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Civil Rights and the Struggle for Black Equality in the Twentieth Century
The Struggle Is Eternal: Gloria Richardson and Black Liberation
Many prominent and well-known figures greatly impacted the civil rights movement, but one of the most influential and unsung leaders of that period was Gloria Richardson. As the leader of the Cambridge Nonviolent Action Committee (CNAC), a multifaceted liberation campaign formed to target segregation and racial inequality in Cambridge, Maryland, Richardson advocated for economic justice and tactics beyond nonviolent demonstrations. Her philosophies and strategies―including her belief that black people had a right to self–defense―were adopted, often without credit, by a number of civil rights and black power leaders and activists.
The Struggle Is Gloria Richardson and Black Liberation explores the largely forgotten but deeply significant life of this central figure and her determination to improve the lives of black people. Using a wide range of source materials, including interviews with Richardson and her personal papers, as well as interviews with dozens of her friends, relatives, and civil rights colleagues, Joseph R. Fitzgerald presents an all-encompassing narrative. From Richardson's childhood, when her parents taught her the importance of racial pride, through the next eight decades, Fitzgerald relates a detailed and compelling story of her life. He reveals how Richardson's human rights activism extended far beyond Cambridge and how her leadership style and vision for liberation were embraced by the younger activists of the black power movement, who would carry the struggle on throughout the late 1960s and into the 1970s.
The Struggle Is Gloria Richardson and Black Liberation explores the largely forgotten but deeply significant life of this central figure and her determination to improve the lives of black people. Using a wide range of source materials, including interviews with Richardson and her personal papers, as well as interviews with dozens of her friends, relatives, and civil rights colleagues, Joseph R. Fitzgerald presents an all-encompassing narrative. From Richardson's childhood, when her parents taught her the importance of racial pride, through the next eight decades, Fitzgerald relates a detailed and compelling story of her life. He reveals how Richardson's human rights activism extended far beyond Cambridge and how her leadership style and vision for liberation were embraced by the younger activists of the black power movement, who would carry the struggle on throughout the late 1960s and into the 1970s.
360 pages, Hardcover
Published December 14, 2018
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May 28, 2020
"Richardson often gets a brief mention in general histories of the civil rights and Black Power waves of the black liberation movement (BLM), but their coverage and analysis rarely go deep."
"This biography of Gloria Richardson is more than just a story about an individual who used her intellect and skills to work on behalf liberation. It is also a story about America. The unjust and oppressive systems she fought more than fifty years ago are still with us today, as evidenced by people's hierarchical relationships based on skin color, gender, sexuality, and financial wealth, among other distinctions. By reading Richardson's story, current and future activists participating in all types of social change movements can learn how to work toward their goals here in the United States and around the world."
"She found the work itself rewarding, and she liked her coworkers, but one of the tough lessons Richardson learned was that despite having college degrees or "any degree of intelligence," black workers did not progress through the civil service ranks as quickly as white workers did."
"This was an interesting paradox: the person who sat during the Pledge of Allegiance, protested Howard's treatment of women students, and protested at a pharmacy chain that discriminated against black people felt compelled to conform to others' expectations when it came to marriage. Richardson attributed this mainly to gender socialization, noting that she had been so throughly "inculcated" that she was not even aware of it."
"Despite the Supreme Court's Brown ruling, white officials throughout Maryland resisted integrating the state's public school systems (a tactic employed by countless other officials throughout the South). A special committee of the State Board of Education studied how Maryland could go about implementing Brown, but it concluded that the Supreme Court's decision actually "created a new right" for black people while "abrogat[ing] the right" of white people. Though legally meaningless, the State Board of Education's finding provided political cover for white people who were resisting school integration."
The Banner's view of race relations and how to improve them reflected what historian William Chafe describes as the "progressive mystique." Its subscribers "believe that conflict is inherently bad, that disagreement means personal dislike, and that consensus offers the only way to preserve a genteel and civilized way of life." According to Chafe, "The underlying assumption [about the progressive mystique] is that conflict over any issue, whether it be labor unions, race relations, or political ideology, will permanently rend the fragile fabric of internal harmony. Hence, progress can occur only when everyone is able to agree-voluntarily-on an appropriate course of action." In other words, white people will permit societal change only when it is based on "consensus, voluntarism, and the preservation of civility."
