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《休伦港宣言》（The Port Huron Statement）收藏
★　　写在前面的话：好几天前，因为听到鲍伯•迪伦的歌，知道了《休伦港宣言》（The Port Huron Statement），“我们是当代人，在至少是小康的环境中长大，目前住在大学校园里，正忐忑不安地注视着我们所继承的世界……”,也大体了解了上世纪六十年代地球另一边的年轻人、事和书。　　本想把这篇宣言的序言部分转贴过来，耽搁了许久。为了简便，现转贴英文部分，中文翻译网上有，或者学英语的吴燕试一试吧。　　壮哉！二十世纪六十年代。
1楼 16:04&|
★　　　　　　　　　The Port Huron Statement　　We are people of this generation, bred in at least modest comfort, housed now in universities, looking uncomfortably to the world we inherit. When we were kids the United States was the wealthiest and strongest
the only one with the atom bomb, the least scarred by modern war, an initiator of the United Nations that we thought would distribute Western influence throughout the world. Freedom and equality for each individual, government of, by, and for the people― these American values we found good, principles by which we could live as men. Many of us began maturing in complacency. 　　　　As we grew, however, our comfort was penetrated by events too troubling to dismiss. First, the permeating and victimizing fact of human degradation, symbolized by the Southern struggle against racial bigotry, compelled most of us from silence to activism. Second, the enclosing fact of the Cold War, symbolized by the presence of the Bomb, brought awareness that we ourselves, and our friends, and millions of abstract "others" we knew more directly because of our common peril, might die at any time. We might deliberately ignore, or avoid, or fail to feel all other human problems, but not these two, for these were too immediate and crushing in their impact, too challenging in the demand that we as individuals take the responsibility for encounter and resolution. &&&&　　While these and other problems either directly oppressed us or rankled our consciences and became our own subjective concern, we began to see complicated and disturbing paradoxes in our surrounding America. The declaration "all men are created equal..." rang hollow before the facts of Negro life in the South and the big cities of the North. The proclaimed peaceful intentions of the United States contradicted its economic and military investments in the Cold War status quo. 　　We witnessed, and continue to witness, other paradoxes. With nuclear energy whole cities can easily be powered, yet the dominant nation-states seem more likely to unleash destruction greater than that incurred in all wars of human history. Although our own technology is destroying old and creating new forms of social organization, men still tolerate meaningless work and idleness. While two-thirds of mankind suffers undernourishment, our own upper classes revel amidst superfluous abundance. Although world population is expected to double in forty years, the nations still tolerate anarchy as a major principle of international conduct and uncontrolled exploitation governs the sapping of the earth's physical resources. Although mankind desperately needs revolutionary leadership, America rests in national stalemate, its goals ambiguous and tradition-bound instead of informed and clear, its democratic system apathetic and manipulated rather than "of, by, and for the people." &&&&　　Not only did tarnish appear on our image of American virtue, not only did disillusion occur when the hypocrisy of American ideals was discovered, but we began to sense that what we had originally seen as the American Golden Age was actually the decline of an era. The world-wide outbreak of revolution against colonialism and imperialism, the entrenchment of totalitarian states, the menace of war, overpopulation, international disorder, super technology― these trends were testing the tenacity of our own commitment to democracy and freedom and our abilities to visualize their application to a world in upheaval.
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&&&&　　Our work is guided by the sense that we may be the last generation in the experiment with living. But we are a minority― the vast majority of our people regard the temporary equilibriums of our society and world as eternally functional parts. In this is perhaps the outstanding paradox: we ourselves are imbued with urgency, yet the message of our society is that there is no viable alternative to the present. Beneath the reassuring tones of the politicians, beneath the common opinion that America will "muddle through," beneath the stagnation of those who have closed their minds to the future, is the pervading feeling that there simply are no alternatives, that our times have witnessed the exhaustion not only of Utopias, but of any new departures as well. 　　Feeling the press of complexity upon the emptiness of life, people are fearful of the thought that at any moment things might be thrust out of control. They fear change itself, since change might smash whatever invisible framework seems to hold back chaos for them now. For most Americans, all crusades are suspect, threatening. The fact that each individual sees apathy in his fellows perpetuates the common reluctance to organize for change. The dominant institutions are complex enough to blunt the minds of their potential critics, and entrenched enough to swiftly dissipate or entirely repel the energies of protest and reform, thus limiting human expectancies. Then, too, we are a materially improved society, and by our own improvements we seem to have weakened the case for further change. &&&&　　Some would have us believe that Americans feel contentment amidst prosperity― but might it not better be called a glaze above deeply felt anxieties about their role in the new world? And if these anxieties produce a developed indifference to human affairs, do they not as well produce a yearning to believe there is an alternative to the present, that something can be done to change circumstances in the school, the workplaces, the bureaucracies, the government? It is to this latter yearning, at once the spark and engine of change, that we direct our present appeal. The search for truly democratic alternatives to the present, and a commitment to social experimentation with them, is a worthy and fulfilling human enterprise, one which moves us and, we hope, others today. On such a basis do we offer this document of our convictions and analysis: as an effort in understanding and changing the conditions of humanity in the late twentieth century, an effort rooted in the ancient, still unfulfilled conception of man attaining determining influence over his circumstances of life.
