Compare Give me Liberty (Eric Foner) to Judith Rollins Article "Part of a Whole: The Interdependence of the Civil Rights Movement and Other Social Movements"

Clark Atlanta University

Part of a Whole: The Interdependence of the Civil Rights Movement and Other Social Movements Author(s): Judith Rollins Source: Phylon (1960-), Vol. 47, No. 1 (1st Qtr., 1986), pp. 61-70 Published by: Clark Atlanta University Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/274695 . Accessed: 28/07/2013 13:36

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

. JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

.

Clark Atlanta University is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Phylon (1960- ).

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 134.139.29.9 on Sun, 28 Jul 2013 13:36:15 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

By JUDITH ROLLINS

Part of a Whole: The Interdependence of the Civil Rights Movement and Other Social

Movements*

THIRTY YEARS AFTER the Montgomery bus boycott, twenty-five years after the Freedom Rides, twenty years after the scenes of Southern police

using dogs and firehoses on demonstrators, and after the March on Washing- ton, the questions remain. Was the civil rights movement a success or a failure? What was the significance of that tumultuous period in American history? What did it all mean?

This paper attempts to answer such questions by examining the historical and social place of the American civil rights movement in the world context. It is a preliminary exploration of the linkages between the civil rights move- ment of the 1960s and other internal and international social movements. In the examination of this interplay between the movement and the events which influenced and were influenced by it, the significance of the move- ment will become apparent.

My thesis is that the civil rights movement in the United States was a critical part of the worldwide movement since World War II which involves two inextricably interrelated elements: the liberation of peoples of color from the domination of the West and the progressive weakening of capitalism's control over the world distribution of goods and resources. That the American move- ment was related to the efforts of other peoples of color is immediately apparent: black Americans' efforts to be treated as first-class citizens exhibit clear commonalities with efforts elsewhere to decolonize and achieve na- tional sovereignty. But how can a movement reformist and assimilationist at its essence be linked to the weakening of the capitalist dominance of the world?

The beginning of the answer to that question lies in clarifying the conceptu- alization of the civil rights movement itself and in identifying those events I consider its salient antecedents. The period of the "classical" civil rights movement extended from the Montgomery bus boycott in 1955 to the passage of the Voting Rights Act in 1965. But if the interdependence of the American movement with other social movements within and beyond the United States is to be understood, the conceptualization of "the movement" must be broad- ened to include other aspects of activism of blacks of the 1960s: the Black Power period, the evolution and influence of Malcolm X, the philosophy of the Black Panthers, and the urban rebellions of the late 60s. For the clentched fists and militant rhetoric later observed in movements throughout the world

* This is a revised version of a paper read at the "Voices of the Civil Rights Movement" Conference in New Orleans, Louisiana in January, 1984. A note of appreciation goes to Dr. Hussein Abdilahi Bulhan of Boston University and Dr. Elaine Hagopian of Simmons College for their helpful comments on an earlier draft.

61

This content downloaded from 134.139.29.9 on Sun, 28 Jul 2013 13:36:15 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

PHYLON

were as much influenced by the undisguised anger of these more revolution- ary black activists as by the moderate philosophies of the more mainstream, nonviolent assimilationists.

THE INTERNATIONAL ANTECEDENTS OF THE CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT

Black America was affected by the news of an independent Ghana in 1957, an independent Nigeria in 1960, and an independent Tanzania in 1961. But the mood of black America was beginning to change even before those events. Black America watched in the late 1940s as dark-skinned people of India successfully challenged and achieved their independence from the British. Afro-Americans were conscious of the anti-Euro-American thrust, if not the details, of Mao's campaign in 1949 to rid China of the poverty and suffering caused by a hierarchical social structure and an economy controlled ex- ternally. And they watched the Mau Mau in their fight against the British in Kenya in the early 1950s. There was a new spirit in the world indeed.

