Black Vanguard

In James Forman's book The Making of Black Revolutionaries, the former organizer of the Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) -- that led the sit-ins against American apartheid, and risked their lives in support of Black communities in Mississippi Freedom Summer -- recalled the challenges of working with the established Black elites of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) who wanted to control the activists.

Writing today in Black Agenda Report, Bruce A. Dixon examines how corporate funding has corrupted Black establishment organizations like the Urban League, NAACP and SCLC, to the extent that they have become neutralized in conflicts over environmental racism. Having bought themselves a generation of Black politicians like Barack Obama, the nuclear power industry -- and other corporate sectors heavily reliant on public treasury largesse -- have now found reliable toadies in the conventional Black vanguard.