3楼 16:06&|
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　　与07老师：今天打开谷哥，得知是约翰•列侬的诞辰，就想起还没有回复07老师。这个帖前天就看了，07老师提及的人、事我原先不知道，很愿意借此机会做个了解。我想07老师当时在这个时间转发这样一个帖，至少是要告诉我们应该懂得发出自己的声音、捍卫自己的追求，上世纪六十年代的美国充满了各种声音，宣言、讲演、摇滚乐，都汇合在“泯主”、“Ｆ战”、“人权”等的需求之下。先谢谢07老师。
　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　
　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　——牧羊班：吴燕
4楼 17:41&|
★　　吴燕，你好！听一首歌吧。鲍伯.迪伦的“在风中飘荡”。　　　　　　　　　　Blowing in the Wind 　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　Bob Dylan　　　How many roads must a man walk down　　　Before they call him a man?　　　How many seas must a white dove sail　　　Before she sleeps in the sand?　　　How many times must the cannon-balls fly　　　Before they ‘re forever banned?　　　The answer, my friend, is blowin’ in the wind　　　The answer is blowin’ in the wind.　　　How many years must a mountain exist　　　Before it is washed to the sea?　　　How many years can some people exist　　　Before they’re allowed to be free?　　　How many times can a man turn his head　　　Pretend that he just doesn’t see?　　　The answer my friend is blowin’ in the wind.　　　The answer is blowin’ in the wind　　　How many times must a man look up　　　Before he can see the sky?　　　How many ears must one man have　　　Before he can hear people cry?　　　How many deaths will it take　　　Till he knows that too many people have died?　　　The answer, my friend, is blowin’in the wind　　　The answer is blowin’in the wind.
5楼 11:33&|
★　　附相关介绍：　　1963年，21岁的鲍勃.迪伦在村子的咖啡店中写下六〇年代的国歌：《随风而逝》 （Blowin’ in the Wind）。　　现在看来，这首歌或许有太多晦涩意象，没有一般抗Y歌曲的具体内容。但在当时，这首歌的意涵对听者来说却是清晰无比；所有听者都能穿透那些薄雾，知道当迪伦认真地质问“还要多久，某些人才能获得自由”时，他指的是种族不平等；当他唱道“炮弹要在空中呼啸而过多少次，他们才会被禁止”时，他指的是核武器。　　尤其，这样的句子还不够清楚吗：　　“要有多少尸体，他才会知道，已经有太多人死去？” 　　这首歌真正巨大的力量不在于是否有深刻的社会分析，或是否能S动人们起来行动，而是他抓到了那个时代空气中微微颤动的集体思绪，说出许多年轻人面对时代的困惑。他们知道眼前的世界正在经历巨变，一切既有价值都正在被D覆；他们渴望改变社会，也希望追求个人的自主，所以要对K一切传统权威。但是要去哪里寻找改变社会的答案呢？迪伦的回答是，不要接受任何既有权威赋予的答案，要自己去风中寻找；最可怕的是不去寻找，是沉默、冷漠与不关心，拒绝去观看这世界上发生了什么事情：
　　　　一个人要有多少双耳朵/才能听见人们的哭泣？　　　　　……　　　　一个人要转多少次头/才能假装什么都没看见？
6楼 11:35&|
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为兴趣而生，贴吧更懂你。&或婚姻状态：
改变就要来临
注：本文系《1964系列回顾之二》，阅读前文可移步：
《1964系列回顾之一：自由之夏》
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1964年，是1960年代的转捩点。那一年的政治与社会冲击，让美国告别了此前的纯真与乐观；那也是摇滚乐的新时代：披头四（The Beatles）在二月首次从英国来美国，掀起狂潮，另一支英国乐队滚石（Rolling Stone）则在六月首次来美国演出。一股新的能量彻底电击了美国。
这一年的音乐更是紧密贴近社会的心跳。
两张专辑同时宣告了这个历史的转变：一月，迪伦（Bob Dylan）发表《时代变了》（The Times They Are A-Changing），到了年底，黑人灵魂歌手山姆&库克（Sam Cooke）发表《改变就要来临》（A Change is Gonna Come）。这两个歌手都看到了时代的改变，且分别回应了那个时代最重要的行动主体：青年与黑人。
1960年代前半期，美国内部正在进行一场从十九世纪下半期内战延伸下来的种族战争，一场争取黑人权利的战争。战争的一方是勇敢的黑色灵魂在餐厅、巴士、学校中无声的抗议，是一场又一场用身体的抗争和游行。另一方，是警察和白人种族主义者以各种暴力来反制，殴打民权运动者、焚烧黑人教堂；让这部黑白的政治影片不断染红。
那也是一个充满乐观希望的时代。1960年代初期洋溢着自由派的理想主义：肯尼迪的热情俊美形象召唤着年轻人的理想主义，投入社会服务，黑人民权运动追求种族融合。民权运动歌曲《我们一定会胜利》（We Shall Overcome）是这种正面乐观精神的主题曲（关于这首歌和那个时代，详见我的书《时代的噪音》）。
但事实上，1964年是美国将进入一个更剧烈变动时代的门槛。
迪伦一月发行的专辑《时代变了》（The Times They Are A-Changing），预示了一个新时代的来临。
他召唤人们拒绝成为旧思想的俘虏，勇敢向新时代起义。
他大声宣告，时代正在快速变迁，没有人可以挡住历史前进的脚步。
他警告政客，要倾听青年的吶喊，不要在阻挡在路上。在你们办公室的外面，一场战争正在进行，并且将撼动你们的墙壁，让你们无法再安逸地闭起眼睛。
他更警告父母，不要批评你不了解的东西。你的儿女已经不是你能掌控的。如果你不能伸出手帮忙，就不要成为变迁的阻碍。
而所有人都要知道：你最好要赶快开始奋力往前泅泳，否则你就会如大石般沉落海里。
迪伦说：“我知道我想要说什么，和我要对谁说。我想要写出一首伟大的歌曲，一种主题性的歌。”
的确，就在这一年，青年真正进入公众视野，成为改变时代的关键行动者。
当然，1962年，“民主社会学生联盟”（Students for Democratic Society，简称SDS）的青年们就在密西根州的修伦港，写下了《修伦港宣言》（Port Huron Statement），成为那个新世代的政治议程，但他们尚未大规模行动。
