Sorry to be plunging in with a second contribution my first day
on this list, but the issues dealt with are things in which I was
involved at first hand and on which I have thought, broadcast (on
Pacifica via KPFA), and written for forty years.
I agree with the criticism of Ted Morgan's periodization of
the 60s, but disagree with Bibby's making it Black-centered.
There were two parallel but interwoven movements from the outset,
Black and white. Having been a participant in pre-1960s and
pre-Montgomery movement in the South (the mass 1951 "pilgrimage"
to Richmond, VA., then still very much the capital of the
Confederacy in spirit, in an unsuccessful effort to save the
seven Blacks executed in the Martinsville Seven case [see my
SAYING NO TO POWER, pp. 222-236]), and a very enthusiastic
supporter of King from the outset, it is absolutely clear to
those of us whose activism bracketed the chronological divide
that there was a discontinuity between those movements and the
60s. That was made most clear by the dropping of the word,
"Negro," by leaders of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating
Committee, the organization embodying the 60s spirit, as
representing an excessive, in their view, willingness to
compromise.
Chronologically, the Sixties began, among Blacks (the new
term soon adopted), with the coffee-house sit-ins at the
beginning of 1960, and among whites with the mass demonstration
of UC Berkeley and San Francisco State students outside the HUAC
hearing in S.F. in April. The consciousness that that was
happening emerges in a letter of mine in the fall of 1960:
"In October...I wrote to Bill Sennett, a veteran of the
Abraham Lincoln Brigade...: 'There is one phenomenon in current
American political life -- and current American political
MOVEMENT -- with which I am intimately associated and highly
familiar...I refer to the student movement, and in particular
student opposition to the Un-American Committee. The seriousness
with which this is taken by the opposition is indicated by the
fact that 1000 (one thousand) prints of the movie 'Operation
Abolition' have been made'."
"'It is important for your group to know that a new MOVEMENT
is under way that, I am absolutely convinced, will have a major
impact on American life in the years just ahead. I was present at
a week-end encampment of the new campus political parties this
summer, which so impressed the head of the official National
Student Association, who was present, that he endorsed its
opposition to the J. Edgar Hoover report on the San Fran
demonstrations, and also endorsed its call for national student
commemorations of the anniversary of...Hiroshima....This is NOT a
movement led by any traditional Left party, although these
students obviously have very advanced ideas in the major areas of
social life'."
"A month later a pamphlet called Campus Rebels appeared,
written by Al Richmond, editor of the Communist 'People's World'.
He had interviewed me and quoted me anonymously, thus:
"'An older radical, who is acquainted with student leaders,
said this movement might well spearhead a progressive democratic
revival in American life, filling a vacuum that he believes has
been created by the abdication of labor leadership and the
ineffectiveness of existing radical groups'.
"My view was at odds with conventional wisdom, Left, liberal,
and Right. The Left believed that any movement not led by the
working class could not be of significance. Liberals quickly
recognized that something was happening, but did not know what to
make of it. As for conservatives, an article in the Wall Street
Journal titled 'Campus Radicals' was subtitled 'Increasingly,
They are Right Wing, Drawn to Goldwater.' Exactly the opposite
was true in the '60." (op. cit., ppp. 373-374).
There is a great deal more to be written about periodization
of the sixties. At this point, suffice it to say that those of us
who were involved remember them as having been brought to an end
very sharply by the nearly simultaneous National Guard shootings
at Kent State of whites, and at Jacksonville State of Blacks.
This brought a realization among youth that the "revolution" was
not going to be brought about simply by parading back and forth,
trashing, useful media spectacle a la Jerry Rubin, or even the
heroism of Selma, Alabama. Among whites, who were free to retreat
from activism, they moved into communes, self-improvement, and
making a buck. Among Blacks there was a heavy shift, particularly
in the South, into use of the vote they had gained, and,
everywhere, use of access to higher education and, in some
measure, jobs, won by affirmative action.
William Mandel
Michael Bibby wrote:
Ted Morgan wrote:
You may find of interest website www.BillMandel.net
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