Perspectives; The Negro and The American Promise

This is perspective presented by National Educational Television. I think the one who's got to find some way. Of putting the present administration of his country on the spot. When it's got to force some help. From Washington. A moral commitment. Not to the negro people. But to the life of his country. It doesn't matter any longer. And I speaking for myself but you are balding and I think I was speaking for a great many other negroes too. It doesn't matter any longer what you do to me. You can put me in jail if you kill me. But the time I was 17 who had done everything that you could do to me. The problem now is are you going to save yourselves. Right. Dr. Kenneth Clark Professor of Psychology at the City College of New York

director of Harlem Youth Opportunities unlimited and research director of the Northside Center for Child Development brings us an interpretation of the negro and the American promise. The racial confrontation in America. It's not clear what is required of Negro leadership is equally clear. Namely price preferred citizenship right. And now this response of all negro leadership is battle weary and not able to mobilize itself to achieve and sustain meaningful and solid break throws then the result will be chaos chaos either in terms of social confusion and violence or what to me would be an even worse moral drive. We've invited three men on the forefront of the negro struggle to

sit down and talk with us in front of the television camera. Each of these men through his actions and his words but with vastly different manner and means is a spokesman for some segment of the Negro people today. The Reverend Martin Luther King is a symbol of the right nonviolent struggle for integration and for all right now the right through peaceful direct action now connects the Black Muslims most eloquent spokesman is an apostle of black racism and race racial segregation. This movement appealed strongly to the most heavily unaided of Negroes. We talked also with James Baldwin a writer who through the magic of his words and the purity of his artistry and truth

has communicated the full passion of the negroes present in systems. Martin Luther King our first guess is 34 year old Atlanta born Baptist minister who personifies the dignity the discipline and the insistence upon the rights of American citizenship which the president of the Negro people demand. We will not be we will not allowing a bot of the talents that the like thing that they are not the physical lightning from the sky. All know we know as well that we know that it came as a result of sort of some individual who had not allowed the spirit of Jesus Christ who prevail a bad line.

We know that what happened here came from somebody who had the strength that they could blast through the aspirations of the Negro people for freedom and justice by the strong. And it is not starting their property our property are significant and when we do this when men seek to destroy the Church of God generated to a tragic of then humanity and sand and she will write.

You're going down right. Down to it. Martin Luther King is that one's a fearless activist. He contemplated religious scholar. And the social philosophy. He's also a skilled politician and an organization that. We have taken this opportunity to ask him about the relationship between the direct action and nonviolent technique which he uses so effectively and his personal philosophy for the oppressor. One is a method of action nonviolent direct action

is a method of acting to rectify a social situation that has jobs and it involves an engaging and practical technique that nullifies the use of bonds of calls for nonviolence at every point but if you don't use physical violence against your opponent. The love ethic here is another dimension which goes into the realm of accepting nonviolence as a way of life that many people who will accept nonviolence as the most practical techniques to be used in a social situation but they will not go to the point of seeing.

The necessity of accepting nonviolence and a way of life. Now I accept but I think that nonviolent resistance is a most potent. At Baylor both to oppress people in the US for the freedom it has away and this ongoing the opponent exposes his Maro defenses and weakens and morale them at the same time it works on his conscience he just doesn't know how to handle it and I have seen this over and over again and I was spared him and the sound of you write what I know. Oh holy God I quit. They follow the coming of the guy. All we really want to be treated as human beings. If you.

Are not all it's pretty calm now. Right. Now. I'm the Quest on the left who by their love ethic. I think this is so important because hate is injurious to behave as well as I hated many of the psychotic who's telling us now that many of the strange thing that happen in the subcontinent and many I've been to conflicts are rooted in hate and so they're now saying about her.

