Rage, despair, hopelessness... and the election by Dave Anderson

The Anderson Files

By Dave Anderson

We are sick and tired of being sick and tired. — Mississippi civil rights leader Fannie Lou Hammer I n the 1960s, black people demanded to be treated like human beings with all the rights of citizens. They did this by engaging in non-violent social disruption. It was a somewhat passive-aggressive way of challenging America to live up to its democratic ideals. They knew that whites would violently retaliate and they had to endure that. In particular, white law enforcement officers would frequently beat the shit out of them.

In another country, such barbarity would be met with violent insurrection. Since blacks are a minority in this country, such an understandable reaction would be self-defeating. The civil rights movement was trying to appeal to the consciences of their fellow Americans who were in the white majority. But it is difficult to remain non-violent in the face of wrenching oppression. There were victories and defeats and things got messy. Riots broke out in response to police violence. Someone dragged out an old poem by Langston Hughes that said:

Negroes — Sweet and docile, Meek, humble and kind Beware the day They change their mind.

Columnist Shaun King notes that, “Being black in America, from 1619 until today, has always required a painful level of pretending for the sake of survival.”

In the late 1960s, the media talked about “black rage.” There was Malcolm X, the black power movement and the Black Panthers. When Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated in 1968, there were riots everywhere. It is quite certain that those riots helped make Richard Nixon president with his “law and order” message.

But things would calm down. Over the years, an increasing number of blacks were elected to office around the country. The Democratic Party became more multicultural and multiracial. Civil rights leader Jesse Jackson was quite successful as a presidential candidate in the 1984 and 1988 pri-