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Civil Rights Pioneer: Post-Racial World Doesn’t Exist
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The Martin Luther King Jr. holiday is a good time to assess that post-racial world we’re supposed to be living in now. So, how’s it working out?
Not very well, according to Franklin McCain. He’s one of the four trailblazing students whose sit-in 50 years ago at a lunch counter in Greensboro, N.C., ignited a nationwide effort that resulted in passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Says McCain:
I don’t know where I was when racism disappeared from these United States of ours. This new right and the Tea Partiers have taken the position that anybody who talks about racial discrimination or affirmative action is a whiner or a civil rights pimp. We have to get off the sidelines and attack [that kind of language]….They are taking parts of our gains and using it against us. And it’s ridiculous.
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McCain, 67, and three of his fellow students at North Carolina Agricultural & Technical College sat down at the whites-only lunch counter in the Woolworth’s in downtown Greensboro on Feb. 1, 1960, and refused to leave until they were served. Their bold action inspired protests in more than 50 cities across the South against segregated public facilities. Those protests garnered national media attention and public support, eventually leading to passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which mandated desegregation in public accommodations throughout the country.
McCain says reactionaries today have co-opted the principles Martin Luther King and others stood for, especially his commitment to economic justice. Racism and discrimination still are alive and well, he says, even though it’s not as overt as in 1960.
If you take a walk downtown and look into your office towers, you’ll see [African Americans] doing things and in slots where we never were before. But if you go into the boardrooms, you don’t see many of us still.
McCain says the four students had the courage to stage the sit-in because, like most 17-year-olds, they were “kind of crazy” and would “do anything and think about (the consequences) later.” But they also believed in justice and were angry at a system that betrayed them after telling them the “big lie” that if they worked hard and behaved themselves, they would be successful, only to be held down because of their color.
Now a retired chemist and marketing executive, McCain is a member of the University of North Carolina’s Board of Governors. He says he “can’t fall for the hype anymore that we don’t have the experiences to do these kinds of jobs.”
Based on what has happened to corporate America over the past four or five years, it looks like we have just had a bunch of dumb white men trying to run the country and run business—almost wrecking this country. It sure wasn’t done by black folks. We could have done better.
McCain was honored along with the other members of the Greensboro Four—Joseph McNeil, Ezell Blair Jr. (now Jibreel Khazan) and the late David Richmond—at our annual national AFL-CIO King Day celebration, Jan.14-18.
More than 400 union activists gathered in Greensboro for a five-day event that focused on King’s unfulfilled vision of economic justice. The event featured a town hall meeting on jobs and a major community service project to help the homeless. AFL-CIO Executive Vice President Arlene Holt Baker and Assistant U.S. Attorney General Thomas Perez were among the guest speakers.
When he was assassinated in April 1968, King was in Memphis to support the struggle of the city’s sanitation workers to attain wages that would support themselves and their families and to achieve justice and respect on the job.
As McCain says, King understood it’s not enough to be able to sit at the lunch counter “if you don’t have any money in your pocket.”
This is a cross-post from the Firedoglake blog.
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9 Comments
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Video from the AFL-CIO MLK Celebration event in Greensboro, NC can be found here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zGNeZmKWLeA
Video of the “Greensboro Four” from the AFL-CIO event can be found here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q7ycoG2Yi7A
Why is the AFL-CIO giving a corporate executive this web space? There are plenty of African-American civil rights veterans who lived their lives as workers and union activists who could have commented on the continuing existence of racism. The capitalist economy would still be a disaster whether or not the corporate boards are more diverse or not. McCain, at this point in his life, is just a shill for the capitalists and does not speak at all for the vast majority of African Americans who will only find a better life under socialism, NOT capitalism with a black face.
Minn.1934, Agree with you almost totally. “Socialism” is still a scary word to many people. “Capitalism” has always been seen as good. Some of us understand that we need a new solution to the worlds problems and that we all must work together for the betterment of all.
Go out onto Main Street. Ask the first 100 people you meet if they voted for Obama. Of those who answer yes ask them why.
Here’s what you’ll hear. “To end the war”; “to provide health care for all”; “to put America back to work.”
You won’t hear them saying anything about further privatizing the war[s] by rewarding no-bid contracts to criminal war profiteers. Not a one will say that they were looking forward to an amendment to Section 1322 of ERISA that would have enabled states to attempt real healthcare reform because Congress wouldn’t. Nary would a person say they were willing to endure further unemployment so that banks could get bailed out and then turn around and reward their CEOs with bonuses worth hundreds of millions of dollars.
The people of this nation are far ahead of the Congressional corporatists posing as either Republicans or Democrats. They are far ahead when it comes to ethics and morality, even though we are bombarded with half-truths by the media.
Generally speaking, the majority of people support true democracy and liberty and justice for all.
It is Congress and their corporate benefactors that lack ethics.
Case in point: Our new president didn’t even have a chance to warm the chair in the oval office before Blue Dogs were attacking his programs. Those heirs of Dixiecrat politics barely made a peep when Bush was running amok, but now that Obama is in office they seem to have found their voices.
Equality in America? Yeah, sure. And my Aunt Helen is my Uncle Al.
Humane, moral, and ethical people want everyone to have the same opportunities. They believe all people everywhere should have access to decent housing, health care, education, employment, and other components of the “American Dream”.
That puts Congress and corporate America in bad company. They deserve each other, just not at our expense.
Mr. McCain’s statement “Based on what has happened to corporate America over the past four or five years, it looks like we have just had a bunch of dumb white men trying to run the country and run business—almost wrecking this country. It sure wasn’t done by black folks. We could have done better.” certainly sounds racist to me. Why does he believe that “black folks” could have done better? Wasn’t the real lesson of the civil rights movement that no one is better than anyone else based solely on race, gender, or ethnicity? Given an equal opportunity, shouldn’t we be limited only by our talents and efforts?
I’m sorry if I’ve missed something here. But after all, what do you expect? I’m just a “dumb white man”.
Comment to Minn. Interesting points you’ve asserted. With black slum lords and land owners in American ghettos, are the people living there any better off? The Employee Free Choice Act would do more to help all working men and level the playing field.
As far as the board of directors being dumb, quite the contrary. They’ve set up a system to rob us blind and the government lets them do it and they give themselves mega bonuses to boot.
there certainly still racism in our country, usa. it is masked by other issues but is still very much in place. what was fought fo r by so many great people, has not desolved. all of the criticism about our president over the past few months is nothing less than racism, falsehoods put out by the opposing party. its time that lies are stopped and RACISM, masked or other wise be put to rest and accept the great job being done, by the party in office. weepat
I agree that showcasing a corporate person is not the best example. I also think that it is important that workers realize that it was not Bush nor is it Obama, it is capitalism that is the problem. We need to unite as an international working class to fight racism, sexism, imperialism and run the world ourselves.
US imperialism under Obama is still sending troops in before medical supplies. Doctors Without Borders said 5 planes filled with medical supplies have been turned away from Port Au Prince airport so US troops can be shuttled in to “keep the peace”. (Washington Post 1/20/10)
If food and medical supplies were handed out, looting would not be necessary. We need to fight the system that puts profits ahead of workers. Multiracial unity is the key.