Black Agenda Report
Black Agenda Report
News, commentary and analysis from the black left.

  • Home
  • Africa
  • African America
  • Education
  • Environment
  • International
  • Media and Culture
  • Political Economy
  • Radio
  • US Politics
  • War and Empire
  • omnibus

Blacks and the Alabama U.S. Senatorial Race
Ken Morgan
13 Dec 2017
Blacks and the Alabama U.S. Senatorial Race
Blacks and the Alabama U.S. Senatorial Race

“The capitalist moribund two-party electoral politics takes us down a dead-end road.”

Democrat Doug Jones’ hair’s-breadth win Republican Roy Moore is being hailed as a great victory. In reality, it makes no difference.

An unemployed Alabama black construction worker John Dewayne Richardson provided food for thought. According to the Washington Post, he said, “People don’t vote because they don’t feel their votes matter because nothing is going to change. What difference is it going to make?”

Did not Obama or Trump v. Clinton or JFK teach us a lesson? The capitalist moribund two-party electoral politics takes us down a dead-end road. Even the Jackson experiment and the Black Lives Matter movement are bound and limited by bourgeois electoral politics.

Instead, start with independent political action movement beyond mainstream, electoral politics. Give it an anti-capitalist base. Add massive doses of anti-racism, anti-sexism, anti-homophobia, and pro-immigration. Give it an internationalist view. Our allies represent oppressed people of the world.

“Even the Jackson experiment and the Black Lives Matter movement are bound and limited by bourgeois electoral politics.”

Get over the dump Trump syndrome. Instead, dump capitalism with its bourgeoisie electoral politics. It is not about replacing Trump with Bernie Sanders types. The capitalist economic crisis is real. Attacks will continue lowering wages, cutbacks in social areas as well as attacks on our democratic rights.

Alabama’s history is strewn with varying degrees of independent black politics – not relying on electoral politics. Black miners’ activated struggles in the 1890s and turn of the century. Organizing black sharecroppers signaled still another method. The modern civil rights era brought us Rosa Parks and the E.D. Nixon-inspired Montgomery bus boycott.

Birmingham’s Rev. Shuttleworth’s 1956 efforts to end segregation in that city woke up the struggle. Dr. King’s Birmingham SCLC campaign exemplified another form of battle not led by electoral politics. The Selma to Montgomery marches marks another epoch struggle.

“Alabama’s history is strewn with varying degrees of independent black politics – not relying on electoral politics.”

The Lowndes County Freedom Organization (LCFO) helped usher in a more concentrated form of independent black politics mixed with black solidarity, and black awareness. The group helped to create a transition from civil rights to black rights. LCFO, with its symbolized black scowling panther, was nicknamed the Black Panther Party, aided by SNCC field secretaries that Stokely Carmichael led.

True, none of these Alabama episodes were anti-capitalist. They did contain seeds of independent politics that spawns it. My argument is that these happenings included elements of independent, albeit different methods, of struggle.

Spontaneous reaction to black oppression is not enough. The black working class and black working class-minded sisters and brothers must be the central leadership.

Alabama represents fertile ground. Build the movement!

Dr. Morgan is a Black, and internationalist activist scholar. He can be reached at kmorgan2408@comcast.net

duopoly

Do you need and appreciate Black Agenda Report articles. Please click on the DONATE icon, and help us out, if you can.


