Corporate liberalism / Anthony Lewis / a very notable civil rights conference

We've had a brief discussion on RBB about Anthony Lewis, the well known writer and journalist -- among other things for the New York Times -- who passed away a couple of days or so ago.  Our List opinions about him have been mixed.  There seems to be general agreement that he was, at the least, a "better liberal" than many of that genre.  Having had a little brief and unpleasant experience with him, I wrote: 

"In 1979, at the large Civil Rights Retrospective at Jackson, where I denounced the "corporate liberals" and the "splendid scoundrels", he was there but not among the thousand who stood and cheered.  He stormed out of the auditorium, almost crashing into a table with my just out Jackson book -- a table where the transactions were being handled by (son) John (Beba).  Lewis was livid.  Back in New York, he wrote some unkind things about me and others.  I wrote to him -- friendly enough but blunt and direct -- and explained precisely why I'd said what I said.  He responded in rather hostile fashion, indicating we were in different worlds that could never "be glossed over."

He was right on that."

His relatively brief piece on the conference in the NYT was somewhat garbled and sprinkled with vitriolic spines.  He didn't know me at all, or other activists, and he certainly didn't stick around to dialogue with us.  He simply cut his conference stay short and rushed home to New York City.

This morning on RBB I wrote in part:

" His (Lewis's) position was typical of the removed "authorities" who consistently pushed the concept that it was the Kennedys and the Johnsons who were primarily responsible for the civil rights breakthroughs and advances. And what, in the Movement, the Kennedys and Johnsons couldn't control -- they sought to destroy. The role of tens and tens of thousands of civil rights people who, at the grassroots, courageously broke the segregationist system is always secondary to the Anthony Lewises of the presumed stratosphere."
This is my take on that conference -- quoted from my book, Jackson Mississippi.  (Copyrighted material by John R. Salter, Jr. and John Hunter Gray.)

"There had been a significant event in late 1979, to which son John and I had driven from Tsaile. (Note: our home on Navajo Nation.)

During late October and early November of that year, a major and genuinely historic retrospective on the Mississippi movement -- "Mississippi's Freedom Summer Reviewed: A Fifteen Year Perspective on Progress in Race Relations, 1964-1979" -- was held at Jackson under the joint auspices of Tougaloo and Millsaps colleges. For the better part of a fascinating week, several dozen program participants gathered.  Some were old Mississippi movement activists and others were liberals of good will and outside academicians. A welcome presence was courageous and involved Professor James W. Silver, late of Ole Miss -- and author of the notable work, Mississippi: The Closed Society (1964, 1966).  There was considerable wrangling, pleasant and otherwise, over the meaning of it all before session audiences which often numbered close to a thousand.  The consensus was that much had  happened in Mississippi and other hardcore Southern areas that was good:  the development of the very right to organize and dissent and vote, widespread desegregation, and a substantial reduction in terror.  

But the dichotomies became very apparent on the question on how close was the millennium and to whom should the credit go -- and what had gone wrong and why. Some of the blacks who had "made it" (not all of them by any means, however) and most of the liberals felt matters were well up on the mountain and gave a heavy measure of credit to the Kennedy and Johnson administrations and to the concept of Federal involvement in general.  Activists, whether currently engaged or not, vigorously disputed both of these contentions, gave primary credit for what victories had been won to the courage of the grass roots people, and pointed to the economic poverty and relative powerlessness which continue to grip the South and nation regardless of race.

My part in the affair was to discuss "Race Relations in Mississippi Before 1964." My paper, which I had given at Ole Miss two days before to an enthusiastic gathering of the Black Students' Union, covered the background and development of the Jackson Movement and its ramifications, and I concluded: 

 "If we could have gone on, really cracking Jackson, who knows what 1964 would have been in Mississippi?  Only the Creator can tell us now."

"The black youth of Jackson were exhausted and discouraged. Many dropped away or eventually went into other civil rights groups. The middle-class retreated. Low income poor people, who had just been into the primary thrust of the movement, never had an opportunity to really gain a confident footing. Thus the Jackson Movement passed into history and legend.  Though other strains of activity came into the capital city in the years to come, there was never again a viable on-going upsurge from within Jackson itself. . . .Divisions between the national NAACP and other civil rights organizations deepened permanently.

On the positive side, the Jackson Movement -- particularly in the massive demonstrations following the murder of Medgar Evers -- destroyed forever the self-serving segregationist myth of Mississippi black satisfaction.  The boycott, nourished by the blood of May and June, lived on, eventually winning some victories and draining white Jackson merchants into grudging compliance with the 1964 Civil Rights Act.   The passage of that legislation was certainly enhanced by the many forms of martyrdom characterizing the struggle in Jackson.  And in other parts of the state, efforts continued and mounted, aided by the rapidly growing national focus upon Mississippi, which, until the tragedies of Jackson especially, had seemed a lonely and isolated backwater.

So it went down. In the end, the Jackson Movement brought forth the most magnificent display of  basic human grassroots courage that many of us have ever witnessed -- courage that non-violently and effectively confronted the raw brutality of a garrison police state.  But it could not withstand the subversion by the corporate liberals of New York and the self-styled "pragmatism" of those splendid scoundrels residing in Camelot on the Potomac."

That drew a cheering, standing ovation from the very large audience. But more to the point: in the years since Jackson Mississippi first appeared, there has been no attempt to refute my contentions regarding the conduct in Jackson of the national NAACP and the Federal government."

HUNTER GRAY [HUNTER BEAR/JOHN R SALTER JR] Mi'kmaq /St. Francis 
Abenaki/St. Regis Mohawk 
Member, National Writers Union AFL-CIO
www.hunterbear.org 
(much social justice material)

See the new and expanded/updated edition of my "Organizer's 
Book." It's the inside story of the massive Jackson Movement,
bloody repression and murder, and more -- including a myriad
of organizing "lessons."  And with my new and 10,000 word
Introduction. http://hunterbear.org/jackson.htm (". .a local activist's
 important account of the deleterious effects the involvement of 
national organizations can have on indigenous protest movements."
David Garrow in "The Age of the Unheralded", Progressive Magazine,
April 1990.

See my piece ON BEING A MILITANT AND RADICAL
ORGANIZER -- AND AN EFFECTIVE ONE:
http://crmvet.org/comm/hunter1.htm

The Stormy Adoption of an Indian Child [My Father]:
http://hunterbear.org/James%20and%20Salter%20and%20Dad.htm
(Expanded in 2012. Photos. Material on our Native
background.)