But is it not too much to expect but a group of human beings who have been the victims of cruelty flagrant in five ruling those who have been associated with the perpetrators if not we react the perpetrator of them so how can you expect for example the negroes in Birmingham you know. OCONNOR to really love him in any meaningful for what I think Ron as I understand the meaning of love at this point. I'm certain a non-speaking and affectionate. Response. I think it is really noms NS to urge oppressor who's I mean oppressed people the lower back oppressors and an affectionate sings. I found it pretty difficult unlike people like Bill Clinton. I find it difficult to like saying that these but I think you

can love why you can't like that person because Mike is an affectionate. Not to you. I'm about to eat well. Malcolm X one of the most articulate their own and like most of them blob of thing has said of your movement and your philosophy that it plays into them and the right effect that they are happy to hear you talk about the oppressor because the disarming of the negro And it into the stereotype of the ME and vain from turning the other cheek. Oh to think it would be fair to comment on the correct lead.

Well I don't think of love in this context as an emotional bond I don't think of it in a week. I think a lot of us something's wrong and that all the knives in the south and our direct action this is what I've tried to teach in the struggle in the south that we have not engaged in a struggle that means we sit down and do nothing. That has a great deal of difference between nonresistance to evil and nonviolent resistance and nonresistance leaves you and leaves you in a state of stagnant passive it and bedlam complacency wherein nonviolent resistance means that you do resist. And of a strong and determined man and I think some of the criticism of

nonviolence of some of the critics failed to realize is that we are talking about something various film and they can fume nonresistance where the non violent scene goes beyond that in some of the things I've heard him say say that this is deliberately your philosophy of love of the oppressor which identifies completely with the nonviolent movement. If he says is that the law for you and this movement is actually higher actually in Perth. Live life because it makes them comfortable make them believe that Negroes mean the prying creature. What I don't think that's true if anyone has ever lived with a nonviolent movement in the south from Montgomery on through the Freedom Rides and through the sit in movement in the recent Birmingham movement

and see the reactions of many of the extremists and reactionaries in the white community. He wouldn't say that his movement makes this a loss if it makes him comfortable. I think it rouses the sense of shame within a mile and minute instances I think it does something to cuts the conscience and establish a sense of guilt. Now so often people respond to you by engaging more in the guild evoke an act in an attempt to drown the sins. But this is a pro set and doesn't make the white man feel comfortable. I think it does the other thing it does stir this conscience and just stared as if this sense of contentment that he. James Baldwin raises another point of the whole nonviolent position and approach.

He does not reject that in the way that Malcolm X was. But he raises the question of whether it will be possible to contain the Negro people within this framework of nonviolence. If we continue to have more of the kinds of demonstrations that we had in Birmingham. Well I think the brutal methods used by the Birmingham police force and now the police. Well naturally our Rousey I need and I think there is a danger that some would be so arouse that they will retaliate with violence. I think that we we can be sure of that the vast majority of Negroes who engage in the demonstrations and who understand the nonviolent lots of things will be able to face

dogs and all of the other brutal methods that in use without retaliating with violence because they understand that one of the first principles of nonviolence is our willingness to be the recipient of one's law never inflicting violence upon another and none of the demonstrators environment now engaged in. Aggressive retaliatory always someone on the sideline and who had never been in the demonstrations and probably not in the mass meetings and had never been in a nonviolent workshop. So I think it rather depend on the extent to which we can extend the teaching of the philosophy of nonviolence to the larger community rather than those who are engaged in the demonstration. Well how do you maintain this type of discipline control and dignity.

We do a great deal in terms of teaching both the theoretical theoretical aspects of nonviolence as well as the practical application. We even have courses where we go through the experience of being rough and this kind of socio dominance will be very helpful in preparing those who are engaged in demonstrations the other thing is that they even include the children. Yes it includes children and Birmingham where we had several young from. We had some as young as 7 years old has been in demonstrations and they were in the workshops in fact none of them went out in March. None of them engaged in any of the demonstrations before going through this kind of teaching session so that through this method we're able to get the meaning of nonviolence over and I think that is contagious

