Black Journal; 49; Special: Is it Too Late?

The following program is from NET. Can black people survive culturally and physically in America? Can we ever be a part of the existing white institutions or should we be developing our own? Can we as a people develop solutions to our dilemma fast enough to counteract the present rate of growth of the oppressive factors built into this society by institutional white racism? As black people, we must deal with the issue. Is it too late? Tonight on Black Journal, Reverend Ralph Abernathy, the Mammu Amiti Boraka, Dr. James Chief, Reverend Albert Clay, Congressman Charles Diggs Jr., Mr. Dick Gregory, Miss Dorothy Hype,

Mr. Roy Innes, Mr. Vernon Jordan, Dr. John Morsell. What is the present condition of black America? And what will black America's future be? Or will there be a future black America? In essence, is it too late? The special black journal program is designed to discuss that complicated question. For the next 90 minutes, we will present a live, unedited, two-way communication system between you and our Congress of black spokesman. We will be using television as an instrument of positive social reform, allowing black America for the first time to question members of her leadership and make herself heard collectively. This program is being aired live only in the Eastern and Central time zones. By calling regional phone in centers in eight cities, you can address

questions to our symbol panel answering these phones are members of the Friends of Black Journal. You can call the regional number nearest you and in the east, the regional area code and numbers are for the Boston area 617-491-5600 for the New York area 212-765-5960 for the Washington D.C. area 202-628-1222. In the Midwest, the area codes and numbers are for the Chicago area 312-591-6400 for the Cincinnati area 513-621-7200 for the Detroit area 313-871-8700. In the south, the area codes and numbers are for the New Orleans area 504-486-5511

for the St. Louis area 314-725-2460. We do appreciate your patience. Please understand that we cannot use all of the questions we receive, but every effort will be made to use as many as possible. We are also thankful to the members of the panel for accepting this invitation, understanding that there are a lot of time for discussion will be less than they are normally accorded in television appearances. We have asked that their responses be as brief as possible. This is our first attempt in the Black Journal series at using television for a live two-way communication, but we do not intend it to be the last. Indeed, there are many other Black spokesmen, but our physical and technical capabilities have limited us. We do want the public to understand that our Black leadership doesn't include persons not on this panel. Sister Fanny

Lou Hamer, president of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, was scheduled to appear with us, and has suddenly and unfortunately been hospitalized. She sends her regrets and her love. In selecting tonight's panel, we attempted to bring together a diversity of positions and philosophies held together by the common thread of concern for all Black people. The St. Louis Argus, a Black community paper, describes this event as follows. I quote, all over America, Black men and women of purpose will be sitting down with their children to view this historic program, to ponder on its message, to listen, to learn, to go forward. Each panelist will now make a brief opening statement, after which we will place your questions before them. Reverend Ralph D. Abernathy, president, Southern Christian Leadership Council. The Southern Christian Leadership Conference, known to many throughout our nation,

as SCLC, is that organization that was founded by Martin Luther King, Jr. and used as an instrument to redeem the soul of America. SCLC is now a national organization, working across the South and in the major cities of the North, for the rights and the needs of Black and poor people. Basically, we organized masses of people in non-violent community action movements and programs. We're working for the total liberation of Black people through economic development and control of our Black communities. We believe in amassing the collective power of Blacks, other minorities, all people, and progressive forces. We seek a radical change in our national priorities, a redistribution of wealth and power, and the creation of a nation of peace and human

decency. We also seek to develop and strengthen our international ties to movements of other people across the world. SCLC is that organization that will see to it that America feeds its hungry, houses its ill-house, provide adequate medical care for all of its citizens, and live up to its pronouncements and its dream. A mammo, a meaty baraka, executive committee, Congress of African people. The Congress of African people is a pan-African nationalist organization that as we believe in the unification of Black people, Africans wherever we are in the world, we also believe that we will not survive and develop unless we are able through unity to achieve self-determination, self-respect, self-reliance, and self-defense. We also work to unify diverse groups of Black

people, African people. We believe that there should be unity without uniformity that all Black groups must be able to work together around common purposes. Before I continue, I would like to state that the Honourable Elijah Muhammad is with us by phone from his home, and along with him is Minister Lewis Farrakhan. The Honourable Elijah Muhammad will, at the end of the visible panel, make a position statement by phone from his home. Our next statement will be made by Dr. James Chief, President of Howard University. One of the major issues facing our nation in this decade is the issue of quality education. Many Americans, Black and white, assume that quality education can occur only through integration, where integration has come to mean the destruction or closing of Black colleges and institutions of learning and Black students enrolling in predominantly white

institutions. At the level of higher education that is beyond high school, this attitude in acted into public policy has resulted in the continuous deterioration of one of the nation's most important, most strategic and most essential groups of institutions, the Black colleges and universities. After more than a century of service in educating and training, most of the nation's Black College trained population. These institutions have experienced during the past ten years, serious erosions in their resources, which have seriously affected the quality of their services, and which today threaten their vitality, and from a number of standpoints threatened their continued existence. Unless a major national effort is launched to change the public attitude toward the Black colleges and universities, and to provide for them substantial sums of financial

support, many of them will not exist by 1980. And those that do survive will have become either predominately white in student body and faculty, or so poor in quality, as to render them meaningless as collegiate level institutions. In such an event, America's Black population will be deprived of a major resource that is essential in our efforts to achieve for ourselves and the nation as a whole through social justice. The destruction and impoverishment of Black colleges and universities will contribute to the destruction of any possibility of this nation, achieving true democracy, true freedom, true equality, and true justice. It will be a national tragedy, if America through indifference, disinterest, and outright bigotry, allows the Black institutions

of this country to become academic wastelands. It is very clear that the development of strong and distinguished Black institutions, not simply the inclusion of Blacks in white institutions, is indispensable for the attainment of racial equality in this society. Reverend Albert B. Clegg Jr., Chairman, Black Christian Nationalist Movement. I represent the Black Christian Nationalist Movement, and I state the Black Christian Nationalist Movement's position. We feel that it could very well be too late for the Black man in America. Probably the next five or ten years will indicate whether or not the Black man can survive. Our struggle for survival is a very real struggle, and the white man has prepared genocide for Black people. Unemployment, the Black man is no longer necessary. Unemployment is going to be a way of life for Black people. We are going to face increasing dangers and problems as the days pass,

