The Struggle in Black and Brown: African American and Mexican American Relations during the Civil Rights Era

6. Cesar and Martin, March ’68

SIX Cesar and Martin, March ’68 JORGE MARISCAL In early 1968 the philosophy of nonviolence was sinking beneath a tidal wave of bloodshed and death. The previous summer , rioting had erupted in major urban centers across the United States. In Detroit, where the worst violence took place, forty-three people died. The Tet Offensive cut a path through the month of February and ended with 2,259 U.S. servicemen and thousands more Vietnamese dead. Since late February, U.S. Marines at Khe Sanh had been under seige from North Vietnamese regulars in what would become the longest battle of the U.S. war in Southeast Asia. In the California grape fields, the two-and-a-half-year-oldstrike by Filipino, Mexican, and Mexican American workers was under attack from corporate growers and their allies. The violence directed against the picket lines had generated talk among the strikers about retaliation. In order to recommit his organization to the philosophy of nonviolence, on February 15 the forty-year-old farm worker organizer Cesar Chavez began what would become a twenty-five-day fast. Reflecting on his philosophy a few years later, Chavez told an interviewer: “Some great nonviolent successes have been achieved in history. . . . 149 The most recent example is Gandhi. To me that’s the most beautiful one. . . . It’s fantastic how he got so many people to do things, which is the whole essence of nonviolent action.”1 Where the Mississippi river leaves Tennessee, sanitation workers organized by the American Federation of State, County , and Municipal Employees (afscme) Local 1733 walked off the job in Memphis on February 12 when supervisors used inclement weather as an excuse to send African American workers home without pay but kept nonblack employees working at full pay. The following day and again two weeks later, police attacked peaceful marches in support of the strikers. Union members adopted the slogan “I Am a Man” and the Memphis-based Reverend James Lawson, who had trained in India in the nonviolent philosophy of Gandhi, became chairman of the strike committee. He asked his longtime friend, thirty-nine-year-old Reverend Martin Luther King Jr., to come to Memphis to support the strike.2 Moving through the eye of this violent storm in March of 1968 were two men who today are recognized as the most 6. Cesar Chavez in his office, 1968. Photo by Arthur Schatz. Used by permission of Time & Life Pictures. MARISCAL 150 famous American practitioners of Gandhian nonviolence. Both struggled to adhere to the philosophy of nonviolent civil disobedience within the turbulence of cresting mass mobilizations deeply rooted in the particular histories and traditions of two distinct communities. Cesar Chavez and Martin Luther King never met and probably never communicated except by telegram . In hindsight, their coming together would appear to have been the ultimate black-brown alliance. But in March of ’68, conditions on the ground did not allow for such clarity. My purpose in this chapter is less to imagine what might have been than to describe the extremely hostile conditions through which both men moved. In this way, we can begin to sharpen our understanding of the philosophy and organizing practices of two key black and brown social movements and how they overlapped at a critical juncture in the revolutionary sixties. In order to unpack the many reasons why a King-Chavez alliance never took place, we need to disabuse ourselves of over forty years of hagiography and cooptation. In other words, the contemporary stature of both men as the object of holidays and postage stamps ought not be inserted back in time if we are to avoid distorting the historical record. In 1968 both men were known but not yet beatified. More important, each was fully immersed in a complex social movement at a perilous moment in that movement ’s development; each was aware of the other’s actions but the complex series of contacts and maneuvers that more than likely would have led them to collaborate had only just begun. On February 23, President Lyndon Johnson issued a statement in response to the recommendations just released by the Inter-Agency Committee on Mexican American Affairs. He concluded by stating, “With this report of progress and action, we have begun the journey toward full opportunity for the Mexican -Americans, Puerto Ricans, and other Spanish-speaking people of our land.”3 Less than one week later...