quality and in a movement like this when everybody talks about nonviolence and being faithful to it and being dignified in your resistance it tends to get over to the larger group because it becomes a part of the vocabulary of the movement. What is the relationship between your movement and the organizations of the NWC or and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee as a separate organization but do you work together. Yes we do. As you say that each of these are his ations is of Thomas. But we work together. And then in many ways last year we started a voter registration drive and intensified the registration. And all of the organizations are working together sometimes two or three are working together

in the same unity of the same thing is true of direct action. I'm in Birmingham we had the support of sneck in core and the Peace Corps sent some of its staff members and his sisters and snex and some of the staff members or Wilkins came down to speak in one of the mass meetings and make it clear that even though the NAACP cannot operate in Alabama we have the support of the U.S. and you saw that we are working together on in a very significant way and we are doing even more on the days ahead to coordinate any machinery for coordination. I truly rather have had sort of coordinating council where we get together as often as possible. Of course we get involved in many of our programs in the various areas and can't make as many of these meetings as we would like but

we often come together. I mean the heads of all of these are the stations to try to coordinate our various efforts. What about the federal government. Have you made any direct appeal. I think Mr. Canada has done some significant things in civil rights but I do not know that he has yet given the leadership that the nominee of the problem demands. Mr. Kennedy now do you mean the president oh yes I mean anything now of the president. Maine and I would include the attorney general I think both of these men and then a genuine good will. But I think they must understand more about the depth and dimensions of the problem and I think that is a necessity now to see the urgency of the moment that is on a lot of time time is running out and the Negro is making a powerful magnet that he wants all of his rights that he wants in here and that he wants them now.

The Black Muslim movement of Malcolm X is sometimes put forth as the dangerous alternative to all of the nonviolent activist groups symbolized by Dr. Martin Luther King. I believe that the Muslim doctrine as handed down by Elijah Muhammad is dangerous essentially because its basic premise is true. White America has permitted a system of cruelty and barbarity. To be perpetrated on citizens of Doc's skin color and the Muslims are very effective in saying this over and over and over again. They're also dangerous because they use hatred and racism. To manipulate emotions. We asked Minister Malcolm to explain this movement which preaches directly or indirectly.

I think for the right black supremacy. And anti-Semitism. And it has been described as the mirrored in bigotry. Now this is done by those who are guilty of all those things to get the economy out of all those things you just mentioned the white people who are guilty of white supremacy trying to hide their own guilt by accusing the Honorable Elijah Muhammad of teaching black supremacy when he tries to uplift the mentality the social economic condition of black people in this country and Jews who have been guilty of exploiting the black people in this country economically civically and otherwise hide behind their guilt by using the honorable and I don't know how much of being anti-Semitic simply because he teaches people to go into business for ourselves and try to take over the economic leadership in our own community and this other thing white supremacy and that is what we are. And hatred and

hatred and since the white people collectively have practiced the worst form of hatred against Negroes in this country and they know that they are guilty of it. Now they want the Honorable Elijah Muhammad begins comes along and begins to list the historic historic added to the historic behavior of the white man in this century. The black people in this century again that white people are so guilty that they can't stop doing these things to make Mr. Muhammad appear wrong so they say they're wrong by saying that he is teaching hate history and that he actually we are Muslim because we believe in a religion of Islam. We believe in One God we believe in Muhammad as the Apostle of God. We practice the principles of the religion of Islam which means prayer charity fasting Brotherhood in the Honorable Elijah Muhammad teaches us that since the Western society is deteriorating it has become overrun with immorality that it is going to decide to judge it and destroy it. And the only way black people who are in this society can be

saved is to not integrate into this corrupt society but separate ourselves from the moral standards and try and be godly instead of trying trying to integrate with God instead of trying to integrate with the white man or try to imitate God instead of trying to imitate the white man. It has been suggested also that this movement preaches. Gospel violence that know all the black people in this country have been the victims of violence at the hands of the white man for 400 years and following the ignorant Negro preachers we have thought that it was god like to turn the other cheek to the group that was brutalizing us and today the Honorable Elijah Muhammad has shown that people in this country that just as the white man and every other person on this earth have God given rights and that the rights civil rights. Any kind of right that you can think of when it comes to defending himself. People should have we should have the right to defend ourselves also. And because the honorable bit of argument it makes black people brave enough to defend itself no matter what the white man runs around it with the fall out with the doctrines

