Black Journal; 7

complications. Any key, black journal, number 7, 60 minutes, air, 12, 30, 68.

The following program is from NET, the Public Television Network. When I found that we'd had black cool and black cam, it made me not hold my head down, but it made me hold my head up.

And when I asked my little girl, my grandbaby, that my donor passed and left, I asked her some time, I said, said loud, she said, on black and on proud. And then baby, sweet baby, this other man just got the face, baby, baby, sweet baby. You let me hang in a real cold way, speak your name, and I'll be your friend. You say I do, and I'll bet I will. I'll tell you, I'll tell you, I'll give you, and give the girl a little pass. We only, baby, I want you to be alright. I'll tell you, I'll give you, I'll give you, I'll give you, I'll give you, I'll give you, I'll give you, I'll give you. I'll be your friend, baby, baby, baby, I'll give you, I'll give you, I'll give you, I'll give you.

The Olympic boycott simply says that there is no off limits for displaying our disgust for the failure of the American economy and political order to respect us as people. There is no off limits. While the American flag has been raised, the Olympic racism goes on. While people are standing on the victory stand, exploitation goes on. I'll tell you, I'll tell you, I'll give you, I'll give you.

I'll tell you, I'll give you, I'll give you. I'll tell you, I'll give you, I'll give you, I'll give you. I've been talking to you so much, I've been bragging, I've been taunting in the past. And non-violence is not the way. I mean, we'll never get it by marching. Nobody never got anything by marching. You never got anything by sitting down. If you have to sit down to get something, you'll never get it. So the best way to get it is to get up and go get it. That's what you want, if you really want it. And even if every black person in America got together and asserted himself violently, I still don't believe this would be the answer. Because I don't believe, number one, that we can win. And number two, I'm not at all convinced that this is the way to affect a meaningful lasting change. The problem is, can we get into the system or get someone into the system to introduce the changes that are necessary,

will the people have to remain our side of the system and really destroy it? I don't think so. Oh, we're all over. Oh, we're all over. Don't keep my words so long. Oh, I'm so glad. I'm so glad. I'm so glad.

I'm so glad. I'm so glad. I'm so glad. I'm so glad. I'm so glad. I'm so glad. I'm so glad. Thank you. I'm so glad. I'm so glad. If any of you around, when I have to meet my day, I don't want a long funeral. And if you get somebody to deliver the eulogy, tell them not to talk to you. Every night and then I wonder what I want them to say. Tell them not to mention that I have a Nobel Peace Prize.

That isn't important. Tell them not to mention that I have three or four hundred other awards. That's not important. Tell them not to mention where I went to school. I'd like somebody to mention that day that Martin Luther King Jr. tried to give his life serving others. I'd like for somebody to say that day that Martin Luther King Jr. tried to love somebody. I want you to say that day that I tried to be right on the walkway. I want you to be able to say that day that I did try to feed the hungry. I want you to be able to say that day that I did try in my life to close those who were next to me. I want you to say on that day that I did try in my life to visit those who were in prison. I want you to say that I tried to love and serve humanity. Yes, if you want to say that I was a drum major.

Say that I was a drum major for justice. Say that I was a drum major for peace. I was a drum major for righteousness. I just couldn't walk out of the door when the special bulletin flashed on the television. The doctor King had been shot. And I just stood there a long time and then a little while later they said Dr. King was dead. My anger was that of any other black person anywhere in the United States. The Fourth of April, how could this happen to a man that had given his life, not just himself, but for his fellow man. And I was angry. There's a whole lot of other people were angry.

That he was that non-violent, but he had to die that violent. Well, I said this by Dr. King. He had a good thing, good to you. I thought a whole world and lot of it. And I hated that they stopped him like the day. And I just said I was just going to stick to a good deal of his problems. Now, he said it over and often that he would like to see the times that come when the children, like Jerry's children, sit down and play and eat together and do around. And I tried to carry that program out and I'm still going to try to carry it out. And when King came to Washington, King would not come to the grassroots part of Washington and say like a place like Anacostia. He came out and talked to some white folks at St. Elizabeth. I think this is the name of the church. St. Elizabeth, he came and he stayed two hours, talked to these middle class people

