Say Brother; Question of Leadership for Boston's Black Community

The question of leadership of Boston's black community has again come to the forefront. The idea of finding one person who could advance the aspirations of black Bostonians is probably an impossibility. For example, we might all agree with the concept of quality education, but there is a great difference of opinion on how to reach that end. In essence black people in Boston are not philosophically of one mind. It is a natural desire of all people to look for one charismatic leader to represent them. One of the problems with this is that many leaders become the movement and when they are gone the movement dies. The late Dr. Martin Luther King and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference is a good example of this. Anything more than a cursory review of the black community will reveal a variety of people directing programs in the areas of health, housing, education, and law. These are able articulate people, dedicated to improving different

aspects of life. They seldom receive publicity for their efforts or recognition as leaders in the black community. The leadership that will advance the black community will have to emanate from an assortment of people from different backgrounds and disciplines. The importance of electing representatives to city government becomes increasingly important. Representation in the city council and school committee would give the black community a voice in two important domains that affect the quality of our lives in the city. The question of leadership really rests with each of us, to actively support people who articulate what we feel. People with ability, who could be positive representatives of our community, need to know that we are morally and financially behind them. The future will be our test. April 24th Boston is going to be the site of a national march for

desegregation, and the coordinators of the march have compiled a truly impressive list and six typewritten pages of community spokespeople and, and leaders who are coming together this one time to generally endorse such an effort. We've asked several of those community leaders to appear on "Say Brother" with us this evening to discuss the whole question of leadership. With us will be ?John Boehner, Macy Oh? ?Dixon, Reverend William Weeks?. They're welcome. Maybe I could ?begin may see I think you know? that the coordinator for, for this march the local ?coordinates and scar? ? is there right now.? Well, there's a coalition that has developed out of it. I'm representing the Student Coalition, and in the April 24th coalition march on Boston which is a broad range of different organizations and groups that have developed

around this and I'm just a project director for this march and rally to help make sure that it comes off peacefully and legally, safely, and with a lot of people, even those going to be very, very militant on that day. So, you have, you have opted for a coalition. Yes. You bring together a variety of viewpoints. Yes. In this volatile kind of, kind of area, who are you planning to have here nationally? We invite a whole number of people to speak nationally, including Brother Jesse Jackson, Coretta Scott King, Brother Farrakhan from the Nation of Islam, and then we're going to be drawing up a whole list of local people who are going to be speaking. But this is a Boston march and rally. We're asking people from across the country to participate but to make this thing very successful it has to be Boston-based in Boston, led in Boston participation. That's doing things, going to make it very successful.

Let me ask you why you decided on a march and we've been marched out on ?the range. What made you fasten.? This tack. Well, I say a march and rally is only one method in the overall struggle for the liberation of our people. We did it in the late 50s and throughout the 60s to get some equal rights in this country and I don't think that we had a point that we are liberated. We have to continue to struggle, and it was those marches in those cities, it was pray-ins and so forth and so on to begin to give us some of the concessions from this system, and I think we need some more concessions at the present time, and I think that we have to go back to those marches and so forth and so on. I think it's going to make a powerful impact on this country because I think the problem has been that we've gone away from those marches, sit- ins, and pray-ins and so forth. There's only one method in the overall struggle to get what is so vitally necessary, and busing is the key issue that the segregationists have utilized to

organize against all black rights. I mean people should understand that it's not just busing that they organized against, it's also when we talk about controlling our own schools in our community we talk about Affirmative Action. We're talking about more blacks to go to college, black student unions on the campuses, Black Studies, and so forth and so on.. They're using busing to organize against all black rights and they've set the battleground, they've set the field of struggle. The thing is that we have to struggle on that because it's there and all those white folks who have demonstrated against busing are also demonstrating against black rights even though many of them may not be consciously saying that. Then that's what they really wanted. One of the prime reasons why you are, why you are marching against, you say, rights, excuse me, against desegregation, because of the spread of facts. No, marching for the segregated ?for the ferry because of the spread of fact.? Exactly, exactly. This is a pro-busing ?produce irrigation? margin. There is also around the question of the race's violence because the busing issue has caused when these whites

