revolutionary action movement (ram) - Michael Schwartz Library

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a series of ideological discussions, the Philadelphia study/action group
decided to call itself the Revolutionary Action Movement . (RAM) . It
decided it would be a black nationalist direct action organization . Its
purpose would be to start a mass black nationalist movement . By using mass
direct action combined with the tactics of self-defense,
it hoped to change
the civil rights movement into a black revolution . RAM decided to work
with the established civil rights leadership in Philadelphia and eventually
build a base for mass support .
RAM contacted Rev . Leon Sullivan who had organized selective boycotts
in the early 60's and volunteered to help with the selective boycotts which
the Philadelphia ministers were conducting against industries that discriminated
in their hiring practices .
RAM distributed leaflets in the tens of thousands door to door throughout
the community, Stanford states :
With about 15 people we distributed about 35,000 leaflets in three
days : Brother Stanley Daniels and myself covered almost all of
West Philly, block by block, going in bars, candy stores, slipping
leaflets under people's doors, working into the early hours of the
morning .
In
the early months of 1963, a new Philadelphia NAACP president was elected
named Cecil Moore, an attorney who was prone to direct-action . 8
Temple University initiated a
pilot project called Philadelphia Community
Action (PCA) composed of white liberals who had been given a grant
of one million dollars to study black people in North Philadelphia .
No
black people from the community were included on the commission . The NAACP
decided to hold a mass rally to protest the commission . Moore asked all
7Max Stanford (Muhammad Ahmad), Formative Years : Fall, 1962-63 (Unpublished
paper, Amherst, Mass ., 1974), p . 1 .
8A Cadre Discus sion on RAM . (Unpublished paper), p . 3 .