After the Tall Timber (16 page)

By Thursday afternoon, so many resolutions had been passed that the committee established a subcommittee to improve the literary style of all its previous resolutions. Then, perhaps dissatisfied because there was so little left to do, Garskof deplored the lack of black representation on the Steering Committee. Since he was on the Steering Committee himself and should have known better, it was odd that he should make such a complaint, but his beard—even in the context of new radicalism—was an eccentric one, running straight, dense, and furry back along the underside of his chin, never touching his jaws at all, and it is not unlikely that he was just trying to liven things up a little. Two resolutions were immediately passed: one expressing grief over the separatism of the Black Caucus, and the other deploring the lack of black representation on the Steering Committee. Martin Peretz, an instructor in government at Harvard and a member of the convention’s executive board, objected. “You are trying to railroad chaos through this convention,” he said, and he deplored the committee’s “militant ignorance.” (Later, Peretz said to Todd Gitlin, of Chicago’s JOIN Community Union, that he resented the implication that the Steering Committee had been “coopted.” “Don’t let’s get up tight about cooptation,” Gitlin replied.)

In any case, more than half the Committee on Resolutions ultimately walked out, to form a Whites in Support of the Black Caucus Caucus, and what turned out to be the major preoccupation of the convention—attitudes toward the Black Caucus—was established. From then on, there was so much talk of caucuses of one sort or another—the White Radical Caucus, the White Revolutionary Caucus, the Radical Alternatives Caucus, the Poor People’s Caucus, the Women Strike for Peace Caucus, the Mobilization Caucus, the Labor Caucus, the California Caucus, the Anti-King-Spock Caucus—that delegates seemed to be not so much discussing a New Politics as croaking mating calls to one another from adjoining lily pads. On Thursday evening, the Black Caucus itself consisted mainly of local Chicago teen-agers and Black Nationalists, who ordered (and charged to the convention) a lavish meal, and who advocated withdrawing from the New Politics Convention altogether, to join a Black People’s Convention to be held on the other side of town. The Reverend Ralph Abernathy, of Dr. King’s Southern Christian Leadership Conference, however, briefly entered the group with what he called “some of our folk,” and persuaded the others to remain—for a while, at least—with the still nominally integrated New Politics Convention.

Thursday night, in Chicago’s Coliseum, a large, ugly stone fortification on the South Side, the full convention met for the first time. Julian Bond, the convention’s co-chairman, was introduced by the moderator, Ossie Davis, as “a black terror in tennis shoes.” He spoke briefly and then left the Coliseum, and he took no further part in the convention. Dick Gregory delivered one of his less effective monologues, in an apparent attempt to unite the convention by offering an apologia for its more extreme elements (“Every Jew in America over thirty years old knows another Jew that hates niggers. Well, it’s even, baby”). He remained with the convention another day and then left to march for open housing in Milwaukee. And Dr. King delivered his keynote speech, a long and, for him, rather flat peroration, in a tired voice. As he spoke, some local black teen-agers shouted threats and insults at him from the back of the room. Black members of the audience tried to quiet them down, but within moments a few self-styled members of SNCC were charging through the crowd whispering “Make way for Rap Brown.” (This never failed to produce an awed “Where? Where?” from whatever white radicals were nearby.)

The Reverend Andrew Young, of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (a member of the convention’s executive board), turned to a white liberal lawyer with whom he had worked on many campaigns in the South. “These cats don’t know the country has taken a swing to the right,” he said. “I wish the violence and riots had political significance, but they don’t.”

“They just have political consequences,” the lawyer said.

“Yeah. All bad,” the Reverend Mr. Young said. He left the convention that evening.

Some teen-agers marked a cardboard box “Contributions for Our Black Brothers in Prison,” and laughed loudly whenever whites dropped money in it. Two photographers who attempted to take pictures of these transactions were threatened (“You gonna lose that camera”), and it was only the quiet appearance of Dick Gregory, who caught two boys in a rather firm, friendly grip around the neck from behind, that dispersed the teen-agers. “Why, here’s Brother Dick Gregory,” they said, and they walked away, laughing and slapping each other’s palms.

Dr. King left the convention the following morning.

At the convention’s first official plenary session, on Friday morning, at the Palmer House, Gary Weissman, the chairman of the plenary (he had been an officer of the National Student Association but had abandoned it for the SDS), announced to the delegates, whom he addressed as “Brothers and Sisters,” that “the purpose of this convention is to enable the delegates to do what they wish to do.”

Arthur Waskow, of the Steering Committee, immediately introduced a motion for the democratization of the Steering Committee with “members of all regions and all caucuses, if they feel they are not represented.”

