I don't subscribe to the faceless masses/great man theory of history. It's
important to understand that a number of organizations and individuals were
important to the success of the civil rights movement. Since I am a native
Southerner and came of age in this period, I have more personal insight
than most in the Anarchist movement who created a grassroosts political
movement in Mississippi.
Although the white establishment and its' media picked Dr. King out for his
moderate views and willingness to collaborate with the federal government
on social policy, (in effect making him the personification of the
movement), it is an undeniable fact that political tendencies of the civil
rights movement *not under his command*, such as the Student Nonviolent
Coordinating Committee, the Congress of Racial Equality, and Fannie Lou
Hamer actually did more organizing in Black Southern grassroots communities
to make it actually happen.
Certainly the black youth group, SNCC, was much more authentically miliant
than King ever was. They came out against the Vietnam war and organized a
Black anti-draft campaign years before King even gave his famous Riverside
Church speech denouncing the war as an "imperialist miadventure"; further
SNCC first began the Southern voter rights campaign, way before King and
the Southern Christian Leadership Conference; but contrary to most
historians, SNCC did not become the most militant wing of the Southern
civil rights campaign just because they finally confronted the Klan with
armed counter-violence, it was because they put their lives on the line in
racist communities over and over, and never stopped.
This may have been because they also were not beholden to the white
liberals in the Democratic Party or the federal government like King and
the NAACP clearly was. Many in SNCC came to see that it was the government,
white liberals and capitalism itself which sustained racism and used it as
a poltical tool. So they saw it was dangerous to entrust the fate of an
oppressed people to one man, someone they knew that white government and
business leaders would rather deal with than Malcolm X or SNCC chairman H.
Rap Brown. One would beg you, while the others would bite you.
Over most of its hisotry, SNCC practiced systematic organizing, rather than
charismatic leadership. This was the great difference between SNCC and
King's approach. In fact, it was called an "Anarchist organization" by
well-known Anarchist writer Paul Goodman in Liberation magazine, and that
was when it was still a pacifist organization.
In truth, it may not have been an Anarchist organization, but it was an
anti-authoritarian organization. Although it had a facilitator,(Bob Moses)
he had no power over others as a central authority, and the so-called
headquarters in Atlanta was strictly a place to pick up mail, have some
planning meetings, and for field organizers to meet up occasionally. Maybe
you could get stipend money there, but most serious work was not done there.
The Congress of Racial Equality, now a right-wing sellout organization, was
then a respected, progressive organization which was instrumental in the
bus rides ("Freedom Rides") through the South to test federal laws
forbidding racial segregation in interstate commerce. No question that the
campaign was a serious threat to the racial status quo, especially since it
was the closest collaborator with SNCC. The FBI worked directly with
Southern Sheriffs and white racist groups to terrorize the activists and
break up the campaign. It did not work.
Of course, women like Ella Baker, Fannie Lou Hamer, Ruby Doriss Robinson
and others have never been given their due, but they rocked those racists'
world. They provided a strong base of leadership, regionally and nationally
throughout this period. SNCC was created bacause of Ella Baker, given
leadership by women like Diane Nash and Ruby D. Robinson, and helped in the
local areas by Fannie Lou Hamer.
I guess what I am trying to say is that Dr. King did not do it alone, and
that we need to stop exalting these male, conservative, charismatic
leadership figures. It was the masses and unexalted leaders on the local
level who made the difference. We do them a disservice when we subtract
them from history or make them a faceless backdrop to King's parade.
I am in great part an Anarchist today because of my experiences in the
Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, not because of adulation of Dr.
Martin Luther King.
http://www.komboa.net/