而在1964年夏天，黑人民权运动组织者展开了“夏日自由计划”，招募近千名北方大学生去南方参与民权运动，吸引了全国媒体的关注。而后这些学生开始建立起全国性的组织网络（见另文《自由之夏》）。
秋天，柏克莱大学展开言论自由运动，抗议学校限制他们表达与抗议的自由，开启了1960年代后半波澜壮阔的校园抗争。领头者萨维奥（Mario Savio）的这段话更打动一整代青年：
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“这所大学如今只是座疏离冷漠的机器……你必须把你的身体置于齿轮之上，轮子之上、拉杆之上，在所有的装置之上，你必须要向拥有这台机器的人指出，除非你自由，否则这台机器将绝对不得再度运作。”
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反战运动也从这一年开始有了新的起点：八月美国国会通过东京湾决议，授权约翰逊总统在越南进行军事战争；次年二月，美军开始全面轰炸北越。春天，学运组织SDS发动第一次的全国反战游行，然后是一场又一场的抗争，焚烧征兵卡，甚至到了1968年之后，激进学运组织气象人决定采取暴力革命行动。
迪伦在前一年已经写下史上最重要的反战歌曲“Master of War”，在这张专辑他又在歌曲《上帝在我们这一边》（With God on Our Side）这首歌中，反思美国的帝国主义与宗教和道德的关系。
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我所感到的迷惑/没有任何唇舌可以说清/
言语充塞我的脑袋/然后跌落地上/
如果上帝站在我们这边/他将阻止下一场战争发生
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民权运动在这一年更是关键。鲜红的血不断地流泻在美国的黑白地图上。
在南方，民权运动组织者早已遭受各种生命威胁，不论是被警察骚扰、攻击，或是被白人种族主义者殴打、恐吓，但他们无所谓畏惧。1963年六月，肯尼迪总统首次公开表示黑人权利是一个道德与法律议题，但该晚，民权组织NAACP的重要领导人爱佛司（Medgar Evers）就在家中门口被三K党暗杀。
迪伦在这张专辑中写下《游戏中的棋子》（Only a Pawn in Their Game），批判深深根植于教育体系、社会结构的种族与阶级矛盾，以及白人政客的政治操弄。这是迪伦最好的民权运动歌曲。
在这个1964年，时代看似正在前进：马丁&路德&金获得诺贝尔和平奖，国会通过民权法案禁止公共设施的种族隔离，肯定了十多年来民权运动的血泪成果。 1965年3月，约翰逊总统在国会演说承诺推动投票改革法案，强调要消除一切阻止公民自由投票的障碍与暴力。然后，他引用民权运动这句着名的口号/歌曲，“我们一定会胜利”（we shall overcome）。
但1964年7月，马丁&路德&金发表一本小书：《为何我们不能再等待》。
种族主义暴力更为强烈，黑人也更为愤怒：就在民权运动法案通过的1964年六月，三个民权运动工作者在密西西比州被谋杀。那个夏天在南方，有几十起黑人教堂和房屋被暴徒焚烧；那个夏天在纽约哈林区，发生首起黑人社区暴动，掀起了未来数年在黑人贫民区越来越严重的暴动。
进入1965年，是更多的血腥。
1965年2月，Malcom X被枪杀。
1965年2月，阿拉巴马州塞尔玛（Selma）镇，警方用皮鞭及木棍驱赶黑人注册投票的队伍，开枪打死一位黑人牧师。愤怒的马丁&路德&金组织了一场游行抗议，准备从赛尔玛镇步行到十年前民权运动开始的起点：蒙哥马力（Montgomery） 。当几百人队伍在走出塞尔玛镇的桥上，就被警察的棍棒和催泪瓦斯猛烈袭击，上百人受重伤。这天被称为“血腥的星期天”（Bloody Sunday）。
（资料图：1965年，由马丁&路德&金组织的游行抗议）
南方面对的是最赤裸裸和暴力的种族歧视，但在北方，即使民权运动让许多政治和法律的种族隔离措施被取消了，但系统性的种族主义和制度性的歧视仍未消除：恶劣的住屋、低劣的教育品质、高失业率和贫穷问题仍然标记着黑人社区。尤其黑人民众的权利意识增长后，更让他们对丑恶的现实严重不满。1965年，在洛杉矶的瓦特区（Watts）的严重暴动造成三十四人死亡，上千人受伤。暴乱不断蔓延。1965年到1968年间，有169人在这些纷乱中丧生，七千人受伤，超过四万人被捕。对于1967年夏天在各大城市出现的暴动，约翰逊总统指派一个委员会调查暴动原因，结论指出，即使通过民权法案，但美国仍然是一个黑白分离且高度不平等的社会。
而黑人民权运动扬弃种族融合的目标，开始追求黑权和黑人民族主义，更扬弃非暴力的原则。马丁&路德&金自己也说，白人和黑人团结一起的道路在赛尔玛交会，但此后就如一个巨大的X走向分歧了。
在那个黑白议题高度政治化的时代，黑人R&B歌手是排行榜上的宠儿，但他们很少直接支持民权运动组织，歌曲也不会直接讨论种族问题，以免影响市场。例如，1963年8月在华府的举办的数十万人民权运动大游行，台上演唱者几乎没有黑人R&B歌。
Curtis Mayfield和他的合唱团The Impression是一个重要例外。在1964年，他发表一首深受马丁&路德&金感召的歌曲“Keep Pushing On”，鼓舞黑人民权运动（次年他们的歌曲“People Get Ready”更成为民权运动最有代表性的歌曲之一）。
而另一首歌，抓住了此后那些炎热的骚动：《在街上起舞》（Dancing in the Streets）。这首歌原本只是描述夏天时，不分肤色的孩童在街上听音乐跳舞、玩耍，但是这首歌曲的节奏、歌词和演唱者Martha and Vandellas的歌声，以及是让人想要暴动的外在社会气氛，使得这首歌成为1964年及其后街头抗争的主题曲。
还有Sam Cooke。他是1950年代末到1960年代最有代表性的R&B歌手之一，歌迷也有不少是白人。当他在1963年听到迪伦的《随风而逝》（Blow in the Wind）后，思考为何黑人不能做出如此关于美国种族主义的伟大歌曲。他在1964年底发行专辑《改变正要来临》（A Change is Gonna Come）──虽然他在歌曲发行前就被意外枪杀。
这首歌融合了蓝调音乐中的痛楚和忧伤与福音歌曲中的救赎，说出了一个人如何在绝望与希望中摆荡，并决定坚持下去。那确确实实是那个时代黑人的心声。
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许多时候我以为我无法再承受了
但现在我相信可以继续坚持下去
虽然我们等待了很久
但是一场巨大的改变终于要来
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到了1965年，音乐人Barry Mcguire看到严重的种族主义和恐怖暴力，因而另一种对时代的诠释：《毁灭前夕》（Eve of destruction），幸运的是，那只是时代的一面。因为到了1960年代后半，黑人的权力、权利、尊严与认同的确缓步前进了──虽然巨大的歧视与不平等仍然持续，青年反文化运动挑战了主流价值，同志平权和妇女运动冲击了传统父权社会，而环境运动日益萌芽壮大。
改变终究来临了。
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（责任编辑：余江波）Veterans of the Civil Rights Movement -- Thoughts on Port Huron
Thoughts on Port Huron
[This was written
after the effort to recall rightwing, anti-labor Governor Scott Walker
of Wisconsin failed in early June of 2012. The