have organized attacks against blacks in the schools and so forth, then you have black families that live in Dorchester, for instance, predominately white communities, have been chased out. Has nothing to do with the desegregation of the schools, have nothing to do with busing, but instead that they were attacked and so forth. Or that the question of things like the book burning campaigns in West Virginia has nothing to do with busing, nothing to do with desegregation, but the same people organize against busing. I also agree with things like not having books by Langston Hughes in the school itself. It has a spread effect and we have to focus in on that, concentrate on that, and root out that evil and focus in on that evil and begin to move on that so that we can make sure that the gains that we have won in the past 20 years are upheld and even extended in terms of black and Puerto Rican people in this country. I mean I would say that, you know, that might be one of the, one of the reasons that you have been successful in pulling together as many different kinds of

people as you have and coming from as many different, different points of view on this whole, this question. Well, I think, you know, which, you know, which many of us have been tentative, a kind of paper tiger, issues, you know, when we were in fact very concerned that our children know that any children receive a kind of, kind of, education, broad education that they should. I think the reason why it's the number of people with ?300 people? have endorsed this and one level or another have endorsed this is mainly because of what the program was about, was a question of leadership that the black masses want to see some direction. They want to have a way to get out of the conditions that we're in. And this march ?interest rates? can be one aspect to that. There's a lot of things going on in the black community, these attacks, these cutbacks in programs, and so forth, and people can begin to get together, I think, around this aspect and, I think, it's this pressure of people seeing

something that's happening because it's explosive in our community right now and anything could happen to tick off anything, and they need some direction, and I think this march on the 24th of April which is the same day that the anti-busing forces are demonstrating in Washington, D.C., against busing and demanding a constitutional amendment to it through Congress and I think you can show a big powerful show of force, the anti-busing demonstrations in Washington, the pro-busing and pro-black rights forces in Boston having this big show of force and testing out who cannot organize, who are around these different questions in a nonviolent, in a nonviolent, peaceful, legal, but militant as hell. (laughing) Let me ask you for some specifics where, where exactly, where marchers congregate. The marches will congregate on the 24th from 10:00 to 12:00 in the morning at Franklin Field. We are asking people to come there around the Blue

Hill Avenue, Columbia Road part of Franklin Field, and we will march through the black community, to the Government Center on that day. All right. ?I was off for the week yesterday.? ?............? ?I am not going to quit? I'm not done yet. I am tired. Maybe you ?can come back and make plans? with somebody like him. ?They came after me less than the? ?bank.? You ?can do it but the thing that? ?really is so appalling is that? such a ridiculously high price is required for doing the right thing.

And somehow the people who liked society and never asked ?about supreme price? only those people who in fact dignify ?they were asked to pay? their fines and ? if used and I hear you saying that you you agree with with it.? Is this unanimous? Well, you know somehow in America we never want to discover the source of evil, and it's easier to cover it over and say the source of evil is us. Reverend Weeks, today is the anniversary of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King and I suppose it's a time when we might reflect on past leadership and current leadership and possibly future leadership. Now this is a man who recently was was called by Wallace the Mohammad of the Nation of Islam, a true prophet. And it's fairly heartening at this time to see, to see

leaders coming from, from a variety of diverse positions supporting one another and supporting one another's efforts. I might ask you how you kind of, how you see the, the church's role in the 70s as a force compared with, with its role in the, in the 60s. Well, it all has to be different in a certain kind of way, simply because a whole decade has gone by. And do you know in terms of demonstration, just about every day there's a demonstration. So, if you, today, you can almost get lost in the malaise of demonstrations. You talked about Dr. Martin Luther King's being a real prophet. There are many false prophets and unfortunately some of them are amongst us, who, who now say that

we don't need to demonstrate, we don't need to moan. That was our way from the 60s but we don't need that type of thing today. We'll go back to our own, old way of doing things, however. since the masses do gather at the church and there is need for a spiritual regeneration, That is the truth. Within us. I find that, that role is one of profound importance for especially church leaders. When I said usually I don't, I'm not going to talk about the minister, but, people who, who really have a regenerated spirit within, that have an acute awareness of the injury and the damage and even the danger of just being apathetic about the situation. We talk about this oncoming march on the 24th of April. We're not just talking about

