Peace and Freedom. Simon Hall
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Nolan considered it “inconceivable that one who supports the ideals of the civil rights movement could also support what is being done by the United States to the people of Vietnam.”74
The activists’ opposition to the war could sometimes have a personal dimension. Rives Foster was classified 1-A for almost a year, and confessed that he did not know what he would have done if he had been drafted.75 At a staff meeting on July 18, the VSCRC decided to sponsor a peace demonstration on August 6. Reflecting his mounting interest in the war, Nolan was “delegated to make further plans … and to report back.”76
Opposition to the war, though, was not always an issue that commanded broad support among the local black population. As David Nolan explained, the white workers tended to have views “on such subjects as … Vietnam that don’t jibe with those of local people.” Nolan recognized that most blacks “had a single interest in civil rights and proclaimed themselves ‘100% with LBJ.’”77 The potential of Vietnam to divide movement activists from those whom they were trying to organize had parallels within SDS. By 1965 its attempt to mobilize the poor through ERAP (Economic Research and Action Project) was already struggling but, as James Miller has argued, Vietnam was the “last straw.” The escalation of the war, and the desire of many SDSers to oppose it, introduced a volatile and destabilizing element into the relationship between community organizer and community. Many poor people, believing that America fought only just wars, were hostile to the growing antiwar movement.78 VSCRC activist Rives Foster acknowledged that Vietnam helped to push the Virginia civil rights movement off course—“at first anti-war efforts … seemed to be hurting the movement,” and “the result of the war was the drifting along of projects and problems.”79
Venturing outside the field of civil rights also threatened to damage relations with the group’s white supporters, some of whom were offended by its tentative opposition to Vietnam. After the VSCRC decided to sponsor an antiwar demonstration, a Charlottesville doctor who had contributed money to the group wrote to ask “how much time we were going to spend on Vietnam, so he could reduce his contributions accordingly.” Another financial supporter wrote that “we were not really civil rights workers, but rather draft-card burners, anarchists and subversives, and he wanted his money back.”80
Antiwar activity in Virginia’s Southside seems to have generated very little enthusiasm. Fewer than fifty people, described as a “disgustingly low turn-out,” attended a daylong peace seminar on April 23.81 Moreover, the peace demonstration planned for 6 August had to be canceled because of a lack of support.82 As David Nolan explained, “at the last staff meeting we voted not to have the demonstration, after people began finking out right and left, getting county fever, deciding that one day of voter registration work was worth more than trying to do something about the war.”83 It is interesting to note Nolan’s implication that Vietnam was more important than civil rights.
The VSCRC’s increasing interest in Vietnam, which coincided with the rise of separatist tendencies within the freedom movement as a whole, pushed the white volunteers away from their organizing work among Virginia’s black population and onto the college campuses. Black Power had always been a factor within the VSCRC. John “Coolie” Washington “came on the project a black nationalist,” and believed that “if there was a war between all the whites and Negroes … the Negroes would win,” while the group’s black chairman, Ben Montgomery, was “influenced by SNCC workers who came through singing the praises of Malcolm X.”84
The VSCRC’s white activists increasingly accepted that organizing African Americans was a job best done by blacks themselves. Within the grass-roots civil rights movement, whites were increasingly seen by their black counterparts as perpetuating a culture of dependency among poor African Americans and reinforcing racial stereotypes. In 1965, for example, CORE’s Bill Bradley outlined some of the problems caused by white activists—“the general experience expressed by project leaders … was that white workers generally found it difficult to accept Black leadership.” There were also cultural differences, such as when white workers decided not to bathe “until practically forced to.” Perhaps more important, though, was the realization that the relationship between white activist and black community could be a potentially damaging one. Bradley explained that “too often the white worker becomes a crutch for members of the black community…. Case after case of Black dependency (upon) whites could be cited. The reasons are clear, we are used to depending upon white folks (good or bad) for practically everything. We are taught from birth that the white man is the greatest and a ‘nigger ain’t shit.’” The CORE leader concluded, “the very independence we are trying to encourage is discouraged by the presence and activity of whites.”85
David Nolan explained that white VSCRC activists “were given preferential treatment to the Negro workers. This is … understandable … since the white workers were something new … but it grated on the Negro staff members.” He continued, “Negroes in the community had a hard time breaking their own stereotypes about whites. When Mr. Claiborne came over … to get me for church he was hesitant about coming in, hesitant about sitting down, always calling me Mr. or sir.”86
Nolan had raised the problem of whites organizing blacks as early as September 1965. Somewhat patronizingly, he explained that “I think you get non-ordinary whites (social revolutionaries) working with ordinary Negroes (peoples).”87 Rives Foster, who was white, believed that “black-white hangups in community organizing was always a problem. Many times I talked to groups of Negroes instead of with them … Black nationalism was and is the answer.”88 In November 1966, as the VSCRC considered abandoning its work among black Virginians, the staff agreed that any future civil rights organizing “should not be geared toward participation by white students.” Instead, local black students should be recruited.89
In late 1966, the VSCRC staff decided to withdraw from the Southside, and focus on organizing “Virginia students” rather than local African Americans. One explained that the VSCRC “had a dual constituency—Virginia Negroes and Virginia college students, the former by the nature of our commitment and the latter because of our origin. We had a responsibility to both of them, a responsibility to change.” Many of the organization’s activists felt, as David Nolan noted, that they “were not living up to that responsibility by continuing to work only in Southside” because it was not “the most effective place to work to change the condition of the Negro in Virginia and it was not the most effective place to work to change American policy in Vietnam.”90 With the war in Vietnam escalating, student protest against the war continued to build. Nolan wrote that “we were … derelict in our obligations to Virginia students. Increasingly, their main concerns were the Vietnam War and the draft.” In a July 1966 memorandum, Nolan argued that “the problems of organizing” African Americans was “best done by” African Americans, and he urged the white VSCRC activists to switch their focus to Virginia students and the war in Vietnam. He believed that they “should focus Virginia students on their own problems … rather than drain off their efforts by working in southside.” Nolan felt that there was a “need for more peace work in Virginia which would more logically be located in the college communities than in southside…. I think there is work to be done on the question of the draft.” Nolan thought that “people in VSCRC are probably the best qualified in the state to do something about these things, and I think that this is where they should train their efforts.”91
It would appear that, within the VSCRC, Black Nationalism to some extent provided white activists with the excuse they were looking for to leave the civil rights movement in order to concentrate their efforts on protesting against the war in Vietnam. By 1966 many were coming to agree with Michael Ferber, founder of the anti-draft Resistance movement, that Vietnam was a more “urgent national issue” than civil rights.92
The white activists’ increasing focus on, and interest in, protesting against the war in Vietnam blended with Black Power ideology to derail the VSCRC and its civil rights organizing work. Evidence from Virginia shows how the war in Vietnam increasingly replaced civil rights as “the issue” in the consciousness of politically aware progressive white activists as Black Power