Salient. Victoria University Student Newspaper. Volume 33, No. 2 4 March 1970
The Black Liberation Struggle
The Black Liberation Struggle
The Black struggle has come a long way from the days of sit-ins at segregated restaurants and Martin Luther King's pacifism Undoubtedly the symbol of today's struggle is Malcolm X, who was developing a revolutionary nationalist perspective just before he was murdered in February 1965. After a wave of ghetto uprisings, usually sparked by some excess on the part of police against black people. 1969 saw the opportunities for the struggle for black liberation mushroom.
Politically, there is s real crisis of leadership in these struggles In default of nationalist leaders the vacuum is filled by conservative and reformist elements such as the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and the Democratic Party.
The Black Panther Parry, which s year ago seemed to be on the point of achieving massive support from the black community, has dwindled everywhere. This is due to incredible pressure on and persecution of its leaders, notably Huey Newton, who has been in jail since mid-1968 an s trumped-up charge. Id response to this, the Panthers have failed to build adequate defence movements, and their programme seems to have degenerated in practice to rhetoric about "picking up the gun" and "offing the pigs" (that is, killing cops). There is now a greater gulf than ever before between the Pan then and the masses of exploited Blacks.
The Black struggle has in recent months been supplemented by a very active and fast-growing movement among Chicanos (Mexican-Americans) for self-determination. There are probably as many as 15 million Mexican-Americans, Irving mainly in the West and Southwest, but also occupying their own ethnic communities in the bigger northern industrial cities Brutally suppressed by whites in the days of the early settlers, the Chicanos today have a greater number of frontline troops in Vietnam in proportion to their population than even the Blacks.