and we're totally unequipped as Black people to deal with them. We're a part of a slave culture, we have no preparation, we have no Black institutions capable of dealing with white racist institutions designed to serve only white people. We must deal with the problem that confronts Black people by building Black institutions, by understanding that only a separate disposition is a viable position for Black people. Any organization or any leader in America who today advocates integration is a full and an enemy of Black people and their survival in the coming years. Representative Charles C. Diggs Jr., Democrat Michigan, and Chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus. The United States is the second largest Black nation in the world. The West African nation of Nigeria ranks first having a population of over 60 million Blacks which more than doubles our own. The Congressional Black Caucus composed of the 13 Black members of the U.S. House

representatives believes that we are on the threshold of a new era of political power for Blacks, not only in America but in Africa and in the Caribbean area. There was a kind of heightened solidarity among Black people now who are becoming more conscious of the intricacies of politics as an instrument for change. We are witnessing the emergence of a kind of nationalism, of a kind of a Black awareness that has spilled over into the political arena on an international scale and the Congressional Black Caucus is committed to that kind of objective. Mr. Dick Gregory, social commentator. Is it too late? It could be if America insists on dealing with her problems with might instead of solving problems with right. It could be too late if

America insists on fighting the sick, degenerate insane war and Vietnam and not deal with the sick insane problems that confront Americans. It could be too late if America insists at this day and age that we are to run around the world, to guarantee foreigners a better way of life than we guarantee our own Indian brothers who we have locked up on the reservation who she stole this country from. Is it too late? It could be too late if America insists on solving her problems with political muscle instead of statesmanship ability. Ms. Dorothy Height, President, National Council of Negro Women. Black women face the double handicap of racism and sexism. And Mary McLeod Bethune recognizes this as far back as 1935 when she founded the National

Council of Negro Women because she realized that the black woman, whether she was trained or untrained, stood outside of the mainstream of American opportunity, influence and power. The National Council of Negro Women has encouraged black women to assume leadership roles and to serve as catalyst for social change. Today as a coalition of 25 national organizations, we've realized that it is too late to have divisions. Women from all walks of life, different ages, political persuasion, social and economic backgrounds are mobilized to help increase the strength of the black family and the whole black community. The work of the National Council of Negro Women is based on a philosophy that I think could be expressed in three words, commitment, unity and self-reliance. And the energy of its woman power is harnessed to fight such chronic inequities as racism itself, inadequate education and substandard housing, hunger and malnutrition, insufficient

child care, drug addiction, the lack of economic opportunities especially for women and their families in the rural south and the demeaning conditions facing so many of us as household workers. It is late, it's too late to think about a matriarchy, it is the time to think about the unity of the whole family and women of the National Council of Negro Women feel that in this day black women can make a difference for justice and liberation. Mr. Roy Innis, National Director, Congress of Racial Equality. The Congress of Racial Equality is a nationalist pan-Africanist organization of the Garveyite variety. We feel a survival of black America is threatened by racial schizophrenia that plays a great portion of black leadership. Malcolm Cole's problem, the problem of the house nigga against the field nigga is destructive ramification exists

yet today. Black masses are governed and led by an elite few who have split normalities between their black and white families. These racial skitsoids are leading us down the path of racial genocide to the propagation of forced integration and the calculated assimilation. Black people could very well disappear as a people and certainly lose or prospect for black political, economic and social power and unity. I say this feeling a profound sorrow and a hard felt concern for destruction looms critically before us unless we meet head on the problem of the white imposed leadership of the mulatto aristocracy and their ban to lackeys. Cole will not shirk its responsibilities to reveal this truth and expose this conspiracy against black people. Mr. Vernon, E. Jordan, Jr., Executive Director, National Urban League.

The National Urban League believes in a pluralistic open society one in which black people have the same range of choices and options as any other citizen. Urban League's action programs are carried out by 100 affiliates across the country and they serve the minority community that is in need of our programs and our community organization projects. We believe that a necessary precondition for an open society is the presence of a strong of strong black institutions and the achievement of economic parity. We say it is not too late for black people to get themselves together and to join with others, blacks, browns and whites to bring about the necessary restructuring of our society. We believe it is not too late to realize the political and economic empowerment

of black people and thus to achieve parity with those whose skin is white, whose opportunities have not been withheld and whose progress has been steady. Dr. John A. Morcell, Assistant Executive Director, National Association for the Advancement of Color People. When the NAACP was established some 63 years ago, a number of leading authorities in this field declined to join with it because they said it was impossible that black people could survive 50 years in this country under the conditions then prevailing. 63 years of history has passed and like my organization, I am dedicated to the proposition that it is still possible to achieve genuine racial justice and meaningful equality among black and white Americans through the social and governmental structures we now have

modified as needed through the democratic process. I believe that the goal of an integrated society nourished and formed by healthy cultural diversity is still attainable. I also believe that there is no guarantee that we will be successful, but I am convinced that if we have any chance at all, it is along the road which seeks a common American destiny and insists upon a partnership of equals along the way. The statement for the Nation of Islam will now be made by the Honourable Elijah Muhammad by phone from his home. Go ahead, please. Opening statement of the Nation of Islam by the Honourable Elijah Muhammad. Go ahead, please. Too late. I say it is too late for anything. That the black man, such as for the devilish

of white Americans, it is too late for that. It is too late to adopt the politics of the white man of America. It is too late for us to try to integrate with the white man. It is too late for us to continue the religion called Christianity that the white man organized by himself and for those who would want to be in such religion. It is too late to talk of integration unless we want to be lost in such integration. We have not never been such seen as a white

person unless the white man integrated and our family is white. By nature, we are different to people. We cannot claim ourself white if we are not born of the white. There are so many black people want to be white rather than black. Therefore, they will speak in that direction of the white. But I say it is too late on unless you want to taste hell for. It is too late. The end of the white man's time has arrived and therefore what rights do the black man want to go along with a person that

is doing the finally doing. That person should go ahead and take his on and we take our on. Salvation has come for the so-called American Negro to black man of America. Why should not he be wise enough to accept it? Your God help come in, not say in no spooky manner. He is in person and often told the black man of America money, good home, friendship in our work of life. I believe that you know these things is now true. I don't say that I hate the white man's respect for us. We surely got it.