about finance and this program and left. So then losing Dr. King, we lost a symbol and we lost substance. We lost a man that had taken us from black men within light minds and tingling spinal cords to a new people who had the power to stand up in front of white people. I developed the power to confront dogs, to confront chairs, to confront jails, to confront death. All of this malware in our bone came from Dr. King's leadership. His personality and his image was that of a giant, somewhere between the giant and God, so that among the black nationalist camp, among the other black extremists like the black panthers or snake or some people who would resort to violent measures at the very existence of Dr. King, held these people in check. It was to see whether or not he would come of age, whether or not he would join forces with us ultimately because he felt that he was sincere and that as soon as it was shown to him that none violence was not practical

that he would change his stand as he didn't have yet known war. For black folks, it has been a year marked both by increasing pressures and a growing sense of community. It was the year of Resurrection City in Richard Nixon of the death of Robert Kennedy and of the corner report on white racism. There was school decentralization, the Olympic boycott and the black psychological revolution. In 1968, we saw the eclipse of many older figures in the movement by the rise to the forefront of such young leaders as Julian Bond and Huey P. Newton. As Black Journal crisscrossed the country, getting the views of Afro-Americans on these and other subjects, one fact became increasingly clear. To most of us, the single event that dwarfed all others in significance was the cold-blooded murder of the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King. The effect that I'm most aware of in the assassination of Dr. King was in the final and total rejection on the part of the establishment

of black people approaching the establishment on its own terms. And it was proven and made very clear to all black people that this is something that would not work, that the rewards of Dr. King's very gracious and noble and western, white, Christian approach to solving black people's problems was rejected finally. The only individual who had stature enough and who was a recognized leader of the integration civil rights movement was Dr. King. When Dr. King, the growing experience, the reality under which black people were living, was had been shown clearly through the experiences of SCLC, the fact that the effort at demonstrating and petitioning the white power structure had not succeeded in bringing about basic change in this country. So that when Dr. King was assassinated, seemed to me that one of the most obscene things that was possible to happen did happen.

That is, the same people who'd been calling Dr. King Martin Luther Coon all these years, on the day, on the night of his death, were embracing him, facing his philosophy, was saying that he represented them and it's too bad he's gone and we must carry on in the tradition that he exemplified. All they were concerned about was preserving their system. And the real nature of their concern was proven when the poor people's campaign, martyled its forces and came to Washington, because the same people who, a month previous, had said that there are democratic processes by which change can be affected in the country, and what you need is to be nonviolent and to maintain the nonviolent tradition and come with your hat on your hand and beg white power structure to do the right thing. The response of the white power structure to that effort was guns and police and the destruction of the poor people's campaign. The poor people's campaign, that was supposed to have been a landmark, it was supposed to have been a very important opportunity.

I never thought so, I felt that like Diane Watts, I was never a supporter of Dr. King's and such marches that seemed to me where you were going to appeal to a Congress, which wouldn't even pass a rat bill. No, I couldn't, I didn't believe in it when it was first projected and its failure proves to me that the United States, the white community in the United States is not ready to give away anything whatever we get we have to take. Are you suggesting that the poor people's campaign had no impact whatsoever on the Congress? Oh, it was a cruel hoax, all it basically did was confirm the white America that they had been taking care of business. I mean, this is all it really was, to go tell the white establishment that they had been persecuting us, they know what they've been doing all these years.

So, we all, we did really was to sort of run a kind of survey to point out to them how effective they have been. And I think the time has long passed for these kind of kind of real game play. Well, I think the most important event of 1960 was the poor people's campaign, specifically Resurrection City. The poor people's campaign forced America to make poverty at acceptable living reality in this country. People get ready, there's a train coming, don't need no back end. White people come out on that poor people's campaign, or I looked upon it as a lobbying technique, or also more important to perhaps anything else. And I thought it was one of the good ideas to come from Dr. King, because here you had masses of people, you know, not just an individual or personality. That simply, although no disrespect to the vice president elect of the United States, spirit, Agnew, who said, if you see one ghetto, you've seen them all.

Dr. King had representatives from the ghetto throughout the United States, nationalities, creed, colors, religions, etc. And took all of these people to Washington and put up what I would call a prototype ghetto. Now, this could have saved the taxpayers a lot of money. You didn't have to send the congressman running all over the United States to look at ghettos. He was like, oh Agnew, you just send them down to Resurrection City. And if you see in this one ghetto, truly you will have seen most of the ghettos of the United States. And I think to that extent, I consider it successful, although most people said it was a failure, because of the things that happened in Resurrection City. But muddest streets in Resurrection City was typical of muddest streets and ghettos throughout the United States. Cops coming in and tear gas and people in the night who were asleep, some of this happens in the ghetto.

