Peace and Freedom: The Civil Rights and Antiwar Movements in the 1960s

276 Pages·2006·12.406 MB·English

by  Simon Hall

Peace and Freedom
POLITICS AND CULTURE IN MODERN AMERICA
Series Editors: Michael Kazin, Glenda Gilmore, Thomas J. Sugrue
Books in the series narrate and analyze political and social change
in the broadest dimensions from 1865 to the present, including ideas
about the ways people have sought and wielded power in the public
sphere and the language and institutions of politics at all levels—
national, regional, and local. The series is motivated by a desire to
reverse the fragmentation of modern U.S. history and to encourage
synthetic perspectives on social movements and the state, on gender,
race, and labor, on consumption, and on intellectual history and
popular culture.
Peace and Freedom
The Civil Rights and Antiwar
Movements in the 1960s
SIMON HALL
University of Pennsylvania Press
Philadelphia
Copyright © 2005 University of Pennsylvania Press
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
First paperback edition 2006
Published by
University of Pennsylvania Press
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104–4112
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Hall, Simon, 1976–
Peace and freedom : the civil rights and antiwar movements in the 1960s / Simon Hall.
p. cm. (Politics and culture in modern America)
ISBN-13: 978-0-8122-1975-3 (pbk. : alk. paper)
ISBN-10: 0-8122-1975-9 (pbk. : alk. paper)
Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index.
1. African Americans—Civil rights—History—20th century. 2. Civil rights
movements—United States—History—20th century. 3. African Americans—Politics and
government—20th century. 4. Vietnamese ConXict, 1961–1975—Protest movements.
5. Peace movements—United States—History—20th century. 6. United States—Race
relations. 7. United States—Social conditions—1960–1980. 8. United States—Politics
and government—1963–1969. I. Title. II. Series
E185.615 .H274 2004
959.704´3´8996073—dc22 2004055478
For Olive, a friend and mentor
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Contents
Introduction 1
1. The Organizing Tradition 13
2. Black Power 39
3. Black Moderates 80
4. Racial Tensions 105
5. Radicalism and Respectability 141
6. New Coalitions, Old Problems 167
Conclusion 187
Notes 195
Bibliography 235
Index 255
Acknowledgments 263
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Introduction
In February 1966, world heavyweight champion Muhammad Ali was in
Miami, training for his title defense against Ernie “the Octopus” Terrell.
One afternoon a television reporter sought Ali’s reaction to the news
that the Louisville Draft Board had upgraded his draft status from 1-Y
to 1-A, thereby making him eligible for immediate induction into the
United States Army. Ali’s retort, “I ain’t got no quarrel with the Viet
Cong,” helped deWne an era. Fourteen months later Ali refused induc-
tion, explaining “I am not going ten thousand miles from here to help
murder and kill and burn another poor people simply to help continue
the domination of white America.”1Ali’s response to the war in Vietnam
seemed to many to epitomize a new militancy within Black America. The
October 1966 platform of the Black Panther Party demanded that all
African Americans be exempted from military service—“Black people
should not be forced to Wght . . . to defend a racist government that
does not protect us.” The Panthers refused to “Wght and kill other peo-
ple of color who, like black people, are being victimized by the white
racist government in America.”2 Stokely Carmichael and the Student
Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) attacked the war too.
Speaking at one antiwar march, Carmichael deWned the draft as “white
people sending black people to make war on yellow people to defend
land they stole from red people.”3
It was not just black militants who were critical of America’s actions in
Vietnam. The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., the nation’s most impor-
tant and most respected civil rights leader, also condemned the war in
the strongest possible way. In the spring of 1967, King bitterly de-
nounced the “madness of Vietnam” and called on his government to take
the initiative in halting the conXict.4 Indeed, by the time that the Paris
Peace Accords were signed in January 1973, every major civil rights
leader had spoken out against the war.
The years between 1960 and 1972 saw the emergence of two of the
most signiWcant social movements in American history—the African
American freedom struggle and the movement to end the war in