Eyes on the Prize II; Interview with Amiri Baraka

Group A. Market please. Okay. Tell me about, and if you can look at me in New York, what was your image of Malcolm? And how did he influence your writing? Well, it's greater than I think in my, it's a particular era, a particular age. And for many of us Malcolm summed up the spirit of age, which was not only resistance to white supremacy and imperialism, but aggressive resistance to it. You know, I think a lot of us had been raised watching Dr. King get beat up, and we had seen the students,

you know, the students in the Greensboro and people, you know, dumping ketchup on people's heads and drag and people out. And so when Malcolm and the Nation of Islam rose up with the whole message of self-defense, you know, along with self-determination, self-respect, I hit a chord in a lot of people. And I think I was just one of them, you know, who took that to be my particular feeling, and my line about it, you know. What did he represent particularly for black men? Does that mean I heard a language? Well, you know, I don't think it was I, myself thought of it as man per se as opposed to woman. And I thought of it as, you know, the image of black people particularly. I guess there must have been something in that in terms of, you know, maybe, you know, black men standing up. But I took that as an image for all of us, you know.

Like, because when I saw Fannie Newhamer, I identified with that too, you know what I thought of it as black people, you know. And... Welcome. Okay, if you could describe that meeting at the World War of Malcolm in 1965. Yeah, it was set up by Muhammad Babu. I'm sorry, again, they won't hear my questions. Oh, the meeting in 1965 with Malcolm was set up by Muhammad Babu, who was the leader of the Zanzibari Revolution. And the three of us met in the world often and talked. Babu was staying in the World War. And so, you know, Malcolm, I met there. And really it was to have a discussion about, you know, the state of, you know, African-American politics and African politics, you know. Malcolm had been to Africa. He had come back not long from his tour of Africa. And then I think he went to France, I think,

went to Europe and they wouldn't let him stay in France or something like that. But he had just come back. And we were comparing notes about the movement, the state of the movement, and what was going to happen. What was your impression of Malcolm at that meeting? Well, I thought, you know, Malcolm was a great leader. I mean, I mean, that further, you know, confirmed that in my mind. You know, he talked about the nature of building a United Front, what needed to be done, and that particularly with some of us, rather than denounce some of these mass organizations that we should be joining him and trying to influence him, rather than just, you know, standing on the side, denouncing him as backwards, you know. And he really, I think, was, that was during the time he was trying to put together the OAAU, you know, modeled on the organization of African-American unity after, you know, the split with the Nation of Islam.

And that's really what we were talking about, how to expand, you know, a Black United Front, how to create a strong or kind of black organizational resistance and presence that would include not just one, you know, particular organization, or one particular religion. You remember, he was in the nation, then he came out and became a Sunni. And all these moves and outcomes were aimed at trying to, you know, come up with a secular Black United Front. You know, it's interesting that that was King's last discussion. I had with him a week before he was murdered when he came to my house. Here in Newark, he talked about a United Front. It's very interesting of trying to pull together, you know, the so-called militants and the so-called, you know, nonviolent or, you know, mainstream civil rights people. So it seems that both of those leaders were very conscious, ultimately, of the need to build a Black United Front

in the real terms, not just an organization calling itself a Black United Front, which is really, usually what happens, you know, some people get together and then they decide a United Front is everybody they like, or everybody who relates to them politically, when that's not a United Front. Could you also give me a personal sense of welcome to having a personal impression? Malcolm, well, I think Malcolm impressed, I mean, people who saw Malcolm and who understood what he was talking about. I think he impressed me like that. He was a sincere, forceful man who understood with a great deal of clarity what had to be done to, you know, resist white supremacy and to resist the whole kind of national oppression that Black people were subjected to. And I think he was a man who had dedicated his life to that, you know, and I could see that and feel that. And indeed, I think many of us at the time felt the same way that this was what we wanted to do with our lives, you know,

to fight against this kind of, this kind of scourge, which by that time was he getting even more open, if you remember. I mean, the Kennedy knocked off, yeah. Let me just ask you, how did he personally, again, in terms of persons towards personally effect your writing? Well, you see, you can't make it more than the influence of ideas. I mean, unless you're going to have him guiding my pen, you know, it's a question of the ideas and the image of Malcolm represented in terms of standing strong, standing tall in terms of what this oppression was, you see, the question of the oppression of Black people is so constant. It's not like it's something that we don't know about. It's so constant in our everyday life. And to see somebody who represents taking a stand, a forthright, and sincere stand against that, and says the things that have to be said, no matter what the consequences are, and, you know,

tells the truth, the truth about these things. That was very impressive to me and to a lot of people. And certainly, when you see these kinds of, you know, vacillating, opportunist, supercarsious, niggros that many times supposed to represent us, who will not tell the truth longer than 20 seconds about anything, you know what I'm saying? And at that point, Malcolm came, you know, he came through because that was after the King thing, and after King was assassinated. So Malcolm had come to the fore as the kind of major Black leader, you see, which is why he was killed then, because that's when he, I mean, King wasn't killed then, but once they killed Kennedy, then a lot of Black people began to see that the so-called nonviolent thing, you understand what I mean, was not the way. In other words, I think that Dr. King's influence had come to,

let's say, it was stalemated by the Kennedy assassination, you know, the march on Washington, I think, was the kind of high watermark, and at the same time, the beginning of the end, I think, for that particular domination. And so the whole Malcolm's preeminence began to be clear, the fact that nonviolence would not work, you know, the fact that Black people had mainly been nonviolent, and all they had gotten was violence and return, the whole question of self-defense, and also the question of imperialism being the enemy. Malcolm began to be clearer on that, you know, when he came back from Mecca, and he used that as his means of saying that finally was not the color of somebody's skin that was at fault. It was the nature of their politics, you know, and the whole question of internationalism. That was very important, you know, and Black people,

