TWO years ago this week, on the bleak balcony of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, black America lost its greatest modern-day leader. In the death of Martin Luther King Jr., the entire nation also lost a part of its conscience—a very human scale by which to weigh its commitment to racial justice. Bewildered whites dedicated to nonviolence wondered to whom they could now relate when they thought—as they did perhaps all too rarely—about blacks. For a time, blacks reacted with inevitable rage as well as sorrow, and agonized over their lack of leadership.
Today most blacks and thoughtful whites have accepted the fact that leadership on the magnitude of a Martin Luther King is uncommon in any race or time. This realization has contributed to a new mood among the blacks who now form the vanguard of the mass drive for racial progress. They are angrier than ever, more impatient with social, economic and political servitude, and even more determined to revolutionize race relations and achieve full equality in American society. Although blacks were never in full agreement with all of King's tactics, they now look less longingly for any single man to provide a sense of unity that, however uplifting, must necessarily be an illusion when applied to a people who are as diverse as any other in their talents, interests, intellect and philosophies.
The black movement today is fractionalized. Many blacks would argue that it always has been, but that the condition is now more readily recognized by all blacks as a positive asset. Strongly linked by a fierce pride in their very blackness and by outrage at continued white racism, the movement's leaders are pursuing progress on many highly specialized fronts. More than in the past, the assault on inequality, the use of black pride and power, is taking place on the local community level. The lack of national voices makes the decibel level of black protest seem lower. Actually, the many local voices have been speaking loudly, but white America has not always been listening.
Three-Way Split
This new localism draws much of its strength from the intense feelings and aroused energy of an increasingly activist and impatient generation of black youth (see EDUCATION). It also coincides with a philosophical and pragmatic fragmentation of the entire black movement. As analyzed by Charles V. Hamilton, professor of political science at Columbia University, there is sharp disagreement among the traditional integrationists, best symbolized by King and the N.A.A.C.P.'s Roy Wilkins; the black nationalists, of whom CORE's Roy Innis and US's Ron Karenga are leading spokesmen; and the Marxist-oriented revolutionaries, represented by the Black Panthers. In Hamilton's view, the integrationists have discovered that their classic techniques of progress through the courts, the Congress and the Federal Government are no longer as effective as previously. The nationalists, who appeal to black pride and push for black studies, local control of their communities and black political and economic power, are gaining strength. At the same time, more blacks are becoming radicalized. Though still a minority, those who lean toward the Panther concept of waging a class struggle, sometimes in alliance with white revolutionaries, to overthrow the present capitalistic system are gaining attention—much of it