that Mr. Muhammad is advocating violence when he's actually telling Nigro to defend themselves against violent people. While the Reverend Martin Luther King preaches a doctrine of nonviolent insistence upon the rights of the American Negro. What is your attitude. I think there's a lot of white men pay that revenue. Martin Luther King subsidizes revenu Martin Luther King so that revenue Martin Luther King can continue to teach the Negroes to be defenseless. That's what you mean by nonviolence be defenseless be defenseless in the face of one of the most cruel beast that has ever taken the people into captivity that's this American white man. And they have proved it throughout the country by the police dogs and police club 100 years ago they used to put on a white sheet and use a blood hound again. Today they have taken off the white sheet and put on police uniforms. They traded in the bloodhound for police dogs and they're still doing the same thing and just as Uncle Tom back during slavery used to keep the negroes from resisting the

bloodhound or resisting the Ku Klux Klan by teaching them to love their enemy or pray for those who've been despitefully. Today moving into the 20th century not an uncle or a religious one. Who was doing the same thing today to keep me defenseless in the face of the fact that Uncle Tom did on a plantation to keep those negroes defenseless in the face of the attacks of the Klan in that day. But the goal of Dr. King is no equality and full rights of citizenship for the goal of Dr. Martin Luther King is to give the chance to sit in a segregated restaurant the same white man who had brutalized them for 400 years. The goal of Dr. Martin Luther King is to get Negroes to forgive the people who have brutalized them for 400 years by by lulling them to sleep and making them forgetting what the whites had done to them. But the masses of black people in America today don't go for what Martin Luther King is putting down as you said in one of your articles. It's psychologically insecure something of that sort of a get out you put it but you didn't endorse what Martin Luther King was doing yourself.

I do not reject his goal of full integration and full equality rights of American citizens. Do you reject that you don't think that he's walking on the right road I'm quite sure you don't agree to that to the right place. And if you would classify his method as psychologically unrealistic I think that a man's method is psychologically unrealistic which means the road or the means or the method that he's using. I think that the psychology would be very doubtful that he would reach the right goal. There is one correction. It is an album I'd like to make here in that same piece that you're quoting from. I said that he is methods are effective. His philosophy of law all of the oppressor I thought was psychologically burdensome but I would be more interested in your goals what are the goals of the movement which you represent so effectively just as you said in the same article that we were trying to Mr. Muhammad trying to get us on God's side so God will be on our side and help us to fight our battles against a very vicious deceitful

hypocritical enemy and this is why Mr. Muhammad put so much stress upon moral reformation that when it rules that getting drunk would stop fornicating and committing adultery when Negroes stop being addicted to drugs and these things that destroy the moral fiber and the morale of the negro. Then people will be able to get together and unite in harmony and unity and get toward what end would you want our people. United What would you call it being on God's side the Honorable Elijah Muhammad teaches us that dad now is about to establish a kingdom on this earth based upon brotherhood and peace and the white man as a brotherhood in the white man is a thesis history on this earth to prove it. Nowhere in history has been brotherly toward anyone who wanted to I mean when you when you can exploit you when you get oppressed when you will submit to him. And since his own history makes him qualified to be an inhabitant or a citizen a citizen in a kingdom of brotherhood the Honorable Elijah Muhammad teaches us that God is about to eliminate that particular race

