Expert answer:I need help in history
Answer & Explanation:Prep Paper Assignment
For September 29 (Tuesday-Thursday Classes),
For October 5 (Monday Evening Class)
Read: Fairclough, “The Rise and Fall of Black Power” on Blackboard under:
Course Material > For Sept. 29 and Oct. 1 and Oct. 5 Classes >
Prep Paper Assignment Sheet
Write: Assignment must be typed, double-spaced, with your name at the top
Write a paragraph that answers this question:
Does Adam Fairclough say that the Black Panthers were innocent victims?
Read Fairclough’s chapter about the Black Power movement and watch for the
point where he addresses this very question. Note that the question here is:
what is Fairclough’s view of the Black Panther’s responsibility for their fate, not
what others see as the reason. Do not use the Internet to find some approximate
answer to the question.
Write a paragraph of at least four sentences, including a topic sentence that
answers the question generally and relates to all of the sentences in the
paragraph. Use NO QUOTATIONS. Write your paragraph entirely in your own
words.undefinedFairclough-Rise and Fall of BlackPower.pdf
fairclough_rise_and_fall_of_blackpower.pdf
fairclough_rise_and_fall_of_blackpower.pdf
fairclough_rise_and_fall_of_blackpower.pdf
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11
The Rise and Fatt of Bl,acfr, power
RrorrNc
0n the evening ofAurysl
summer heat wave, a
AND THE
rl, 1965, as Los Angeres swerrered in a smog-raden
California
over a
Gsnrro Rrvorr
Buick at Avalon Avenue
Ht;h*”;”p;;-l offi…, L;Mril;r,
pu,ed
In the driver,s seat was Mar_
quette Frye’ a twenrv-one-year-ord
brack man; beside
brother, Ronald. Marqrette’hrd
younger
from high school, possessed
a’;uvenile record, and
was currentry rinemproyed.
several “screwdrivers'”
his
^aiiz,”ls*”r.
,.”;;;;ar”*,
hil ,;;-il
Having recentry downed
driving
,h”,
administered a sobrierv
Minikus
“riJ*uly erratic, urd
test, Frye iu.a ir.
gathered as more porice
rived’ and Frye’s mother,
arRena
,”.r.. slramed or emloldened
by his mother,s presence,
tutu.q,,.tt.
He
cursed th. poli.”m.rr.
“lr a…*a
r.y.,;Jr.i ,i.
f.””_.
T.rrior, ,”.”r,”J
,r.H;1il:i,l*?t
ther truck, or roughry nl:: q:r*i,
h”il;;, ,;;H.
rrl ,r*rr.
,he altercation unfolded.
“,
i1,,,
seems thar a porice orncer
ilj::Til:ffi:$ff Tfi
g’;*i'”s-,eiled
s
y”
,fffi;:,:lj,lffil,To like
“irI
selma!”
that!,,,,Morhe.r,r.t
f””ar r.r.oop”.uri*r
..rr,]l
ei_
their disapprovar. ,uleave
“They’d never treat a whlte woman
like
As olficers moved to disperse
the onlookers, what began
as the routine ar_
rest of a drunk driver
turned ;.rto u .ioi. in””f.,
began flying,,, reported
Los Angeles Times’
the
“then wine ard
bottres,
oiJun”..,.,
pieces of wood-anything
,t u,
“hurri,
“outJu;1”;;.,, six consecutive days of ur_
,”hiG
=BETTER
DAY COMING
ban violence followed, with rioters looting and burning stores, attacking firemen, battling the police, and assaulting white people. Labelled the “Watts
riot,” after the black section of south Los Angeles in which it erupted, the violence ranged over forty-five square miles, destroyed an estimated $200 mil-
lion of property, led to 4,000 people being arrested, and left thirty-four
people dead.z
The bloodiest race riot since the Detroit outbreak of 1943,Watts dwarfed
the 1964 disturbances in New York, Philadelphia, and Rochester. Although
black leaders had been ritualistically warning that the Northern ghettos were
combustible, the destructiveness of the Watts riot, and the fact that it occurred amid the palm trees of Los Angeles-not the popular image of a tlpical
ghetto-shocked everyone.
