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America's Two Choices: Adlai E Stevenson and Martin Luther King, Jr
In 1959, then former Presidential candidate, Adlai E. Stevenson drew a profound parallel on the state of the nation and the African community residing within it. Stevenson remarked "What is more difficult, to think of an encampment on the moon or of Harlem rebuilt? Both are now within the reach of our resources. Both now depend upon human decision and human will.” It would be a profound choice which would restore and reconstruct Black humanity while moving the nation towards a non racist society. On the other side of the coin, America could choose to make the moon and space investment its number 1 goal and simply ignore Harlem.
In 1967, Dr Martin L. King, the primary spokesperson for the civil rights and peace struggle in the USA, released a new book entitled, Where Do We Go From Here: Community or Chaos. King proposed that either America would redefine and enhance its human values making choices to reconstruct and rebuild Black and urban communities or enter and age of Chaos.
Among Dr. King's Choices was a proposal that America should either provide employment for all of its workers or a guaranteed annual income. King proposed full time meaningful work with a living wage. The music of the King movement said it best, "Listen here to me Mr. LBJ no more full time work for no part time pay."
On the issue of national health, King called for socialized medicine guaranteeing every resident of the nation government sponsored health care. In Kings, view, It was a shame that the richest nation on earth did not provide health care for all of its citizens.
With the violent silencing of the voice of the great drum major for human justice and peace in 1968 came an unexpected outcry from Black and poor in urban communities. Political eruptions blazed across the nation. Blacks and poor in more than three hundred cities and towns showed their disapproval using the match as a potent weapon. For days flames and smoke lit the day and evening skies. A sad spiritual came from the down deep grabbing the heart of America to remind her that "when the stars are falling down there ain't no time".
Within days of the silencing of Dr. King, President Johnson set up a Commission to study the violent upheaval and eruptions. Former governor of Illinois, Otto Kerner was assigned to head the panel. The panel findings shocked white America while affirming what Black America always knew. "There were two Americas, one white and rich, one Black and poor" and the panel should have made a further statement that the Black nation was oppressed.
A brief look at the USA from 1960-2010 shows in a profound way America's choices. Americas choice is crystal clear whether one looks at primary issues of political campaigns, federal, state and national budget line items, education, the criminal justice system, hiring practices, apartheid practices in federal, State and city zoning and housing legislation, practices for loans and grants for business development, red lining for insurance required for business development or the creative arts.
The African in the USA had become urban by design of corporate businesses beginning with migration out of South between 1890 and 1960. Millions of Africans abandoned their Southern slave home for northern slums and ghettos in search of jobs, education for their children and the "promised land" of freedom. The story of that sojourn is chronicled in hundreds of books, journals and news. The story of that journal is the story of the cultural remaking of America in the image of the image of Africa.
This huge population of new arrivals walked into a hornets nest in housing segregation and homelessness as they searched 'looking for a home'. They managed to reconnect the old African way forming new families and new alliances as way of establishing themselves in the cold bitter dismal environment of the Promised Land: Five, ten, fifteen men and women to a three room flat sharing bed and floor space.
As the African struggle to locate housing, the cities, townships of the north set up new restricted housing codes blocking their path and in many cases that of other arrivals, especially: Latinos, Asians and Jews. The promised land became a cold, insensitive and unwelcome environment for the new Black immigrant from the South.
Employment was minuscule with meager wages and hash working conditions. Those ads in papers like the Chicago Defender which enticed the African out of the South never said that police brutality; racial assaults would be as common place as the fields of cotton, tobacco and sugar cane and lynch mobs that made up the landscape of more than 200 years living in Dixie.
Down home remained as it had always been until the civil rights struggle lit a new light in the heart of Blacks in urban and rural communities. The new movement brought a broad diversity of Americans into a new struggle that would end in a Civil Rights Bill and Voting Rights Act. It would also open the way for the emergence of a struggle to end poverty, homelessness and unemployment.
In that hour of freedom and glory the assassins made their move killing Dr. King, and other civil rights activists and numerous members of the Black Panther Party. The assassins used the bullet for their target. America made her choice for development, too. America chose the moon.
For the African descendant of US slaves the picture remains dismal and dangerously genocidal. America Chose the moon for investment and "benign neglect" for the Black America. America prefers chaos over community. America dumped its workers into the trash heap while embracing the policies and practices of big business. America prefers "two Americas, one white and one Black poor and dispossessed."
Colia L Clark - Candidate for US Senate
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