People being beaten and robbed, some of this happens in the ghetto. People who did not have three good meals a day, this happens in the ghetto. People who were idle, this happens in the ghetto. Virtually everything that went on in Resurrection City went on in the ghettos of the United States of America. And if Congress had just simply not turned this by and had not ignored Resurrection City, much good could have come out of it. Of course, we had this assassination of Martin Luther King. We had the failure, I call it a failure, I didn't agree with it in the beginning of Resurrection City, the meal train march on Washington, poor people's march. These things prove that black people had to develop a new way of thinking, a way of thinking that I've always believed in, which is that it's really money and power. I think that in depth what the significance of Resurrection City was to the black people in America today was that look, the dream is gone.

You see, Dr. King had a certain ear about him, a certain mystical ear. The people for years believe that all they'd have to do is follow him down the street peacefully and somehow we were going to get rights in a magical fashion. And I think that once he was no longer there and the people could see what was happening in a detached fashion, that is detached from King even though you couldn't say it was completely detached because his spirit was still there, but the man was no longer there. His charisma was no longer there. He was no longer able to hoodwing people with outstanding oratory. They had to look at the facts and everybody, I think, for the first time since beginning to follow Dr. King realized that the whole era was over. I think the era was over in 1963 at that picnic called the March on Washington.

I question how much hold Dr. King did have on the people. I think he was very largely supported by whites because one must ask the question, where were all of the black people during all of Dr. King's operations? One would have thought that after his death, there would have been many millions of people marching to Washington to beg a Congress for some respite from oppression. No, they took to the streets for many reasons immediately after his King, after his death. And I think the main reason was because even those of us who disagreed with Dr. King thought that symbolically we had been shot to. We are underestimating the significance of the poverty program, the March, the March, which Martin Luther King was slated to lead immediately prior to his assassination. This represented a new dimension which was being added to the whole campaign led by Martin Luther King.

Moreover, while I don't agree with all of his philosophy, still, to me it is clear that Dr. King moved more Afro-Americans into challenge against their oppression than any other figure in the world. And at that moment he was about to add millions of poor Euro-American people, which represented the kind of challenge to the power structure which they couldn't take. And so he had to be removed and was removed because that movement was becoming a mass movement including Euro-Americans and Afro-Americans which actually would put the axe at the root of the system dominated by the power structure. And by the power structure, what has happened to this movement?

Was it all in the mind of Reverend King or was it a genuine people's movement that the only thing it lacked was some direction? What I'm trying to get at was it once again the kind of where we depend always upon the one man to move history or was it a genuine people's movement? What has happened to the movement? Unquestionably the movement was set back and precisely because the assassination of King was calculated to set it back. Smite the shepherd with the scatter of the sheep. In fact, demonstrations as we see them are propaganda too for mobilizing power. We did the propaganda thing. We failed to mobilize the vision power. But you know, you don't knock out. I mean, we jumped the United States government. Russia's scared to do that. China doesn't have the forces to do that yet. So the very fact that some poor black people were there to come there and confront this military industrial complex and say you've got to start pouring some money into us instead of into Vietnam's and places like this. It was in itself significant. Now I think we face the task of continuing that national mobilization of which I think all of the black consciousness at every level in the society is an important part.

And that these next years I see us mobilizing the power within our communities and the allies we can mobilize outside of the communities to bring about the changes asked for in the poor people's campaign. How about the pouring of funds? Excuse me, Kathy. You mentioned pouring funds. Let's pull people and you've got poverty programs. You start pouring money into something. I mean, these poverty programs have been of any work to black people or they just. Let's deal with something more relevant than poverty programs. I'd like to talk about also this effect of the assassination. Poverty programs are a tool of the government for doing something they want done. They don't have anything to do with the lives of black people and that's been recognized. There's an old African proverb before we can cure the disease. We must first diagnose it and the disease is racism. Poverty is just one aspect of racism. Dr. King was not poor. He was killed. Muhammad Ali was not poor. He was deposed. Adam Clayton Powell was not poor. Nigger is not an economic condition.

