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Column: Black/Red View by John Alan Blacks in wartime
After the terrorist bombings of Sept. 11, Congress gave President Bush extraordinary powers to make war and curtail civil liberties in this country. There was only one opposing vote; it came from Barbara Lee, the African-American congresswoman who said: "Let us not become the evil that we deplore." Ms. Barbara Lee undoubtedly will be remembered in history for her opposition to Bush's war, in her words, "in the general interest of humanity." Now there is the usual ideological and political pressure to create "national unity" behind President Bush. In practice this has always meant the curtailment or outright suppression of any serious open critique of the policies of the government. As John Conyers, the dean of the Congressional Black Caucus put it: "Historically, it has been at times of inflamed passion and national anger that our civil liberties proved to be at greatest risk, and the unpopular group of the moment was subject to prejudice and deprivation of liberty. In 1798, Congress enacted the notorious Alien and Sedition Acts, making it a federal crime to criticize the government. In 1861, at the beginning of the Civil War, President Lincoln suspended habeas corpus...Ulysses S. Grant sought to expel Jews from Southern states. World War II brought about the shameful internment of Japanese Americans, which even the Supreme Court failed to overturn." Those reactionary political acts by presidents, Congresses and courts cannot be hidden by any mythic concept of social unity. African Americans have carried on a ceaseless struggle against racism and oppression in this country. It has been a life and death struggle both in peacetime and in wartime. Today, we need to take a brief look at what happened in the thought and practice of African-American masses in 1941 and see how their battle against racism set the stage for the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s and today. In 1941 when the United States was at war with Germany and Japan, A. Philip Randolph, the president of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, announced that he would organize a March On Washington Movement (MOWM) to demand the end of segregation in defense jobs, in government departments and the armed forces. Randolph said MOWM could eventually bring out 100,000 protesters. The vision of 100,000 angry Blacks in Washington was enough to get President Franklin Roosevelt to issue an executive order establishing a committee on fair employment practice. Some historians have said that the Fair Employment Practices Committee was no big deal when you compare its feeble enforcement powers to its demands. But others have noted, correctly, that the greatness of the FEPC was that it was brought into being because of Randolph's threat to bring Black masses out in the street. African Americans were outraged when the march on Washington was cancelled. I remember Randolph coming to Chicago to try to explain the decision to cancel the march to angry African Americans. A most accurate and concise expression of African-American thought during those years was the very popular slogan "Double V," meaning victory over racism and fascism at home and abroad. The African-American press constantly pointed out that the United States could not claim it was fighting a war for freedom while it had a racially segregated army and nation. This great contradiction exploded in Detroit in 1943 when a race riot left 34 people dead. Twenty thousand white auto workers went on a "hate strike" against the upgrading of Black workers in a plant making aircraft engines. Despite this opposition, nothing could stop the African Americans' irrepressible drive for freedom. Randolph's unrealized attempt to end the practice of racism in America during World War II was the prelude to the Civil Rights and the anti-Vietnam war movements of the 1960s. Barbara Lee's courageous vote may well be an indication of new expressions of the idea of freedom coming from African-American masses. History has shown that the Black revolution is a ceaseless and ongoing movement for freedom that will not stop at any particular stage of alienation. |
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