Transcripts For CSPAN3 Minority Activism And The 1968 Electi

This first presentation is called when poor people marched on washington, the 1968 campaign in black and brown. I will introduce the speakers, and then they can come up and begin the discussion. So, the first person i will introduce is gordon who is an Gordon Mantler who is an assistant professor at George Washington university specializing in the history and the rhetoric of 20th century social Justice Movements and the africanamerican and latino experience in the united states, as well as oral history and history of film. His first book and focus of his Library Presentation is power to the poor, blackbrown coalition, and the fight for Economic Justice 1960 to 1974. It was published in 2013. And so, we are really happy to have him here. He is the recipient of many awards, including the first annual ronald t. Ferrar civil rights history award. So we are very happy to have him here. And how is this going to work . Come on up and have a seat. Yeah. Our second speaker is going to be our second panelist is going to be Carlos Montes, a nationally recognized leader in the chicano immigrant rights and Antiwar Movements who resides and works in east l. A. It was while attending college in 1967 that he joined the mexicanamerican Student Association and founded la vida nueva, a chicano student group, and organized and fought to establish one of the first chicano studies programs in the united states. We have an Academic Program coming out of that, which is wonderful. He took part in founding various social movements, including the brown berets. He took part in the Antiwar Movement and the free huey Newton Campaign and other campaigns during the 1960s. Hes remained active organizing other social movements. So Carlos Montes, if you would come on up as well. Finally, i will introduce our third panelist who is or our moderator who is the wonderful guha shankar, who works here at the American Folklife Center of the library of congress where is a senior specialist. He looks after our civil rights history project. So guha. [applause] good morning. Thank you for coming out on a rainy afternoon washington, d. C. It seems like fall is here now. I want to thank carlos for flying off from california to be here. Its hard to believe it has been nine years since i first interviewed both of them for my book that came out 8 years later, back in 2005 when i first trekked out to california, new mexico, and colorado to speak with them and some other folks. Oral history became the core of the book. So, what i plan to do today is to briefly sketch out the story of when poor people marched on washington in what was dr. Martin luther kings final crusade. One that he did not see but was envisioning and working on around the last six months of his life. So, you may have noticed that we are in the season of civil rights anniversaries. As the opening introduction to the entire symposium today suggested that this is the last program of a season of programs that started off in the spring to commemorate freedom summer, the 50th anniversary of that in mississippi, as well as the Civil Rights Act of 1964. It is the 60th anniversary of the first brown decision from 1954. No commemoration has been moment has been celebrated as much as the 1963 march on washington in d. C. Last august. Im not going to go into critique and analysis of the original march and the commemoration, but what i will say is that i am struck at how much that march has overshadowed the other marches, particularly the 1957 prayer pilgrimage a few years after the brown decision, as well as the 1968 Poor Peoples Campaign. I think this is a product of continued public memory an d scholarship that emphasizes two 1960s. An early 1960s, the halcyon days of the civil rights struggle, and perhaps kennedy liberalism and a bad 1960s. A good and a bad 1960s of urban riots, white backlash, and for a lot, black power. Today i want to talk about the Poor Peoples Campaign, dr. King never saw. One i argue reveals the complexity of the man, the movement, and of the decade, the far more than the campaigns betterknown counterpart from five years earlier. Alarmed by what he saw as a vicious circle of state violence in the form of Police Brutality and harassment as well as military involvement in vietnam, and by rioters frustrated with the slow pace of civil rights reform, particularly in northern and western cities, dr. King really was fearful that we were very quickly moving toward a fascist state. In december, 1967, king announced Poor Peoples Campaign, in which the southern christian Leadership Conference would bring ways of the nations poor to washington, d. C. , to redress their grievances by the government. Adding the poor would stay until america responds. He envisioned the campaign as not just one of black and white but one a Rainbow Coalition that included mexicanamericans, Puerto Ricans, and native americans. He hoped the campaign would do a number of things. One, transform fully the struggle for civil rights into human rights. Of course, many other people had been already doing that. One of the leading civil Rights Organizations, this was a considerable turn from what they had been doing earlier, including other people they had not worked with before. Bringing about the federal governments rededication to the war on poverty which have been declared by president johnson and never fully fought or funded, at least partially because of the commitment to the war in vietnam. And three, restoring