It's not an economic identity. It's a racial identity. Racism is our problem. Poverty is simply one aspect of it. Days after Dr. King was assassinated in Birmingham, Bobby Hutton was murdered in Oakland. Elders Cleaver was wounded in a battle with the Oakland police. And while much has been made of Dr. King's assassination, the information concerning Bobby Hutton's assassination was the first person to join the Black Panther Party has been suppressed. But this is where it's at. In terms of the young Black people moving, you see the response to Dr. King's assassination was not something that he himself would have advocated, but this is the move that the young Black people would make. It was spontaneous, but it was not what you call nonviolent. It was not a passive response. And people all over the country turn to another form of leadership.

And I think that the leadership represented by the Black Panther Party is the only viable leadership that will get something done left to Black people. I'm not saying the Black Panther Party leadership per se. I'm talking about the types of things that they play politically ideological and revolutionary leadership. One of our basic premises is that political power grows out of the barrel of a gun. And this has been taken up by the young warriors, the young men in the community across the colony, across this country. And I think everyone has to recognize that whatever changes are going to be made in this country for Black people in the coming years are going to be made by young people. And the young people in this country are responding to the Black Panther Party is drawing vastly all across this country. This is a force that's going to have to be dealt with. So no soon the sun went down, the fishes came through the Black community shooting. So we had no other alternative, but to pick up what we had and fire back.

And after doing all of that, now I think Prankville is one of the best towns in Alabama. You can go through without any trouble. Go into place and Prankville that you want to without any trouble. I never heard of a city in revolution. The only type of revolutions I've known about or read about have been bloody revolutions. Examples of the Russian Revolution, the Revolutionary War, when one man said, give me liberty or give me death. Violence has a way of being very healthy and functional for the development of the society. By that I mean it's frequently in times of the peak violence where the society can take that next major important step, like Cleveland, Black people now must patrol their communities. I think Black people are sympathetic to the non-violent approach that they have been before. They have become much more, much more impatient, but as far as that sympathy and they are concerned for non-violence by nature, Black people are non-violent.

Just like by nature, white people are violent because this is something as an instrument they have used through centuries to bring about change where Black people are doing just objects. We're still going to have to participate to some degree in the electoral process because you can't tell people that the electoral process is fraudulent if they haven't said participate in that to some degree. So that we see ourselves waging more or less two battles. We see ourselves waging a battle in the streets. We see ourselves waging a battle through the electoral process in order to very neatly sharpen the contradictions in society. Well we're in a position now, whereas we have a lot on the white man, we're in a position where we can hurt him, and we're going to hurt him, we have to. And I think more so he realizes that we can hurt him. And this is scared him after death, which is another good thing. And I think it's time to fight whatever you believe in, it's just time to fight. My definition of black power or any kind of power in terms of regulating or controlling one's own destiny or the destiny of a community of people or a nation of people or the world is the ability to kill the ability to kill.

I have some difficulty however in shifting totally to the philosophy that the answer is in the barrel of a gun. That gives me great difficulty. I would say this that if we reach the point at which Patrick Henry and George Washington and our other national heroes apparently reached that there is no other answer except force and violence. Then there may be an answer here which has to be looked at by anybody who is not a religious pacifist and there many people who are pacifists. I would not characterize the non-violent approach as a cowardly approach or a subservient approach. I think it requires great courage to do the kinds of things that Dr. King did and the people who worked with him. It seems to me however that there is a change in strategy that is called for by the events of 1968 and I don't believe it necessarily calls for at least at this point.

Maybe I'll come to it later but I am not at the point where I believe it calls for guns and ammunition. I think what it calls for is the mobilization of the power that is present in the black community and I'm thinking particularly about political power as you suggest and I'm thinking about economic power and I'm thinking about psychological power and I'm thinking about black pride and I'm thinking about coalitions and the development and strengthening of allies and alliances. I'm not quite ready to give up completely the possibility of any solution other than going out into the streets and becoming a part of a violent struggle. Do you feel that because the statements made that political power is out of a barrel of a gun that this means that it is necessary to streets? One thing I'd like to say about this whole question of violence that's been bandied around is very clear.

