A Black Manifesto

The message was brutally harsh: "Fifteen dollars per nigger." In these words, a newly formed National Black Economic Development Conference last month demanded that "white Christian churches and Jewish synagogues" pay $500 million in "reparations" to U.S. Negroes or face the possibility of disruption of church operations and seizure of church facilities. Last week conference speaker James Forman, one-time executive director of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, disrupted a Sunday Communion service at Manhattan's Riverside Church to demand, among other things, that the church, located on the edge of Harlem, turn over 60% of its investment income to the conference. Two days later Forman posted the conference's "Black Manifesto" on the door of the headquarters of the Lutheran Church in America; the Lutherans' share of the reparations bill, he said, was $50 million. Finally, he appeared at the New York Archdiocesan chancery to demand $200,000,000 from U.S. Roman Catholics.

Ironically, this blunt demand on the churches originated from a well-intentioned effort by a liberal interfaith group to draw out black ideas for the economic betterment of urban ghettos. The Interreligious Foundation for Community Organization (IFCO), which includes 23 Protestant, Catholic, Jewish, Negro and Mexican-American groups, organized the National Black Economic Development Conference to bring black leaders together for discussions and action on the economic aspects of Black Power. The result was not what IFCO had expected. Forman took over a meeting of the conference in Detroit and called for an end to the capitalistic system in the U.S. Then he pushed through a "Black Manifesto," which passed 187 to 63, with many abstentions.

The manifesto itself was less sweeping than Forman's revolutionary introduction. It did demand half a billion dollars from U.S. churches and synagogues as reparations for their role in supporting the "exploitation" of the American Negro. But most of the money was earmarked for such plausible projects as a Southern land bank to aid dispossessed Negro farmers and a new black university in the South.

Many church leaders nevertheless recoiled both at the tone of the document (it mentioned "armed struggle" if necessary) and at Forman's aggressive tactics in publicizing it. A few were ready to accept New York Mayor John Lindsay's offer of police protection for houses of worship. Others were obviously moved by the manifesto's charge that Negroes had been "kept in bondage and political servitude and forced to work as slaves by the military machinery and the Christian church working hand in hand." By week's end the General Board of the National Council of Churches had recorded its "deep appreciation" to Forman and avowed that it "shares the aspirations of the black people of this country." As for the people who started it all, the Board of Directors of IFCO voted to solicit $270,000 from its members .for further activities by the Black Economic Conference.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.