The Lost Legacy of the Freedom Summer
As large pockets of the African-American population spend parts of the summer of 2014 reminiscing about the spirited songs and protest marches of half a century ago in Mississippi that are widely regarded as keystones in the Civil Rights movement of the '60s, most American whites, even progressives, will look on quaintly and with detachment, as though passively watching the doings of Carnivale or the Mardi Gras. It does not move them as an event of democratic solidarity and a celebration of inclusion.
History and memory being what it is, few will venture beyond the vagaries of the Summer of Love, let alone drift back to the violent, revolutionary beginnings to the slow, on-going evolution of black freedom in America that took hold that summer.
And fewer people around the world will see it as a watershed moment that can help them understand their own nation's development in coping with the tolerant inclusion of the Other—the glue that makes civilization possible. Could the French not gain perspective on their historical treatment of Arab cultures by studying the riotous growth spurts in America? Could Czechs not gain insight into their treatment of the Roma? Do not the terrible insufficiencies of Mississippi in 1964 not have a blazing resonance in Australian Aboriginal relations?
There was a time — and it was then — when JFK was a Berliner and MLK was the living gospel of hope, when all eyes were on America and her determination to break through the remaining chains holding back the final growth spurt of civilization. America the exceptional. Or so it seemed.
In a recent Guardian article, Errin Haines points out the obvious: "Unfortunately, the anniversaries of the watershed moments of the civil rights movement are not embraced as thoroughly by white people in America as they are by black people, despite the reality that these events have benefited us all."
Yes, this is sad indeed, the begrudging tokenism, the sense that the hard-fought "victories" of these years is seen by many whites with the same resentment as Affirmative Action. These early civil rights actions, especially the voting rights act, were the catalyst for the eventual near-revolutionary protests against violence in general and the war in particular that followed.
You could even argue that it was the principal progressive outlet for middle class whites, until the draft changed their focus and the 1970 Kent State atrocity forced progressives to put aside their sweet Age of Reasoning and inch closer to a more militant, black-driven 'by any means necessary' resolve.
But it should never be forgotten that though the events of Mississippi in 1964 were brutal and terrifying some mention is necessary, even in passing, of some of the blood sweat and tears years that came before and made Freedom Summer possible – Rosa Parks in 1954, Emmett Till in 1955, Little Rock in 1957, Medgar Evers in 1963, MLK's Dream speech of 1963. All of these events built toward that tipping point momentum which made changes possible.
The Freedom Summer led to the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and, of course, it is right to emphasize that this was an accomplishment shared by like-minded whites and blacks. Clearly, the equal right to vote should be the crown jewel of any modern, pluralistic democracy, and the struggle to get there should be recalled with more universal pride than it is. Again as Haines sums up: "It is not … the responsibility of black Americans to make white Americans feel comfortable with this history. Rather, it is time for white Americans to simultaneously own their role in the ugly parts of segregation and be proud of those who were on the right side of history."
And that's where the rub comes in.
Had such pride in universal inclusivity been in play in 2000, it is unthinkable that the Florida presidential election debacle would have taken place—or, if it did, that it would have been allowed to stand.
While many white Democrats and self-styled progressives point to that colossal systemic failure in democracy and blame Ralph Nader for siphoning votes away from Al Gore, or the failure of the latter to win his own home state's electoral votes, it is the rather quiet, almost-forgotten-already decision by the US Supreme Court to not allow a recount of votes in key Florida districts — with strictly partisan reasoning and the application of obtuse partisan technicalities (it would have gone beyond a mandated deadline).
As lightning rod attorney Alan Dershowitz remarked after the Justices handed down their decision: "[T]he decision in the Florida election case may be ranked as the single most corrupt decision in Supreme Court history, because it is the only one that I know of where the majority justices decided as they did because of the personal identity and political affiliation of the litigants. This was cheating, and a violation of the judicial oath."
