The Negroes Enter Southern Politics

Selma and the March to Montgomery, so full of the hyperbole of hope, the promise that democracy would at last come to the South, marked an end to the direct-action phase of the civil rights movement. Since then, the emphasis has been on politics. The attainment of the Voting Rights Act ended the need for the movement to rely solely on demonstrations and boycotts to achieve its political ends.

In the year since Selma the movement has reflected the new reality in mostly predictable ways. The NAACP, born and bred in the briar patch of conventional politics, has regained prestige. SNCC and CORE, the youngest and most radical advocates of direct-action—once, with Martin Luther King’s SCLC, the most idealistic element in the Sou...