busing. I refuse to buy into promoting the negative to achieve the positive. I think we need to take a positive view at the total eclipse of what the opportunities are for black folks and other minorities in terms of jobs, in terms of accessibility to decent housing, and access to even the flow of money, how that money serves individual communities, and when it's withheld from a certain community, that community becomes a shambles. So I think that we're really talking about a demonstration to at least prick the consciousness of those people who have been listening to false prophets and who have swayed or sidestepped the very succinct policy of, like Dr. Martin Luther King. And you see in this, you know, in this case, this

march again here and 1976 as a viable, viable tactic to address some of the issues that you raised in other areas as well as education. It is a viable tactic simply because one thing it does is it gives physical announcement again to those issues which are really in this ?900 series? of the bicentennial year. Really patience. You know the, the mental and physical portion of humanity especially in the minority sectors. So we need not, you know, I sometimes think of us doing all the celebrating along with others of 200 years of the history of this country. But you know when you look back in retrospect and see where we have been, and then introspectively see where we are, you know, one

has to view that 200th birthday with some degree of sorrow, and not necessarily one of joy. And I think that it's very, very, very, very important that we see this as a challenge, we see this as modus operendi for gathering different forces together and to coalesce our people. I've heard it, you know, I've heard it said that Boston 200 years ago was the focal point for much of the activity for founding this country and they had, you know, 200 years later, it has once again its own kind of cyclical fashion, become the focal point for another beginning in this country, and I think the problem is not really addressed here. It's not dealt with here. If issues aren't raised here, we're going to see a lot of things going down the drain.

Well, that's true and I hope I'm not being a prophet in this sense, but seems to me that 200 years ago there were some people who, who got this whole thing moving by sacrificing their lives and I sometimes wonder what it takes to trigger a, a force of people, or a movement. What does it take to trigger that. Is it going to take the, the scenario of, of hundreds, a group of minorities laying out in the street dead because they say they attempted to stand up for what they felt was right and just. I just wonder about that. And you know it seems to me that as you say, are we talking about the things that, you know, take another circle, you know, and I have a way of saying it over from a different perspective from the pulpit. If it's new it ain't true and it is true.

Thank you. That is what we call a one-way program. We don't focus on the bus because that's a code word. It's the kind of code word like you people qualify quality education, inner city, hard core, underprivileged. You know, they go on forever, quota systems, all of them have to do with diffusing white America's focus away from the realities of the changes that have to take place both within themselves and within our institutions around the Supreme Court decisions which give equal access to Black and other Americans, to our public life, private life, and political life. And it's very difficult to get people to focus on the real issues. And as long as they can focus on the vehicle like the school bus or pairing schools or the issue of whether black teachers are qualified, or whether we deserve the right to come places, they're not to be able to deal with pollution, or housing needs, or unemployment, and all the other things which plague

our country very severely. And I think, until the issue of race is solved, we won't deal with the issue adequately of sexuality. What is the end. I suppose that's the best way to define ?P would? be to say that it has been, for 66 years, The principal vehicle, ridden by black people in this country toward the constitutional promise of equal rights under law, has been the protector, at times, of mob violence that has been a key to open up locked doors, segregated schools, and universities. It has been the way the sheriff has been moved out of the way when he has been running jails in which black people were brutalized. That has been the means by which black children and their parents were

able to be treated with dignity and with quality medical institutions. It has been for over half a century, the principal protector of minority rights in this country. John, ?puts a leg on? the whole question of leadership, is it going to happen over the top of the area, take the ?mountain out of the? ?damn thing out of it have doesn't have a root have you.? Well I think we have to stop moaning on looking for that one big leader. Regrettably, we have had lots of potential leaders literally knocked off in the last 10 years in various and sundry means and this has been frustrating and disturbing. We get the feeling that there is no leadership or there is leadership lying dormant and unity. I

have, however, reasons to believe that, in our communities now, there is a great deal of readiness in units, in units. Unfortunately, we were waiting for that big movement to be optimized in movements is happening and not where you have a Messiah to appear to common leaders. I think that black people are discouraged and disappointed and that they have not given up. They are defeated and angry, but their anger is controlled. I can give you one or two examples. Three years ago in my community we had a great deal of ease getting Metco in the community. The other day some results were disappointing and ?anger without sales because? the top busing person who was obviously racist walked right into the school committee in that community, the backlash in suburbia. I think that all black people are aware of the fact now that we are

expendable. Their war on poverty is over. It's nobody's foundations otherwise going to give us anything. This is going to make us come together and decide to do things in a way we can. Strategy - let's not ?Laden? about it, tell us to give up on marches is the effect of other people using. The students used them up to a few years ago to make visible some great injustices. So, so, that you see there are many tactics still available to us. We have to use all of the tactics and we have to use them boldly and unafraid. The only ingredient we have to keep this is they did it ?Missy? and nonviolence, of course, because we don't own ?any,? What he call a dumb, dumb bullets and things like that. But we've got to be had many ?temp? in our insistence on bold protesting. We don't own any newspapers, we don't own a