It should be made very clear that in the Black Panther Party and among all Black people it's not a question of violence, aggressive violence. This is what people mostly think of. It's a question of defending ourselves and our people against the violence that's being waged upon us and has been waged upon us for the past 400 years. The war of aggression is going on against Black people not only on the level of guns but on the level of housing, on the level of education, on the level of food, on every level of the society. There's aggression, there's hostility, suppression and violence directed against Black people that the program of the Black Panther Party originally started as the Black Panther Party for self-defense is to move to defend and protect Black people against this violence so that we can move to organize Black people into a sufficient power to obtain our needs. One thing, back to what we were talking about earlier about the assassination of Dr. King, I think it should be viewed in its context. It's very clear to me that this is something that was planned. You take the month of April, on April 1st, President Johnson announced that he wasn't going to run again for office.

And this was a profound shock that went around the whole world. Everyone was sort of caught off balance. On April 4th, Dr. Martin Luther King was assassinated, another shock. People were juggled around, they didn't know exactly what was going on. On April 6th is an eruption in Oakland, where it's the hottest spot in terms of the Black movement in which the Minister of Information, Elders Cleaver, was almost assassinated. I do think that the Black man within a very few years will build up his own political party. The politics of this world is made by the White Man. You don't have any yourself. The White Man makes all his politics. Then he teaches other people those laws of politics in which he has planned and devised himself. And there is so much crookedness in the White Man's politics that you cannot win with his politics. The question is, are we not in the American economy, more and more, and obsolete people? They do not need our labor anymore. The fact of the matter is they don't need the labor of most white people, but the message hasn't reached them yet.

It ought to have reached us because we are more and more unemployed. And aren't we really talking about, isn't the basic question that faces us, is that faces the nation, the whites, the basic question is, what do you do with the people that you don't need anymore? I know what they've done with them throughout history. And that's one question. And then the second question for the Black people or those who are attempting to map out strategy of struggle is, do you continue to work within the system that has neglected you and oppressed you and repressed you for 300 years or do you attempt to change that system? And by change, I mean, eliminate, overthrow it. What do you do? I mean, this is a question I would throw out.

Well, it seems to me that we have to do both things. We have to work within the framework of the system and we have to work for its complete change. It's basic change. It's a contradiction to me, Mr. Moore, because one of the first lines of the fence of any system is to perpetuate itself. And Sony is not going to allow us to quote, infiltrate it, and then, presumably, get into position where we can weaken it. I think that the Julian has probably hit on the crux of the matter. Basically, that approximately 25 million Americans of African descent are obsolete in terms of the demands and technology of the country. But I think you are looking at this question not from the viewpoint of the Afro-American, but from the viewpoint of the European-American system of oppression. When you say, what do we do with people who are no longer employable or who are obsolete? It isn't a question of what do we do with them. It's a question of what we will do with ourselves.

Just a minute. No, no, no, no. We will do it with ourselves. We will do it with ourselves, involves this organization to get as much power as we can and to get the means of changing this. But Mr. Moore, all I am asking is that we declare about this. I think there is a contradiction. You can't talk about getting as much power as you can by working within a legislature. Let's say any state, any of the 50 states. How much energy do we have? How much unity do we have? Look at the unity that is demonstrated around this table here. We don't have enough power to do all of these things at once. It seems to me that there is such a basic contradiction that we ought to address ourselves to it. Working within the system, it seems to me to mean that you are going to waste years and years and generations and generations because those who are the most articulate will get better jobs and what not, they move out of contact with the community. Another young, hot young men come along and the same process follows. And what we are talking about.

It's all because of the surprises from the establishment. You see, when you talk about economics and economic power, we could never work within the system and at the same time overthrow the system economically or politically because, like, when you refer to places like in Africa, like Mozambique, Angola, South Africa, where there is still colonialism going on, you take a giant, a financial giant like Chase Manhattan, they can do what they want in South Africa. In this country, black shifts. Yeah, that's right. At the same time. Yeah, in the foreground, they can do the same thing. They buy out the whole revolution. And with time, blacks get ready to talk about a revolution. Now, if blacks had the power, you'd like to say what we can do economically and start a fund whereby we can help all those people in Africa. And we could do this, providing we had the gigantic financial strength of a Chase Manhattan bank whereby we could say, look, Chase Manhattan bank, you pull out a South Africa or else we're going to have like 10 gigantic corporations stop doing business with you in the United States. But we can't do that. They can laugh and say, yeah, well, look, let's give some more money through the found, through the Ford Foundation, to the black revolution here. And we can keep on doing whatever we want.

