Negro revolt

The Britannica World Language Dictionary defines a re volt, among other things, as an extensive or drastic change in a condition, method or idea. And it is in this precise sense that I contend that the American Negro has been in a state of revolt for more than five years.

The Negro revolt involves a drastic change in our methods and ideas concerning segregation and established Negro leadership organizations. Concerning segregation, the revolt lies in the fact that we not only have decided that the last vestige of that evil must be eliminated, but have embraced a new methodology, and armed ourselves with new weapons in our war against segregation and all of its concomitants. And the revolt against the established Negro leadership or ganizations has come about because these organizations are wed to weapons which, though they accomplished some gains, have proved incapable of dealing segregation a final death blow.
To say that we have revolted against certain methods and the civil rights organizations that sponsored them is not to say that we have completely abandoned or turned against them; rather, it means that we Negroes have demanded tactical changes, that our traditional leadership organizations have debated, rather than acted upon, our demands, and that while the established Negro leaders were still locked in the methodological debate, rank-and file Negroes have moved on their own, employed new tactics and achieved incomparable results. As a result, established Negro leadership is in the position of the oddly dressed man who said to a bystander, "Please tell me which way the parade went; after all, I'm leading it."

To understand the Negro revolt one must stay his anxiety about Albany, Georgia; Little Rock, Arkansas; McComb, Mississippi; and the growing cleavage between the several Negro leadership organizations long enough to recall the basic elements of Negro history. For it is only after one remembers this history that he can understand the Negro present; and until both the Negro past and present are clarified it is utter nonsense to offer suggestions about the Negro's future.

The American Negro revolt is one of the nonwhite uprisings now sweeping the world. In every single case, the black man has a grievance against the white man; these grievances are already couched in bitterness, and many serious thinkers, Negro and white, believe they could one day soon burst into open and bloody conflict. In a very real sense, the American Negro holds the key to the rise of nonwhite peoples all over the world. And to the de gree that the question of the American Negro is admitted and resolved, the probability of a world free from racial strife is in creased.