Stokely Carmichael Interview

[Cannon]: My name is Terrence Cannon. I'm the editor of the West Coast Newspaper for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. I'm talking today with Stokely Carmichael, SNCC Field Secretary, working in Lowndes County, Alabama. Stokely is an organizer of the Lowndes County Freedom Organization, also called the Black Panther Party. Black Panther Party is an independent political party of negroes in Lowndes County who are seeking to gain political power in their county. And to strengthen and organize independent county by county political organizations in Alabama. When SNCC puts out research material in Alabama one of the things that they stress is that Alabama is not really

run by the politicians, it's not really run by the sheriffs, it's run by the businessmen, corporations, people who have the economic power. Now when you talk about Lowndes County Freedom Organization and black political party you're talking about voting power. Now how do you feel this is going to change the real power or do you think the real power is economic or is not economic power. [Carmichael]: I don't know that it will. And some of the things that we question now in Alabama is whether or not the vote will make property-less people as equal as property owners. We don't know. I've been told in college, in my political science textbooks, that the way to get a road fixed and the way to get the lights and the way to get better jobs and better housing is through the vote. I don't know that for a fact. And that's what I've been telling people in Alabama and what we're about to do is find

out. [Cannon]: How do people in Alabama react to that? Do people in Alabama think that they're going to get real improvements in their every day situation through the vote do you think that? [Carmichael]: Well it's not that easy. A number of things that comes into play here. Number one, the attitude of the country has changed tremendously in terms of the racial milieu. Certainly read that you've had passage of several bills. The [inaudible] have changed the atmosphere of the country, they haven't done the change on the concrete basis for Negroes. There are for example a number of Negroes, a few negroes who got jobs in the poverty program, and a few Negroes who've gotten jobs on Wall Street. But other than that they haven't done very much. So that, what the negroes in Alabama now hope to do is to see whether or not the vote can really bring the changes that they want on a day to day living

whether or not the're disillusioned remains to be seen and never voted before. We're organizing people around their own interest and we're trying to hold that political power inside the community, not outside of the community as it lies throughout the country. [Cannon]: What sort of issues do you organize around? [Carmichael]: Well the first issue we organize around is poverty and lies. See it's very easy to organize around lies because this country lies. This country has been saying that if you work hard every day you can make it. That's not true. Negroes work from sunup to sundown, they make two dollars a day. That's why it's a lie. So that just isn't true. I mean the hard working person doesn't make it, it's the person's got the money that makes it and those people are poor so we organize around that. How do you in fact change it that you don't work from sunup to sundown for two dollars a day today.

[Cannon]: How do you? How do you change that? [Carmichael]: Well, we're not quite sure. What we do is that you just organize people, you change the emphasis of the vote, for example set up a new organization which is not tied to any Democratic Party. Bodies when developing are not tied to the democratic body and all their power will rest within the community or each county organization is an entity unto itself so that it isn't geared to what's outside of the county politics or the politics of every county community, executive community, and they all get their politics outside of that county. But this will be get inside the county so that the money that's coming into that county will be able to be controlled by the people of the county. And we've been doing some exciting things within the political spectrum. For example we take, every weekend we take people over to Atlanta. Last weekend we took about 150 people over to Atlanta. And

what we did was that we and the research department, we taught the people what the duties of the sheriff are, and the following weekend we do tax assessor and then we go on to all the different duties and the officials on the county level. For people who attend these workshops then come back to Alabama and they conduct the same workshops in their community, on their community levels. What that means is that those people, for example, now in Lowndes county, they're about 400 people who know what the duties of a sheriff are or those 400 people feel qualified to run for sheriff. So that you were in fact not have somebody running for sheriff who got out of line the other was that's what campaigns are all about, you know, one man gets up and says that he will not escalate the war in Vietnam and the other man says that he will. And you just vote for the one who lies the best and keeps on a straight, an honest face. So that you won't have that