and people generally began to look at Malcolm now more closely, because, you know, the nonviolent thing had been, I think, proven to be ineffective to some extent, and the fact that Kennedy, who Black people looked to as, quote, the only person who's going to make this nonviolent thing work in the first place, since they had killed him, it became clear that these people would kill anybody, you know, to, I mean, since they had killed Kennedy, you know what I mean? It became clearer, you know, they would kill anybody, and then, of course, right away, didn't Malcolm? Talk about, describe what you're doing and how you felt when you hear that Malcolm's assassinated. Well, I mean, for me, it was a declaration of war. I mean, I felt that it was like open. No, for, you know, the Malcolm's assassination, for me, it was a declaration of war. I mean, I took it as a straight-out, you know, attack. I mean, really, a kind of open attack that could only be met

with, like, some kind of equal attack. I mean, I don't think there was anything that made me as, I mean, seriously outraged, you know, in the sense not only of being angry at the murderers, but of losing, you know what I mean? Of having lost, you know, some kind of great person and being outraged at the sense of the forces who could conspire to do that, that these people thought that they could actually make you submit to them, that they could make black people submit to them, and that they would kill anybody. And, you know, the only thing I think that did for me, and a lot of people was strengthen our resolve, that, you know. Just go out for me, what you're doing, and how you feel when you're here. First here, Malcolm's assassinated. Well, you know, it was, I don't know,

I was downtown at some book party at a bookstore, and it was a Sunday, and we had already formed an organization called the Black Arts, and I think hearing about that, you know, that he had been murdered. It just made the people that I was with, resolved that we were going to go to Harlem, that we're going to move. I felt outraged, I felt mad, I felt like I should be involved in trying to redress this, that it was, you know, just too much, that the whole thing had gotten beyond, gotten beyond the case of just reacting indirectly one way or another, or in some other kind of way, that there had to be some direct answers

that Black people had to fight back directly, and, you know, consistently and continuously against this kind of, you know, the madness of people that actually thought that they could continue to make you a slave, that they could continue for eternity to have you, you know, submit to the madness, you know. And, I mean, I feel that way even today, I mean, that's one thing, I think, that the whole kind of element of rage in terms of, you know, imperialism and racism has never left me. That just, I think, just made it deep in. And then what happens when you leave the party, you go to Harlem, during the assassination? No, not that very moment. You think it in an apocryphal way. We organized a thing called the Black Arts Up in Harlem. I think I was living downtown, I think, by the next month we had, you know,

what this building had opened the Black Arts, which was a group of people, group of Black people who were trying to put together an organization of Black artists. And so, to us, that meant that that had to be now, and it had to be done, and people needed to quit jiving about it. And they needed to, like, you know, if art really was going to serve the people, if it really could help make revolution, then those of us who thought that you'd get on with the work of it are shut up about it. That's the way I felt, you know. And you're so adamantly connected with the music, and all the arts. And when you said something about a new book about Malcolm and training being reflectors of the same life together, can you talk about that a little bit? Well, you know, train actually the whole movement. I mean, the arts reflect the social movement all the time. I mean, the confusion in these western academic circles, I mean, you know, like these universities

and these critics that are serving white supremacy and imperialism, notwithstanding, the arts are only a reflection of society. You know, so when you have a social upsurge, you always have an artistic upsurge that reflects that, you know, so that the whole anti-slave movement, you get the slave narratives, and, you know, the great speeches and orators and rhetoric from the black convention movement. When you have the whole Garvey Du Bois, African Blood Brotherhood at the beginning of the 20th century, you got the Harlem Renaissance, you know, the Negroes and the Negroes and all that stuff. In the 60s with Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, Snake, the Panthers, you have a black arts movement that reflects that because the artists who are most sensitive to what the society is doing, and particularly the people that they, you know, who they draw their life sustenance from. The art has the same kind of desires, you know.

The art wants the same thing so that the, somebody like Coltrane who's breaking out of the standard stating of, quote, you know, the American popular song as jazz and jazz solo, is a classic kind of case because just like Malcolm moving through different levels of experience, I mean, you know, Malcolm one time was, you know, Robert, you know, Pimp, you know, he used to sell drugs. He was an intimate with all the musicians because he used to be a drug supplier. Still, he was a man of culture. It's incredible. He was a person who exemplified the African American people in a way that those, you know, civil rights and quotes leaders chosen by white academics and white corporations could never be, which is why he was dangerous, you know. And so Trane, I mean, he would come up, you know, out of the South and, you know, church music.

And then went to Philadelphia, play with all the rhythm and blues groups, big Maybell. And, you know, finally, coming up through bebop and Charlie Parker and then finally, you know, had gone through that whole gamut of black experience. And so when he came to the point where the society, black people generally were beginning to make a leap, you know, a kind of revolutionary leap in their thinking. I mean, his music paralleled that. I mean, you know, we'd stand up and listen to Trane, play a 30-minute solo, you know, and I mean, you wouldn't even know, I mean, it was the time had passed because it was all of that feeling, all of that energy, all of that striving and all of that rage and all that beauty, just reflected our own feelings at the time. And I think I always hooked him up with Malcolm because of the fire that, you know, I mean, with Trane, get down and start playing one of those, I mean, just mind-crushing solos that would be screaming for 20 minutes, just screaming, and screaming, and screaming,

and screaming, you could hear, say, the rage of black people talking about, you know, America. I mean, you could hear not only Malcolm, but you could hear, or, you know, somebody like a rap brown, you know, or you could write here, stokely, or you'd hear, you know, the Panthers. I mean, you could hear that the rap, in other words, I mean, you know, and rap music, I guess, is a further extension of all that feeling. I mean, it seems like it's the best part of us that the poetry and the music that's come into the 80s, you know, when you get somebody like Public Enemy talking about it takes a nation of millions, so hold us back. Then you can see that that is a continuum, you know, that it contains both the politics and the art in it, even though, you know, people want to, you know, diminish it, but they don't understand it, they diminish it, the same way they diminish us. You know, they diminish it like they diminish our children. I mean, how could Public Enemy be serious since our children are, like, dope addicts, and unserious, you know what I mean? Sorry, let me cut here.