from this. So they are due for elimination. We don't want to meet with them without trying to integrate with that which we know has come to the end of its rope. We're trying to trying to separate from it and get with something that's more lasting and we think that is more lasting than the white man. So in effect Mr. Malcolm. Your movement does not share the integration of the NWC Corps. Martin Luther King's movement and the Student Nonviolent you know integrate with a sinking ship. You don't do anything to further your stay aboard a ship that you see is on its way down to the bottom of the ocean. Most try to separate people from Pharaoh and when he tried the magician is try to fool the people in this thing with Pharaoh and we look upon these other organizations that are trying to get Negroes to integrate with his new white man is nothing but modern day magicians and the Honorable Elijah Muhammad as a modern day Moses who trying to separate us from the modern day pharaoh. Well do you feel that the negroes who are attempting to influence the policies and actions of our federal government the attorney

general the president the United States when are when my when James Baldwin recently had a conference with Robert Kennedy he took it to a white man. Lorraine Hansberry was married to a white man Belafonte who is married to a white woman. Edwin Berry of a Urban League who's married to a white woman now. And whenever you have a group of black people sitting down with a white man both represent the black masses. You can never get anybody who is involved in any intermarriage in any kind of situation who will be qualified to represent to represent himself as a spokesman for the black masses in this country. They were representing their own personal desire they want to mix and mingle so that they can take the white any of these places with white. They're involved in the marriage. But you can find masses of black people who will accept any black man who's married to a white man as a spokesman for black people a black woman who is married to a white man as a spokesman or representative of what black people feel and think. What do you feel the grove should do in respect to that.

But even more effective protection from our federal government you know will get protection from the federal government that's like asking Kennedy to go to Alabama to stand in a doorway body in a doorway. That's like asking the fox to protect you from the will and when the now the masses of black people can see this and it is only the negro leadership the bourgeois handful of negroes who think that they're going to get some kind of respect recognition of protection from the government the government is responsible for what is happening to black people in this country the president have power. You didn't know you notice he didn't send any troops in the Birmingham to protect the negroes when the dogs were fighting the negroes. The only time when the negroes erupted and then the president sent troops in there not to protect the Negroes to protect them. White people down there from Iraq who are not. They go American citizens if they were citizens we wouldn't have a race from if the Emancipation Proclamation was authentic you wouldn't have a race problem. If what if a 13 14 15 minutes of the Constitution was authentic you wouldn't have a race problem if the Supreme

Court the segregation decision was authentic you wouldn't have a race problem all of this is hypocrisy and it is this hypocrisy that have been practiced by the so-called whites so-called liberal for the past 400 years. That compounds the problem makes it more complicated. Instead of eliminating the problem. Well Mr. Malcolm What do you see as the future of the Negro in America if you think will be the culmination of the present thrust until the white man in America sits down and talks with the Honorable Elijah Muhammad. He won't even know what the race problem. What makes the race problem what it is and it just like Pharaoh couldn't get a solution to his problem until he talks the most about going to get a solution to this problem. The Daniel the white man in America today will never understand the race problem or come anywhere near getting a solution to the race problem until he talks to the Honorable Elijah Muhammad then Mr. Muhammad will give him God's analysis not some kind of political analysis or psychologist analysis analysis or some kind of clergyman's analysis

but Gunns analysis that's the analysis that most fair wrote in the analysis that Daniel gave Now she is out. And today we have a modern and modern Pharaoh. Sitting in Washington D.C. What do you think is going to happen in Birmingham in Jackson Mississippi in Philadelphia in Boston in Englewood. Well Dr. Glass as you know these Negro leaders have been telling the white man everything is alright everything's under control. And they've been telling the white man of Mr. wrong don't listen to him. But everything that Mr. Muhammad has been saying is going to come to pass. It is now coming to pass. And now the Negro leaders are standing up saying that we are about to have a racial explosion. You're going to have a racial explosion and a racial explosion is more dangerous than an atomic explosion is going to explode because black people are dissatisfied they're dissatisfied not only with the white man but they're dissatisfied with the rules who have been sitting around here posing as leaders and spokesmen for black people and actually making the problem worse instead of

