American Experiment

by James Macgregor Burns

  [Baker and SCLC]: see Morris, pp. 103-4, 112-15, Cantarow and O’Malley, p. 84; Garrow, Bearing, pp. 120-21, 131, 141.

  358 [Formation of SNCC]: Morris, pp. 215-21; Carson, ch. 2; James Forman, The Making of Black Revolutionaries (Macmillan, 1972), ch. 29; Raines, book 1, ch. 2 passim, and book 1, ch. 5; Zinn, pp. 33-36; Oates, pp. 154-55.

  [“Direct their own affairs”]: Baker interview with Clayborne Carson, New York, May 5, 1972.

  [“Foundation of our purpose”]: SNCC founding statement, in Judith C. Albert and Stewart E. Albert, eds., The Sixties Papers: Documents of a Rebellious Decade (Praeger, 1984), quoted at p. 113.

  [“He is the movement”]: Ella Baker, “Developing Community Leadership,” in Gerda Lerner, ed., Black Women in White America (Pantheon, 1972), quoted at p. 351. [“We are all leaders”]: quoted in Morris, p. 231.

  [An American Dilemma]: Myrdal, An American Dilemma: The Negro Problem and Modem Democracy (“Twentieth Anniversary Edition”: Harper, 1962), quoted at p. 1023.

  [King on Bay of Pigs]: quoted in Oates, p. 173.

  [King-Kennedy meeting]: ibid., p. 172; see also Harris Wofford, Of Kennedys and Kings: Making Sense of the Sixties (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1980), pp. 128-29.

  [The Kennedy White House and the civil rights movement]: Burke Marshall Papers, esp. boxes 17-19, John F. Kennedy Library.

  [“Or the Devil himself”]: quoted in Carl M. Brauer, John F. Kennedy and the Second Reconstruction (Columbia University Press, 1977), p. 48.

  [‘“Terrible ambivalence”’]: Schlesinger, A Thousand Days: John F. Kennedy in the White House (Houghton Mifflin, 1965), p. 930; see also Brauer, ch. 3; James L. Sundquist, Politics and Policy: The Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Johnson Years (Brookings Institution, 1968), pp. 256-59; John Hart, “Kennedy, Congress and Civil Rights,” Journal of American Studies, vol. 13, no. 1 (April 1979), pp. 165-78; Steven F. Lawson, Black Ballots: Voting Rights in the South, 1944-1969 (Columbia University Press, 1976), ch. 9; Wofford, ch. 5; Bruce Miroff, Pragmatic Illusions: The Presidential Politics of John F. Kennedy (David McKay, 1976), ch. 6 passim; Victor S. Navasky, Kennedy Justice (Atheneum, 1971), pp. 96-99.

  Marching as to War

  361 [1961 Freedom Rides]: Zinn, ch. 3; Carson, ch. 3; Raines, book 1, ch. 3; Morris, pp. 231-36; James Peck, Freedom Ride (Simon and Schuster, 1962), chs. 8-9; Forman, ch. 18; Brauer, pp. 98-111; James Farmer, Lay Bare the Heart: An Autobiography of the Civil Rights Movement (Arbor House, 1985), chs. 17-18; Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., Robert Kennedy and His Times (Houghton Mifflin, 1978), pp. 294-300; Wofford, pp. 151-58; Meier and Rudwick, ch. 5; Oates, pp. 174-78.

  [“Movement on wheels”]: Raines, p. 110.

  [“As we entered”]: Peck, p. 128.

  [FBI informant on beatings]: Gary Thomas Rowe, Jr., quoted in Schlesinger, Robert Kennedy, p. 295.

  [“Stop them”]: quoted in Wofford, p. 153.

  [“Have been cooling off”]: quoted in Farmer, p. 206.

  [“All on probation”]: ibid., p. 207.

  [King-Kennedy exchange]: quoted in Schlesinger, Robert Kennedy, pp. 299-300.

  364 [Albany]: Carson, ch. 5; Garrow, Bearing, ch. 4; Morris, pp. 239-50; Oates, pp. 188- 201; Brauer, pp. 168-79; Zinn, ch. 7; Forman, ch. 33.

  [“Just speak for us”]: William G. Anderson, quoted in Oates, p. 189.

  [Sherrod on the singing]: quoted in Forman, p. 247; see also Bernice Johnson Reagon, “Songs of the Civil Rights Movement, 1955-1965: A Study in Culture History” (doctoral dissertation; Howard University, 1975), chs. 2, 3, 5; Reagon, “In Our Hands: Thoughts on Black Music,” Sing Out!, vol. 24, no. 6 (January-February 1976), pp. l ff.

