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Source: International Socialist Review, Vol.21 No. 1, Winter 1960, pp.28-29.
Transcription: Daniel Gaido.
Mark up: Andrew Pollack for ETOL.
When Negroes March
by Herbert Garfinkel
Free Press, Glencos, Illinois. 1959. 224 pp. $4.
Negro marches on Washington to demand civil rights and to protest discrimination are no longer unusual. But, when A. Philip Randolph first issued a call in January 1941 for “10,000 black Americans” to march on the nation’s capitol, the Chicago Defender editorialized, “To get ten thousand Negroes assembled in one spot, under one banner with justice, democracy and work as their slogan would be the miracle of the century.” The description of the conditions which led to such a call by Randolph, the story of how the Negro masses and leaders responded and the events surrounding the March on Washington of the forties are vividly presented in Herbert Garfinkel’s When Negroes March.
Mr. Garfinkel traces the March on Washington movement from the time that the depression signs of “No Help Wanted” changed to the pre-World War II signs, “Help Wanted – White.” Negro leaders appealed to President Roosevelt and met with government officials in behalf of the Negro community which was frozen out of the “benefits” of the war preparedness program. The ineffectiveness of such appeals and conferences and the marked contrast between the lot of the white worker and serviceman and the Negro prompted protest meetings and picketing throughout the country. It was at this point that Randolph issued the first call for “An ’all-out’ thundering march on Washington ...” in order to “shake up white America.”
After a halting start the March on Washington idea began to seize the imaginations and stir the activities of the mass of Negroes. Local March committees were set up in eighteen cities, outdoor rallies were held, poster walks took place, funds solicited, MOW buttons were sold by the thousands. Counter-pressures and appeals for national unity on the part of the government only served to encourage the March supporters in their project. Originally asking 10,000 to march—the goal became 100,000 to gather at the Lincoln Memorial to demand equal job opportunities and an end to segregation in the armed forces.
Barely one week before the March was to take place, Roosevelt issued Executive Order 8802 setting up a federal Fair Employment Practices Committee and Randolph called off the March.
Shortly after the first FEPC public hearings, Pearl Harbor was attacked and the shooting war began. However, the “Double V for Victory” campaign (victory against Jim Crow as well as against the Axis) continued throughout the war period. Mass meetings organized by the March on Washington Movement were held in Chicago, New York and St. Louis during the summer of 1942. They were all huge successes.
Mr. Garfinkel dates the decline of the March on Washington movement from the time of these rallies. Despite the formalization of the March on Washington as an organization at a conference held in September, 1942, the original objectives of the march movement were altered. Efforts now were to gain an effective FEPC and Randolph chose to pursue this goal with methods and organizations other than those associated with the MOW mass movement.
In his preface the author points out,
“Behind the current agitation in the Negro community is a history of developing leadership and organization which requires intensive analysis if we are to understand the present. The defense period just prior to American entry into World War II is fundamental, because it was then that Negro political activity was forced into independent action.”
By “independent action” Mr. Garfinkel means action independent of white liberals. True independent action—a break with capitalist aims and political parties—never occurs as an important factor to the author.
Unfortunately, the analysis of the “developing leadership and organization” which Mr. Garfinkel presents is the weakes section of his book. For example,
“It is to the leadership of Dr. King and Mr. Wilkins that the future of Negro protest belongs, but it is from Mr. Randolph that a great deal of their tactical conception of the struggle has stemmed.”
His attitude on this question is perhaps best expressed by the fact that he completely overlooks the new type of working class Negro leader typified by E.D. Nixon of Alabama and Robert Williams of North Carolina.
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