In the early 1960s, many civil rights leaders were clear that antidiscrimination policies alone were incapable of closing the economic divide separating blacks and whites. Though Coates claims that A. Philip Randolph and Bayard Rustin — the organizers of the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom — gave up their demands for race-specific remedies to black poverty when confronted with the Johnson administration’s preference for class-oriented anti-poverty measures, Coates’s characterization actually misrepresents both sides. Simply put, the black organizers of 1963 rally identified social-democratic policies as essential to redressing racial disparities in employment, income, housing, and wealth, while the liberal white president opted for prescriptions that presumed the distinctiveness of black poverty and ignored the structural transformation of the economy. Indeed, even as Randolph declared his support for a fair employment practices act at the March on Washington, he stated plainly that antidiscrimination alone would do African Americans little good in the face of “profit-geared automation” that was destroying “the jobs of millions of workers black and white.” Randolph and Rustin thus identified public works, full-employment policies, and a minimum-wage hike as essential to
closing the racial economic gap. [...]