was adopted in 1962 by Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) at its first
convention held at the UAW conference center near Port Huron, MI.]
I was there and the most important thing was not to require a loyalty oath
of movement participants. The energy saved by refusing to red-bait went
right into action for freedom, or organizing.
It's important what a person believes, so tell me what you think,
but more importantly, tell me what you do and have done. In
Alabama I saw folks chanting affirmations of faith, knowing they
did not mean it. My quest became why people's actions and beliefs
were so far apart. I was fascinated with why so few white
Southerners risked life and limb or even ostracism and poverty in
the struggle against segregation and racial oppression.
Searching for authenticity, commitment and risk, as well as
harmony between belief and action, I sought people doing things
challenging and exciting to me. The second of five boys with a
schoolteacher mother and preacher father, it was unlikely I would
meet Dr. Martin Luther King and Ms Rosa Parks as a college
student in Montgomery and become part of America's most exciting
History&&&the Civil Rights Movement. Perhaps it
was providential that my Methodist College, Huntingdon, was
located in Montgomery, the cradle of the modern civil rights
My odyssey from KKK to MLK was a stretch. Dad, James Abraham
Zellner, a Methodist minister was once a Klan organizer, a
Kleagle. He and Mom, Ruby Hardy Zellner, graduated from Bob Jones
College now located in Greenville, SC Even though it is now
called a "university," it is not widely known as a hot bed of
Southern Liberalism. What's worse, I was named for Dr. Bob Jones
after he performed the marriage of Mom and Dad. In 2012-speak,
that means I come from a line of Fundamentalist Terrorist. I must
have been a disappointment to Godfather Dr. Bob. Have you ever
noticed how fundamentalism and terrorism go together?
The nexus is ubiquitous throughout history. A fundamentalist,
Muslim, Christian, or any other can be peace loving and protect
those inside his circle. As a fundamentalist, however, his
ability and willingness to harm those outside his circle, i.e.
infidels, is altered. Not only is the fundamentalist allowed to
harm others, his creed may even require him to do so. Presently a
fundamentalist, then, depending on circumstances, voila, a
terrorist is born. My father, grandfather and uncles in
Birmingham were Klan activists. A more ruthless gaggle of
terrorist is hard to imagine. Was their Klavern responsible for
killing four little girls guilty of nothing more than going to
Sunday school at the 16th Avenue Church one September morning
Telling stories about "deadheading" across the country while
working on the railroad, Granddaddy Zellner worked as a
telegrapher and later a dispatcher for Gulf Mobile and Ohio. I
never thought of his bustling metropolis as the "Johannesburg" of
With this wrenching background, then, it's not surprising my
outlook became that of an existential Marxist attempting to
follow Jesus&&&schools of thought and action
clearly at odds with one another. When one believes in dialectics
and uses the philosophy to learn about the universe, one becomes
comfortable with uncertainty and discomfort. Some early mentors
advocated the adoption of an attitude of "creative insecurity."
