Because the Civil Rights movement in 1955 wasn’t a disorganized rabble unable to articulate objectives and formulate strategies devoid of positive PR. Parks wasn’t some random poor and tired Black seamstress that just for once refused to give up her seat to a white person. She was an experienced activist. Chosen because she could shine a light on injustice and ordinary white folks could empathize with this fine, hardworking, seamstress. There was nothing negative about Ms. Parks that could be used against her to undermine her stand.
Colvin was a fine, young black girl as well. But she was only fifteen years old. A protest operation to tackle the Montgomery Bus discrimination had not yet fully formed when she was arrested for refusing to move to “the back of the bus.” As it became more organized in the months after that, rallying around Colvin was still problematic because of her age but also because she was by then pregnant.
The political barrier and challenges fo BLM today aren’t anywhere near what they were for the civil rights movements in the 1940’s-1960’s. AA couldn’t vote throughout much of the south. Were denied seats in restaurants and theaters. Civil rights workers, both AA and white, were murdered. And they didn’t spend their time over-runing restaurants that welcomed both AA and white customers.
The defenses for the “BLM” actions that targetted Sanders have varied, but a few get repeated.
All you white liberals didn’t object to Code Pink actions.
No, we didn’t. Then again, in 2004 when Barbara Boxer was runnning for re-election, Code Pink didn’t oust her from the stage of a campaign rally and demand that she and her supporters do more about endeding the Iraq War and that no other issues were appropriate for her campaign than that one.
Yeah, well what about OWS?
OWS had difficulty holding on to their own mics. There weren’t at All Saint’s Episcopal Church, or any other liberal house of worship, pushing the preacher out of the pulpit. They weren’t picketing mom and pop stores or demanding to be fed by them.
White liberals are just too panty-waist to embrace in-your-face political actions
See above: Code Pink.
The lesson we can take from NAACP, SCLC action/protests and Rosa Parks is organize and get all your ducks in a row before commencing a protest. And recognize that results won’t come quickly or easily.
The Black Panther Party for Self-Defense was fighting a less apparent and possibly more insidious form of racism than what existed in the south. Unlike the economic deprivation that AA residents in the south had experienced for close to a hundred years with improvements for some but at a very slow pace, it wasn’t much more than a generation of AAs that migrated from the south to the west and midwest and experienced vastly improved financial circumstances before factory and low skill jobs began to disappear and with that their financial well-being.
In the west, white migration was strong from WWII on and the demarcation lines between communities of color and whites became more rigid and AAs were less able to spread out into surrounding communities as their population grew. Leaving school and other government services having to stretch a static of shrinking tax base over a larger population.
By the mid-sixties it was bad in Oakland and south central LA. There was a need for the BPP. However, with or without COINTELPRO to take them down and out, they alienated themselves from portions of the wider liberal community and foreshadowed the early demise when they picked up the guns.
There was no liberal/progressive/AA split at the time of this:
And many of us cheered for Tommie Smith and John Carlos as they gave their Black Power Salute in Mexico City.
Yet, could/should we have been in denial with regard to the murder of a cop (1967) by Huey Newton and ambush of Oakland police officers by Cleaver and Hutton two days after the assassination of MLK, Jr? Excuse, rationalize, dismiss?
Extremists, and seriously unbalanced people, do gravitate towards movements seeking a better life and/or way of being. But not so much formally joining such moverments but appropirating superficial symbols. In 1969, Manson cult murder sprees and
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Altamont_Free_Concert
violence at Altamont were to the DFHs what later the SLA was the the BPP. (Should add what the Weathermen were to the Anti-Vietnam War movement.)
Movements destroyed. Missions not accomplished. TPTB stronger than ever.
We all should have been more patient, listened better to the words of MLK, Jr, and never strayed from the long slog to completion of the task. Then again powerful and wealthy forces were against us, and we’re all too human and not half as smart as we need to be.
