The Objector, magazine of the Central Committee for Conscientious Objectors, interviewed Michael SImmons on the role of African-Americans in the anti-war movement, both historically and today.
Objector: One problem with most historical accounts of the anti-war movement, or the peace movement as a whole, is that in most accounts, the contributions, or even the very presence of black people is virtually omitted or overlooked. What is your impression of this?
Simmons: There's a sense, particularly in the progressive movement, that African Americans just deal with domestic issues, and historically that's absolutely false....
The problem with African Americans challenging U.S. foreign policy has always been that whites in this society, including white progressives have always challenged us in the sense that we should not link those issues (civil rights and peace). So that when SNCC, which had among its leadership Stokley Carmichael, H. Rap Brown, and which I was a part of, formally came out against the war, our funding base just went down, and people were very critical of us. But what is significant about the statement by SNCC against the war, if you read it, is that unlike Students for a Democratic Society, or those of many other white progressive groups, the SNCC statement was also a critique of U.S. foreign policy. It criticized not only the war in Vietnam, but it criticized the policies on South Africa, the policies in Latin America, so it went way beyond just the war."
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