TV. This is a way for us to get on the radio. To do these things we have to use everything and use it better than we did before, and I think a lot of us can think about that, and we're going to begin to do it. I hear you saying that, that we no longer need to expect some kind of Great White Father, whatever. We, we, we don't have a Great White Father who is going to lay out a few crumbs, dribble down, for some of us who would pose as leaders to hand out. I say that is one contribution of Richard Nixon. He took the pen out of our hands. A long time ago we had a resource, resources of values, resources and strategy, and we used them. A lot of people died by the vote or we have some interest in coming down. Let's take prison for example. Prisons are packed with black people. The Supreme Court just said blacks can vote. Well, we got to get in and organize, and we can get in to register them to vote, to know where they are voting in the community.

Heck, we've got to go back to our past, pull in these things, and get on with the case. I think that. For the last 10 years have they killed the leader and leaders. We were ?afraid?, were in retreat, now it's time for us to come out and fight. They are killing us every day through this much ???? integrity smashing our lives about our morals all over the papers and say there is a conspiracy to kill black leadership. We need to know that and we need to come out fighting, and I think that the marches and, you know, the kind of strategy must be both refined and we must return to them in order to encourage ?job? You got a lot of people there lying dormant. I think nothing is happening, nothing is going to happen. We've got to let them know that something is happening, but the first thing you know they said we aren't in a free country. We got to stand up and say yes it is free and we insist on equal protection. And we need large numbers to say that a man can buy his house in Dorchester, you see,

and he won't have to get that gun, you know, to defend himself, or necessary get the gun and defend himself if the police won't. So I think that we are going to wake up and while it may see ?O? call for our movement as I said you know call for it but it could be happening sooner than we think. You know, I agree with you, I don't, I don't feel we're dead on our feet and we're sleeping. I think we're sleeping and that right things were too easy. I mean that's a good thing, that kind of view of the Nixon years yet kind of shocked us. I think you know, when it's back on our feet and it has made it, certainly made me re-examine a lot of my old feelings about registering to vote, for example, about the, the place of politics in our struggle, about the roles of a variety of different kinds of agencies, and I

think that's fair, that's healthy. And that's, I find that a very healthy, healthy kind of thing because you're right, we were, we were very much removed from that. The need to do something, do something just for ourselves, you know, to look within ourselves for our resources. Definitely. Thank you. It's important that I inform. And so that's why I say I'm an informer, I'm a stool pigeon, is what I am, I'm walking on the system. I am Most do ?Biju?. And the system tries to teach me, treat me the same way the Senate would like to treat ?stupidity? as they like to ?give me first chance they get in and? I don't say that. To say to the world out there they're trying to get me, I say that because, you know, I feel a very beautiful thing about it, that I know what's going on in this country. I know there are certain elements in the government that's planning on overthrowing the country and I know what's fixing to happen

in this country in four years if it's not stopped, 80 percent of everybody in his country would be dead. Now, if me knowing this and keeping quiet about it meant that I could live and my family could be happy and peaceful, I would just sooner die. You know matter of fact if the only way I could live and have my family and I safe is be quiet, then I'd help him pull the trigger because you see I feel with the background I came out of, a poor, ignorant mama that just worked hard all the time. And raised us, none of us ever went to jail but we should have, we just never got caught. You know but it was all sweetness and beauty. That where me and my family have been is a freak of nature, you know. And if I'd have stayed in my own position. I probably wouldn't have even gone college, I'd be in some steel mill like I was when I was a kid. Understanding America through the eyes of my television set and Matt Dillon. And so

