The First Amendment; Elma Lewis

The following program is made possible in part by a grant from the Courier Corporation of Lowell, Massachusetts. WGBH Radio Boston, in cooperation with the Institute for Democratic Communication at Boston University, now presents the First Amendment and a Free People: An Examination of Civil Liberties and the Media in the 1970s. And now, here is the Director of the Institute for Democratic Communication, Dr. Bernard Rubin. [Dr. Rubin]: Welcome to this edition of First Amendment and a Free People. Joining me today as co-host is Caryl Rivers of the School of Public Communication faculty. And we're very delighted to have Ms. Elma Lewis, the Director of the School of Fine Arts and the National Center of Afro-American Artists with us today. The subject is, uh, not to be put in any simple title. It really is, uh, how do we look at the terrible human mess

that we're in as in terms of social relationships and all that flow from social relationships. And is there anything that we as individuals can learn more about it and do more about it? And so, Ms. Lewis, I'm not going to lead you on any more than that, I'm just going to say, is, is that a suitable title or is that not? [Ms. Lewis]: I don't even know [clears throat] what suitable titles are or aren't. All I know is that in this multi-racial, multi-ethnic, uh, nation in which we live, we have to be talking about living in a completely open society, and anything else we're talking about is folly. And I also think that it would be good for all of us to acknowledge that it was never intended that we live in an open society. And if we're now going to live in an open society, we're going to have to redesign the original intention. Very often I hear people saying let's get back to the reasons for which America was founded. Well, America was founded for

some, um, Northern Europeans to be able to express themselves. That's all. [Dr. Rubin]: In other words, you're saying that the original concept was for division of power through some sort of representational system that favored the "haves." And now we are really grappling with the possibility, the prospect of whether we can have a democratic society. [Ms. Lewis]: No, I'm not even saying that; you edited me. [Dr. Rubin]: I edited you. [Ms. Lewis]: Yes, you edited me, because I said a "few northern Europeans." [Dr. Rubin]: A few northern Europeans. [Ms. Lewis]: That's who was being addressed. At the time that the Pilgrims migrated to America, they weren't considering what will we do with, uh, Mediterranean people and Asians and blacks and God knows who all. They were considering what shall we as Northern Europeans do about expressing ourselves away from our native land. And they came and saw some other natives whom they promptly annihilated.

So for us to say that this, um, country was founded on the concept of freedom for all of us is wrong. It wasn't. [Dr. Rubin]: Mm-hmm. [Ms. Lewis]: We have constantly been in a process of redesign since the beginning, and now we come to a very complicated process of redesign. And if we would now acknowledge that this is the only nation of its kind in the world and maybe it can and maybe it can't work, but we will try, then we'd all be better off. [Dr. Rubin]: Caryl? [Prof. Rivers]: I wonder, too, if we shouldn't admit the class issue which we, we tend not to want to admit in this country and to say that what seems to be happening is that we wish to move vigorously toward social justice for the poor, for the urban poor white and poor black. Um, but you know we had a peace march in Boston the other day and hundreds of thou... well, I forget 60,000, something like that people came, and many of them from the

communities outside Boston marching for peace in Boston. Sadly enough, many of the communities these people came from would resist to the teeth any kind of metropolitan integration, any kind of low-income housing. So that as a society, we tend to say, "All right if we're going to have racial justice, let's, um, have it for those who are less privileged, and the privileged should not share in it." [Ms. Lewis]: That's true to a point also. You see, I think that, um, Dick Gregory said that America depends on having a nigger. And if black people get free they'll have to choose another nigger and that's probably probably very true. We have had a boom or bust type economy and it depends on some people staying down so the other people can have too much. Now somewhere along the line we've got to not only conceptualize but make it real to everybody that there is enough for everyone.

[Mr. Rubin] Assuming that assuming that there is enough and I agree with you, what what do we do? What do we do next? Let us say that Elma Lewis says that we should take this first small step or large step. What would it be? [Lewis] Well the first thing I think we have to do is start to obey the laws that are on the books, you see? The poor always have to obey the law and nobody else. If right away we would enforce the law for all people things would straighten out because the laws as they are written are adequate to take care of social justice. They're adequate. We don't need any more laws. We simply need some leadership with the courage to enforce the laws. I have noticed that men who are not particularly, um, spiritually developed showed a lot of courage when they got on the Supreme Court. They no longer then had to be responsive to the electorate etc..

