Roy Innes vs. Roy Wilkins

The debate between Roy Wilkins and Roy Innis over demands by Negro students for separate black studies departments has major implications. The question they are arguing is whether separatism is a condition that black Americans should desire and, in fact, struggle to achieve. If the answer is “yes,” as Innis would have it, then in his own words “the civil rights movement is dead.” But if Wilkins is correct in opposing a black “version of segregation and Jim Crow,” then not only must the civil rights movement stay alive if Negro Americans are to have equality, but the separatists must be criticized (and, as Wilkins proposes, fought in the courts) for committing an injustice against the black community. A...