Tacoma’s Broadway Center for the Performing Arts opened the doors of the Theater on the Square last night for a panel discussion focusing on one of the 20th century’s major political movements, the Civil Rights Movement.  The spotlight was on the “Black/White coalition” that formed around the movement, and the question posed was, essentially, whatever happened to that coalition, anyway?

The conversation was at times restrained, and at other times quite lively, as audience members and panelists explored the roots, as well as the fate, of the multi-cultural/ethnic/racial force inspired by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and other civil rights leaders of the mid and late ‘60s.  The conversation was also recorded for broadcast on public radio.

Panelists, of whom there were eight, ranged from local educators from the University or Washington Tacoma and the Evergreen State College, along with representatives of local government, labor, the religious community, and the arts community.  University of Puget Sound faculty member, Dexter Gordon, served as moderator.

Dexter opened with a question that set the tone for an evening’s discussion of the Black/White coalition of the 1960s.  Essentially he asked, “What has happened to the coalition?

“Somewhere along the road,” he said, “the coalition has fallen apart…despite the great success of the coalition in the 1960s.”

The panelists offered several theories for the apparent disappearance of the progressive, multi-ethnic coalition of activism for social change that emerged during the Great Society era of the 60s.  Tom Hilyard, representing the county’s Office of Community Services, as well as the local chapter of the NAACP and the Tacoma Pierce County Black Collective, suggested a combination of “time, specialization and diffusion,” explaining that “we’ve all gone about the business of engaging in our individual lives.”  He speculated that, since the ‘60s, other concerns have “begun to overshadow” what was once such a powerful focus on civil rights. 

Bill Hagens, a clinical professor a the University of Washington’s School of Public Health and Community Medicine, described the civil rights movement of the ‘60s as “really rather a short-term experience,” an exception to the country’s tendency to “lean toward the conservative.”  According to Hagen, the decline of the coalition created a kind of social and ideological “gulf” â€" followed eventually by the “period of social narcissism” in the 1980s.

“We started thinking that we didn’t really need each other,” Hagens said, “and we didn’t really need to solve each other’s problems.”

Audience member and former Tacoma mayor and council member, Harold Moss, who most recently served on the Pierce County Council, wondered if the panel was suggesting that the 60s inspired coalition could be somehow resurrected.  “The coalition was a tool and it was a tool of the times,” Moss said.  “We will not go back to those times.”

Times have changed, Moss said, and he echoed what several panelists had suggested â€" that discrimination, unlike the Black/White coalition itself, has not disappeared:  it’s just a little harder for the public to recognize it for what it is.

“There’s no point recreating what no longer exists,” Moss told the panel.  “You don’t need another coalition, you need a tool â€" for today.” â€" Bill Timnick

Not A Genuine Black Man
The Black/White coalition discussion was a precursor to Brian Copeland’s “Not A Genuine Black Man” performances Jan. 18-20 at Theatre on the Square.  For more information and tickets, go to the Broadway Center Web site.

Below is a preview of Copeland’s performance on YouTube.