Perhaps we need some group of men like that to enforce the law. [Mr Rubin] In other words, if we would carry out what we say we stand for on paper [Ms. Lewis] that's sufficient [Mr Rubin] and bring this to the poor. That's the first step [Ms. Lewis] bring it to everyone [Mr Rubin] but bring it to the poor brings [Ms Lewis] No, no [Mr Rubin] to everyone doesn't it [Ms. Lewis] no it doesn't [Mr Rubin] I thought that followed from what you said. [Ms. Lewis] No bring it to everyone. Bring it to everyone. I said the laws only enforced for the poor but now I said enforce them for everyone. [Prof Rivers] Well, let's ask specifically what kind of issues and what kind of areas do you think there's the least enforcement? Where-- [Ms. Lewis] I think it's across the board. For instance, if in fact, I, uh, our budget doesn't balance at the Center, the business community looks at us with terrible anger and hostility despite the fact that we didn't have enough to begin with. If in fact Lockheed, the Museum of Fine Arts, Harvard

John Hancock, anybody doesn't balance its budget it's looked on with favor, and the poor must help them out even further. Start with economics that's true, alright. Now second if we go toward things like housing. If in fact the poor live inside of some shelter that doesn't leak, it's adequate. But if the rich have not three acres around their houses, it's not adequate. [Mr Rubin] What did you think of the ruling of the Supreme Court the other day which I thought was important that the HUD, Housing and Urban Development, and the FHA could go into communies and put public housing there whether they requested it or not on the basis that they had a certain proportion of people who were not living well and I thought this would probably be- have a tremendous impact upon many of many of the suburbs and, though not all of the suburbs of our cities

providing housing where there are good schools. Housing where there is-- [Ms Lewis] That's only true though if it's enforced, as I said the laws are no better than men. You see that they'll put that law on the book and then the town will spend all the rest of its energy circumventing the law. I used to be very hopeful, where laws were concerned. I can remember all of us, all of the blacks in my community having great jubilation when the Supreme Court ruled that separate but equal was no longer a doctrine. But here we are almost 25 years later and it has not come to be a reality. So the fact that the Supreme Court says something doesn't give me cause for any jubilation I am looking for the local enforcement to enforce it. If that is not forthcoming what we're asking for is anarchy because those who are abused are no longer willing to take the abuse. The baby has been born and you can't put the big back in the womb.

[Prof Rivers] Do you think there...there's much chance for the concept that Martin Luther King was arguing for particularly toward the later part of his life? The idea of uniting the less privileged, black and white, in persuading them to see they really have more in common, that they should work together to lobby for the things to develop political force. [Ms. Lewis] I would think that he must have had the right concept because at that point he was assassinated. As long as he talked only about blacks, he was no threat. But when he showed that coalitions bring power, he was a threat and that is usually when people are done away with. [Prof Rivers] Do you see anybody else on the horizon who might have the same chance? [Ms Lewis] There's never going to be that person again I think that's -that was- he was symptomatic of a time when most of the people are uneducated and uninformed and one is. Then you have "a leader" in quotes, but I think that as the world becomes more sophisticated,as television educates people

around the world, you see leadership in given areas. You'll see leaders in the area of education, leaders in there but you won't see that leadership again and that's very importantly good because it's not as easy to pick them off. [Prof Rivers] We have more of them. [Mr Rubin] I'm wondering I have a sense that you are a very pessi- mistic. I'm not dis- [Ms Lewis] not at all [Mr Rubin] I have a sense that you're pessimistic. I have a sense that at least I am pessimistic looking at what's been going on and seeing the breakdown of our political life. I agree with you about the law. Law depends upon politicians, uh, vigorously defending it, proposing it, explaining it, pushing it through the city council and the state legislature and the national government. But if you're not pessimistic, [Ms Lewis] What makes me optimistic? [Mr Rubin] What makes you optimistic? If you are optimistic I don't sense that [Ms Lewis] I am ve- Well, you see I think pessimism or

optimism depends on where you're sitting and what I say that sounds pessimistic- pessimistic to you. Sounds pessimistic to you because you're on the winner's team. I'm on the losers team. I have no place to go. I can't go down any further so I'm optimistic. Where am I going? If I say that I'm in a war and some people are going to get killed so that some things are solved, that for me is the greatest optimism. That isn't pessimism. Where are we goig? Do you understand what I'm saying? [Mr Rubin] But what, uh, what [Ms Lewis] What makes me feel this way? Well several things make me feel this way. One thing is true that even though those people of whom Carol speaks would not foster social justice in their communities, they have sufficient conscience to come marching out on a Friday morning and the next day- two days later only 2000 of them from all around the country can get down to Washington on the other side of the coin. That's one reason for optimism. A second reason for optimism is this: that you fight hardest when you know you're right. Most of