Okay. How and why does agriculture begin to affect the young, the culture and politics of African-Americans? Well, I guess because the... Sorry, I didn't just mention it. ...about Africa. I think the whole African national liberation struggle had intensified after the Second World War. And by the 50s, you know, you began to hear about people like in Krumah, you know. And then I think the most dramatic, I know, for us, the most dramatic thing was, of course, Lumumba. What was that 1961? Something like that. When, you know, they killed Lumumba at the time, the United States was in charge of the UN. And Lumumba was, of course, the first premiere, independent nationalist premiere of Belgium. What had been the Belgian Congo, and Congo,

and, of course, the Rockefeller and the Belgians, you know, US government colluded to kill our Mobutu, the Negro that's in there now, it was directly responsible for it. And so for a lot of young black intellectuals, that marked a kind of coming to consciousness, you know. I remember a lot of people went into the UN. I remember I was picketing in front of the UN. I met people who were writers that I hadn't known were writers. I had met them, for instance, Oscar Torrey. I met him out there. You know, a lot of people who were artists and, you know, scholars of one kind or another, just young black people. The Lumumba thing, you know, sparked the kind of rise in consciousness, you know, and the resistance, I think. Is that where you begin to see the African dress and the end of? I think that's, it deepens from that point on, you know. I mean, Africa at that point, then the whole liberation struggles begin to be emphasized. People like in Krumah.

People like in Krumah. People like Cabral, people like Secretary. They begin to come to the fore, you know. And of course, the South African struggle, you know, there were people there. And African revolution was gaining some kind of a place and, you know, young black intellectuals consciousness here in this country. And then, of course, Malcolm talking about Africa. And, you know, the Mao-Mao rebellion, you know, even in New York City, you know, which people think is relatively sophisticated. They used to have, there used to be a store, I remember, I'm Broadway. They used to have photographs in the windows that were trying to depict the Mao-Mao rebellion, the way they try to depict the Palestinians now, some kind of mad terrorists, you know, and they had pictures of Kenyatta and pictures of the Mao-Mao. It was supposed to be like taking white people's heads and, you know, raping white nurses, you know, all kinds of trying to make the Mao-Mao seem like they were the beasts and the monsters, not the Belgians

who cut off people's hands and not white supremacy and imperialism, which it is. And, you know, even to this day, you know, with the invasion of Grenada and so forth. So, what are you saying that there's a different image that that Arab America will have? Okay. Let's go on out. Twenty-one set. All right. Tell me the personal story of why you decided to change your name or tell him you did that? Well, we had been, you know, more influenced by African, of course, the nation of Islam and that whole question of African cultural revolution, you know, and the whole question of just black consciousness, you know, was getting emphasized in the 60s. And, after I got arrested in 1967 and the Newark rebellion, you know,

and my head split open, my teeth knocked out, sent a jail and whatnot. I met the brother who had said the prayer over Malcolm, you know, how she shared him, Jabra. He came to my house at the time. I was living on the side of town on Sterling Street. And he came in there with some other people and said, if I was a leader, I needed leading information. But anyway, he, he, I mean, I was right for that. He told me he wanted to give me this name, which was Amir Batakat, which is Arabic, because they sent me Muslims. And since Malcolm had become a Sunni, you know, I was, you know, could be influenced by that to that extent, you know. And so, I thought it was good. I changed it further, modified it and made it, you know, add the band to a Swahili eyes instead of Amir Batakat, which is Arabic, you know, became a midi, Baraka, which is the Swahili pronunciation, because I was interested in the African emphasis. And that was it.

And, you know, we were identifying with Africa. We were identifying with revolution. And even after, you know, I mean, I got a tidally mamu when I belong to a cultural national organization. But all the kids that Amir and I had, they were all had Swahili names, one got a European name. And so, it would keep kind of out of character for Amir to be the only hero I was walking around when I got, you know, races and Aminas and Amidis and, you know, Shani's and Obalajis, you know. Was it, I mean, a big personal decision to you? Well, at the time it was, it was, you know, part of the spirit of the time, you know, the zeitgeist. I mean, it was something we wanted to do. Whatever we was, whatever we thought we had to do to do it, we were going to do it to make any difference to us. The question of the slave name actually was kind of a, we thought of it as an honor to take on African names, you know, to get rid of, you know. And actually, if you look at the, our history, you find it's not the first time,

although black people right after the Civil War abandoned the slave master's name, they would take on Anglo sounding names, most of them, some of them took on other names. But they would change their names anyway, because they didn't want to be, you know, named after the slave master. So they would drop that name and take names. So black people would change their names. So the thing about black history is why it's so important, is the things that we think that we're doing for the first time. We've found that been done before. Like, back people have burnt down every city, black people have burnt down every major city in the United States, at least twice, except the ones that just got settled. They had burnt down New York City twice before the 19th century. You know, I mean, they had burnt it down in the 18th century. I mean, in terms of, they didn't burnt down New Orleans and Birmingham and Atlanta, for the same reason. So in terms of our history, once you know it, you see that black people have been trying to get out of this for a long time, and have been doing the same things. I'm talking about images now. What are you seeing on in film, radio, whatever, in terms of black images as you're going up?