in Alabama because you know what the duties of a sheriff are, but more than that is that once that sheriff is elected he can't do anything outside of its bounds because everybody knows just what his duties are. [Cannon]: Now let's say you elect a sheriff. Who controls politics in Lowndes county? Is it the courthouse? [Carmichael]: Yes, that's the courthouse concept, we call it the courthouse concept. Negroes have to gain control of the courthouse in the Black Belt counties. [Cannon]: As the sheriff operating by himself couldn't do much except not beat up negroes or work on minor reforms. To get a thing else you have to change a lot more. [Carmichael]: We're changing everything. We make no bones about it. In Alabama, in the Black Belt counties, for example Lowndes County, where 80 percent of the population is Negro, for one. Whites control and run everything, every single thing. And they run that based on a racistic attitude. They have no respect for the negroes to come into the courthouse, and in fact

that courthouse has come to be an oppressive tool. Negroes are afraid of it. When they go to pay their taxes they go there with their hats in their hand. Now we're going to change that and the only way to change is to get rid of all those whites. It's very simple, we make no bones about it, we're taking over the political machinery. That political machinery now in existence is tied up to the Democratic Party. That Democratic Party holds in a Kennedy. It also holds an Eastland, it holds a Carson Meyer, and it holds a Wallace, and when those four guys sit down to table and talk and they make a compromise, Negroes get hurt. And what we have to do is to make it so Negroes do not get hurt so that you don't have to be interested in a Democratic Party, I mean the Democratic Party has shown just where they stand with the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party. They told the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party that "we don't recognize you but we recognize Coleman in Johnson and all the other racists." They have the power in Mississippi and so we said to them "fine, in Alabama we don't recognize you, we're the power in these counties and that

has to be." [Cannon]: What pressures have been brought against you on the county level and on the state level? [Carmichael]: Well there's been shootings and regular violence but we're getting used to that now. Aside from that they've been using all sorts of propaganda. "It's a Black Muslim. It's a Black nationalist. It's putting the Negro vote," regular propaganda type of stuff. People don't seem to be bothered about it because we've had white nationalism for so long and while two rights don't make a wrong, doesn't seem to me two wrongs make a right. Doesn't seem to me anybody is willing to right the wrong that has been committed for so long, except Negroes and they have to right it as they see fit. And that's what they'll do. [Cannon]: What your timetable? Do you have - do you see aiming for certain posts within a certain- [Carmichael]: November 8th. November 8th we're going to take over all the political offices in roll then. [Cannon]: Do you have enough - are there enough Negroes in Lowndes County registered to vote

now? [Carmichael]: Yes, there are. Yes, there are and we have until 45 days before the November 8th election, that sometime in September, to get all of them registered, and we'll have them registered [Cannon]: Now, what's the step by step machinery? In other words, how do you get on the ballot? What's the - each step by step. Were they primaries or? [Carmichael]: OK, if you are, [inaudible] a political party you don't vote in the Democratic or the Republican primary because it's illegal. You can't then vote until Primaries. [Cannon]: When are the regular primaries? [Carmichael]: May. On that same date you have a convention a county convention and this convention, we want everybody to come, all the Negroes, and they will elect the slate of candidates for offices. And 60 days before the election the names will go on the ballots [Cannon]: Their names go on the regular ballots. [Carmichael]: On the regular ballots, and the Black Panther, which is the emblem, goes on there, so there for people who are illiterate, can't read and write, they can just vote by the Black Panther and members of the Black Panther party.