Again, they still have their hands on everything. And first of all, you'd have to get an economic base here in this country before you can do that. The fact that without the existence of the United States, as it is today, there would be no white South African regime. Most of the reactionary governments regimes around the world are supported by the United States so that we could send as much money as we wanted to the freedom fighters in a place like Portugal, the poorest country in Europe, which controls the territory 36 times its size. How could Portugal continue to do this without the support of the United States government? What the statement I'm trying to make is this that none of those countries will achieve freedom until this system, which this system here in the United States is overthrown until it has changed. I don't agree, because your whole position sums up to an overestimation of the power of the people who nagled, dominated and controlled the United States.

I grant that it's considerable. It's massive. It's massive. But when you magnify it as you do, then you remove all possibility of doing anything. And I'm not for doing nothing. I am for beginning where we are and we certainly are within this system so that begin to begin to do anything about it means that we begin within it. I'm suggesting that we should infiltrate the power structure and somehow the other get out towards them. I'm talking about infiltrating the power structure. Again, you were dominated by the power structure. I am saying that we should organize to fight against the power structure. But you're saying join the power structure in order to organize? No, I'm not saying that at all. No, that's not really what's happening. What's actually happening is that the power structure is joining the minorities, the disenfranchised minority to help fight themselves.

But this is one of the most beautiful gimmicks in the flavor of my friend. Look around you, the government, the Ford Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, everybody's following the black revolution. You deny Mr. Moore, do you deny that one of the basic tenants of any revolution is that once the class, any class regardless of how low they've been, once they assume power they become the leading class? Do you think that there is or has been a black revolution so that they can continue to maintain power? And they are seeking, of course, to buy off those that they can. But it is my judgment since I believe in man that they will not succeed altogether. And that there will be a remnant, a force that has not bowed the knee to bail and will lead the people in a revolutionary struggle to change this entire system. There has been a remnant of Christy anime in the Western world for the past 2,000 years and it has its own story.

If you think this is mythical, I tell you that great movements have always been motivated by some powerful myths. For the coming of a new Christ. You can call it that if you wish. Come to the top of the mountain with us and look into the Promised Land. Nothing like it. I was wondering whether or not all of you were talking of variation to the theme of revolution. I was wondering how would this impulse toward separatism fit in with this revolutionary quest because it seems to me that one seems to be excluding the other or does it? I would like to make a comment about what Mr. Allen just said about non-violence.

We have never taken any position that non-violence was either cowardly or subservient. That's not even the issue. What is it issue is does it work? Non-violence is a very non-functional approach in a society that's based entirely on organized, forced, and violence. A country that's created in violence, land was taken in violence, society that's perpetuating itself through violence, in the ghettos, in Vietnam, in Africa, wherever you look. There's organized, forced, and violence at work to maintain the society. So whether the solution is organized, forced, and violence is a secondary question. The question is what is the problem? And the problem is organized, forced, and violence. And one of the things that's very clear about the philosophy of the Black Panther Party and Huey P. Newton is the statement that there's a world of difference between 20 million unarmed people and 20 million people organized and armed to the gills. That's power right there.

That's your first amendment. That's power. Let me get back there for a while. That's their first amendment. The only thing I want to say, I don't like to reduce the thing to either. Because with Black people, it's a question of both hand, not either, bullets or ballots. It's a wise use of whatever is necessary. My enemy is necessary. And you see the opposition, you're up against, that's the army, the navy, the Marine Corps, the sheriff, the FBI, the CIA. So when you're looking at total opposition. And I think each instance, when Black people have to get themselves together, and you have to work out your kind of program and say in which direction you're going to move, if you, if the time comes when politics is a thing that can help you advance, you'll call. And then Black people should get to the ballot. And they should use the ballot box, you know, and put Black people in position.

And then they should use the power. That's when that occasion arises. Well, wait a minute. Black people use the ballot box in untold numbers in 1968. And Nixon sitting in the White House. What we've got to say, though, is that there's no one solution. There's no support. I mean, you've got a... I'm not saying there's no one solution. I'm saying there's some things that are not functional. There's 40, 50 of violent struggle in China. You had... I mean, there's no one quick answer. Now, I think part of what I feel here is that we really have understood the nature of our plight jet. I think some people have it. No, that what is the power based on? So I think the reason we centered on the South is this whole big military industrial complex you talk about is the enemy. And that is resting on the power of about a half a dozen southern senators and congressmen that virtually control your committees in the Congress. And you don't break that power by shooting a cop.

