Those of us who survive must indeed be a tough people. - Stokely Carmichael

Woodrow Wilson proclaimed that this country entered World War I “to make the world safe for democracy.” This was the very same President who issued executive orders segregating most of the eating and rest-room facilities for federal employees. [...] Obviously, black people were not included in Woodrow Wilson’s defense perimeter. Whatever the life of blacks might have been under German rule, this country clearly did not fight Germany for the improvement of the status of black people—under the saved democracy—in this land.

It should, however, already be clear that the building of an independent force is necessary; that Black Power is necessary. If we do not learn from history, we are doomed to repeat it, and that is precisely the lesson of the Reconstruction era. Black people were allowed to register, to vote and to participate in politics, because it was to the advantage of powerful white “allies” to permit this. But at all times such advances flowed from white decisions. That era of black participation in politics was ended by another set of white decisions. There was no powerful independent political base in the southern black community to challenge the curtailment of political rights. At this point in the struggle, black people have no assurance—save a kind of idiot optimism and faith in a society whose history is one of racism—that if it became necessary, even the painfully limited gains thrown to the by the Congress would not be revoked as soon as a shift in political sentiments occurs. (A vivid example of this emerged in 1967 with Congressional moves to undercut and eviscerate the school desegregation provisions of the 1964 Civil Rights Act.) We must build that assurance and build it on solid ground.

Law is the agent of those in political power; it is the product of those powerful enough to define right and wrong and to have that definition legitimized by “law.” This is not to say that “might makes right,” but it is to say that Might makes Law.