making the problem that what will be the consequence of this explosion. Any time you put too many spots around a product the thing is going to explode if the thing that explodes is still inside the house then the House will be destroyed. But what will happen the Honorable Elijah Muhammad is telling the white man get this product you got to your house. Let the black people in this country separate from us. Well there's still time and if the black man is allowed to separate and go on to some land of his own where he can solve his own problems and there won't be any explosion in the world who want to stay with the white man let them stay with the white man. But those who want to leave it I'm going to go with the Honorable Elijah. I understand your position with him. The only thing that can save us from a catastrophic explosion is complete separate separation is the only solution to the black and white problem in its gut. James Baldwin has been deeply moved by the starring in the Negro community of which Malcolm X and Martin Luther King are

simple. He was known throughout America and the world for saying so passionately so clearly and with such grace and style. What every negro has long known and long about recently he temporarily put aside his pen to speak out directly to his people and to the government. Through a strange set of circumstances we managed to record this conversation with James Baldwin immediately after both of us attended that now famous meeting between a group of Mr Baldwin's friend and Attorney General Robert Kennedy. I believe much of the emotion of that historic occasion spilled over into our conversation in an attempt to ease the tension. I started by asking

him to dig back and tell us something about his childhood and his growing up and I did some plays out really. But I think back on it was bought and spittle and you grew up the first house I remember was on Park Avenue which is not the American program. Or maybe it is the American walk uptown Avenue with the relevant tracks on. And resew playing on the roof and in the I cant call an alley but near the river. It was a kind of dump garbage dump that was first stows first Seems I remember I mean my father. Had trouble keeping us alive. There were nine of us and I was your oldest so I took care of the kids and I doubt the

daddy might is that much better now. I was bodiless he couldn't beat his kids and I was a kid and I didn't know that and he was very religious very rigid. He kept us together I must say. And when I look back on it and it was only 40 years ago that I was wrong. I think back of my growing up and walks that same block today. So there. And think of the kids on that block now. I'm already something terrible has happened which is very hard to describe. I am in all but no technical legal fact a Southerner. My father was born in the South my mother was born in the south and they had waited two more seconds I'm my own son. That means I was raised by families which whose roots were essentially rural and

southern rural southern and whose range to the church was very direct because it was the only means I had of expressing their pain and their despair. But 20 years later the moral authority which was present in the Negro northern community when I was growing up has vanished. And people talk about progress and I look at Harlem which I really know I know I know my hand. And it is much were said today that it was when I was growing up would you say this is true of the school. It's much worse in the schools. What school did you go through. I went to P.S. 24 and went to 139 brother and I love my run and I like about him and he read a couple teachers who were very nice to

me and a good teacher and I remember I was I was asking these questions and I answered. I remember coming home from school and I could guess how young I must have been. And the mother asked me what he was called the wife and I said he was with the God. Little bit by bit because she was about Yoko and as a matter of fact I was right. That's part of the dilemma of being an American Negro. That one is a little bit colored a bit white. And not only in terms in physical terms when the headline The hot and their days is one of them. When you went on. What you wrote is in this country what your future is in it. How precise you're going to reconcile. Go south

to your situation here and how you're going to communicate to the vast heedless and thinking cruel majority that you are here and to be here means you can't be anywhere else. I'm terrified at the moral apathy the death of which is happening in my country. These people who do themselves were so low. They really don't think I'm human. I had bases on their conduct not on what they say and this means that they have become themselves moral monsters. OK I can see the indictment. Yes I mean every word I say. Well we are confronted with the racial confrontation in America Barry I think.

Three pictures of dogs in the hands of human beings attacking other human beings in a free country and a freak on the middle of the 20th century is Birmingham. Clearly not restricted to Birmingham as you so eloquently pointed out. What do you think can be done and saying use your term. The brawl fiber of America. I think the one who's got to find some way. Of putting the present administration of this country on the spot when it's got to force somehow from Washington a moral commitment not to the Negro people but to the life of his country. It doesn't matter any longer.