And I'm talking about Tarzan and Shuffle. Well, that, I never, all of that stuff, it might have had an effect. But when I was a kid, I always looked at that, with a cold cast in my eye. I knew that was people making fun of us. You know, I mean... I'm sorry, did you back up in this mission? Oh, in terms of black images? No, that's why we were starved for them, because that's why when somebody like a poitier came on the scene, all later, in Belafonte we were so happy. Even the brother that came before him, James Edwards, we were, we thought it positive. I mean, you know, kids, because we never saw any. I mean, that's one of the reasons we like Sabu and Terhambay, because they were colored looking, you know. You know, I remember when Richard Conti, we used to identify Richard Conti, because he was least dark looking Italian, you know what I mean? But, you know, Tarzan and things like that, I mean, we always knew that that was supposed to be some kind of... I mean, I always knew that that was supposed to be a put on. Of us, and even Mantan Moreland,

I mean, it drugged me that people thought they could do that to us, you know, as a kid. I mean, it made me be kind of pissed off that people thought that they had the right to make us look like that. But at the same time, I thought Mantan Moreland was funny. Same thing with the, you know, the rest of those people they were poking fun on. I thought they were funny. The problem was, I knew that the people who had them on were trying to ridicule us. So I always had that kind of a duel. I mean, Mantan Moreland still has the most reasonable view about death that I've ever seen. Stay all the way away from it, you know. Do you think that those negative images though had an effect on the way you saw ourselves? Well, there's no doubt they would given that. In terms of a negative imagery, did it have an effect on this? There's no doubt that it does have some effect. In the sense that it begins to, you see a parameter, a limit, you see what the society wants to make you. But usually in terms of those of us who,

the great majority of black people, I think that the great majority always knew that that was somebody else's limitation on us. I don't think we totally, I mean, the ones who actually thought that they were those characters, we see them in public office and whatnot. Those Negroes, the little, you know, weak-hearted, you know, scary-acted Negroes, we can see them in our lives. And their minority, they've always been a minority. I mean, most black people saw that, and always stood away from it, you know, and knew that that was people who didn't like us trying to make fun of us. You know, and certainly if I didn't know it from just my perception, my parents and grandparents kept up a steady line of wrap about it, there was no way you could get away from the dinner table and not know about, you know, everything that was going on that white folks was trying to do to you because they would be running it down. They were not just sitting there passing it now, you know. You think it affected the white folks' sauce?

Well, it affected, they saw us like that for two reasons. One, yeah. I'm talking about it, it affected the white folks' sauce. It reflected the white folks' sauce. Number one, you see the whole Amos and Andy and Bula syndrome, it reflected their attempted caricature. What they didn't understand is that there was a legitimate humanity and humor that they wanted to ridicule that couldn't stand ridicule. They wouldn't, they wouldn't understand it. For instance, when they have step-in-fetch it, combine and ask, you know, when one of these people is trying to get step-in-fetch it to do work and step-in-fetch it makes a conversation. Step-in-fetch it wants to know, is Franco still dead yet? That's a heavy question, see. Now, you're going to ask this man, is Franco still dead? Of course, the leader of the fascist. Now, if the man is going to get off into a long dialogue about Franco being dead, it might take five or ten minutes to get through with that conversation. The step-in-fetching hadn't done no work yet. He's just standing there, you know. So, that's not lost on us.

You know, when we realize that that the change takes us. He had said the same for me, but for 1968, a sense of the Nixon-Blawn Order, with some Agnew, Co-Intell Pro, that kind of thing. What is it? What is the Native Black folks in 1968? 1968, I think, that we had this feeling of all-out conflict, all-out war. I mean, Nixon, Agnew, obviously, were corrupt and mad. The police were killing Black activists. You know, certainly they were killing the Panthers. I mean, the kind of backward leadership that had taken over from Bobby Seale and Huey Newton, Cleaver, had this kind of backward line of engagement where they would actually hold themselves up

in these little places, and be assaulted by the state. If you could start, then Agnew will not have seen the Panthers. Okay. Just mention the Panthers, and then knock it into place. All right. No, the thing about 1968 is that it was, you know, a feeling of war. It was conflict in Nixon and Agnew, who on the face of it were corrupt individuals who do not represent anything but violence and hatred of Black people. And I think that from 1967, certainly the intensity of Black resistance. I mean, there was Black people getting killed every week. I mean, Black Panthers getting killed. Public New Africa getting killed. All kinds of Black people getting locked up, ram, people having to leave Robert Williams, you know, Herman Ferguson, people in exile, and then people started getting murdered. You know, I mean, they actually did a kind of blood bath at the Black Liberation Movement.

I mean, not only after the Malcolm X thing, you know, but then all the people in between that, you know, Bobby Hutton and Ralph Featherstone, Fred Hampton and Mid-Granvers, and you know, they were murdering people. And my own view is the people in the White House, now those far right Republicans had a hand in that. I don't see why we wouldn't believe that this country could go so sharply to the right, with only one Democrat being elected since Johnson, and that was Carter around the Watergate tip, and not see that the whole wipeout of the Black Liberation Movement, and the other Liberation movements, the White House and Puerto Ricans, you know, they tried to destroy the young lords in the Puerto Rican community, you know, the Brown Barays in the Mexican community, and all these things were aimed at destroying the back of the resistance, the back of the anti-imperialist movement that now had joined with the anti-war movement for a kind of real, furious kind of force.

Mark. So why is it important now that this is not he said you, too, you got the mixed sense of oppression? Why do you think it was important to have a air condition at this point? Black political condition? Well, I think that the whole question of black power had arisen from even from kings, marches, and from the snake people, particularly Carmichael and the others, and the black power conventions that Adam Powell had said in motion in Washington, and second one in 67 was in Newark, and in 68 in Philly, and then I think 69, they had won in Bermuda, the government of Bermuda, banned most of the actives from even coming to. And so 1970, the Black Power Conference was transformed into the Congress of African people, and at the Congress of African people meeting in Atlanta,

a conference, a Congress, a conference was called to be held in 1972. I was a person put in charge of putting it together, which would be a national convention to choose black candidates to try to organize black political power development, and the Gary Convention, which had, you know, 2,000 delegates, about 8,000 people there, was an attempt to do that, to set up a congressional structure, if you will, a kind of, in terms of black history, you know about the convention movement and things like that. Yeah, I can't believe it. And yes, you also turned to 72. So why, why, particularly, well, 72 was the elections coming up, and what we felt is that if we could organize black political participation,

