Even this backstage role was fragile. In 1960, Adam Clayton Powell, the pastor and then congressman from New York City, let it be known that if King and Rustin did not bow to his demands on a certain tactical matter, he would accuse them of having a sexual affair. Randolph urged King to stand by Rustin, since the charge was so obviously bogus. King hesitated. Rustin handed in his resignation from the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in the hope that King would reject it. Instead, King quietly accepted it, much to Rustin’s dismay. King dropped Rustin personally as well, no longer calling upon him for advice, sending the occasional bland note as a cover for his decision to cut him off.
In 1962, Rustin turned fifty, largely unknown. Of all the major civil rights leaders, Randolph was the one who had stuck by him most steadfastly. One day, as they were sitting around in Harlem, Randolph began reminiscing about the World War II era march on Washington that never took place. Rustin sensed immediately that it was time to complete that dream and organize a “mass descent” on the nation’s capital. The marches and protests across the South had begun to shake the foundations of the old order, Rustin believed. The election of John F. Kennedy made Washington once again relevant. It was time to force federal action through mass confrontation.
At first, the major civil rights organizations such as the Urban League and the NAACP were skeptical or completely hostile. They did not want to offend legislators or members of the administration. A confrontational march might reduce their access to those in power and lessen their ability to exercise influence from the inside. In addition, there had long been a basic difference of outlook within the civil rights movements that involved not just a debate about strategy but also a deep difference of opinion about morality and human nature.
As David L. Chappell argues in his book A Stone of Hope, there were really two civil rights movements. The first was northern and highly educated. People in this group tended to have an optimistic view of history and human nature. Without thinking much about it, they perceived the arc of history as a gradual ascent, a steady accumulation of more scientific and psychological knowledge, a steady achievement of greater prosperity, a steady growth of progressive legislation, and a gentle rise from barbarism to decency.
They believed that racism was such a clear violation of America’s founding documents that the main job for the civil rights activist was to appeal to reason and the better angels of people’s nature. As education levels increased, as consciousness was raised, as prosperity and economic opportunity spread, then more and more people would gradually see that racism was wrong, that segregation was unjust, and they would rise to combat it. Education, prosperity, and social justice would rise together. All good things are compatible and mutually reinforcing.
People in this camp tended to believe in conversation over confrontation, consensus over aggression, and civility over political force.
There was a second camp, Chappell argues, that emerged from the biblical prophetic tradition. Its leaders, including King and Rustin, cited Jeremiah and Job. In this world, they argued, the just suffer while the unjust prosper. Being right does not necessarily lead to being victorious. Man is a sinner at the core of his being. He will rationalize the injustices that benefit him. He will not give up his privileges even if you can persuade him they are unjust. Even people on the righteous side of a cause can be corrupted by their own righteousness, can turn a selfless movement into an instrument to serve their own vanity. They can be corrupted by whatever power they attain and corrupted by their own powerlessness.
Evil, King declared, is “rampant” in the universe. “Only the superficial optimist who refuses to face the realities of life fails to see this patent fact.”29 People in this realist camp, who were mostly southern and religious, had contempt for the northern faith in gradual natural progress. “This particular sort of optimism has been discredited by the brutal logic of events,” King continued. “Instead of assured progress in wisdom and decency, man faces the ever present possibility of swift relapse not merely to animalism, but into such calculated cruelty as no other animal can practice.”30
The optimists, members of this camp argued, practice idolatry. They worship man and not God, and when they do worship God it is a God who merely possesses human qualities in extreme form. As a result they overestimate the power of human goodwill, idealism, and compassion and their own noble intentions. They are too easy on themselves, too complacent about their own virtue, and too naïve about the resolve of their opponents.
Randolph, King, and Rustin had this more austere view of their struggle. The defenders of segregation would not lie down, and people of goodwill would not be persuaded to act if there was any risk to themselves. The civil rights activists themselves could not rely on their own goodwill or their own willpower, because very often they would end up perverting their own cause. If there was to be any progress, it was necessary not just to be engaged, one had to utterly surrender to the movement, at the cost of one’s own happiness and fulfillment and possibly life. This attitude of course fueled a fierce determination, which many of their more optimistic secular allies could not match. As Chappell put it, “Civil rights activists drew from illiberal sources to supply the determination that liberals lacked, but needed.”31 The biblical lens didn’t protect the realists from pain and suffering, but it explained that pain and suffering were inevitable and redemptive.
One consequence of this attitude was that the prophetic realists were much more aggressive. They took it as a matter of course that given the sinful nature of man, people could not be altered merely by education, consciousness raising, and expanded opportunity. It was wrong to put one’s faith in historical processes, human institutions, or human goodness. As Rustin put it, American blacks look “upon the middle class idea of long term educational and cultural changes with fear and mistrust.”32
Instead, change comes through relentless pressure and coercion. That is to say, these biblical realists were not Tolstoyan, they were Gandhian. They did not believe in merely turning the other cheek or trying to win people over with friendship and love alone. Nonviolence furnished them with a series of tactics that allowed them to remain on permanent offense. It allowed them to stage relentless protests, marches, sit-ins, and other actions that would force their opponents to do things against their own will. Nonviolence allowed the biblical realists to aggressively expose the villainy of their foes, to make their enemies’ sins work against them as they were exposed in ever more brutal forms. They compelled their foes to commit evil deeds because they themselves were willing to absorb evil. Rustin endorsed the idea that extreme behavior was required to make the status quo crumble. He saw Jesus as “this fanatic whose insistence on love thrust at the very pillars of a stable society.”33 Or, as Randolph put it, “I feel morally obligated to disturb and keep disturbed the conscience of Jim Crow America.”34
Even in the midst of these confrontations, Randolph, Rustin, and the other civil rights activists were in their best moments aware that they were in danger of being corrupted by their own aggressive actions. In their best moments they understood that they would become guilty of self-righteousness because their cause was just; they would become guilty of smugness as their cause moved successfully forward; they would become vicious and tribal as group confronted group; they would become more dogmatic and simplistic as they used propaganda to mobilize their followers; they would become more vain as their audiences enlarged; their hearts would harden as the conflict grew more dire and their hatred for their enemies deepened; they would be compelled to make morally tainted choices as they got closer to power; the more they altered history, the more they would be infected by pride.