Blogging off subject, though not really

Well they called me once, and they called me twice
Third time they called me was cold as ice,
They say "Get to the table, Get to the table on time!"
Better make up your mind, if you wanna get to the table on time
Better get to the table, get to the table on time.

And the Lord of Lords, He laid out a feast,
He said "Listen to me boys, this will be last one of these,
So you better get to the table, get to the table on time."
Better make up your mind, if you wanna get to the table on time
Better get to the table, get to the table on time. (M. Ward, "Get To The Table On Time")

Seems lately I've been finding more opportunities to blog on things not so related to the subject of HungryBlues. Part of this is about my finding ways to participate in the broader activity of the blogosphere. But it's also because HungryBlues is a memoir of my learning about the history and biography that illuminate my father's life. One of my goals is to gain a better understanding of how my personal history and my own preoccupations are part of the story that I'm telling about my father. It should be the case, then, that even my unrelated musings are actually an important part of what I'm doing here at HungryBlues.

This is meant as a preface to blogging Jeanne D'arc's thoroughly great "Politics and Poetry" over at Body and Soul. But now I don't know why I started this thinking that I'm blogging off subject. That I identify so strongly with Jeanne's piece has everything to do with the things I'm writing about my father. "Politics and Poetry" is a gorgeous expression of the sort of realistic idealism about America that motivated my father to do the work that he did.

Reading through the comments to Jeanne's post, I see there is some discussion about whether idealism about American values is appropriate in leftist politics. From the historical vantage point of this blog, I'd have to say that such idealism is most definitely appropriate—and needed—on the left. It isn't just that, as Donald Johnson comments, "it's the civil rights movement which ennobled Jefferson's words, not the other way around." Civil Rights Movement protest was very much about demanding that the core American ideals apply to African-Americans as well as to whites.

This year's Democratic National Convention in Boston will mark the 40th anniversary of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party's noble failure in Atlantic City. The failure of the MFDP laid bare the hypocrisy of Democrats who professed Jeanne's values. The MFDP failure also exposed the sadly compromised position of liberal Blacks and whites, largely from the SCLC and organized labor (the liberal coalition my father was part of). Yes, it's true that the MFDP representatives were defeated by the "emptiness inside the box," to use Jeanne's phrase—but they came to Atlantic City to demand that the promises of representative democracy be met. They came with a belief in what the wrapping paper seemed to promise would be inside.

I'm mentioning the MFDP now because we, as a nation, desperately need the Democratic Party to stand for what the MFDP stood for. If to get George Bush out of the White House we must support John Kerry, then we must make sure that John Kerry knows that his constituents expect him to live up to the radicalism of the Langston Hughes quote used in the Kerry slogan, "Let America be America again."

It's my impression that even folks reasonably familiar with Civil Rights Movement history don't know about the MFDP. As this year's Democratic National Convention approaches, I'd like to recall the events in Atlantic City with some passages from James Foreman's The Making of Black Revolutionaries. In the 1960s, Foreman was Executive Secretary and Director of International Affairs of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC).

At the 1964 Democratic National Convention in Atlantic City Hubert Humphrey, Walter Reuther, Senator Wayne Morsse, Roy Wilkins, Bayard Rustin, Martin Luther King, Jr., Ralph Abernathy, Allard Lowenstin, and many other forces in the liberal-labor syndrome said that the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee did not understand politics.

We did not understand the political process, they said.

We did not understand how to "compromise," they said.

We did not understand the Democratic Party, they said.

We in SNCC understood politics and the political process. We could compromise—but not sell out the people. And we knew a great deal about the Democratic Party. But the way that the liberal-labor syndrome looked at life was not the way we looked at it. We did not see the Democratic Party as the great savior of black people in this country. Therefore we did not have the habit of following blindly the ass, no matter how stupid he became . . . or how many times he kicked you . . . or did not move forward . . . or lost his way. We were not hooked on his smell. We understood, we understood all too well.

When I arrived at Atlantic City, two days after the others from Mississippi, Mrs. Fannie Lou Hamer had already testified before the Credentials Committee—the first step in the battle of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party delegation to be recognized as the rightful representatives at this convention. Mrs. Hamer has a way of describing her own life and the lives of other poor people in the Delta with such force that they become very real. Her testimony, carried over national television, stirred the hearts of many viewers. She brought to life the legal brief prepared by Joseph Rauh, the general counsel for the UAW, whose true character we did not yet know, and by Eleanor Norton, a skilled black attorney. The brief argued that the regular delegates could not represent the Democrats of Mississippi because almost half of that state's population was excluded from the entire political process, including the election of delegates; that the regular delegation, aside from its racist basis, could not even be considred "loyal" to the national party because the state Democrats had several times bolted—most recently coming out for Goldwater. . . .

Everywhere in the lobby there were Mississippi farmers, all dressed up in their Sunday-go-to-meeting best. I greeted Mrs. Palmer; she was worried about what-them-white-folks-going-to-do. Upstairs in one of the rooms several of our delegates were stretched out on a bed. They had another meeting to attend, one-of-them-caucuses. Haven't been to so many meetings in all my life, one said. . . .

It was Tuesday night, 8:30 PM, and the convention was about to have the formal opening. As the chairman introduced George Lawrence, former governor of Pennsylvania, members of the Freedom Democratic Party entered the convention hall with passes obtained from sympathetic delegates. There they were, black Mississippians, led by Mrs. Fannie Lou Hamer, sitting in the seats of the Mississippi delegation. They had voted to reject the proposal of the Credentials Committee—a proposal "giving" them a grand total of two seats as "delegates-at-large." This was not what they had come for, not by a long shot. So they came inside, all of them. This was their protest, their answer to Lyndon B. Johnson.

But Johnson's people had a trick bag for them. The word was passed in some delegations where we still had support that the Freedom Democrats had accepted the resolution of the Credentials Committee. . . . The Credentials Committee report was adopted by the convention. Some people in SNCC and the MFDP were stunned—others were not. (386-90)