  [Brauer on “Pritchett’s jails”]: Brauer, p. 177.

  365 [Meredith]: Metcalf, pp. 219-54; Brauer, ch. 7; Schlesinger, Robert Kennedy, pp. 317- 27; Navasky, ch. 4 passim.

  [“Nobody handpicked me”]: quoted in Schlesinger, Robert Kennedy, p. 317. [Barrett on “that boy”]: ibid., p. 319.

  366 [“Sense of Southern history”]: Edwin Guthman, quoted in ibid., p. 325; see also Brauer, p. 204.

  [“Republic had been trapped”]: Schlesinger, Robert Kennedy, p. 326.

  [“Breaking out”]: quoted in ibid., p. 327.

  [Black disagreements over goals and strategy]: see Carson, ch. 3 passim: Garrow, Bearing, pp. 216-30 passim; Forman, ch. 31; Martin Luther King, Jr., Why We Can’t Wait (Harper, 1964), chs. 2, 8 passim; Lomax, ch. 12.

  367 [The “magic city”]; see King, Why We Can’t Wait, pp. 37-43; Morris, pp. 257-58; Silver, passim.

  [Birmingham campaign]: King, Why We Can’t Wait; Garrow, Bearing, pp. 231-64; Oates, pp. 209-43; Morris, pp. 250-74; Raines, book 1, ch. 1, part1; Forman, ch. 40. 367-8 [“Letter from Birmingham Jail”]: in King, Why We Can’t Wait, ch. 5, quoted at pp. 82, 83, 87, 91; see also Wesley T. Mott, “The Rhetoric of Martin Luther King. Jr : Letter from Birmingham Jail”, Phylon, vol. 36, no. 4 (Winter 1975), pp. 411-21.

  368 [The movement and the media]: see Garrow, Bearing, pp. 247-50; Catherine A. Barnes, Journey from Jim Crow: The Desegregation of Southern Transit (Columbia University Press, 1983), p. 203; Mary King, esp. ch. 6.

  [“Fan the fames”]: quoted in I.ois L. Duke, “Cultural Redefinition of News: Racial Issues in South Carolina, 1954-1984” (doctoral dissertation; University of South Carolina, 1979), p. 175.

  [“Doesn’t live down here”]: quoted in Garrow, Bearing, p. 257.

  369 [Kennedy on photo of dog attack]: quoted in Brauer, p. 238.

  [“Above all, it is wrong”]: Special Message to the Congress on Civil Rights, February 28, 1963, in Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States. John F. Kennedy (U.S. Government Printing Of?ìce, 1962-64), vol. 3, pp. 221-30, quoted at p. 222; see also Brauer, pp. 211-29; Theodore C. Sorensen, Kennedy (Harper, 1965), pp. 493-96; Oates, p. 214.

  [King on Kennedy proposals]: quoted in Brauer, p. 228.

  [Robert Kennedy’s meeting with blacks]: Schlesinger, Robert Kennedy, pp. 330-35, Smith quoted at p. 332, Horne at p. 333, Kennedy at p. 334, Schlesinger at p. 335; Brauer, pp. 242-45.

  370 [Tuscaloosa confrontation]: Brauer, pp. 252-59; Marshall Frady, Wallace (New American Library, 1975), pp148-70; Schlesinger, Robert Kennedy, pp. 337-42; see also Robert J. Norrell, Reaping the Whirlwind: The Civil Rights Movement in Tuskegee (Knopf, 1985), chs. 9-10.

  [“Draw the line”]: quoted in Jody Carlson, George C. Wallace and the Politics of Powerlessness (Transaction Books, 1981), p. 24.

  [“Segregation now!”]: quoted in Frady, p. 142.

  [“Out-nigguhed”]: quoted in Carlson, p. 22.

  [“Negro baby born”]: in Kennedy Public Papers, vol. 3, pp. 468-71, quoted at pp. 468, 469.

  370-1 [Kennedy’s proposals and their reception]: June 19, 1963, in ibid., vol. 3, pp. 483-94; Sorensen, pp. 496-504; Oates, pp. 243-45; Sundquist, pp. 259-65; Brauer, pp. 245-52, 259-64, and ch10 passim: see also Steven F. Lawson, “ ‘I Got It from The New York Times’: Lyndon Johnson and the Kennedy Civil Rights Program,” Journal of Negro History, vol. 67, no. 2 (Summer 1982), pp. 159-72.

  371 [March on Washington]: New York Times, August 29, 1963, pp. 1, 16-21; Oates, pp. 246-47, 256-64; Garrow, Bearing, pp. 265-86 passim; Schlesinger, Robert Kennedy, pp. 349-52; Carson, ch. 7; Brauer, pp. 272-73, 290-93; Forman, ch. 43.