We went to Washington and the white government of America honoured me better than all the black people in America's ever-held respected me for 40 years. They let me up, Pennsylvania, have a new, like I was a king or queen for me to say queen, like if I was a prince. For the new government somewhere else, I think the white people, they did a wonderful honor to me, twice that I did it, Washington. They have never disgraced me in the way of trying to mock me as a messenger. No, they honoured me and I think them, but the honor they give to me that marked like people never dared to do.

Out of Washington, I in Washington. So, this is true that they know more about me than my own people. They know that God helps raise me up, to taste the truth. They don't argue with me about it. They don't try to mock me, disgrace me. They are very nice to me. That is my black people, that is the one who does the mocking and disgraceing they try to do. But I want to say this, and this is, it is true. You cannot disgrace 827 of God, you disgrace yourself. I don't say this time to say anything it gets too late. I am coming to that end right. It is too late for us to go to work, to try to be equal in politics with the white man. You cannot be equal with him in politics, that he has made himself. You cannot go and get besides him if he gave it to you in office in Washington, to be equal with the white man while you don't know who he knows.

He makes them himself. I say we need to make politics of our own, if we want politics, make them of your own. We cannot use his politics because that they are made up of his know-how for self. And this thing that we are after today is something for self, and not something for the white man who has 6,000 years to have made his world and he has made it, that is no doubt he didn't lose one minute in making him a world. But we are this poor slaves who have been swathing down by the white drake in trying to do something for self. We have not did nothing for self.

On the big white people that do something for us, I don't give two cents for a black man hanging around Washington. Scargo, San Francisco, here we are in the country, big and white folks that do something for him. Get out and do something for yourself. He said you are free, take advantage of this freedom. He said that you can go for self, go for self like man. What's hindering you if he boldly tell you in the world to go for yourself? We are trying to go for ourselves and we must go. We are trying to dignify America whatever we state, our partners, our families, wherever we live. We are trying to dignify the country. We are not trying to make the country look ugly. We are trying to make the country look beautiful because we are living in it and we want to live wherever we live to be beautiful.

We are trying to do something for ourselves and we are trying to teach our people to do something for self. We are not trying to deal with the politician, black people. We are not trying to treat you brother. We just want to beat you too. That's all we want to do. Again we are trying to find. You may not write for me, but from farming comes everything that we get. Therefore we are trying to find. I am begging you all over the country to come in and to help do these things which I know that you will love me for teaching you to do these things and position. We cannot depend on the weak house of America. We cannot depend on the livestock of America. We got to depend on something for self.

Let us go to the good old age. If the white man will sell it all read it all easy to us and they get out of that age what he has done not only. We must do these things about laying around begging the white man for this and that. And I said to the preachers preach the gospel of dying for self and don't preach the gospel of begging. This is a shame for us after 400 years and a hundred years up from slavery to go and beg white people to give us anything. Go get it ourselves. If I'll hear. I have here on the south side of Chicago with the help of my father have that things that you never dreamed of doing.

We have a program of what we going to do for the south side in Chicago to show to you in our paper now within a week or so. And you will be happy. We want you want him for a minute down to overtake you. I said to you hungry is bound to overtake you. All kinds of bad weather that you have never dreamed of bound to overtake you. We are in this room of divine destruction of America. And America is now setting free of these things in them. Mr. Muhammad. Mr. Muhammad can you hear me?

Mr. Muhammad is the sound vision of the black man in America. Join on to it. Make note of the phone in center nearest to you in the east. The regional numbers are in Boston and Boston area. 617-491-5600. Area 513-621-7200 in the Detroit area 313-871-8700 and in the south, the numbers and the area codes are in the New Orleans area 504-486-5511 St. Louis area 314-725-246.

We have quite a few questions and would like to progress as rapidly as possible. First question is from New York City for Reverend Abernathy. Did you categorize the struggle between yourself and Reverend Jackson as a power struggle between black men? Well, there is no struggle between myself and the Reverend Jackson. As you will recall, Reverend Jackson served as a staff member of Southern Christian Leadership Conference and he did an excellent job by thinking that capacity as the director of our Department Operation Bread Basket and when he could no longer carry out the orders of our organization and be governed by the organization, he resigned, he quit and I understand that he is established now his own organization. There is no power structure between Ralph Abernathy and Jesse Jackson.

I'm fighting so that America will feed its hungry, house its ill-house, care for the sick and the needy in the war and Vietnam, solve our domestic problems here at home, stop spending billions for the moon and own the pennies for the poor. This is our program in SCLC. Thank you. The next question? Sure. I don't care about the whole concept of a power struggle between two black folks, neither one having any power is absolutely ridiculous and points out the basic problem that confronts all organizations that have been speaking here, other than core, even the Muslim herring did not deal with the basic problem of the black man's powerlessness. Black people don't have any power. Abernathy and Jesse Jackson can wrestle from here to Los Angeles, they still not dealing with power. Black people are powerless, they've been put outside of the whole white power structure and all the organizations, NAACP, Urban League, SCLC, National Council, Negro Women, all of

them are talking as though black people have power. Black people don't have any power unless we can begin to build black institutions and realize that we're dealing with a power struggle for survival, all these organizations are leading us straight to hell and genocide. If Abnathy ought to understand, it couldn't be a power struggle because neither one have any power. NAACP has no power, Urban League has no power, no black organization, no black people in America have power, they fight for survival from a powerless position, flat on their back, begging white folks and that was almost the tenor of the Muslim position, they were begging white folks, please, please sell us some land, give us some land, let us exist, white folks are good, that's a self-eat kind of thing that black folks find themselves degenerating into because black people have no power and they have to big white folks to give them whatever they want. I say black people and black Christian nationalism says we have to approach the whole problem in terms of power.

