Bill Moyers Journal; 509; The Black Agenda

Bill Moyers' Journal

"The Black Agenda”

March 27, 1980

[ Interior, Richmond Coliseum, Richmond, Virginia the National Conference on a Black Agenda for the '80s, dinner]

MOYERS: The people gathered in this room are perhaps the most conspicuous measure of success of the civil rights movement. They are the political leaders of black America, a group whose numbers and influence have been growing steadily since the early 60s in the streets of Little Rock, Selma and Birmingham. Ten years ago, there were fewer than 1500 elected black officials in the United States. By November there may be 5000 and, although that number still represents less than 1% of the nation's elected officials, black politicians have scored some major breakthroughs. But the visible success of the few who have achieved influence and position obscures the reality of the many who have not. The truth is the vast majority of black Americans emerged from the civil rights victories with little of the spoils.

MOYERS: The worst problems of our society chronic unemployment, poor housing, inefficient schools remain unequally theirs. And even the best projections have a bad situation growing worse. It's been said that if the 1980s bring a recession to white America, they will bring a depression to black America. It's against this gloomy backdrop that black leaders have gathered here in Richmond, Virginia to draft an agenda for the new decade. There is little evidence, however, that the rest of America is listening.

MOYERS: Not all the leaders of black America came to Richmond earlier this month, but those who did had two agendas on their mind the one they would try to put on paper as a blueprint for social and economic action in the 1980s, and the one that dominated their talk in the corridors and rump caucuses outside the meetings. That agenda was political power-how to get it and use it in the Presidental politics of 1980. Any time black leaders get together, you hear echoes of the familiar civil rights themes of the 1960s. Most of them, after all, were on the front lines of those battles, and the cadence of struggle and liberation is never completely stilled. But, by their own acknowledge- ment, many of the big issues are not just black issues any longer. Enough blacks have moved into the mainstream that their chief concern now is with mainstream issues inflation and the economy, party loyalty and patronage, the relation of oil cartels to precinct politics, women's rights the problems to an extent of success in America. Therein, as we shall see, lies a potential schism in black America between those who've made it and those who've not. My colleagues and I went to Richmond with a modest aim in mind just to listen to black leaders as they listened to each other. Very quickly we learned that one theme of the conference was set by some people who did not come at all.

Mayor RICHARD HATCHER [at the podium]: I wish to announce at this time that our scheduled Presidential forum on Sunday will not take place and that instead an announcement will be made regarding the substitute activity on that date. I wish also to say with all of the seriousness that I can muster that if you did not understand why it was necessary for us to come to Richmond and to meet and to plan and to strategize our future then surely you must understand it after this announcement.

MOYERS: Where are the political candidates?

DELEGATE: That's what we'd like to know, where are the candidates? If you can get the National League of Voters, and probably get a hundred, fifty people in a little town of Iowa or New Hampshire, and all of the candidates go there and respond to them, I'm wondering where are the candidates? And to me this is a slap in the face of every black in this nation. To me there's no conceivable excuse for these individuals who supposedly want to lead this nation not to be here at this convention.

DELEGATE: And here we have all arrived here with the notion that on Sunday morning we're gonna do the same thing as the voters in Iowa and New Hampshire did we're gonna face the candidates. We're not gonna face a damn thing on Sunday morning but frustration. We're not gonna see anybody and people are gonna go home angry. Whether this will translate into people not going to the polls, what's gonna happen. It's difficult to say.

JESSIE RATTLEY [President, National League of Cities]: I have a great deal of respect for this person and it is my honor to present to all of you Ambassador Andrew Young.

MOYERS : The anger some delegates felt over the failure of Presidential candidates to come to Richmond was not shared by the keynote speaker, Andrew Young. He urged the conference to think big and to think back and remember how far they had come from those days in the 60s when they had been attacked with firehoses and police dogs on the streets of Southern cities.

Ambassador ANDREW YOUNG [at the podium]: We are here united in the attempt to build an agenda that will lead this nation forward and to which any leader who happens to emerge as President of these United States will be made to respond by those of us who are responsible for his or, you never can tell nowadays, her election. And I would contend that things ain't nearly as bad as some people like to make them. I resent, you know, demeaning our accomplishments and I guess I resent it because I can remember the sufferings that brought us thus far on our way. But I also tactically oppose the call to always talk about what is wrong. Because I'm not sure that that's effective with black folks. Black folks are already discouraged. They are already cynical. Martin King used to talk about the old man on Auburn Avenue that sang, "I been down so long that gettin' up don't cross my mind." And we are attempting to overcome hundreds of years of slavery, another hundred years of segregation. We are still attempting to overcome the legacy and the scars of centuries of oppression. And so I would talk to you as a black people, not to a white community about how far we have to go. I take that for granted. But given a choice between determining whether the cup is two-thirds full or one-third empty, I would like this evening to talk about a cup that I think is two-thirds full.