from where my head have progressed and from where my spirituality have led me to from being out here that if I got to die in the morning man, I'm still 2000 years ahead because where I was, and the position that I should've stayed in, it would take me 5,000 years man to get in my head what I have now. So I just kind of like lived up all mine real quick. And so you know, you know what is fixing to happen in this country don't have to happen. [Host] When we speak about pan-Africanism it's very important that we move it out of the realm of ideas which are concentrated in the heads of a few men and women and try to make it become a living reality in terms of black people not only in this country but also in the world. Pan-Africanism, as I conceive it, conceive of it is that "pan" of course means "one" in Africa, the oneness of Africa and its people worldwide. A brother by name of Ayi Armah in a book

entitled "Two Thousand Seasons" has a very important quote with I think speaks to to what I mean. He says that "we the black people are one people we know. Destroyers would travel long distances in their minds and out to deny you this truth. We do not argue with them, the fools. Let them presume to instruct us about ourselves. That too is in their nature. That too is in the flow of their 2,000 seasons against us." [female speaker] There may be a you know, the general question is how this movement begin? What kinds of things should we be looking for to attach ourselves to, pull ourselves up from the ashes again? Well, Ebony says the black revolution is over or dead or something? Do you gentlemen agree with that? How do you feel about that?

[Guest] I disagree. I think that when we are able to turn the people on and tie it together we will have a movement. I will admit that some of us are afraid to turn the people on because we don't have any anything to offer at this point. You know we are a little afraid that what do you think about that be a lot. Let me ask you a pointed question, one of our bases has been the church. And that minister in that congregation. And you know it seems that we haven't even been able to turn people onto registering and voting and to education and when that happens in town we will have some kind of movement even if it's just for voter education and registration. [different speaker] Well it seems to me that in Montgomery, I point to that because that was a great movement.

One of the things that happened was the that the ship of all these flocks got turned on to the boycott. And saw some value, you know in a prophetic sense down the pike, they didn't see it immediately. But they had to have vision and then of course the Bible says you know, where there is no vision the people perish. And we need to begin to articulate that vision, but it has to come from people who are able to to discern, you know what the tempo and temperature of our times are, that generally and normally and historically has happened out of the church. One of the things that I think that would begin to give some assemblage to this is just what you recently said, something about the the power of the ballot. I've been harping on that for years and I think that, you know when ministers

begin to see that as one of the priorities high on the agenda, not dealing with the here and after, but if people want to even make it to the here and after, you have to deal with the here and now. Then it seems to me that that began to at least assemble masses you know together to exert exert some power. Right, in this city that we're talking about, the city of Boston, where we're approaching 25 percent of the population very quickly. And yet there isn't one small minute percentage of that in political leverage, as far as minority people are concerned. [female speaker] That's true, everybody seems very depressed to me. I mean this is not just economically depressed but emotionally depressed I mean after the vigor of up to when-- maybe 1972. I suppose when everything didn't turn over instantly. The people didn't change

adjusting, have to kind of go back and get a look at ourselves a little bit. But it's true we got kind of quiet. And personally I just think that's a that's a -- When you're thinking, you know when I think and don't I think the thinking has stopped. Some people do. I don't think its stopped. The kind of mode-- what's going to spark that into action again or maybe, is this the time for action? I don't know whether it is or not. [male speaker] Well definitely a lot of black folks are reassessing what happened in the '50s and '60s as well as the early 70s, reassessing the different direction, is the black revolution over, something that-- I don't think it's over because we're still in chains, so to speak, and we have to move and deal with that particular situation. But the question is which way do we go? Unfortunately we're in a position where we have to respond to the segregationist, the racists, they want to keep us in the ghetto, who want to ship us back to Africa from their point of

view you know. Unfortunately, we have to respond to that. But it might be this question of responding to this question like in Boston that the inspiration for our people can begin to flower and bloom so we can be moving on all different aspects of not only education but, as was said earlier, the question of segregated housing, the question of jobs, the question of voter registration, the question right- The question that-- we don't have any blacks in Boston on the city council and school community I mean I think that's atrocious. I think that's extremely bad. This in my opinion sets-- Boston's one of the most backwards city politically in the whole country where you have a large percentage of oppressed nationalities and we come out and vote all the time but we have no representatives. And I think that what this, if this movement can start, what it can do is begin to unleash a lot of these different things, like I think it will force the fact that we have to have elected officials, school community, city council. [another speaker] May I say, I think we have t o stop saying Boston is