The McCone Commission, however, appointed by Governor Pat Brown to
investigate the riot, tried to downplay the significance of the outbreak by calling
it “senseless.” This was criminal vandalism, it argued, not purposeful protest.
The commission’s report made light of racial discrimination, virtually exonerated the Los Angeles Police Department, and criticized the Civil Rights Movement for having weakened black respect for law and order. The commission
blamed the violence on a small, unrepresentative minority of unemployed
young men, many of them recent migrants from the South, who were on the
criminal fiinges of society. Only 10,000 people, it argued, had engaged in riotthe very most, 5 percent of the area’s black population. Watts had been
an “insensate rage of destruction . . . engaged in by a few but bringing distress
ing-at
to all.”3
The McCone Report’s “riffraff” theory however, badly misstated the riot’s
significance. If the figure of 10,000 was accurate, critics pointed out, then 40
percent of all the rioters had been arrested-a claim that was plainly absurd.
On the basis of postriot interviews, social scientists more plausibly estimated
that 15 percent of the population-80,0O0 people-had rioted, and reckoned
that a further 34 percent had approved of the riot as they watched it unfold.
Critics of the report also disputed the contention that the riot had been purposeless: most blacks defined it as a protest which, they believed, would draw
attention to their grievances. Bayard Rustin pointed out that the rioters acted
with a degree of deliberation and rationality: they attacked property rather
than people, singling out white-owned stores that they regarded as exploitative. Sociologist Robert Blauner likened the outbreak to a “mass rebellion
against colonial status.”
Perhaps the most striking aspect of the riot, apart from its sheer destructiveness, was the lack of remorse felt by the local black population. Despite
the fact that all but a handful of the dead were black people, most blacks in
The Rise and Fall ofBlack
Los Angeles
Power
Zg7
did not conclude that the riot had been a tragic mistake. Even
those who disapproved of the riot felt sympathy for the rioters, placed most of
the blame upon the police, and believed that the riot had drawn attention to
black grievances. Many blacks felt a positive pride in having seized control of
the streets and given the police-universally loathed for their racism and bru-
tality-a bloody nose. “The mood of Watts last week smacked less of defeat
than of’victory and power,” noted Newsweeh.a
This celebratory unrepentant attitude boded ill for the civil Rights Movement. Ever since the much smaller riots
of 1964, King had been weighing the
possibility of taking the scLC North, applying the methods of nonviolence ro
the problems of the ghetto. In moving North, however, the scLC had to contend with apathy, skepticism, and outright hostility. I/vhen Andrew young and
James Bevel tried to explain nonviolence to black youths in Rochester, New
riot there in 1964, they got nowhere. “what is all thisJesus crap?,,
asked one nonconvert. Now, visiting watts, King evoked the same cynical response. Gerald Horne describes a typical encounter. “With his rolling cadences
King began,’AIl over America . . . the Negroes mustjoin hands . . .,,And burn,,
added a heckler.” Shouted another: “Go back where you came from.r,5
The rioters’ cries of ttBurn, baby, burn!,, and ,,Get whiteylrt seemed to express a visceral hatred ofwhite people. Sensational reporting by the news media may well, in fact, have exaggerated the depth of that hatred: some whites
were beaten up during the watts riot, but not a single white person died
through the direct action of rioters. The rioters directed their wrath against
the police, not white people in general. Nevertheless, watts brought into the
open a widespread hostility toward whites that had been festering beneath the
surface in the Northern ghettos-a gut resentment ofwhite people that seemed
far more intense in the North than in the South.
only a few months earlier,Newsweehhadreported that'(Far from being an
York, after a
explosively frustrated mass,” blacks were “caught up by an exhilarating sense
“more deeply committed than ever to the strategy of
nonviolence.” Judged by the gains of the civil Rights Movement and the
of progress” and were
beneficence of the Johnson administration, they had every reason to be. But
appearances were deceptive.
