They have little or no interest in potentialities. Their whole interest is in today and today they want and expect a flowing river of milk and honey. As one commentator has remarked sadly about the black masses in the ghettoes: “They have many wants, and they want them all yesterday.” But it is widely agreed that while the Negro masses are expecting too much too soon, they are not getting as much as they might and perhaps ought to be given. At a recent press conference the President chided Negroes and expressed, as one newspaper put it, almost paternal impatience with those who have raised the cry of black power, saying the Government is already doing

everything it can. Others are not so sure. They feel, among other things, that the poverty programme is lagging. Walter Lippmann goes as far as to say (in discussing black power) that the bright hopes of last year have given way to a bleak realisation that progress is stalled. He, and others, interpret the cry of black power as an effort to restore the momentum of things, of progress towards better housing, better schools, more jobs, and better paying jobs. A few days ago Dr. Martin Luther King, in an effort to halt the Chicago rioting, got together 200 sweating Negroes who had participated in the near 100 degree heat in the rioting and asked them what they wanted. “Swimming pools,” said one. “Libraries” yelled another. “Jobs,” said a third, and the fourth said: “No more police brutality.” Then a fifth jumped to his feet and yelled, “What are we gonna do right now?” And the answer came back from the crowd, “Let’s get our brothers out of gaol.” Chicago has made it glaringly clear that the Negro movement is now sharply divided. The moderates stand where they always have, for votes, for non-violent civil disobedience, for demonstration and for persuasion, to get what the Negroes want. Some while ago they were dominant in the movement but are so no longer. The militant Negroes, led by men who know the wretched nature of their housing, their lack of jobs and consequent lack of hope, also want the Negro movement to operate to its fullest, but they also believe that angry defiance, boycotts and some violence are necessary to‘force from the whites the things they want and feel entitled to. It is significant that at the beginning of the Chicago riots Dr. King, a moderate, sought to help the police to restore order. He failed signally and

was not in evidence during the next night’s, rioting. He had failed in his effort to quell the unrest.

Broadly speaking the Negro movement works on two distinct levels, on the top is a thin layer of educated and articulate leaders, both moderates and militants, all anxious to do what they can to improve the lot of their race, all arguing about nonviolence and black power. Beneath is the seething mass of mostly ill-educated Negroes, usually easily roused to passion, mostly ready-made material for a rabble rouser. They have been told over and over again what is due to them and they are presenting their 1.0. U. and demanding immediate payment. The riots they create as part of the demand for such payment increase their grievances. Riots are intolerable and the police must restore law and order. In the process it isn’t always or even often possible to be gentle. People get hurt and this results in renewed cries of police brutality, and passions rise still higher. It is hard for anyone who has followed the grave problems of a minority of 20 millions, anxious for what they call equality to escape the conviction taht the Negro tendency today is to a belief, perhaps subconscious, that for him the law must stand aside until his grievances have been

met, that he can and should ignore laws he doesn’t like during his fight to get what he thinks is his right. Some educated and literate Negro leaders have been guilty of urging that “bad laws” be ignored, the Negro of course being the sole judge of what is a good law and what is a bad one.

The press reports that when a member of the committee which investigated the Watts riots discussed the Negro problem with a White House aide he said there was not enough money for instantaneous corrective action. The committee member, not a liberal, declared it didn’t matter what the programme cost, even if it was billions, because “this country’s future is at stake.” Some people, Lippmann among them, blame the cost of the war in Vietnam because tax surpluses which were to have financed matters of internal progress don't exist because the war is consuming them. Comment in sober sections of the press says the southern sheriff’s cattle prod and the Northern School Board’s humiliating racial slurs have helped to spawn the cry for black power, and white Americans who find black power radicalism distasteful must vitiate its importance by doing all that is possible to break up the ghettoes and start giving the Negro some of the things that have been hi-, due now for a century.