extending the franchise to Blacks in the South.
But have these gains exhausted the revolutionary potential of the Black movement? Have the mechanization of Southern agriculture, massive outmigrations from the Black Belt and civil rights laws wiped out the consequences of the old plantation system? Most important, have these changes wiped out the existence of an oppressed Black nation in the Deep South as so many have claimed? Is the right of self-determination for the Black Belt nation still a demand that communists should raise?
Let's take a look at current conditions. Despite the imperialist offensive against the Black masses, which resulted in tremendous outmigrations from the Black Belt homeland, there remains a stable community of Black people in the rural South and a growing Black population in the urban areas. The actual number of Blacks has steadily increased. In 1940, there were over nine million Black people in the South and by 1970 the number had increased to nearly twelve million. Over 70% of all Black people in the U.S. were bom in the South and still have roots there. Within the Black Belt territory itself, despite fierce economic and political coercion, there has remained since 1930 a stable community of over five million. The "escape valve" into the northern cities is being closed by the crisis, and outmigration from the South has slowed considerably with reverse migration now becoming the dominant trend.
It is no accident that the civil rights movement first arose in the South where Blacks face the most terroristic oppression and are often denied even the most basic democratic rights. In faet, the mechanization of agriculture, which drove so many Blacks off the land in the South, provided one of the main fueling sources of the rebellion. SNCC did some of its best work in its Southern rural projects, where it took up the struggles of sharecroppers and the displaced peasantry.
T oday the spiraling inflation and recession of the worst crisis in forty years still hits Blacks hardest, the victims of continued lasthired, first-fired policies and an unemployment rate twice that of whites. Recent statistics show the highest rate of unemployment among Black youth since World War II, while at the same time
BLACK BOLSHEVIK
there have been cutbacks in Black studies and other affirmative action programs. The result is yet another "lost" generation of Black youth condemned to the margins of the workforce. Once again, the sensitive ghetto youth and students are becoming a flash point for all the contradictions of the system.
In the midst of the biggest strike wave in twenty years, the ruling class is desperately trying to exacerbate existing race differences.
This accounts for the new rise of anti-busing and segregationist movements in northern cities, the rise in membership of the Ku Klux Klan and the increasing attacks on social welfare and affirmative action programs.
The crisis is also undermining the existence of the expanded Black middle class which was created by the ruling class's strategy of concessions during the "boom" years of the sixties. Business failures and service cutbacks are weakening this group economically, while fascist attacks and growing class divisions inside the Black community are eroding the political credibility of Black elected officials. In cities like Atlanta, Detroit and Newark, where Black mayors have been elected, the living and working conditions among Blacks have continued to deteriorate. Far from indicating the attainment of real political power for Afro-Americans, these politicians have been elected merely to serve as administrators for the white power structure.
This domestic situation is combined with an international situation more explosive than in the sixties, symbolized particularly by the fierce liberation struggles in southern Africa and the increasing threat of war between the two superpowers. It is only a matter of time before the smouldering embers of Black Revolt burst into flame again. As Lenin pointed out, "Capitalism is not so harmoniously built that the various sources of rebellion can immediately merge of their own accord, without reverses and defeats."13 Whenever the next Black upsurge comes-whether as part of a general revolutionary upsurge or as signal of the movement to come-we must be prepared to bring out mass support for equality and self-determination as a special feature of the struggle for socialism.
Most assuredly, the next wave of mass struggle will begin from a
