Draft of SCLC 1964 Annual Report

Transcript

[Page 1] [Inserted in margin: Circled: 8] I. Introduction II. The Role of SCLC [Southern Christian Leadership Conference] [Crossed out: III] A. Organizational growth and expansion B. Direct Action C. Voter Registration and political education D. Citizenship Education E. Operation Breadbasket F. Operation Dialogue G. Office Administration and Staff Charges III. What of the Future IV. Demonstrations and Political Action V. Voting Bill VI. War on Poverty VII. The North VIII. Non-Violence [Inserted text in bottom margin: 35-1] [Page 2] 1. In the beginning many ideas went into the melting pot. We decided that this was the best tactic at the present time. 2. [Crossed out: MS:illegible] On June 2, when the leaders meel [meet], there was total agreement that the current demonstration would not necessitate civil disobedience. Q[uestion]. Will you do something when the filibuster comes 3. A[nswer] We will cross that brid[g]e when we come to it. 4. Instead of receding, the non-violent method is at the peak of acceptance. But in spite of its popularity I would stall adhere to it if it [Crossed out: MS: illegible] were not popular. 5. The civil rights future must not be tied to this bill. 6. A victory of reaction encourages the extremist to become more determined. 7. This is moving in a constructive direction [Bracket: It must be passed It must be enforced It [is] only the beginning] [Inserted text in bottom margin: 35-2] [Page 3] 8. The bill should be passed with the broadest coverage and the smallest number of loopholes. 9. It is aimed at dramatize a shameful human condition. Already the task of arousing the conscience Never before has any issue received such widespread support. More groups, organizations, and institutions have responded 10. You cannot measure the struggle for freedom in dollars and cents. No price is to high to pay for freedom. There is no price tag on freedom. 11. Are not you pushing to fast, and alienating support. What about greater [MS:illegible] to equalize [MS:illegible] subsidies by the government in small busines[s] A man out of work gets unemployment insurance [Inserted text in bottom margin: 35-3] [Page 4] [Inserted text in top margin: 27] So we must continue to march when necessary. Our marching feet have caused thick walls of segregation to crumble before the battering rams of the forces of justice. Our marching feet have resurrected crucified truth and placed bright eyed wisdom back on her sacred throne. Our marching have taken wounded justice, lying [Crossed out: MS: illegible] prostrate on the streets of our cities, and lifted it [Crossed out: MS: illegible] from this dust of shame to reign supreme in the legislative [MS: illegible] of our nation. [Crossed out: MS: illegible] Yes, our marching feet have carved tunnels of hope through the dark mountain of despair. [Inserted text in bottom margin: 35-4] [Page 5] [Inserted text in top margin: 8] [Underlined: Political Education and Voter Registration] One of the [Inserted text: most] significant developments in the program of SCLC [Southern Christian Leadership Conference] is the work of the department of political education and voter registration. The able and dedicated head of this department, Hosea Williams, has launc[h]ed the most vigorous and devastating war ever conceived against the disenfranchisement of the Negro people. Ultimately, the objective of SCLC's [Southern Christian Leadership Conference] program of political education and voter registration is to rid the American body politic of racism. It is our contention that it was upon the rock of political disenfranchisement of the Negro that segregation was built and that the gates of democracy cannot prevail against it and that this intolerable condition must be alleviated for the redemption of America's soul One of the major programs of our political education and voter registration department is the summer community. [Inserted text in bottom margin: 35-5] [Page 6] [Inserted text in top margin: 9] [Inserted text: 1st paragraph 4th sentence after 'across the southland': ;] [Inserted text: 1st paragraph 4th sentence after 'in political education': ;] [Inserted text: 1st paragraph 6th sentence above 'we would': It is important] [Crossed out: We would like] [Crossed out: 1st paragraph 7th sentence: popula-tion] [Crossed out: 1st paragraph 7th sentence: population] [Crossed out: 2nd paragraph 2nd sentence: other county officials] [Inserted text: 2nd paragraph 2nd sentence above 'and mayors': even] [Inserted text: 2nd paragraph 3rd sentence above 'the election of': This will] [Crossed out: The election of] [Inserted in bottom margin: inevitably result in [Crossed out: MS: illegible] liberating the political climate of the south. [Inserted text in bottom margin: 35-6] [Page 7] [Inserted text in top margin: 15] [Underlined: Operation Dialogue] One of our newest and most promising programs is the [Crossed out: 1st paragraph 4th sentence from 'In these communities' to 'resentment are pointed'] [Crossed out: 1st paragraph 6th sentence from 'Already we have' to 