Radical Americans; 105; The Angry Negro

The following program is a presentation of National Educational Television the fifth in a series on the malcontent political minority both left and right. Malcolm X on his way up from obscurity and degradation to become an international spokesman for black aspirations and an angry radical in his own country. He made enemies as he wrote and it means he was set out to destroy him. February 21st 1965 the Audubon Ballroom in Harlem. Minister Malcolm faced his audience. He also faced his assassins and his death has been recorded. Our ally. When you get past Malcolm Steen back in

just about Malcolm X I think one of the major conventions to the struggle. Has been arousing the consciousness of being black. In French speaking Africa the consciousness of being black in the black people. Malcolm X voiced the bitterness of Harlem and watts of the urban slum dwelling negro assassins silenced Malcolm. Although the struggle for civil rights in the south captured public attention the frustrations and hopes on which Malcolm built his following have not disappeared. The radicalism of the southern civil rights movement has had growing nationwide sympathy for the justice of the cause was clear because Southern negroes fought an open and arrogant anime the northern negro radical is more difficult to understand. These people are poor. They are second class citizens. The harsh

realities of the slum and racial exclusion make a mockery of equal opportunity. But the Northern Negro has no clear enemy no White Citizens Council no share of Clark. There is no line which once crossed brings the promise of victory and a better life. Not knowing what he must fight the urban negro loses hope in the fight itself. The black radical returns hope to his people. He substitutes for a clear enemy. A proud cause he has contempt for white America. He says that the Negro must fight the whole system. He emphasizes pride in being black independent black political action. Some black radicals say that what the white man won't give the Negro must take if necessary by violence. Black radicalism has led to a debate within the Negro community. The issues are black nationalism third party political activity and violence. The participants in this debate

speak for themselves. Black Muslim leader black supremacist and Malcolm's first mentor allies are Mohammed not the white man that made us white men just 6000 years ago and we would need unlimited. We don't know nothing about anybody right. You can't find no history that you know you the boy of the black man. Will you then. Daniel Watts edits the radical black magazine Liberator in New York. The newest voice of the young black intellectual circulation of 15000 a tough aggressive voice of pride. Let me put it to you this way. We are proud of being black and black heritage but white America does not accept the concept that this is a multi racial society. It is never accepted the fact that there are black people brown people yellow people here alongside them they've always looked upon America as being white and hence

all of its propaganda is directed at us to convince us that somehow the other we must become white before they will accept us. Even a publication like ebony with a subscription of something like 800000 negro subscribers is that for what we call the low visibility negro. You know the light skinned Negro with the rare exception Ebony never features the activities of the black man in this country. It's always that low visibility you know the almost White Negro. And how you two can be this way one day if you use some of the skin like theirs that they run in the advertisement. I mean when it runs ads like Dr. Fred Palmer's skin whiteners. It is the Nile of the fact that black people exist that some of the other in order for us to exist we must resort to using here straightness Oh I care won't be kinky if we could only hide our blackness. We can then become part of this thing called the American melting pot of the American

saying this is the primary role of 74 and such publications serve this young man work for corps work for snake lives in Watts Los Angeles is typical of the young intellectual negro Jimmy Garrett speaks of pride. I don't think it's the I think the problem is the span of the discussion is set by the white. That and a lot of negroes now don't want to accept that standard you know they want to say we got to have our own stand. I think that the hook up comes if you can develop a whole new standard where whites and Negroes can have a dialogue not either one of those are acceptable anymore. I mean whites are done except negro standards and negroes no war no longer want to be white. So that clear thing is to develop a whole new standard. And everybody taught that so they can so they can be some kind of dialogue. Julian Bond of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. He speaks of a great many people like in a great many people in the

