Negro Digest - Freedom Archives

pain of knowing too much, and we
share this pain as Max reads :
"Panic in Washington ensued
when it was discovered that Jaja
not only had information on the
Alliance, but on King Alfred, the
contingency plan to detain and ultimately
rid America of its Negroes .
Mere American membership in the
Alliance would have been suf&dent
to rack America, but King Alfred
would have made Negroes realize,
finally and angrily, that all the new
moves-the laws and committees
-to gain democracy for them were
fraudulent, just as Minister Q and
the others have been saying for
years . Your own letter to me days
after you left the White House only
underscored what so many Negro
leaders believed . The one alternative
left for Negroes would be not
only to seek that democracy withheld
from them as quick and as
violently as possible, but to fight
for their very survival . King Alfred,
as you will see, leaves no
choice ."
Have black people ever had a
choice? NO . Yet, the New York
Times reviewer said of the King
Alfred plan, " . . . here believability
falters ." The Saturday Review
adds to white America's illusions
with the assertion, "It reads rather
like an anti-white, Protocols of
the Elders of Zion ." The Nation
said of the Contingency, "It is an
unlikely possibility that deflects
attention from the ways power and
prejudice actually work . Inevitable
black genocide is a risky thing to
7 8
base your whole vision upon ." A
white critic reviewing a black book
feels that "the King Alfred Contingency
Plan" is not only fiction
but borders on science fiction .
Were Detroit and Newark fiction?
Were the deaths of three
college students in South Carolina
(two shot in the back) fiction? Is
the formation of one thousand
vigilantes (posse) in Chicago to
fight off "rioters" fiction? And
what about the purchasing of armored
cars, "Mace" (an eye-irritating,
nauseous gas), "banana
peel" (a chemical that makes a
street too slippery to walk on),
polycarbonate Riot Shields, grenade
launchers for 12-gauge shotguns,
and other weapons by city
and state governments? One can
go further, even after reading the
so-called scholarly criticism in
Trans-Action and refer to the Report
from Iron Mountain .
The "Report" not only legitimizes
war, but suggests that the
government reconsider the reintroduction
of slavery :
"Another possible surrogate for
the control of potential enemies of
society is the re-introduction, in
some form consistent with modern
technology and political processes,
of slavery .l"
As a black writer, I can look at
The Man Who Cried I AM from a
different perspective and indeed see
"King Alfred" being implemented
today .
3 Report From Iron Mountain, Dial
Press .
March 1968 NEGRO DIGEST