Black Journal; 59; Roy Innis

Both of you! The following program is from WNET 13. With me in the studio is Roy Innis, National Director of the Congress of Racial Equality, who will answer charges that he, in quote, a little band of bitter men, in quote, have

created a quote, Doomsday Device, in quote, for black children in this country school systems. We'll be right back after a report from Trinidad on the Steel Drums or Beacon Pan. From the island of Trinidad and the Caribbean comes the sound of the steel band, a sound of a 20th century, a West Indian sound. The story of the steel band is much like the story of black music in the United States. For those steel bandsmen have been beaten pan for nearly 30 years, they've only recently begun to gain recognition and acceptance as legitimate musicians. The bands which originated in the poverty-ridden areas of Trinidad were made up of black youth and the music which was considered by many to be merely noise, became associated with the link Quincy, and there were often clashes between the bands and the police.

But the determination and creativity of the young brothers overcame all the stigmas, and the music of the pan is now being heard all over the world and appreciated for the art form that it is. The steel band definitely originated in Trinidad. Of course it's a spread throughout the Caribbean now, and indeed throughout the world. It originated here somewhere around 1937. It was purely rhythmic. That is to say, it was consisted of drums. Anything made a drum, anything any kind of tin, any kind of metal, dustbin, disappear, and I'm sure that I must have danced behind my own dustbin many a time. Now that period went on for about eight years or so, and there come 1945 with the celebration of victory in Europe, and all the steel bands that time went on the street. And the first melodic pan appeared, playing a very simple melody somewhere for the victory

in Europe 1945. Today they are real pop-class musical orchestras, and every year they usually have a grand festival. I think we must have about 200 steel bands in Trinidad. When you see them at Carnival times, the bands may be anything like about 80 to 90 pans, 150 musicians, you know, some decide waiting to take over from the others. A huge band that you could hear, probably a mile off, a fast-for-carnival. And Carnival itself is about nearly 200 years old in Trinidad. And it began as a French fet for the elite for about 50 years or more.

And then with the emancipation of African slavery in 1833, the whole thing changed because the entire populace participated in Carnival. And Carnival has grown and has grown to the extravaganza it is now. Carnival has been regarded as the greatest show of its kind on earth. They haven't stopped experimenting and last year in the Carnival one of the top bands of Trinidad, Gatorsparados, came out with some improvement in the pans that seemed to give them a greater tonal quality. And now I see one of the top boys in the pan world, steel band world, Bertie Marshall is experimenting with new dimensions for the band. So they are very active, they are very imaginative.

And the steel band hasn't stopped the improvement. They are very active. Birdie Marshall, like most of the pan tuners in Trinidad, practices the highly skilled craft

of tuning in a small pan yard. He collects empty oil drums and begins by banging in the bottom of the pan until he has a smooth concave surface. The deeper the surface, the higher the pitch of the pan. The next step is to mark off the surface for placement of the various notes that will have to be tuned. There are usually three or four notes on a boomer or bass pan and as many as 32 notes on a ping pong or soprano pan. The two in-between pans are the guitar or alto with 14 notes and the cello pan or tenor with five or six notes. The tuner must next seam the notes into the surface of the pan with a hammer and cold chisel.

Extreme care must be taken to make the channel deep enough to avoid overtone without puncturing the pan. After the pan is heated and tempered, great care and concentration is taken to tune the notes with the use of a small tinker's hammer and a two-pound sledge. A tuner may take all day to tune a single note or if the process goes well, he may tune an entire pan in only a few hours. Well, Tony Williams is regarded as one of the top men in this tea-bang world of Trinant Bego, who came Anthony Williams with a new form of tuning, which he called the Spider-Web tuning, a difference and gave a different tonal effect to pans and by that time pans were playing top-class music at music festivals and Anthony Williams, who was the captain of North Star's, a musician himself and a ranger, very highly regarded man in this tea-bang

world. Well, a North Star was formed in about 1950 and since then we have won quite a few competitions. Well, the majority of them are unemployed but some will care and they cannot read music really but they have a good year for music here. I started tuning pan since I was about 13 years old and this was a certain amount of significance to me because it's something creative and I like the amount part of it. Well, I'm a carpenter really but during the time I like music and during the time that pan came I bought it and I liked it and I sticked it and then I give up the tree and I do mainly tune and know.