the south in
The civil rights reforms had been designed with
mind; the legislation ofJohnson’s “Great society,” especially the
much-ballyhooed “war on Poverty,” raised black expectations but offered no
route out of the ghetto. The situation for many blacks in the North had not
improved at all, and in some respects it was deteriorating.o
_BETTER
DAY COMING
SncnncarroN AND DrscnrurNATroN rN THE Nonrn
Some urban experts believed that the difficulties faced by blacks in the North
were akin to those experienced by European immigrants half a century earlier: in both cases, the arrival of large numbers of impoverished rural folk created overcrowded slums and caused political tension. Certainly, the scale of
the continuing black migration was bound to strain the urban fabric: about 4
million blacks left the South for the North between 1940 and 1965. The
black population of New York increased from 6 percent of the total population to 16 percent; that of Chicago, from 8 percent to 27 percent; that of Los
Angeles, from 4 percent to 18 percent; that of Detroit, from g percent to 29
percent; that of Washington, D.C., from 28 percent to 63 percent. Sheer
numbers, argued Professor Philip M. Hauser, “made the Negro in-migratory
stream relatively unassimilable-economically, socially and politically.” Like
the immigrants, blacks would eventually climb up America’s economic ladder, but “it requires time-time measured in human generations rather than
”
Time, however) was not operating in a benign manner. The latest and
largest waye of black migrants had started during the Second World War,
when an enormous increase in industrial production eliminated mass unemployment and created new opportunities for black people to enter the
blue-collar workforce. These were the kind of factoryjobs that had provided
generations of European immigrants-Poles, Czechs, Slovaks, Hungarians,
Italians, Greeks, and others-with stable employment and decent livelihoods.
years.
But the black migrants gained a toehold in the industrial economy at precisely
the time when advances in technology were eliminating blue-collarjobs, and
when changes in the organization of industry shifted employment away from
central cities and towards suburbs, small towns, and green fields. Moreover,
many employers imposed skills tests on job applicants that previous generations of immigrants had never had to face-a considerable handicap to Southern migrants who had been educated in some of the worst schools in
America.
Many migrants did, to be sure, achieye a degree of ecorromic securiry and
the proportion of black workers classified as “white-collar” increased from 10
percent in 1940 to l8 percent in 1960. For a large segment of the black working class, however, wartime employment gains did not last. In 1948 black unemployment stood at a low of 5.9 percent, a ratio of 1.7 compared to white
unemployment. By 1954, however, almost l0 percent of black workers were
jobless, double the rate among whites. Black unemployment stayed at twice
the white level for the rest of the decade and throughout the 1960s. Equally
–1
The Rise and Fall of Black powcr
discouraging was a sharp decrine in brack participation
in the workforce, especially among men: from g7 percent irr lg+s
io zz percent twenry years
later’ A growing number ofyoung black
mares between tt . ug”, oirixteen and
twenty-four dropped o.ut of legal^employment.
Many of them joined gangs
and engaged in criminal activities.8
The problems faced by blacks in the North were
undoubtedry
complex.
still, white prejudice, which often derived from
the crannishness and conservatism of recently arrived ethnic groups) herped
to isolate bracks and retard
their progress. Racial discriminatlo, in .-pLymenr,
for .””;;i;, was commonplace, despite fair employment laws in
most Northern states. The unions
were often to blame. In the construction industry
for example, it was virtually
impossible for blacks to obtain a union ca.d.
Limiting th” ,ir” of their mem_
bership, the craft unions accepted new apprentices
on a friends-and-reratives
basis, thereby perpetuating
i
white ,.oropory. The apprenticeship itself
could last.up to five years, giving union offilciai.
u.r,pl.;;p;;;;;;,y to dis_
courage black interlopers. Such practices
ensured that th” pl.r*bers union
was 99’8 percent white; erectricar workers
99.4 percent *hite; and carpenters
98.4 percent white. Even in unions with substantiar
brack memberships, rike
the UAW, blacks found themselves concentrated
in lower_paid, ,,unskilled,,
jobs, and underrepresented at the
leadership level.e
..”g”:t”* was perhaps the strongest and most visible expression of raciar
discrimination in the North. Despite the supreme
court,s invaridation of.,,restrictive covenants” in r94g, resicrential ,”g.”gutio.,
persisted in every city.
supported by the vast majority of white hoi”o*.r..r,
who viewed the proxim1ty.9f black people as a threat, the real
estate industry covertlf operated
a dual housing market, with the object
of maintaining separation o’f th. .u”.r.