Democracy itself, they pointed out, is an exercise in dialectics
or creative insecurity. To maintain our civil liberties we must
allow those who would take away our civil liberties the right to
speak. The Klan can rally, the neo-Nazis can advocate and the
ignoramuses of the Tea Party are free to bloviate. Progressives,
countering with better organizing, bigger marches, and debate
rather than trying to outlaw rightwing first amendment rights,
will win every time.
In time of war, like the present one with terrorists of various
types around the world, we must fight fiercely to maintain our
civil liberties. It's nonsensical to say our freedoms are under
attack by funda therefore we must give up a
corner stone of democracy&&&the right to be safe
in our persons. Sad to say, since 9/11 Americans have given up
habeas corpus, the right to a fair trial through due process,
without a whimper in the name of national security.
Spirituality, more important to me than religiosity, allows me to
take the best from all religions and paths of enlightenment.
Fundamentalist Muslims, I find, are just as capable of
misconstruing the concept of jihad as Christian fundamentalists
are of misinterpreting the concept of crusade. Looking back,
trying to unravel the threads woven into this spiritual,
philosophical fabric, my personal trope continues to be towards
action. We are products of all we experience, therefore the above
caveat&&&"now tends to be," warns that this
current outlook could change.
I discovered a new intellectual universe in 1957 when Rev.
Charles Prestwood, a newly minted Doctor of Divinity just
returned from Boston University, encouraged us college freshmen
to "break our cups." On fire with the social gospel, Dr.
Prestwood, in a deliberate act of subversive teaching, advocated
breaking our cups, even though they run over with goodness and
abundance. He wanted us to actually question all the things we
had been taught in church.
I was able to sit at the feet of Dr. Prestwood and other
progressive ministers only through the miracle of Dad's
conversion from KKK to the inclusive social gospel. Breaking with
family and the Klan, he worked with Dr. King, Rev. Joe Lowery in
Mobile, Prestwood, Thomas Lane Butts, and others attracted to the
work being done by SNCC and SCLC, the Southern Christian
Leadership Council.
Dr. Butts, my early mentor, is currently pastor emeritus of First
United Methodist Church in Monroeville, Alabama serves as the
main helper to Harper Lee, author of TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD.
My interest in race and justice, kick-started by Charles
Prestwood was aided and abetted by Dr. Tom Butts. My generation
of Methodist youth was fortunate to have several young ministers
in segregated Alabama spreading subversion quietly among my
cohort of the teenage faithful. I found a blog, which brings
Doctors Prestwood and Butts together in one paragraph. It is
typical of both that they emphasis the organizer's responsibility
to avoid hubris in their work. Tom Butts recently reported: "A
friend and colleague, the late Dr. Charles M. Prestwood, who had
unusual insight into the games people play in order to gain power
without taking responsibility, wrote: 'The divisions of our day
in part grow out of the fact that as slaves we begin by demanding
justice and end by wanting to wear a crown.' There are some who
never quite understand that we cannot wear the crown of thorns
and also have the thirty pieces of silver. The truth is that our
inclination to comment with authority and casually offer serious
advice on every condition we encounter should be accompanied by
an equally serious willingness to become actively involved in
affecting the solutions we suggest."
Thomas Butts, in his eighties, continues to break cups, violate
mores and he bends toward freedom. Prestwood's concern with
divisions between people, and Butt's insistence that prescription
and advice is meaningless in the absence of action toward solving
problems, was the basis of my activism. Activist wasn't a word we
used in SNCC in the 1960s, calling ourselves civil rights workers
or "organizers."
My involvment, similar to that of many church-bred young
southerners black and white, is mirrored by Casey Hayden, who
recently wrote a luminous and haunting memory that speaks to my
coming of age in the south. Casey and I, along with our cohort of
movement adventurers, including Jane Stembridge, Connie Curry,
Dorothy and Rob Burlage, Joan Browning, Anne and Howard Romaine,
Ed Hamlett, Sam Shirah and other white shoutherners, understood
each other and where we came from so well that we seldom felt the
need to speak or write about the experience. Along with other
white Southerners who rose up for freedom now and always, we are
currently writing about growing up white and southern. In Casey's
case, her piece was written for her former husband Tom Hayden's
book on SDS and the history of the Port Huron statement. That
declaration along with SNCC's statement of purpose (drafted by
Rev. Dr. James Lawson) became twin manifestos of a legendary
generation in American history. "ONLY LOVE," she wrote, "IS
I was a child of small town Texas, and of a single parent mom, a
feminist. We were poor closet liberals. Austin was my Mecca. I
[became] an existentialist at a residential community of learning
alongside The University, the only integrated housing on campus,
both by gender and by race. We met in rigorous seminars with a
collegium of renegade Christian ministers, headed by a chaplain
from WWII who'd seen the carnage, demythologizing the church
fa The collegium attempted to create a
language of experience: Surrendering illusions through honesty,
one was opened to creating meaning: an authentic life, freedom.
This surrender into reality was "the Christ event". Our freedom,
our commonality in receiving it, and our common task of passing
it on, were realized in community through rituals of confession,
forgiveness, surrender, and gratitude. We found a remnant of the
social gospel, the campus YM-YWCA, as our outpost. I served at
the Y's national conference. Men and women led workgroups as
equals: P Race R the World of W The Changing
Roles of Men and Women. Consciously breaking out of the silent
postwar generation, we vowed to realize our values, a politics of
authenticity. The 50's unfolded into the 60's, the sit-in
movement their exalted opening.