MOYERS: If the cup is two-thirds full, as you said last night, if things are really better than the doomsayers acknowledge they are, why does Shirley Chisholm say that the black nation is in the worst shape it's been in since Reconstruction and why does the Congressional Black Caucus call Jimmy Carter's 1981 budget an unmitigated disaster for poor and minorities?

ANDREW YOUNG: I don't think it's as bad as Shirley Chisholm- as that statement of Shirley Chisholm's. And I think the Congressional Black Caucus is in a very difficult role for them in that they really don't have anywhere to go and they see the President drifting to the right preparing to run against Ronald Reagan.

MOYERS: And they're not going to the Republicans?

YOUNG: They're not going to the Republicans. And so I think that they have to get the attention of the Administration. Now- The other thing, though, there are some aspects of the budget that are a disaster. And I would say that the military spending aspects of it come close to that. And I would—– Well. I have problems with the assumption that additional military spending could have prevented Iran or Afghanistan.

MOYERS: Are you saying then that the call for increased defense spending by President Carter and the Congress is on insufficient grounds?

YOUNG: I think it's based on a kind of hysteria that grows out of an improper and inaccurate analysis of what's going on in the world. And I know the Congress very well and there are not two dozen of them that really know much about what's going on in the world. And basically they are playing domestic politics rather than giving leadership.

MOYERS: How, then, can you be so enthusiastic in your support of the Administration if the Administration is playing this game of hysteria and going along with the forces in Congress that are crying for a military increase that you say is unjustified?

YOUNG: Well, what President Carter's doing happens to be good politics. So if it's working don't knock it. But just don't let it get out of hand.

MOYERS: But you said a minute ago that-

YOUNG: I mean when President Carter was trying to reason with the American people and give intellectual leadership he was down to 21% in the polls. So when he leads the hysteria he goes up to 79%.

MOYERS: What does that say about politics?

YOUNG: It says that maybe you have to give emotional as well as intellectual leadership.

MOYERS: You said a minute ago that black voters are not going to Ronald Reagan and the Republican Party. The Congressional Black Caucus is frustrated because Carter is moving right and they have nowhere to go. Doesn't it mean once again that the black voter is in the Democratic Party's hip pocket? That the vote you fought for in the '60s, which you felt would really make a difference, has really been like the dollar devalued because the blacks have nowhere to go except to the Democratic Party?

YOUNG: There is some truth to that, but hopefully we're a little more sophisticated than that now. We're not talking about a black vote that is only responsive to the voice of one Martin Luther King anymore. We're talking about a black vote that is well institutionalized, that will be voting for the Congressional Black Caucus. You see, the Congressional Black Caucus has to get out its own vote.

MOYERS: So everybody's playing politics?

YOUNG: Including the black community. The question is, and the thing that I think is growing out of this conference which is quite significant, is that we are not arguing about personalities and we're not talking about Jerry Brown or Ted Kennedy or John Anderson, even though we invited them all to come. Essentially we're talking about the issues that we're gonna hold anybody responsible to.

Rev. JESSE JACKSON: To date the 1980 political campaign has been an exercise in entertainment and a diversion from the real issues that affect the lives of Americans, especially black Americans. As a nation we are victimized by an economic system in chaos and threatened with collapse. But what are the burning national issues that we have had projected to us every morning in the newspaper and every night on television? Reagan's age and private jokes. Bush's personality or lack of one. Carter's travel schedule or lack of one. Kennedy's personal life. Can Connally shake his wheeler-dealer image? Garbage, all of it. Together, they don't add up to one job or cut inflation by one-tenth of one percent. All of the candidates are skillfully evading black issues. There is a certain fear of touching us. To touch us may upset whites, and you might have to be accountable. There's a kind of latent Andy Young syndrome. If you touch one that's visible he may make you reward him visibly, so don't touch him and you don't have to reward him. And so the purpose of these workshops today and tomorrow is that we must focus on these issues and get off each other's back. Some are for Kennedy, some for Carter, some for Bush. And god forbid some are for Reagan. Yes, black folk, what can you all do? We got three ways we can go. We can go Democrat. We can go Republican. Or we can go home. And either way we go will affect the election. Well, what do you mean? I mean in 1960 blacks voted for Kennedy enthusiastically and he beat Nixon by 112,000 votes. In 1968 blacks did not vote for Humphrey enthusiastically. He lost by 500,000 votes. And no party and no personality can afford to ignore 10 million registered black voters. That's who we are today.

VOICE: Workshop bus across the street! Last call, workshop!

MOYERS : There are, to be sure, ten million black voters and that spells clout. So in workshops the leaders focused on turning the potential into real political leverage.

[Interior, meeting hall · Political Parties workshop]

Dr. ROBERT WRIGHT: We must change drastically our political game plan. And we must adopt a strategy that prohibits one party from taking us for granted and the other party from writing us off.

MOYERS : The black vote has been as solid as any voting block in American politics. Since 1950

blacks have voted 9 to 1 for the Democratic Presidential nominee. The Democrats have held the White House 12 of the last 20 years and controlled Congress all that time. And many blacks still find themselves out of work and out of power. In Richmond amid the refrains of unity there were also strains of impatience and calls for strategies beyond fealty to the Democratic Party.

