Races: The Other 97%

RACES

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Through an angry summer of racial rioting, the pillagers, the arsonists and the snipers, the anarchists, the loudmouths and the demagogues have held the center of the stage. When the fury abates and the fires die down, a wholly different cast of characters will move in to repair the damage. These are the real revolutionaries, the men who have been laboring undramatically for years, and in some cases for decades, to secure for the Negro a more equitable share of America's affluence. "These are the people who can do more," says Massachusetts Republican Edward Brooke, the first Negro in the U.S. Senate since Reconstruction. "They can accomplish something that the militants cannot."

They can, that is, unless the Negro Revolution follows the classic pattern and devours the very men who did most to set it in motion, replacing them with extremist firebrands. In the wretched Negro slums, the more moderate Negro leaders pack no clout with the young buckoes who toss Molotov cocktails and chant murderous antiwhite slogans. "A black man today," insists one Black Power advocate, "is either a radical or an Uncle Tom." In fact, only a fraction of America's 22 million Negroes falls into either category. What worries the moderates is that increasing numbers of ghetto dwellers seem more susceptible than ever to the "Burn, baby, burn!" appeal of the radicals. Whitney M. Young Jr., 46, executive director of the National Urban League and probably the most effective man in the nation when it comes to drumming up jobs for Negroes, says: "Whether the moderates can prevail will be determined by whether there is an immediate and tangible response to the riots from the white community." Adds Young, in the phrase with which he addresses mayors and businessmen: "You've got to give us some victories."

Broad Paths. Young's concern is shared by other top-echelon Negro leaders—most notably A. Philip Randolph, president of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters; Roy Wilkins, executive director of the National Associa tion for the Advancement of Colored People; and Martin Luther King, winner of the 1964 Nobel Peace Prize and president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. Each has explored broad pathways to Negro advancement: Randolph in the labor movement, Wilkins by affirming legal rights, King by awakening the nation's conscience, Young by opening up economic opportunity. None of the advances came easily or swiftly.

Now come the militants—mostly men with minuscule followings and even less in the way of concrete accomplishment for their race—to confront the nation's Negroes with a choice. "They can try to solve their problems," says Philadelphia's U.S. District Judge A. Leon Higginbotham, a Negro, "by supporting people who have programmatic effectiveness, like Whitney Young. Or they can place their faith in others and have another century of increasing chaos."

Wilkins, for one, sees "no discernible danger that the moderates will be overthrown." Young, similarly, estimates that no more than 3% of U.S. Ne groes applauded or participated in recent outbursts. What troubles him is that Congress, "in its obvious efforts to avoid rewarding the rioters," will embark on "a course of