Of course, there had been individuals in black America who had been advocating decolonization for decades. Of course, there were Afro-Americans who recognized the inevitability of the demise of the European empires. The importance of DuBois and the Pan African Conferences to the decolonization efforts of Africa cannot be overstated. Nor can the importance of Marcus Garvey for touching and developing a conscious black pride as the basis of mobilization for self-improvement. But it took the concrete realizations of these ideas, the involvement of hundreds of thousands of people of color in the activities of rebellion to generate the spark in the hearts and minds of a large number of black Americans. These movements of liberation in the Third World made it clear to Afro-Americans that "the world was no longer 'a white man's world."'1 Then came two events which reverberated throughout the Third World and which are often underestimated in their importance to people of color: the Battle of Dien Bien Phu in 1954 and the Bandung Confer- ence in 1955.

The Battle of Dien Bien Phu, in which the poorly equipped Vietnamese army decisively defeated the well-armed French, demonstrated that the European juggernaut could indeed be stopped. Dien Bien Phu gave heart to all those peoples who shared the common history of having had their land, their minerals, their crops and their bodies used for the economic and psycho- logical benefit of white European and American people. The significance of this event was not lost on black America. Paul Robeson published an article entitled: "Ho Chi Minh is the Toussaint L'Overture of Indo-China," in which he not only compared Ho Chi Minh to the leader of the successful Haitian slave revolt but, with incredible foresight, warned black America about Eisenhower's threats to send Americans to Vietnam "in order that the tin, rubber and tungsten of Southeast Asia be kept by the 'free world' - meaning

'James W. VanderZanden, "The Non-Violent Resistance Movement Against Segragation," in Studies in Social Movements, ed. by Barry McLaughlin (New York, 1969), p. 54.

Vol. XLVII, No. 1, 1986

62

This content downloaded from 134.139.29.9 on Sun, 28 Jul 2013 13:36:15 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

PART OF A WHOLE: CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT

white Imperialism."2 Similarly, Mordecai Johnson, president of Howard Uni- versity, had said:

For over 100 years the French have been in Indo-China, dominating them politi- cally, strangling them economically, and humiliating them in the land of their fathers.... And now it looks as though [the Vietnamese] can win, and as they are about to win their liberty, we rush up and say: "What on earth are you all getting ready to do?.... We are the free people of the world, we are your friends, we will send you leaders....3

The same perceptive empathy that allowed black Americans to understand what colonized people were fighting for also allowed them to see through the government's propagandistic cliches about "making the world safe for de- mocracy" and to realize that the real issue of these colonial wars was the economic issue; that the real fear behind the "domino theory" was the fear of losing plantations, minerals, markets and cheap labor. Thus, as many black Americans became more pro-decolonization, they became increasingly anti- Western imperialism.

The year after the Battle of Dien Bien Phu, five Asian nations4 called the first conference ever to bring together representatives of Africa and Asia and to exclude representatives of white countries. Twenty-nine nations were in- vited to Bandung, Java, to discuss "racialism and colonialism." The signifi- cance of this event did not escape the white world. Newsweek magazine wrote:

Everybody knows what must come to pass between Asia and the West, the yellow and the white.... Kaiser Wilhelm II, popularizer of the phrase 'Yellow Peril'... was right in foreseeing a crisis that now threatens in a more virulent form than he envisaged - an Afro-Asian combination turned by Communists against the West. The problem, according to those who have to deal with it today and tomorrow, is to prevent its formation.5

And the Christian Science Monitor stated: ... The West is excluded. Emphasis is on the colored nations of the world....

Colonialism is out. Hands off is the word.... This is perhaps the great historic event of our century.6

Bandung was, indeed, one of the great historic events of this century. Although no American delegation was invited, individual blacks did attend on their own. The two "public figures" were Richard Wright and Adam Clayton Powell. But there were others: Wright described a "Mr. Jones" from Los Angeles, who was so moved when he heard about the conference that he used all of his own and his wife's savings to attend.7 Richard Wright himself was so excited by what he heard and saw that he produced a book on his experiences there. And, based on Wright's description, we can glimpse the impact of the conference on Powell:

The astounding aspect of Congressman Powell's appearance at Bandung was that he

felt the call, felt its meaning.... At the very moment when the U.S. was trying to

2 Paul Robeson, Paul Robeson Speaks, ed. by Philip Foner (Secaucus, New Jersey, 1978), pp. 378-79. 3Ibid., p. 379. 4Burma, India, Indonesia, Ceylon and Pakistan.

Richard Wright, The Color Curtain: A Report on the Bandung Conference (Cleveland, 1956), p. 85. Ibid., p. 86.