Assemblyman ALBERT VANCE: I'm Assemblyman Albert Vance from New York State. Any strategy towards the development of black political empowerment must address the following: the recognition that black people are a nation within a nation and a nation in exile. Be it resolved that the collective black leadership of this convention establish a technical research task force to investigate the feasibility of establishing an independent black political party.

JESSIE RATTLEY [at the podium]: We have not received all that we want. I wonder if we ever will. No one will give us anything: We're going to have to take it. In this era of Proposition 13 when everybody is saying cut out the fat, no more taxes, no more spending. And when you ask them where the fat is they say you'll find it in the welfare programs or those programs that will help those in need and those who can not help themselves. And I feel that the Democratic Party is the only party in existence today that will, that have paid attention to the needs of the poor, and those needs still exist.

DELEGATE: In the state of Virginia, nobody, Democratic or Republican, can say what either party's done for black voters in Virginia. In Virginia there is one political party. And that is the party of reactionary conservatism. There is no Democratic Party in Virginia. There is no Republican Party in Virginia. It is the Conservative Party. You know, governors run as Republican, run as Democrats, change their label and get in that office. The Democratic Party in this state only has one black on the administrative staff. The Republican Party doesn't have one. So how in the hell can they come here and say which party is best for us in the State of Virginia. I don't know what's going on in any other place around this country, but in Virginia it's horrendous. The only thing that's happening is the black folk gonna have to make a decision whether they gonna die and go to heaven on a party philosophy or a philosophical philosophy that is married to the black community. They've got to divorce themselves at a certain time from what is party and what is right. And the party is not always right. And I don't care who it is. Secondly, I think that also the 80s is going to see a rising battle between the blacks and black political leaders. It's coming. Because some black political leaders are not being responsive to black people. My position is also this for the black political party. No matter who wins the White House, if it's the Democrats, based upon our percentage of votes to the man, that should be the ground floor that we demand appointments, power and money across the board. And those are the three things that we want from political power absent of third party of black folk in this country, sir. Thank you. DELEGATE: I would like to see out of this conference, and I know that many people are already committed, but for those of us who are not committed, let the word go out that until there becomes a permanent structure in any party that seeks our vote I will remain uncommitted and I will barter with that uncommitment until the day I get to vote for whoever it is that's gonna be responsible for that. Let the word go out that until you deal with me then you don't deal with my community. Because that's the way the system is set up. I am ready for my responsibility. I implore upon you to lead me, but should you not lead me, I know which way to go. I know which way to go.

[Interior, ballroom-Moyers with Dick Gregory]

MOYERS: Well, Jesse Jackson said you either go Democrat, you can go Republican or you can go home. Is it conceivable that many blacks after fighting for twenty years to get the vote would voluntarily not use it in order to make that point?

DICK GREGORY: Well, let me say this. I don't think that we have the sophistication to not to use it. I was one of the few that did not believe that black folks put Jimmy Carter in the White House. I don't believe we strong enough to put no President in the White House, but we are strong enough to take one out. We took Gerald Ford out the White House. We didn't put nobody in. I believe that a lot of blacks got inspired when you have a Gerald Ford that says 'I'm against busing'. Well, Gerald, we don't want to know what you against. Don't alienate me. That a lot of black folks registered and came out against Gerald Ford, not for. And so what we did. You can go to New York City as President Carter could go and say to the Jewish vote, you putting me in, and you'd be right. Say to the Italian vote, you putting me in, he'd be right. Say to the catholic vote, you puttin' me in. Say to the black vote. But only us can say we didn't put you in. We took him out. Ain't nobody else can claim that distinction.

MOYERS: So what do you think you all should do this year?

GREGORY: If I could wave a magic wand, I would go and beg black folks to do two things. To go out and register. I wouldn't even tell them to vote. I'd rather have ten dollars I didn't need than need ten dollars I didn't have. I would say register, join the NAACP, the Urban League, the SCLC, Jesse's group, to give them black groups the power to negotiate because I don't have the sophistication. I been in the steel mill. I been too busy trying to get this child [over] a cold, to deal with this cough. I been too busy trying to keep bread on the table. But here are some black leaders, if we went in and gave those membership what we need they can negotiate for us. And then President couldn't send for them to Camp David; we could call the President and say, 'come here, boy, I want to talk to you'.

[Interior, meeting hall — Voter Mobilization workshop]

SPEAKER: Around the concrete issues that are real for us-

MOYERS : If the ability of black leaders to mobilize their vote is key to increasing their political power, it is nonetheless a weapon that has been slowly eroding. Since 1968 black turnout in elections has been steadily declining as more and more blacks see little connection between the ballot box and their lives. For many. Individual daily survival is more urgent than collective political action. At a workshop on voter mobilization, Joseph Madison of the NAACP spelled out the statistics.