Black people have to begin to build institutions, every institution that exists, belongs to white people, was built by white people and serves the interests of white people and for black organizational leaders to be sitting there talking as though they have power, as though they represent some dollar, we want to represent everybody, we want to bring everybody together, we want to build a beautiful America, we don't want to build no kind of beautiful America, we want power for black people and we go have to fight for it, it demands confrontation and the willingness to do anything necessary to get power and we got to take it away from white people, white people are not going to give black people anything politically, economically or any other way, black man is no longer necessary in America and the white man is hell-bent on genocide, so we have to understand we've got to build institutional power to deal with the white man who has decided to destroy it. Well, thank you Reverend for destroying my point, this is merely a gimmick on the part of a white racist society to divide black people, there is no power structure to be struggled between Ralph Abinath and Justin Jackson.

Thank you. I can see if I can and if you could keep your questions as brief as possible but I know you need time to develop them. The next question is for Dick Gregory, what is being done about sickle cell anemia and what can black people do to help, this comes from Charlotte, North Carolina? One thing, one thing what we got to do is develop ways and means of doing some basic research to find out one, the origin of sickle cell anemia was a sickle-like shaped cell in the blood that guarded black folks against malaria and when we were brought to this country and got on the high, grease high starch diet that we are on, it created problems which was once a protection and so the millions of dollars we fixing to spend to counteract sickle cell if we would spend a little time doing some research and change the diet because the most black folks knew that so food was taken 30 to 40 years off of their life and almost charging a third of their salary for doctors and what have you, a lot of sicknesses we

die from, we wouldn't and I think the important structure of the black man's health be a sickle cell or anything else lies basically what to die because you are what you eat. Thank you. We now have an on the air call from Cincinnati, Ohio, would you go ahead please? Okay. We have a call, a message here, question for any member of the panel. Does the panel think the Democratic Party can serve as a tool for the liberation of black people or should it be necessary to create a new political party? No political party can serve as a tool if it's dominated by white people. Black people have to build their own institutions, their own institutional power base from which to work and the only possible power base that black people have is the black church which has to be restructured, its orientation has to be taken out of the clouds and begin to

build on earth kind of a nation of black people here on earth who are dealing with reality in a programmatic kind of way. Would Mr. Barack or Congressman Diggs like speak of that since you involved in the political community? National black political convention which takes place in Gary Indiana March 10th through March 12th will be addressing itself to the empowerment of black people through this kind of an instrument without any reference to partisanship and I think that it is consistent with the implications of that question because without confrontation with both political parties and outside of the political party political structure obviously we're not going to be able to translate what represents our potential power into anything meaningful. Mr. Barack, you want to respond to that? Yes. A basic position is that first thing we have to realize that we are a people, a particular people, that we are not Americans except by default to being here in the same space.

But what we have to realize and what we are trying to articulate is that I think almost all of our brothers here have a correct position to a certain extent from the Honourable Elijah Muhammad to Brother Clay, to Congressman Diggs that our problem is that we seem to think that the diversity of our beliefs is somehow, has to keep us apart. That I think when we learn to, that the, it is institutions, alternative institutions that will be our salvation but we have to be able to orchestrate our community that is to pull together a kind of unified national black community so that the Christian nationalists or the Christians or the Muslims or the people who are talking about integration or the people who are talking about garbageism that somehow we can function as a nation of people, as a people that we can sit just like we're sitting here and say to each other

try to agree on certain things that we have to do as a people so that we can agree that the Christian nationalists and the Muslims and the, you know, people who are politically motivated that say on one issue we can get together and deal with that particular issue from the point of our collective strength because we don't have any power because we have not focused and created an instrument through which to translate our power potential into actuality. Any such instrument would be wholly dishonest unless we are able to come together and admit our diversities and identify them for us to stop lying about what we are. We have a serious problem in this country among black leaders where we very few these days will honestly call themselves integrationists while pursuing that path with all of their energies and resources will need to be able to admit our diversities, identify them, then there might be a chance to come to get into some kind of instrument.

We now have, yes, Dr. Morselle. I'd like to make a brief quick comment. I hope it would have the effect in part of bringing our discussion back into a reality of the here and now and I have no quarrel with people who want to engage in philosophical speculations about the ultimate culture and the ultimate this and the ultimate that. But I call attention to the fact that we are a minority of 10 or 11% living right here and now in the United States in the midst of institutions in which it is certainly true we have very little power. It seems to me that while some are pursuing the long-range goals in one direction or another that they, some of which have been enunciated here, somebody has got to be in effect mining the store and seeing that the problems of black people who are hungry in Mississippi and Alabama are being met that they are being fed as our emergency relief program is doing as Dorothy Heights councils program is doing. Somebody has got to see about finding jobs about seeing people are trained for jobs because

no matter what system we have people are going to work by the sweat of that brow and that's the way they're going to earn their bread they're going to have to know how to work and how to work skillfully and well and these are problems to which we have to address ourselves. Now Imamu Baraka has notably in Newark operated on this level. I'm quite sure that his views as to the ultimate future of black people are very different from mine and God will only tell some years hence who is right but he works to get people registered to vote in the city of Newark so that they can use some of the power. If people are powerless in Newark in part at least because they don't use what power channels they have and I think we need to address ourselves the ways in which we can build unity on specific problems specific needs where there is analysis and action. So we won't get bogged down in our differences and in having an argumentation over our organization of philosophies we have literally thousands of people who are phoning and I would certainly

appreciate if you could respond directly to the questions and please respond as succinct as profit. We have just overwhelmed phone calls. Thank you very much. We now have a live call from a viewer from Cincinnati. Would the viewer from Cincinnati go ahead please? As an interested citizen, what appeared to be the best and perhaps the most logical position to take concerning the 1977 presidential election. The panel likes to respond to that. She wanted to know what the most sensible position would be in the 1972 election. She wanted to vote for that candidate who can openly come out and recognize the diversity among black people and be willing to put together a platform that can satisfy the diverse interests of the various black groups. Thank you. The next question is for Dr. Cheek. What goals should black students seek at this time in order to succeed in today's society