Casey Hayden reminds me that it is a wondrous thing when
southerners change. Her memory of being a stifled southerner
hungry for change evokes my evolving consciousness more
eloquently than I can write. Shakespeare said the play is the
thing. My movement generation came to believe the ACT was the
thing. Authentic politics compelled us to ACT against the evils
around us&&&evils crying out for action. Emerging
from the silent generation, we found ourselves surrounded by
poisonous snakes inching closer and closer to our bare feet. Too
long had foremothers and fathers talked of making change, we
would actually make change. We accomplished a lot. By 1965 the
public accommodations and voting acts had passed setting the
stage for a social and economic revolution. The national liberal
consensus, which had allowed the movement to succeed up to this
point, broke down.
When serious change, like that advocated by Ms Ella J. Baker, was
on the agenda, liberals ran for high ground. Ending de jure
segregation and black voter exclusion certainly completed the
bourgeois revolution, which was left unfinished following the
civil war. That was okay, but moving to full social and economic
equality in the sense Frederick Douglass, W.E.B. Dubois and Ms
Baker understood it, was not all right. No broad left national
consensus moving toward socialist revolution existed. This was
the end of the civil right movement.
Dr. King's assassination sealed the deal. When he worked to
unionize garbage workers in Memphis while planning a poor
peoples' march on the nation's capitol, it was over. The movement
was changing. In 1966, SNCC had become an al
so many of the white staff began working with SCEF, the Southern
Conference Educational Fund. We answered the call to organize
among and with white Southerners. We started to reach poor and
working class white Southerners, bringing them into coalitions
with already organized grass roots black folk. We formed GROW,
Grass Roots Organizing Work, also called Get Rid of Wallace. I
remember the joy and amazement we felt on finding former Klansmen
in Mississippi willing to switch sides and join the human race.
One, M. O. McCarty, a member of Local 5-443 of the International
Woodworkers of America, walked off the job, at Masonite
Corporation after a shop steward was fired for supporting two
workers who refused to do work not included in their job
descriptions, had been a Klan enforcer.
Masonite, located in Laurel, Mississippi, was at that time the
largest hardboard plant in the world. The union could easily have
prevailed in the resulting wildcat strike had the union members
been able to remain unified. The problem was the racial division
between white and black workers. M.O. became a great friend,
helping in the effort to bring white and black workers together.
When criticized for having been in the Klan, M.O. said, "Yes,
I'll admit I was in the KKK, even though I am not supposed to say
so. I have always been a joiner. Whenever I go to church, if they
open the doors to membership, I join. So far I'm a Methodist, a
Baptist, a Presbyterian, and a Holiness, and yes, I was a
Klansman, but now I have joined the civil rights."
Only later, much later, in fact twenty or thirty years on down
the line, did we begin to view human nature as a hard thing to
change. Had we known early on, we may never have attempted to do
what we did in the GROW Project. As it was, we were lucky to
stumble on a philosophy of working class organizing that was
successful. Large numbers of poor and working class folks from
the Deep South could best be reached on a material basis. All who
could be reached with the basic movement idealistic message of
Christian love, brother and sisterhood had been reached. The
majority would have to see that their material wellbeing depended
on them changing racist behavior like separate seniority lists at
the plant which kept blacks from advancing in skill level and
pay. A strike would pit black and white workers against each
other rather than being together, strong in unity.
While contemplating the difficulty of making basic social change
in the south I used all the psychology, sociology and history
learned in several bouts with college and graduate school. I
began to work on a social change theory called the shrunken heart
Briefly stated it means that centuries of standing on the necks
of fellow human beings inevitably shrinks the hearts of those
doing the oppressing. Evolution apparently works on the mental
and spiritual body as well as the physical one. I reasoned that
during slavery, whites in North America, especially the south,
maintained the institution through force, violence and terror.
Enslaving a human is an act of war against that person. To make
war against a person or a people, it becomes necessary to learn
to hate "those people". To own a human, unlike owning a mule, the
slaveholder must deny the humanity of that man, woman or child.
So, growing up in south Alabama among a people who had, for
centuries, practiced treating people like objects or mules, I was
expected to go and do likewise. To accomplish such a degree of
dehumanization, individuals in the owning group inevitably suffer
a shriveling of their souls and spirit.
A small example of this process can be seen in farm children,
trying to get over their tender heartedness when killing
chickens, rabbits, pigs and other livestock. They manage somehow
to harden their hearts. In the same way, southerners get over
their innate dislike of mistreating others. They teach themselves
and their children that, "Blacks aren't the same as you and I,
and therefore you may mistreat them".
Imagine an entire region of people mistreating African Americans
(a mild and profoundly understated way of describing slavery from
1617 to 1865) for over two hundred years. These same southern
people re-enslaved black people under Jim Crow, the sharecropper
and prisoners-for-purchase systems for the hundred years leading
up to the voting act of 1965.
If you think it would be terrifying to grow up this way, you have
some understanding of my early experience. That was the region of
my child those were the
people&&&friends, fellow church members, family,
and acquaintances&&&I grew up around. They were
steeped in racism and self-hatred to the point that nothing was
as it seemed. Wouldn't they of necessity have shriveled hearts?
Small hearts leave no room for the milk of human kindness. These
are the people I grew up with. Has human kindness dried up in
southern white people?
