Jack Salzman, Cornel West Struggles in the Promised

348 // WALDO E. MARTIN, JR.
freedom struggle to undermine principaled Black leftist politics. This could perhaps
best be seen in the government's sordid campaign to blacklist both Paul
Robeson and W.E.B. Du Bois. Neither leader nor the internationalist, Pan-
Africanist, communist/socialist visions they represented ever recovered. 13 An
important component of late sixties and early seventies Black radicalism was the
effort among various Black intellectual-activists like Angela Davis and organizations
like the early Black Panther Party to revive the tradition of Marxist-inspired
analysis of the Black freedom struggle.
The fevered Cold War mentality likewise impeded serious Black support for
the Cuban Revolution, especially after the revolution's alignment with
Communism and Soviet Russia. Early Black support for the Cuban Revolution
grew out of sympathy for the Cuban people's freedom insurgency as well as that
movement's highly praised efforts to alleviate anti-Black racism and discrimination.
14
For many Black nationalists, the Cuban example was at once instructive and
inspirational, in keeping with a Black nationalist vision which increasingly
aligned itself with the progressive struggles of peoples of color throughout the
Third World (including Vietnam). Therefore, during the sixties, the Cuban victory
at the Bay of Pigs, and Cuban support for nationalist efforts in the Third
World were not lost on Black nationalists. Not surprisingly, therefore, Black
activists like Robert Williams and Assata Shakur sought refuge in Cuba to escape
official persecution for their insurgent political activities in the United States. 15
Growing Black opposition to the war in Vietnam derived in part from the
developing Third World consciousness of the period. Although most African
Americans, like most Americans generally, continued to support the war, by the
late sixties Black opposition was intensifying. King's open opposition to the war
after 1966 coupled with that of SNCC and the Black Panther Party revealed
something of the range of that antiwar sentiment. King's opposition revealed the
depth of his commitment to nonviolence as well as his compulsion to exercise the
national moral leadership he personified. It also reflected his growing need and
willingness to support publicly the national antiwar movement. While King distanced
himself from the increasingly nationalist politics of groups like SNCC, he
shared with them an awareness that the escalating political and financial costs of
the war were undermining support for the Black freedom struggle itself. Those
costs extended to lagging support for critical national initiatives like President
Lyndon Johnson's War on Poverty.
In addition, it was becoming clearer that Black soldiers were a disproportionate
number of the war's combat troops and fatalities. Radical Black nationalists in
particular severely criticized this aspect of the Vietnam War as evidence of its
racist nature. On a different yet related level, the conflict was seen as a racist
American intrusion into the internal affairs of the Vietnamese nation. Consistent
with this line of argument, radical Black critics charged the government with pitting
one nation of color—African Americans—against another—the Vietnamese.