backwards. You see the same disease that infect Boston in fact every city I've -- even my hometown Atlanta, Georgia. [earlier speaker] I agree. [speaker continues] And I think that Boston is symbolic. And that this is the bicentennial year, while a lot of people are glorifying the past. We obviously -- the past wasn't worth a damn, you know, we made a little progress. We gone on from here this year I think it's good that it's right here in Boston. I want to give you two reasons why I say the revolution is not over. The insidious S1 Bill have passed and you had a lot of congress persons trying to get it passed, who would put all of us in jail for just talking about the issue if it is passed. The other day you had a Supreme Court decision was packed by President Nixon to come down so you can search anybody on the street and call him a criminal and arrest him. Now somebody who have all kinds of computers and things say hey, that revolution is still there, we want to get a way of controlling it and all that. So let's not say that Boston is backward and then it's just like all of the other cities. We have been dormant, we've been sleeping and thinking, I hope, let's come out this year and

go on with the revolution. [different speaker] Now, I don't have any basic disagreements with that, I'm just comparing it you know with other cities, but definitely the entire country, you know, is backwards in terms of where black people need to be and where black people are presently at the present time, and I think the only way that's going to happen is that for people like ourselves and the other brothers and sisters who do have a lot of inspiration to speak out and say "hey we got to stop this forthwith and now." Speak out and get our people together, come together and deal with all the problems that we face with, even though primarily it's focused in on this school desegregation question in Boston. [female speaker] Perhaps, ya know perhaps what we did learn over the past 10 years was that we needed to develop our own philosophies and perfect our own skills and enhance our own talents and kind of start defining our own directions,

instead of having to always react against. Then we can begin to react for, and I hope this dormant period is that, you know, that's what we're doing so that so that we can come out and say "this is an alternative, this is kind of what we think about this" and not just for black people, but there's a kind of humane sort of way we think people should be moving. And yeah I hope it's just that -- just a dormant, you know, thinking thinking time for us all. [male speaker] The future black politicians is directly tied to the future of black people in this country. I think at this point that's got to be viewed as a mixed future. To the extent that this country is willing to respond to the legitimate needs of black people, you're going to see black politicians being successful. I think to the extent that this country is going to survive, black politicians are going to have to be successful because unless we

respond as a nation, the national will, to the needs of black people which in many cases duplicate needs of poor whites, Chicanos, Puerto Ricans, Native Americans, we're going to have a rough time making democracy, as we know it now, work. And unless it works, blacks aren't going to be able to participate in it, of course. [another speaker] If we're not satisfying our needs and our aspirations at the local level, it is futile to talk about the national level or the international level. And that must be made very clear that we have to always keep our eye on what is happening locally. Are we being satisfied locally as a people, and then begin to move nationally and then internationally. I think this is where pan-Africanism means, where we begin to talk about it in a very substantive way. [female speaker] You know, the point we haven't really focused on yet is what

about this individual leader that we seem to be looking for? I'd like to explore this question with Percy Wilson, the executive director of the Roxbury Multi-Service Center. You know, is there going to be one? How do you feel about that? [Wilson:] Well I personally think that too much time and energy is being placed on looking for quote unquote the leader. I think that that is an institutional or systemic system fantasy that has been placed up on the black community to cause the masses of black people to believe that in order for them to make progress they have to have a Messiah, so to speak, to deliver them. Well you know white people have never waited for the Messiah to deliver them into anything. I mean they've always been taught that what they have to do is to be achievement-oriented and they will in fact receive certain benefits from that. I think the same mentality has to most certainly begin to generate itself into the

black community and that the time and energy put into trying to analyze or to determine when the Messiah will come can be best put into what I call institutional building and we've got to begin to focus on institutional leadership as opposed to individual leadership. Because when you have individual leadership then there's always a reason for the powers to be-- or the enemy, wherever the enemy may be, to feel that all they have to do is to destroy the individual. Then when that happened they will then in fact destroy the movement as it relates to the masses of black people. It is very hard to destroy an institution, an institution that is built with some very strong, sound, basic infrastructures which is laid by the by the community and by people who are friends of the black community. And then you begin to

speak through the institution as opposed to speaking through the individual. And you know, look at what has happened in this country, look at what has happened in Africa, you will find that the system, and I'll use the system as a broad kind of thing, you could probably call it the government or a group of government, felt that all they had to do was to destroy Nkrumah and Ghana would fall, or destroy you know, other African leaders and that those countries and the liberation efforts of those countries would fall. But fortunately enough they had a great enough thrust and a great enough institutional base to continue to move toward a liberation struggle until now you see that-- I'm predicting that this time next year South Africa, Ian Smith will no longer be in power in South Africa. Well, I mean and come back to this. They tried to destroy, in this country, they used the same tactic,

