FIGHTERS MAKE IT ANOTHER LONG HOT SUMMER
By Evelyn Sell
Another long hot summer of civil-rights crises in the United States is now over, With the coming of the cooler winds of fall, it is possible to more fully assess the failure of the Johnson administration's attempts to avert civil-rights explosions. We can, also, better understand the current demonstrations which had their begin= nings during the long hot summer of 1965.
The Johnson administration frantically tried to dampen the fires of the continuing Freedom Now struggle by throwing out some crumbs to the black masses: the Civil Rights Act of 1965, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, free classes for preschool-age children from the Northern and Southern ghettoes, special employment programs for Negro youth, "War on Poverty" projects designed to lull people into sitting back and keeping quiet and letting the federal government run things.
The capitalist newspapers did their part to aid the administration's campaign. News of civil-rights activities were greatly played down and lying stories about "progress" and “easing of ten= sions" were played up. For example, the August 4 Detroit Free Press printed an article by Edwin A. Lahey, chief of the paper's Washington bureau, which started: "Six-and-d-half weeks of a thirteen week season are behind us. And if the roof doesn't fall in while this article is in transmission, the racial tension in the summer of 1965 is certainly much less than it was a year ago...The Community Relations Service, created by the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and headed by former Gov, Collins of Florida until he became Undersecretary of Commerce, has done heroic work behind the scenes to break down the barriers of prejudice, and to head off tension before it develops.”
The plain truth, however, was that tensions were building up and exploding across the nation throughout the summer. The Freedom Now activities and the police brutality in Americus, Georgia, for example, were duplicated in many Southern areas during the long hot months of June, July and August. <A brief description of what happened in Americus gives some idea of the summer's activities -despite all the Johnson administration could do.
On July 20 four Negro women attempted to vote and were arrested because they were standing in a "whites only" line. Hundreds of Negroes marched through the streets of Americus in protest against these arrests. Daily protest demonstrations and an allenight vigil in front of the county courthouse were a part of the mounting Negro offensive against all forms of segregation and inequality. A 24= hour moratorium on demonstrations was called on July 28 when a white youtn was shot and killed by gunfire from a passing car. Two Negroes, Eddie Will Lamar and Charlie Lee Hopkins, were arrested for the fatal
3 5=
shooting.
Riotetrained state troopers were brought in to enforce the suspension of civil-rights demonstrations. When Negroes had complained of whites throwing bottles and rocks at them, the state troopers were not brought in; but as soon as a white was hurt, Southern "respect for law and order" suddenly came to the surface!
On July 50 the four Negro women, whose arrests had touched off the almost continuous demonstrations, were released from jail. That day demonstrations began again in celebration of the release of the women. Further concessions were demanded from local officials. The next day, July 31, whites attacked Negro and white civil-rights demonstrators picketing a supermarket. State troopers stood by and watched while civil-rights workers were being beaten. One Negro boy was.° helped away from the picket line with blood spurting from his .head. One of the Negro girls shouted at the state troopers, "Are you going. to stand by and just watch this brutality?" After a while the troop-~ ers did intervene -- not against the white toughs, however, The troopers escorted the demonstrators back into the Negro district,
The situation became more critical with each passing day. County Ordinary (judge) Eugene Horne reported that 30 permits ‘to carry pistols had been issued to whites and then added, "People here are going to defend themselves and their rights." On-August 2 the police arrested 23 civil-rights workers on "trespassing" charges when they picketed a grocery store. Georgia Governor Carl Sanders appealed to the demonstrators to halt their activities.
"T am asking them publicly,” said the governor, "that they allow the whole question of violation of rights to be determined by local officials and local citizens." The same local officials and citizens who had been involved in the arrests and beatings, no doubt.
- On August 3 a grand jury indicted the two Negroes charged with shooting of the white youth. That night some 300 civil-rights demonstrators marched to the courthouse and held an outdoor rally. Judson Ford, an official of Martin Luther King's Southern Christian Leadership Conference [SCLC], spoke to the cheering crowd. "You know what they call us in Savannah (Georgia)? White folks straighteners," Ford said. When a group of hostile whites made a move toward the audience, Ford called out, "You better think twice or maybe three times; because we're ready,"
. The next day Negro and white civil-rights workers staged a sing-in on the lawn of the county courthouse to reinforce their demands for a biracial committee to work on local segregation problems. County Attorney Warren C. Fortson began to organize such a biracial committee -- and because of this very moderate action he and his family were hounded out of Americus by racists. The Fortsons received threats against their lives; white townspeople refused to have any social contact with them; Fortson was ousted from his posi-
tion of Sunday school teacher at the First Methodist Church and the county hired another law firm to handle its legal work.