that's from Brooklyn, New York? I think one of the most important things is for black students to assure themselves that they are receiving a kind of education that will make them competent to function in this society as well as competent to change it. The next call is from Cincinnati, Ohio, from his height. Do you think if there were ever be racial pluralism in American society and if so, how soon? Well, I think there is, actually, the myth of the melting pot has let us down very sad paths. But that there will be pluralism when we recognize the contribution of every group. And I think that is why it seems to everyone, black people are talking about our contribution that we are trying to make America more of a pluralistic society by recognizing the contributions of all of its people rather than expecting any of us to give way for something called a melting pot.

The next question is directed to Reverend Clegg. If there is no difference between your organization and that of the Honourable Elijah Muhammad, why don't you join forces? Well, that is a kind of ridiculous question. There are differences between black Christian nationalism and Muslims who have a Muslim position. We are willing to join forces with anybody who rejects integration and is willing to take a programmatic approach to the solving of the black man's problems. We have to understand that the black man is in a slave culture. That is why so much of the talk that is coming out here is coming out of a slave culture where black people feel inferior, where the white man's declaration of black inferior already has been accepted by black people. That is why black leaders talk out of a slave culture whenever they open their mouths and their organizations, even when they have learned that black people have changed and they start to try to sound like they are opposed to integration,

begin to talk in gobbly gook because they really are working for the integration and that is what they believe in. So I would work with Elijah Muhammad. He is closer to trying to do something, and most of these other organizations that are represented here with the exception of Roy in it. I have just been informed that Mr. Muhammad would like to respond to your comment. Mr. Muhammad, you may go ahead, please. The next question is for the panel from Reverend Leo Johnson in Las Vegas, Nevada. What do you envision as the major issue facing the black community? Having identified the issue of all of the announced and unannounced presidential candidates, who do you assume would work to alleviate the problem?

Obviously, we got to face one thing. All the questions are going out of the same distortion of the truth. No president has any power. America is not run by presidents, but by people whose names are never even in the newspaper. They run by white institutional establishment and the institutions control how people act. We've elected this president to keep us out of war and this one to keep us out of war and we stay in war because the president has nothing to do with any kind of decisions. So for black people to be sitting around trying to pick a president who's going to solve the black man's problems is totally ridiculous. The black man's got to solve his own problems and the president is not going to do it for it. Mr. Jordan, would you like to respond to that? I think that's the basic answer to that is that black people have to say to the democratic part of it that they cannot take it, smoke, and it's powerful, granted. I think on the other hand that it has to say to the Republican Party that it cannot in 1972 ignore the black vote. And also think that if in fact there is a taken for granted in the part of the Democrats and

there is an ignores on the part of the Republicans that there are clear options for black people in 1972 elections. And it seems to me that the Gary meeting is an opportunity for black people to get themselves together and to deal with the question of what those options are. Now this question is directed toward the panel and I hope you can be brief whoever answered it from Richard Green in Cincinnati Ohio. What is the opinion of the panel on busing to achieve school integration? It's ridiculous. I think that you've been only received quality education in light of our geographical locations and where black people and white people live through busing. I think the busing is very necessary to achieve integrated quality education. I would like to associate myself with that point of view. I do not think as does Reverend Clegg that it is ridiculous. I think that the issue is one of quality education. I think the issue

is one of ensuring black people an opportunity to equal educational facilities and consistent with the court decisions and Richmond and then the Charlotte Mecklenburg County case. I put myself on the side of the issue busing. I'm for it to achieve. Let me agree with Reverend Clegg and state again that it is ridiculous. It is insulting to black people to assume for one moment that for all these years white people have been getting a good education. The Kennedys have been going through their racially exclusive and isolated schools and becoming presidents. And for us to assume for one moment that black kids must be busing to white schools to get a good education is nothing but racism by black people against themselves. Self-hate. Let me just add quickly Mr. Brown, busing in the concept in which I join Vernon Jordan and Ralph Abernathy is not intended to be an exclusive process of busing black children into white schools. It is one of a

number of devices which can be used and are being used and I hope will continue to be used to bring about quality integrated education. And obviously if one does not accept that as a goal then busing is an aftermath. If one does accept that as a goal then busing is certainly a legitimate means of achieving it and ought to be used and not disused. That's not even the question. The question is education itself. Quality education does not necessarily mean going into a white school or where the students are predominantly white. No school in America other than the Muslim school could be accused of teaching black children anything that would be helpful to black children. It doesn't make any difference whether you bust them out to an exclusive white suburb or leave them in the ghetto. They're still going to be learning the same nonsense that has destroyed the black man's mind. The black man does not understand the whole question of power because he has been destroyed intellectually by a white education and white education is not even touched by

bus. Then maybe we ought to bust the white students to the black Muslim school. Dr. Cheek, you might be an improvement certainly for the white students it would be an improvement except it would show tear up the Muslim school. I think a fundamental consideration is whether or not and in order an amount of attention and energy have been devoted to the issue of busing and the fundamental issue of what kind and character quality of education is being provided students has gone into the background. I myself do not see the issue we face in those terms that are described by busing and its related phenomena. I think it's very important for the black population in America to disabuse its mind of the notion that the only way in which quality education and by that I mean more than what is represented in how much one spins

but also what is the kind and quality and character of education is being provided. Are far more important considerations than the question of what school one attends? Tony, I think in a way we are taking a lot of time on this question but there is no question more fundamental to describe the crisis in black America than this. Right now today in Richmond, Virginia, white people in a conspiracy with a small number of black people are trying to disperse, a lot of disperse black people. Just at a time when we are talking about group to get in this group identity, black power, social, political, economic and it is important that we stay in this question a little bit longer like all these panelists because this is the first time in a hell of a long time that the black population outside here has been able to hear from its so-called leaders on this issue of schools. Let everyone declare himself. Is he an integrationist or is he a national?