And I was speaking for myself but you are golden. And I think I was speaking for a great many other negroes too. It doesn't matter any longer what you do to me. You can put me in jail or you'll kill me for the time I was 17. You've done everything that you could do to me. The problem now is are you going to save yourselves. It was a great shock to me. I want to say this on the air they 10 general did not know when the attorney general of the United States was to rub it in. But I didn't know I would have trouble raising my nephew to go to Cuba for example to liberate a Cuban in defense of a government.

Which now says it is dead and is doing everything it can do. Which cannot liberate me. Now the 20 million people in this country. And you can't at the moment. I know my nephew feels and I knew I had cancer about which I feel. A burning last week he was 16 in San Francisco told me on television. Thank God we got to go. It was and I was out to listen he said I've got no country I've got no plan is only 16 years old and I couldn't say you do. I don't have any evidence to prove that he does. They were tearing down his house because a San Francisco is gauges on most other cities now are engaged in something called urban renewal which means moving to goes out it means legal removal that is what it means

and the federal government is going to do is it is an accomplice to this fact. Now this we're talking about human beings is not such a thing as a monolithic wall or you know some abstraction called an ego problem these negro boys are going to a good 16 17. I don't believe the country means anything that it says No people have any place on the basis of the Roman's of the entire country. But not my graduated. No I certainly could not say that you're exaggerating but there is this picture of a group of young negro college who was coming from colleges where the whole system seemed to conspire to keep them from having integrity clarity and the willingness to take the risk which they have been taking for the last three or four years. Who do react who and who can nonviolent

women which has made such an impact on America which has affected both the pro's advice and improve the lethargy of broken moderation. How do you account for that. But of course one of the things I think that happens in reading is that in the first place and the guy has never been as docile as white Americans want to be. That was a myth. We were not singing and dancing down the levee. We were trying to keep alive or trying to survive a very brutal system and it has never been happiness place. What those kids first of all prove first was that they prove that they come along a lot of fighters. They also prove I'm going I want to get your point really. But they also prove is that the negroes changed and that the country's right to the place they

can no longer contain the revolt you know no longer as you could do once let's say I was a Negro college president. And I needed a new chemistry that I was to go to I was to go to the white LEDs that I was and I came to get you that was you like Lisa and that's a price I paid for the chemistry that was going to all the people I represented. And now. I can't do that. When the boy said this afternoon we were talking to Negro students that we've been through it all. He was half dead. But when you're on your loan it doesn't all feel a lot to ask a person to bear. The country sat back in admiration of all those kids. Well three or four or five years and has not lifted a finger to help. Now we all knew. I know you knew and I knew too

that a member was coming but we couldn't guarantee that no one can guarantee that it will reach a breaking point. You know you know he's advised many beatings so much mitigation so much to span so many broken promises that when something good is human beings are not by nature those children had to go. I do pay a terrible price in discipline and moral discipline and interior which a country cannot imagine but still things Gary Cooper for example was a man. I mean his image anything against him you know him you sort of something that you cannot expect him to remain completely nonviolent. No you can't you can't. And furthermore they were always used to be talking about a minority. Students would talk about it as data has it. There were some students protesting but there were many many many many students who had given up who were desperate and who Malcolm X can reach for example much more easily than I can. What do you mean

when Malcolm tells him when Malcolm tells them in effect is they should be proud of being black and God knows what they should be. That's a very important thing to hear. They're going to shoot you. Gee we should be ashamed. Of course what he did in order to do this what he does is destroy truth and invent a history. What he does I say it better because you're black because it isn't true. That's the trouble. Do you think that this is an appealing approach and that the Black Muslims in preaching live the promise they seek to exploit. We must ration of the negro. I don't think put it as simply as I can without trying to investigate but of the motives of any given as a leader may be.