  [“May seem ill-timed”]: quoted in Schlesinger, Robert Kennedy, p. 350. [Lewis’s speech at March]: Carson, pp. 91-95, quoted at p. 95.

  371-2 [King’s speech at March]: Oates, pp. 261-62, quoted at p. 262.

  372 [Post-March meeting with Kennedy]: Garrow, Bearing, p. 285.

  [Wilkins on Kennedy]: quoted in Oates, p. 262.

  [Moody]: Moody, Coming of Age in Mississippi (Dial, 1968), p. 275.

  [“Fuck that dream”]: quoted in Schlesinger, Robert Kennedy, p. 351.

  [Evers shooting and Kennedy]: New York Times, June 13, 1963, pp. 1, 12-13; ibid., June 21, 1963, p. 14; Metcalf, pp. 195-218; Schlesinger, Robert Kennedy, pp. 344-45.

  [Arrests in South]: see Theodore H. Whi
le, The Making of the President: 1964 (Atheneum, 1965), p. 171.

  [Birmingham church bombing]: New York Times, September 16, 1963, pp. 1, 26; Oates, pp. 267-69.

  372-3 [Dallas 1963]: William Manchester, The Death of a President (Harper, 1967), pp. 34-51 passim; Herbert S. Parmet, JFK: The Presidency of John F. Kennedy (Dial, 1983), pp. 340, 344-45.

  373 [WANTED FOR TREASON]: quoted in Parmet, p. 340.

  [Kennedy in Texas]: ibid., pp. 341-46; Manchester, book 1 passim.

  373 [“That’ll add interest”]: quoted in Parmet, p. 341.

  [“You know the French author”]: Moynihan papers, Nixon Administration Papers, Subject File II, excerpt from interview, December 5, 1963, uncatalogued folder.

  [“Caught in cross currents”]: quoted in James MacGregor Burns, John Kennedy: A Political Profile (Harcourt, 1960), p. 155.

  [“Historic crossroad”]: Mark Stern, “Black Interest Group Pressure on the Executive: John F. Kennedy as Politician,” paper prepared for delivery at the 1987 Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, King quoted at p. 51. [Baker’s principle]: quoted in Mary King, p. 456 (italics added).

  We Shall Overcome

  [The Johnson White House and the civil rights struggle]: Burke Marshall Papers, esp. boxes 17-19, John F. Kennedy Library.

  [“Talked long enough”]: in The Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: Lyndon B. Johnson (U.S. Government Printing Office, 1965-70), vol. 1, part 1, pp. 8-10, quoted at p. 9. On the ambivalence of LBJ over civil rights legislation when Vice President in 1963, as contrasted with his presidential leadership, see telephone conversation between LBJ and Theodore Sorensen, Edison Dictaphone recording, June 3, 1963, Lyndon B. Johnson Library.

  376 [“Resort to arson”]: quoted in Charles Whalen and Barbara Whalen, The Longest Debate: A Legislative History of the 1964 Civil Rights Act (Seven Locks Press, 1985), p. 90.

  [“Nefarious bill”]: ibid., p. 91.

  [Smith and “sex” amendment]: ibid., pp. 115-17; Carl M. Brauer, “Women Activists, Southern Conservatives, and the Prohibition of Sex Discrimination in Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act,” Journal of Southern History, vol. 49, no. 1 (February 1983), pp. 37-56.

  [House passage of civil rights bill]: Whalen and Whalen, p. 121; Sundquist, p. 266 and p. 266 n. 144; see also Joe R. Feagin, “Civil Rights Voting by Southern Congressmen,” Journal of Politics, vol. 34, no. 2 (May 1972), pp. 484-99.

  [Senate filibuster]: Whalen and Whalen, chs. 5-7; Sundquist, pp. 267-69.

  [“To the last ditch”]: Russell, quoted in Whalen and Whalen, p. 142.

  [Thurmond’s filibuster record]: ibid., p. 143.

  377 [“Billion dollar blackjack”]: ibid., p. 145.

  [Russell on lobbyists]: quoted in Sundquist, p. 268.

  [Length of Senate debate]: see ibid., p. 267 n. 146.

  [“Bill can’t pass”]: quoted in Whalen and Whalen, p. 148.

  [Aide on LBJ and Dirksen]: quoted in Sundquist, p. 268.

  377-8 [Senate approval of cloture and bill]: ibid., pp. 269-70; Whalen and Whalen, pp. 199-200; see also Rowland Evans and Robert Novak, Lyndon B. Johnson: The Exercise of Power (New American Library, 1966), pp. 76-80.