those people know they are wrong. There is nothing as the Bible tells us like the power of righteous wrath. [Rubin] Let's take a let's take that peace march that Carol and you are referring to in Boston. I think it's great. But with, with conditions when you- [Lewis] Ohh I don't even think it's- [Rubin] Wait a minute, just let me just finish. When you, when you celebrate peace is like celebrating this survival of the nuclear family because what is there left after the nuclear family. If if you have to join to celebrate the fact that enough people believe in nonviolence killing that day that's that's pretty far down the ladder. That's what makes me happy about the fact there was a march and very very pessimistic that the march was for such an elemental thing as peace and not for something progressive that one could feel in touch- [Lewis] But you have to start somewhere. [Rubin] But I'm not so sure that that is a- that is a start. I think that in Boston and other communities around the nation, we've come pretty far down the ladder.

[Lewis] We haven't come anywhere. We were there all along. When it was possible for me to go to public school and have to do Irish step dancing for St. Patrick's Day, and for me to stand up and celebrate George Washington and Thomas Jefferson and a lot of other slave holders and nobody knew I was hurting, You might have felt far up the ladder but you were at the bottom of the barrel. You have come far up now that you know I'm not happy and that you can join in at that elemental level of which you spoke. That is up. That is not down. When all of America was walking around feeling peaceable and happy, they were living on my bones and on my back and on the backs of many others. [Rivers] What's your feeling of the mood- and this is a general question of black leadership today- you know, we sort of- we- [ Lewis] I don't know who that is. Who's the black leadership? [Rubin] You are. [Lewis] No I'm not. Who reads - There is- Who is your leader?

[other speaker]You are. That's why I'm asking you to give me- [Lewis] Well, you're not black. [Rubin] I don't have to be. [Lewis] Well you tell me the black leadership, I don't know who leads whom. [Rubin] I see- I see your point. [Lewis] I don't know who leads whom. Who is your leader? [other speaker] Anybody who has a- [Lewis] So don't ask me who is the black leader. I don't know who he is or who they are. [Rubin] Any who has a good i- anbody who has a good idea. [Lewis] My biggest idea, the thing that I talk about most is courage. I think there are very few people who don't know right from wrong. They need to be locked up. They're a menace to themselves nevermind society, and their number is infinitesimal. The thing that the people need is courage to do that which is right. It is very hard to go home to a community that does not want blacks and enunciate your correct position. It is very hard for blacks to go home to a community that don't want whites in it and enunciate a correct position. It is very hard to say hey look this is the way that should go. Whatever it is. Courage then to do it. That is what we have to encourage all around the nation. That doesn't take

any particular leadership. [Rubin] Well let me let me sort of transpose Carol's question and then ask Carol to add something to it. How many of our leaders regardless of background - you say that's not that is impornat, the background -but regardless of background nevertheless have this courage that you talk about or is this- is this- a small minority? Are those who have the courage vapid in expressing it? [Lewis] I don't think very many have the courage. And the reason not very many have the courage is because we don't have leaders so to speak, and we should throw that out and start with that as a concept. We have elected officials who we put there to do the will of the people. Even the church is in that position. When you go to any kind of a religious expression that is organized that is elected leadership. And they were not elected because of their great moral present- position. They were elected because of good administrative abilities and their financial strength

and their charisma and blah, blah, none of which has anything to do with human dignity. [Rubin] Carol? [Rivers] Well I think one thing that- one dangerous area we may be in now is that the politics of race, the demagogic politics, pay off. And I wonder how we ensure that they don't pay off for people. [Lewis] Well as I think back on the civil rights movement when Bull Connor and those people were running around with buttons on it said Never they lasted about one more year. That was the last desperate thrust. That's true here. [Rivers] Do you think we're may - we may not be facing an even more intractable position in the north. [Lewis] No. [Rivers] You don't think so? [Lewis] No way. At least in the north we weren't hanging blacks from trees, and burning their bodies, and- and all the rest of the things the South was doing when it was saying never. One of the things that is wrong in the North is that the North was not prepared for how bigoted it was. It's terrible to find yourself out. You know, we all hope we're pretty

