Later in his speech, Agnew called on those leaders to rebuke black "extremists" -- he mentioned Stokely Carmichael and H. Rap Brown by name -- much as whites condemned members of the American Nazi Party and the John Birch Society.
Edward C. Papenfuse Jr., who works at the Maryland State Archives, was the panel moderator. He said there is television footage of a woman running up to Agnew to challenge him about his remarks.
"She comes up, and she's waving her finger at Agnew and she's rubbing her hat back and forth," Papenfuse said. That woman was the late, great Juanita Jackson Mitchell of the Baltimore chapter of the NAACP. She was probably going to tell Agnew that the NAACP had indeed been condemning black extremists and racists long before he became governor.
I asked Peter Levy, a history professor at York College of Pennsylvania who gave the symposium's plenary address, what was wrong with Agnew's exhorting black leaders to condemn the extremists among them.
"Some of them already had," Levy answered. "The NAACP had never been a big fan of the Black Power slogan." In Cambridge, Levy added, the NAACP tried to push a black woman named Daisy Bates as the moderate alternative to Gloria Richardson Dandridge, who could hardly be classified as an extremist.
Papenfuse said there exists in the Maryland State Archives a letter that Henry Offer wrote to Agnew, telling the governor line by line where he was wrong in his speech. Papenfuse asked if any in attendance remembered the name Henry Offer.
Indeed I did. I remember him as Father Henry Offer, a white Catholic priest and ardent civil rights supporter. Offer pointed out in his letter that Agnew criticized the very black leaders who put their lives on the line by taking to the streets to discourage rioters from looting and burning.
On the facts, Agnew was very wrong. But on principle, he was very right. The principles he espoused were summed up in perhaps the only parts of his speech that can't be condemned.
"I cannot believe," Agnew said, "that the only alternative to white racism is black racism. ... I publicly repudiate, condemn and reject all white racists. I call upon you to publicly repudiate, condemn and reject all black racists."
greg.kane@baltsun.com