[Cannon]: Now how do you qualify to get on the ballot, legally? Just by having a convention - [Carmichael]: Just by having a kind of convention and having you elected. That's correct. [Cannon]: I've read something about 20 percent of, what is that? [Carmichael]: You can't be called a political party until you vote. After the vote, if you receive 20 percent of the vote, then you have to recognize political party, so that we're called Lowndes County Freedom Organization, after November it'll be called Lowndes County Freedom Party. [Cannon]: Why are you organizing on a county by county basis rather than, say, taking all the Black Belt counties and making one party? [Carmichael]: Well number one, Alabama has a unique law that allows for such organization on a county level. That's the first thing. And the second thing is I feel very strongly about local politics in terms of how we organize. If you organize for state level I think things just gets too confused and you lose a lot, and if you organize for national level, it's the same thing that happen, there are too many compromises to be made. Too many what people call

political decisions and what happens are the powerful people make those political decisions, and the other people just get stepped on. If you control the county level and you can control everything else, and we're working for the county level. We're not interested in the state level or the national level. [Cannon]: What it sounds as if the county level is a kind of free, if you understand what I mean, of connections of being pressured or trapped from above and it doesn't, I don't think it's really that way, is it? [Carmichael]: It's not, but if you control it, if you have the power then you're in a position to make that bargain. You can make the bargain once you control your county and I mean, you can tell whether you're bargaining in this is what we want we have the power. If you go for the state you don't have the power and then you just have to get what you can. But once you control your county, I don't care who's governor, George Wallace or James Eastland. I mean they still have to meet that power on that level in the county. [Cannon]: Does it seem to be any quite strategy for keeping the power? [Carmichael]: Oh yes, there are all sorts of them. They've got Negroes who are saying the Democratic Party is the salvation for the Negro race.

They've got Negroes who say we're trying to split the Negro vote. And up until Sammy Young was shot they had Negroes who kept saying "Look at Tuskegee, look how nice it is." So after Sammy was shot they couldn't say that and we organized the Freedom Organization in Macon County. The other strategy is what Wallace introduced, new legislation to try to keep Negroes from voting in any way that he sees fit and that was what he asked for his own words on the floor of the legislature. [Cannon]: What happened with that? [Carmichael]: Well it passed seven to two, in what they call a study to find ways to keep illegals from voting. But that's all irrelevant. I mean in 1966 there are going to be Black people sitting in those offices, come hell or high water [Cannon]: Now are all local positions running in this election? Who can't [inaudible]? [Carmichael]: We filed a suit in Lowndes County to make all the offices void, all the elected offices void, as of November 8th because those people

were elected by illegal means, by murder etc., and that's how they got those offices, that disfranchise 80 percent of population. If the justice of this country, which as we've noted to be probably will not rule in our favor, will have the sheriff, tax assessor to county schoolboys, and tax solicitor open for voting. [Cannon]: What about when the other elected positions come up? [Carmichael]: Well some of them 68, some of them as far as 70. Well, we have such a democratic society I imagine that those offices will probably stay until somebody does something about it. [Cannon]: Now let's take the response of the Democratic Party. Has there been any official response? Do you think that they'll try to break up your activity the way, I think it was tried in Arkansas, which was by running [inaudible].

candidates? [Carmichael]: I'm sure they'll do that. Surely they will do that. I'm sure that pressure will not only come from the State Democratic Party but it will also come from the National Democratic Party. Johnson Johnson gave the voting rights bill, and [inaudible] the Democratic Party, they would get all the Negroes to vote in their party, they never have to worry about the south. Well, that's just not true, these independent political parties, if Negroes don't vote for the Democratic Party, they're in trouble, so it's to their benefit to see that Negroes vote for the Democratic Party. So I'm sure they'll use all sorts of means to stop the independent political organizations also become very dangerous thing if the idea spreads, for example in Lowndes County, the Dan River Mill has a building there that's just tax free. I mean what'd happen if we got a tax assessor and she taxed then River mills, which we intend to do, on the basis of the profit they they make. [Cannon]: Then Dan River would probably move out of the county. [Carmichael]: So be it, we'll have lost nothing, but what happens if that idea spreads?