After 17 days of almost continuous demonstrations, the civilrights forces were able to claim a small victory in one area. On August 6 the chairman of the County Board of Registrars named three Negro voting clerks and immediately registered 97 Negro voters, Some white leaders told reporters privately that the move was due to the new federal voting law and "the desire to get this thing [the city's racial crisis] over." "This thing" was far from over, however.
.On August 8 police arrested 22 Negroes and whites who were trying to integrate two churches. Later that same day about 700 Ku Klux Klansmen and their sympathizers staged a march and rally in downtown Americus. The Klan's top official, Imperial Wizard Robert Shelton, told the rally, "It's the white man against the Negro," Several hours later more than 300 civil-rights marchers held a rally at the courthouse. Negro leader Willie Bolden told the crowd, "As of now we're not pleading for freedom, we're gonna take it."
It was situations like this in Americus that gave weight to Martin Luther King's warnings during the latter part of the summer, On August 4 King summed up his tour of major Northern cities by saying that Negroes forced to live in slums with poor schools and no jobs feel they have nothing to lose. "These are the people who will riot," King warned. "They see life as a long and desolate corridor with no exit sign." He stated that "Chicago is the most ghettoized city in this country."
And the situation in Chicago was boiling furiously toward an explosion all summer long. While the nation's newspapers were exulting over "the massive desegregation" of Southern schools brought about by the 1964 Civil Rights Act, civil-rights demonstrators in Chicago were protesting de facto segregation in a school system which had been legally desegregated for many years. During May civilrights workers called a five-day boycott of the city's public schools in order to protest the reappointment of School Superintendent Benjamin C. Willis. Willis had been under long and heavy attack because of the discriminatory policies within the Chicago school system, Successful school boycotts had already been held involving 250,000 children in 1963 and 172,000 in 1964,
The new boycott and a large march on city hall took place on June 10. During the first six days of the series of protests there were three rallies, one prayer meeting, four marches on city hall and a total of 525 persons arrested. Albert A. Raby, head of the Coordinating Committee of Community Organizations which was organizing the protests, stated: "We're demonstrating for the same reason in Chicago as they are in Jackson, Mississippi -- against the basic injustice of our society."
Chicago's Mayor Daley was a special target of the civil-rights
forces. The mayor's home was picketed a number of times and when he arrived in Detroit for the National League of Cities Convention he was greeted by four carloads of pickets from Chicago reinforced by civil-rights activists in Detroit. Inside Detroit's Cobo Hall, Mayor Daley sat and listened to reports about "the peaceful summer" created by biracial committees. He heard fellow mayors cheerfully say that “improved communications in big cities was the main reason the long hot summer of racial strife has not materialized,"
Both Mayor Daley and Los Angeles Mayor Samuel Yorty left the cheerful reports at the convention to face grim reality in the streets of Chicago and the Watts district. On August 13 the tense situation in Chicago was set ablaze when a Negro woman was accidentally struck and killed by a fire truck. What followed was described as "the worst racial rioting here in 13 years." The targets of the Negroes! fists, bottles and stones were: the hated police whose brutality has claimed many black victims, the stores of white businessmen who have long exploited the residents of the ghetto, and the fire station which served as an ever-present symbol of Jim Crow practices because it was manned by an all-white crew in the heart of a black residential district.
The three-day explosion in Chicago was far over-shadowed by the week-long rebellion in the Los Angeles ghetto of Watts. The events in Chicago and Los Angeles were the exclamation points toa whole summer of intense civil-rights activity marked by violence and death. The carefully planted articles about "the peaceful summer" and "the easing of racial tensions" were clearly and definitively halted by the residents of Watts. who shouted so loud the whole world could hear, "This is the Negro revolution, we want the world to know,"
The summer-long conspiracy of cheerfulness was shattered. The failure of the Johnson administration's gimmicks was exposed. Although the progress of the Freedom Now struggle is uneven, now rising and now falling, and the victories are offset by the stratagems of the racists, the struggle continues and the demands reach farther and farther into the heart of the capitalist system which breeds inequality and violence. The heat of the long hot summer of 1965 is giving a fever headache to the insecure rulers of the United States.