7Ibid., p. 176.

63

This content downloaded from 134.139.29.9 on Sun, 28 Jul 2013 13:36:15 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

PHYLON

iron out the brutal kinks of race problems, there came along a world event which reawakened in the hearts of its '23,000,000 colored citizens' the feeling of race, a feeling which the racial mores of American whites had induced deep in their hearts. If a man as sophisticated as Congressman Powell felt this, then one can safely assume that in less schooled and more naive hearts it went profoundly deep.8

The meaning of Bandung went deep into the psyches of the colored op- pressed of the world. Through the Mr. Joneses, Wright and Powell, the im- portance of the Bandung Conference reached at least some segments of black America. Internationally Bandung shocked and dismayed the West while heartening and inspiring the Third World.

THE CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT IN THE UNITED STATES

In the midst of these international events, the most significant legal event for black Americans in over fifty years took place: the 1954 Brown vs. the Board of Education Supreme Court decision reversed the separate but equal policy which had received government sanction in the 1896 Plessy vs. Ferguson ruling. While credit must be given to the ongoing efforts of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in bringing about the decision, the position taken by the American government was also influenced by the changes going on in the world - specifically, the dissolution of the British, French and Dutch empires and the emergence of new independent nations of color. An official segregationist policy could have caused embarrassment to the U.S. government in its dealings with these nations; therefore, the official government sanctioning of segregation had to be eliminated. This combination of Afro-America's increasing awareness of a worldwide confrontation with colonial oppression and the U.S. government's (at least nominal) commitment to an antisegregationist policy infused black Americans with a new sense of self, with "rising expectations", with an aware- ness of the vulnerability of "white power," and a readiness for confrontation and change.

The civil rights movement began that change. But the 1960s movement brought changes to the American society that even the most perceptive of early activists could not have foreseen. While it is not within the purview of this paper to detail the history of the movement, a few analytical remarks are in order.

From the Montgomery bus boycott to the voter registration drives of 1963 and 1964, black Americans initiated confrontations aimed at reforming the American system to force it to implement its own liberal ideology of equality for all under the law. The goal was integration of blacks into the existing system, the destruction of caste barriers, the affording of basic civil rights to all Americans. Civil rights activists were not questioning the structure and goals of the system itself. Because there was no inconsistency between the goals of the movement and the liberal philosophy on which this country was founded and because blacks' achieving these goals did not threaten material

8 Ibid., pp. 178-79.

Vol. XLVII, No. 1, 1986

64

This content downloaded from 134.139.29.9 on Sun, 28 Jul 2013 13:36:15 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

PART OF A WHOLE: CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT

losses to whites, this is the period in which the movement enjoyed the strong- est support of whites - in terms of money, personnel, the media and the government. As previously stated, this has been called the period of the "classical" civil rights movement.

But my conceptualization of the movement is broader than this limited definition, and the black activism beyond the classical movement was distinct in some important ways. First, in the post-1965 period of the movement- when equal employment, access to trade unions, Affirmative Action and fair housing became the issues (i.e., when the achievement of goals of blacks meant loss to whites, and success to blacks with a real redistribution of wealth and services, changes in the forms and functioning of institutions, and Northern whites too being affected), much of the support of "liberal" whites was withdrawn.

Also noteworthy is the fact that many of the activists outside the classical movement raised more fundamental questions about American society- questions about its values, aesthetics, violent history and hypocritical self- portrait, its role in Vietnam and, most important, its economic structure which by its very nature generates poverty and unemployment in this country and maintains Third World countries in dependent and exploited positions. It was on the margins, then, of the classical movement that one can see the influence of prescient men like Paul Robeson and W.E.B. DuBois more than at its core.

And, finally, it was during the 1960s that many Americans of color began calling themselves "Third World Americans," demonstrating their identifica- tion with Third World nations. Clearly, for them the goal of getting a bigger piece of the American pie was not a tenable one.