  [“More abiding commitment”]: in Johnson Public Papers, vol. 1, part 2, pp. 842-44, quoted at p. 843.

  [Provisions of civil rights bill]: see Whalen and Whalen, pp. 239-42 (Appendix).

  378-9 [Hamer on Ruleville meeting]: Hamer, To Raise Our Bridges (KIPCO, 1967), p. 12.

  379 [Hamer]: Hamer; Raines, pp. 249-55; Zinn, pp. 93-96; Susan Kling, “Fannie Lou Hamer: Baptism by Fire,” in Pam McAllister, ed., Reweaving the Web of Life: Feminism and Nonviolence (New Society, 1982), pp. 106-11; Mary King, pp. 140-44.

  [“Just listenin’ at ’em”]: quoted in Raines, p. 249.

  [Hamer on literacy test]: ibid., p. 250. [“Too yellow”]: Hamer, p. 12.

  [Reprisals against Hamer]: ibid., p. 13; Zinn, p. 94; Raines, pp. 250-51.

  [Mississippi voter registration drive]: Carson, chs. 4, 8, 9; Zinn, chs. 4-6; Forman, chs. 30, 34, 36, 38, 48; Sally Belfrage, Freedom Summer (Viking, 1965); Mary A. Rothschild, A Case of Black and White: Northern Volunteers and the Southern Freedom Summers, 1964-1965 (Greenwood Press, 1982); Meier and Rudwick, CORE, ch. 9; Emily Stoper, “The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee: Rise and Fall of a Redemptive Organization,” Journal of Black Studies, vol. 8, no. 1 (September 1977), pp. 13-34; Bob Moses, “Mississippi: 1961-1962,” Liberation, vol. 14, no. 9 (January 1970), pp. 7-17; Cantarow and O’Malley, pp. 86-88; Seth Cagin and Philip Dray, We Are Not Afraid (Macmillan, 1988).

  379 [Baker’s mediation at Highlander]: Carson, pp. 41-42.

  380 [“Born in prison”]: quoted in Zinn, p. 80.

  [Hamer on jail beatings]: Raines, pp. 253-54, quoted at p. 253; Hamer, p. 14.

  [Casting of “freedom ballots”]: Zinn, pp. 98-101; Carson, pp. 97-98; Forman, pp. 354-56.

  [MFDP]: Carson, pp. 108-9, 117; ‘‘Belfrage, ch. 12; Hanes Walton, Jr., Black Political Parties (Free Press, 1972), pp. 80-95.

  381 [“Extraordinary inner sense”]: Belfrage, p. 201.

  [MFDP at Democratic convention]: Forman, pp. 384-97; Carson, pp. 123-28; Mary King, pp. 343-52; Belfrage, pp. 236-46; Walton, pp. 95-103; White, pp. 277-82; Silkoff, pp. 179-85; Evans and Novak, pp. 451-56.

  [“Popcorn and seaweed”]: Belfrage, p. 240.

  [“Woesome time”]: quoted in Raines, p. 252.

  [“I question America”]: “The Life of Fannie Lou Hamer,” Pacifica radio program (Pacifica Radio Archive, Los Angeles).

  381-2 [“Come all this way”]: quoted in Forman, p. 395.

  382 [1964 election]: White, passim; John Bartlow Martin, “Election of 1964,” in Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., History of American Presidential Elections, 1789-1968 (Chelsea House, 1971), vol. 4, pp. 3565-94; ibid., p. 3702; Eric Goldman, The Tragedy of Lyndon Johnson (Knopf, 1969), chs. 8-10; Evans and Novak, chs. 20-21; Robert D. Novak, The Agony of the G.O.P., 1964 (Macmillan, 1965); John H. Kessel, The Goldwater Coalition: Republican Strategies in 1964 (Bobbs-Merrill, 1968); Richard H. Rovere, The Goldwater Caper (Harcourt, 1965); Samuel A. Kirkpatrick, “Issue Orientation and Voter Choice in 1964,” Social Science Quarterly, vol. 49, no. 1 (June 1968), pp. 87-102.

  [Southern black voting, 1964]: James C. Harvey, Black Civil Rights During the Johnson Administration (University and College Press of Mississippi, 1973), p. 27 (Table 1).

  [Selma and Voting Rights Act]: David J. Garrow, Protest at Selma: Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Voting Rights Act of 1961 (Yale University Press, 1978); Charles E. Fager, Selma 1965: The March That Changed the South (Scribner, 1974); Garrow, Bearing, ch. 7; Sundquist, pp. 271-75; Raines, book 1, ch. 4, part 2; Wofford, ch. 6; Lawson, pp. 307-22; Carson, pp. 157-62; Mary King, pp. 216-28; Oates, pp. 325-65 passim, 369-72.