Negro community in general have feelings of nationalism of black nationalism and the disturbing thing to me is a great many Americans white Americans seem to equate this with the same sort of white supremacy that flows from the Ku Klux Klan and the Citizen's Council and so on I don't think it's quite the same thing. I think what black nationalists are saying is with Negro Americans have their own history and their own heritage you should be proud of. And it's a heritage in the history that the rest of the country must recognize. I don't think it's any more than that and I think it's something that Negroes have to be made more aware of as their history of participation as American citizens and as against a new form of American life that has oppressed them and I think it's a beneficial thing rather than detrimental. Fannie Lou Hamer a founder of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party she speaks of pride and you know from a child up our ways. First I wanted to be white because my family was 20 of us six girls 14 balls. We would make that turn 60 bales a cotton gather all that

cotton and we wouldn't have food in the wintertime. So I figure there are no white people must be right. But as I got older I said now is something wrong and if I ever get a chance I'm going to do something about it. But year after year things look like that worse and worse. The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee helped to build confidence in people that they were just about to lose all hope and that's the truth. Black radicals seek equality in different ways. Julian Bond at the post. Elected to the Georgia legislature he was refused the seat because he opposes the Vietnam War. Bunn describes his work with snake oil an organization 200 young people mostly young people college and university age young people white in the ground more or less the country trying to do several things. Number one we try to encourage southern Negroes to register to vote. But even more basic than that we try to organize people in rural. And the rural parts

of the Deep South into groups that can make use of those funds as new grows gradually achieve the right to vote. We go in there where people live and where it worked. People try to get them aroused to the point but they lose some of their years that we have to cut across generational fear. And we hope someday that we don't we will have developed across the south several what we call pockets of power that Negroes can use to gain a measure of independence and use to force some changes in the American system to make their lives a little better listening. Smith and corps work with us day and night. You would be surprise when snake came into Mississippi defaulting about the 1960 to the first conference I went to a snick conference in Nashville Tennessee in November 1962 and the first time I had a chance to just sit next to a white person. I've never been that nervous in my life.

And they tell us you know they didn't tell us what to say. So you know how you've been getting along in Mississippi. We don't have to tell you. So say what you mean. You know the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. One of the established civil rights organizations made its reputation in the south. The Reverend Andrew Young of AC I'll see presently we're engaged in two major programs. One is a voter registration program in the state of Alabama which is involving 31 counties and so far two of the major cities and we'll probably expand about five major cities in the next two months. The key to this is that we think by transforming the political structure simply through the adding of Negroes to the voting rolls. We will accomplish a certain political reform across the south. The civil rights movement by and large has been the. Almost exclusive property of the coalition that was formed by

Roosevelt labor the white liberal establishment wing center etc. with a few showcase Negroes up front. By and large it is certainly not affected. The bulk of the black people in this country are grassroots people. This is where the lover hopes to make inroads into the. Sort of uncommitted the uncommitted black person which I would say have a comprise something like 75 percent of the black population in this country. These are the people who can identify let's say with the Martin Luther Kings or the Roy Wilkins. Because these people these so-called leaders represents the black Anglo-Saxon establishment and they do not speak for the soul brother in the street and they will forget Mr. Wilkins came to me one day from the NAACP that I found out at that National Convention was the National Association of the advancement of certain people. But it didn't include us in Mississippi. And he came to me and told me say you

people are ignorant you don't know anything about politics. You put your point all around to pack up and go home. Well at that time our marriage in that he was being impression that a man with a king is his. The logic of the. Negro leader and he's trying to get Negroes and into the middle class I mean the body politic which ultimately is to get them into the mainstream of American life. Now Malcolm said there was some wrong with the mainstream of American life and I was some wrong when I get an enemy whack in the middle of a cesspool that's my own attitude. There is no white man in America today can go to Washington and give their so-called American Negro equal right. He can't do it or interest he can promise to try but we have these armed people to contend with. Equal rights will mean given so much to you can't be equal. By living on the white man. This is

his country. Why should you ll be deceived by the president a candidate for president saying he will give you equal rights when you can't get no equal right. No fully equal rights is here for you unless they are going to do this. I give to you some portion of the country and give to you right to set up on government for yourself and your own people sense that by nature you are different. If there's not a lot of black people in this country to talk about starting up a little hill out there well you know and not they are to the people could blow us off the face of the map you know. So I'm not thinking about that. I am thinking about in terms of a better and a greater world for all people and we can't do that by a million in one corner doing what I can do in the region you never can do anything