"Activists in the Deep South continued to focus on desegregation and the right to vote, whereas in Cambridge the focus was jobs, housing, and education. Officials in Washington kept the more southern movements at arm's length, but they fully engaged the Cambridge movement."
"It is difficult enough to fight prejudice," Richardson said, "but when it is coupled with stupidity, it becomes dangerous for CNAC and the total community...."
"The basic difficulty in the situation in Cambridge is that [white people] believe that they are a law unto themselves and that Dorchester County can be treated as an island apart from the rest of Maryland and the United States." The report continued, "The attitude of the white people is one of granting rights to N*****, instead of recognizing that these rights are given to all citizens by the Constitution of the United States and are not within the power of the citizens of Cambridge to bestow or withhold."
"Anthropologist Susan Gal states that in many cultures, silence is viewed as a "symbol of passivity and powerlessness." However, in other contexts, "silence can also be a strategic defense against the powerful...to baffle, disconcert, and exclude" them from information."
"Although Maryland is a southern state, it resides in the upper portion of the South, and during the civil rights movement that geographic distinction meant it was both similar to and different from the rest of the region. In terms of society, Maryland was as racially segregated as the rest of the South, but in terms of politics, it was very different. Since the end of Reconstruction, Maryland had never taken away its black population's right to vote, as other southern states had. These common and different realities meant that the Cambridge Nonviolent Action Committee's goals would sometimes intersect with the broader goals of the Deep South's civil rights movement and sometimes diverge from them."
"Organizer's decision to have the Lincoln Memorial serve as the event's focal point also bothered Richardson. In an interview with Robert Penn Warren in March 1964, she told him the Big Six had agreed to the site because they wanted to be legitimized by President Kennedy, a claim all of them would have disputed. She also thought the Lincoln Memorial would be a powerful marketing tool for the Kennedy administration because "Lincoln was the myth of America." Kennedy, she alleged, hoped to parplay that to improve his own public image on civil rights, even though he had done so little to make democracy a reality for black Americans."
"In the late 1950s white voters in Little Rock, Arkansas, sought to circumvent the Supreme Court's Brown decision with a referendum to maintain racially segregated schools. Interestingly, Cambridge's 1963 referendum was the third such ballot measure initiated by white voters that year, and all three became part of the civil rights landscape. There was a statewide measure in Maryland whereby white voters tried to nullify a recently passed state law that desegregated certain public accommodations, and earlier in the year white voters in Berkeley, California, used a referendum to reject an open housing ordinance."
"The political reality of being a racial minority in a gerrymandered municipality reinforced the black community's sense of offense. Black voters had engaged in electoral politics since obtaining the right to vote, but "it did not help improve our situation," Richardson noted."
"In the words of an Associated Press reporter, "it was the young people who gave the movement its impetus," a fact Richardson has always acknowledged and has stated countless times over the decades. We will never know if Cambridge would have had its own local freedom struggle if those students had not stood up for themselves and their community, but we do know that their activism created a political space that Richardson stepped into and from which she did her best to improve her community."
"The ILGWU's response to Richardson's position illustrates a major belief among countless generations of white Americans about who has the right to use self-defense. As far as America's colonial period, black people's use of the tactic had almost always been condemned by white people. NAACP official and attorney Clarence Mitchell Jr. addressed this issue in November 1963. While speaking at Howard University, he implied that self-defense is a right that white people reserved for themselves, as evidenced by their demand that black people, particularly men, "turn the other cheek" when attacked."
"Dick Gregory also attended and addressed white people's interpretation of the term "Black Power" as an antiwhite movement that sought to invert the racial hierarchy so that black people oppressed white people. "White people panic at the sound of two simple words, Black Power...Why? Because when they hear us say Black Power, they think it is just like white power, and that means napalm, lynching, stealing (legally) and lying."
"For a movement to be viable and effective, its organizers must be efficient not only with social media and web-based information sharing but also with personal outreach in their neighborhoods. Richardson thinks celebrities and business people, as well as religious leaders, either do not realize this fact or ignore it, and they are not prepared to do community-oriented grassroots work. The only logical choice for organizing a movement, in Richardson's opinion, is for activists to replicate the SNCC model because it encourages communities to identify their own leaders."
