revolutionary action movement (ram) - Michael Schwartz Library

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after the March on Washington . Then came the assassination of John F .
Kennedy, President of 'the United States .
Many Negroes across the country
felt they had lost a friend . To the RAM cadre the ultra-right had made a
move .
Malcolm X,
speaking the Sunday after the assassination, made reference
to the Kennedy assassination as "chicken coming home to roost ." Elijah
Muhammad, head of the Nation of Islam, suspended Malcolm from speaking for
90 days and later extended the suspension indefinitely .
In Philadelphia, a white cop shot a black epileptic in the back of the
head and killed him . A coalition of black radical groups held mass rallies
to protest police brutality . After one of the rallies, black teenagers
began small-scale rioting . Members of RAM, observing the riot, began to
theorize about the potential of this kind of activity .
The coalition led mass marches on
the cop's police station only to be
met by machine guns staring them in the face .
The coalition decided it
had gone as far as it could go without getting innocent people hurt .
Freeman traveled to Philadelphia to talk to the RAM cadre .
He told
the cadre to cease all public activity and said that the ultra-right was
preparing to crush the movement . The word was "go underground" .
Development of RAM into a
National Organization
The year 1964 was a year of transition for the civil rights movement
and a year of ideological development for bl.ack radicals . In January,
Brookly CORE, led by Isaiah Brownson, planned the
Stall-in at the World's
Fair to protest discrimination being practiced there .
The purpose of the
Stall-in was to stop or slow down traffic in the streets and subways, to
bring New York City to a standstill . To disrupt the function of a city was
a new tactical use of civil disobedience .