else. I think in the process of being rich being absorbed into it we're going to have to change for instance. We're trying to integrate into the political system but we're not integrating into the political system of James Eastland and Strom Thurmond. That when we get the right to vote the James Eastlands and the for Strom Thurmond's will have to go because the first thing we would do is vote them out of office. So that means that as we come in as a power factor in American life certain changes will take place in the structure of the American economy and and the American political system which will be advantageous not just to the negro but to the whole political system. The reason we have Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party we were not allowed to participate with the regular Democrat. Credit Party in Mississippi we tried from the present level to go

into the with the regular Democrats. I'll never forget when we went to visit the recent meeting in Bill it was a you know eight negroes and we went up to this polling place where they would hope recent meetings and they had this place it was locked up. So we stood at the nearest place which was right down by the steps on the lawn and we held our own precinct. We elected our chairman now Secretary of delegates and alternates and we passed a lot of resolution and we move from the present level to the state. Then on the 24th of April one of for our six of April 1964 the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party was our then as at the Masonic Temple in Jackson Mississippi. I was proud of myself. Bill Acton was a candidate of the Communist Progressive Labor Party captain ran legally in Harlem but somehow his name on lever was

missing on two thirds of the polling machines in his district. Experiences like these support the assertion of many black radicals. But the vote is a sham. Uniformity among the black people of Puerto Rican people and the white working. Class. Sometimes if you get word. Doubt they can tell you. Everything and we demand that we never get from the Democratic or Republican. Let us take her out for an example. Lindsay and the whole motley crew from down down come running up to Harlem during the election. The promised jobs housing public housing schools and hospitals and the black people unfortunately born this time on this right. No one in the black community. If you take these slum buildings off the tax rolls and replace it with taxable buildings such as schools and hospitals. Where is that money going to come from the bill these hospitals

schools and this is precisely why they won't build any more hospitals or any more schools or public housing because you're taking off the tax rolls these slum building and replacing with taxable structures that thing about slavery with a smile. If you've got a house slaves call a free man and give him the vote so you can control people. If you determine their choices for them then it doesn't matter whether they vote in that cause if you if you choose between a person who's going to stab you five times in the heart of President to stab you four times in the kind of choices that so you go ahead and vote so what. So you vote for senator and the senator's constituency is either a lobbyist or a lobbyist who represent big business or lobbyist who represent him himself. So what so what so you can vote. I am interested in developing a third political all black party once we are in the black community can establish our political party then we can negotiate with our so-called white allies who have developed their own political parties simultaneously along with us

then from the standpoint of power and interest. We can negotiate fairly and squarely. We wouldn't be hung up with all the euphemisms such as brotherhood. And it's a model thing to do. If we had a chance to run for office in Mississippi and in some districts in Mississippi we have a chance to have negroes in power but I wouldn't call our black power structure in Mississippi just like all white power structure. We want good people. Regardless the white black to represent the people of Mississippi. I'm not concerned about just represent black people because we have poor whites. This in the same category with the poor negro. Well I want to see a change for the people. And if we can get a good white man all right we'll put him in office. But I don't want it all black and I don't want it all white. What we need to do today is to develop black institutions so that that the whole movement the black liberation movement does not depend on any single individual

but the Pens upon an institution. We're so bad off that we don't even have an ideology for our revolution. We don't even have one black economist not one black there Ed. who can step back sit down and say this is the program this is what we're going to follow something on the order of the American Jewish Committee for the American Jewish Congress. Except there will be black instead of it being white an institution that's up front analyzing propose making proposals in terms of course of actions lobbying etc. for black people not going up on this business of integration whatever that may be. If we look at the whole question of the black people realistically some kind of a don't we have to set another way. Given the rapid advancement of technology in the country today. Every black child over 10. Is already obsolete in terms of the needs and demands of the technology. So some kind of dole system would have to be set up where we would be supported for the rest of our

lives while all of the efforts concentration in terms of education motivation be placed on the black children between the ages of 1 and 10 so that they will have the equipment to enter into the technology that's America. Now that's one aspect and the other aspect would be a guaranteed annual wage. This can only come from central planning in Washington it cannot come from this freewheeling profit making economy. It has to come from a central planning agency in Washington a guaranteed anyway just been a lot of talk and a lot of shuffling of papers. But in terms of the plight of the black man in this country there's been no perceptible change primarily because the white man. Has no reason to. He enjoys the higher standard of living his government enjoys dominance in world affairs. Why should he turn to mean when I say I want to share part of my good fortune with you. He has no reason to. And I think it's to remind me that you know when we were