that we would have much more influence on American politics in 72. And so we had laid out a thing where we wanted to run candidates locally and, you know, statewide, and, you know, even, and have some kind of consistent, national political influence on, you know, candidates running for Congress and Senate, and mayors and everything else to try to really get some kind of a consistent, you know, black political presence. And that's what Gary was about. And if you remember, we had Shirley Chisholm declared for president that year, and then she gave her, I think she gave her support to what was the Democrat's name, who ran against, no, that was the guy who lost so miserably. I can't think of his name, got beat to death. But anyway, Gary demonstrated that the,

not only the black people felt that, they needed some kind of organized national political representation, but that was an important thing to do. What wasn't science-doubt, or what we failed to be able to deal with was the fact that the whole black electoral movement, you know, which was headed up mostly by those middle-class black politicians, that they would align themselves with the status quo institutions, in many cases. And... How specifically about the Coleman Young walkout? I mean, what's... Well, Coleman Young walked out because Coleman Young at the time was representing the United Auto Workers. He might still be representing the United Auto Workers, as Mayor Detroit. But he walked out because somebody had proposed a black union, where the unions wouldn't serve black people, that they should be a black union organized.

And so Young had to hit the silk, because he represented, you know, the UAW. And so he pulled the whole Michigan delegation out. I was the Secretary-General, and I was presiding on the floor, and I didn't know what he was doing. So we had to call a recess, and I had to go back there and find out what was on his mind, you know? And it turned out that was it. What did he say to you about that? Well, he first wanted to get, you know, he was just going through this kind of, like, quasi hysteria about it. But then people hit me to what was going on, and I talked to him and he calmed down a little bit, and told me, I can't go for this. I can't go for this. And he was assuming that I was pushing it. I mean, people always assumed, as I was the Secretary-General, that I was pushing the various resolutions on the floor, and just my job to raise them and get votes on them, you know? Same thing with the question of Israel, same thing with the question of bus and people assume they knew my position, based on the way I was handling the floor vote, you know? Well, I'll come up.

What do you think, and did you see the walk out? I didn't know what it was. I mean, you know, I didn't know. When I saw Coleman Young, and I didn't even know him at the time, I just knew it was the Michigan delegation, and they were one of the largest delegations in the convention, because one thing that was done very well was that we had proportional representation by black people, according to the number of black people in a particular state. And we had, you know, delegates, those delegates were elected, and they represented black people in those states, and all the states were represented. It was amazing to me. It was really impressive. One of the most impressive things that I've ever seen that throughout the whole convention center, of course, Richard Hatcher was the mayor of that town, so we had complete access to the town, you know, to the police and to the institutions, and seeing that whole hall set up like that, with, you know, the banners for each state, and black people being represented, and passionately arguing for these points. I think it filled us all with the sense of deep self-respect, knowing that ultimately, the only thing keeping us down was the man-man's gun,

that it wasn't anything else, that we knew exactly what we wanted, you know, and all we needed to develop was how to get there, you know? So in terms of Coleman, and we stand in that podium, as well, and how do you think? I just want to know, you know, it was my job to see that the things were running smoothly in terms of that floor, you know, presiding on the floor. I think all three of us presided, Hatcher presided, digs presided, and I would preside. That was the kind of little triumph for it that we put together. One was electoral politician digs. On the congressional level, Hatcher will represent local politics, and I represented the actives and the nationalists, you know? And so we tried to keep that balance, which I thought was a good formula for dealing with our different constituencies. But I didn't know what the Michigan thing, there were so many different kinds of wild things going on at one point to Roy and his lead, some kind of demonstration. Yeah, if you could just keep on for a second, because we have the footage. Oh.

If you could just talk about what you think about when you see that happen. Well, I didn't know what to make of it. Later, I attributed very negative things to it, knowing that it was just the UAW demonstrating against black organizing. Well, when you stand in there and you're looking at it, what do you think? I just think, like I always think, there's some bad job to do something about it. I mean, it's certainly not intimidating. Anything is just a crazy thing that's happening and it's got to be dealt with. So I called a recess. And so we got to deal with this. These people are walking off. I don't know how many delegates, a hundred and some delegates, getting them walking off the floor. You know, obviously, I guess, like they would do in any big convention, you have to call it to a halt. I think we call it to a halt another time when I was up there. They would call and say there was a bomb in there when we had to call it to a halt again, you know. Although to tell you the truth, I wasn't going to call it to a halt. I would be bomb scared until the police came out to the black police chief and say, you better call it for a couple of minutes. Because I didn't think it was a bomb. I thought it was just, you know, racist at work, you know, which it proved to be.

The other thing you mentioned is now, at one point on Saturday, Dix over does the same with the old rise and voice both. I think it was on the agenda. And you were then, and it's almost a sense of unraveling. And you then go to the delegations at night. Can you talk about that? Well, you see, there was always already that kind of interesting struggle between, you know, the forces of electoral politics. You know, the little petty bourgeois status quo, Negroes. Although I thought Charlie Diggs finally came a long way in trying to be more sympathetic to the mass line. And I think he paid for that, you know, because he was supposed to be chairman of the House Committee on Africa and then they bounced him out of there, you know, just about that time. Which is what they do, which is a pattern. But then you go, you go to the delegations. What happened at night? Well, I have to convince him not to... I mean, I went to the delegations to try to find out if how people wanted to handle that. People obviously were angry at the way it was handled.

The electoral politicians had certain things that they refused to deal with. I mean, they no longer saw it as, quote, their constituencies, although that was their line, that it was their constituencies that they were reacting to. They were really reacting to their relationship with the United States government in some kind of way. Certain of the lines they would find embarrassing. In the ACP, the Associated themselves from the convention, the day before the convention opened, we instead of word. Where Wilkins came out with an editorial saying he didn't want to have nothing to do with us, you know what I mean. But the electoral politicians who had to be drawn in it, because we drew them into it, we knew what we were doing. I mean, the activists, the nationalists, we drew the electoral politicians into it. Because they wanted a national strategy, there was no other way to go, except the way we were proposing. But once they got in there on the floor, some of the questions that came up were controversial. The thing on busing, the thing on Israel, for instance, the thing on the unions, the whole thing about a black political party. Jesse Jackson, for instance, got up and resolved that we should, you know, declare a black political party. Percy Sutton got up and talked about a black presidential campaign to nationalize the votes.

