(en) France, Alternative Libertaire AL #230 - Folder Black Revolution: The Roots of Racism: From Slavery to the Ghetto (fr)

Between the period of slavery and the black power, the situation of black-es of the United 
States has undergone considerable changes. From south to north, the constants of racism 
... and resistance. ---- In the nineteenth century, the United States is divided into two 
business units: North we saw the emergence of an industrial and financial capitalism based 
on wage labor, the South perpetuated a landed aristocracy based on cotton and slavery. 
Antagonism never ceased to deepen between South whose prosperity depended on exports and 
thus free trade and protectionist North whose expansion of slavery in the West braked 
ambitions. The Civil War (1861-1865) broke out.

The North's victory was followed by what was called reconstruction: During this period, 
the newly freed black es-es politically organized through counseling, is reappropriated 
farms, for a while under the protection of the Northern troops . But soon, the North 
rallied the old masters South, while blacks became sharecroppers in particular. The old 
masters organized the reaction, the Ku Klux Klan and lynchings appeared spread.

Racism from South to North

From the late seventeenth century, after the "revolt of Bacon" which saw poor whites and 
black slaves coalesce, racism was organized by wealthy colonists in North America, as the 
" ?only tool capable of segregating hazardous hazardous white slaves raising them the 
wall of racial contempt ? "[ 1 ].

Theories about the inferiority of non-white races are broadcast at the time of the 
outbreak of the American imperialist expansionism, which was justified with the same words 
that we heard in the southern states where segregation laws called Jim Crow was then 
adopted. Racism served as the dominant classes within and outside the United States.

According to Daniel Gu?rin [ 2 ], the South represented a kind of colony. While it is 
emptied of its black, large industrial cities of North saw emerge in their downtowns 
ghettos. Black came to work in the factories where they were a labor underpaid and 
exploited. The black underclass from the South was hard work, penned in ghettos much 
larger than he had left dimensions. With nothing to lose, they are willing to risk 
everything. They were the most affected by the crisis of the 1930s led a part of the 
population to survive by illegal activities. Police violence in these neighborhoods was 
merciless. The riots of 1960 will not be the first in the ghettos, they were particularly 
numerous and violent past: in Harlem in 1943, we witnessed a real rebellion of the black 
community.

In the 1950s, at the dawn of the civil rights movement, the black-es are present in the 
southern states where the majority of black-es live, and where they know segregation, and 
in the northern states, including large cities on the East Coast and Michigan (Detroit, 
Chicago ...) which are black-migrated increasingly following calls labor of two world wars.

Civil Rights Movement

On 1 December 1954, a black woman member of the NAACP (National Association for the 
Advancement of Colored People) in Montgomery gives the starting signal to a huge movement. 
This is Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat to a white bus. This action is followed by 
a very long boycott of the bus company in the city. The black-es organize a system of 
private transport and turnover of the company deflects 60%. Across the country the black 
community is in solidarity. The federal district court eventually give them succeed and 4 
June 1956 segregation in public transportation in Alabama is illegal. Martin Luther King 
is known for the first time during this fight. Montgomery movement raises the whole 
community and the bus boycott spreads to other cities. The movement spreads later in 
Little Rock, Arkansas, against school segregation. Sit in, in refusing sncks black es 
multiply.

Pacifist methods Luther King had the advantage of mass mobilization. But repeated abuses 
by various supporters of white supremacism went increasingly necessary self-defense. At 
the time, the violence in the South reached its climax, the whites retaliated against the 
black-es due to the questioning of Jim Crow laws, and tried to prevent black-es to 
register on electoral lists. The massacre of Birmingham shocked America, and was followed 
by the famous march on Washington (see box).

The years that followed were those riots in the ghettos. After a decade of struggle for 
civil rights, the center of gravity of the Black Revolution is irresistibly moved from the 
southern states to the ghettos of the North, where there was no racial segregation laws. 
Three-quarters of black-are now living in cities rather than in the countryside, and more 
than half live outside the South. It is from these cities will emerge Black Power.

Nicolas Pasadena (AL Montreuil)

The march on Washington in 1963 marches for equality in France
Shortly after the massacre of Birmingham, where two white civil rights and black are 
killed, it is the start of the march on Washington. But what are the black leaders who, on 
the day of arrival in Washington, succeeded to the rostrum. They put in the hands of 
walkers placards and slogans handpicked. This gait recovery by black leaders was denounced 
by Malcolm X [ 3 ].

It is striking to note that the steps for equality in France were recovered by the 
socialist regime fairly similar. In 1983, Mitterrand invite walkers at the Elysee arrival 
at Paris. The following year, Convergence 84, while claims were identified and became more 
radical, the PS decide on the creation of SOS Racisme to divide the movement and reduce 
its radicalism. With the arrival of marches, placards, stickers with yellow hands were 
distributed, with slogans depoliticized and paternalistic, while people like Julien Dray 
or Harlem D?sir monopolized speech. The Socialist Party has learned the lesson. We must, 
we also retain the lessons.

Summaryof the dossier

The roots of racism: From slavery to the ghetto
labor movement: black or white, always proletarians
Malcolm X: a life in black and white
Malcolm X: Building a Black Power
The Black Panthers beyond the myth
The Black Feminism: at the intersection of oppressions
DRUM: The struggle of blacks in the workplace
black reformist movements: The pitfalls of bourgeois strategies
Harana Par? (historian): "This is the revolt that brought into existence the American Black"

A Black Revolution remains to be done

[ 1 ] Howard Zinn, A People's History of the United States , Agnone, 2003.

[ 2 ] Daniel Guerin From Uncle Tom to the Black Panthers , the good characters, 2010.

[ 3 ] Malcolm X, Geoge Breitman, The Black Power , The Discovery, 2008.