JOSEPH MADISON [at the podium]: It's because the 18 to 24-year-old black American in this country has the worst voter participation rate of any age group, any nationality or any race in this country. In 1976, there were 3.4 million black 18- to 24-year olds in the country. In that same year only 38% of that age group bothered to register to vote, and in that same year only 28% actually cast a ballot. The middle class black are the second largest groups of nonvoters among us. We call them positive apathetics. They also are the biggest liars because when a survey was done 90% of them said that they did vote and they actually didn't. So I'm suggesting to you that any group of votes or block of votes like that is in a strategic position to determine who's going to hold office.

DELEGATE: And my concern is that in the last general election in this city we lost something like 28,000 black voters at home out of a total of 42 or 43,000 voters. But I don't see anything on this agenda that's dealing with local elections. I'm concerned about how many people in the local city of Richmond can get involved in my city government. How many of those 28.000 who are staying at home who are saying, 'hey, why go down there? The cat doesn't even walk my streets.' So those are the type of things that I'd like to see this agenda deal with. Local, state government. Forget about the cats running for the Presidency cause that's a mixed-up ballgame that the Black Caucus threw out some months ago.

2nd DELEGATE: What I'm suggesting is why can't we get the members of the Congressional Black Caucus and these super black leaders into local communities to help us mobilize in the local community. An example, I'll talk to you about this. In Bronx County where I come from the population reads 113,000 Jews, 294,000 Italians, 3:19.000 Hispanics, and 500,000 blacks and yet I'm the only black member of the City Council, the first preacher there in 39 years since Adam Clayton Powell in a community where there are 55,000 more blacks eligible to vote than any other group. What we need is some of these superstars to come there and help us go into these housing projects and ring doorbells and get some people out. That's my recommendation.

WALTER FAUNTROY: We're not going to have a debate. We're going to have specific recommendations for goals. Now that recommendations that black leaders come to where he needs them. And we're gonna try to arrange that. Next!

3rd DELEGATE: We have to on a local level be our own leaders. And those brothers are very thin. It ain't many of them. Every time you all say something about the superstars, it ain't but five or six. They can't come to every local community. All right, and when they do come a lot of times we don't even know they're there or go to see them. But I'm just saying I want somebody to come—

FAUNTROY: I appreciate what you're saying but it's not germane. But go on and say it, anyhow.

4th DELEGATE: Okay. I'm here to get information to open up. My suggestion is to open up political stores. We have a store to buy clothes, we have a store to disco, we have a store to buy liquor. we have a store to buy food. But when you go down the avenue, there's no political store. So I'm here to get information to open up a year-round political store where the sign's out front, where you can come and buy politics. Where politics can be handed out to young folks. I want you to understand, to carry that message. Like a local grocery store? We got the supermarket. This is a supermarket, but we don't get here. We can't get the transportation to get here. So you got to open it on the street corner. A local political store. Thank you.

[Interior, hotel lobby -- Moyers enters with Walter Fauntroy]

MOYERS : Congressman Walter Fauntroy of Washington, D.C. For him the talk of moving away from two established parties would only dilute further the power of blacks to be heard.

MOYERS: What about the idea of a black party?

FAUNTROY: Well, first of all I don't agree that we should have a black structured party. I think we ought to have black organization that moves our leverage within both parties. Our key has to be participation, strengthening our leverage. We're only operating now on half strength. The fact is that we have been able to determine the Presidency in '76 and prior to that time in '64 and in '60 with just about 50% of our people registered. I know that the black vote in this country has to be reckoned with. If anybody wants to get the 45 electors out of New York, he's got to go to the black vote in New York City.

MOYERS: So you're not particularly disturbed that the candidates did not come here?

FAUNTROY: No, they're just gonna give us more time to get the issues out to the people so that when they have to come, and they must, anybody who wants to win, particularly a Democrat, he's got to go to New York, he's got to got to Philadelphia and Pittsburgh if he's gonna get those 27 electors from Pennsylvania.

MOYERS: Unless,of course, as you've been talking about black registration and voting continue to diminish...

FAUNTROY: Yeah. That is the danger, that we may be fooled into thinking that we don't count. The fact is that we know that the black vote in a close election is like the umpire in a baseball game. Somebody steals second. One team says he's safe. The other says he's out. The umpire says he ain't nothing til I call it.

MOYERS So you're going to call it?

FAUNTROY: Well, I think the black vote was key, for example, in the eleven southern states in 1976. 55% of the whites in the south didn't even want their own boy to be president. They voted for Ford. Because we had a 67% turnout of black voters there and they voted 9 to 1 for Jimmy Carter, he swept South Carolina, Georgia, Mississippi, Alabama, Florida.

MOYERS: You've come out for Kennedy. Why?

FAUNTROY: Well, I think that out of my basic conviction that as a Christian, as a man, my basic responsibility is to the poor. We say we're anointed of God to declare good news to the poor. And quite frankly the Carter policies of the last four years have resulted in the poor hearing the bad news.

MOYERS: If, as you believe, the Carter economic policies have been bad news for blacks, and you think they have been-

FAUNTROY: And for the poor and for middle-income Americans as well.