'employed white neighbor'] [Inserted text in bottom margin: 35-7] [Page 8] [Inserted text in top margin: 19] [Underlined: before 3rd paragraph: Office Administration and Staff Expansion] [Inserted text: after 'to seventy-one.': Our field staff has grown from 50 to more than 300.] [Inserted text in bottom margin: 35-8] [Page 9] [Inserted text in top margin: 20] [Inserted text: above 'sue': chanel] [Crossed out: sue] [Inserted text: above 'has': have] [Crossed out: has] [Inserted text: above 'moe': more] [Crossed out: moe] [Inserted text in bottom margin: 35-9] [Page 10] [Inserted text in top margin: 21] [Underlined: What of the Future] This, in brief, is an account of SCLC's [Southern Christian Leadership Conference] work over the last year. It is a record of which we can all be proud and one that brings all of us closer to the goal of freedom. But we cannot rest content on the laurels of past achievements. Bright yesterdays must be transformed into brighter tomorrows. With all the struggle and all the achievements, the plant of freedom has grown only a but and not yet a flower. Negroes in 1965 are freer but they are not free. Negroes in 1965 have more dignity and self-respect than they have known in their history, but they are still far from equal. [Inserted text in bottom margin: 35-10] [Page 11] [Inserted text in top margin: 13] [Underlined: Operation Breadbasket] One of the most dramatic and creative phases of our program has been the development of what is known as operation breadbasket, [Crossed out: MS: illegible] under the dynamic leadership of Rev[erend] Fred C. Bennett Jr. This is a program which has as its aim the securing of more and better jobs for the Negro people. The success of this program grows out of the fact that the Negro is a key factor in the consumer community and that he now has a collective power of about 30 billion dollars a year. This means that the Negro buying dollar can make the difference between profit and loss in almost any industry in our country. So operation breadbasket is a program which calls for support of those businesses that will give a fair share of the jobs and economic withdrawal from the businesses that have discriminatory [Crossed out: practices] policies. The key word in operation breadbasket is [Underlined: respect:] it says in substance, if you respect my dollar you must respect my person. If you respect my quantitative support, then you must respect the quality of my job. In short, this program says you have a moral obligation to refuse to use your dollars to perpetuate segregation and discrimination. [Inserted text in bottom margin: 35-11] [Page 12] [Inserted text in top margin: 14] During the past year operation breadbasket has dealt with some twenty seven firms and added millions of dollars to the Negro's income by securing new and upgraded jobs that had been previously closed to us. [Inserted text in bottom margin: 35-12] [Page 13] [Inserted text in top margin: 23] SO we still have a long long [sic] way to go before we reach the promised land of freedom. We still need some Paul Revere of conscience to alert every [Crossed out: MS: illegible] hamlet and every village of America that revolution is still at hand. Yes, we need a chart, we need a compass. Indeed, we need some North Star to guide us into a future shrouded with impenetrable uncertainties. What,then, are the basic issues, that the good alliance must graph with in order to assure human rights. [Underlined: Demonstrations] The SCLC [Southern Christian Leadership Conference] must reaffi[r]m its allegiance to the time honored tactics and strategies that have served us so well in the past ten years. As long as injustice is dround demonstrations will be necessary. So when it is approp[ro]iate we will encourage sit-in's, stand-in's, kneel-in's, boycotts, picket lines, marches, civil disobedience and any form of protest and demonstrations that are non-violently conceived and executed. At the same time we recognize that the right of [MS: illegible] and protest is a relative right subject to regulations to [Inserted text in bottom margin: 35-13] [Page 14] [Inserted text in top margin: 24] protect the rights of others. For that reason before a protest can be approved by responsible leadership they must answer the following questions: 1. Do we have a just grievance, or is our purpose merely to create confusion for its own sake as a form of revenge. [Inserted text in bottom margin: 35-14] [Page 15] Let this affirmation be our ringing cry. It will give us courage to face the uncertainties of the future. It will give our tired feet new strength as we continue our forward stride toward, the city of freedom. When our days become, dreary with low-hovering clouds and our nights become darker than a thousand midnights, let us remember that there is a creative force in the is universe working to pull down gigantic mountains of evil and prodigious hilltops of injustice, a power that is able to make a way out of no way, and transform dark yesterdays, into bright tomorrows. This is our hope for the future. With this faith we will be able to