Re: [sixties-l] Critique of Bruce Franklin >

From: Bill Mandel (wmmmandel@earthlink.net)
Date: 11/03/00

  • Next message: Bill Mandel: "Re: [sixties-l] Critique of Bruce Franklin >"

    I have not the slightest doubt about the accuracy of the picture of 
    political repression in Norman, Oklahoma presented by Michael Wright. 
    The dates he covers finally explain to me his position on the matter 
    of what is now called racial profiling, as it pertains to political 
    repression.
       His list begins in 1966. That was immediately AFTER the years of 
    upheaval in the South that won major changes in the status of 
    African-Americans. It was a time when the government desired, by all 
    means, to prevent unity between the white and Black movements where 
    the Vietnam War was concerned. Such unity would have speeded the end 
    of the war. 
       Likewise, when he cites a later Black demonstration against the 
    mass murder of prisoners in Attica, here again was a situation in 
    which the authorities everywhere wanted to avoid a repetition of the 
    burning of cities that occurred when Martin Luther King was 
    assassinated.
       To me, as to Blankfort, the fact of long-term discriminatory 
    political repression of Blacks is so obvious that I, at least, no 
    longer keep a list of sources in my head. I would suggest that going 
    through the files of The Black Scholar at the university in Norman 
    would provide both a wealth of articles on the subject and an 
    embarrassment of riches in new books listed in each issue. The one 
    title that instantly comes to mind is from an earlier period, and 
    important for that very reason: WE Charge Genocide, a book-length 
    petition to the United Nations by the Civil Rights Congress, 1951.
    																						Bill Mandel
    



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