It is only moving the country which we can call grass roots. I hate to say that but it's true. Because it is only when Malcolm talks when the talk they articulate for all the Negro people to hear them to listen to they articulate their suffering the suffering which has been in this country so long denied. That's Malcolm's been authority over any of his audience. He corroborates their reality. He tells it as they really exist you know. Then do you think that this is more a more effective appealed and the appeal of Martin Luther King is much more sinister because he's much more active is much more effective because it is after all comparatively easy to invest a population of the postman around by giving him a false sense of superiority and it always break down the crisis to

history of Europe simply is one reason to be in this terrible place is one of the reasons that we have five cops. Blackwell is back in Birmingham because at some point they believe they were taught and they believed that they were better than others and goes in the light it leads to a moral bankruptcy. It is inevitable. I cannot but believe that but the point is my point here is that the country is for the first time worried about the Muslim movement. It should be worried about the Muslim. That's not the problem the problem is to to eliminate the conditions which breed the Muslim movement. Well I'd like to come back to get some of your thoughts about the relationship between Martin Luther King's appeal and if you actively nonviolent and his philosophy of discipline and love for all the oppressor a man and what did you think were the relationship between that and the reality of the Negro man. Out of it in a moment.

Not as a way of a great man. Not for two reasons not because just just because he is and because he's a real Christian and he really believes in and that is he's writing to him to get in step. And it's and it's in the Wasn't doing and he still has great moral authority in the south. Islam whatever you know. As God through God knows what kind of help to make to awaken the American conscience. But Martin has reached the end of his rope is in these not again to any one man. Not against al the nation's central problem by himself. There are lots of people lots of black people I mean we don't go to church alone and don't listen to Bob you know and anyway I themselves produced by civilisation which is only glorified by those listening to had the gun. So the modern Martin is undercut by the claims of the country because he's only concerned about

nonviolence. It seems I'm going to get violent. As I wrote about it about about nonviolence. If it's a matter of that machine it him. What do you see in the recesses of your own mind and the future of our nation and I ask that question in that way because I think that the future of the negro and the future of the nation are linked there and stuff. Now what do you see are you fed really optimistic or pessimistic and I really don't want to put words in your mouth because I really want to find out if what you really believe. I'm of glad and sorry you asked me that question. How do I best answer it. I can't be a pessimist because I'm alive. To be a pessimist means that you have agreed that human life is an academic matter.

So it goes to be an optimist because to believe that we can divide us. But. The Negro in this country. The future of the Negro in this country. Is precisely as bright or as dark as a future of the country. It isn't. I live up to the American people and our representatives. It is entirely up to the American people. Whether or not they're going to face and deal with and embrace the stranger they maligned so long people have to do is try to find out in their own hearts why it was necessary to have a nigga in the first place. Because I'm not a nigga I'm a man but if you think I'm a nigger means you need it. The question you got to ask yourself the white population of this country

got to ask itself. North and South because it's one country and one negro. There's a lot in the south. There's just a difference in the way they the way they castrate you. But that's but the fact of the castration is the american fact and I'm not the maker here and the you invented it and you the white people invented it and you got to find out why. And the future of the country has on that. Whether I was able to ask that question I was a Negro. And as an American I can only hope that America has the strength of the moral strength to ask and answer the question in affirmatively construct ready to face that issue. Thank you very much. Thank you. James Baldwin. Martin Luther King and Malcolm X

are in different ways. Symbols and spokesmen for the Negro are crying out for his full rights as an American citizen. And now if one dares to look for the common denominator of such seemingly different forms of Negro protests one sees in each of these men a dramatic response to America's attempt to deny to its Negro citizens the fulfillment of the American promise by all meaningful indices. The negro is stale and unquestionably the downtrodden disparaged group. And for a long time was systematically deprived of his dignity as a human being. The major indictment of our democracy is that this is being done with the knowledge and at times with the connivance of

responsible moderate people who are not overtly bigots for segregationists. We have now come to the point where there are only two ways that America can avoid continued racial explosions. One would be total oppression of the other. Total equality. There is no compromise I believe. I hope that we are on the threshold of a truly democratic America. It is not going to be easy to cross that threshold but the achievement of the goals of justice equality and democracy for all American citizens involves the very destiny of our nation. LOL

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