Generation Next:
Civil rights movement must continue to evolve

Marc H. Morial

Today’s youth are looking for something different than their parents and grandparents. This is evident in the giving patterns of young minorities, who are more likely to believe that the key to greater equality is greater access to financial power than political power. According to the City University of New York’s Center on Philanthropy and Civil Society, they are more interested in gaining access to Wall Street than marching on Washington.
Instead of fighting for basic rights, we are now fighting for our economic future. There is no doubt that African Americans have made great progress in surmounting past challenges and thriving in the 21st century.

In 1960, 20.1 percent of blacks graduated from high school, just under half the percentage of whites. Now, 81.1 percent of blacks hold high school degrees or higher, compared to 86 percent of whites. High school dropout rates have fallen to nearly one half of what they once were, from 27.3 percent in 1975 to 15.1 percent in 2004.

The State of Black America 2006, an annual National Urban League report, found the overall status of blacks to be at 73 percent of whites. In health, education and social justice, blacks were from 74 to 78 percent of whites, and even surpassed whites in civic engagement. However, blacks lagged substantially behind whites in economic status, at just 56 percent.

The gap in salaries has actually widened since 1960, when the median income for black households was roughly $14,000 less than whites (as measured in 2004 dollars). That difference has now expanded to $21,372 despite black household income nearly doubling. When it comes to personal wealth, whites outperform blacks 10 to one.

The idea of expanding the American dream to everyone is as relevant now as it was in the 1960s. The fight to sit at the lunch counter was an important one. But what’s the use of winning the right to eat there if you cannot afford the meal? The civil rights struggle has become a fight not only about being able to afford lunch, but also being able to purchase the lunch counter.

For the African American community to achieve economic equality with whites and be competitive in the global marketplace, it is not enough just to own property — though it is a very good start. We must also be able to maintain and secure that ownership for generations to come. And it is not enough for our children to just graduate high school. They will need to go to college at the very least to acquire the skills necessary to obtain the jobs of the future and gain the financial freedom we desire for them.

In 1967, at the 11th Convention of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, Dr. King pondered the question: “Where do we go from here?”

He realized that the movement was an evolving entity. To grow and flourish, it couldn’t just concentrate on securing basic liberties for minorities. Its focus had to expand — not just for future generations, but for the legacy of those who gave their lives to the cause.

A decade after the birth of the SCLC, Dr. King began to expand its scope to include issues standing in the way of greater equality, such as poverty and the Vietnam War, causing consternation within the administration of President Lyndon B. Johnson.

After all, it wasn’t just about guaranteeing basic inalienable rights to African Americans in the South. Even back in the 1960s, it was becoming less a struggle for the rights of blacks to vote and operate freely within American society. The inner-city ghettos in northern cities emerged out of poor economic conditions — not necessarily out of political circumstance. The riots of the late 1960s occurred in areas where residents had possessed the right to vote for years and where the first blacks after Reconstruction won election.

Dr. King realized that economic as well as political empowerment would put the African American community on the track to full equality and prosperity in the United States by blacks — especially the poor — “the additional weapon of cash” to combat discrimination.

“The dignity of the individual will flourish when the decisions concerning his life are in his own hands, when he has the assurance that his income is stable and certain, and when he knows that he has the means to seek self-improvement,” he said. Discussing the impact of the “n-word” at a National Urban League forum in Harlem last June, one panelist said part of the reason why the younger generation invokes the word more freely than their elders is that they are not as aware of the racial epithet’s history. They don’t feel the pain of the word because their elders would rather repress bitter memories than relive them. But that’s the last thing we should do in our efforts to move forward.

When we fail to make our youth aware of what came before, we undermine their ability to build upon the movement’s progress and create a brighter future for their successors. Without those memories, we have no context in which to put our aspirations.

We must concede that the challenges now faced by the black community are somewhat different from the 1960s. Our youth have our legacy in their hands. We can either engage them and emerge stronger, or ignore them and relinquish our power.

Marc H. Morial is the president and CEO of the National Urban League.