Re: [Redbadbear] Good comment by Bob Zellner (and a little more from me)

Sam Friedman writes a quite good message on RBB -- and it is below my answer here.

I had no contact with SDS in those days -- and only rarely got out of the South at all at that point.  Later, in the Far West and Chicago, I had no SDS contacts at all.  I was doing my own organizing things.  No negative reflection on SDS but we were on different rivers.

I wrote that extensive paper very much from my own grassroots organizing experience, observation, and reflection in several settings, especially Dixie.That was its basic foundation. I cited many things I had seen re poor whites in the South and Southwest.  In observing Klan rallies in North Carolina, sometimes covertly, I was struck by the low income nature of almost all of the participants -- save the leaders, e.g. Grand Dragon and Imperial Wizard who had Cadillac's.

In addition, I brought in a number of written resources including Carl Carmer's, Stars Fell on Alabama and Anne Braden's, The Wall Between. And some others.  

And, along my trail, I had had some revealing conversations with hard-line racist poor whites.  I cited those, protecting their privacy.

At the time I wrote the paper, Black separatism was growing rapidly.  Nevertheless, I believed and still do, that it's dangerous to organize poor whites by themselves in a racist environment -- and that racial integration is the basic answer to eliminating a white individual's racism.  And racial integration is a positive complex that gives considerable good strength to social justice causes.

Working with poor whites, back then and even now, requires patience.  And discussing the bread and butter gains from integrated social justice endeavors is an important early step.  As we know, this and all organizing work requires much hard, tedious, grassroots organizing.  Well meant speeches are definitely not enough in any real organizing.

So I stressed several kinds of pork-chop-with-some-vision organizing thrusts that would include poor whites -- very much unions -- in a racially integrated setting.  I cited the good work of some of the unions that were much better on race:  Mine Mill. Chemical Workers, Packinghouse, some others.

It's a solid paper, if I say so myself. I don't have it at hand.  I may well get a copy of it from Wisconsin. I have some other things as well.

Best, H


From Sam:
  
  I never knew about that paper on organizing the white poor.  When you wrote it, were you aware of the SDS projects (and position papers) that were about doing this in the North?

  The '60s were a time of great intellectual ferment, solidly grounded in good practice of many kinds.  Many of uson this list and elsewhere from that generation are still trying to build on what we learned then (and since), and apply it in these different times.  With help from a lot of yunger people--in increasing numbers, finally.

  Writings like those you did in the '60s can be of great help to the new generation of organizers.  I know many SNCC veterans have been discussing how to make this happen, and taking some efforts in that direction. 

  Do you have other thoughts on how this can be done?

  best
  sam








  -----Original Message-----
  From: Hunter Gray <[email protected]>
  To: Bear Without Borders <[email protected]>
  Cc: newgreencanada <[email protected]>; marxist <[email protected]>; SycamoreCanyon <[email protected]>; Redbadbear <[email protected]>
  Sent: Sun, Apr 6, 2014 2:53 pm
  Subject: Re: [Redbadbear] Good comment by Bob Zellner (and a little more from me)


    
   
  Sam Friedman writes and I then respond:

  very nice!  Bob is someone I greatly admire.
  We had Dorothy Zellner talk at our coffeehouse in December



  Thanks very much, Sam.  Bob and I go back a long, long way.  Eldri and I remember his arriving at our home at Tougaloo -- back when we had just launched the Jackson Boycott.

  It's interesting and heartwarming to see our North Carolina Black-Belt material getting lots of attention. Our Website pages on it have always been visited consistently -- but this is a very significant spike for sure.

  You probably recall back a year or so ago when I was helping Willa Cofield get my North Carolina material from my large collection of stuff at Wisconsin Historical Society's National Social Action Collection.  That came to two large boxes.

  My considerable material at Wisconsin on a number of campaigns has been utilized by a number of researchers -- and shows up in a number of books.

  That's true of the North Carolina cache.  One of the books and a good one is To Right These Wrongs, Korstad and Leloudis, University of North Carolina Press, 2010.  It focuses on civil rights and anti-poverty efforts in N.C.  -- and has stuff on our Black Belt work.  In the anti-poverty context, they found in my collection a very extensive 1966 paper of mine in which I advocated poor white organizing in a racially-integrated context  (A position I still maintain.)  They were much interested in that since it broke new ground.  I focused on the moral issue of white poverty (and anyone's poverty) and also on it as a key factor in the widespread Klan growth.

  The authors also noted that I was not a "romantic" or "naive idealist" and that I traveled with a .38 Special Smith and Wesson revolver.

  Best, H


  ----- Original Message ----- 
    From: [email protected] 
    To: [email protected] ; [email protected] 
    Cc: [email protected] ; [email protected] ; [email protected] 
    Sent: Sunday, April 06, 2014 11:35 AM
    Subject: Re: [Redbadbear] Good comment by Bob Zellner


      
    very nice!  Bob is someone I greatly admire.
    We had Dorothy Zellner talk at our coffeehouse in December







    -----Original Message-----
    From: Hunter Gray <[email protected]>
    To: Bear Without Borders <[email protected]>
    Cc: newgreencanada <[email protected]>; marxist <[email protected]>; SycamoreCanyon <[email protected]>; Redbadbear <[email protected]>
    Sent: Sun, Apr 6, 2014 1:32 pm
    Subject: [Redbadbear] Good comment by Bob Zellner


      
    Hunter, Thanks for this.  There is great interest in John Salter and the organizing work you, SCEF, SNCC and the NAACP did in the black belt and other parts of the great state of NC.  Keep up your great work and keep shooting in the same hole.  Bob zellner

    (Bob Zellner, himself a veteran civil rights activist, is a key leader in the contemporary North Carolina Moral Monday civil rights movement.  I was the SCEF Field Organizer in the Old Time and, later, an independent free-lance organizer, partially supported by Highlander Center, in the very challenging anti-poverty situation.)  H.


    HUNTER GRAY [HUNTER BEAR/JOHN R SALTER JR] Mi'kmaq / 
    St. Francis Abenaki / St. Regis Mohawk 
    Member, National Writers Union AFL-CIO

    Check out our massive social justice website
    www.hunterbear.org  The site is dedicated to our
    one-half Bobcat, Cloudy Gray, and to Sky Gray:
    http://hunterbear.org/cloudy_gray.htm

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

    See our very full COMMUNITY ORGANIZING
    page -- with a great deal of practical material:
    http://hunterbear.org/my_combined_community_organizing.htm

    See my  new expanded/updated "Organizer's Book," 
    JACKSON MISSISSIPPI -- with a new 10,000 word
    introduction by me. This page lists many reviews.
    And this book is also an activist's how-to manual: 
     http://hunterbear.org/jackson.htm   

    The Stormy Adoption of an Indian Child [My Father]:
    http://hunterbear.org/James%20and%20Salter%20and%20Dad.htm:
    (Photos)