the credibility of nonviolence and social justice organizing, which had lost ground amid calls for armed selfdefense. The campaign blossomed into the most ambitious ever taken undertaken by sclc and dr. King, but has been dismissed by journalists, scholars, biographers and even some , activists as irrelevant or a disastrous coda of the black civil rights struggle. One former official of the sclc called it the little bighorn of the Civil Rights Movement. It certainly was flawed. It did not achieve many of its goals. A closer look at the campaign reveals a remarkably instructive moment, an experiment to build a Multiracial Movement designed to wage a sustained fight against poverty. Only in d. C. Did representatives of so many different movements come together to build a physical and Spiritual Community about justice and poverty that went beyond a oneday rally. Represented was the Southern Civil rights movement, labor unions, chicano and American Indian activists, the welfare the welfare movement, the student movement, north, south, and west, and many others. What a Diverse Campaign reveals is how classbased multiracial coalitional politics often operate alongside the racebased identity politics of black power and chicano power. They were not at odds. This is often times what the public memory suggest as well as historiography and scholarship, that these were always at odds. But in fact, i would argue they were mutually interdependent. The campaign also reveals how poor folks also saw their poverty differently. Issues overlapped, but were not the same based on the different historical trajectories. So, despite dr. Kings call for a different sort of campaign, it wasnt until march 19 68 that activist beyond traditional civil rights circles began to respond. In what was called the Minority Group conference, 80 activists gathered in atlanta. It was a remarkable moment that few people had ever heard of. Some of the most important leaders of the chicano movement. As you can see. The Mexican American Political Association in california. Jose gutierrez, one of the founders of the Mexican American Youth Organization in texas. And denvers crusade for justice were among the folks there. They were welfare rights activists. There were coal miners interested from Eastern Kentucky and West Virginia who were interested in land and environmental issues. Religious activists from the National Council of churches. And the American Foreign service activists from the quakers. All these people in varying degrees saw themselves as opponents of the vietnam war. And saw that as linked to the abandonment of the war on poverty by 1968. Here king presented his vision. One that was not just about how sclc defined poverty as jobs or income or a solution to poverty but one that included everyones ideas. The chicano activists offered a familiar refrain about the burgeoning relationship between them and Civil Rights Activists, representing more urban chicanos reminded king that conferring is a twoway street. African americans must listen to them and include them in campaigning. Reyes dominated the room in a Cap Committee defense of the land grant rights. And i also will not go into all the details of the land grant struggle but i will be happy to talk about that in q a. The delegates bonded over food, culture. The growing realization that they were stronger together than they were a part. And perhaps most importantly, that sclc took their issue seriously. So miles horton, the founder of the highlander folks school, the Training School or center for civil rights and Union Organizing in tennessee wrote king after this conference. I believe caught a glimpse of the future and the making of a bottomup coalition. Know, king waswe assassinated three weeks later, sparking violence in more than 100 cities including the district. Ralph abernathy insisted the campaign would go on and support exploded as many people who had initially dismissed the campaign for a variety of reasons to o provocative, social nonviolent protests was outmoded. For a variety of reasons. Many of them reconsidered. Black panthers who i talked with said, we wanted to go to washington as, in memory of dr. King. Even if they were still skeptical. In fact, the campaign was so flooded with volunteers, so flooded with financial support, th campaign was overwhelmed. And speaking of this idea of ptsd, that is a good way of describing Ralph Abernathy and a young jesse jackson, the folks that were the close aides around king, the people who had been working with him for years trying to put this campaign on a month after dr. Kings death. So, this disorganization it starts to become apparent as marchers began to descend on washington through the nine caravans modeled after the montgomery march in 1965. And the march of the united farm workers. They came from the west, northwest, midwest, northeast, and of course the south. I hope in his comments that carlos might speak about his experience on the caravan from the west. I remember some interesting stories he told, some of which are in the book. And the most photographed of the caravans, however, was the mule train. As you can see here. A classic civil of southern poverty, sharecroppers, even black southern poverty. What this did was inadvertently reinforce the notion that the campaign was one more black civil rights campaign, and not the multiracial campaign that scls and dr. King had thought. By using the symbol over and over again, and having a reporter cover and follow the mule train, the