"Whether the issue is world peace, police brutality, gun violence, or globalization's impact on workers' rights and the environment, Richardson recommends the same action: "If everything else doesn't work then I think you should make it uncomfortable for them to exist....You have to be in their faces 'til it gets uncomfortable" for politicians and corporate leaders to keep opposing activists' demands."
"This biography of Gloria Richardson is more than just a story about an individual who used her intellect and skills to work on behalf liberation. It is also a story about America. The unjust and oppressive systems she fought more than fifty years ago are still with us today, as evidenced by people's hierarchical relationships based on skin color, gender, sexuality, and financial wealth, among other distinctions. By reading Richardson's story, current and future activists participating in all types of social change movements can learn how to work toward their goals here in the United States and around the world."
"She found the work itself rewarding, and she liked her coworkers, but one of the tough lessons Richardson learned was that despite having college degrees or "any degree of intelligence," black workers did not progress through the civil service ranks as quickly as white workers did."
"This was an interesting paradox: the person who sat during the Pledge of Allegiance, protested Howard's treatment of women students, and protested at a pharmacy chain that discriminated against black people felt compelled to conform to others' expectations when it came to marriage. Richardson attributed this mainly to gender socialization, noting that she had been so throughly "inculcated" that she was not even aware of it."
"Despite the Supreme Court's Brown ruling, white officials throughout Maryland resisted integrating the state's public school systems (a tactic employed by countless other officials throughout the South). A special committee of the State Board of Education studied how Maryland could go about implementing Brown, but it concluded that the Supreme Court's decision actually "created a new right" for black people while "abrogat[ing] the right" of white people. Though legally meaningless, the State Board of Education's finding provided political cover for white people who were resisting school integration."
The Banner's view of race relations and how to improve them reflected what historian William Chafe describes as the "progressive mystique." Its subscribers "believe that conflict is inherently bad, that disagreement means personal dislike, and that consensus offers the only way to preserve a genteel and civilized way of life." According to Chafe, "The underlying assumption [about the progressive mystique] is that conflict over any issue, whether it be labor unions, race relations, or political ideology, will permanently rend the fragile fabric of internal harmony. Hence, progress can occur only when everyone is able to agree-voluntarily-on an appropriate course of action." In other words, white people will permit societal change only when it is based on "consensus, voluntarism, and the preservation of civility."
"Activists in the Deep South continued to focus on desegregation and the right to vote, whereas in Cambridge the focus was jobs, housing, and education. Officials in Washington kept the more southern movements at arm's length, but they fully engaged the Cambridge movement."
"It is difficult enough to fight prejudice," Richardson said, "but when it is coupled with stupidity, it becomes dangerous for CNAC and the total community...."
"The basic difficulty in the situation in Cambridge is that [white people] believe that they are a law unto themselves and that Dorchester County can be treated as an island apart from the rest of Maryland and the United States." The report continued, "The attitude of the white people is one of granting rights to N*****, instead of recognizing that these rights are given to all citizens by the Constitution of the United States and are not within the power of the citizens of Cambridge to bestow or withhold."
"Anthropologist Susan Gal states that in many cultures, silence is viewed as a "symbol of passivity and powerlessness." However, in other contexts, "silence can also be a strategic defense against the powerful...to baffle, disconcert, and exclude" them from information."
"Although Maryland is a southern state, it resides in the upper portion of the South, and during the civil rights movement that geographic distinction meant it was both similar to and different from the rest of the region. In terms of society, Maryland was as racially segregated as the rest of the South, but in terms of politics, it was very different. Since the end of Reconstruction, Maryland had never taken away its black population's right to vote, as other southern states had. These common and different realities meant that the Cambridge Nonviolent Action Committee's goals would sometimes intersect with the broader goals of the Deep South's civil rights movement and sometimes diverge from them."
"Organizer's decision to have the Lincoln Memorial serve as the event's focal point also bothered Richardson. In an interview with Robert Penn Warren in March 1964, she told him the Big Six had agreed to the site because they wanted to be legitimized by President Kennedy, a claim all of them would have disputed. She also thought the Lincoln Memorial would be a powerful marketing tool for the Kennedy administration because "Lincoln was the myth of America." Kennedy, she alleged, hoped to parplay that to improve his own public image on civil rights, even though he had done so little to make democracy a reality for black Americans."
