Peace and Freedom: The Civil Rights and Antiwar Movements in the 1960s PDF
Preview Peace and Freedom: The Civil Rights and Antiwar Movements in the 1960s
Peace and Freedom POLITICS AND CULTURE IN MODERN AMERICA Series Editors: Michael Kazin, Glenda Gilmore, Thomas J. Sugrue Books in the series narrate and analyze political and social change in the broadest dimensions from 1865 to the present, including ideas about the ways people have sought and wielded power in the public sphere and the language and institutions of politics at all levels— national, regional, and local. The series is motivated by a desire to reverse the fragmentation of modern U.S. history and to encourage synthetic perspectives on social movements and the state, on gender, race, and labor, on consumption, and on intellectual history and popular culture. Peace and Freedom The Civil Rights and Antiwar Movements in the 1960s SIMON HALL University of Pennsylvania Press Philadelphia Copyright © 2005 University of Pennsylvania Press All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 First paperback edition 2006 Published by University of Pennsylvania Press Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104–4112 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Hall, Simon, 1976– Peace and freedom : the civil rights and antiwar movements in the 1960s / Simon Hall. p. cm. (Politics and culture in modern America) ISBN-13: 978-0-8122-1975-3 (pbk. : alk. paper) ISBN-10: 0-8122-1975-9 (pbk. : alk. paper) Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index. 1. African Americans—Civil rights—History—20th century. 2. Civil rights movements—United States—History—20th century. 3. African Americans—Politics and government—20th century. 4. Vietnamese ConXict, 1961–1975—Protest movements. 5. Peace movements—United States—History—20th century. 6. United States—Race relations. 7. United States—Social conditions—1960–1980. 8. United States—Politics and government—1963–1969. I. Title. II. Series E185.615 .H274 2004 959.704´3´8996073—dc22 2004055478 For Olive, a friend and mentor This page intentionally left blank Contents Introduction 1 1. The Organizing Tradition 13 2. Black Power 39 3. Black Moderates 80 4. Racial Tensions 105 5. Radicalism and Respectability 141 6. New Coalitions, Old Problems 167 Conclusion 187 Notes 195 Bibliography 235 Index 255 Acknowledgments 263 This page intentionally left blank Introduction In February 1966, world heavyweight champion Muhammad Ali was in Miami, training for his title defense against Ernie “the Octopus” Terrell. One afternoon a television reporter sought Ali’s reaction to the news that the Louisville Draft Board had upgraded his draft status from 1-Y to 1-A, thereby making him eligible for immediate induction into the United States Army. Ali’s retort, “I ain’t got no quarrel with the Viet Cong,” helped deWne an era. Fourteen months later Ali refused induc- tion, explaining “I am not going ten thousand miles from here to help murder and kill and burn another poor people simply to help continue the domination of white America.”1Ali’s response to the war in Vietnam seemed to many to epitomize a new militancy within Black America. The October 1966 platform of the Black Panther Party demanded that all African Americans be exempted from military service—“Black people should not be forced to Wght . . . to defend a racist government that does not protect us.” The Panthers refused to “Wght and kill other peo- ple of color who, like black people, are being victimized by the white racist government in America.”2 Stokely Carmichael and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) attacked the war too. Speaking at one antiwar march, Carmichael deWned the draft as “white people sending black people to make war on yellow people to defend land they stole from red people.”3 It was not just black militants who were critical of America’s actions in Vietnam. The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., the nation’s most impor- tant and most respected civil rights leader, also condemned the war in the strongest possible way. In the spring of 1967, King bitterly de- nounced the “madness of Vietnam” and called on his government to take the initiative in halting the conXict.4 Indeed, by the time that the Paris Peace Accords were signed in January 1973, every major civil rights leader had spoken out against the war. The years between 1960 and 1972 saw the emergence of two of the most signiWcant social movements in American history—the African American freedom struggle and the movement to end the war in
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