Struggles for equality by the world's peoples complement one another
wchao37  Updated: 2004-04-12 09:58

Chairman Mao's call in 1963 to support the American blacks in their struggle for equality in the Civil Rights Movement was very timely.

It was timely because the Civil Rights movement was gathering momentum yet there were widespread resistance from the whites against desegregation especially in the southern states.

For the blacks, each struggle in the previous four hundred years had ended in even more merciless oppression against them.

Mass mob lynchings and torching of homes were rampant throughout the blacks' history in America even after Southern General Picket's Charge against the Federal troops failed miserably at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania on July 3, 1863, resulting in reversal of fortune against the South in the American Civil War and in Abraham Lincoln's moment of triumph -- living down as a legend in America's history as one of her greatest presidents.

So why did the struggle starting in 1955 with Rosa Parks' refusal to let a white man take her seat on a bus end up in complete success in 1965 with the passage of the Civil Rights Act by then President Lyndon B. Johnson?

Do you really believe Mao's call had nothing to do with it?

Then let me ask you these two questions?

Why is China vigilant about subversive activities in the Hongkong SAR? Isn't that just one city amongst thousands in China?

Why are the Americans and British worried about the Madrid bombings? Isn't that involving only a few hundred people in a Spanish city far removed from the center of gravity of the West?

These questions and their obvious answers tell us that what happens in one area has a great influence on another part of our global village.

In the above two instances, China is afraid that subversive activities and the havoc they wreak in the HKSAR might spread to the rest of the country and the Anglos are afraid that the Spanish bombings would have domino effects leading to the toppling of their own governments.

In the same vein, the fact that China as a non-nuclear Third World country was able to fight the U.S. to a standstill in Korea and defeat the French at Dienbienphu in North Vietnam (the Vietmings were nominally fighting under general Vo Nguyen Giap, but the real battlefield commander of the troops in the engagement was General Chen Geng of the PRC, and all the weapons used by the Vietmings were sent from China) shows us that Mao's victory was a huge encouragement to the 'colored' peoples of the world, including the American blacks, just like what happens in HKSAR and Madrid have tremendous influence on China and the West respectively.

Therefore, it makes perfect sense to say that what happened in Korea in 1953 and Vietnam in 1954 had greatly encouraged the blacks in their fight for civil rights beginning with Rosa Parks' case in 1955.

Just look at the timeline.

You don't suppose Rosa Parks suddenly decided one morning to challenge the Montgomery bus company policy of relegating the blacks to the back of the bus without any increasingly malleable social climate for such a change, do you?

Afterall, non-white soldiers did prevail over whites for the first time in two pivotal wars just a couple of years before Rosa Parks' insubordination in Montgomery, Alabama in 1955.

After four hundred years of slavery, why did her decision to sit in the front of the bus did not result in her getting lynched like she would have been had she done it before the Korean War?

Don't you think Mao's victories in 1953 in Korea and 1954 in Vietnam had something to do with Rosa Parks' action in 1955 in Montgomery, Alabama but most importanty -- the resultant Civil Rights Movement in America?

Judging from what transpired during those three years, I would venture to say that just because you hadn't heard of such a comparison before wchao37 points it out does not mean he is terribly wrong about it, does it?

There is a time-spatial relationship here if you connect the dots together with Euclidean mathematics.

Of course no one is saying that Mao's call in 1963 was the ONLY thing that helped the Civil Rights Movement succeed. Progressive forces throughout the world during those years always complement one another, and struggles of the black people in the United States was an inseparable part of this global orchestra of anti-imperialism in the fifties and sixties.

The above content represents the view of the author only.

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