"In the late 1950s white voters in Little Rock, Arkansas, sought to circumvent the Supreme Court's Brown decision with a referendum to maintain racially segregated schools. Interestingly, Cambridge's 1963 referendum was the third such ballot measure initiated by white voters that year, and all three became part of the civil rights landscape. There was a statewide measure in Maryland whereby white voters tried to nullify a recently passed state law that desegregated certain public accommodations, and earlier in the year white voters in Berkeley, California, used a referendum to reject an open housing ordinance."
"The political reality of being a racial minority in a gerrymandered municipality reinforced the black community's sense of offense. Black voters had engaged in electoral politics since obtaining the right to vote, but "it did not help improve our situation," Richardson noted."
"In the words of an Associated Press reporter, "it was the young people who gave the movement its impetus," a fact Richardson has always acknowledged and has stated countless times over the decades. We will never know if Cambridge would have had its own local freedom struggle if those students had not stood up for themselves and their community, but we do know that their activism created a political space that Richardson stepped into and from which she did her best to improve her community."
"The ILGWU's response to Richardson's position illustrates a major belief among countless generations of white Americans about who has the right to use self-defense. As far as America's colonial period, black people's use of the tactic had almost always been condemned by white people. NAACP official and attorney Clarence Mitchell Jr. addressed this issue in November 1963. While speaking at Howard University, he implied that self-defense is a right that white people reserved for themselves, as evidenced by their demand that black people, particularly men, "turn the other cheek" when attacked."
"Dick Gregory also attended and addressed white people's interpretation of the term "Black Power" as an antiwhite movement that sought to invert the racial hierarchy so that black people oppressed white people. "White people panic at the sound of two simple words, Black Power...Why? Because when they hear us say Black Power, they think it is just like white power, and that means napalm, lynching, stealing (legally) and lying."
"For a movement to be viable and effective, its organizers must be efficient not only with social media and web-based information sharing but also with personal outreach in their neighborhoods. Richardson thinks celebrities and business people, as well as religious leaders, either do not realize this fact or ignore it, and they are not prepared to do community-oriented grassroots work. The only logical choice for organizing a movement, in Richardson's opinion, is for activists to replicate the SNCC model because it encourages communities to identify their own leaders."
"Whether the issue is world peace, police brutality, gun violence, or globalization's impact on workers' rights and the environment, Richardson recommends the same action: "If everything else doesn't work then I think you should make it uncomfortable for them to exist....You have to be in their faces 'til it gets uncomfortable" for politicians and corporate leaders to keep opposing activists' demands."
July 1, 2023
“Tell those Kennedy brothers they both can go to hell” -- Gloria Richardson
I got to see Gloria Richardson at a discussion of Malcolm X at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture a few years back. As I recall, she was the only panelist who had known Malcolm X, and the only one there worth listening to.
I’m glad to see more biographies coming out about Black leaders especially ones who were women, like Rosa Parks and Fannie Lou Hamer, and those who had working class backgrounds, like Fred Shuttlesworth (and Hamer, who fits into both categories).
Richardson’s first protest activity was when she was a student at Howard University; boycotting and picketing stores that wouldn’t hire Black workers. Earlier, in 1937, a union organizing drive in Cambridge, MD made Richardson admire her grandfather’s oratory, but she disagreed with him and supported Blacks joining the union. This was the period when the CIO, a group of unions that had broken with the AFL, was organizing unskilled workers by industry, unlike the AFL, which organized skilled workers by trade. Although the CIO didn’t make a total break with racist practices, unlike most of the AFL, they organized Black workers. The results both in wage gains and self-confidence were enormous for these workers. The best book that tells this story is ‘Labor's Giant Step: The First Twenty Years of the CIO: 1936-55.’
When the US entered World War II, the Stalinized Communist Party supported Roosevelt’s attempts to impose a wage freeze, strike-ban, and an end to dissent about racism in the military. The failure to totally do this is illustrated in the Art Preis book, especially by the description of the coal miners’ strike of 1943. The failure to stem the fight against the attempt to “postpone” the fight against racism is well documented in ‘Fighting Racism in World War II,’ which, although it is taken from the pages of the ‘Militant,’ frequently was based on reporting carried in the Black press across the country. Gloria Richardson certainly would have been aware of some of these struggles.
