Black Separatist

Integration has been the aim of the Congress of Racial Equality since CORE was born in 1942. Its intramural squabbles have never been concerned with the principle of desegration but with its pace. Two years ago, Floyd McKissick replaced Founder James Farmer because he was not moving fast enough. Last week McKissick, in turn, was supplanted by a more aggressive lieutenant. CORE's new chief, however, advocates rigid separation of the races.

Roy Innis, a Harlem-honed black nationalist, will formally replace McKissick next month at CORE's convention in Columbus. Innis, 34, is a bearded manifesto maker who holds that "separation of unlikes is the natural condition of society," and says that blacks generally favor nonviolence, but "not over the achievement of nationalistic objectives." He professes a fear of genocide, not "by the gas chamber but by the slow taking away of our existence" through racial amalgamation. Appealing to Negroes to improve their own lot rather than die in all-out conflict with the white man, Innis adds nonetheless: "We believe that if we must die, it will not be by hara-kiri but by kamikaze--take as many with us as we can."

By accepting Innis' incendiary view, CORE alienates not only whites but black moderates as well. Thus it joins the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in a militant shift to the left.

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