We can see which way that went. Percy Sutton's one out. Did you support the idea of the third party? Always. Sure. Sure. We thought that what we were doing was providing the transitional form for a third party, you see. When we thought about national black assembly, national political council, in my mind, I thought that what we were trying to set up was a kind of focused headquarters, if you will, a kind of developmental outpost for the beginnings of a third party. I mean, there's no secret that most of the stuff, yeah. So why does the idea of a third party not get endorsed by the private convention? Well, it was a furious struggle over it. It came up in many different ways. The idea of a third party did come up repeatedly. The idea of a third party, the idea of a black political party,

and variations of that, they came up. But you see, as I said, the electoral politicians who were committed in the main to the Democratic Party, some of the Republican Party, they were opposed to that. You see, Jesse Jackson, as I said, came up with the idea, he supported the idea of a black political party. The black bourgeoisie on the other hand, Percy Sutton came up with the idea of nationalizing the black vote by running a black candidate, which, of course, is an idea whose time has come for the last eight years with Jesse Jackson. Now, Jesse has taken that line, which was Percy Sutton's line. But I think it was the electoral politicians, the black caucus, that militated, and the various kind of electoral politicians who were connected to one of the parties, the other, mainly a Democrat, who always militated against an independent party, because they always saw their particular interests with the Democrats, so the Republicans, and still the same way. How did you feel about your things out? I didn't like that. And I still think that's a debilitating factor in the black liberation movement

that our so-called representatives are more hooked up to Democrats and Republicans than they are hooked up to the evolution and development of the black liberation movement. That is very negative, and it must be opposed. Okay, and go back again for me to learn that delegation after delegation after delegation, to try and keep them together, because you're afraid they might not allow. Okay, a description. Well, a lot of the delegates felt, you know, the masses felt that they had been used, that they'd been betrayed, that they'd been... Okay, fine, let's go around. A lot of the delegates felt they'd been treated undemocratically, that they'd been roughed off, chumped off by, you know, black electoral officials, black elected officials. I mean, Charlie Diggs was up there, and he was, you know, chairing.

And you see, there was the perception, whoever was chairing was running the meeting, you know, although it was true to a certain extent, you know, that Diggs and those electrophokes did not want certain things to come up, did not want them to get voted on. And their line of reasoning was that if you take this position, you're going to destroy this organization, or this united front attempt. You're going to destroy it as a mass vehicle, because people will shy away from it, you know. Well, obviously, they were talking about their relationship to the mass media and their relationship to the Democratic Party, more than they were talking about their relationship to black people, because I don't think the majority of black people would have shyed away from the idea of a black political party. And what do you do? I mean, to describe that night of going, because people tell me you were tired, I mean, you just were delegated to the delegation. Well, you know, that was, I started as my job. I was trying to see that the majority, who I always started,

I was going to speak for, because I wasn't an elected official. I wasn't a mayor or wasn't an congressman, but I was a black nationalist. I was an activist. And I thought a lot of those people had come to Gary because of our organizing, our, you know, pleading with people to come and, you know, be part of a whole black political development. And I thought it was important that the thing not fly apart, that we talk to the people and find out what could be done other than, you know, just walking out or, you know, just breaking down into, you know, like some even worse tactics, because, you know, I mean... What do you do then? What do you do? What do I do when I talk to them? No, what do you do when you decide I got to shoot this one right? Well, you go... I don't know what that is, it's so kind of chuck.

Okay, can you describe going around to get your delegations, to try and keep the front out? Well, it was the question of a lot of people felt, that they had really just been dismissed and deprived of the democracy, by the way, the elected officials, through digs, were, you know, handling this particular question. I don't remember what the question was, whether it was the question of busing or the question of Israel or the question of black party, one of those things, because they were the ones that were really, you know, controversial. But a lot of people felt that that wasn't right, that the things should be struggled out, and, you know, the elected officials were using their slick parliamentary manner, and the fact that they were organized to try to keep things from getting said and resolved, that would embarrass them in terms of their relationships with the Democratic party

and the media and so forth and so on, although they would always cite their constituency, who we were supposed to be in the first place, as the reason, that they didn't. So I was in the main trying to discuss with people, you know, what they thought, how they were going to approach it, that I didn't think that just by talking to the leaders of the delegations, the heads of the delegations, the people that I know, well, you know, you'd find that, you know, you'd talk to people who had influence. The sense I got out was that that night, you'd been up all night and you'd go, I'm in the delegation, I want people to know that. Yeah, well, everybody was, I mean, after those meetings, people wouldn't go to sleep, they would caucus, and each state would caucus, you know, and then there would be caucuses inside the caucuses, because didn't you had the elected officials caucuses inside the state, and then you'd have the black nationalist caucuses inside there, and then in a lot of time, there was, there was Marxist of somebody else, they be caucusing.