[Cannon]: Yeah, OK, let's talk about it spreading. What about counties in Alabama that have 30 percent, 20 percent, 10 percent Negro population? Your strategy in Lowndes County and in the Black Belt counties seems rely on the majority of Negroes. What do you do about the problem when you have 10 percent or 5 percent Negroes? [Carmichael]: The first thing you do is that those Negroes organize themselves in their own interest. So Negroes voted Democratic Party across this country but then organize a democratic body. That's why in Chicago there it doesn't have to do anything, it doesn't have to do anything because Negroes are going to vote Democrat, I mean, so they don't move and they vote Democrat but they're not organized. So what those Negroes have to do is organize themselves and then they have a weapon. I mean even with 10 percent of the people voting you have some sort of voice. I mean, that's what we're about doing.

We're organizing Negroes to conserve all the gains they have made in the last six years in the last six years the Negroes in the country have come a long way and it would be silly to throw it all away over a question of whether or not you vote Democrat or Republican. That's irrelevant. You want to get to things that you've been asking for done and you do that however you see best and they see best by organizing themselves and maintaining control of those interests and that's what the Negroes in those counties will have to do to organize themselves and they can organize themselves and I'm sure they'll find some voices among other organizations in white community that probably have the same problems they do. But they have to be organized and they're not. [Cannon]: Do you see any chances then on the state level? [Carmichael]: Of course, if we organize. Alabama Negroes are 30, 35 percent of the population in Alabama. If those Negroes organize into one solid block the rest of the 65 percent people voting have four factions by three

factions. They have the Republican Party who's putting a lot of money to the state of Alabama this year to try and make its gains and they have within the Democratic Party a split between the Wallace, the Jim Clarks, and the Richmond Flowers so that you have three factions fighting for that 65 percent of the vote and you have 35 percent of your vote solid. If you can't at least control the state you become a very very powerful bargain weapon. That 35 percent of your vote and it'll be the same thing with that 10 percent of the vote. If you have that 10 percent that will organize it, it becomes a very strong, broadening force. [Cannon]: Do you say we want to use leverage from one county to another? In other words, a way that a county with a well-organized Black Panther Party can help out Negroes on a county with, let's say, 20 percent or 10 percent Negroes? [Carmichael]: I mean, once they've organized or not, if they're not organized you can start

sending, like we're doing, people who are organized to go out all over Alabama, they do the talking to organize other Negroes, that's buffering a lot of people in Alabama that been saying that SNCC has been splitting the Negro vote because now you've got Negroes from Alabama who saying that they should join these freedom organizations but that if in fact that those Negroes are organized, I don't see why they couldn't make certain political deals, as it may be, I guess, to help out the other counties next to them you know in a state wide level they sway an awful powerful voice that's 11 counties in the Black Belt. And if they're all organized only 30-35 percent of the vote in Alabama, they become a very powerful weapon. [Cannon]: When you talk about extending, you know, moving out of the Lowndes County that you you don't reject the idea of coalitions entirely, do you? In other words, what about poor whites? Or white moderates? [Carmichael]: White moderates, I

have my feelings about what that mean. I don't know what that type of animal is but. No, I don't reject coalitions. I just say that what Negroes have to do is to realize that when you form coalitions you aim towards what people call national interest and the national interest is never the same as Negro interest. So they have to maintain the only interest first, and then move. Certainly they can form coalitions but I don't see any coalition forces in the country that SNCC could hook up with today or that Lowndes County Freedom organizations can hook up with outside of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party. There is no force today. We can hook up for example with the Delano strike workers. I'm talking about there is no established force in the country they can hook up with. They can hook up with new movements. [Cannon]: You see insurgent forces- [Carmichael]: Yes, insurgent forces they can hook up with certainly and that's being done. SNCC has workers in Delano, on the grave strike and that's just to see what

those sort of troops have spring up. [Cannon]: What about poor whites in Alabama? Do you think you, could say that organized Negro party working for certain economic interests could get poor whites involved just on the basis of economic self interest? [Carmichael]: Well, Terrence, you see, that's an academic question because the poor white is not organized and that the racial hostility is still there. But once we have the poor white organized we can move. [Cannon]: Well, the 35 percent of, what makes you think that that could stay a solid block? It seems to me that in Mississippi it's been shown that you can't keep Negroes in a solid block just as Negroes. That middle class Negroes pull off, they form coalitions with the whites. It's very difficult to keep any kind of solid block on a race basis. [Carmichael]: Well the difference is that the people we were flown out of Alabama for the sharecroppers and the strength of those