MOYERS: —why are so many blacks supporting Carter today?

FAUNTROY: Well, that remains to be seen.

[Interior, meeting hall]

Mayor COLEMAN YOUNG: I say to you that, based on his record, Jimmy Carter will be the next President of the United States. And to those who boo, I say you have a responsibility. After you get through booing, who the hell are for? You can exercise yourself if you want to. You can fingerpop up here, but if we're talking about an agenda to take home to the black people, let me tell you something. Black people are very, very pragmatic. You not gonna drag them off of some kind of damn limb because you getting your jollies down here in Richmond. Where do we go?

you That's our challenge. I'll tell you where I'm going. I'm going with Jimmy Carter. You make up your damn mind.

[Interior, hotel suite Moyers with Richard Hatcher and Marion Barry]

MOYERS : The boos that greeted Coleman Young's endorsement of President Carter are a chorus of the quandary facing many black mayors. They support the President's reelection but a growing number of their constituents do not. I talked about that conflict with Mayors Richard Hatcher of Gary, Indiana and Marion Barry of Washington, D.C.

MOYERS: What intrigues me, Mayor Hatcher, is that Ron Dellums speaking for the Congressional Black Caucus said the other day that the Carter Administration's 1981 budget is madness. Madness, he said. And yet two out of three of the mayors I've talked to here are supporting Jimmy Carter. How do you explain that?

Mayor RICHARD HATCHER: I think that, first of all, obviously mayors of cities find themselves in something of a dilemma. Because of the difficulties that urban areas have experienced over the last ten or twenty years, they are heavily dependent upon federal grants and federal programs. An administration that effectively delivers such programs, and this Administration has done a better job than many in that regard, is obviously due some kind of support. It is a matter of recognizing certain realities.

Mayor MARION BARRY: Bill, let me also say I'm one who supports the reelection of President Carter. But it's relative to what's out there. If you look at― I'm a Democrat, and you look at the potential Democratic nominees or any of those who are announced, or those who want to run you have to pick and choose from what's out there. You can't go and go find a candidate that's not out there. You can't go create a candidate. If you support someone it means you then at least have an opportunity to say, I don't like what you're doing. And you can say it legitimately, as opposed to if I were supporting somebody else, and they say the hell with you. You weren't supporting us in the first place. Like any other politician.

MOYERS: You've used a fascinating expression. You said, Just like any other politician. That's where blacks are now, I think, when they're in office?

BARRY: No, not like any other politician. I didn't mean that context. No not in that context.

HATCHER: No, I don't agree with that at all. I'm sure that Marion Barry did not mean that and because black— I have found, my experience has been, that black politicians are fairly unique in the political arena. They seem to some degree be less politic than others who are in that arena.

MOYERS: Explain it to me.

HATCHER: Well, in the sense that I have yet to see, for example, a black mayor who is not absolutely committed and dedicated to changing the social injustices which exist in this country. And that is not`always true of other mayors. So in a way the black mayor or the black politician's role is a fairly unique role in America today because he not only is involved in political action but he is involved in moral action.

BARRY: Those of us who are elected take our jobs very, very seriously in the sense of going beyond just being elected. We have to speak in areas that other politicians don't get involved in. We have to work on problems that are tougher.

MOYERS: Don't you feel torn by that?

BARRY: No, I don't feel torn by that.

MOYERS: You still represent what Marion Barry always represented in the civil rights movement? You're also now mayor of many more constituents.

BARRY: No, what I was fighting for in the civil rights movement was freedom and justice and equality for all of us and not to have the kinds of inequities and the kinds of problems that you face because you're black, because you're Hispanic, or because you're a woman. I'm still fighting that whole thing. How do we all get an equitable piece of the economic pie? It's just a matter of strategy. In 1960 I was sitting in at lunch counters. There are no longer any lunch counters to sit into. And once I got in, I found a lot of us didn't have any money to buy the cup of coffee. So now you have to look at another strategy. I'd rather be making decisions about how monies are disbursed, if I can, than to be trying to influence somebody else to make the decision about that. I'd rather be president than mayor, quite frankly. because that's where decisions are made.

MOYERS: More decisions.

BARRY: That's right. That help more people.

HATCHER: There is also the fact of the matter that we, as black people, have suffered uniquely in the history of this country. We are a special people. We are not just like everyone else. The truth of the matter- No other group in this society has experienced slavery. We are owed not just equality. not just fair treatment, we are owed reparations for all those years that this country grew and expanded on our backs. We are a contradiction in this society. We find ourselves in the most capitalistic country in the world and we do not have any access to capital. I mean we're— you're starting out under the most heavy kind of handicap under those circumstances.

America owes that much to us.

[Interior, Richmond Coliseum]

ANDREW YOUNG [at the podium]: We have made significant social advances. We have made political advances. We have not yet made significant economic advances. We've got enough money to run somebody for mayor. We've got enough money to handle a Congressional District. But statewide politics in America now costs millions of dollars. And we don't have any black candidates to run statewide effectively not because we don't have people who are competent, qualified and who would make good leaders statewide, but we don't have the financial base in the black community to finance a series of statewide campaigns and give us the kind of state political leadership that we need in America. And so we focus now on the question of how do we get the financial resources for statewide politics. And I would say that one of the main issues of the 80s has got to be money. We've integrated the lunch counters, the hotels, the movies.