I mean they, Martin Luther King was assassinated, Malcolm X was assassinated. Something happened to Whitney Young, we don't really know what happened to Whitney Young. And I could go on and on and on. But what has happened as a result of that is that the masses of people are beginning now to search for themselves and find their own strength and efficacy to continue the struggle. And many of us now have come to realize that what we've got to do is begin to build sound institutions, social, political, economical, and religious. institutions in a combination of all of those things in those institutions working together will begin again to deliver. And I think that that's where we got to go as opposed to waiting for the individual to come along because it's easy to to slay The Leader. But it's hard to destroy an institution. [female speaker] Would you say that the, and there are young and tender institutions that we begin to see now in, locally certainly, and in our community,

are working, kind of one with the other, beginning to interface, to provide either services or to provide some kind of -- I don't -- unified community effort to kind of belie that sort of crabs in a barrel attitude we heard so much about? [Wilson] I see, I think that that's that's happening, I don't think it really has been as crabbish as we has ever been purported to be. I most certainly don't feel, for my own position at the Roxbury Multi-Service Center, any great thrust on the part of any of the other people who run centers such as ours, to to destroy me. I mean I feel great collaboration and a great sense of work, good prog- for positive working relationship with other people at that level, as well as political leadership, as well as economic leadership. I think that there is one higher of a void. And we've got to --we've got to move to build a leadership base economically. We've got to become more serious about making money.

[female speaker] Someone said that, a newcomer in this area says in the Northeast we're used to thinking a lot. We're used to to get involved, we're not used to working. [Wilson] That's right. We got to be gettin' I mean you see, I think that there's a time and place for all things and for all types of things. Alright. And I think that one of the places that we got to be about and things that we have to be about is making money. Entrepreneurships. And so often we have been misguided to believe that capitalism is a bad thing in itself. Therefore people black people themselves have been been taught or have come to believe that if they get involved in money making ventures then that's going to be bad. Well I don't-- I don't believe that that's bad, but I believe that if you use it in an abusive way, to destroy other people, as we have seen it happen by other folks who have gotten it, that's bad. But unless we have that so we can begin to level up, we can begin to

stimulate growth and development in our communities, then we would not have the kind of collective leadership that we need. Again I go back to the question of institution. You know if you expect a human service agency for example or human service institution to deliver everything, then we're in trouble. [male speaker] The Nation of Islam feels that there is a hunger in the black man and in the black woman to realize that national spirit. Until there the opportunity comes that will give us a chance to act as a nation, to breathe as a as a nation, to negotiate with nation leaders, to do business as a nation, to do export, to do import, until we get that opportunity then we will be suffering the need to express something that is natural in all human beings and that is the national spirit.

[female speaker] Percy, I wanted to kind of pick up on one of your older points and just read from this list of black leaders who have somehow disappeared from the scene: Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, Guido St. Laurent, Medgar Evers, Fred Hampton, Mark Clark, George Jackson, Ralph Featherstone, Jonathan Jackson, Bunchy Carter, John Jerome Huggins, Bobby Hutton, Mrs. Martin Luther King Sr., Stokely, Maulana Karenga, what's happened with him lately, Bobby Seale, James Forman, Milton Henry, Floyd McKissick, David Hillier, Amiri Baraka, James Farmer, Robert Williams, Atra Vaughn/Brown?, Whitney Young, you mentioned earlier. [Wilson] Well say again, that's my point.