decent, and when we find out our indecencies and have to deal with them then that's a little difficult. And I think that's what's happening to a great many wall to wall poor in the North. They had fooled themselves that they were part of that small northern European minority that I described. You know, in Boston, all black people, black Portuguese people, Jewish people, all kinds of people like that, who were really not accepted by the establishment, fooled of themselves that they were the establishment. So I have now had to come to grips with the fact that actually I have assumed all of their ugliness and I am who they are. And without any position of privilege, somehow I have to pull back and see what I must do. I was very interested a couple of days ago to see that in South Boston the construction workers had understood that 25 percent of them were unemployed and that housing for the elderly was being built in their

community, and they weren't employed on it. Isn't that what blacks have been saying? Isn't that what we've been saying? [Rivers] Yeah, but I think unfortunately that Southie sees- [Lewis] the blacks as a threat. [Rivers] Yes because [Lewis] That's a mid passage, that's a mid passage. I'm not alarmed by symptomatic disease. You know if you have pneumonia, you can deal with that. It's when somebody tells you it's cancer of the lung that you can't deal with that. [Rubin] Then you're describing- you're describing a crest in this Boston situation, and we when we look over it, when the tide recedes, the next step what what will happen? [Lewis] I think what will happen is that some people will remain disgruntleds to the end of their lives, but they'll all sit down and shut up and go on with the business of living. They have no alternatives. The alternative is for all of us to push each other off the planet. Sooner or later sane men must see that. [Rivers] What worries me though is in the South there was a massive will by the federal government to say we will use the

power of federal government to enforce racial justice. And South, you're going to bow to that will ultimately. And I have a suspicion that in the North, which is home territory in a sense, that will is not there. I have a sense that it may be dissipating. [Lewis] It's not not in the North. It's not in the federal government as you just pointed out. But the federal government is a changeable government, isn't it? [Rivers] I hope so. [Lewis] No it changes all the time. It comes up and it goes down and it comes up and it goes down. So this federal government and this too shall pass. You know, I'm not alarmed by that. Then there is another thing, I- Maybe one of the reasons I'm not pessimistic is because I am religious. Everybody has counted without God. And I haven't. I really cannot believe- the day that I believe that that small band of people who are the ugly in the city of Boston can triumph over the world - Well I would commit suicide that day.

Who are they? They can make a lot of noise. What are they doing that's so dramatic? They aren't doing anything that's so dramatic. What are they doing that's so dramatic? [Rubin] Well we've seen in every society, and without leading our own racial crisis, the Stanford University studies on war and peace, their studies about Nazi Germany and other situations, there is an element in every society which are plug uglies who can be recruited for SS types and so and so forth. They often take over governments, which is an unfortunate thing. But- [Lewis] Well you don't need to talk to me about that. What are you going to do about it? [Rubin] Well- [Lewis] I'm going to do plenty about it. I'm going to fight it tooth and nail every day of my life, and I am not nonviolent. If it calls for war, then we go to war. [Rubin] Well speaking [laughter] [Lewis] If it calls for war, we go to war. [Rubin] All right, does that imply that- and some of the other things you've said- that you have lost faith in any coalition politics with other minority groups that the old alliances between- between Jewish people

and black people that- You seem to imply that it was just a false- [Lewis] It was a false front. But I have not lost faith in coalition politics. But I have lost faith in man, and I think that I address myself more to what Carol's saying. The politics of class. That people of similar problem tend to band together better. And I think you might even see a lot of blacks banding together with some capitalists as they get something. If they get some money, etc. They'll be without those people. [Rubin] Well politicians- [Lewis] And I think- [Rubin] politics of class is what Carol spoke of and you're speaking of, but I sense that it's been, that the problem has been the pol- politics of caste not class. [Lewis] Caste, class, race- It has had many facets. This is a complicated society in which we live. That by the fact that it's not unilaterally racial or unilaterally cultural or unilaterally religious. It has had all these various and sundry aspects which is probably what makes it hard to solve. It might be