Negro politicians who all their lives have been sitting with the white moderates quote unquote, have been cut off from the Negroes that we work with. They have no power in their basis. I've been, I've had spent a year in Alabama, and in that year I have done nothing but go around and talk to people and given them strength and now those people have enough strength to move on their own. Why I said, one of the things the Mississippi experience we learned was that we did seek out coalitions and that's what the price of coalitions are. We didn't seek any out in Alabama. Just told people that they ought to realize from the beginning that they're isolated and that whatever they do have to do in their own home for the best. Maybe they'll win, lose, draw, tie. But that once they start seeking coalitions that the power is not theirs anymore. It belongs to the coalesced force. [Cannon]: Has there been any over reaction by the federal government on this? Have you tried, for example, to gain control over poverty programs in that

area or are other poverty programs that you work with? [Carmichael]: Yes, but we didn't get bothered fighting for poverty programs. It's more for people in the north I mean, they've been fighting for five months for money for the programs. That's just a very academic fight. The way to eliminate poverty is to give poor people money. That's all people in Lowndes County want, to give them the money and to go for these applications and red tape and bureaucracy who decides the programs is just too much that people don't understand half of it and they just lost interest. They just lost interest. Aside from the fact the poverty programs and it would come through George Wallace, Negroes say that "well if George Wallace just wants to approved their money," it's just absurd, so they said OK. And George Wallace said "well I'll appoint a fair minded man" which he did. And then the money had to go through him, which of course, had to be vetoed and have to go see if the federal government, I mean, it was just a tie up and I refused to work on it, I don't work for the federal government.

And when I start working for the federal government, they'll pay me $25000 a year. I work for a SNCC a $10 a week and my job is to organize people to overthrow the governments that are now oppressing them, not to organize and to beg for money from the federal government. If they all control those county government offices they won't have to beg for money. Money is there, they'll just take it. [Cannon]: I want to go back to my first question. What is, what strength does does industry or business have in Lowndes County? Suppose you had a black political structure and a white economic structure. This the only way of breaking out of that? [Carmichael]: I see a way of that quite the coquetry of the problems I have my own questions in my own mind. If I broached those questions so people usually say I'm a leftist, or a communist or an anarchist. Whatever those terms mean. But it's clear to me that the Constitution of this country was written

by property owners and it was some time before people who didn't own property could vote. And I would think that the property owners who wrote the constitution voted for their own interest, not for the interest of the people who didn't own property that's what I mean, so that they have to give people something that will equal the power if you didn't own property and that was the vote. Now what happens in Lowndes County when you have 90 percent of the people who are property-less voting and they now control politically 15 percent of the people who own the county economically. That's what I'd like to see. I don't have any questions or answers, maybe some good American political scientists could answer the question for us. I don't see Negroes are any better off than anywhere in the country, whether in a ghetto or in that nice photo there. They're still property-less. And in Lowndes

County they can't gain any more property because land is not just being sold. So what's going to happen to those people, how they're going to live, where they're going to move, it's going to be interesting but it's going to have to be used as an indicative scale of what's going to happen to the country in terms of that question property-less people start asking those questions. And in Lowndes County for example, negroes who get evicted of their land have to live in tents now because they voted, they see me every day and I go up to canvas and talk to somebody says "you told me to vote." "You told me I'd get better houses. You told me I'd get better schools. You told me I'd be a first class citizen. Now I lost my house. You get me a house." See I can't just walk away and say "well, that's part of it." Those people need a house. [Cannon]: So how do you handle a question? [Carmichael]: We've been trying to put them up in tents and squeeze'em in with other families and have split up their families. It's clear to me that Negroes don't control the resources of the country and that the people who do have to speak to that. It means that Negroes will have to really touch seriously the question of Vietnam. That money is going to have to