Related Stories

Arnold August
Genocide as the Principal Cause of the Democrat’s Crushing Defeat
04 December 2024
While genocide is a clear cause of the democrats' defeat, economic issues are usually mentioned.
Black Alliance For Peace
No Matter Who Sits in the White Peoples’ House, the War Being Waged by the U.S. Colonial/Capitalist Class Against the Black Colonized Working Class and All Oppressed Peoples and Nations Will Continue
20 November 2024
Originally published in Black Alliance for Peace
Malaika Jabali
In Milwaukee, Many Black Voters Aren’t On Board With Either Party
31 July 2024
The city’s abstainers could determine who wins Wisconsin, a critical swing state, this November.
​​​​​​​ Ajamu Baraka, BAR editor and columnist
War, Genocide and Coups: Biden/Harris and The Irreversible Crisis of Neoliberal Fake Democracy
24 July 2024
One of the defining characteristics of the current crisis is the speed at which contradictory social, political and ideologic
​​​​​​​ Ajamu Baraka, BAR editor and columnist
For African/Black Working Class and Colonized Peoples, Midterm Elections in the U.S. Offer No Relief from War, Repression and Capitalist Misery
10 July 2024
This article was
Democratic Party Betrayal, Abortion, and the Supreme Court
Margaret Kimberley, BAR Executive Editor and Senior Columnist
Democratic Party Betrayal, Abortion, and the Supreme Court
08 December 2021
Democrats have been fooled into thinking that only the courts can protect abortion rights.
Elections and the Illusion of Black Political Power
Margaret Kimberley, BAR Executive Editor and Senior Columnist
Elections and the Illusion of Black Political Power
03 November 2021
Black politicians may be openly conservative or pretend leftists but their constituents rarely get what they need.
Biden is No FDR  and Build Back Better Legislation Proves It
​​​​​​​ Ajamu Baraka, BAR editor and columnist
Biden is No FDR and Build Back Better Legislation Proves It
27 October 2021
The idea that Joe Biden is the "most progressive president since FDR" is a propaganda device meant to quiet the Democratic Party left and force
Senators Bonnie and Clyde - 1% soldiers of fortune
Raymond Nat Turner, BAR poet-in-residence
Senators Bonnie and Clyde - 1% soldiers of fortune
27 October 2021
                                         
Some provisions of Biden’s “Build Back Better” legislation benefit the masses of Black people, but this legislation is a bare minimum effort to blunt some of the sharpest contradictions of the system while attempting to maintain the neoliberal order.  
​​​​​​​ Ajamu Baraka, BAR editor and columnist
Build Back Better Legislation: New Keynesianism or Neoliberal Public Relations Stunt?
06 October 2021
Some provisions of Biden’s “Build Back Better” legislation benefit the masses of Black people, but this legislation is a bare minimum effort to

More Stories


  • Palestine Action
    Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley
    UK State Repression on Behalf of Israel
    11 Jul 2025
    Roger McKenzie is the international editor of the UK-based Morning Star, the only English-language socialist daily newspaper in the world. He joins us from Oxford to discuss how the UK supports…
  • Margaret Kimberley, BAR Executive Editor and Senior Columnist
    New York Times Joins a White Supremacist In Attacking Zohran Mamdani
    09 Jul 2025
    Zohran Mamdani, the choice of Democratic Party voters in New York City, is anathema to the billionaire class. So much so that the New York Times elevated the work of a white supremacist in an effort…
  • Editors, The Black Agenda Review
    EDITORIAL: Even During Disaster, The Pittsburgh Courier, 1927
    09 Jul 2025
    “Neither disaster, catastrophe, nor calamity can take precedence … over the color-caste system.”
  • Ann Garrison, BAR Contributing Editor
    UN Group of Experts on DRC Report, June 2025
    09 Jul 2025
    The UN Group of Experts on DRC reports the obvious, that Rwandan President Paul Kagame intends to annex DRC’s Kivu Provinces.
  • Anthony Karefa Rogers-Wright
    Collaborators Like Al Sharpton Can’t Assist Zohran Mamdani with Circumventing Pigmentation Politics and the Black Misleadership Class…But Principled Black Radical Organizing Can
    09 Jul 2025
    Zohran Mamdani’s victory rattled NYC’s political elite. But to win Black voters and defeat the Democrat machine, he must reject Al Sharpton’s co-optation and align with radical Black organizers.
  • Load More
Subscribe
connect with us
about us
contact us