The South today continues to be a bottomland with acidic puddles
of racist poison still stagnating. Old black women and men in
Mississippi taught me that hate is an acid that corrodes the
bucket it is carried in. This is especially true among older
white people. Only 11% of whites voting in Alabama pulled the
lever for our first black president, Barack Obama. Southerners
call him "the foreigner," rejecting the legitimacy of a black
President. During the current Republican primary, the entire
roster of candidates referred to him as "Obama," never President
Obama. They have done their best to intimidate this president
from exercising leadership, ready to pounce on him for being an
angry young black man. But he has shown leadership, most recently
on the right to love the one you chose. Thank you President Obama
for showing political courage, rare these days.
Growing up in lower Alabama, I learned that my Great-Granddaddy
thought he could not do without slavery. Then Granddaddy Zellner
thought he could not get along without segregation. My father's
generation of southerners was sure they simply could not get
along without opposite sex marriage.
Well I get along fine without slavery and I don't have a personal
need for segregation. As for marriage, I have tried it twice
without success and hope I am done with it. For those who like
it, however, I am happy for them to have at it anyway they want
it. Opposite sex, same sex, no sex, it is all the same for me.
Wait! Someone brought up bestiality. Was it Republican candidate,
Santorum? Man on dog? That might actually give me pause,
especially if the man wants to marry his best friend. Well it
only gave me a pause, and a short one at that. If a woman wants
to marry her dog and a man wants to marry his horse, who's to say
it is not the right thing for them? No skin off my teeth, no harm
no foul. Right?
I remember when Chuck McDew, former SNCC Chairman, and I visited
my brother David and sister-in-law Ruth in a small town near
Knoxville, Tenn. McDew, an African-American born in Massillon,
Ohio, was fascinated by the jobs being held down, clung to
actually, by my young nephews and their wives, all white
southerners, born and bred. It was in the time of the Bush vs.
Gore presidential race. We were eating in a Chinese buffet near
the airport while waiting for our flight, surrounded by all these
rural southerners so quite naturally Chuck asked whom everybody
was voting for. Bush was their man one of my nephews proclaimed
vigorously.
McDew allowed as how that did not seem right, given the bleak
picture they had painted of employment in Knoxville. Looking
perplexed, he questioned, "Didn't you say there no good paying
jobs and you make hardly enough to pay for gas to and from work?
You work at Jiffy Lube, minimum wage and you at Burger King, same
wage, one wife at the dry cleaners and another at Wall Mart, and
Grandma Ruth has to take care of the babies? Why on earth would
you vote for Texan George Bush over Tennessean Gore?"
"Because," my kinfolk fairly shouted in unison, "Bush
is going to protect us from gay marriage!" Chuck, completely
flabbergasted by now, asked, "Do you know any gay people? Do
you know any gay people who are getting married?"
They all agreed that they didn't know any gay people and didn't
know if any of them were getting married.
Later at the airport McDew ruefully told me he had often worried
about my poor white kinfolks, hoping they would be able to do
better. "Now," he exclaimed, "After what I heard today
from your poor nieces and nephews, I will never again worry about
poor white people." Amen. So living with others continues to
be a challenge in the South. In some ways young southerners are
more open to change and less homophobic than their parents. But
if the older generations continue to teach their prejudices to
their offspring how long will it take.
Failure to embrace diversity has allowed a bastion of reaction to
invade our entire body politic and I fear the infestation will
continue until my region undergoes a thorough change. Many
thought the process of integrating the solid south with the rest
of the nation was well underway by the end of the
sixties&&&that the south would never go back to
its old ways. FDR and his redoubtable wife Eleanor tried mightily
to change the politics of my region coming out of the last Great
Depression, declaring the South to be the nation's number one
economic problem.
Struggling to come out of this one, we find ourselves faced with
the same problem. During Reconstruction, fair-minded people
thought the south could never, would never, return to the all
white courthouse and ballot box. In less than a generation,
however, former slave owners using violence, ended
reconstruction, reclaiming the south while disfranchising Negros
and their poor white allies. Similarly nobody thought the gains
of women, blacks and other oppressed people during the civil
rights movement could be taken away again in this country.
Currently the GOP, having been hijacked by Tea Party racists and
shills for corporate fascism, is doing just that.
Will the tiny shrunken hearts of my fellow Southerners be able
once again to stave off a concerted assault on its backwardness?
Time will tell but there is hope. Challenges exist to be sure,
but new and exciting promises are also present. Younger
southerners like most young Americans are no longer as cowed by
racism, paternalism, and homophobia as their parents and
grandparents. More importantly there is a new respect for
community organizing and positive social change. Our debonair
young President Obama, after all, was a community organizer
before trying his hand at leading the "free" world.
My region functions today as a safe rear for rightwing extremism
and it anchors Tea Party white nationalism. Morris Dees of the
Southern Poverty Law center warns of widespread arming and
training of paramilitary extremists. He says that bullying and
hatred of gays and immigrants is fueling impending violence on a
grand scale. I think the ultra right is gearing up for a serious
attempt to foment a new civil war in this country. The
progressives and liberals on the left are woefully unprepared.
This makes it imperative that progressives unite once and for all
to bring the South into the national fold. And there is
historical precedent for organizing the South as a way of
liberalizing the body politic.