unworkable. I don't know. It might be. [Rivers] Eldridge Cleaver, interestingly enough, after having toured and being very disenchanted with some of the socialist regime, came back to ask what seems to me the essential question that we face, and that is how do you have both economic justice and political democracy and make them both work. [Lewis] Well I think democracy is a fine concept up to a point. And democracy is a concept that you can work in small numbers. This is a republic. This is not a democracy and we keep- We are terrible liars. Why do we keep on talking about democracy, when we never intended that it be so? I don't practice it. Of course people in the theater don't practice democracy. [Rubin] Because it is- it is a republican form of government, and I agree with everything that you say, but democracy is our dream. Democracy is our hope. [Lewis] It is not our dream. [other speaker] How can you say that? [Lewis] Because- [Rubin] What else you have as a dream? You can have a republican form of government as your dream. [Lewis] What our dream is I am going to get mine. And we have never had the courage to say out. I don't like people to lie to

me. I don't like people to lie to me. When I sit in a room with somebody who's got everything he wants and more than enough of it, and he's not willing to give up one iota of it, and he's saying to me what shall we do because democracy is my dream. I want to upchuck. [Rubin] Yeah but- [Lewis] And his number is legion. [other speaker] Yeah but that's- I hope that you're not talking about me because that is not what I'm saying. [Lewis] No I'm not. I'm talking in the abstract. Now, why did you put that cap on? [Rubin] Because- because if- if everybody gets what he deserves, it can't be that way. People have to get what they deserve because they're schoolchildren. Schoolchildren cannot not grasp, they have to get it because they are school children or because they're young people or because they're sick people or old people or whatever you want. I believe that if you have the concept of democracy that is how you use your republican form of government. You seem to disagree. [Lewis] No I don't disagree. I'm just saying that that was never what any large number of people are saying, so why do you keep saying this? This is a school book maxim. It is not a reality. [Rubin] What's the alternative? [Lewis] What is the alternative?

I don't know have to have an answer. [Rubin] You said war is the alternative. [Lewis] No, I didn't I said if- [Rubin] A possibility. [Lewis] It's a possibility, and if that is the possibility then perhaps that will resolve things. I don't know. I told you that my own direction is religious. I believe God solves it. See, that's why I'm- I can't possibly be pessimistic. The day I believe that God is not in charge, I, personally, will commit suicide. [Rivers] I wonder if we can use more of the Ombudsman concept, the idea of building into the system some kind of powerful group to lobby for the powerless, which we seem only to have approached on tiptoe at this point. [Lewis] How would you do that? I would be interested in that. I don't know how to do that. [Rivers] Maybe something like Community Action Project, which fell apart pretty quickly, where government funds go into lobbyists for the poor, lawyers for the poor. [Lewis] That made a whole bunch of hustlers. [Rivers] Yeah, but it also did make some people who- there were a lot of hustlers, but there are also some people who stayed with it and who did

care and some of them were still there today fighting- fighting the fight. [Rubin] How much came out of the Johnson programs? That made a lot of hustlers, I think you're trying- [Lewis] It did make a lot of hustlers. It also, though, gave us some new concepts. It did give us new concepts. I think that a lot of poor people understood better what could and could not be done, and how totally oppressive the system is. How totally oppressive it is. That the establishment needs to really be done away with and a new plan put in.I don't think there's much that can be done to amend this. It's to sick. [Rubin] By the way, when you talked about war- I'm not implying that it is inevitable, but I'm just saying what ran through my mind was that old axiom it's always better jaw jaw jaw rather than war war war. Was as been rampant on this on this globe. It may destroy us all regardless of Boston, North America, the world. We use that war system everywhere. That's the thing we have recourse to. [Lewis] But I don't know that jaw jaw jaw has been better. It's been better for the haves. It has been better for the haves. It has not necessarily been better for the have nots. That when you have a lot it's easier to sit down and talk because none of it is violated or

damaged. When you have nothing what's knocked down? What's knocked down if you've already got a whole pile of broken glass in the street and that's all you've got? If the glass breaks up finer, what have you lost? [Rubin] Well the only thing we've lost Elma Lewis is privileged to talk with you some more because it's been absolutely delightful. We've run out of time, and I'm not going to summarize because I have yet to think about what has been said. It's something that has to weigh on my mind. [Lewis] Perhaps nothing much. [other speaker] I think a lot has been said. [Lewis] Jaw jaw jaw. [laughter] Well at least Well at least not war, war, war. And this is Bernard Rubin thanking you for this edition of First Amendment and Free People, and also thanking my colleague Carol Rivers. WGBH Radio Boston in cooperation with the Institute for Democratic Communication at Boston University has presented the First Amendment and the Free People: an examination of the media and civil liberties in the 1970s. This program was recorded in the studios of WGBH Boston and was

made possible in part by a grant from the Courier Corporation of Lowell Massachusetts.