We helped to build their frustration.įor too many years, black Americans marched and had their heads broken and got shot. We had nothing to offer that they could see, except to go out and be beaten again. Each time the people in those cities saw Martin Luther King get slapped, they became angry when they saw four little black girls bombed to death, they were angrier and when nothing happened, they were steaming. In a sense, I blame ourselves-together with the mass media-for what has happened in Watts, Harlem, Chicago, Cleveland, Omaha. None of its so-called leaders could go into a rioting community and be listened to. It served as a sort of buffer zone between them and angry young blacks. There has been only a civil rights movement, whose tone of voice was adapted to an audience of liberal whites. One of the tragedies of the struggle against racism is that up to now there has been no national organization which could speak to the growing militancy of young black people in the urban ghetto.
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