In practice, this involved preventing bracks
r.or” r.iyi”g ;;;;;ri;;
in
areas
occupied by whites. when the preszure of numbers
b””ir,” ,oo g..”ur, neighborhoods on the edge of the ghetto shifted from
white to black-and rear
estate agents often made rarge,profits by
exproiting the panic selling of white
homeowners’ However, the black poprlutio.,
was not permitted
perse throughout the city,large sections
of
people.
to
dis-
which remainejoff-limits to black
white politicians
,housing
projects
quietly reinforced segregation. They ensured that
pubric
were eirher all-black 1[,oI” located i., ttr. gh.iio;
o. unwhite (those situated in white areas). Sporadic
a*emprs ;il”g*”
public
housing evoked vehement white resistarr”.
urrd were soon abandoned. politicians also used urban redeveropment-the
routing of expresswayr,-ro. .”u–
create physical
ll:-,:
federal government
barriers between whire and black areas. Until
t94g the
had actively encouraged segregation; until 1962
it had
silently acquiesced in it. segregation becaie
even more solidry entrenched
as
B[,TTER
DAY COMING
–
whites moved to new suburbs. White-only developments like Levittown on
Long Island, the model for postwar suburban housing, were built with the
support of the Federal Housing Authority. Even after President Kennedy
banned discrimination in federal housing programs-which the 1964 Civil
Rights Act reinforced-the government did little to oppose segregation. As a
result, the races lived apart and the ghettos grew; residential segregation was
more rigid in the North than in the South. Segregated housing patterns produced “de facto” segregated public schools. School boards further discouraged integration by gerrymandering school attendance zones and permitting
whites to transfer out of predominantly black schools.
Whites in the North expressed their opposition to integration in no uncertain terms. In 1964, only months before the Watts riot, California voters
passed Proposition 14, a referendum that repealed a recently enacted fair
housing law. Voters in other states also rejected antidiscrimination laws.
White determination to exclude blacks sometimes turned violent: in Chicago,
black families who settled in white neighborhoods met with harassment, arson attacks, physical assaults, and at least a dozen riots between 1945 and
1964. In 1952 Illinois governor Adlai Stevenson called out the National
Guard when the arrival of blacks in the satellite town of Cicero triggered rioting. The blacks departed and Cicero remained an all-white enclave of 70,000
people. Where housing was concerned, racial discrimination in the North lost
its subtlety; it was raw and open.
Tsr SCLC’s
CHrcAGo CAMpercN .q.Nl
rnn Wnrrn Bacrlesn
This is what the SCLC discovered in Chicago, where King led his first campaign in the North. After floundering for the first half of 1966, the SCLC focused its attack upon housing segregation, organizing marches in the city’s
all-white neighborhoods. It was a brilliantly effective tactic. By evoking the
same kind ofviolent opposition it had encountered in the South-white mobs
burned cars, hurled bricks, and bodily assaulted the marchers-the SCLC exposed the depth of Chicago’s racial division and exerted intense political
pressure upon Mayor RichardJ. Daley. Forced to the negotiating table, Daley
accepted a “Summit Agreement” that consisted of promises by the city of
Chicago, and by local real estate agents, to promote housing integration. Having defused the immediate crisis, however, Mayor Daley quietly shelved the
Summit Agreement. King was bitterly disappointed by the betrayal.
On one level, Daley simply outfoxed King. Yet the SCLC’s failure in
r
The Rise and Fall ofBlack power
301
chicago had deeper *uf*’.1^llrthern
organizarion accusromed to mobilizing small communities, the
SCLC lacked thT know-how
and the resources ro
reach a massive black popuration
of o””
a half
used to
dealing with one-dime.rsionar
v,rains tit
;;;
m,rii;;il:
connor andJim crark, the
scLC found Mayor Richard Darey “rg.rx*
a sJde, skinful poritician, who
J’
opposed the civil Rights Morr.-“.,rt
utr, r.iJ*ords and smart
than fire hoses a.rJ billy,.clubs.
were chicago’s brack
L. Dawson, who nor
were
Srpp”rl”S
gestures rather
DaleS-and opporirg the SCLC,
poriticians-erecred o’n”iutr,’tit
o”ly.3jor.d
.