So I'd have to get to the heads of the various kinds of power focuses, you know, in there and find out what each thought they were going to do, and whether there was some kind of, whether we were going to have some kind of a court, whether there was going to be a united front, whether they were going to have crazy, or, you know, what they were going to do, whether you were going to put up a resolution, or you're going to walk out, or what you're going to do, and try to get some kind of record. And really, I guess like you would do if you were speaker to house, and the regular thing, you go around and you try to get people to understand, you know, what the greater good is, and to see that we have to be in this, and that I didn't like what was done, you know, and I'm talking to them, we discussing it, and we're going to try to find out how the democratic procedures going gone in here, because I can't go on, you know, and trying to, you know, at one hand, relate to my own constituency, you know, which in terms of black activists, the nationalists, and so forth,

the people who are not elected officials, the masses of people, and to, in other words, give them a sense that we were not going to be just misused, but at the same time, I thought that trying to hold the convention together, and the national black assembly together, and I thought openly that was a good idea, and it was an important idea, and we had to be willing to fight in there with these people, and not just, you know, nut out and throw up our hands, you know, so it was a kind of an endless talking to people in delegation after delegation, because I thought that that had to be done, particularly in delegations where you saw people had real problems, you know, where there were delegations who were protesting, or delegations who were threatening to walk out, or delegations who had had resolutions that couldn't be heard, and things like that, you know, so you had old piles of papers that characterized different delegations, and then I would recognize from, you know, standing on the floor serving, and you could see problems in different delegations what they were, and people were bringing me messages, and sending you messages saying, you know, New York wants to talk, you know, Illinois is going to walk,

you know, South Carolina says so and so, and so you'd have to look at these papers, and you'd have to play Fireman, and go to these different delegations, and find out what their story was, why, you know, and then there might be independent groups like Roy Innes and Korra, who got some other kind of like half-baked scheme that they want to try to mash on people, you know, and then, you know, people want to get into all kinds of pushing and shoving, and on one hand, like those kind of real, uninformed types, you know, so it's the gamut of political reaction, and if you're going to manage it, if you're going to see it, if you're going to be the Secretary General, that's up the job, seriously, then you're going to have to deal with all those people and see that come time for that gavel to hit, everybody was sitting there, and everybody was ready to go, and that they were there for business, no matter how drug they might be, you know, brother so-and-so, or mayor so-and-so, that they were ready to do business, and that they would be there, you know what I mean,

and the thing was going to go on, and we was going to follow the agenda, and that's really what it's like. And the slogan of the conference is unity without uniformity. Could you mention the slogan, just talk about what that meant? Well, actually, that slogan came from Ron Carringa, because we- Did you mention that? Yeah, unity without uniformity, and I had gotten, you know, associated influence back Carringa, influence in the society, we Carringa back in, it was about 67, you know, about that time, and that was one of the slogans that in his so-called doctrine, unity without uniformity, which actually is a united front, which meant that people had the right to maintain their own political views, even though they would submit in a united front formation to the greater need that they could agree on. You understand what I mean? That it didn't mean you had to completely abolish your views, but that there was an area in which you could submit

to common kind of, you know, common accord, you know, common discussion and diplomacy and negotiation for the sake of everybody's development. And so even though Carringa and I had separated by then, that's a rollout on 2113. Mark it. Okay, so last day, Carringa, what is your feeling as you're meeting Carringa? Well, I had been given a job to do, to assembly voted that I had to go down to Miami and see that the Black Agenda, which we put together, which was printed, we tried to get John Johnson, I never needed a printed and distributed, but we printed it. And it was the demands that the Black delegates made of any candidates who wanted their vote, president and so forth and so on. Unfortunately, when we got down to Miami, most of the Black politicians didn't do nothing. What I do mean is to get that sense of what you're feeling now.

Well, I felt that that was one long and positive step that we had accomplished. I thought that Carringa was something that we had done very positive and that now was the next step because I always saw it in terms of increments and steps and degrees and it was, you know, like any journey, you know, to get there, you had to take a series of steps and I thought, Gary represented a large step forward and since I'd been given responsibilities that went past Gary, it's simply meant I had to get ready for the next gig. And personally, I mean, you feel tired, you feel jingling. Well, I mean, the tiredness is always, I think, you know, the physical part of that is momentary. You feel really now, you begin to get your mind ready to analyze what has to be done now, what are the new tasks, you know, what folks do you have to contact, you know, what things do you have to do, you know,

and you begin to sum up and take a post-mortem at the same time, you know, congratulating people and I guess yourself to a certain extent. But, you know, I think there was a deep feeling for the people involved that we felt, I think, great respect for each other because it was a large project, you know, and it meant coordinating great, many black people from all over the world and to see that done and to see it done with such impact was a deeply satisfying feeling, you know, we thought for sure that we were, you know, on the winning track, you know, without a doubt. It cuts well. Good. It's nice. Yeah. Alexa, that's the highest part, too. Into new with Rocker. Okay. All right. If you can talk about your work in late 60s

early 70s before 71 in the prisons, but particularly in New York State prisons, and what kind of transformation you're seeing within the black prisons? Well, you mean black prisoners? You know, there was a great spirit of camaraderie and solidarity in the 60s and early 70s and people on the outside and people in the prisons because so many people were getting arrested in the 60s. You know, people were locked up with demonstrations, people were locked up in various organizations. Organizations were always going in, talking in the prisons to the extent that they could. I remember we organized a great deal in Trenton State and raw way here, not to mention, we were locked up in some of them, most of them. I know we were in Rikers and Sing Sing, and then there's a woman's prison over there in New York by the West Side Waterfront that we were in speaking.

I didn't even know it existed. But we've been in prisons to speak. And I know the activists always looked at prisoners one way of reaching a kind of potentially militant brothers and sisters who already locked up who had been disillusioned by America, who had been disabused of their illusions about America. And many times we're jailed either illegally or jailed simply based on white supremacy. And we always thought of the jails as a kind of explosive resource for revolutionary change. Certainly people like Malcolm X had come out of prison and the Nation of Islam had done a great job of transforming a lot of people who had been in prison. And some people in prison had been in the panthers and things like that. So we saw revolutionary activity as a means

of transforming prisoners into revolutionaries. And so the program of going into prison is organizing and speaking. And do you mean to see a change in the late 60s, for example, and within the principal of the area, do you mean, are they, what kind of... Well, the prison, you know, you get to change in the movement. The people are the same, essentially. The movement itself changes when the movement goes into decline. The relationship between, say, movement activists and prison activists declines. I mean, just like the black family gets weaker. I mean, it's all related to the question of social organization within the group. When the social organization of the group is more revolutionary, you see more progressive and positive dimensions and definition to the group. So in terms of these examples, now, when you're going to see a New York State prison, what are you seeing with the prisoners doing that is changing them? Organizing. You know, now you see more prisoners laid back just doing their time, you know, or... Oh, sorry. In the late...

Before I, for example, is that whole prison movement around George Jackson, what are you beginning to see prisoners doing in terms of reading and being open to what's going on around the black conscience? Like I said, there was a big connection between the movement and the prisons because a lot of people in the movement were getting locked up. And so they were being carrying that message into the prisons. And a lot of people were locked up directly related to movement activities. And so when they put them in prisons, it became, you know, a place where you could organize. I know when I was locked up in Trenton, the police did everything they could to put me in solitary. I dodged that. But when I was in Newark, the pen over here in Newark, it's a scholarly pen. They put me in solitary. They never wanted to have the activists in the population. You see what I mean? But it didn't matter. It was still strong ties between militant activity and people in prison because people in prison would resent the fact that they were in prison in the first place, particularly if they were there

around revolutionary activities. So there was a stronger tie. And as the revolutionary motion began to stall out, you know, the murders of Malcolm, the murders of Dr. King, the murders of wholesale murders and slaughters of Panthers and activists and lockups of people, then like the movement itself, you begin to get a stalling and a reactionary kind of tone that's in. And when you get somebody like George Jackson who is beginning to talk about reading kinds of those kinds of things, are you saying that also when you go into prison? Well, you always saw that. It depends on the focus. I mean, Bumpy Johnson, when he went to Alcatraz for 12 years, I mean, he educated himself. He had, I guess, a triple post-doc in literature and, you know, world culture. I mean, based on people who locked up like Malcolm said he read the dictionary was in prison. I mean, people make use of their time depending on their consciousness in prison. And you find some very well-educated people in prison because they got the time to do that. But during the period of revolutionary insurgents, the kind of focus of that reading becomes different.

People then are reading, you know, Fanon, Malcolm X doctrines and so forth and so on. And in Krumah and, you know, the whole question of organizing in prisons and relating to prison movement, deliberation movements, this becomes much more of the time. A nation of Islam was always well-organized in prisons. Some of the other organizations, like I said in New Jersey, we were well-organized in prison, the Congress of African people. We had teachers in the major prisons who went there every week, you know, teaching, you know, about cultural revolution and the Black liberation movement and things like that. So there was a closer tie based on the revolutionary, you know, character of the times. And do you remember seeing that when you wanted to do the prisons? Yes. And what, I mean, how would you say that? By the way, they were organized. They had many different organizations. The inmates were organized in different organizations.

Like I said, they had the nation of Islam, the Congress of African people, the Black Panther Party. They had them in the prisons. They had a, you know, a prison Black Panther. It was a prison nation of Islam, a prison Congress of African people. You know, the same things you saw in the outside. Now, in the inside, there's still our Black consciousness movements, but not nearly as many as there were. The nation is probably still there, not as much as it was, but you see more people now who, when you say it's the same as the outside, I mean that people are smoking as much dope, or are shooting as much dope inside as they are outside. You know, that's true. But you still have a core of people who develop their consciousness in their, when they're in prison, because it's, you know, they're in school. They see it as a school, not just in prison. And again, back to Malcolm, particularly since you mentioned it. What, could you tell me again, what was your image of Malcolm then before he gets assassinated? My image of him? Well, I thought he was the maximum leader in the movement. Malcolm X, I thought, saw him as the maximum leader in the movement.

I saw him as the spearhead as the kind of, you know, really I think that sums it up as the kind of leader, both inspirationally in terms of politically, that he was the spearhead of the movement and the cutting edge of it. Is he the king to take promise in terms of, as opposed to what you say with Dr. King? Well, for me, Dr. King, when I was a young man, I never really approved with Dr. King, what Dr. King did. I always saw that as something imposed upon us by people thinking that we had to qualify to be free. I never agreed with that. I just recently came to see Dr. King in a more progressive light, because Dr. King was much more progressive than even the image that was given out by his syncophans and followers, you see. But making a mistake, Martin Luther King was a positive force in our movement. The fact that a whole lot of these preachers think they can do the same thing,

just stand in the pulpit, it's not true. Dr. King was an activist, you know, and he was a very progressive man. Second sticks. Second sticks. Okay. You can go back. Second sticks. I'm sorry. You were talking earlier about the image of people who, you know, the sit-ins getting beaten in and that whole sense of, you know, not being able to retaliate. Can you put Malcolm's energy in that context that he was a different kind of voice? Hey, representative, different class of people. Yeah. I mean, Malcolm represented different class of people that I identified with. He represented the masses of people. The masses of black people never were willing to sit still and let anybody spit on them, you know, then to be brutalized so that they could appear to be, you know, civilized to white people, to those uncivilized people on the planet. So that, you know, a lot of us, when we were young,

rejected that, you know, that idea that somehow, because black people had never been violent in that sense. You know, our protests in the main were non-violent. When black people got violent, then you would know about it, you know. So that, that never appealed to me. What appealed to me about Dr. King later was the way I began to understand his thinking as it developed around the question of Vietnam, the question about activism. And finally, when he began to talk about the United Front and to deal with the whole issues of the workers, you know, which finally got him killed, the whole Memphis garbage strike, you know, then it became much more dangerous to the establishment. But I think then I began to see King in a little different way, you know. And how is Malcolm a different voice for you? Malcolm, to me, represented the masses of people straight on. You know, he was trying to talk about self-determination and self-defense and self-respect. He wasn't trying to appease, you know,

any part of the establishment. You know, that's essentially what the establishment, the white supremacist establishment was corrupt. And then Negroes attached to it were corrupt. That's what I felt. That's what I feel now. And I thought that when King first appeared, too much of what he said appeared to be couched in the rhetoric of the black establishment as it cow-tiled to the white establishment, you know. And later on, as I said, I began to see King in a different light based on his activism and based on the fact the development of his thought to him more. That he never represented that. He represented, to me, straight out resistance to racism and imperialism. That's a cut. Thank you.