I felt, and Bayard Rustin agreed, that it would be more effective and meaningful for me to come to work for the institute, as opposed to what I was doing at the Industrial Union Department of the AFL-CIO, where I mainly was engaged in trying to develop community unions based on the concept of organizing on economic and social grievances felt in the minority or black community.

I felt that my efforts would be more fruitful working with A. Philip Randolph and Bayard Rustin in the context of effectuating what Randolph called the black-labor alliance for racial equality and economic justice. Bayard Rustin felt it was important for the civil rights movement to move from protest to politics, to engage in political action to address the problems facing blacks that were not merely racial but were economic and social.

Part of what motivated the critics of coalition politics is that they didn’t view the trade union movement as a major social and political force. The peace movement, for instance, saw the labor movement, at least its top leadership, as an obstacle in terms of moving toward peace. The New Left thought the labor movement was not aggressive and militant enough. But Bayard saw the labor movement as the core, the essential element in the coalition because its economic and social program was parallel to where the civil rights organizations should be heading. That was the essential difference between Bayard’s emphasis on coalition politics and his critics.

The critics were not very accurate in their view of the labor movement because the labor movement, especially on economic and social questions, was a major force for forward movement in terms of domestic issues. There may have been differences on foreign policy, but certainly on domestic issues the labor movement was a major force for effective action.

I think there are a couple of things. First, there was no grassroots political mobilization for the Freedom Budget. Although the civil rights movement and the labor movement were generally for the Freedom Budget, they did not engage in a mass, grassroots effort to build support for the Freedom Budget. And therefore, with no key political figures in Congress committed to it, and lacking an effective grassroots political movement behind it, it resulted in a kind of stalemate.

Also, as things moved on, the coalition that Bayard and A. Philip Randolph hoped to generate around the Freedom Budget was split, or set aside, because of the disagreement and the contention over the Vietnam War, where there were different elements claiming that there could not be “guns and butter” at the same time. The peace movement’s priority was pressing for the end of the Vietnam War. It was difficult with so much money being spent on the war to generate the kind of substantial support needed in terms of action and commitment to the Freedom Budget.

I think there was a genuine lack in the mobilization effort. The kind of mobilization that took place in 1963 for the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, resulting in at least a quarter of a million people marching on Washington, DC — that kind of mass mobilization in terms of political action, and the pressing of elected officials through political action, was in fact lacking. Although the labor movement was for the Freedom Budget, they were not prepared to mobilize their ranks in a grassroots effort politically in support of the Freedom Budget.

No, I don’t. In effect, the actual development and organization of the Freedom Budget was to press key elements in the Democratic Party to support an economic and social thrust that would lead to freedom for masses of blacks and masses of whites as well. Bayard and A. Philip Randolph were concerned about moving key elements and forces in and around the Democratic Party in support of what they thought ought to be the political, economic, and social thrust of the civil rights movement. And if that meant creating pressure on key elements in the Democratic Party, they were more than willing to do so.

I think that there was the real possibility of getting the coalition that Randolph and Bayard advocated. They were not co-opted by the Democratic Party. As an example: In the effort to get the 1964 Civil Rights Act passed, the Kennedy-proposed legislation did not include an economic dimension; it did not include a provision to address job or economic discrimination. The civil rights movement felt this was an important area to press, even though the [John F.] Kennedy administration thought that adding a jobs dimension might jeopardize the whole legislative effort to get civil rights passed.

The civil rights movement in effect went to the labor movement, and George Meany, president of the AFL-CIO, agreed that there ought to be an economic dimension to the civil rights legislation and a job discrimination section. In his testimony before Congress, he said that not only was he for the workplace discrimination provision added to the bill, but that such legislation was important in terms of the labor movement because it would give an added lever to labor leadership to address problems of discrimination in the labor movement itself.

That was an illustration of the civil rights movement not being co-opted by the Kennedy administration and the Democratic Party leadership. In fact, the civil rights and labor movements were successful in getting Title VII added to the Civil Rights legislation, and the legislation was passed in 1964 with that job and economic dimension in the legislation. So I would say that the civil rights movement and the labor movement itself was not bound to what the Democratic Party leadership was for at any given time, and that the critics on the New Left saying that the civil rights movement was co-opted is just not accurate.

I think he was still committed to extending the civil rights revolution in 1966. But soon after that he was distracted by his own commitment to an involvement in the Vietnam War. Even with the passage of the Fair Housing Act in 1968, the last legislative thrust of the civil rights movement in the latter stages of the Johnson administration, what cut short Johnson’s commitment was his involvement in waging the Vietnam War.

No, I think the Freedom Budget and the antiwar cause should not have been tied together. The Freedom Budget, if it had a chance to be effectuated in the Congress, it was more likely to be done by the coalition that was not linked to the antiwar effort. This was true, although it turned out that the Freedom Budget did not pass Congress.

The political, economic, and social framework is best articulated in an article that Bayard wrote before the Freedom Budget called “From Protest to Politics,” in which he made the case that the problems facing blacks were not merely racial but economic and social, and that as such, not just fair employment but full employment, not just integrated housing but decent and affordable housing, not just integrated education but quality education, these economic and social problems required a major allocation of resources from the government. And therefore that the civil rights movement ought to engage in political action, aggressively and militantly, to press Congress and the White House to address these economic and social problems. But that blacks, being both a numerical and racial minority, could do this best in coalition and that the essential partner in the coalition was the labor movement, which had an economic and social program to address these issues. It was in this context that the Freedom Budget was put forth.

The problems are still with us. What’s needed is a revival of the coalition politically, but on a much more grassroots, in-depth basis. It would take the building, organizing, and the amassing of such a movement around the basic economic and social issues that are still with us to bring about a political climate for the effectuation of an updated Freedom Budget.