Is that for school integration or for community control? I certainly appreciate that record and that we ought to move to the next question. Yeah, I would like to but I think we also have responsibility to all these people who are calling us. We could certainly have a 90 minute program on busing as hard as you can get. I certainly would appreciate if you keep your responses brief and I'd like to move on. As a matter of fact, the honorable Elijah Muhammad would like to respond to Reverend Clegg and if he can now listen to me, I would like for him also if he can to make his statement as brief as possible. You may go ahead. You're on the air, please, Mr. Muhammad. Yes, it is not too late for the black man of America to accept his fallen place in the sun as other nation has accepted. They are places. This is the best time for the black man that he has had. He's been in America to accept his own. The black man in America has been read

by white people. Therefore, he don't know how to accept his own. But I'm here to tell him how to accept his own. God have made me for just that purpose and it's not too late for him to accept his own. It is not too late for the black man in America to separate himself from white Americans. This must be done. The black man I want to say to him, he's not too late to set up a government for himself. It is not too late for the black man to take over that which God has offered him to take over. And that is the whole entire thing. The whole thing belongs to the black man. Everything

belongs to the black man but white man. You don't own white people but everything else belongs to him. And it is time that he takes it over. It is time that we realize the fact that we have been here for 400 years serving almost servicers for all these years and now for us to take and find and be sure of speaking up and taking over that which actually belonged to us by the right of justice. It's making a fool out of ourselves. We can't take and make a fool out of ourselves for taking what is our own. This is our own race. We made it. Our God made it. Our God now today want to give it back to us. And why should not we take it over? It is our every thing is ours but

the white man. He don't belong to us and therefore we should take that which belongs to us to be made Marco. But white people just because that is in his time that you accept your own and take over the whole entire earth and the heavens above the earth is only because that they don't like to be removed. But it is time and Marco is his face. Therefore we black people must remember and most must act upon the principles of this one thing that we are the black people of the earth, the original people of the earth, their face and we're not going to have in the last we are forever.

Thank you very much sir. I'd like to say that this black Christian nation would certainly accept that position that he's denunciated in this statement. And with one exception that God is not going to do it for us no matter what name we call God by that we are going to have to do it for ourselves. The other the historical aspect of his statement is absolutely correct. Thank you. Now the next question is the similar question phoned in from three cities and three people, Curtis Richardson and Columbus Ohio, Joseph Jackson and Boston, Massachusetts, and Ruth Scott and Manhattan, New Jersey. The question is to the panel. Can the panel function as a group in resolving problems for black people? No, the panel can't function as a group because the panel doesn't have any position. Most of the panel is integrationist which is outmoded and obsolete and will tend to destroy black people. The members of the panel who believe in the black man building his own life, building his own nation are separatists and cannot possibly function with a panel of integrationist.

Integrations are going to have to learn through the process of the white man's efforts to genocide that integration will not work. White people do not want to integrate with black people. Now you can all about if they will do this and if they will do that white people are not going to integrate. They're not going to deal in terms of morality or moral values. They're going to deal as they've been doing in terms of the self-interest of white people. And as soon as black people learn that then black people can begin to deal in terms of the self-interest of black people. I think the question is to the point of a functional operational unity. It's impossible to function together if you don't have the same position. How can a separatist and an integrationist who are both black function in terms of a white man who's out to destroy both of us? Mr. Baraki, have any views on it? I think what I tried to say before is that what is lacking, just like what is lacking in our community, like is what is lacking on this panel, is the sense of trying to integrate the black community. In order to have a nation, to have a national consciousness, you have to have national integration. It is you have to be able

to move to a point of sophistication and maturity where you are able to take diverse groups within a national group. The one similarity that nationalists and integrationists have is that we both black and neither one of us by our ideologies and philosophies can erase that fact. So what we're saying is if we can bring about the integration of our own community and begin to create an institution of our own community's political development and politics, not meaning just voting, but politics, meaning community organizing, making alliances and coalitions, developing the power to disrupt and also being able to elect people to office. But by able to integrate, to bring together our community as one totality based on the fact that we are black people. And unless we are able to do that, bring our people together, then we'll never be able to make any movement because we'll always be working at cross purposes and then against each other. Now, the fact that someone can say their integrationists and I know as well as you do, that is an absurd position in a theoretical way. You see, or a real way. But what I'm trying to say is this, I am not going to press the theory to the detriment of the

reality. I would rather try to get black people together, you know, to solve all kind of diversity than to be so hung up on the theory of my own ideology that I would drive people away from this. Beautiful. But what we've got to understand is one thing that we cannot go along with integrations. We have got to black people, have got to drive integrationists, integration organizations, the black churches, and this integration thing. We have got to drive them out of the black community. We can't put together a program that's dependent on dealing with black integration. They are the enemy. Black integrations are just as much the enemy of black people as white people are because they are the lackeys of white people doing the dirty work that white people would ordinarily have to do for themselves. If we can, because we're running very short of time. Maybe how's our philosophy in our responses to the question? Right. And I think that way we can stay out of other people's ideologies because we only have, I think, 20 minutes. Mr. Jordan, we're trying to make a point and then Mr. Gray. It's already proven to that in response to that

question that they are those of us on this panel with the exception, I think, of Reverend Clean, who have demonstrated and demonstrate on a daily basis that despite our differences and despite our diversion approaches and views that we have found in various programs and in various situations instances where we could come together and agree and work together. And it seems to me that that is the only way that we can bring about some kind of unity out of our diversity. I think that Reverend Clean got to understand that those of us who do take a position on an open, probabilistic society, that we're not going out of the black community, that we're not going to be run out and that we, they are just like to be planted by the rivers of water. I mean, we have one more response. I'm wondering what Mr. Jordan and the other assimilation misintegrationists would be willing to reframe from speaking exclusively for the black community, recognize their two goals and agree for us to function and possibly have a peaceful coexistence and reinforce each of those goals. The problem is the integrationist and conspiracy to silence

the true aspiration and goal of most black people, which is that of self-determination. The problem is not the integrationist, the problem is the European. But the integration asserts the European. Right. But what does the job for? What do we want to do? Once we unify our community, then anybody who doesn't serve that community will be isolated and can be diminished in their influence on our community by the totality of our strength. But you'll never unite the black community until you get German, please, who are willing to reject it. We now have a live call on the nation's black people. For Mr. Degregi, would you go ahead, please? Would you ask me a question, Mr. Degi? You're on the air. We have a difficult area to be back to in a minute. You want to make a statement?