  383 [“Put on their walking shoes”]: quoted in Garrow, Bearing, p. 403.

  [“Turning point”]: “The American Promise,” March 15, 1965, in Johnson Public Papers, vol. 2, part 1, pp. 281-87, quoted at p. 281.

  [“Mudcaked pilgrims”]: Fager, p. 158.

  384 [“How long?”]: quoted in ibid., p. 162.

  [Murder of Viola Luizzo]: ibid., pp. 163-64; Garrow, Protest, pp. 117-18; Wade, pp. 347-54.

  [“They came in darkness”]: August 6, 1965, in Johnson Public Papers, vol. 2, part 2, pp. 840-43, quoted at p. 840.

  [Conflict within SNCC]: Carson, part 2 passim; Forman, chs. 62-63; Mary King, chs. 12-13 passim.

  385 [Black migration, 1960-70]: Thomas L. Blair, Retreat from the Ghetto: The End of a Dream? (Hill and Wang, 1977), p. 228; see also John D. Reid, “Black Urbanization of the South,” Phylon, vol. 35, no. 3 (Fall 1974), pp. 259-67; Hollis R. Lynch, ed., The Black Urban Condition: A Documentary History, 1866-1971 (Crowell, 1973), pp. 439-40 (Appendix D).

  [Black proportion of urban populations by 1960]: Kenneth B. Clark, Dark Ghetto: Dilemmas of Social Power (Harper, 1965), pp. 24 (Tables 2 and 2A), p. 25 (Table 3). [Cost
of being black and of discrimination]: Paul M. Siegel, “On the Cost of Being a Negro,” in John F. Kain, ed., Race and Poverty: The Economics of Discrimination (Prentice-Hall, 1969), pp. 60-67, quoted at p. 67; and Council of Economic Advisers, “The Economic Cost of Discrimination” (1965), in ibid., pp. 58-59.

  [Clark’s Harlem]: Clark, quoted on his family’s movements at p. xv; see also U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, A Time to Listen … A Time to Act: Voices from the Ghettoes of the Nation’s Cities (U.S. Government Printing Office, 1967); Paul Jacobs, Prelude to Riot: A View of Urban America from the Bottom (Random House, 1967); Daniel R. Fusfeld and Timothy Bates, The Political Economy of the Urban Ghetto (Southern Illinois University Press, 1984); Robert Coles, “Like It Is in the Alley,” in David R. Goldfield and James B. Lane, eds., The Enduring Ghetto (Lippincott, 1973), pp. 104-15; James Baldwin, “Fifth Avenue Uptown,” in ibid., pp. 116-24.

  385 [“Anguished Cry”]: Clark, p. xx.

  [Street talk]: quoted in ibid., pp. 6, 16, 1, 4, respectively.

  385-6 [Malcolm X and the Black Muslims]: Malcolm X and Alex Haley, The Autobiography of Malcolm X (Grove Press, 1965); George Breitman, ed., Malcolm X Speaks (Grove Press, 1965); Eugene V. Wolfenstein, The Victims of Democracy: Malcolm X and the Black Revolution (University of California Press, 1981); Louis E. Lomax, When the Word Is Given … (Greenwood Press, 1963); Peter Goldman, The Death and Life of Malcolm X (Harper, 1973); C. Eric Lincoln, The Black Muslims in America, rev. ed. (Beacon Press, 1973); Blair, ch. 2; Oates, pp. 251-53; Hank Flick, “Malcolm X: The Destroyer and Creator of Myths,”Journal of Black Studies, vol. 12, no. 2 (December 1981), pp. 166-81; Peter Schrag, “The New Black Myths,” Harper’s, vol. 238, no. 1428 (May 1969), pp. 37-42; Lawrence L. Tyler, “The Protestant Ethic Among the Black Muslims,” Phylon, vol. 27, no. 1 (Spring 1966), pp. 5-14; Raymond Rodgers and Jimmie N. Rodgers, “The Evolution of the Attitude of Malcolm X toward Whites,” ibid., vol. 44, no. 1 (Spring 1983), pp. 108-15; Peter Goldman, “Malcolm X,” in John A. Garraty, ed., Encyclopedia of American Biography (Harper, 1974), pp. 723-24; Clifton E. Marsh, From Black Muslims to Muslims: The Transition from Separatism to Islam, 1930-1980 (Scarecrow Press, 1984); Elijah Muhammad, Message to the Black Man in America (Muhammad Mosque of Islam No. 2, 1965).