After the war in Europe and against Japan was over, tens of thousands of American GIs considered that their war was over and demanded to come home (see “1945: When U.S, Troops said No!” in ‘New International no. 7: Opening Guns of World War III: Washington's Assault on Iraq’). This enabled the Chinese Revolution to win and also led to a postwar strike wave. But the policies of the Stalinists made easier the imposition of McCarthyism, which had a devastating effect on the labor movement. It was not as effective in destroying the fight for civil rights, although it certainly made it more difficult, such as the FBI’s hounding of Dr, King.
Despite the fact that its framework is the life of Dr. King, the 3-vol ‘America in the King Years’ by Taylor Branch is essential for background on the Civil Rights/Black Power movements. Branch used a wide variety of sources for his work, including the ‘Militant’ and the ‘National Guardian.’
You can find the “Message to the Grass Roots” November 1963 Detroit speech by Malcolm X that Gloria Richardson heard (and that mentions her) in ‘Malcolm X Speaks: Selected Speeches and Statements.’
My problem with this generally excellent book is too much academic jargon, and too few quotes from Richardson. I don’t doubt that Joseph R. Fitzgerald does a good job of summarizing her views; I’d just prefer hearing them direct.
One doesn’t need research on facial gestures to know why Robert Kennedy was uncomfortable with Richardson. Would a smile have made the difference? Robert Penn Warren (mentioned in the Fitzgerald book for an interview with Richardson) in a hostile interview with Malcolm X wrote that his “face suddenly breaks into his characteristic wide, leering, merciless smile….” Smile or not, even white liberals knew when they were being barely tolerated, and they didn’t like the feeling! (Today this interview is mostly known by people who read the article written in response to it, “Two Interviews,” by Jack Barnes, who interviewed Malcolm X for the Young Socialist (see ‘Malcolm X Talks to Young People: Speeches in the United States, Britain, and Africa’).
Richardson and the Cambridge movement didn’t have a commitment to non-violence in principle. They also raised economic demands which King didn’t do for a few more years. And their goal was desegregation, not “integration,” which didn’t seem either possible or desirable at the time. While some at the time and today tried to make a big distinction between the Civil Rights and Black Power movements, the distinctions were not always that great, and there was a lot of overlap. The real distinctions were in degree of militancy, class outlook, self-defense, and where to find allies. Some of the Black Power movement, like CORE, became focused on “black capitalism.” Dr. King didn’t like capitalism, but his framework was always reform and work within the Democratic Party. Malcolm X was attracted to the revolutionary socialism of the Socialist Workers Party and spoke three times at the Militant Labor Forum in addition to other collaboration (see ‘Malcolm X, Black Liberation, and the Road to Workers Power’).
There were people from both the Civil Rights and Black Power wings of the movement involved in the fight against the war in Vietnam. This was especially highlighted at the April 15, 1967 march in New York, headed by a large Black contingent, which both Martin Luther King and Stokely Carmichael spoke at. (see ‘Out Now: A Participant's Account of the Movement in the United States Against the Vietnam War’).
While the online index for the ‘Militant’ (something I work on) only went back to 1979 at the time I read this book, other search features go back to the beginning (1928). I’ll just give a few of the references I found there to Gloria Richardson. In the August 19, 1963, issue, which was sold (and sold out!) at the March on Washington, an article appeared on a speech she gave in San Francisco. One paragraph reads:
“The Cambridge Nonviolent Action Committee has proposed a program to benefit both white and Negro workers. Mrs. Richardson listed some of the major points: A proposed federal housing project should be built by a local contractor hiring an integrated work crew. Special classes to be instituted to train Negro and white apprentices. Integrate the school system and invite a special task force of outside teachers in to help raise the low standards of the formerly segregated schools.”
From the ‘Militant,’ September 2, 1963:
“It was very moving when A. Philip Randolph paid tribute to the women who have played a heroic role in the civil rights revolution. He singled out Mrs. Daisy Bates of Little Rock; Mrs. Rosa Parks of Montgomery, Ala., who touched off the historic bus boycott there by refusing to move to the back; Mrs. Herbert Lee, whose husband was shot in cold blood by a Mississippi racist for supporting the voter-registration drive; Diane Nash Bevel, a courageous young Deep South rights fighter; and Mrs. Gloria Richardson, the unflinching leader of the embattled Cambridge, Md., movement, which is affiliated to SNCC.”
The Militant didn’t comment on the fact that none of the women got to speak, but it commented on the censoring of John Lewis’ speech, and ran the original version in a later issue.