Many experiments in trying to see if I could get something new. So making pans and trying different designs and so on. The competition is so great and I don't think anybody could actually live on it and you have to consider there isn't a big tourist all the way so that the bands could be playing continually at the hotel or so. Some hotels only employ a band about two or three times a week so I could kind of really keep up. So I could smell after do some odd job outside. Well, as I said we are still working to perfect the instruments and when they are perfected I believe that they will eventually face into a lot of extras and to produce a different it is producing a different song so when it goes into the hotel it's also a standard of extras it would produce a different song and I think arranges would look forward to that. So

. . . . . The steel band movement is a very important, it's not only important musically, but it seems to be a very important nation-building influence,

because although it starts among Negro youth, Afro-Trillion West Indians, and a delinquent majority of them, delinquent youth at that, it has come to the age of respectability now, acceptability, let us call it, perhaps a better word, and that everybody, regardless of what the ethnic origin is, play in the steel band. So it's an excellent influence musically, as well as in the national spirit. . .

. . . . . . . . .

. . Roy Ennis was the chief architect at the recent black national convention on the anti-bussing resolution, which was eventually passed. Roger Wilkins, who recently wrote an editorial in the Washington Post, referred to Mr. Ennis' role and the significance of the anti-bussing resolution. I'm quoting from Mr. Roger Wilkins' article in the Washington Post recently, quote, "'Segregation, whether in the schools or in the total society, has not worked and will not work. Separation hasn't worked in Ireland, in Pakistan, Salon, or Cyprus, and it will not work here. We all share the same fate on the same small planet in a coal black and vast universe, and we had better start learning soon how to get along on it together.

But at Gary, it was the doomsayers who won the day. The delegates were in a mood to vote for anything black, and so they fell prey to corps plan for perpetual separation of the school systems of this country. A doomsday device created for black children by Roy Ennis and his little band of bitter men. And now the country thinks that blacks everywhere don't want integrated education. They are wrong. How do you respond to that? First, let me say that Mr. Wilkins doesn't understand history. The history of the world has been an entire movement of separatism. People have always sought to define themselves politically and homogeneously away from other people. So he's very wrong. The movement of Jerry, the algebra revolution, was a separatist move. The French tried to include them in. They said they weren't part of France. In terms of small band of angry men, let me say that if he's referring to corps, he's wrong. Corps is a very large group of dedicated brilliant men.

Not bitter, angry and disgusted with people who have been trying to push this more and more in the white domination. So that's just the correction of the record. What do you believe, and I certainly think there's evidence in the press, that you and corps are becoming the bad boy now of the black movement? We have always been the bad boy since I became the national director of corps. And those of us who have moved since the mid-60s towards nationalizing the movement, making the movement more black, making it more nationalist, have always been considered by the white press the bad boys. So how do you explain your nationalism? I've often heard you differentiate black nationalism as corps philosophy. It's different from what we normally call black nationalism. What is your particular brand and what are the philosophies of your black nationalism? We get our intellectual and philosophical sustenance from the old Marcus Garvey movement.

And we trace our philosophy back to Edward Blighten and to Martin Delaney. These are the patron saints of the corps movement. We consider ourselves classical black nationalists, which means we try to avoid confused in our nationalism with all kinds of European isms. We do not consider ourselves capulists, we do not consider ourselves Marxists, both of them we consider European philosophies. We just tread our fashion, classical black nationalists of the Garvey, Delaney, and Blighten variety. We're translating that to people who don't know what nationalism means. Exactly how would you explain it to them? That means that we see black people as a whole. In Africa, in fact we see black people as being Africans at home or Africans abroad. And the West is in the United States. We feel that we must move first to link up politically and economically and socially the parts of this family. And that those of us who are away from home should move to acquire power where we are,

so that we can be of more help and use to the monoland Africa. That means that wherever we are we move for sovereignty, for control of our institutions, for management and the definition of the areas we live in as political entities. That's why naturally core for years have been pushing for the control of schools. But why are you pushing so hard now against busing? Well because I see this bus in an integration, it's parent, as being in fact the Doomsday device that could destroy black people. It should destroy the unity of black people. Black people are dispersed into a white mass. It would be the first time in the history of mankind and any people have voluntarily agreed to be dispersed. All people in the history of mankind and history based me out seek to aggregate their energies and resources, seek an internal identity, and not seek to gain benefit of society,