Thus, although the classical civil rights movement of the late 1950s and early 1960s, as many writers have concluded, was essentially reformist, it both reflected and generated ideologies representing a broader spectrum of politi- cal thought and behavior. That the total picture of that movement comprised of chiaroscuro of nonviolence and violence, of love and hate, of assimilation- ism and separatism does not negate the fact that a single community was moving in various ways toward the single goal of liberating itself from the injustices of centuries. Within the movement of the 1960s were articulated varied and sometimes contradictory ideas. Other groups, of course, would select out and adopt what was relevant and useful to them. What was impor- tant, however, was the energy itself, an energy about change and liberation and the destruction of domination. Thus the movement of the 1960s, precisely because it encompassed such varied political stances, could offer philosophical inspiration and practical guidance to a variety of kinds of social movements throughout the world, including (but not limited to) reformist movements.

THE OUTGROWTHS OF THE CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT

What, then, have been some of the effects of the 1960s movement? As stated, the diverse causes and effects can be subsumed under the major heading of the worldwide liberation of oppressed peoples and the weakening of capital- ism. But this broad conceptualization does not do justice to its many and uniquely important aspects.

65

This content downloaded from 134.139.29.9 on Sun, 28 Jul 2013 13:36:15 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

PHYLON

Overseas, the American movement reinforced decolonizing efforts in the Third World, especially Africa and the Caribbean. For example, some leaders of the independence movement of Surinam have articulated their admiration for and inspiration from the militancy of black Americans.9 (Surinam achieved its independence from the Dutch in 1975.) The Black Power Move- ment in Trinidad, which was promoted by the National Joint Action Commit- tee and the New Beginning Movement,10 adopted much of the philosophy, tactics and language of the activism of black Americans of the late 60s. And the influence of black America on the thought and behavior of South Africans cannot be overestimated. A member of the South African Black Conscious- ness Movement" and former classmate of Steve Biko stated:

Black Americans, particularly those who camdejs missionaries to South Africa, have had a profound influence on South African thought since the turn of the century. The long-standing non-violent policy of the ANC [African National Congress] was largely due to the religious influence of these black Americans, the strongest group being the AME [African Methodist Episcopal] church. The Civil Rights Movement had a direct impact but it must be remembered that that was part of a continuing pattern; it was a carryover of earlier influences.

We in the Black Consciousness Movement were certainly influenced by your Civil Rights Movement but you won't find any direct references to it in our speeches or writing - for internal reasons: the writings of all your activists were banned. I clearly remember in 1965 being invited to hear one of King's speeches in secret. It was the one where he talks about "sleeping through the revolution." I was really struck by it. Steve Biko admired King and Malcolm but he could never make a direct reference to them in public. Our listening to or reading of such men had to be kept secret.'2

The references to the American movement in the writings of Cabral, Mao, Nyerere, Nkrumah and others make clear that Third World people were conscious of developments in the United States. And how could they not be encouraged by these developments? Those very areas of the world which had generated the spirit and energy to cause black America to move against its oppressors, in turn, were energized by the rhetoric, militancy, and anger of the entire movement toward self-empowerment that characterized black America of the 1960s.

In the U.S., the most obvious direct outgrowth of the movement was the awakening of other people of color. Among Mexican Americans (the second largest Third World group in the U.S. which in terms of health, education and employment is "more disadvantaged than any other ethnic group, except American Indians"'3), there had never been organizations like the NAACP to struggle on behalf of the group as a whole. Though there had been isolated labor strikes of Mexican-American workers dating back as early as 1903, it

9 For example, Robin Dobru, Surinamese poet and independence fighter, discussed his awareness of the movement in black America in numerous conversations with the author since 1972.

10 The National Joint Action Committee actually began the Black Power Movement in the late 1960s. The New Beginning Movement was an outgrowth of that Movement.

"The Black Consciousness Movement was begun in 1968 and became public in 1972. 12 Interview in December, 1983. For political reasons, the interviewee prefers to remain anonymous. 1Rodolfo Alvarez, "The Psycho-Historical and Socioeconomic Development of the Chicano Community in the

United States," in Majority and Minority, eds. Norman R. Yetman and C. Hoy Steele (Boston, 1982), p. 169.