Sidney Lens, of the Labor Caucus, said, “Brother Chairman, I would move that the proposal be amended to include on the Steering Committee fifty per cent of the black people, to represent the thousands and millions who for four hundred years  . . .”

In one of the long speeches that ensued (there were references to “this convention, with all its beauty and power” and to “this Chicago palace, with the country looking on”), someone referred to Appalachia as being in “the South,” and a delegate rose to denounce this symptom of insensitivity to the problems of Appalachia. Someone proposed an amendment to Lens’ proposal, and he accepted it. The chairman pronounced this acceptance out of order. Lens disagreed. “Brother Chairman,” he said, “I’ve been thirty years a labor bureaucrat, and if I don’t know that I don’t know anything.”

Many delegates questioned whether the plenary should continue to meet unless the Black Caucus joined it.

Paul Booth, a former national secretary of SDS, rose and threatened, if the discussion went on much longer without a consensus, to move to table whatever motion was on the floor.

A Mrs. Warfield, a black woman from Rochester, rose to suggest that she lead a delegation to the Black Caucus, wherever it was currently being held, to express understanding of whatever its demands might currently be.

Someone denounced this proposal as out of order, but the chairman disagreed. “This body is free to be as parliamentary as it likes,” he said.

“Perhaps we could use the old Steering Committee as adviser to the new Steering Committee,” a delegate proposed, referring to the motion for more black representation on the Steering Committee.

“What is the criterion for being black?” someone asked. Since one of the delegates in the Black Caucus was Miss Grace Suzuki, this was not an altogether unreasonable question.

“It won’t hurt the convention to send a delegation,” Mrs. War-field said, rather impatiently. “I’ll be standing here, if anyone wants to approach me.”

“I’ll tell you who’s black,” another speaker began. “If you were with us in Detroit, if you were with us in Newark, and Watts, and Cincinnati  . . .”

Mrs. Warfield began to lead her delegation—ten or eleven whites and four blacks—out of the room.

The motion was put to a vote. “What will mean an aye vote and what will mean a no vote?” someone shouted. There was no answer.

The motion passed.

Someone proposed that the plenary adjourn until the Black Caucus had given its response to Mrs. Warfield, but the Chair ruled him out of order and shut off his microphone.

A delegate from Indiana rose to deplore the enlargement of the Steering Committee.

“You are debating a motion that has already passed—is that correct?” the chairman asked.

“That is correct,” the delegate replied.

Mrs. Warfield’s delegation never found the Black Caucus—or, rather, Mrs. Warfield left her delegation behind while she sought out all rooms that happened to have blacks in them. “Don’t discuss among yourselves,” she said as she left. “There will only be so much confusion.” The members of the delegation stayed on a staircase, adjuring one another not to talk, for fear of government agencies and the press. Mrs. Warfield returned to them briefly, to announce that she would continue her search. “Go back to the convention floor,” she said. “Remember who you are—the committee to bring a black structure into this convention.” Barry Jones, a black who had actually participated in the Black Caucus, kept repeating that the caucus had disbanded earlier in the day. The whites ignored him. “Darling, not in the presence of the press,” a white woman said. Mr. Jones gave up.

Friday afternoon, in what had been described in the convention program as “a panel discussion of perspectives,” a number of people delivered speeches. In the middle of a discourse by Manhattan Councilman Weiss, who argued, not altogether tastefully, that the regular Democratic Party might still give dissidents “a couple of shots at Lyndon Johnson—speaking figuratively, of course,” Floyd McKissick, of CORE, preceded by five blacks in a flying wedge, walked down an empty aisle to the platform. By the time Weiss had finished speaking, all the chairs on the platform were occupied, and he unceremoniously climbed off. McKissick, standing between two impassive, bearded, gum-chewing blacks in fezzes and khaki jackets (one of whom performed a sort of ballet with his hands while McKissick was speaking), began his speech.

In the two years since the Mississippi March and the advent of the Black Power slogan, McKissick has tried to remain in touch with radicals and liberals alike, keeping his public utterances wild and his private influence moderate. It is a strange course to take, and the effort has told on him. His rhetoric veers back and forth from center to extreme. His head bobs and his voice climbs octaves. He blinks continuously. In describing the destruction wrought by Molotov cocktails, his words to the white man were “Hell, man. You made this problem. You clean it up.” He spoke of “the twin brothers, capitalism and racism,” and he referred to all blacks who had risen to positions of national influence not as “blacks” but, contemptuously, as “Negroes.” Then he remarked that no good could come to the black people from the New Politics Convention (he subsequently withdrew CORE from the Conference entirely), and invited all whites to attend the Black People’s Convention that night instead. (Later, apparently under pressure from members of the Black Caucus, he revoked the invitation.) Preceded by the flying wedge, he left.