From the June 7, 1965 issue:
“NEW YORK — Civil rights militants Fannie Lou Hamer of Mississippi and Gloria Richardson Dandridge, formerly of Cambridge, Md., were among the featured speakers at the memorial meeting for Malcolm X held at the Rockland Palace Ballroom here May 26. Malcolm’s widow, Betty Shabazz, who is expecting Malcolm’s fifth child this summer, was present and greeted the audience of some 500 persons.
“Fannie Lou Hamer said Malcolm was “one of the greatest men I ever met because he was one of the only men I ever met who had the guts to tell the truth.” Gloria Richardson Dandridge, who led the famous Cambridge Nonviolent Action movement until she married and moved to New York last year, said that unlike those people who disliked some sides of Malcolm ‘my admiration was for the whole man.’ She liked the direction in which Malcolm was moving, she said, and for ‘White America with its elaborate myths it was a more dangerous Malcolm who was developing.’ He was cut down, she said, when it only remained for him to ‘fashion the political weapon oriented toward the black people and necessary for our freedom.’
“Among the other speakers who appeared were Harlem rent strike leader Jesse Gray, comedian Godfrey Cambridge and actor-producer Ossie Davis. The meeting was chaired by writer Sylvester Leaks.”
I got to see Gloria Richardson at a discussion of Malcolm X at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture a few years back. As I recall, she was the only panelist who had known Malcolm X, and the only one there worth listening to.
I’m glad to see more biographies coming out about Black leaders especially ones who were women, like Rosa Parks and Fannie Lou Hamer, and those who had working class backgrounds, like Fred Shuttlesworth (and Hamer, who fits into both categories).
Richardson’s first protest activity was when she was a student at Howard University; boycotting and picketing stores that wouldn’t hire Black workers. Earlier, in 1937, a union organizing drive in Cambridge, MD made Richardson admire her grandfather’s oratory, but she disagreed with him and supported Blacks joining the union. This was the period when the CIO, a group of unions that had broken with the AFL, was organizing unskilled workers by industry, unlike the AFL, which organized skilled workers by trade. Although the CIO didn’t make a total break with racist practices, unlike most of the AFL, they organized Black workers. The results both in wage gains and self-confidence were enormous for these workers. The best book that tells this story is ‘Labor's Giant Step: The First Twenty Years of the CIO: 1936-55.’
When the US entered World War II, the Stalinized Communist Party supported Roosevelt’s attempts to impose a wage freeze, strike-ban, and an end to dissent about racism in the military. The failure to totally do this is illustrated in the Art Preis book, especially by the description of the coal miners’ strike of 1943. The failure to stem the fight against the attempt to “postpone” the fight against racism is well documented in ‘Fighting Racism in World War II,’ which, although it is taken from the pages of the ‘Militant,’ frequently was based on reporting carried in the Black press across the country. Gloria Richardson certainly would have been aware of some of these struggles.
After the war in Europe and against Japan was over, tens of thousands of American GIs considered that their war was over and demanded to come home (see “1945: When U.S, Troops said No!” in ‘New International no. 7: Opening Guns of World War III: Washington's Assault on Iraq’). This enabled the Chinese Revolution to win and also led to a postwar strike wave. But the policies of the Stalinists made easier the imposition of McCarthyism, which had a devastating effect on the labor movement. It was not as effective in destroying the fight for civil rights, although it certainly made it more difficult, such as the FBI’s hounding of Dr, King.
Despite the fact that its framework is the life of Dr. King, the 3-vol ‘America in the King Years’ by Taylor Branch is essential for background on the Civil Rights/Black Power movements. Branch used a wide variety of sources for his work, including the ‘Militant’ and the ‘National Guardian.’
You can find the “Message to the Grass Roots” November 1963 Detroit speech by Malcolm X that Gloria Richardson heard (and that mentions her) in ‘Malcolm X Speaks: Selected Speeches and Statements.’
My problem with this generally excellent book is too much academic jargon, and too few quotes from Richardson. I don’t doubt that Joseph R. Fitzgerald does a good job of summarizing her views; I’d just prefer hearing them direct.
