Freedom Socialist • Vol. 28, No. 6 • December 2007-January 2008
No to federal troops!

Below are excerpts from Revolutionary Integration: A Marxist Analysis of African American Liberation, an update of a 1963 document by the founders of the Freedom Socialist Party. The segments below explain the distinctive position taken by the FSP against using federal troops as a supposed tool for integration.

To obscure the basic dependence of the government upon the southern system, to create the illusion that the government desires and will effect drastic changes in the South, and to project a democratic image for international consumption, the government rattles the sword at the Bourbon South and even sends troops, ostensibly to rescue a few Blacks in distress.

What is the actual function of the troops?

• To prevent self-defense. Eisenhower only dispatched troops to Little Rock at the mayor's insistence that the Black community was an armed camp prepared to slaughter the headstrong Klan.

[President John F.] Kennedy developed an ominous new theme during the Birmingham crisis. Not only did he send troops to Alabama only after the Blacks had gained the initiative and whipped the Birmingham police and fire departments, but he justified their continued presence by citing the "danger" from "extremists" - from both sides, of course. Blacks have a pretty good idea of which "extremists" will take the beating from federal troops.

• To help racist politicians. Kennedy's fantastic invasion of the University of Mississippi with huge armies [30,000 troops], out of all proportion to the need for James Meredith's safety, was designed to prevent a split in the white community.

Kennedy's troops ... held intact the authority and power of the state officials by allowing them to be defeated by an overwhelming outside force instead of local opposition.

• To improve the United States image.

• To intimidate the working class.

• For the record. Eisenhower used his Little Rock troops operation as a smokescreen for a drastic retreat on the civil rights front.

Any gains engineered by the White House will be pure tokens of temporary character gilded with big future promises. Assistance to Blacks will be granted only to keep the southern system basically intact, and to forestall and slow down the struggle.
 
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