Dr. King Planning Protests To ‘Dislocate’ Large Cities (1967)
Dr. King Planning Protests To ‘Dislocate’ Large Cities (1967)
Massive but Nonviolent Campaign Is Sought, Before Congress Adjourns, to Get Federal Aid for Negroes
By GENE ROBERTS Special to The New York Times
ATLANTA, Aug. 15 – The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said today that he planned to dislocate Northern cities with massive but nonviolent demonstrations of civil disobedience before Congress adjourns its current session.
The civil rights leader told delegates to the annual convention of his Southern Christian Leadership Conference that he had decided on the step to provide an alternative to rioting and to gain large Federal spending programs for impoverished Negroes.
To dislocate the functioning of a city without destroying it can be more effective than a riot because it can be longer lasting, costly to the society but not wantonly destructive, Dr. King said. Moreover, it is more difficult for Government to quell it by superior force.
Mass civil disobedience, he added, can use rage as a constructive and creative force.
Dr. King announced also that he would meet with his staff in about two weeks to discuss the specifics of the civil disobedience campaign and to consider such tactics as weekly school boycotts, blocking plant gates with unemployed Negroes and disrupting governmental operations with sit-in demonstrations in Federal buildings.
The ultimate objective of any demonstration, Dr. King made clear, will be to draw Congress and President Johnson into responding to Negro demands for jobs, improved housing, better education and more intensive enforcement of existing civil rights legislation.
Our real problem is that there is no disposition by the Administration nor Congress to seek fundamental remedies beyond police measures, he said. The tragic truth is that Congress, more than the American people, is now running wild with racism.
The idea of massive civil disobedience in the North is not new with Dr. King, although he has never committed himself to it as firmly as he did today. A year ago, he briefly discussed jamming the freeways of Chicago and other Northern cities with Negro sit-in demonstrators, but abandoned the project after white mobs attacked his open-housing marches with rocks and bottles in Chicago.
Campaign Delayed
Some of his aides said then that in delaying his civil disobedience campaign, Dr. King was acting on the advice of people who felt that further demonstrations could touch off still more racial strife in the Chicago area.
Now, according to some of the same aides, he believes that Negroes will not stop rioting unless they are presented with alternative ways of militant protest.
It is purposeless to tell Negroes they should not be enraged when they should be, Dr. King said today. Indeed, they will be mentally healthier if they do not suppress rage but vent it constructively and use its energy peacefully but forcefully to cripple the operations of an oppressive society. Civil disobedience can utilize the militance wasted in riots to seize clothes or groceries many do not even want.
However, Dr. King is almost certain to encounter major difficulties in carrying out massive civil disobedience campaigns, particularly if he should decide to center the assault on Washington.
No Grass-Roots Staff
One problem is that he has no grass-roots organizing staff working in Negro neighborhoods in Washington, and might be forced to transport demonstrators to the city from other areas. This could seriously tax his organization’s financial resources, which have dropped considerably since the Selmato-Montgomery protest march in 1965.
His staff is also scattered in Chicago, Cleveland and the South – and probably would have to be regrouped before any massive campaign could be undertaken.
But for all the problems, Dr. King clearly wants to create what he terms a nonviolent confrontation between Negroes and the Johnson Administration and Congress. He said that in voting down a rat control bill and cutting back on several poverty programs, Congress had shown itself to be more anti-Negro than anti-rat.
He also criticized President Johnson-although not by name – for escalating the war in Vietnam, rather than diverting defense money to a war on slums.
Source: The New York Times 8/16/67
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