The south and other pockets of reaction in the West, skews our
national politics violently rightward. A basic change in the
South will change the politics of the whole country, making
American democracy safe for the world. Even a small change could
make the country and therefore the world a healthier, safer
place. Long-term community organizing seems to be the best
solution to the Southern problem. Operation Dixie, Wikipedia
explains, once attempted to unionize industry in the Southern
United States. From 1946 to 1953 in 12 Southern states, labor
tried to consolidate gains made by the trade union movement in
the Northern United States during the war. Organized labor needed
to block the status of the South as a "non-union" low-wage haven
to which businesses could relocate. Failure of Operation Dixie to
end the South's status as a low-wage, non-union haven impeded the
ability of the union movement to maintain its strength in North
and contributed to the decline of the American union movement in
the second half of the twentieth century. Unions were unable to
prevent businesses from holding back wage increases by either
moving to the South or threatening to do so. The non-union South
holds the nation back economically and has always impeded the
fulfillment of civil and human rights. Presently there is no
difference between organized labor and the civil rights movement.
My job as a scholar and activist, then, is to propose solutions,
make plans and take action, so I am returning to the south after
living and teaching in the north for many years. I moved to
Wilson, North Carolina where Barton College is located at the end
of my short street. A series of miracles landed me here. SNCC and
movement people, being angels, will understand. I'm in an old
house at the top of a hill near some woods where a bear reputedly
lives. Ancient trees from the farm's pecan orchard shade our lot,
which anchored vegetable fields along this ridge. I call it Seven
Trees Farm. A downpour is drumming on the old roof, the first
rain since I moved here April 13th, a Friday. Recently my old
organizing friend, Al McSurely, introduced me to the remarkable
Rev. Dr. William Barber, leader of a powerful and diverse
coalition of fired up progressive southerners here in NC. Also I
want to help focus national attention on the North Carolina Plan
and the black power it represents, as well as assist John McNeil,
wrongly convicted in Newt G's district of GA.
Wilson is also the home of John McNeil, an African-American
basketball star sentenced to life for the death of a white
a mirror image to Travon Martin. I helped his wife,
Anita, who is battling a recurre draft a
letter to Kerry Kennedy for defense funds.
My new home at Seven Trees Farm, with offices, freedom house and
organizing school will serve the eastern black belt region of NC.
Our work plan for the next four or five years is outlined in the
following resolution being presented to the NAACP Convention this
July in Houston, attempting to bring organized labor and the
NAACP together in a new Operation Dixie. Titled, HOUSTON WE HAVE
A PROBLEM! The plan includes the following ideas:
"In the 1960s and 1970s, national forces violently opposed to
labor and civil rights, adopted a southern strategy to destroy
civil rights organizations providing practical support for
southern labor and human rights movements. For 40 years we've
trod vineyards where the grapes of wrath are stored, waging local
and state battles against powerful national forces with unlimited
funds for their long-range plan to reinstate segregation, voter
ID's, and the whole bag of old tricks of division and hatred.
A conference will convene in the Southern Regions, the 11 former
confederate states where anti-labor and anti-civil rights
practices continue to plague our neighborhoods, our work-places,
our churches and other institutions where we live, work, worship
A proposal to be debated in the NAACP should emerge
calling for a NAACP-Labor summit to negotiate a Southern
Check-Off where One Nation Organizing Fund members can collect $2
monthly to finance labor and civil rights organizers in 11
confederate states. $2 of each NAACP member's dues will be set
aside to rebuild the southern civil and labor rights movement.
Martin Halpern, professor of history at Henderson State
University in Arkansas, and other labor scholars, wonders if
organized labor can even survive in the U.S. In an article
written for Portside, comparing and contrasting the policies and
actions of Presidents Kennedy and Obama, both seen as pro-labor,
and Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, an ultra rightwing one per
center out to destroy the last vestiges of collective bargaining.
Unions have declined in the private sector, Halpern points out,
and they are under assault in the public sector, the strongest
part of the labor movement today.
It is scary to me that the future of organized labor is so
precarious. Mark Halpern sums up the situation: "Should Wisconsin
voters June 5 retire Scott Walker for his anti-democratic
actions, it will contribute to the movement to rescue our country
fromdomination by the one percent. Likewise, by voting for Barack
Obama in November, voters across the country will express their
optimism that the president will continue to move in the
direction of listening to the movements for peace and justice and
support efforts fordemocratic workplaces. It is a good time to
honor the legacy of John Kennedy: to listen to social and
economic protest movements, respect unions for the goodthey do,
and to promote the idea that government serves the people."
So Wisconsin voters and the NAACP/Labor organizing push may go a
long way in saving collective bargaining. Such a joint plan could
change the South from a bastion of the ultra right wing into a
progressive region, making American democracy safe for the world,
ending our skewed political spectrum which ranges now from far
right to the ultra center.
NAACP and National Labor, establishing a National Organizing
Committee will also plan the 50th Anniversary of the March on
Washington for Jobs and Justice in front of the Lincoln Memorial
honoring Dr. King and others of the Moses Generation. The NAACP
and labor will then announce the funding and joint sponsorship of
the One Nation Organizing Fund.
The North Carolina Conference of NAACP Branches is blazing the
trail for a new era of organizing in the south and the rest of
the nation. Rev. Dr. Barber and his cadre of organizers are also
challenging the national NAACP to rededicate itself to grassroots
organizing, honoring its glorious past. I was blessed to meet Ms
Rosa Parks as a college student doing research for a sociology
paper on the movement. She became a mentor to me and other
students at all white Huntingdon College. Once, when trapped in a
Montgomery church, Ms. Parks helped five students escape arrest,
but not before saying to me, "Bob, when you see something
wrong you have to do something about it. You must take
action&&&you can't study injustice forever."
Don't morn Wisconsin, organize!
Bob Zellner
June 12, 2012
Copyright & 2012, Bob Zellner
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