stop going in and it's going to have to go into Alabama. So there's going to be to our interest to stop that war. Not even on a moral issue but a practical issue. [Cannon]: So you don't believe that we can both have a war in Vietnam and continue like Johnson claims? [Carmichael]: I think we can't because Johnson just can just keep ordering more money to be made. It just rolled off the press. [Cannon]: But that's a rural strategy you're talking about basically. I mean, how does that apply to ghettos? [Carmichael]: Well I think it wouldn't apply to ghettos as I think that for example in New York City what the Negroes have to do is to organize themselves. For example the political power of New York City in Harlem does not lie in home, it lies outside of home. In Chicago, it can be seen very clearly, the political power of Chicago lies in the daily machinery, it doesn't lie inside the community of Chicago. In Watts, it was very clear that the political power did not lie inside of Watts. It lied outside of Watts and so what were about very simply is doing something that we've been

talking about, that even Malcolm X was talking about, that political power has to lie inside the community and that's all and that's North-South, rural, industrial wherever you go. [Cannon]: But there's no mayor of Watts, there's no sheriff of Watts. there's no mayor of Harlem, or sheriff of Harlem, you know, that you can you can take over those positions. [Carmichael]: They organize a political strike. They organize in Watts. You got [inaudible] from Watts, don't you? Do they represent, is that power inside of Watts? [Cannon]: Not the way it stands out. [Carmichael]: No, of course not. That's what we're talking about. If those people were organized and had that power inside of Watts then they wouldn't have to be fighting over the poverty program money, over who gets it. The power lies into Brown's step and he fights over who gets the po- he fights over who gets the poverty money, not the people of Watts, because it's clear they're

not organized and that's the hard work that, that's ahead of everybody who wants to be an organizer. It's not as easy as being a student demonstrator, you know, it's much harder to be an organizer but that's the task. [Cannon]: How many people working full time in the Lowndes County project then? [Carmichael]: We just have two staff people in Lowndes County now, Bob Manson and myself, but we've polled from people in Alabama, the people in Alabama and Lowndes County do organizing in other counties now and that's the way it should be. I will leave Alabama by the end of this year and that work has to go on. That's one of the things I like about SNCC. One of the things about SNCC is whether or not it lived or died. The organizations that it organized would continue, as a Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party. SNCC would become irrelevant. [Cannon]: What are things SNCC learned, or I'll put it in another way, things the MFDP learned

from the whole challenge experience? Has there been much evaluation of that? [Carmichael]: It has been, I mean, a lot of Negroes have learned that there's no such thing called justice in this country, that's being out in the courts. There's less power in its politics and people who control that get it, it's quite simple, and maybe sometimes you can organize and you have to organize to meet that power base and that's what we're about in Alabama. We recognize that people aren't impressed by demonstrations but they are suppressed by political power. That's what Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party understood and understood that you can't go out for coalitions because coalitions are formed by people who have their interests at stake, not yours. And then when you go into coalitions with somebody who's already established there isn't very much they can get, you can get from them, but they get a lot from you that's what they learned at the Mississippi challenge when they had all these forces that were behind them all of everybody wanting to accept the challenge. And they also

learned that there is no such thing as justice in this country again, because the people who are recognized by the National Democratic Party as the official party, were the racist, were the criminals, were the murderers, they were the ones who were recognized, so that what they went and they just start from rock bottom and you start with nobody but each other and that's where you go. You don't look for anybody else who's already established. You look for people like yourself, who's starting out, who are on the outside just trying to get in. You look for people like the farm workers in Delano, you look for people like the freedom organizations in Alabama. If you don't you may find yourself coalescing with all sorts of forces and ending up being the Labor Party supporting the war in Vietnam. [Cannon]: OK, thank you very much.