sing in [Crossed out: MS: illegible] some not to distant tomorrow with a cosmic past tense, "We have overcome, We have overcome deep in my heart I did believe we would overcome." [Inserted text in bottom margin: 35-15] [Page 16] will be inevitable setbacks here and there and the boayancy [buoyancy] of hope will at times be transformed into the fatigue of despair. Our dreams will sometimes be shattered and our ethereal hopes blasted. We may again, with tear drenched eyes, have to stand before the [MS:illegible] of some courageous civil rights worker whose life will be snuffed out by [Crossed out: MS: illegible] the dastardly acts of blood thirsty mobs. But difficult and painful as it is we must walk on in the days ahead with an audacious faith in the future. As we continue our chartered course, we may gain consolation from the words so nobly left to posterity by a great freedom fighter of yesterday,, James Wildon [Crossed out: MS: illegible] Johnson. Stony the road we trod, Bitter the chastening rod. Felt in the days when hope unborn had died. Yet with a steady beat have not our weary feet come to the place for which our fathers sighed. We have come over a way that with tears has been watered; we have come treading our paths through the blood of the slaughtered. Out from the gloomy past, till new we stand that where the white gleam of our bright star is cast. [Inserted text in bottom margin: 35-16] [Page 17] of jobs that do not exist. Let us be dissati[s]fied until wrinkled stomachs in Mississippi are filled, until the idled industries of Appalachia are revitalyed [revitalized] and until broken lines in sweltering ghettoes are mended and remolded. Let us be dissatisfied until race baiters disappear from the political arena, until the Wallaces and Eastlands tremble away into silence; until brotherhood becomes more than a meaningless word in an opening prayer but the order of the day on even legislation agenda. Let us be dissatisfied until the sacred of Congress are filled will [with] men who will do justly, love mercy and walk humbly with their God. Let us be dissati[s]fied until men everywhere will be embraced with a passion for justice, until the loin [lion] and the lamb will lie down together, and every man will sit under his own vine and fig tree and none shall be afraid. The road ahead will not always be smooth. [MS: illegible] There will still be rocky places of frustration and meandering points of bewilderment. There. [Inserted text in bottom margin: 35-17] [Page 18] [Inserted text in top margin: 40] These then are the basic issues which our movement must face. This is the road we must travel from this junction in our on going struggle. Let us therefore resolve to be engaged in a part of divine dissatisfaction until the American dream is a reality. Let us be dissati[s]fied until every socially oppressive ghetto and rat infested slum is plun[g]ed into the junk heaps of our nation and Negroes and whites live side by side in decent safe and sanitary housing. Let us be dissati[s]fied until every vestige of segregation and inferior education will become a thing of a dark past and Negro and white children study side by side in the socially healing context of the classroom. Let us be dissati[s]fied until all men will [Inserted text: have] [Crossed out: MS: illegible] food and material necessities for their bodies, culture and education for their minds, freedom and dignity for their spirits. Let us be dissatisfied until every [Inserted text: handicap] [Crossed out: MS: illegible] of poverty is unlocked and work-starved men will no longer walk the streets in search [Inserted text in bottom margin: 35-18] [Page 19] [Inserted text in top margin: 11] New affiliates of SCLC [Southern Christian Leadership Conference] are also being formed in many small towns and rural communities as an outgrowth of citizenship classes so in a real sense the citizenship education program continues to be our most vital positive program moving silently across the black belt of the south, teaching, encouraging and inspiring the underprivileged masses of our society with a technique and a vision of freedom. This program has been under the able [Crossed out: guidance] and dedicated guidance of the Rev[erend] Andrew Young, Mrs. Septima Clark and Mrs. Dorothy Cotton. Through their expert direction the citizenship Education program was elevated from local [Crossed out: MS: illegible] into national political and economic relevance. Now that Andy Young?s brilliant abilities have [Crossed out: MS: illegible] elevated him to the directorship of SCLC [Southern Christian Leadership Conference] he will be replaced by Dr. Robert Green whose academic credentials and experience more than qualify him to continue the phenomenal growth and development of this department. [Inserted text in bottom margin: 35-19] [Page 20] [Inserted text in top margin: 36] [Inserted text in bottom margin: 35-20] [Page 21] [Inserted text in top margin: 37] [Inserted text in bottom margin: 35-21] [Page 22] [Crossed out: 40] [Inserted text in top margin: 38] [Inserted text in bottom margin: 35-22]