+;;;dmacy
c;d;;il;;
wiriam
u”i;.r.r,l..luse
they
part of the Democratic rimachine,”
possessed patronage and fhvors
to
dispense or withhold.
The scLC also found it ai{Hcurt
ro adapr to jhe. hald-edged,
more secular,
urban culture of the North.
The brack chx.”h ru.k.d the prestige
and influence thar it commandecr
in the south. In the No_rth? many
ical,
disturbed
bv the,r.,.rth gurgr,-,
bi;;l;:;.-.d
cyn;w. ;.;.
;;rticurarry
…utt.J;fi;i’;..;;,”;’;#J,
alienated. and impervious to the
scl0s
idealism.
looted,
raped: t..,..1ii.a”*f,ot.,r.igt,Uorhoods;
fought with each other.
”[T]hose hard-eved brack boys L”d ;;?.;ct
for anything or anybody. To
them a preachrr *u’ th.e next
worse thing to a poriceman,
and rerigion was for
old folks and suckers, both
of whom
ffii.g”ra.d witrr a fine c-ooniempt.,, A
serious riot that ..”ptlg.in
the west sial giitt, inJury
1966 sharpry,rumi_
nated the SCLC,s inability
to influence ,ilr” gu.rgr. King,
stranded in the
middle of
:r,lTd,and
the riot area. tried, to
Iisten, heckJing and cursing
rtrp ,r* .p.r”aing violence.
him.r,i
people refused
to
The more profound reasons for
the
sclC’s
sorth.l, r.”Jiry
fa,ure, however, had to do
had aroused the conscience
in the yl;h1nt;;presidents
down, to assist rhe
:l::::i:1,”?::,y,jlg,ynf:”s
cause
ofthe civ, Rifhts Movement.
similar violencr, bui they did
,ror gui.,
sympathy. Indeed, the Iiberals
who had lauded
with white people, not bracks.
u,l scici;;”],1Tft1’*..-Jii
*h;
King a y”u.
“urii..-and even marched beside him at
Selma-now co’dcmnJd lis tactics
u, i…rfor.,rible and p.”r”;;l;.
Sympa_
thy for the civil Rights Movement
Mason-Dixon line.
,….i’,o’.uaporate
when it crossed the
Northern politicians attributed
this rack of sympathy to a ,,white
backrash,,
h;i.;;;r”;nd violence. A””;;;g to this
rpr.uaofurti*hit. rhetoric ararmed
basi_
cally well-meaning whites.
Most whites mri.*a that demonstrations
encouraged riots and should stop.By
1966, accordingto an opinion
poll, g5 percent
of all whites had come to
th. co.r”r,^i.”ir.”, a.”ro.r.rrurio.ri*.r.,,hurting
the Negro cause.” The number
or*rrit” r*” in the North who believed
that had been caused by brack
theory the outbreak ofriots
and ar
_.302
BETTE,R DAY COMING
that theJohnson administration was pushing integration “too fast” grew from
28 percent in April 1965 to 36 percent in August 1965 (after Watts), and to
52 percent in September 1966. “White people are scared and sore and the
consensus behind improvement of the Negro’s condition is running out-has
run out,” White House aide Harry McPherson wrote Johnson. The 1966
Civil Rights Bill, which proposed to ban housing discrimination, failed to
pass. Shortly afterwards, in the midterm elections, the Democrats lost fortynine seats in the House and four in the Senate.Il
Bayard Rustin contended that the Civil Rights Movement had to shift
“from protest to politics,” investing its energies in building support for a progressive agenda within the Democratic Party. Yet race was splitting apart the
traditional New Deal coalition. In state after state, wrote pollsters William
Brink and Louis Harris, elections showed “the defections ftom the Democratic party of the late-arriving Catholic minorities.”l2
Few sensible people-and certainly not King-denied that rioting had set
back the cause of racial equaliry. Yet while riots might have intensified the
“white backlash,” they did not cause it. In 1963, before any serious rioting had
occurred, opinion polls documented the fact that “anti-Negro prejudice is
widespread and deeply rooted in the U.S., extending to the vast majoriry of ordinary well-meaning Americans.” North and South, most whites shunned social contact with black people, did not want integrated housing, and thought
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