We've integrated the politics. Now we need to integrate the money. You know, all of a sudden, this country has grown strong enough so that it can't get along by itself. We have produced so many goods that we have used up the natural resources with which God has blessed us. And now we have to go looking for more. And when we go looking for additional resources, lo and behold, the Lord gave it to the Africans. He gave it to the Arabs. He gave it to the people in the Caribbean and in Mexico. And if we are going to get the resources that we need to keep this economy going — I'm not talking about integrating black folk, now. I'm saying that if white folk are going to have the resources that they need to keep their standard of living if we don't get a thing, they are gonna have to learn to deal with niggers. And I tell you they ought to be thankful that they had some niggers like us to learn with. Cause when they have to deal with the Nigerians, lord, you ain't seen no bad niggers yet. They were bad when they were poor.

And now that they are selling us twelve, ten to twelve billion dollars worth of oil a year and we can't get along without it- Good god almighty, you talk about some hard folk to deal with. If we are going to end trade deficits, somebody's gonna have to learn how to do business with black folk in Africa. And American industry and business is going to have to come to its black brothers and sisters and say, 'look, we can't make it without you any more. Integration is not something that Eleanor Holmes Norton is making us do at the threat of a lawsuit. Integration is something that we have to do because we can't stay in business without it.'

[Interior, meeting hall Moyers with William Gray]

MOYERS: As Andrew Young prophesized a new integration of the world economy with a special role for the developing non white nations, it falls to pragmatic politicians to bring it about men like Congressman William Gray of Pennsylvania. He is a member of both the important Budget Committee and the House Foreign Affairs Committee.

[Interior, ballroom]

MOYERS: You said to a friend of mine not long ago that America's entering a profound new era. Tell me what that means.

Rep. WILLIAM GRAY: Well, that era is characterized by two phenomena. One, an era of limitations and dwindling resources, which is just so new for this country it's staggering. Secondly, the other characteristic is the economic and political interdependence of the world community of nations and particularly the experience that America finds itself in where it is now dependent upon many third world countries black, brown, yellow countries that are producing oil and other vital resources. And we have not been sensitive to their needs in the past. Nor do we know how to deal with them very well in our foreign policy.

MOYERS: On the question of scarcity and dwindling expectations and limits— What are the implications of that for people at the lowest end of the totem?

GRAY: In the 1960s in the civil rights movement we were saying give us a share of the pie. The pie was growing. Now we're saying give us a share, a just share of the pie but the pie is not growing. It is standing still or, in some cases, actually shrinking. On the one hand you're asking somebody to share something with you, on the other you're saying give up something. And that's the problem that we find all Americans in but particularly those who are the minorities blacks, Hispanics - at the lowest end of the rung. That means the struggle for economic justice, fight for full employment policies, for better housing, better health care, is going to be a much tougher struggle than ever before as a result of the dwindling resources.

MOYERS: You said there was a second major phenomenon and that is the growing independence and therefore the relationship between American domestic politics and the politics of Africa, Asia, the nonwhite world. Are you saying that the politics of black Africa are going to be as important in American political life in the 80s as the politics of Israel have been in the past?

GRAY: It will be more important than the past politics. Somehow all of our lives are wrapped up together in this world and we used to have a saying in the civil rights movement that when a decision was made in Philadelphia, Mississippi, it affected Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. And we find ourselves in the same situation on a global basis. It is that decisions made in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, decisions made in Lagos have a profound effect upon black people and their struggle for survival and equal opportunity here in this country.

[Ballroom, another location]

MOYERS [to Dick Gregory]: Do you believe the American political system is sophisticated enough to deal with complex issues like these?

DICK GREGORY: No, I believe it's too unethical and that's where I believe it's gonna swallow up itself. And I believe you're gonna look around and have mass chaos in this country.

MOYERS: Chaos? Are you talking about violence?

GREGORY: I'm talking about violence, yes, because white folk are not gonna tolerate being out of work. White folks are not going to tolerate being told they cannot own a house. White folks are not gonna tolerate being told they can't go to Florida and get them some sun and that's just what's fixing to happen. They ain't never had to worry about me. Because when I tore up something I tore up my neighborhood. White folks will blow up the bridge. They will blow up the banks, and I'm saying if we don't look and see where this country is headed. Because you have white folks in this country who have never been without a job. That's never been without a good job. When I got a good job, I was surprised. I never expected it. When I found out I was going to college, I was surprised. I was the hero in my neighborhood. It's expected for white folks to go to college. And all at once this lifestyle- There's only two people that can survive this country. The Indians will be able to survive it cause they ain't never had gasahol. They ain't never had a thermostat to turn down. And black folks might be able to survive it provided we can get out of all that silliness and stop trying to emulate something that we're not.

