Don's Reviews > The New Abolitionists

New edition of the 1965 book written during the heat of the civil rights movement. Zinn describes the SNCC as a youth movement emanating from college campuses which was free from the legacy of older civil rights and anti-racist organisations like the NAACP and CORE.

It's hallmark was direct action undertake by black students in the southern states were segregation was a constant feature of life. Lunch counter protests and the invasion of whites-only facilities in transport hubs brought about a harsh, violent response from local police authorities. The basic tactic of the protesters involved insistence on the rights provided by the 14th Amendment to the US constitution which supposedly guarantees the equal rights of all citizens regardless of race. With a team of full-time 'field secretaries' operating in towns and cities across the South, numbers of protesting students were augmented with 'Freedom Rides' bringing in volunteers from other regions to participate in actions.

The sit-ins moved on to voter registration drives which aimed to increase the enrollment of blacks to become eligible to vote. In states like Mississippi. Alabama and Georgia this had long been impeded by local officials hostile to black participation. Barriers to registration were generated, using devices like long forms and quizzes about the meaning of clauses in the state constitution. Black citizens where discouraged from evening attempting to access their right to vote by intimidation and actual violence.

SNCC activities organised drives to encourage registration, being scores of black citizens to state courts to begin the process. Officials responded by slowing the pace of processing to a crawl which had the effort of forcing would-be applicants to wait for hours in long lines. Hostile sheriff departments lined deputies aimed with guns, clubs and cattle prods against this in the queue, forbidding any contact with people who wanted to converse with them or provide food and water.

The students and their allies appealed to the federal government - John F. Kennedy and his successor Lyndon B. Johnson being the presidents of the day - for action to ensure the rights guaranteed in the constitution. Zinn gives accounts of incidents in which local policy assaulted protesters and people registering to vote under the noses of federal officials and FBI officials without any intervention in support of the victims. The federal attorney-general, Robert Kennedy, denied that his office had the authority to intervene in cases where there was clear evidence of the violation of constitutional rights.

The core of the book centres on the experiences of the student activists in the states of the deep South. It also includes a chapter of the role of white students in the struggle and their relationship with the black majority. It is hard to know whether anything like the concept of 'white saviour' existed at that time - no indication if it did is to be found in Zinn's chapter. He talks of friction existing between black activists who doubted the extent of the commitment of the white contingent but sees this as being a problem that would be overcome over time as trust and mutual respect was built up. Overall, the collaboration across the racial divide is presented as a harbinger of what American might yet become if it was able to rise to its supposed historical destiny.

On the political impact of the movement, 1965 was too early to hint at the direction that might be taken. The most interesting section here is the emergence of the Freedom Democratic Party in the South, challenging the official Democrat structure which had the maintenance segregation at its core. The allocation of delegates to party conventions became another site of battle, with the national leadership showing intense reluctance to undermine the compromise reached after the Civil War, which gave Southern politicians tacit permission to maintain segregation in defiance of the Constitution.

The book skates over political convictions of SNCC leaders and activists. Accused of communist sympathies by their opponents, the movement's activism in the early 60s did not stray into considerations of the tensions set up by capitalism and the country's vast pool of poor citizens. Yes, Dr King and his closest associates indicated their interest in seeing a move towards the socialisation of the economy, but at least in this account it did not seem to open up a conversation on these issues within the activist ranks. It seems that it took the assassination of King in 1968 and the rise of the militant movements associated with Malcolm X and the Black Panthers to root any sort of socialist perspective in the ranks of the civil rights movement.