One doesn’t need research on facial gestures to know why Robert Kennedy was uncomfortable with Richardson. Would a smile have made the difference? Robert Penn Warren (mentioned in the Fitzgerald book for an interview with Richardson) in a hostile interview with Malcolm X wrote that his “face suddenly breaks into his characteristic wide, leering, merciless smile….” Smile or not, even white liberals knew when they were being barely tolerated, and they didn’t like the feeling! (Today this interview is mostly known by people who read the article written in response to it, “Two Interviews,” by Jack Barnes, who interviewed Malcolm X for the Young Socialist (see ‘Malcolm X Talks to Young People: Speeches in the United States, Britain, and Africa’).
Richardson and the Cambridge movement didn’t have a commitment to non-violence in principle. They also raised economic demands which King didn’t do for a few more years. And their goal was desegregation, not “integration,” which didn’t seem either possible or desirable at the time. While some at the time and today tried to make a big distinction between the Civil Rights and Black Power movements, the distinctions were not always that great, and there was a lot of overlap. The real distinctions were in degree of militancy, class outlook, self-defense, and where to find allies. Some of the Black Power movement, like CORE, became focused on “black capitalism.” Dr. King didn’t like capitalism, but his framework was always reform and work within the Democratic Party. Malcolm X was attracted to the revolutionary socialism of the Socialist Workers Party and spoke three times at the Militant Labor Forum in addition to other collaboration (see ‘Malcolm X, Black Liberation, and the Road to Workers Power’).
There were people from both the Civil Rights and Black Power wings of the movement involved in the fight against the war in Vietnam. This was especially highlighted at the April 15, 1967 march in New York, headed by a large Black contingent, which both Martin Luther King and Stokely Carmichael spoke at. (see ‘Out Now: A Participant's Account of the Movement in the United States Against the Vietnam War’).
While the online index for the ‘Militant’ (something I work on) only went back to 1979 at the time I read this book, other search features go back to the beginning (1928). I’ll just give a few of the references I found there to Gloria Richardson. In the August 19, 1963, issue, which was sold (and sold out!) at the March on Washington, an article appeared on a speech she gave in San Francisco. One paragraph reads:
“The Cambridge Nonviolent Action Committee has proposed a program to benefit both white and Negro workers. Mrs. Richardson listed some of the major points: A proposed federal housing project should be built by a local contractor hiring an integrated work crew. Special classes to be instituted to train Negro and white apprentices. Integrate the school system and invite a special task force of outside teachers in to help raise the low standards of the formerly segregated schools.”
From the ‘Militant,’ September 2, 1963:
“It was very moving when A. Philip Randolph paid tribute to the women who have played a heroic role in the civil rights revolution. He singled out Mrs. Daisy Bates of Little Rock; Mrs. Rosa Parks of Montgomery, Ala., who touched off the historic bus boycott there by refusing to move to the back; Mrs. Herbert Lee, whose husband was shot in cold blood by a Mississippi racist for supporting the voter-registration drive; Diane Nash Bevel, a courageous young Deep South rights fighter; and Mrs. Gloria Richardson, the unflinching leader of the embattled Cambridge, Md., movement, which is affiliated to SNCC.”
The Militant didn’t comment on the fact that none of the women got to speak, but it commented on the censoring of John Lewis’ speech, and ran the original version in a later issue.
From the June 7, 1965 issue:
“NEW YORK — Civil rights militants Fannie Lou Hamer of Mississippi and Gloria Richardson Dandridge, formerly of Cambridge, Md., were among the featured speakers at the memorial meeting for Malcolm X held at the Rockland Palace Ballroom here May 26. Malcolm’s widow, Betty Shabazz, who is expecting Malcolm’s fifth child this summer, was present and greeted the audience of some 500 persons.
“Fannie Lou Hamer said Malcolm was “one of the greatest men I ever met because he was one of the only men I ever met who had the guts to tell the truth.” Gloria Richardson Dandridge, who led the famous Cambridge Nonviolent Action movement until she married and moved to New York last year, said that unlike those people who disliked some sides of Malcolm ‘my admiration was for the whole man.’ She liked the direction in which Malcolm was moving, she said, and for ‘White America with its elaborate myths it was a more dangerous Malcolm who was developing.’ He was cut down, she said, when it only remained for him to ‘fashion the political weapon oriented toward the black people and necessary for our freedom.’
“Among the other speakers who appeared were Harlem rent strike leader Jesse Gray, comedian Godfrey Cambridge and actor-producer Ossie Davis. The meeting was chaired by writer Sylvester Leaks.”
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