MOYERS: You keep talking as if something dire's going to happen. Chaos if the economy falls, a revolution if the political apparatus collapses. And yet I don't see much evidence of that. I see instead resignation, disillusionment, a retreat into self-centeredness, the 'me decade.' I don't see any sense of the flames that might flicker into real change.

GREGORY: I wouldn't see it neither if I wasn't watching the economy. And I'm not saying that we were cleaner back in that last depression, or pure. But conditions forced me to live next to you as my brother. So I knew it anyway. I don't know who live next to me now. I don't know who lives upstairs, I don't know who lives downstairs. I know one thing, every other person got a gun. And when you live in a nation that would squawk more about registering their rifles than in registering their children, then we in trouble. We are completely in trouble. And I think a 91-year-old white woman said it better than anyone's ever said it. And that was this past summer. This white woman in Houston, Texas got arrested for shoplifting. And her picture went around the world. And Americans sent that women $25,000 and she held a press conference and said thanks, but no thanks. I don't need your $25,000. I need you to change the conditions that reduces people like me into shoplifting. And I loved that because it embarrassed me. Because that old white woman upset me because if my grandmother was alive and 91 and got caught shoplifting, and white America sent her $25,000, she'd a got on TV praising God and talking about what a good country this is. But that woman put it right. I need you to change the conditions that reduces me down. And that's a funny thing because when you get people that's Christians that really believe in God that get reduced down to stealing then you lose that thing. And if America is not watching, we in trouble.

[Interior, meeting hall]

MAUDINE COOPER: Recommendation number one. We need to have a special black conference on education to more carefully examine a number of complex issues including but not limited to the following;

MOYERS : Some of the diverse voices heard in Richmond belonged to women. That isn't novel. Black women like Rosa Parks and Fannie Lou Hamer were among the movement's original shock troops. But as with the rest of American society the new role of women is also on the black agenda. It, too, is a question of discrimination, but one based on sex and not race. In his keynote speech on opening night, Andrew Young put the issue squarely before the delegates;

[Interior, Richmond Coliseum]

ANDREW YOUNG [at the podium]: I want you to forgive me, brothers. I'm gonna betray you. I'm gonna sell out completely right now. We've had a good thing going and I'm about to blow the game. We got to quit oppressing our wives and our daughters. Now for any of you in this room to say I'm no male chauvinist, I believe in women's rights get me a cup of coffee, baby. And we don't realize it, but you know just like we used to complain whenever white folks said, 'oh, no, I'm not a racist. It's those other white folks.' And we said, you know, you can't stop being a racist until you first admit you are. And I would say to you black men in particular— you will not stop the oppression of your wives and children until you admit that you are doing it and try to understand the nature of your role as oppressor to your loved ones. We can't take on this next battle with black men out front and black women in the back saying we're going to support our men. No, we passed that day.

[Interior, hotel lobby]

MOYERS : Maudine Cooper is a vice president of the National Urban League in Washington.

MAUDINE COOPER: I'm in a primarily black organization where the hierarchy is primarily black males. I deal with a decision-makers who are primarily white males. And so sometimes I get a bit torn apart in terms of my identity. I think a lot of black women, especially executives, are frustrated tremendously in trying to put all those individual personalities together to make a whole person that is in fact sane. There is a suicide rate among females now that I'm finding distressing.

MOYERS: Among white females?

COOPER: Black females.

MOYERS: Black females?

COOPER: I'm finding that many of my peers are beginning to question what they do, why they do it and how they do it. And many of us are even saying, 'wow, I wish I was back where I was, you know, ten or fifteen years ago.' The whole myth of you as a wife and mother vs. you as an executive is beginning to haunt us. Our relationships with our black men are beginning to suffer. There are a whole number of frustrations and problems that nobody really taught us how to handle. I think white women are beginning to experience some of that, too, but I think with us it is critical.

MOYERS: You know, as you talk I get the impression - you correct me if you think I'm wrong that after this intense and costly and yet victorious struggle that blacks had in the 60s and early 70s, and the liberation of blacks from legal discrimination, you are discovering now many of the same problems that whites are trying to flee middle class problems, peer relationships, the problems of relationships in America.

COOPER: Well I think we may be questioning our participation in this process, but I think though on balance all of us want an opportunity to participate, we want an opportunity to be equally frustrated.

MOYERS: Opportunity to have problems like that.

COOPER: That's right. We want to have equal access to the psychiatrists. Psychiatry among blacks was a foreign medical issue. It has been brought to the attention of this conference that, to the contrary, that mental health problems among blacks are increasing incredibly. I mean, we're going crazy at virtually the same rate as you all are now.

MOYERS: Would it be fair to say that what you're trying to do in the '80s is to emancipate yourselves from being thought of as a problem?

COOPER: Absolutely, and to also emancipate ourselves without the assistance of Abraham Lincoln.

MOYERS: Oh?

COOPER: Yes. He freed the slaves. However, we have not been freed.

MOYERS: What do you mean?

