THE CIVIL Rights Movement of the 1960s still touches a raw nerve in American society today. Political movements borrowing the rhetorical and organizational tactics of civil rights activism, from women's liberation to gay rights, continue to shape our political discourse today. Yet it is easy to forget just how radical Martin Luther King, Jr.'s message truly was, and just how much we have forgotten of the Civil Rights legacy. That includes the movement's emphasis on economic and political empowerment, issues virtually ignored by our politics today.
The University received an importantreminder of this legacy when Elaine Brown, chairman (as she insisted on being called) of the Black Panther Party during the 1970s, spoke at Old Cabell Hall on Jan. 25 as part of the Office of African-American Affairs' Annual Dr. Rev. Martin Luther King Commemoration. Brown, who, with her rapid-fire delivery and zest for controversy, palpably retains the fire of her Panther days, gave a speech keynoting a ceremony which included inspiring dance, dramatic and vocal performances.
While King is remembered today for his non-violence, Brown, pointing to King's work on his anti-poverty crusade, opposition to the Vietnam War and provocative use of civil disobedience, emphasizes that King's message stressed structural change in American society and complemented the message of the Panthers.
When Brown intoned, "Freedom isn't even on the agenda anymore," it was clear that by "freedom," Brown meant much more than the legal and moral causes we associate with the Civil Rights Movement and continue to associate with "progressive" political movements today. Brown attacked the idea that African Americans have ever been "free," even after the Civil Rights Movement, and argued against the notion that continuing disproportionate African-American poverty and crime can be blamed on individual choices: They are problems that must be attacked through broad structural and social change in American society.
Brown's message is essentially that of the Black Panthers, who with their gun-toting tactics and support for "liberation" movements across the globe, regarded themselves not simply as a "civil rights" movement or even a "Black Power" movement, but as part of a larger, worldwide movement for social and national liberation.
Brown's structural analysis of the situation of African Americans, as well as her insistence that blacks have not yet been freed, has evident power.
It is plain that legal and moral reform cannot be regarded as a panacea. The legal reforms achieved by the Civil Rights Movement, from Brown v. Board of Education to the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Voting Rights Act of 1965, represented nothing less than a watershed in American law. Yet there are limits to reform that can be achieved through the legal system. For example, the broad discretionary power of the police in investigating suspects, prosecutors in bringing cases and judges and juries in rendering criminal verdicts, has remained largely intact, despite frequent findings of racial bias in these areas. The Supreme Court's 1987 case McClesky v. Kemp upheld the constitutionality of the death penalty in the face of rather decisive evidence of racial bias in the administration of capital punishment.
Even more fundamentally, however, African Americans, as Brown reminds us, continue to suffer disproportionately from poverty and crime. We cannot be satisfied with the de jure elimination of discriminatory laws and the considerable change in racial attitudes that have occurred as a result of the Civil Rights Movement. As King emphasized in his lifetime, poverty across the United States must be confronted in order for the work of the Civil Rights Movement to have succeeded in its work.
Today, politicians of both parties rather consciously avoid addressing issues of poverty and political power in American life today. The bipartisan consensus today regards poverty as an economic -- not a political -- problem, a stand contrasting with the entire thrust of King's legacy. The "freedom" that Brown speaks of, and many of the 1960s generation fought for, is indeed off of the agenda today. As Brown reminds us, we might question that omission.
Noah Peters' column appears Fridays in The Cavalier Daily. He can be reached at npeters@cavalierdaily.com.
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