Good morning and thanks for letting me know you're are much for the unity of our relations, as others here claim they are, as well...
But, well, me having been literally off the local stage for awhile too, others may have to elaborate who do know what folks were striving to do, when they were around then, back then...
FYI...
Back then, and even *now*. Even still, Chuck.
Everybody wants a fair shot. Everybody wants their kids to have a fair shot. This was true in the past. Greenwood, OK exemplified such kinds of aspirations-to-reality in us--so did Rosewood--and explains why we recognize what happened to those folks (our grandparents in these places) as great tragedy. They were segregated! Just like the system wanted them to be--WHY wouldn't the machine leave them be??? Yet they didn't. Don't take rocket science to know why--because that system was NOT supposed to afford them success. Independence. Hope for the future, so...their so-called controlling system was FAILING THEM!
Aspirations still lives in many of us; or, a collective desire for final overcoming still exists today.
Afrakan/Black or Afr Ams today (no matter our collective label) who live in *clusters* within larger neighborhoods face problems of organization in pursuit of a greater good, not because of segregation clustering (based on skin color)--an advantage that our grandparents took organizational advantage of, too--but because our collective presence within the neighborhood structure is more diffuse since integration. In so many ways, much more selfish.
In terms of organizing as a subculture in pursuit of secular (political/legal/racial) solutions, we no longer have reliable institutions to back us up (so that we can forward our progress in problem-solving); meaning, no more national organization or cluster of national organizations that can *set up in the post position* like a center, waiting for one or any of our regional based organizations to pass the ball to them (so that they can muscle the ball up to the hoop and score). Such a pattern of problem solving that our grandparents devised is so worthy of respect that it ain't funny! Yet times have indeed changed. The game has certainly changed.
Online organizing. This is a way. From local to regional to national to international.
One Love, and PEACE