Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

Disgruntled by the ineffectiveness of the peaceful strategy of the early civil rights movement , black college students formed the Revolutionary Action Movement (RAM) in 1963 in Philadelphia. RAM, the first black organization in the United states to call for a Marxist revolution, initiated a seven-year militant campaign against what it identified as the African American's uncompromising, “incurable” enemy: a white-dominated capitalist society. By 1967, the Federal Bureau of Investigation's COINTELPRO program and state law agencies incarcerated RAM's leadership, oftentimes unlawfully, which encouraged disunity. RAM dissolved in 1968. In an effort to combat police brutality, high black unemployment, and racist practices still rampant in the early 1960s, Max stanford, who later changed his name to Muhammad Ahmad, helped form the Revolutionary Action Movement in Philadelphia and was named the national field chairman. His group pushed for a revolutionary black nationalist movement as it tried to convert, by infiltration, the pacifist civil rights movement organizations, such as the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) and the student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) . Malcolm X , after breaking away from the Nation of Islam, became the spokesperson of RAM's “freedom by any means necessary” message. Although RAM's footwork was carried out by its secret political chapters, ... log in or subscribe to read full text