Nobody Turn Me Around

Nobody Turn Me Around

http://www.csmonitor.com/Books/Book-Reviews/2010/0816/Nobody-Turn-Me-Around

How infighting almost silenced Dr. King's momentous "I Have a Dream" speech.

By Chuck Leddy
August 16, 2010

On Aug. 28, 1963, as part of the historic March on Washington, Martin
Luther King Jr. delivered his electrifying, era-defining "I Have a
Dream" speech in front of some 250,000 spectators and a national
television audience. In the end, Dr. King's "I Have a Dream" speech
would move a nation to action. President John F. Kennedy would be
assassinated by that year's end, but Lyndon B. Johnson would carry on
the martyred president's civil rights agenda (and then some). Both a
public accommodations bill and a voting rights bill would become law,
despite passionate opposition from segregationists.

Behind the scenes, however, the March on Washington almost collapsed
under the strain of massive bickering and internal disagreements. In
Nobody Turn Me Around, academic and author Charles Euchner does an
excellent job of telling the lesser-known story of the internal
contradictions that nearly destroyed the historic event.

Pulling the march together was far from easy. Organizers intended to
put public pressure on the Kennedy administration to support a new
civil rights bill that would guarantee blacks equal treatment in
public accommodations. The march was organized jointly by several
civil rights groups around a theme of nonviolent political action.
Like any mobilization of a broad coalition, the more radical elements
inside the civil rights movement complained that the message was
being watered down for mass consumption. President Kennedy,
unsurprisingly, asked organizers to cancel the march, which he deemed
needlessly provocative. Black Muslim Malcolm X, on the other hand,
refused to join because it wasn't confrontational enough, satirizing
the event as the "Farce on Washington."

The two men who seemed to arouse the most heated debate were prime
march organizer Bayard Rustin and Student Nonviolent Coordinating
Committee president John Lewis. Rustin was attacked both inside and
outside the civil rights movement as a political liability with three
strikes against him as a former communist, a draft dodger, and a
homosexual. Indeed, segregationist South Carolina Sen. Strom Thurmond
would publicly attack Rustin, asserting that Rustin's "background
showed the moral depravity of the March on Washington."

As for Lewis, he had planned to deliver an incendiary speech
castigating Kennedy's proposed civil rights bill as too little too
late. As Euchner describes it, Lewis's radicalism threatened to
shatter the march's fragile coalition. Roman Catholic Archbishop
Patrick O'Boyle, a Kennedy ally, "was supposed to deliver the
invocation, but he would not come...," writes Euchner, "unless John
Lewis deleted the objectionable passages from his speech." Euchner
details the ensuing drama as march organizers pleaded with Lewis to
tone down his rhetoric. Though he relented in the end, Lewis's final
speech was anything but conciliatory: "We must say wake up, America,
wake up," Lewis intoned, "for we cannot stop and we will not and
cannot be patient."

Euchner also offers us accounts from dozens of grass-roots civil
rights activists who rode buses and trains to Washington from places
like Harlem, N.Y.; Georgia; and Mississippi. There were tensions
here, too, as black activists hardened by police brutality argued
about the wisdom of making common cause with white liberals. Euchner
also explores conflicts over protest music, with white performers
like Bob Dylan and Joan Baez taking criticism from black activists
like Dorie Ladner "that the March on Washington turned music into a
passive spectator activity. It was a concert, a Newport festival, not
a rousing call to action."

Euchner fittingly concludes with King's epic speech, every bit as
indignant as Lewis's, yet elevated by its soaring biblical language.
"No, no, we are not satisfied," King told his listeners, "and we will
not be satisfied until justice rolls down like waters and
righteousness like a mighty stream." Euchner explores the gathering
power of King's speech as he describes the historic sufferings of
black Americans as something redemptive, uplifting. "[S]uffering ­
like Christ's suffering on the cross ­ can bring a better day," King
insisted. "That suffering can change people's hearts. That suffering
can clear poison from the system."

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