I Chose Liberty - Ludwig von Mises Institute

378 I Chose Liberty: Autobiographies of Contemporary Libertarians
organization to be called the Council for a Competitive Economy. The primary goal was
to create a visible distinction on Capitol Hill and within the business community between
the terms “pro-market” and “pro-business.” For five years, we struggled to enlist corporations
and executives as members and donors even as we continually and openly criticized
any of their actions that seemed to us to undermine the case for a free market.
We also put forth the best possible solutions to business issues, regardless of political
feasibility, from repeal of Glass-Steagall to elimination of the corporate income tax. Thanks
to my committed and like-minded staff, I was able to keep the Council pure enough that
both LeFevre and Rothbard became supporters and cheerleaders. My staff included, at
various times, such notables as David Boaz, Joe Cobb, Cindy Ingham, Tom Palmer, Sheldon
Richman, Katsuro Sakoh, Fred Smith, and Barbara Stevens. While in the end the Council
did not survive, the experience for me was an uplifting one, and the culmination of my
intellectual odyssey. How many ever get to advocate anarcho-capitalism there within the
belly of the beast?
Rich Wilck is a faculty member in the College of Business and Public Administration at the University
of Louisville.
80
ANNE WORTHAM
KNOWING MYSELF AND EARNING AUTONOMY
Since I am black and grew up in segregated Jackson, Tennessee, attended college at
the famous Tuskegee Institute, and was in Washington, D.C. on August 28, 1963, one
might have expected me to join 250,000 people participating in The March on Washington
for Jobs and Freedom. Instead, having just completed my part time job at the Peace Corps
headquarters, I was leaving the city, to visit my family in Tennessee before reporting to
Syracuse University for training as a Peace Corps teacher in Tanzania, East Africa. Despite
my landlady’s insistence that I delay my departure (“Everybody is going to the March”), I
just couldn’t overcome my reasons for skipping the historical rally at the Lincoln Memorial,
which is known more for Martin Luther King’s famous speech than for its welfare statist
demands for what amounted to democratic socialism. First, I was suspicious of mass collective
action in general. In 1960, when the sit-in movement, led by students at black colleges,
spread to more than 55 cities in 13 states, I witnessed a herd mentality at the campus