50 years ago today
by digby
“Change will not roll in on the heels of inevitability…”
Perlstein has a fascinating piece up at the Nation with some very relevant historical context. The Villagers of the day were apoplectic about the notion of all these people marching on Washington and causing lawmakers to feel “pressure.” They considered such behavior to be both provocative and undemocratic. Martin Luther King disagreed:
Martin Luther King, bless his soul, understood the game: don’t back down. He joined a group of leaders who met with the president. “Dr. King had told a banquet group just the before that ‘if they start filibustering, by the hundreds and the thousands and by the hundreds of thousands white people and black people ought to march on Washington.”
Damn, he spoke well. That sentence is poetry, pure pulsating rhythm: “by the hundreds and the thousands and the hundreds of thousands.” He also strategized well: he understood how the popular fear of violence advantaged the marchers. It was, as we’ll see, a sort of bargaining chip. And he would not trade it away lightly. The opposite, you might say, of Barack Obama, who keeps a bust of King in the Oval Office, and will no doubt have sonorous words on tap this Wednesday lionizing King—whose thought I don’t really think he understands at all.
Obama should actually keep a bust of Roy Wilkins, the head of the NAACP, because that is more who he is like. “I have never proposed sit-ins at the Capitol,” Wilkins said, according to The New York Times. “I have said that any demonstrations, in Washington or elsewhere, should have specific, not general, objectives…I am not involved in the present moment.” Five days later he warned against what he termed a “whoopin’ and a hollerin’ operation.” I suppose he had reason to fear. For what the marchers were proposing to do might well be illegal. Explained the AP: “Federal laws specifically forbid demonstrations at the Capitol, Capitol buildings, or Capitol grounds without permission granted specifically by the vice president and the speaker of the House, acting jointly…. The blocking of roads and streets leading to the Capitol, and unauthorized ‘harangues’ also are forbidden in the Capitol area.” (Informed readers: is this still true?)
The AP cited their inside source, the one who warned about the possibility of violence: “One plan under consideration…is an effort to induce leaders of civil rights groups in ‘reasonable numbers’ to accept a ‘dramatic confrontation’ meeting with congressional leaders and other appropriate Congress members as an alternative to sit-ins. ‘Citizens have a right to petition the Congress,’ this source said,’ but they do not have a right to try to overpower it.’ He said there has been official consideration of whether the police might have to be augmented by military personnel if no compromise can be evolved.” The next day, Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy warned the march’s organizers off: while he had “great sympathy” for protest, “Congress should have the right to debate and discuss this legislation without this kind of pressure.”
Right. Because the “national conversation” would have happened on its own, without the rude interruption of Edward Snowden, oops, I mean A. Phillip Randolph and Martin Luther King…
You can follow today’s speeches at this live feed.
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