the goals of the March were political and social and not economic. The reason
the March was called a march for, “Freedom and Jobs” was the idea for the march
came from A. Philip Randolph, head of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters.
Randolph first proposed the march in 1941 to get President Roosevelt to open up
defense jobs for blacks. But the march did not gather widespread support at the
time. Then in 1962 Randolph planed a march for economic justice for Blacks. The
idea was supported by CORE, SNCC, and SCLC. Martin Luther King’s SCLC then took
over organizing the march and downgraded Randolph’s economic demands. Ibid.
pp.159-161.
34 Ibid. p.96.
35 William Harris, The Harder We Run: Black Workers since the Civil War (New
York: Oxford University Press, 1982) p.153.
36 Harvard Sitkoff, The Struggle for Black Equality (New York: Hill and Wang,
1989) p.199.
37 Between 1965 and 1968 there were over three hundred race riots in American
cities. Woodward concludes that these riots helped bring about the end of the
Civil Rights Movement by creating factions within the movement as different
groups pursued different policies to rectify injustice in the Northern ghettos.
The Riots also created a backlash among the White populace which manifested
itself in the defeat of the 1966 Civil Rights Act and the election of Richard
Nixon in 1968. Ibid. pp..222-223.
38 The rise of racial separatism and extremism manifested itself within SNCC and
CORE and the formation of Black Separatist groups such as the Black Panthers,
the Weathermen, and RAM. The rhetoric of extremists inside SNCC and in other
groups captured television camera’s and although Reverend Martin Luther King
continued to march and speak, the face of the Civil Rights Movement became that
of Angela Davis and Huey Newton; the song of the Civil Rights Movement changed
from Reverend Martin Luther King’s, “We Shall Overcome,” to Stokely Carmichael’s,
“We Shall Overrun.” Ibid. p..217.
39 Ibid. p.145.
40 In 1963, Malcolm X was the most quoted Black spokesman, “He played to the
media, conjuring fantasies of jet fleets, piloted by Blacks, someday bombing all
White neighborhoods.” Ibid. p.154.
41 These Blacks were from what E. Franklin Frazier calls, “the Black
Bourgeoisie.” E. Franklin Frazier, Black Bourgeoisie (New York: Free Press,
1957) pp.103-104.
42 Leaders have emerged such as Minister Louis Farrakhan and Colin Powell, who
either propose Black Capitalist, and nationalist solutions to the plight of the
urban poor, much like Marcus Garvey in the 1920’s, or they provide
accommodationist views of the Black struggle in America which meets with the
approval of White elites much like Booker T. Washington at the turn of the
century. Cornel West, Race Matters (New York, Random House, 1994) p.57.
43 Harvard Sitkoff, The Struggle for Black Equality (New York: Hill and Wang,
1989) p.212.
44 Kathleen Rout, Eldridge Cleaver (Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1991) p.80.
45 Angela Davis, Frame Up (San Francisco: National Committee To Free Angela
Davis, 1972) p.7.
46 Harvard Sitkoff, The Struggle for Black Equality (New York: Hill and Wang,
1989) p.234.
47 Civil Rights initiatives though have helped the Black middle-class who have
experienced unprecedented job prospects as they have been able to escape the
urban ghettos and take advantage of jobs in the corporate and government sector.
This points to what Wilson calls, “the declining significance of race in
determining poverty,” instead of race dictating someone’s economic status, the
status of their class is what determines their economic future; with the poor
Blacks getting poorer and middle-class Blacks becoming wealthier. Because of
this economic inequality in the Black community has grown more than inequality
in the White community. William Julius Wilson, The Declining Significance of
Race (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980) pp.151-154.
48 Harvard Sitkoff, The Struggle for Black Equality (New York: Hill and Wang,
1989) p.231.