Table Of ContentPAUL LE BLANC is Professor of History at La Roche College in Pittsburgh,
and has lectured in Australia, Brazil, Britain, Canada, China, France,
India, the Netherlands, and South Africa. Among his books are: Work and
Struggle: Voices from U.S. Labor Radicalism (2011), Marx, Lenin and the
Revolutionary Experience: Studies of Communism and Radicalism in the
Age of Globalization (2006), Black Liberation and the American Dream
(2003), A Short History of the U.S. Working Class (1999), From Marx to
Gramsci (1996), Lenin and the Revolutionary Party (1990). Since the
1960s he has been active in struggles for racial justice and economic justice.
MICHAEL D. YATES is Associate Editor of Monthly Review and Editorial
Director of Monthly Review Press. For many years he taught economics at
the University of Pittsburgh at Johnstown and has taught working people
in Labor Studies programs around the country. He is the author of Why
Unions Matter (2nd edition, 2009), The ABCs of the Economic Crisis (with
Fred Magdoff , 2009), and editor of Wisconsin Uprising (2012). After
retiring from full-time teaching, Yates took up the life of an itinerant radical
economist and documented his travels in Cheap Motels and a Hot Plate: An
Economist’s Travelogue (2007).
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A FREEDOM BUDGET
FOR ALL AMERICANS
Recapturing the Promise of the Civil Rights
Movement in the Struggle for Economic Justice Today
Paul Le Blanc and Michael D. Yates
MONTHLY REVIEW PRESS
New York
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Copyright © 2013 by Paul Le Blanc and Michael D. Yates
All Rights Reserved
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Le Blanc, Paul, 1947–
A freedom budget for all Americans : recapturing the promise of the civil
rights movement in the struggle for economic justice today / Paul Le Blanc
and Michael D. Yates.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-58367-360-7 (pbk. : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-1-58367-361-4
(cloth : alk. paper) 1. United States—Economic policy—20th century. 2.
United States—Social policy—20th century. 3. Economic security—United
States—History. 4. Poverty—Government policy—United States. 5. Civil
rights—United States—History. 6. Equality—United States—History. I.
Yates, Michael, 1946- II. Title.
HC106.6L385 2013
330.973—dc23
2013021619
Monthly Review Press
146 West 29th Street, Suite 6W
New York, New York 10001
www.monthlyreview.org
5 4 3 2 1
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CONTENTS
Acknowledgments / 7
1: Introduction / 9
2: The Battle for Civil Rights / 21
[Appendix: Marxist Perspectives] / 48
3: For Jobs and Freedom / 53
4: A Freedom Budget for All Americans / 89
5: The Political Economy of the Freedom Budget / 127
6: Defeat of the Freedom Budget / 145
7: The U.S. Political Economy from
the Freedom Budget to the Present / 180
8: Poverty and Its Attendant Evils Today / 195
9: Toward a New Freedom Budget / 222
Appendix: A Freedom Budget for All Americans / 242
Select Bibliography / 251
Notes / 257
Index / 299
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I MUST EXPRESS GRATITUDE for a sabbatical granted by La Roche College,
allowing me to focus on this book, and to my many students there with whom
I have shared information about the Freedom Budget. The several-year experi-
ence of coordinating the award-winning “Global Problems, Global Solutions”
conferences associated with La Roche College also contributed to keeping the
Freedom Budget very much in my consciousness.
An early commitment from Monthly Review Press was essential for this
project to move forward, and the labor of its dedicated staff was no less essen-
tial to its completion. In the same vein, I must acknowledge the kindness and
help of the staff s of the Tamiment Library and the Library of Congress.
Thanks are due to many others, including:
Participants who granted interviews or off ered correspondence: Rick
Congress, Joel Geier, Norman Hill, Velma Hill, Rachelle Horowitz (who sub-
jected portions of the manuscript to a valuable critique), David McReynolds,
and Walter Naegle (who also graciously supplied a summary version of the
Freedom Budget);
Knowledgeable friends who read through one or another draft of the
manuscript, in some cases more than one draft, off ering helpful challenges,
suggestions, and information: Brian Jones, Russell Pryor and, of course, my
co-author, Michael Yates;
Friends and colleagues who off ered encouragement and feedback, too
numerous to mention, though perhaps an exception should be made in regard
to one of the most loyal and thoughtful of collaborators on an accumulating
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8 / A FREEDOM BUDGET FOR ALL AMERICANS
number of projects—Immanuel Ness, an outstanding fi gure in the fi eld of labor
studies. On second thought, I must also express warm appreciation for the
good fellowship, wine and munchies, and stimulating comparing-of-notes pro-
vided by two current fellow Pittsburghers, David Garrow and Darleen Opfer.
Jibran Mushtaq, a brilliant former student and principled activist, also deserves
special thanks for help in conceptualizing the cover design for this book.
I especially want to acknowledge the support of my sisters, Nora Le Blanc
and Patty Le Blanc, of my sons, Gabriel Le Blanc and Jonah McAllister-
Erickson, and of my dearest companion, Nancy Ferrari; and also the inspiration
of fellow activists in and around Occupy Pittsburgh, Pittsburghers for Public
Transit, the Thomas Merton Center, and the Pittsburgh-area labor movement
(particularly Fight Back Pittsburgh, an innovative affi liate of the United Steel
Workers), all of whom continue the struggle for economic justice.
—PAUL Le BLANC
FIRST, LET ME THANK Paul Le Blanc, without whose hard work and knowl-
edge of the history of the Freedom Budget and the civil rights movement this
book would not have been written. Thanks go also to Karen Korenoski, my
partner, traveling companion, and editor, who has helped to teach me that good
content is often lost without quality writing. As always, I thank my comrades
at Monthly Review Press, especially Martin Paddio and Scott Borchert. And
thanks to Erin Clermont, our copy editor, who has done her usual outstanding
job, catching errors and omissions we missed and greatly improving the style.
—MICHAEL D. YATES
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1. INTRODUCTION
INSEPARABLE FROM THE GOALS projected by the historic 1963 March on
Washington for Jobs and Freedom, A Freedom Budget for All Americans was
advanced in 1966 by A. Philip Randolph, Bayard Rustin, and Martin Luther
King Jr., central leaders of the activist wing of the civil rights movement in the
1950s and ’60s. It promised the full and fi nal triumph of the civil rights move-
ment. This was to be achieved by going beyond civil rights, linking the goal
of racial justice for African Americans with the goal of economic justice for all
Americans. If implemented, it would have fundamentally changed the history
of the United States. In this introductory chapter, we will fi rst give attention
to that larger sweep of U.S. history, and a consideration of the relevance to
this of capitalism and socialism, before focusing on the civil rights movement,
which—in more than one way—so sharply posed questions of reform and revo-
lution in the American experience.
What Might Have Been and What Was
The Freedom Budget proposal could be seen, and by some was seen, as related
to the twentieth-century liberalism that was ascendant in U.S. politics from
Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal to Lyndon B. Johnson’s Great Society. But
its dimensions and implications were far more radical. It projected the elimina-
tion of poverty within a ten-year period, the creation of full employment and
decent housing, health care, and education for all people in our society as a
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