Yes. I think, you know, many people have different ideologies sitting here. But to the basic point of that question, I have nine kids and the physical suffering that go on in this country, I could leave this earth today and have no doubt that everyone on this panel could deal with all of the physical pain without getting involved with ideologies. There's no one on this panel here that couldn't deal with that in a very brilliant and honest and ethical way. Thank you. The next question is for Ms. Height from Donning, Williams, and Chicago. Please comment on black women and the women's live. Well, black women have always had to fight for a liberation. I think that this question probably pertains to some of the new thrust towards liberation that have been strongly pushed through white women. Seems to me that the one of the best examples we have today is the thrust of a Shirley Chisholm on the national scene where black and white women are recognizing the need for

the talent of women to be fully expressed. And I think that black women have not been able to communicate only around the issue of personal development because we feel that our problem of liberation is tied up with the whole liberation of black people. So we have to work not only for the liberation of black women, but for the whole black family. But indeed, we are joined with all women in the struggle for liberation. Thank you. Now, this will be another hot question. It's to the entire panel who ever responds to it. I would appreciate brevity from Phyllis Waller and New Orleans, Louisiana. How does a young black listening to this program comprehend the idea of being black faced with so many concepts? First, the young person ought to read my book, Black Christian Nationalism, and that advance all the questions and dispose of most of the arguments that the integrationists have brought up here. Well, the young fellow cannot locate Reverend Craig's book.

It is hard to locate, Marl, William Marl published in New York State. If the young fellow should happen to have difficulty locating Reverend Craig's book and a great many bestsellers are not always available on the shelves or being snapped up so fast that they run out of them. I would say that his first job is to become true to himself as a person and individual. He can do this, and it may well be through Reverend Craig's book. He's got to know a great deal about his own past, about his own capacities, about the fact that his blackness is not a limit upon him. Not easy to say that. People have been saying it for many years. The actual achievement of it is far from being that easy or as simple as it sounds because it has to be too old. He's got to know what the past was. He's got to know what he himself is, and he's got to struggle against adversity and make it. Nobody can achieve true manhood either by reading books or by engaging

in philosophical dissertations or any other way except by struggle, individual struggle and group struggle. And that's what is ahead of this young man and all of our young men. Thank you. I should also thank that this panel is reflective of the fact that all of us are shaped in our ideas, not attitudes, bound individual experiences. And it seems to me that that young man must deal with himself as John Marcel indicates based on his own experiences. And I think he not only ought to read, Reverend Craig, but he ought to read Booker Chief Washington and Du Bois and Malcolm Martin. He and everybody else, Garvey, whomever. And based on that, it seems to me that he has for himself and by himself influenced by whomever might influence him, anybody on this panel arrive for himself as to 40 years, what he wants to be, and what his philosophy or life is. And I think that this panel is to a large extent reflective of that.

I'd like to see him consider the black woman as his full partner. And now I say that even more important in my estimation and all of this is the fact that we are all here this evening grappling with problems and working in the field of ideas. We're here because we are black. We're here because we are concerned. Certainly, there is not uniformity, but I have the great feeling that there is unity and we must find that unity. We in such for that unity. And I think that that should ring clear in the mind of that young man that we are such and for that unity. We are such and for that truth. And if we keep such and certainly, we shall find it. I understand. Yes.

Briefly to the young man that we go, diversity is not unique to black people, sitting here, no one else. In his life, he will find a charge of religions, which he can choose, one of many a charge of foods, a charge of music. I think the ultimate end for this young man, and most young people in America and the world over, you got to make a moral stand. And that ethics is what's going to be the guiding force. And in the total end, victory will be won because what we're really talking about and all of us, what he is talking about to relieve suffering of black people, the safest way we can all unify that is say, rally behind the moral force and the ethical power will move. I'd like to say to the public, we certainly appreciate their patience. We're dealing with as many questions as we can and as rapidly as we can. The next question is to Congressman Diggs. How relevant are President Nixon's policies to the black community today? Is he expected to get much support from black communities in his

reelection bid? That's from the black audio network in New York. Well, I think one of the strategic questions for black people in 1972 has to do with the political implications of a presidential election year. And I think rather than concentrate so much on the whole thought of who we're going to support, there are many people who are very much concerned and are prepared to concentrate on unelecting Nixon as a goal. With whatever combination of forces that can be exercised to accomplish that based on the record of his benign neglect on a domestic level and certainly crowned by his attitude toward the emerging nations in Black Africa. We now have a live call. I'd like to get on. We have a call from Boston. If you're on and can hear me, would you go ahead, please?