COOPER: Black Americans are still wedded to the slave mentality. Nobody can free us from that but ourselves.

[Interior. Richmond Coliseum]

ANDREW YOUNG [at the podium]: So I don't know about you. As we go into the 80s. I really don't know about you. But I'm not cynical. I'm not despairing. I don't think we've been set back at all. I don't think I have lost anything cause I didn't have anything to lose. Everything that has happened to me, including my resignation, has only seemed to inspire me more and give me more courage to keep on keeping on. And I know the same thing is true for you. And so I'm looking forward to this election. putting forward a kind of massive turnout of voters. And those voters coming through with the agenda that comes out of this conference, and making the next President of these United States one of the great presidents of all time. And we can do that. We must do that. And you know. I don't feel no ways tired. I come too far from where I started from. Nobody ever told me that the way would be easy. But I don't believe He brought me this far to leave me.

MOYERS: One of America's most distinguished leaders is Vernon Jordan, who's president of the Urban League. He was at Richmond and is here with me to talk about the effects of the Black Agenda Conference. Earlier this year. the Urban League issued its annual report on the state of black America in a sense. And the facts and statistics and conclusions in your report were totally at odds with the optimism that Andrew Young exhibited in his keynote speech in Richmond. He talked about the cup being two-thirds full. Your Urban League report talked about the dire straights in which black America finds itself today. How do you reconcile the two?

VERNON JORDAN: Well, I disagree with Andy Young. I think the cup is half full and draining fast. And I think that all one has to do is to look at the statistics. 23.1% unemployment in the black community, 60% teenage unemployment. More black people in poverty at the end of the 70s than at the beginning of the 70s. The black middle class going from 12% to 9% in a very short time. And what I think is confusing in this process is that we are judging black progress by those persons that were at Richmond.

MOYERS: The middle-class, the leadership class?

JORDAN: And I suggest to you that by that standard there is extraordinary progress, when you look at Maynard Jackson. Dutch Morial, Tom Bradley, Frank Thomas at the Ford Foundation, Andy Young and his position in the society. Don McHenry or Leon Sullivan, anybody. That is a measurement which suggests to me not what has happened but what can happen. But it is only meaningful to the extent that we're able to make that happen for everybody and I suggest to you that it is not happening for the vast majority of black people in this country. And my assessment is that half of all black people, Bill, in America today are boat people without boats.

MOYERS: If your assessment is so, given the political realities of 1980. is anybody listening to you and these statistics and figures you've just recounted?

JORDAN: I think that. sure. they're listening. But there is also a countervoice. A countervoice of rising conservatism, a countervoice of selfish privatism. A majority voice in this country that is saying to me, to Andy, to all of the black leadership. 'listen you guys have really done very well. Now let's get on to the major agenda.' And the problem with that is the absence of recognition of the fact that when you're talking about full employment you're not just talking about black people you're also talking about white people. Look at the automotive industry. Just this week some rubber company closed down six plants. The vast majority of those workers are not black workers, they're white workers. And what is clear to me is that poor white people in this country need a Richmond. Poor white people in this country need a NAACP, a P.U.S.H., an Urban League to articulate for them and for Mr. Carter and for Mr. Reagan and Mr. Kennedy and Mr. Bush their needs.

MOYERS: Are you happy with the process that delivers you the possible option of Jimmy Carter on the one hand and Ronald Reagan on the other?

VERNON: I'm reminded, Bill, of a statement that Will Rogers made which was that the best thing about this group of candidates was that only one of them can win. No I'm not. I would like a broader option. I am concerned. I am worried and I do not think that my pessimism and my concern is peculiar to me because I'm black and because I have a constituency in the black community. The concern that I feel I think permeates the entire society. That's why I think 1980 is so important and that is why I think that this election is important and that is why I think that black people and white people— I think the disillusionment with the election process and disillusionment with political parties and with the President and with the Congress is not just a black problem. That transcends race, too. The concern about our institutions is not just a black concern. Also to the point of my disagreement with Andy on whether the glass is two-thirds full or half-full and draining fast, represents a maturing development of black leadership in that the black community is not a monolithic community.

MOYERS: You can be divided?

JORDAN: It's a diverse community and we can take positions on issues where we do not see eye-to-eye. That is a very healthy development.

MOYERS: In the '60s you had to be together.

JORDAN: In the '60s we were dealing with a very real process of defining and conferring rights. We were not branched off into the power centers of the world. Andy and I were on the same side. We're basically on the same side now. It is important that I take the position that I take, that Andy takes the position that he takes, that Jesse takes the position that he takes so that white America will come to understand that we're not a monolith. That we all cannot be dealt with in one fell swoop and you have dealt with black people in this country. It is clear to me that there are some black businessmen who are running small businesses who may have a different attitude about the minimum wage than I would have about the minimum wage. And I think that that diversity, I think that that different approach is in fact healthy.

MOYERS: Thank you very much, Vernon Jordan. I'm Bill Moyers. I'll be back next week with a look at the Detroit model. Good night.