Vol. XLVII, No. 1, 1986

66

This content downloaded from 134.139.29.9 on Sun, 28 Jul 2013 13:36:15 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

PART OF A WHOLE: CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT

was not until 1965 that a labor strike took on the additional dimensions created by a new sense of racial-ethnic identity and pride. Under Cesar Chavez' leadership, "La Huelga" (the strike) of the National Farm Workers' Association became "'La Causa,' a crusade to assert the dignity of the Mexi- can-American population."'4 Other nationalist organizations soon developed. Reies Tijerina's organization in New Mexico focused on reclamation of lands taken from the original Mexican inhabitants of that state; "Corky" Gonzalez created a militant community organization in Denver; some of the Mexican- American gangs in Los Angeles developed a political consciousness and started calling themselves "Brown Berets"; and nationalist journals, like At- zlan and El Grito, came into being.'5 As sociologist John Howard has stated, "the black protest movement had :.. generated consciousness of the possibil- ity of reform"'6 and helped Mexican Americans take pride in their racial and cultural distinctiveness.

Even more dramatic forms of activism developed in the late 60s among Native Americans. In fact, the demand for the use of the term Native Ameri- can itself and the rejection of the word Indian sprang from the same logic and spirit as some Afro-Americans' rejection of the term negro. Both labels were aimed at robbing these groups of their selfhood and culture.

Though most of the "Red Power" movement has remained symbolic, perhaps its most important achievement has been the stopping of the govern- ment's "termination" program. This program, instituted in the early 1950s, was designed to solve the problems of the reservations by gradually getting rid of them. As one writer put it: "Those favoring termination of the reserva- tions... assumed, implicitly, that there would be no Indian problem if there were no Indians."'7 For Native Americans, more than for any other group in the U.S., the retention of land- some of the land that was once entirely theirs - is a critical element in their effort to retain their distinct ethnic identity. Red Power represents the pride in and value of self and a search for the strategies which can best protect and enhance the quality of life of that racial-ethnic self.

I will not detail here the similar kind of activism among Asian Americans, Puerto Ricans, and other Third World people in the United States. Nor will I detail the renewed pride among white ethnics, especially those from southern and eastern Europe. What is important on the national level is that these movements have forced the American ideology to move even further from that of the melting pot - always a myth, in any case - to one of cultural pluralism.'8 That is, the national ideology, once one which envisioned all Americans eventually becoming culturally homogeneous, now at least in theory recognizes diversity as valuable and seeks to allow ethnic groups to preserve their distinctiveness while being full participants in the American society.

4 John R. Howard, The Cutting Edge (Philadelphia, 1974), p. 96. 5 Ibid., pp. 100-01. 6 Ibid., p. 97. "Ibid., p. 115. 8 For a full discussion of the "melting pot" and "cultural pluralism" ideologies, see Milton Gordon, Assimilation in American Life (New York, 1964).

67

This content downloaded from 134.139.29.9 on Sun, 28 Jul 2013 13:36:15 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

PHYLON

The bilingual education program is one of the practical outgrowths of this continuing change in the national philosophy. And although it may not be important legislation for American-born blacks, it has been a major change for Mexicans, Cape Verdeans, Asians, Haitians, Puerto Ricans and other non- English speaking immigrants to this country.19 This legislation and other manifestations of a significant change in the nation's view of those who are culturally different can be linked directly to ideas generated from the origi- nal civil rights movement.

Concomitantly, the shift in the nation's attitude toward those who are "different" in other ways can also be linked to the civil rights movement. Owing an incalculable debt to the 1960s movement are the Gay Liberation movement, the Gray Panther movement, the increased activism of the handi- capped and, of course, the women's movement. Because I consider the In- ternational women's movement potentially a major force of social and economic change, a few observations are appropriate.

First, the women's movement is made up of far more than middle-class American feminists. But, at the same time, it must be acknowledged that "feminist analyses and the women's movement arose within the ranks of the relatively deprived white, middle class women in the West, rather than the absolutely deprived majority of poor Third World women."20 And many of these originators of the modern movement, like their forerunners in the nineteenth century women's suffrage movement, previously had been in- volved in other progressive causes. That is, as many nineteenth century femi- nists had been involved in the abolitionist movement, many twentieth century feminists had been involved in the civil rights and other move- ments.2' During both periods, the factors that led to the development of a push for women's equality were the same: (1) demographically, the number of highly educated women was rising faster than the labor market could absorb them in appropriate jobs; (2) their treatment in the abolitionist, civil rights and antiwar movements was in some ways contradictory to the egalitarian philosophies of these movements; and (3) through their involvement in these causes, they learned necessary skills for organizing for political change. "Demographic changes alone... were not sufficient to create a movement. They created a mobilizable stratum in the female population, but... other conditions [like involvement in the Abolitionist and the Civil Rights Move-

ments'] were required for mobilization to occur."22 But the earlier and modern movements differ in other ways. In today's

movement, even within the U.S., there is no single unifying issue comparable

"9 To be precise, Puerto Ricans are full citizens of the United States and are, therefore, "migrants" rather than "immigrants."