through piggybacking as a parasite than somebody else. The hardy answer Mr. Wilkins charge that this is a universe and we black and whites must live together on. That's fine. I'm very willing to live and co-exist peacefully with whites, providing I have some piece of this globe that we can define as ours. And that should be Africa and should be all the other places outside of Africa that we live in large numbers. Now it seems to me the way to have coexistence is not to be submerged. It's not to be under the political, intellectual and economic domination of somebody else. Integration and also segregation. The two white philosophies that are being pushed in black people and being accepted in one way or the other by the black black is. A boat, white, dominating philosophies. What are black folks dominated or ruled or controlled by whites? Apart from whites or what are they controlling rule by whites next to them?

It's still white control. Well, some blacks, particularly blacks in the south, who've had a pretty rough time, I'm sure you'll agree with out and out segregation, construe your anti-bussing philosophy with being a move back to segregated. My feeling is that the people in the south are especially understanding what we're talking about because they know we're not talking about segregation. Core has opposed segregation as much as anybody else. We understand the connection, the close relationship between segregation and integration. Both being white controlling philosophies as a gain separatism, as a gain black people controlling their own destiny. Now, we should not talk so much about whether or not we should integrate or whether or not we have segregation because it's the same thing. It is white control, either inclusion or exclusion. How would the schools work if you had your work? The school would work in a completely different way than it would work during the old segregated days. Or it would work during this present integration drive. In that, for the first time in this country, black people will have not just the children in the particular schools, but control.

It will be the managing agent and the policy makers for these schools. Now, this is brand new. And financially and politically and economically. We need to understand that in the old days of segregation, white people control those schools. Even though you had black children and black teachers and black principals. The managing agent, the board of education, was white. And the president proposed the same thing exists. Still white people. In fact, the exact same board of education. And press black folks for decades under segregation now will oppress us inclusively through integration. How do you react to President Nixon's announcement that he would be interested in putting $2.5 billion into downtrodden schools? I oppose that. I oppose that because Nixon is talking about going back to the old fashioned segregated days. He's going to put $2.5 billion into the same hands or the same whites who control the schools now to oppress us even more.

You see, I'm opposed to Nixon giving money to one bunch of racists who are going to run segregated schools. I'm opposed to Nixon giving money to another bunch of racists running integrated schools. Either way, black folks are oppressed. The name of the game is, how can black folks organize themselves so that they are not in fact being managed by somebody else? Why can't Nixon, for instance, send $2.5 billion really more should come to a black board of education running black schools? How do you have any escape route, any alternative for black people who cannot accommodate your total black control of schools? Black people who say they want their children to go to? Well, I am very willing. Many blacks who want to be controlled, I'm very willing to support their program and have them bust, I will hire a bust to bust them out in the suburb someplace. It seems to me, though, that most blacks, most people in the history of mankind, when given a choice, choose to manage and control themselves. And I will bid, you see, and I've seen enough results. The Gary Convention blacks overwhelmingly, a cross-section of blacks, overwhelmingly voted against integration, recognizing his danger, and voted for control of their own destiny.

In Florida, where whites voted against bus and blacks also voted against bus and blacks in the south. Surprisingly, contrary to what's being told us by those blackies of the white liberal structure that speak for black people, contrary to their suggestions, black people in the south understand control. They understand self-determination, and when given a choice, choose so. In Florida, blacks voting against bus and because they recognize the danger of this personal. Our time is short, and I would appreciate a succinct and answers possible to this question. Mr. Wilkins infers in his article that you really have played on the emotion of blackness of the black people at the convention, and that in essence, that vote wasn't so much for against busing as it was for the fact that you felt the tone of black nationalism and played on it. How do you respond?

I very carefully did not propose or submit that resolution myself. The resolution was submitted by the chairman of the South Carolina delegation. An addition to that motion was made by the chairman of the Florida delegation, both southern states, both fellows from the south. And it seems to me that these bright young men from the south were telling people something. They were saying that we understand integration, and we also understand what make people function, and they chose control. Thank you very much. Our time is short. I certainly would like to go on. We certainly appreciate you coming on black journal and explaining your position to us. And now, the black national anthem. In the wrong way, it's gone.

We are the best in the world. We are the best in the world. We are the best in the world. We are the best in the world. We are the best.

We are the best in the world. We are the best in the world.