Robert Scheer then made a speech urging that the convention address itself to “the vicious nightmare” (boredom, wife hatred, alienation) of life in white America. Like many radicals, he managed to refer to the unarguable proposition that material affluence has not brought complete happiness, and to make the reference itself sound like an alternative offer. He seemed to imply that a revolution of the prosperous was imminent. Regarded by many as the Bobby Kennedy of the New Left (since the New Left thinks it bitterly opposes the real Bobby Kennedy), he was given a standing ovation. Another white radical, Robert Cook, formerly of the Yale SDS, now of the New Haven AIM (American Independent Movement), argued that whites should support black riots by diverting police to other areas during the looting and sniping in the ghetto. He was applauded also.

That night, the White Revolutionary Caucus (which consisted mainly of pale, thin, bespectacled women and pale, torpid men, making plans for guerrilla warfare) barred blacks from its meeting; the White Radical Caucus (which consisted mainly of members of SDS, Vietnam Summer, and other local-project organizations) plotted to sway the convention from a national ticket, in order to use the Conference mainly as a servicing facility for the local organizers; and the Black Caucus—despite a last-minute plea from McKissick, who made a brief appearance there—voted to submit its thirteen proposals, along with an ultimatum stating that if they were not passed by noon of the following day the Black Caucus would leave the convention. All through the night, in an orgy of confession about their childhood feelings toward blacks, the whites on the Steering Committee considered the ultimatum. Ivanhoe Donaldson, a black member of SNCC, argued that since the blacks at the convention were the only radicals really “in motion,” no real white radicals should balk at the letter of their demands. There was a great deal of soul-searching by whites. (“I have thirty years of working for civil rights,” a white liberal said. “At least, nobody can take that away from me.” Whereupon, with some dime-store analysis of his motives, they took it away from him.) Martin Peretz walked out. The Steering Committee voted to submit the ultimatum to a “special plenary,” to be called the following morning, and by dawn most of its members were ready to pronounce themselves “radicalized.”

Casady announced to a crowded Grand Ballroom on Saturday morning that a session’s declaring itself a plenary did not make it so and that he could not participate in an extra-legal plenary. Then he too walked out. (His walkout, with Peretz’s of the preceding night, initiated a kind of daily ritual; the few responsible whites at the convention often found themselves walking out, only to walk right back in, and out again.) The front center section of the plenary was roped off and reserved for members of the Black Caucus, creating the impression that if only someone had thought to rope off the back of the buses in Birmingham and shout “Black Power!” the civil-rights movement would never have been necessary. Gary Weissman, who again presided, let the gathering “formally, duly convene itself as a plenary,” and thereafter granted what he called “the indulgence of the Chair” to all deviations from parliamentary procedure that were favorable to the ultimatum. A woman who pointed out that one of the resolutions endorsed “wars of liberation,” though many at the convention were pacifists, was ruled out of order. Several members of the Steering Committee, in the first of what became a series of conspiratorial jags, spoke in favor of accepting the ultimatum. The white radicals argued that the thirteen proposals should be accepted, regardless of their content, which was pronounced “irrelevant.” (White radicals were constantly consigning matters, and people, of substance to some limbo of irrelevance.) Sidney Lens, representing the Labor Caucus, favored “not proposing to split words or commas or periods.” Everyone seemed determined to foster a black illusion that the only whites interested in political cooperation were those who would accept terms of complete capitulation. Robert Scheer, who got up to make a motion to go the “Zionist imperialism” resolution one better, was inadvertently shouted down. In a heated interchange with the chairman, Charles Samson, who at that point was spokesman for the Black Caucus, denied Scheer’s right to speak at all. “All of a sudden this person pops up,” Samson said, pointing at Scheer in absolute outrage, “and he wants to make an amendment.” Several blacks who wished to speak against the adoption of the proposals were hustled from the room by enforcers from the Black Caucus, and threatened and silenced outside. One of the enforcers who ushered several blacks out was an African Nationalist from California who was rumored to be the United Nations Ambassador from Tanzania. The ultimatum was accepted, three to one, and the plenary closed after the chairman proposed, and declared adopted by acclamation, a resolution to send a congratulatory telegram to Ho Chi Minh on the occasion of the twenty-second anniversary of Vietnamese independence.