And the point is that, well certainly, something happened. I don't believe all of those people just sort of burnt out, you know there's a word now that the thing that happens to leaders is that they burned out. Well I don't believe that. I think that they may work themselves to death but they don't burn out, quote unquote. And the fact that there was no institutional, strong institutional base, with exception of Whitney Young, I mean the Urban League most certainly continued you see, there was an institution, available there, you know, the Nation of Islam continued you know, even if Malcolm was not you know directly a part of that, if he was not there the Nation of Islam continued and we see the Nation of Islam now being one of the most powerful forces, institutional forces at work in the black community and that again supports my thesis that that's the way we got to go. I mean we can spend a lot of time talking about what happened to these people. But that's not going to bring them back, neither is that going to move us forward.

[female speaker] A recent editorial in the Bay State Banner said that a community tends to wear out its leadership. I mean it make sense, maybe I should say it's spokesmen and spokeswomen kind of carry the all world's ills on their shoulders and, you know it really overloads them with unreasonable burdens. [Wilson] Well, I think the expectations are too high. That's what I like to say. I mean I think that people expect too much out of individuals. They expect a be all and end all and in you know one of several groups of people. And it is just impossible for the capacity of an individual to deliver but just so much. I think that one of the mistakes, however is that because of the uncertainty, the insecurity on the part of those folks who have gotten themselves out there in the flank and are now being identified as a community leader

or an influence person or spokesperson or what have you is that they have simply lost a capacity to go back to those folk that they're supposed to be representing and say "I can't deliver all of this stuff you expect me to deliver. Or unless there is some other support systems built under me, or build around, then you have to expect less than you expect at the present time". And I think that that's the problem. And when people stop thinking that they can change the world, they will find it will have more of a sustaining force over the long haul so because we've got to be concerned about the long haul, we can't get ourselves into 1980, spending a lot of time sitting around talking about what happened in the '70s. You know we've got to understand the direct relationship right now in what's happening in the '70s to what's going to happen in the '80s, in the '90s into the 200s. And then we will have a consistent process going, to which we will work

toward reaching our own goals and objectives in this society. [female speaker] I like to hear you say that. I like to hear you say that, because it is right, it is easy to do that and get bogged down next year or two years from now. And forget that it's going to happen long after we are gone. That there's always growth. And always change. [Wilson] That's right and as long as we are minority in this majority society there will always be struggle. And we have to understand that and if people really think that somehow the majority is going to give into the minority, well that's insanity. [group laughter] [female speaker] OK. All right. Thank you. Well you know personally when I -- when the cloud of gloom starts to descend on me I just remember that old phrase that we've come this far by faith you know. And

I have to remind myself that I can see some light at the end of the tunnel and 200 years ago, 400 years ago that certainly wasn't the case. That's something that always kind of sparks me, helps set me back up again. So all right you know. OK. All is not lost, and we go back and look at some of these, some of these old tactics, some of these new thoughts, some of these old institutions, and you know I see how we can kind of pull this back together again. I don't know whether that feeling is echoed here. It's [male speaker] It's only echoed in the sense that you talked about faith and faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. I think of our salvation as it will be, as it is right now, and one has to have a position in faith to do that. I do not see us going to utter

destruction without being energized by our inner feeling, inner need, I believe that in time to come the words that we speak today will be proven, proven words of action. [different male speaker] Meaning that today is April 4th and think what we have to do is stand up and protest for what Dr. King died for, I think that's the thing that we have to be dealing with, the situation that we're in. And I invite everyone to come down to the Coalition for the April 24th March on Boston office at 1530 Tremont Street and pitch in and help out any way they can, especially financially. This sort of demonstration is not backed by just inspiration only, needs money to back it up. [female speaker] All right all right and I know John, when you were talking about action today it's time to start doing. [male speaker] That's right and I think we're good, Ms. Hill, we want to show everybody that everything is not lost on April 24.

[female speaker] OK. [music] I just want to ask you a question. Who really cares? To save the world [music] from despair? Who really cares? Ohhh [music] There will [music] come a time. There will come a time [music] When the world won't be singing. Flowers won't grow. [music] Bells won't be ringing. Who really cares? [music] Who's willing to try to save the world

[music] that's destined to die? [music] When I look at the world, it fills me with [music] sorrow. It fills me with sorrow. Little [music] children today, are they gonna [music] suffer tomorrow? Really suffer tomorrow. Oh, what a shame. [music] Such a bad way to live. Oh, who's to blame? [music] We can't stop.. [music cuts off]