New Directions

This chapter depicts directions far removed from the nonviolent civil rights movement. It includes the rhetoric and actions of New Leaders such as Malcolm X, Stokely Carmichael, Bobby Seale, and James Forman, descriptions of incendiary riots, ministerial responses to the riots, the efforts of Rev. Frank McRae to end the Sanitation Workers Strike in Memphis, King’s assassination, and the dramatic Demand for Reparations. Significant were the responses to the events from Episcopal Bishop John Hines, Rev. Dr. Ralph Sockman, John Morris of the Episcopal Society for Cultural and Racial Unity (ESCRU), W. W. Finlator, Rev. Ed King, and Rabbi James Wax. Also significant were the transformation of Roman Catholic Bishop Joseph Durick, the changes in the Student Nonviolent Coordination Committee (SNCC), and the new directions of Will Campbell who began to see that the racist was perhaps the greatest challenge of the day.

White Myths and Black Panthers

Despite its creaking inefficiency and patent injustice, the American courts have twice proven their superiority to the myopia that reigns in the Justice Department. Although it can never restore to victims the brutal years lost in prison, the courts in New Haven and New York have managed to unravel two more of the Government's pet conspiracy indictments and released the victims. Let us hope that the labored victories won in the cases of Bobby Seale, Erica Huggins and the Panther Thirteen can be repeated in the case of the Government against Angela Davis if, as it seems, it is equally contrived.