So you break that power at its source with Richard Russell, Townmage, Eastland, Stennis, Mendel Rivers and South Carolina, the birds. Those are the people that keep the lid on that control the military contracts. That spend two-thirds of our federal budget on oppression around the world. Now, if political violence is the tool, then it ought to be directed in the direction of the enemy. Now, the four cop on the beat is just another tool. Now, one more thing. Even the poverty programs, say, North and South are quite different. And that's why I think we've got to look carefully at them. In Mississippi, the child development group, that was survival for those black people. They took the poverty program in their own hands, and they developed a network that really helped them to survive in the most vicious system of racism. But then the funds were taken away.

But they got them back. They got them back. Right, but they weren't in control now. They're in control now. And they're in control in Alabama. I'm saying there's never going to be a time when you're totally in control. Why? Is a constant struggle. I don't think black people can't be totally in control of their destiny. Only if you struggle and fight for it. Well, that's what it's all about. But you've got to fight with your head as well as with your fist or with your gun. I think that all wars involve fighting on every level. The politics is warfare without bloodshed, and warfare is politics with bloodshed. Including white people. I'm quoting Huey Newton and Mao Zitong and Ho Chi Minh. Well, let's put it this way. If that's the case, then, if we're looking at the one more thing. I would say that when we begin to organize and educate our people so that we say to this military industrial establishment that, all right, your economy is based on steel. Automobile industry is the biggest consumer of steel. We're going to hit you at the heart of the economy.

And come 1970, no 1970 car rolls in the ghetto. And then you will be... Then that's the kind of power that they... You know, they can't counteract simply by beating up a few people or assassinating a few people of putting them in jail. What you're saying is that you don't have a single weapon, but you're constantly going to look out for leverage. And wherever you find it, you have to use it. It seems to me that there ought to be possible to identify a number of areas in which the self-interest, the very self-interest of this general society, dictates not continued suppression and not continued exploitation of a black minority. But rather, opening this society up so that people do begin to have some of the opportunities that they're supposed to have. It seems to me that a wise administrator, somebody who's concerned about the survival of the nation, is going to move in certain directions to avoid the kind of armed confrontation which is very clearly a possibility as even a rapid in some places. In progress. Put it that way.

What I would think it would be wise for a minority leadership to do would be to seek out and to interpret and to press those points in which there is a common self-interest, economics, political housing, things of this sort. I'd like to have a react to that. First of all, this was the policy of Dr. Martin Luther King. He asked these people to move in their own self-interest. They refused. And secondly, what you're asking is something that's human. And I don't think it's possible for this establishment to react to a human problem in a human way. It's impossible. In terms of self-interest. It is. It's obviously that inhuman to me. If you look at its history and what it's doing now. If that is human, then we're something else. So I have to assume that they're non-human. In terms of self-interest, it's a question of who self-interest. There are masses and masses and masses of white people who would agree with you on that point. But these white people do not have any power. They do not have any say. They do not have any control. And the self-interest of the people who are in charge are not those of human beings that are mainly based on money and power.

You see, if these people would move in their self-interest, they wouldn't beat their own children in Chicago and crack their heads. If they moved in their self-interest. They wouldn't send their armed police onto their own college campuses where their own children are studying. They wouldn't do that. So in terms of their own people, they don't move in their own self-interest. So we can be assured that in terms of black people, they will not move in their self-interest. What is important is for black people to move in black people's self-interest and let them do whatever they want to do. The grassroots white man has already taken his step. You see those little American flags on those little cars, all those little birchite policemen. And in Newark when the police went on the strike, they had a curfew in a black city where we couldn't come out the house after 12 o'clock. Because the police, many of whom don't even live in the city, went on the strike. What I'm saying is on a local level of repression is going to go even more violently to the right. And now, at the national level, they'll be able to justify it, you know, Hipper.

