Yes We Did?: From King's Dream to Obama's Promise

9. A Crisis of Victory

0 9. A Crisis of Victory As black leaders face an uncertain future in a society undergoing profound technological, economic, and cultural changes, many are worried about the condition of African Americans in the years ahead, and they wonder what kind of agenda to pursue. Just over forty years ago, as the civil rights movement drew to a close, and as Dr. martin Luther King Jr. lay dying on the balcony of the Lorraine motel, black leaders believed they knew exactly what black people needed to do: they needed to continue the struggle, of course. But what did that mean? In the intervening years, while black leaders have worked to answer this question, the civil rights movement has been transformed from a live movement to a historical event that is assigned just a page or two in most American history textbooks . But the image of martin Luther King Jr. has grown to be larger in death than it ever was in life; every January, a “grateful” nation celebrates and embraces the memory of King as a dead martyr more enthusiastically than it ever embraced the wisdom of King when he was a live preacher and activist. These days, scholars who study the black leadership agenda that emerged right after King’s death tend to agree with political scientist Robert Smith, who argues that by the mid-1970s, black leadership had reached a consensus on its goals. The goals included an employment program that “guarantees the right to useful and meaningful jobs for those willing and able to work” and reform of the welfare system so that recipients will have “a guaranteed annual income.” Among the other goals are national health insurance, tax reform, increased funding for all levels of education, and minority business initiatives.1 However, as today’s black leaders struggle to achieve these goals, they have been criticized by scholars who insist that the leaders have failed to achieve any meaningful accomplishments that will improve the position of African Americans . many scholars are convinced that on all fronts, black leadership in 0 Yes We Did? the twenty-first century is a colossal failure. The titles of recent studies of black leadership scream in frustration: We Have No Leaders: African Americans in the Post-Civil Rights Era, by Robert Smith; The Head Negro in Charge Syndrome: The Dead End of Black Politics, by Norman Kelley; The New H.N.I.C.: The Death of Civil Rights and the Reign of Hip Hop, by Todd Boyd; and Enough, by Juan Williams. In We Have No Leaders, a critical study of black leadership published in 1996, Robert C. Smith describes one of the most important characteristics of late-twentieth-century black leadership this way: “The most striking change in black leadership composition . . . is the decline between 1963 and 1990 in the percentage of civil rights and ‘glamor personalities ’ . . . and a sharp increase in the percentage of persons who are elected and appointed officials in government.”2 Smith argues that as this trend developed, it eventually created a major obstacle to the effectiveness of black leadership. “The incipient incorporation of black leadership into systemic institutions and processes has had the perhaps predictable consequence of further isolating black leadership from the community it would purport to lead.” In addition to the increasing isolation, Smith identifies what he considers an even more ominous development: “This process of incorporation has encouraged the creation of a new cadre of authentically white-created black leaders.”3 many of the members of this new group of white-created black leaders, Smith insists, form the nucleus of the ranks of modern black conservatives. He describes these people as “a well-financed group of black conservative spokespeople who, while lacking an ideological or organizational base in the community, have, nevertheless, because of their access to white elites, money and media, constituted yet another force for centrifugalism.”4 In an article that probes the origins of the modern black conservatism alluded to by Smith, political scientist Hanes Walton Jr. points to a particular moment in history when the group of black conservatives coalesced: December 12 and 13, 1980, at the Fairmont Conference. The purpose of that conference, which was planned by an adviser to president-elect Ronald Reagan, was “to establish a cadre of blacks of some prominence who could speak to a new thrust in domestic policies in regard to black Americans , with the hope and anticipation that they would emerge as alternative leaders to the civil rights group.”5...