Anne Braden: An Interview about Civil Rights and the Upcoming March on Washington for Jobs, Peace and Freedom [August 1983]

I work mainly with an organization that's a south wide multi racial multi national issue network throughout the South a network of activists around South call the Southern Organizing Committee for Economic and social justice and that organization is one of about 700 organizations that are supporting the Aug. 27 March on Washington and I've been serving as a member of the Planning Council for that for the National Planning Council for that march. And my organization has been working throughout the south to try to help build a co-op local coalitions for it. And incidentally although we work in the south we have kind of a close connection with people in Ohio because we work in sort of a sister organization relationship with human here in Alice Springs. Human and Americanization the southern organizing committee co-sponsor a training program for organizers. The idea as I understand it originated with Carette a King the widow of Dr. Martin

Luther King and Dr. Joseph Lowery who's president of Southern Christian Leadership Conference which Dr. King Of course organized and led and possibly some other black leaders began talking over a year ago about the fact that the 20th anniversary of the very historic big 1963 March on Washington was coming up and that something should be done not as a sort of a commemoration or you know just get together to celebrate 20 years ago but because they felt that the country and the world are in such a crisis at this point and that there's a crying need for this country to hear again the sort of moral vision that that 63 march projected. I think the concept was and if you read the call to the march you'll see this the concept was that the that the the vision of a moral and humane society that was projected by the civil rights movement 20 years ago. And by Dr. King. But I think we need to remember that that movement was not just Dr.

King he was an eloquent spokesperson but he was always the first person to tell you that he was not the movement the movement was. Hundreds and thousands of people whose names are known who were willing to risk their lives for what they were fighting for. And that's what moved the nation. And Dr. King became a spokesperson for that honor and a great leader. But it was a it was a tremendous movement. But the concept I think behind the way this march developed was that the the vision of a humane and moral society that was projected by the civil rights movement needed to be lifted up before this country again to address several basic issues and the problems that we face. All come together at some point that there's the question of the effort to turn back the clock on civil rights which has been going on we think since the late late 60s and early 70s it did not start with Reagan. People began to try to turn

that clock back and it's been consolidated under Reagan so that you really got people trying to push back 100 years in the field of human rights. And that's. And with that happen and it's almost bound to be because we think that's so basic the whole issue of equal rights and the whole evil of racism in this country is so basic to everything else in the society that it's that then everything's wrong if that's wrong. And the fact that the economy has fallen apart and people don't have jobs and people are hungry and so forth and and that we're standing on the brink of nuclear destruction and threatening the government of this country is threatening the whole world with destruction and all those things come together because the. The whole concept of white domination and racism that that permeates our society also permeates our foreign policy and because we've got people running the country that think white people are supposed to run the world. We really stand as a threat to the whole world. So all these issues come together so they they sort of soften this up in the issues of

jobs peace and freedom and that that there is a common denominator from which people come in from many different directions can come together. So what happened was that the that that correct King and Dr. Larry and other black leaders Well first they had a series of meetings with with other black leaders in the country so that by last December they met in Washington and issued what they called a Christmas call to the nation to mark the 20th anniversary of the 63 march on Washington with a new. The challenge to this nation and that was endorsed by 400 black leaders and then they reached out to several other groupings of people that they felt had common concerns and that included the peace movement. Peace organizations that are mostly white although we don't that's not the whole peace movement. But. Because that's sort of a misconception to that. But there are a lot of predominately white peace organizations the women's

movement the labor movement which is also facing a crisis because they're very right to be organized is under attack. The religious community. And young people those were the initial sort of constituencies. And what Congressman felt really who Walter Fauntroy who's been one of the leading organizers of this cause that he said the five great constituencies in our country together we're the majority and separated we're weak but together we're the majority. And it's gone beyond that and then other oppressed nationalities in this country are very supportive the Hispanic community in the southwest is organizing very strongly for this Native American community Asian American. The environmental movement is supporting it and and sections of the farmers movement because they're in real trouble now. And and the American agriculture movement has endorsed it. So it's reached out to encompass.

Large sections of our population who aren't obviously people who think like we do and are part of this march don't speak for all of these people that are the religious leaders that are a part of this march and some of the outstanding religious leadership of the country is black and white. Hispanic are a part of it but obviously they don't speak for the whole religious community in this country because unfortunately there are some people in the religious community as well as other places that that simply have not recognized the truth of what needs to be done to make this a good society. But that's the way it's developed and it's a very remarkable coalition. And like all coalitions it's tenuous. I mean when you get people come in that have more together before coming together. You know there's there's there's problems there's conflicts and that kind of thing. But so far it's held together and I think it's pretty clear it's going to hold together and do this march and people hope hold together

after that which is the point. I think what we have to understand and I'm not sure that a lot of people in some of these movements do understand it is that the civil rights movement and by that I mean you say that's broad it is broad. But what I'm talking about is the civil is that there's always been a civil rights within this country. But I'm talking about the particular upsurge of that movement that started with black people in the silo in basically in 1955 when Rosa Parks sat out on the bus and Gomery and spread from there throughout the south. Set the cell phone fire turned it upside down and then shook the whole country and on into the 60s. And as as as I see it that and his people I work with in the south say it is it was that movement that set in motion and created the atmosphere in which all these other movements could could grow. And it