press reinforce d this idea that this is really about southern poverty. Not about westerner midwesterner northeastern, Puerto Ricans and native americans. But about black southern poverty. Another symbol that ended up distracting from the campaigns multiracial message was resurrection city. You can see on west potomac park in the district, the plan was to have some sort of encampment in washington. Where marchers could stay and they could launch their campaign of federal agencies, of congress and the white house. So, they settled in a small tent city on the national mall. Even got a permit from the department of the interior to do so. Now, its partly based on the army march of 1932. When world war i veterans came to d. C. To demand their bonus early, rather than getting it in 1945. Because they were desperate to have some kind of money at the depths of the great depression. They were burned out by u. S. Soldiers led by douglas mcarthur. And sent back over the bridges into virginia. But it was seen by king aides a s successful in that it helped bring down hoover. It was one more way, one more poor optic for president already on the ropes, that he just did not care about poor people or care about regular folks and veterans. Its interesting if you go to be lbj library and spend time with the papers of aides to johnson, they were all reading Arthur Schlesingers history. They were very aware of how that played out and they were insistent that it would not happen in 1968. So, resurrection city did take a life, take on a life of its own, and became a focal point of the campaign. In both good ways and bad ways. By late may, the city had 2500 People Living in it. Described by one magazine as a revival meeting within a carnival within an army camp. When people were not lobbying congress and federal agencies, they ate at the mess hall. They put their kids in a day care center. They got their hair cut. They listen to some of what was called the best entertainment in town from pete seager to diana ross and gladys knight. Residents wrote their own newspaper, criticizing sclc leadership. There was the poor Peoples University that offered a range of courses. Everything from Mexican American history to the intimacies of intricacies of income maintenance, which were which welfare rights activists are working on as a solution to poverty. And there was also the many races soul center. Which fostered Intercultural Exchange is to us exchange especially the music and dance. But it was a rainy spring. I feel like again there was a lot of rain. Oslo my the folks i spoke with for the book said, it rained like in the bible. 19 days out of 31 it poured. A wet spring here. It had to be evacuated twice. You can see what happened. I think maybe the drainage has gotten better in west potomac park. I hope so. Here are pictures of slightly happier times. Barbers doing their job, one of the white families from West Virginia. And so by the time most of the Mexican American and native american marchers arrived from the west, which is several days after resurrection city had been started and they started pitching tents there, the city was a mess. As one said with some understatement, we did not see what we hope to see. For understandable reasons. Martin luther king had been assassinated. We figured, we wished them the best. Meanwhile, we have to get on with what we want to do. Instead, most chicanos who came to washington lived in the Hawthorne School, an Experimental High School that opened its doors to the marchers. At the time, their building was on i street southwest the became they later became part of Southeastern University to which went defunct a few years ago. The choice of hawthorne was critical. It was in this space that much of the campaigns Relationship Building for chicanos occurred. Several activist independently called it a successful multiracial community. Some of it was Cultural Exchange over food and music. Others describe their shock at the poverty of poor whites from appalachia to the point where they would give their extra shoes and jackets to them. For many chicano activists in their teens and 20s, and the age is in the Poor Peoples Campaign skewed young, it forced them to take a more sophisticated look at the world and consider how race, class, and gender were intertwined. Chicano activists such as the brown berets that carlos was part of met folks they would not have otherwise met. And who got them thinking in different ways. One of my favorite quotes from carlos, ill give here. Lets see if i get it right. When would we have gotten together with the crusade for justice . Live with them, shared bread with them, marched every day with them. Their activities in washington bonded the activist together in such a way that they build on these relationships when they went home. One of the protests, maybe most interesting was nextdoor in front of the Supreme Court. In early june, 1968, where 400 africanamerican, native american and mexicanamerican , activists joined to protest a recent court ruling about native fishing rights. In the 1960s, this was one of the key issues for a lot of native americans. Who had been supposedly given the right under treaties that were up to 200 years old to fish in ancestral waters. State laws, including washington state, forbid them from doing this and they would be arrested. So, inspired by the direct action they saw on tv by the student nonviolent coordinating committee, they would fish in places they were not supposed to, be arrested, and put thi