The decision outraged many people for a little while, and has now been all but forgotten. But it seems so much 'progressive' energy was poured into lamenting and blogging about the Supreme Court decision that all the outrage over the electoral processes that caused the crisis dissipated and went unaddressed. Indeed, Florida had similar problems again in 2004. And Florida is not alone: Pennsylvania and Ohio, two crucial 'swing states' continue to have significant systemic flaws to this day which disproportionately affect black voters.
But the Florida political circus wasn't disturbing merely because of infrastructural flaws and weaknesses, but more importantly it was the underlying meanness and nastiness of the treatment, of denying a citizen the chance to vote because, they were being told to their astonishment, that they were felons who no longer deserved –and, in any case, no longer had – the right to vote.
No doubt some people would argue that the system was unintentionally disenfranchising and malignant, part of the general malaise of bureaucratic dysfunction, but I would not be so luxuriantly generous.
When it comes right down to, controlling and Republican authorities in Florida were simply not going to allow the most important election of the 20th century to be decided by blacks. One need only see the speed with which the issue fizzled after the Supreme Court handed down their edict; in how little effort was put into making sure such voting transgressions didn't take place again; how small was the squall of outrage that a whole class of people was dis-empowered at a crucial moment in American Democracy; in returning to that comfortable numbness so well described in a song by Pink Floyd.
There were very few, if any, apologies for the clearly racist intentions leading to obviously successful political ends. But that's the way that it is in Florida, as the Trayvon Martin episode amply demonstrated.
Even many African-Americans have "moved on," largely bolstered by the energy of renewed hope for better things that came with the ascension of Barack Obama, the first black president. But by any measurement, including his progressive club pass for being born black, Obama is a bust as president, who has broken almost every significant campaign promise he ever made and left African-Americans in worse shape, all things considered, than they were 50 years ago during the Freedom Summer.
It's true that African-Americans are no longer routinely brutalized in the Dixiecrat South the way they were half a century ago, but they continue to be brutalized nationally on a scale that is depressing to behold, and it is tragic to see a black man preside over such decay.
Glen Ford, of Black Agenda Report, has referred to Obama as a scourge to African-Americans, as not "the lesser of two evils but the more effective evil," the implication being that after all Obama's broken promises and betrayal there can be no hope again.
In 1995, when the Nation of Islam staged its Million Man March on Washington, by some estimates drawing as many as 850,000 black men to the Mall outside the White House. Speaker after speaker decried the state of being black in America. They cited record imprisonment rates, unrelenting unemployment, sub-standard educations, no real hope for large scale upward mobility, poor health care. And this low reached its high in 2000 when the Republicans stole the presidential election by taking away the votes of thousands of black Floridians.
It was an election that has turned into a key turning point in American (and, consequently, global) history, leading as it did to the lapses that helped produce pre-text tragedy of 9/11 and its security lockdown aftermath. It is no longer safe for the Nation of Islam to denounce American domestic policy. And Obama has turned into a smiling beast of posture, dissemblance, propaganda, and outright lies, turning his back on the black community and virtually handing the keys of the Republic over to elite private interests who don't give a damn about plights or pleas or suffering.
In short, the irony is: 50 years later, we are celebrating (in that we are not protesting) a summer of surveillance and opacity instead of freedom and inclusion, and a black president is in charge as the ship of state sinks into the shark-infested waters of the post-democratic marketplace.
The world is busy fighting an abstract noun — terrorism that it cannot win. And just as other nations once turned to the US to find guidance for the Good, they are doing so today to implement the Evil.
In Europe austerity measures abound throughout the Union; in Turkey, the government works with the CIA to overthrow and possess Syria (and the former Ottoman imperial region); in Australia, the conservative Abbott government slashes away at the social safety net, while, at the same time, promising to find money to build up its military in support of Obama's coming pivot toward confrontation with China.
In this milieu, voting rights seem quaint; democracy a dream that is almost too cruel to have ever had.
This piece first appeared in the Prague Post onJuly 04, 2014.
http://praguepost.com/viewpoint/39947-the-lost-legacy-of-the-freedom-summer