was very a very wonderful experience to to be alive at that time and sleep what was happening in this country because and I had become active in social justice movements in the late 40s and in the silence and lived through that period called the silent 50s which incidentally was not totally silent there was always a resistance move. And and and that's the thing way I came into the movement originally and so forth but there was tremendous repression and people working for social justice were squelched and crushed in that period. And what we saw happen was all of that change when this upsurge developed coming from black people in the south. And I always tell people the beginning of the end of the 1950s was December 1st 1955 when Rosa Parks set out on that bus because then everything broke loose people found out they could organize and growing out of that. It set the stage for where we were able to have a mass movement against the Vietnam War in the 60s. And

and I you know I've it's good so I mean I'm not sure all the white people in the peace movement realize that that they are indebted to that civil rights movement for that. And it's so clear because if you just compare the tiny movement and it was but it was relatively small against the Korean War which I was a part of with the bias movement against the Vietnam War and the issues in those two wars were absolutely the same. And what happened in between was the civil rights movement. But it also set the stage for the for the new women's movement. We've had women's movements before but women could organize again. And as we saw in the south the labor unions had an atmosphere where they could begin to organize in the south again. The handicap people began to demand their rights. Gay people began to demand their rights. I mean everybody realize you can demand your human rights and they began to do it. And but unfortunately many of these

movements I think didn't especially those that are predominantly white are dominated by white people didn't recognize sufficiently I think that their debt to the civil rights movement and sort of left that out left that out of their considerations. And if you leave out the const of your considerations the issue of racism in other words if you're trying to do something about a problem in this country if you don't. Thank you to an interview all part of your effort to turn the policies of the country upside down on racism you're not going to be able to I think any other problem. Now that sounds abstract but let me be specific so I don't think that you can have all the peace organizations in the world and you can have everybody sign a petition for the nuclear freeze and you can have a million people march in the streets of New York last June 12th which you did I mean June 12th a year ago. And

that's not going to change the foreign policy of this country. But they are. And Congress goes right on vote. All these hundreds of billions of dollars for the military budget impasses the Amex missile and all this sort of thing because you're not going to we're not going to have peace in the world. We're not going to have a move toward stopping the arms race until the foreign policy of this country changes. And the foreign policy of this country is based on racism. It's based on white domination of the world. And if we don't see that if we don't try to change that we can be very sincere and work as hard as we can but we're not going to stop the arms race and we're not going to put pull ourselves back from the brink of World War 3. And. So so I think that that all of these movements that develop growing out of the 60s were weakened because they didn't see the key nature of that issue. Plus the fact that we had a

tremendous repression of the black movement. In the late 60s and early 70s and it didn't stop the movement but you had people framed up put in jail or shot at and killed you know. And that movement was was beyond it for a while because of the repression. So I think what we've seen happen is that because you don't know you don't ever totally crush a movement you've seen that the movement for freedom of black people and other Third World people in this country growing again and all through the 70s really. And some people don't realize that because the mass media often doesn't cover what's really happening and then with Reagan in the White House and in his policies which are basically anti people not only anti black people are anti brown people just anti people. That I think people. Have

I know in all the circles I move in there's been a real slow dance ever since the Reagan administration came in of a sense of urgency that we have to someway come together and we've done it in other ways like I'm I've helped my organization helped organize and I'm an active part of the National anti clan network which came together the same way here the claim we thought it was did here it was rising again. We better all get together and people that might not have some might not even might and so might each other they didn't speak to each other before so there was this there's an enemy out there and we've got to get together. So I think there's that sense of urgency. But I don't think it's easy as I say I don't think that I think it's that it has to be struggled for. And and and the other thing is that all that this national coalition came together at the national level and that doesn't mean it's. It's dramatic and it's important but it doesn't mean a lot unless it's really gets to the grassroots. And what the objective of the national leadership of this march has been to try to duplicate that coalition with all these different constituencies in communities all over the country. And that has been

happening in there now coalitions and between three and hundred and 400 cities and there are probably some that the national office doesn't know about yet because it's snowballing people are hearing about it. They just call up saying we're coming to Washington. And I think that in some communities they didn't. The coalitions may not be representative of all these constituencies but in many they are so that you have at the local level people getting to know each other that don't know each other before. And of course the hope is that this can continue to be all because we're not going to change things just by that one day in Washington but it will give a message to the country and hopefully a message to ourselves that we have the strength to change things. Nobody should be anyplace but Washington D.C. On August 27. And I think that that is. If it is such an opportunity to to begin the process because we see August 27 as a beginning not an end. Begin the

process of pulling together a coalition in this country that is strong enough to make a difference and this will just be the beginning not the end. And it couldn't have happened I think except that the civil rights leadership took this initiative because that's what made things happen 20 years ago. You know different you know different way different period. Same basic issues but in a way that the crisis today is is more critical. And it would. We don't want to miss this opportunity. And they'll be a lot of work to do afterwards. But this will if we do this one right it will be a giant step in the right direction. And that's sort of. An organizational and movement level but personally I just think nobody would want to be anywhere else you know I know I run into people all the time who will tell you about how they were at the Washington March and August 1063 and I know they

weren't there and you run into people all the time to bat how they marched with Dr. Martin Luther King and I know they did. But they but they wish they had it. They wish they had looked in fact they wished they were there still they've almost convinced themselves they were. So nobody wants to be in that situation on this one. Twenty years from now looking back and having to live like you were there when you were 30.