And I think as America, you know, like stumbles to the conclusion that it is, you know, weak and about to be taken off by all the people in the world. There are more violent repressions will come. And the next Wallace that comes around, the next time, he will be much slicker, much Hipper. He will have the benefit of a psychedelic, you know, hippie oriented speech rider, you understand? Yeah. With a much slicker publicity thing that old cornpone chewing George Wallace got. You know, by the time he will be right in here. I actually can have that in the president Nixon. I also hear, I was going to add one thing, and if I may, because I heard something else in there, which may be self interest. But it may be possible that black people are suicidal. And if so, in this country. No, I don't, black people are definitely not suicidal. Well, let me finish. If I'm asking the question, if black people have a tendency to be suicidal or if the opposition, the enemy is homicidal, then can they afford for black people to even get into position that they might destroy this country?

Well, first of all, I say black people are already in that position. And secondly, black people are not suicidal at all. They're beautiful people interested in surviving and living. You know that. Black people want to live. It's a very interesting problem that we face here in black journal. We try to get very, very opinions on the show from time to time. And we found that it's very, very difficult to find black people who will come and sit in front of a television camera and take a point of view, which is considerably moderate or conservative or reactionary. How do you explain this phenomenon that is what seems to be, to my mind, sort of the death of the public uncle Tom, I'm thinking of in particular. I mean, that individual who we all know has been a very important member of the black community for a number of years,

who somehow or other, he's no longer available to us. And I'm thinking not only the public uncle Tom, but also even moderates. I find it's very difficult to get on the show. People with modern views. He's become the contemporary race hustler, you know, like years ago, he used to be the guy who went to the whites and said, look, I can get this for you and I can, you know, keep the black brother cool in the black community for you. Well, today, what he is, is that he's a guy in a, you know, cool studio. He hasn't got his hat in his hand. And the people down town, they understand that we've got to keep this. We've got to let this man maintain a militant stance, you know, if he's going to be of use to us. And so he's out there hollering louder than everybody. Black power and down with white hair and yeah, kill him. And the dough keeps running in. You see, but his game is still the same.

It's just the way of putting it over that. Yeah, but I think at the same time, Claude, that there's been a kind of death of this public figure. You call the Uncle Tom without now attempting or even suggesting that the NAACP represents the ultimate and Uncle Tomism. But you notice the NAACP has just changed his public posture. These would be the whole question of criticizing other Afro-Americans or other Negroes or other colored people. And I think even moderate organization like NAACP is beginning to feel the weight. And I think, of course, they're doing what I consider, you know, they're committing suicide. I think they're their policy in the past of not criticizing other blacks. Was a commendable one despite their own public posture. But I think they're they are now, they're they've been taking whiteies money for all these years. And now whiteies calling the Chitzen and said, look. Well, then now that you point out that the NAACP has been one of the largest Uncle Tom. I didn't take it traditionally. Oh, you didn't want to give me.

But anyway, it's not that I didn't say that. We're just in the context of we were talking about public Uncle Tom's and NAACP came to mind. But I was saying that you wouldn't say it or that you don't say it. When Bill mentioned public Uncle Tom, the name NAACP came to mind. Yeah, without even wanting to call him that, it just automatic reflexes. Would you not say that they did at one time perform some useful function? I don't know, I'm asking. The NAACP? I'm certain many people did at one time, probably. I think the NAACP, particularly back then, the very early years when you when you had the kind of mob rule. Particularly in the southern regions of the country. They know that the only voice of the only ones who were able to provide any kind of legal approach to the problem. Well, I think that the, I think they've just outlived their usefulness as they're now structured as their restructions then. I don't think they have changed, visible. But the people who have convicted are not involved. I'm sorry we had to cut this off at this point. Although I know that in the future, all that we didn't get on the program on Black Journal tonight will have on in future programs.

So you'll be watching. So we'll have a little excerpts in there to see us as we move along here. Didn't Black Journal accomplish one of 68? I think Black Journal would be an accomplishment of 1968 after we had a very good one. 1969? 1969 till March. But you want to be watching Black Journal. Our next Black Journal will be on Monday, January the 27th. And as you look, you will probably once again see some of our guests as we in disperse them through the program. Rapping about some of the things we talked about that we couldn't get on tonight. I'm Lou House, with William Greaves here on Black Journal. And so brothers and sisters until Monday, January 27th. I'll be with you then. One gaze to gay. This is NET, the public television network.