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Read an excerpt of Tavis Smiley's 'Accountable'
The book examines the impact of integral issues on our communities
Excerpted from Tavis Smiley's book, "Accountable: Making America as Good as Its Promise."
Introduction
The most important political office is that of the private citizen.
— Justice Louis Brandeis
In the introduction to the landmark 2006 work, the Covenant with Black America, Tavis Smiley tells a poignant story about the legendary African American labor organizer A. Philip Randolph. After dinner at the White House with President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt on September 27, 1940, Randolph was invited to the president’s study for cigars, after-dinner drinks, and conversation. There, at Roosevelt’s urging, Randolph talked about the dismal conditions for Negro workers and outlined an agenda for government action designed to empower his struggling people.
Roosevelt, after fully acknowledging the validity and merit of Randolph’s arguments and the merits of his substantive proposals, challenged the well-known activist with the following words: “Now, go out and make me do it.”
While Smiley left the story there and moved on to discuss its powerful implications—namely, Roosevelt’s demand that Randolph mobilize the necessary political force so that the president would have no choice but to act—it is time we bring the story full circle by picking up where Smiley left off because the rest, as they say, is history.
On June 18, 1941, at the First Lady’s prompting, Randolph, accompanied by NAACP president Walter White, returned to the White House. Presidential historian Doris Kearns Goodwin, in her book No Ordinary Time, notes that Roosevelt tried to set a lighthearted tone for the meeting, offering charming stories, but was interrupted by Randolph. “Mr. President, time is running out,” the focused organizer said. “What we want to talk about is the problem of jobs for Negroes in defense industries.” Randolph, as recorded by the White House Historical Association, continued, “We want something concrete, something tangible, positive and affirmative.” He then gave the president an ultimatum: either introduce an executive order to desegregate the defense industry, or 100,000 black workers would march on Washington.
Alarmed by the prospect of a Negro march on the capital, Roosevelt agreed to draft an executive order desegregating the noncombat areas of the defense industry. A relentless Randolph helped draft and edit the order until he was satisfied with its wording. Goodwin notes that Joseph Rauh, a young lawyer assigned to work on the executive order, once quipped, “Who is this guy Randolph? What the hell has he got over the President of the United States?”
Executive Order 8802 was signed into law on June 25, 1941. It declared that “There shall be no discrimination in the employment of workers in defense industries or government because of race, creed, color, or national origin.”
Despite his own socialist leanings, Randolph understood the concept of an active democracy. No matter how sensitive or charitable the president was personally, he was a public official who had to be held accountable. As the primary representative of a government “of the people, by the people, for the people,” Roosevelt was obliged to account to the masses of citizens and taxpayers over whom he presided. Randolph in turn could be successful in his efforts to affect the actions of the occupant of the highest office in the land only if he first held himself accountable and believed that, as a private citizen, he had the power to do so.
ACCOUNTABLE: Making America as Good as Its Promise celebrates and invites readers to exercise the power of the private citizen. It is the logical successor to two bestsellers: the Covenant with Black America (Third World Press, 2006), which sets forth 10 issues critical to our democracy and challenges our public officials to address them, and THE COVENANT In Action (Smiley-Books, 2007), which offers a tool kit to help everyday citizens effect change.
The Covenant was a groundbreaking effort that drew the focus and energies of the African American and larger community toward critical areas affecting black life—from health to housing, from crime reduction to criminal justice, from education to economic parity. It combined information from six years of symposia and research that empowered African Americans by explaining how individuals and households could make concrete changes to improve their circumstances. The Covenant brought experts and professionals in varied fields together at the annual State of the Black Union and at regional symposia to collaborate on its issues. It galvanized community members across the nation—from pulpits to boardrooms—around the major issues affecting their daily lives.
THE COVENANT In Action capitalized on the success and direction of its predecessor by prompting the African American community to act on the goals outlined in The Covenant. It encouraged readers to become agents of change in their respective communities and outlined steps they could take to organize, connect, and act to effect change.
The Covenant is the “what”; THE COVENANT In Action is the “how”; and ACCOUNTABLE is the “whether”—the yardstick for measuring whether elected officials and citizens have fulfilled or are satisfying their respective duties in our democracy. Building on these first two installments, ACCOUNTABLE serves as a timely report card, one holding public officials accountable for what they have promised to date; too often politicians talk and promise but do not deliver. It also holds the community responsible for its actions . . . or the lack thereof.
ACCOUNTABLE informs citizens how they can help politicians deliver and make democracy active. It tells ordinary people how they can track the performances and promises of their elected leaders, maintaining that these public figures actually represent their interests and ensuring that they, as private citizens, civically engage with government in ways that improve their communities. It is a tool that provides one of the most precious commodities in a democracy: information.
A critical goal of ACCOUNTABLE is to identify how citizens together can plant a flag in that land we know as Common Ground. We flesh out that goal by opening each chapter with stories of individual citizens facing the challenges our country is grappling with as a whole. Too often we talk abstractly about health care, the environment, education, and criminal justice. Stories remind us that we are not alone in the world, that we should not consider the problems facing our nation without trying to understand and empathize with the people dealing with these problems.
Another goal of ACCOUNTABLE: to help readers answer, “What obligations do we, as citizens, have to—and for—each other?” Author Peter Block defines accountability as the “willingness to care for the whole,” one that “flows out of the kind of conversations we have about the new story we want to take our identity from. It means we have conversations of what we can do to create the future.”1 In ACCOUNTABLE, we use stories to illustrate the struggles of our neighbors and others, to generate empathy for their difficulties, and to challenge us to do something to resolve these difficulties. Equally valuable, these stories—ours and theirs—melt into an active and collective American narrative, reflective of the underpinnings of America’s promise.
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