kids the boy with all the marbles is not going to change the rules of the game so it is up for us the black people now to force the whites to change the rules of the game. Part of the radical tactic has been violence. There are many attitudes about violence among the black radicals. JULIAN BOND Well we are a nonviolent organization and that means that some of our members believe in nonviolence as a philosophy and a way of life and some of us believe in it as a tactic and a technique. But over the past five years we have tried to carry out all of our activities in a nonviolent manner. Other people in the general civil rights movement believe in violence unfortunately serve a very good function because they scare white people into doing things that are demand that they would not do otherwise in other words. I think a group like the Muslim says to white American general that if you don't deal with Martin Luther King today then you must deal with us tomorrow. Most people would rather deal with Martin Luther King than deal with a

Muslim. Liberator magazine predicted the Watts riots in Los Angeles two months before it occurred. Writer and editor Daniel Watts I was there in February of this year and unlike white missionaries that go into the black ghetto who go into the periphery of the black ghetto and look for a negro respectable respectable looking I spent most of my time in the foggy bottom bars the funky bars with the soul brothers are talking to their brothers and sisters and really finding out what they were thinking and this was why we were able to predict what was going to happen. So was the train a so-called train sociologist. The poll takers and above all that blot that blank on the on the backs of black people or white missionaries. They could never they could never get into the soul brother town.

Even guys on the block talking Mino still asking what will or what are you mad about what do you want to say what are you fighting for they say well they want. They want education they want to. I want to be respected as individuals Well if you want a policeman to respect you do you kill him or do you cuss him out. Do you find some way to creatively respond to him in love so that he responds in respect. If you want a job with the factory does it make sense to burn that factory down or is it more effective in terms of getting what you want to go to the manager of that factory and apply the kinds of moral and economic pressures that are necessary to get him to open up the doors and and give you a job in that factory and I think we've been finding say among the street gangs in Chicago that when when they see nonviolence presented as as an aggressive action philosophy for social change they can readily see that this makes a whole lot

more sense than throwing a Molotov cocktail in a liquor store. Let's take a look at how all of 1964 when approximately 20 Molotov cocktails were exploded in Harlem and in 1965 in August and Watts Los Angeles 2000 Molotov cocktails were exploded. I think that we are developing a more sophistication and I think in the next uprising and I suspect it will probably come through either in Washington D.C. or in another city where you're going to find 5000 cocktails use. But I have never I have never thought in terms of our valor. Of all the things that have been gained by people fighting and gone to earth for they don't have in it and you know this to me it doesn't make sense. If I hate you because you hate me I'm no better than you are. And all we want to do is to make these people understand that we are human beings and we

can work together in this country and to have a democracy. That's what we don't have to do. I think there's going to be violence cost already has been. I mean when people try to free themselves they kill negroes in the south all the time the negro man has been emasculated and destroyed by that. But in fact every time he stood up he got snuffed out right there. So I don't think there's any question but that there's going to be violence and brutality. My attitude is that is that the brutality and the violence should become the reason that you want to be free. But that's a very personal thing. Freedom is. So the question is and what is freedom to me is what price freedom. Because sometimes the price that you pay for freedom is the very thing that makes you slaves again. That's what I think happened in Russia in 1970. But I know that there's going to be violence I mean I think it gets blurred especially the individuals I face you violently

so who knows where that violence began. I mean I might if I face you with a gun and you got a I got orders to kill you and you got orders to kill me then we can't really deal with each other. When you're a target and I'm a target. So you can't really talk about that. But you have to you can talk about the larger thing the much more universal thing the reason that you're there is really not to kill but to reach. Freedom. Freedom now real freedom and ideals from our political heritage and ideals on which both moderate and radical negroes are agreed. But many negroes are not really free to direct their lives toward fulfilling work. Many negroes are not really free to be proud of themselves and their race. If federal state and local action is able to guarantee these freedoms the grievances on which black radicalism is based will have been met if not the black radicals will speak for an ever growing segment of the Negro community.

Next week on the radical Americans we look at the tradition of radicalism in the United States. In the t the National Educational Television Network.