From the days of Slavery, Black Power and Passive Resistance
It’s Still About Economic Development, Not Burning America Down
By Bill Thomas
Daniel Watts, editor of the provocative Black power monthly, “The Liberator” in a 1968 interview with Bokara Lengendre and published in the Daily Press, believed America should be burned down to the ground.
Dr. King’s “Economic of Rights” called for a massive injection of $12.0 billion in funding to create jobs and economic sound neighborhoods in the rebuilding of America.
How familiar does this sound today, more than a quarter century after an assassin‘s bullet and Dr. King’s effort to empower all the poor people via massive mobilization rooted in economic empowerment?
Both saw the emergence of a strong Black community in America primarily through economic development in cooperation with other people of similar circumstances.
It is still not surprising that they tell us so little about the last years of Martin Luther King’s life; of how in the end his path crossed with other frustrated Black men like Daniel Watts or Malcolm X.