20 Asoka Bandarage, "Toward an International Feminism," in Brandeis Review 3 (Summer 1983): 6-11. 21 For a full discussion of women's involvement in the abolitionist and suffrage movements of the nineteenth

century, see Angela Davis, Women, Race and Class (New York, 1983). 22 Howard, op. cit., p. 144.

Vol. XLVII, No. 1, 1986

68

This content downloaded from 134.139.29.9 on Sun, 28 Jul 2013 13:36:15 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

PART OF A WHOLE: CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT

to women's suffrage. Also, the modern movement has spawned diverse per- spectives, including liberal, Marxist, radical and socialist feminism.23 And, most relevant to Third World people, the modern movement has spread to other classes and races within the U.S. and to women throughout the world. Women in India and Cuba and Tanzania and Vietnam are organizing because of their consciousness of their subordination as women and their country's subordination as a present and/or former dependent and peripheral element of a worldwide economic system. Their liberation as women is tied necessarily to the liberation of their group. Thus, their perspective is different from that of Western middle-class women to whom world capitalist imperialism has afforded not only material comfort but "a higher social status in the world over Third World women"24 and a position of dominance over all poorer people. For Third World women, as sociologist Asoka Bandarage has written, capitalist development has meant:

... the marginalization of women in the least productive and least remunerative sectors of the Third World economies.... The expansion of private property, wage labor, new technology, and the cash nexus have disadvantaged women categorically.25

Therefore, for Third World women to address their oppression is for them to confront the inequities generated by industrial capitalism. Marxist, radical and socialist feminism may be peripheral facets of Western feminism, but a feminism that questions the structure of present economic arrangements as well as the implications of gender is an inevitability in the Third World. Thus the great potential for fundamental socioeconomic change emanating from the international women's movement.

Here, again, can be seen the relatedness of the American civil rights move- ment of the 1960s to a progressive movement of today. For the international women's movement had its roots in the American women's movement which grew out of women's involvement in the hippie movement, the antiwar move- ment, and the civil rights movement.

This analysis of the linkages of the civil rights movement to other move- ments of liberation emphasizes the forward movement of the formerly subordinate toward self-empowerment. There are, of course, complexities and reverses in this movement the detailed discussion of which is beyond the scope of this paper. For example, not every new nation has challenged the Western Weltanschauung. And there are examples of progressive changes being successfully reversed by reactionary forces.26 But these variations do not alter the reality that the trend is toward the decomposition of Western hegemony. And, undoubtedly, a major force behind this decomposition is the struggle of people of color for self-determination and dignity.

23 This is the classification system suggested by Alison Jaggar and Paula Rothenberg in Feminist Frameworks (New York, 1978). 24 Bandarage, op. cit., p. 7.

25 Ibid., p. 9. 26 The fate of Allende's Chile and Bishop's Grenada would be examples of such reversals.

69

This content downloaded from 134.139.29.9 on Sun, 28 Jul 2013 13:36:15 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

PHYLON

This struggle emanates from the desire of Third World people to improve their conditions of living. This desire is what black America has shared with other peoples of color. All of these efforts are a part of the movement of people against those countries, people and systems which have contributed to their impoverishment and degradation. That those countries are mainly West- ern, that those people are mainly white, that that system is the capitalist system is why DuBois was so incisively accurate when he stated in 1903: "The problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color-line."27 The civil rights movement in the United States was a critical part of the ongoing move toward a solution to that problem.

27 W.E.B. DuBois, The Souls of Black Folks (Chicago, 1903), p. 12.

Vol. XLVII, No. 1, 1986

70

This content downloaded from 134.139.29.9 on Sun, 28 Jul 2013 13:36:15 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions