Black Journal; 10

N-A-T Black Journal, show number 10, 58, 30, 328, 69. The following program is from N-E-T, the public television network. N-E-T Black Journal, show number 10, 58, 308, 69. N-E-T Black Journal, show number 10, 58, 308, 69.

We might remind White America that there is a B-A-FRA in our own backyard. Mike, people are wondering when the United States will come to recognize what some observers have called B-A-FRA American style. N-E-T Black Journal, show number 10, 58, 308, 69. ah

This child here, whom we have seen the day, is Vincent Johnson, who was born on January 15th, 1967. He's a little over two years of age. This is the first time we've seen him. We examined Vincent, and when we weighed Vincent, we found that his weight was about 22 pounds. Now, the average weight of a child this age should be about 28 to 29 pounds. He's 6 to 7 pounds below the weight that he should be at this age. What we have seen is that when food supplies are given and medical attention is given when the respiratory infections, the low blood counts are treated that these children start to grow, so that it seems to be a simple cause and effect relationship between the absence of proper food and the failure to thrive.

In a study of the children in Bolivar County, Mississippi, the Tufts Delta Health Center found to their surprise that babies up to three months of age were as much as 20% above the established norms. However, from three months on, they lost this advantage, and by the time they were one year old, they had dropped to the average for middle-class children. The drop continued, and by the time they reached two and three years of age, some of the children were as much as 15% below the norms. The total deprivation in which these children live affects not only their physical development, but also their intellectual development. We saw so much mild and moderate anemia in these children that we began to wonder if our standards were wrong because the levels of hemoglobin and the red cell numbers that we find in these children are definitely below that is reported in the literature, or are reported in the literature. We found that the children virtually never had meat, nor any other good solid animal protein, and we found, for example, that one child hadn't had meat in well over a couple of months.

We made a study of about every third child in the group that we had to determine the parasite's present, and we found that something like over 33% had some type of parasite, a warm present in the stool. One of the great still unresolved problems is that of taking care of the indigent mothers of this county and the surrounding counties. They simply do not get adequate medical attention, and as a private organization, we're very limited in how much we can do. It cannot be resolved by private organizations alone. It has to be resolved by either the federal government or local government.

In this city, we have three art traditions and three hospitals. Well, even with all the goodwill in the world, it would be difficult for them to deliver all the children of the county. It's not lucky, as they say, to keep up even with their paying patients. So the great need of our community is for several more art traditions, or for two general practitioners who would accept maternity cases in their practice. I deliver 26 babies, and 57, 58. I deliver 38 babies. And 66, I deliver 46 babies. But here since a lot of hard work going from place to place, from day to day, sometimes we leave home on Sunday and don't come back to the next Sunday.

Sometimes we have to do without water all at time. Some places, you go, or you don't have water for to drink themselves. They applaud me at the first three months of pregnancy. They ask me for my advice, what must it do bad? How do you must receive premium care? I tell them, you go to the clinic or either to your family, they'll likely check your family doctor first. And then goes to the clinic. I go over with them the first time. And when they get in there eight months pregnant, I go back with them to ask the doctors and the nurses was over there. Do this particular case. It's a rupture case, a bridge, or just a normal birth. I can't handle no cases but a normal birth. And it's very important that I find out that they don't have a normal birth. And I see to it. It's an understanding, I believe, that the perinatal and the maternal mortality rate is higher in the state of Mississippi than it is anywhere else in this country or abroad. And this approximately is about three times as high.

I would think that there are several reasons why Dr Helen Barnes, the only black obstetrician in Mississippi. One, of course, is that we have a great percentage of our mothers delivering at home completely unattended. The second is that if there is someone in attendance, it's usually an uneducated granny midwife who may or may not realize that the patient is having trouble at the time of delivery. And then, of course, there is the ever increasing problem of our mothers being progressively younger. And they do not realize that they have to come in for early prenatal care. And lastly, of course, if you wait until the last minute to get prenatal care, you cannot always help a condition that existed prior to the time that the mother was pregnant. Unfortunately, we do not have the bed capacity to keep the ladies in the hospital more than 24 hours. It would be desirable to keep them in. But we only have the obstetrical department only has a four bed capacity.

And if you're doing a delivery or two per day, you unfortunately do not have the room to keep these ladies. But if we do have one that severely nutritionally deprived, yes, we keep her on the service. Most of our students here in the Harry Medical College come from the south. I would say something like 64% from the south. These are mostly black students. Many have been educated completely in the south. Most of our graduates go to the northern ghettos to practice. I would say something pretty close to 80%. Some do stay in the south. But the larger number goes to the north. And they practice in the ghettos. Now some of the reasons why they go to the north, I suspect that they follow the immigration pattern for one thing. Another thing may be that the north has traditionally, at least more so than the south, offered the kinds of outlets, economic and social outlets which probably were not present in the south.

We feel there is no point in treating a baby with infectious diarrhea that comes from drinking contaminated water and then sending him back to that same home to drink more water from the drainage ditch and get sick again. And so we see health as a point of entry for all kinds of other social change in the things in the social order that make people ill to start with. The U.S. Guigar, director of the Tufts Delta Health Center. Besides providing health services, the center digs wells, repairs houses, and trains sanitarians like Shelton Woodley. And from this, they could get various disease, hepatitis and whatnot. Also as a breeding pool for flies, mosquitoes,

and flies will transmit the germ or the bacteria from this into the home and other instruments where the improper screening, also the city of Rodeo, has a sewage disposal unit, but they're not operating in this section of town for some strange reason. Hold inside the toilet. They actually are not inside the toilet. They are outdoor toilet with regular commode that's as the water connects them, which flows right out into an open hole that's used for a cesspool. And the absorption of the early throw on this, and this type of soil is very poor. So in the rainous season, there's a tendency to stay above the ground.

The Department of Agriculture says that if you have nothing to spend for food, you have to spend 50 cents. And unfortunately, you know, when you don't have 50 cents for food, you end up taking up credit at various stores. And it's a trend that's very difficult to break, because when families have a little bit of money, but not enough to spend what they're supposed to spend for food stamps, they could be supplemented with the commodities. But of course, by law, this is not permitted. You can't have two food programs in a county. I'm about 2 1 1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1. How do you get out of here? Well, you get your racket. You got no real bad news in the foodstamp?

You have any real bad news in the foodstamp? Only out of their income. I went out of their income and together, how much is this? The income? The income. It is, well, $88,000 to $80,000, so security. And $40,000, well, if you've got $100,000 to go in. And all expense comes out of just that because no one working, all cheering going to school. So all of our expense comes out of it. Comes out after you buy foodstamp? Yeah, including. Yes. Yes. Yes. How much do you pay for your foodstamp? Huh? How much do you pay for your foodstamp? $20,000. $20,000? $30,000. $30,000? If you're having a family, just two. $25,000.

$30,000. $26,000. $28,000. $29,000. And how many siblings are in the family? 91. 91? 19. 19. 19. 19. And how much do you pay for your foodstamp? $62. $62. Do you have any income, mother? I'll give you $132 a month, $132 a month, I'll pay you $62 for it. Well thank you very much, yes sir. I understand you've been sick for hours, six weeks, and tell me how, do I sickle? You know what kind of money is coming, you know, you're getting any money from the state?

No, I ain't getting any money from the state. Just no boss, right? I want a little help, I get heat years to tell me. And how much is that? Well he, just every week he deals with a rate of about $15 to $200 a week to try to help him as long, and then I have to turn it back around when I get my stamp, I had to borrow my money to get my stamp, man. You said you have to borrow your money to do what? To get my stamp. To get which stamp? The food stamp. What? And how many's in your family? So. I know these numbers are here somewhere. Jimmy? Okay. Now, is this enough food to last you a month? No it is. Do you have to spend additional money? Yes I do. About how much? Well about $25 or $30 a month, that's it. Oh, what? A month or a week? Well, in two weeks' time, I make it like that. And what do you buy? Well, I buy such as, you know, juices for the cheering, well, I have to buy a flower sometime and bacon pie and things like that, you know, to go in and then meats for

the cheering. Meat? What kind? Well, such as liver and, you know, a lot of freshness, you know, for some time for bacon and the morning time for making lunch or something like that. What do you get in the commodity, well, I get some lard, lalma, and the pintal beans, white bean butter beans, tomato juice, things like that, you know, are you getting cans? Meat cans? Yes, meat. What can? I don't know. Now, is this enough to last you a month? Yes, sure is, it's rice, grits, things like that. And how far do you come? How do you get here? Well, I won't say I don't have no transportation. You don't have any transportation? No.

Then when I get my food and I get some money, I'll still take me back. How far am I now from here? I'm just a good little piece of that down the road there, I'm going back to cook to you. Dr. Howard Meadows, director of the OEO Comprehensive Health Program in Lowns County, Alabama. Well, Lowns County is one of the poorest counties in the United States, boys up for capital income. The coin to save a, there was conducted under the supervision of the University of Alabama Medical School, the Alabama and Lowns County put capital income for the Negro population was less than $500 per year. We have approximately seven miles of running water in the county, approximately half of the county is in an area where water is extremely scarce, very few springs, shallow wells, just

will not produce very much water, you have to go down approximately 1,900 feet. And what's your pay for that? $4. Oh, 15 million schoolchildren in this country, fewer than 2 million are able to get a free or reduced price lunch. In the school we visited, only in the first four grades did every child eat lunch every day. Well, how much do you have to pay for lunch here? 15,000. Did it used to be more? Yes. How much was it? 26. And why did they love it?

Because most children they didn't have enough money to pay for. Do the children who get free lunches have to stand in a different line? Yes. No. They see the children who pay, they stand in front and those who have free lunches stand in hand. Many of the children have never seen the dentist and they do not know what a toothbrush made for. So in many cases we have to remove the teeth that are infected by excessive amount of gum trouble. Before I came here, it hadn't been a dentist in this area of Mount Bio, Mississippi. In 25 years, many of the patients had to travel 24 miles north of Mount Bio to Clark's Dale, Mississippi, or 18 miles south to rural Mississippi. And some would go as far as 43 miles to Greenville, Mississippi to receive downhill care. Since most of these people here are in the poverty class, they were unable to make these trips.

So therefore, many of them told me that they would take a strain and pull it teeth out themselves. Mr. Wacken. No. How about your water? How do you get your water? I have to towed water from across the railroad over here, a little place on the box scales. How about how far is that? Would you say? No distance. Half a mile. I would say quarter of a mile. Quarter of a mile. You care enough water for 12 people, 13 people? Well, me and my children both, you know, we still have 11 kids and all. That's right. And you and your wife. That's right. That's right. We've got 250 gallons of water per day on average. Something like that. Now, have you asked the owner about driving a pump, understanding the water table here is for the high?

Well, I have, but he's making something about it, it was cost too much just to have that well-redeed over there. Well, couldn't you just drive one here in the back yard on the side of the house, straight down on the ground, is on about 35 out of 40 feet? Well, at one time, he promised that he would help me, but after the wedding hour, all came on him. You know, he got back on, but he just refused so that you have a pump. That's right. All right. How many children do you have? I see. Have you had any of your babies by midwife? Yes. And here at home. I had most of them. You're most of them. I don't have three in the hospital. And what would the doctor charge you? Well, from all the time that I would go, I'd say, from maybe seven months until after baby God, sometime run a hundred and fifty dollars, and sixty-five, so much. Is your husband working?

He's working, but not thirty. About how much does he make in a month? Oh, it depends on how much he works. You know, all the planning is to have his reign that you threw. And the man that he works for, he doesn't have a cat in the croppler, and I say, you don't have cows. And he obviously has them every once in a while. I would say, maybe, some good months, maybe fifty or sixty-five hours a month. Dr. Donald Gatch, fighting hunger and disease in South Carolina, is being victimized by internal and external parasites.

While being treated for intestinal round worms, he is also recuperating from injuries sustained from an attack by a gang of white hoodlums in Bluffton, who objected to his work among black people. It was Gatch's reports that sparked investigations by the select committee on hunger and needs, treated by Senator McGovern of South Dakota. Incidents of disease and starvation are not confined to the South, however. Two thousand underprivileged families from low-income sections of New York City will be asked to submit to detailed clinical examination, biochemical measurements, and food intake studies. This is part of a ten-state federal nutrition survey to verify claims of widespread undenourishment among urban, welfare recipients. Last month, black journal examined the crisis in medical care facing black people. Dr. John Bowers, president of the Josiah Macy Junior Foundation, has just announced that the foundation has pledged grants totaling more than $1 million to support medical education programs for minority groups.

The grant is in response to the conspicuous shortage of black doctors and the absence of medical students in major universities. Josephine Baker, the sensation who dazzled Europe and the United States since the beginning of her entertainment career in 1926, was recently hospitalized, suffering from exposure and bruises. Miss Baker was physically evicted from her chateau in France. Miss Baker has been sharing her home since 1939 with the succession of adopted children of many nationalities. Her fundraising activities and a return to the stage failed to bring enough money to retain possession of her chateau for the children. Dr. Kenneth Clark, noted psychologist, has asked the New York City Civil Liberties Union to intervene in behalf of 670 black and Puerto Rican students recently dismissed from Franklin K. Lane High School in New York. The Metropolitan Applied Research Center, headed by Dr. Clark, threatens to sue the board of education if students are not promptly reinstated.

The school system is charged with violating the rights of students by expelling them without a hearing, without the consent of the students or their parents, and finally, without due process. Interestingly, the teacher's union strike, which last year closed down the entire school system, was largely based upon union opposition to teacher removal without due process. Now the teacher's union supports student removal without due process. New York people have affected the political climate of America since its beginning. Our forced contribution and economic development of the South has been unparalleled. And the cruelest irony is that in the South, our political freedom has been greatly restricted. The social revolution, which has been dramatized by the era of the civil rights demonstrations, is giving way to the fight for political rights of black Americans. Since reconstruction, the black man has been virtually shut out of the political process in the South. The many years of non-violent direct action campaigns by civil rights organizations

reveal the true nature of the repressive conditions in the South. Selma, 1965. The bloody Selma march and the long fight which preceded it resulted in passage to the voting rights bill of 1965, thus ending the most flagrant forms of discrimination at the polls. Black registration jumped dramatically. In three years, it has now doubled to 3,200,000. Today more than 62% of eligible blacks are registered. Mississippi alone increased registration 800%. This was the beginning of a political revolution. We had moved from a situation in 1944 where blacks were barred from voting in the so-called white primaries to a position of potential power in 1969.

These gains were accomplished in the face of harassment, intimidation, and with a constant threat of violence. Well, it's just, isn't safe for a person to be around without any protection. It's very much like living on a forest among lots of beasts. It's not something that you just go around talking about, but you just expect something to happen at any time. I would just be afraid to be out without a gun and without any protection. Where's yours? Your mind's here. That's one of them. Shut one Negro man. Just simply cause the extra man and say, look, did you go out there and vote for the Niggas? He said, yes, I voted for my color. And he shut this man down just like he's a dog. Now, we're not having that type of thing in Wilson County code. We're well-organized. And we're organized to go to the fact that this is that we believe in self-preservation. You should admit me and miss me, I'm not going to miss you. You're that simple. No, they came in to get violent because they were just as violent as they are. So therefore, if they be violent, non-violent, whatever they want to do, we will do it to. We never taught non-violence here in this county because we realized our people wasn't

violent. There was a white people who were violence. So we thought that they were the ones who needed teaching, but our people got together most of them carried their own guns to protect themselves. We don't have, we don't worry about that because we know that they aren't going to use them a lot. You're looking at them. On time they use them when you turn your back and if it's night, when they sneak up behind you and blow your brains, I don't want to see them. So what we've done, we got more guts than they have because we don't care how guns openly. And we know that we have guns, it's no question about that and we'll use them if necessary. In rural Alabama, the Lone's County Freedom Party, known by their symbol of the black panther, responded courageously to these threats.

This is a monthly political meeting still influenced by the church tradition. Party founder, John Hewlett. And after this long struggle, we still have people who come out here only Sunday night and listen to us, tall, who have worked in this country, are still sending their children to these overcrowded schools. Let me say this, the elected officials of this county would do everything possible to keep your children out of the best schools. They control their equipment, they go into these schools, in fact they control the entire county, they control everything. And they're going to say the best for that children, like any of us would do. Let us do our part, let us wake faithful, let us try to get the best out of life where our boys and girls would be able to endure this life, like other men's and women's have enjoyed in the past, thank you. A system of discrimination and oppression leads many rural blacks with a sense of alienation,

a kind of mental enslavement. I go to Sunday school and tradition have a greater effect on human humanity. And tradition never was right, it was just a custom of doing that, right. So then tradition is so we have lived under this kind of condition so long that some of them will feel to come up and be on a parallel, I don't know, I'm just on my parallel. Black political power has shaken up the white power structure, the frequent response, arbitrary raising of polling fees, efforts to abolish offices or turn elective offices into a point of ones, redistricting to dilute our vote, intimidation of black officials and economic reprisals, all have been directed at limiting our political power. These tactics take strange and devious forms.

In Memphis where a black mayoralty victory seemed possible, a runoff law was hurriedly passed. Yes, they went out into the white communities and fried in the white community by telling them that unless we change this law, we're going to have a nigger in the mayor's office, we're going to have them in the council, we're going to have them in all levels of city government, elected officials, somebody we can't control. This was that selling point into the white communities and it's stampedeed a large segment of the white community and the law was passed. What was that law just playing with? We called a runoff law. The white people are trying to re-section you where you won't have as much power, you know, when you're in a certain district and you won't have as much power as you want. Well we always try to go to court, you know, they try, well one night I went to bed and didn't turn over and I woke up in another district but we steal them a door. We have to go to court whenever it's necessary.

Finally, Lou Hamer, Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party. I'm not. I've been very concerned with young black people in Mississippi and there's no need of getting an education running to some other place. Fight and make it right here. I take a chance in Mississippi cooking a wood Chicago because we at least know where we are here. They got some of the same hypocrites up there, it's just like these white racist guys. You can tell from what, you know, the wildest boats that he got, you know. And that's where we'd have to do our thing, right in Mississippi. My daughter died as a result and I couldn't get a doctor but I was still willing and going to fight for all of our freedom and regardless of all the fame that we went through, in 1963 in 1964, we didn't have many people registered in Mississippi but today we have 60 percent of the black population registered in Mississippi. We have far too elected officials in the state of Mississippi and one day you will be proud when you can say Senator Fallon Lou Hamer, because I'm on my way here.

This kind of spirit and leadership has led to the election of 400 black officials in the south. Three years ago there were less than 70, although this is still only token representation for some five million southern blacks of voting age, significant gains have been made. The Voter Education Project, which convened this historic meeting of elected officials, has made a great contribution all through the south. One of their workers, Tanya Banks, has come to Woodville, Mississippi to assist two recently elected members of the school board. The problem? How to fire the school principal? No, do you still think that you can get the support of that other white member on the board? No, I haven't had any talk with him since the board met, but if he still feels as strongly now as he did then, we are, you know, he's really on our side.

So if he signs with you, then you'll have enough votes to fire this principal, that's right. So the problem is getting them to vote on at the next meeting, right? If you're going to teach kids to have some kind of moral respect for people, you must be able to show them, you know, and your own performance of your duty. And he has a bit of fusing him, that's any of his fused to at least hold in the recognition with the community. I mean, he don't know anything about the community. When he's fly about night, he just comes in and he makes money, he goes. The State House of Representatives at Lanta, Georgia, there are 12 black members of the House and two in the Senate, more than any other Southern legislature. Their presence has meant that questions regarding public policy and the black men are aired, but their efforts to pass major legislation to benefit our people has been largely thwarted. For instance, Senator Leroy Johnson has been trying to pass a teacher tenure bill which

would prevent teachers from being fired for their political beliefs and activities. And I introduce the bill for the purpose of protecting teachers generally, but naturally I was concerned about protecting black teachers. Obviously, if an integration suit is introduced in a small county, it affects the black teacher. The black teacher would of course be the first to go regardless of a qualification. In other words, the Education Committee said to heck with teacher tenure, we don't want it. And I therefore assume, Senator, that it's all right for teachers in Atlanta to have tenure after three years as provided by the rules, but it is not all right for teachers in Tattinall, Tum, Quiller, and other counties in Georgia. Senator Tattinall, Tum, and other places in Georgia, if they want to have tenure, it's up to the local board of education to set up a ten-year rule whereby they can control their own teachers and do what they want. Is the Senator aware that, under Senate Bill 23, a teacher even after having served three

years may be dismissed for insubordination, for inefficiency, for lack of professional conduct? Senator, you're very well aware that I'm very well aware of everything in this act because I've studied it as well as you. But I would just like to ask you back, how many teachers in the Atlanta Board of Education in the Atlanta system have been dismissed for calls since such time that we've had the ten-year rule? No, not that I know of. I can assure you quite a few. Quite a few. No, Senator. I've represented many of them, Senator. The bill was finally defeated 20 to 29. As a member of a minority group, I'm accustomed to fighting against great arts. The ray of hope is that we receive 20 votes and it takes, of course, 29 votes to pass the bill out of the Senate. Now, we're not going to give up. Someone said our head is bloody but unbound.

Senator Johnson is in the tradition of Southern Black legislators who served during reconstruction. They introduced bills for health and welfare, educational and penal reform, which improved the condition of the Black man as well as the poor whites. However, noxically, whites were victims of their own prejudice as a white backlash swept these Black reformers out of office. The same racism has held the South back ever since. The Mississippi Delta has been hard hit by far mechanization and for many Black's conditions of life are desperate, but they had one hope, politics, and they responded by recently electing Representative Robert Clark, the first Black man to serve in the Mississippi legislature since 1892. Quite a few people want to know what can the President of one Black man do and a legislature with 177 other white people, but my presence there can serve to bring to light the injustices and the laws of the state of Mississippi. My presence there can further serve to give hope to all underprivileged Black people throughout

the South. Most of his efforts are directed at helping his constituents in their daily battle for survival. I'm President, trying to develop a housing project for entire homes county to get people out of shacks like this, but just looking around, we are presently working on a housing project that's going to do something about houses like these. And we find that the business sector that we have an opposition from for a housing project are the individuals that own these projects. We might need Joe's cooperation for signing some papers or so forth, and if we do, can I count on your cooperation? All right. Thank you. Thank you all. See this is the age-old thing, all of the in the past they have been good to the so-called top-nickers, and then they expect the top-nickers to be satisfied and don't

say anything about what's happening to the rest of them. The outrageous violation of our rights is an everyday occurrence in the Delta, and Representative Clark devotes much of his time to coping with the corrupt and discriminatory practices of most state agencies. The price of this man's food stamps have been unaccountably raised. $250, and it was too high for you to buy, is that correct? What's your income? Did your income increase? No, it didn't. Why did your price of your stamps go up? You don't know? I don't know. Well, I'll tell you, we'll check on this. What we'll do, we do have some money here that we have raised for emergency food or programs like this. We're going to let you check with Mrs. Hot Tower, and we're going to feed you today. And we're going to check into this to see why did the price of your stamps go up without your income going up. The real power in the South is held on the state level, where the most important decisions affecting our lives are made.

Dr. Reginald Hawkins recognized this, and became the first black man to run for governor. Our ran for the Office of Governor of Mark Carolina last May. Due to the fact that Mark Carolina had been laboring under a myth, that they were the most progressive southern state, as it pertains to the black man. And I knew that this was false, and that there were attempts in this state to turn the clock back on us, more or less, to take away the gains that we had made. So not only did I run to win, I ran to identify and to build up a third force within the state of North Carolina, so that never again would the black man be left out of political frame state of North Carolina. Before this running, the blacks had been used by the politician in order to defeat the liberal candidate. So by my running and discussing the issues as I did, I was able to get 20% of the vote and become the balance of power to North Carolina. That's the definitely need for core initiative.

The black people, the young people, and the poor people within the state, along with the liberals, need to run together a campaign built around commonalities. We're going to get into that white home. We're going to get to the black man, and we're going to get to the liberals. Who together comprise the majority within the state, and I say to the politicians in 70 and 72 that they better watch out because we're going to have some astute black politicians in North Carolina who's going to tell it like it is. Charles Evers, whose brother was murdered in 1963, has just announced that he'll run for mayor of Fayette, Mississippi, heading an all black slate. What are the aspects for victory or good? How are you feeling? Are you going to vote for me next, sir? Yes. Amazing. Yes. We'll have all these people run here. You're going to talk for him so we can get some better houses. In 1966, there were no blacks registered in this county. It was too dangerous to try. But Charles Evers has changed all that. Oh, there were a bit getting a little wet, but I had to click that hole. They're about to make it more wrong, they don't have anything for you at all.

Suppose you had tried to register three years, go over there and do it. Ah, there was one outside and they had a ring. They ran you on. They used it. Vote for him right here. Yeah. They'll buy a run and vote for him. Sure, they go vote for you. I know you. You're OK. Yeah, I know you. It's 7,000 niggos in this county, and 2,000 whites. And this is the kind of condition we live on. Then now we have got the white foot out of our number, about 2 to 1 registered. We've tried to be fair. We didn't elect before. We could elect all niggos in the past, but we didn't because we thought they might were changed, but they just won't change and they haven't changed and they have a constant denial of the right to be represented. So we can decide that we're going, how are you going? We decide that we're going to have to take over the government and all the give out about a fair shake. We'll come May 13th. We're going to take it. We're going to take all five of them and the mayor. They can't fool us no more and we don't pay the attention.

We're going to vote them all to hell out of our office and we're going to vote our folk in. We're going to run this town and other town in this state. And then when they're three years from now and the governor's up, they're going to be this again. We're going to have people running for the various office on the state level, and we mean that. We're not going to ever have nothing here no more just for the asking. They want to fight for it. I am the smoke king. I am black. I am darkening with song. I'm harkening to wrong. I will be black as blackness can. The black of the mantle. The mightier. The man. These are the words of W.E.B. Du Bois, the black scholar, who was 100th birthday, was observed recently in ceremonies in the black community. Poet and philosopher, his uncompromising teachings shook the racist foundations of this society.

He set the stage for the modern day freedom movement in the United States. And he encouraged unity among African peoples through the doctrine of pan-Africanism. Hounded and persecuted for his political views, Dr. Du Bois died in exile in Ghana at the age of 95 on August the 28th, 1963, one day before the famous march on Washington. It's a pleasure again to be back at the Schoenberg collection as a branch of the New York Public Library, and to be with the curator, Mrs. Jean Hudson, and Mrs. Hudson the last time I was here with you, we didn't get a chance to talk about W.E.B. Du Bois because this year would have been his 100th birthday. How about the doctor himself? Did he use this library or the collection very much for his own research? He often did, but he tended, as most scholars, due to accumulate a library of his own, and his own home. You know, he pursued these studies over a period of, well, 70 years at least. You know, something else I discovered too, they're talking about Du Bois are these little brownie books.

And was this something that he wrote in a spare time, was this a regular thing with him? This was a regular activity, and I think it's interesting to recall now that he was so much interested in young people, and even in 1920, so this is when this was published, that our little brown youngsters needed to have some help in handling themselves in the white world. Well, now, I don't remember any recollection of any study series of books for white children even as early as Du Bois. I think he was fine there, yeah. So you feel that this library now, or this collection, can serve other uses as it served him to other scholars that came here? It is, and for the first time, I think the ordinary people use it, you know, just to average people. There was a perk, people off the street, like me. The kind of person Mr. Schomburg was interested in. Okay, fine. Thank you very much, Mr. Schomburg, collection, it's a gas. I don't think most people, most of us, anyway, know about the role of black people played in the purchase of Louisiana.

The Haitian Revolution of 1797 to 1804 marked a decisive victory in the black man's struggle for emancipation. Tusson Auverture, who began the struggle of the slaves at St. Dominique, let his troops to victory over the Spanish armies. And later, when Napoleon's army invaded, he counter-attacked with a scorched earth campaign rather than surrender his people to the enemy. He was betrayed in a phony truce deal with Napoleon. This brave general died in exile, but the Haitian people won their freedom under a successor Jean Jacques Desolines, destroying the 15,000 French army in 1803, and that's a sizable force in those days. And Desolines' victory marked the first military defeat for Napoleon, 12 years before the much-coded Waterloo. The loss of 60,000 men, the French withdrew from the island, and Haitian, a rather Haiti emerged a free republic in the western hemisphere. It was this victory by black men that enabled the United States to purchase the entire Louisiana

territory from the defeated French for four cents an acre, what happened to our mule and forty acres. J.B. Stona, well-known racist segregationist lawyer from Georgia, has been hired to represent James Earl Ray in a new trial in connection with the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. a year ago. He said that he will help Ray change his plea from guilty to not guilty and will ask for a new trial. It is of interest to know that Stona, an officer in the segregationist states rights party, has been involved in a great deal of litigation regarding civil rights conflicts. According to the New York Times, Stona has also been active in white vigilante groups, serving as a chief clan officer in the Ku Klux Klan in Chattanooga, Tennessee. In 1945, he formed the Stona anti-Jewish party and mailed out pamphlets urging the removal of Jews from this country. While the world wonders about a conspiracy, and what role James Earl Ray may have played in that conspiracy, one year later, the grief over the loss of Dr. Martin Luther King remains.

I just freaking to walk out the door when the special bulletin flashed on the television, that Dr. King had been shot. And I just stood there, you know, a long time. And then a little while later, they said Dr. King was dead. My anger was that of any other black person anywhere in the United States. The Fourth of April, how could this happen to a man that had given his life, not just his self, but for his fellow man? And I was angry, and there's a whole lot of other people were angry, that he was that non-violent, but he had to die that violent. So I said this by Dr. King, he had a good thing, good deal. I thought a whole world and lot of it.

And I hated that they stopped him like the deal. And I just said I was just going to stick to a good deal of his problems. Now he said it over and over and often that he would like to see a time that come when the children, black children, sit down and play and eat together and do now. And I tried to carry that program out, and I'm still going to try to carry it out. His personality and his image was that of a giant, somewhere between the giant and God. Let the God tell you, let the God tell you, listen to that.

Right? If any of you around, when I have to meet my day, I don't want a long funeral. And if you get somebody to deliver the eulogy, tell them not to talk too long. And every night then I wonder what I want them to say, tell them not to mention that I have a Nobel Peace Prize, that isn't important. I'm not to mention that I have three or four hundred other awards, that's not important. Tell them not to mention where I went to school.

I'd like somebody to mention that day, that Martin Luther King Jr. tried to give his life serve and others. I'd like for somebody to say that day that Martin Luther King Jr. tried to love somebody. I want you to say that day that I tried to be right on the walkway. I want you to be able to say that day that I did try to feed the hungry. I want you to be able to say that day that I did try in my life to close those who were naked. I want you to say on that day that I did try in my life to visit those who were imprisoned. I want you to say that I tried to love and serve humanity. Yes, if you want to say that I was a drum major, say that I was a drum major for justice, say that I was a drum major for peace, I was a drum major for righteousness. I will hear it.

Yes that I will remember that day, I'm not living in this world. I'm not living in this world. I'm not living in this world. I can live on this world. That's it for tonight, brothers and sisters.

Next month, black journal will look at the South again, focusing on the economics, legal and cultural aspects. And for those of our brothers and sisters in New York area, the next black journal will be aired on Monday, April 28th. And if you live outside the New York area, please check your local television listings. Until next month, then, I'm Lou House with William Greaves, one gay-so-gay. I'm not living in this world. I'm not living in this world. I'm not living in this world.

I'm not living in this world. I'm not living in this world. The preceding program was made possible by a grant from the Polaroid Corporation. This is NET, the public television network.