Liberals, losers and air-conditioned meetings with Important People

I remember discussing, 30 years ago, what Martin Luther King was doing the night before he was assassinated. He was talking to sanitation workers about their strike and the upcoming poor people’s march on Washington. One of the two people in the conversation was scoffing, saying that wasn’t real politics and that he should surely have been talking to Rich Important People. The other person seemed bewildered, and gently pushed back.

I really really wish I could say that I was that other person. But nope, I was the asshole. I should have known better. By that time I DID know better. But old (dumb) ways of thinking are always in us. It was only a couple of years since I’d properly begun to switch on (1991-2).

The uncomfortable memory comes to mind as I read this below, from David Harris’ book “Dreams Die Hard.” It’s 1964 or so, and the liberals have heard (and like to believe that they’ve actually listened to) poor black people doing their organising. Freedom Summer, voter registration, the Democratic National Convention in Atlantic City etc etc

“I have been listening to the crying of people in Mississippi for seventeen years,” one of the other liberals complained. “I don’t want to have to listen to Steptoe anymore.” (Steptoe was a poor, uneducated black farmer and MFDP leader in Amite County whom SNCS revered). “We need high-level meetings so we can cut away all this underbrush.”

(Harris, 1982:78)

And here’s some biographical info.

E.W. Steptoe