Well, the congressional black caucus, as a matter of policy, does not endorse candidates. Obviously, the candidacy of Shirley Chisholm is a matter of keen interest to all of us. There's no question that Shirley Chisholm candidacy has raised the level of political aspirations of black people in this country. And there's no question that her impact on these presidential primaries and that she plans on entering from Florida all across the country, hopefully in my state of Michigan, is going to be a very strategic instrument for

balkering black political aspirations from 1972. Thank you. This is a question from Miss J Williams in Boston. Do you believe that it's possible that genocide will take place in America within the next 10 years and will it be sanctioned by the government? Yes, very possible and it will be sanctioned and led by the government. Thank you. The next question is for Dr. Cheek from Patricia Hammond and Milwaukee, Wisconsin. What is your opinion concerning the black intellectual quote, brain drain from our black colleges? And how will this affect the black race in the next decade? I think the so-called brain drain has been characteristic of what took place during good part of the 1960s, but I think that there was some evidence to indicate that the brain drain is in the process of being reversed. There is certainly no question that the black institutions

will depend upon black scholars if they are to pursue the goal of excellence that we allude it to in our opening statement. All right, the next question is for anyone on the panel from Aretha Johnson in Chicago, when will the black, when will the white man be destroyed in America? When black people unite and start fighting for their own freedom and the destruction of the white man really is a not, not relevant question is the when will the black man build a nation and be able to control his own destiny? The next question is from Cheryl Rabford in Brooklyn, New York. How can we get white merchants out of the ghetto? How can we start an economic boycott? Just stop buying at white stores in the ghetto. That's very simple. If black people would stop buying, they'd have to leave. The whole question of, again, of control of the community begins first with a movement to unify all the diverse forces in the community to build some kind of power, political power based

on that unity and then to move to economic development. But as long as we are diverse and don't have a structure to deal from a national structure that includes all the diverse elements to put together national black policies and national black agenda, you know, to deal as a quasi-governmental, quasi-national form and structure who will still be dealing with very small programs engulfed by a very large program. But America is talking continually about this national structure, and it's important. But the product should deal with the fact that most of these national structures and national meetings called are called by the integrationists, assimilationists, to serve their own ends. And usually they include the rest of us, the nationalists, so that we can help further that end. Well, I think this is, this ought to be known is that the people sitting on this panel, if they are actually real, each have constituencies. So to say about an integrationist, as if you were one

person in the world, if you go out in our community, you will find that there are many, many integrations out there and many, many moderates and many, many nationalists and many, many Muslims and many, many Christians. What I'm saying is we each have constituencies, but how do you unite those constituencies? So we have a nation, a national president, a national political and economic strategy. And I don't think that nationalists are so weak minded that they can be co-opted by so-called, generally. Can we move to more questions so we can get out of the ideological argument? Another question for anyone on the panel, can Blacks live under a capitalistic society, surely wait some Philadelphia? We've been living under it, but it's a process by which we die slowly. We have not been living very well and the Black man is going to have to cease being purely concerned with consumption and begin to go back and build his own type of economic system, pull himself up by his bootstrap, give him service, work and do the kind of communal thing that's now being developed in Africa called Ujima, where communal work program for Black people

contribute both money and time to build for Black people. This way, Tony, that Black man can live under capitalism, as Reverend Craig says, he's been doing it. I think it's one thing he and I agree on so far tonight. But there's also this to be said that most of the white people who come after Black people urging them to overthrow capitalism are anxious that they not enjoy any of the fruits of that capitalism. And I would say that when we have achieved, if we achieve genuine equality in this country under capitalism, then we can all get together and decide whether we want to change it. I just don't want to see us made patsys by people who have ideological access to grind. But I think it does mean that we have to be willing to examine the systems under which we live to see what kinds of change might make them more humane. And so that we would not have to have enough unemployment, enough racial discrimination, enough war to keep our system going. Change really seems to me what we need to examine and find a basis to move toward. It's very clear to me

that we do live in a capitalist society. It's also very clear to me that Blacks on the short end of the fruits and benefits of that capitalist society. And it also seems to me relates to the question asked by the young lady about should white businesses move out of the ghetto. It seems to me that another question should be, can black businesses exist on Fifth Avenue and P Street Street? And that seems to me to be a very basic question as we look at the whole question of the capital. Very few minutes and I'd like to feel this one from Bernard Witt in New Jersey. Who is the most powerful black man in America today? No black man in America is powerful. There is no such thing. Nothing exists that you could call a powerful black man. There are black people who are projected by white people. But there are no powerful black individuals because no black individual controls any organizational structure. There's no mechanism for us to determine that by since most black leaders are the creation of the white structure. The question is almost impossible to answer but I would suggest just for starters the man that you don't often hear about

Andrew Brimmer. I would say a man who is a member of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors exercises genuine power over money in this country and anybody who exercises power over money in this country exercises power. It may not be power exercises as some of us would like to see if he is a man of power and there are others. He's the spook by the door though. He doesn't have any power. There will be no real total power for black people in America until there is some attempt to unify black America to bring it together where it has one single consciousness and one single focus you know so that we're all acting collectively for the collective good. Our speaking of that single focus is tied into the next question by from Joe Tex from Nova Scotia Texas for the Empire panel. Why can't we find one black leader or organization through which we can all join forces and unite in the common struggle. That's a basic black ridiculous approach to the whole

problem. There's no such thing as any one black leader who's going to lead black people until black people reject integration and begin to put together a black nation with power. Black people have two sets of goals in aspiration until we identify those. We cannot talk about that kind of unity. Thank you. The next question ties in some what from William Reid and Plainville, New Jersey. Is there a common ground then that anyone can agree upon for the advancement of all blacks? Yeah to get some power. Our powerlessness is the thing we suffer from. Either we escape from powerlessness and get power to control our own destiny or we end up the victims of genocide. I think that there would be a consensus here and that's possible that the goal of political and economic empowerment and the part of black people is a desirable goal and hopefully an achievable one. I think that the difference comes as we relate to how we get there in the means by which it ought to be achieved. Thank you. This question, Dick Gregory. I hope you can

answer succinctly from Ronald Webb and Washington DC. Do you feel that the US government will use sickle cell anemia as a form of genocide? No, I think you sickle cell anemia as a form of getting your attention off the real killers. We as black folks got to ask ourselves how many sickle cell anemia females have we been to compared to how many black folks that we know have died from lay at bars and then and rickets and sugar diabetes and heart trouble and all of the other things. And from that point put it into a question. This question is from Leroy Davis, Louisville, Kentucky to Dr. Morsell. How can parents prepare their children when they are sent to schools where the thinking is not within a black spectrum? Well whenever parents have a problem of a diversity between what's taught in schools and what the parents believe the kids ought to know they have two possibilities. One is to find another school if there is one if not and this has been done successfully over the years as witness this panel right here. We did not all learn the same

things in schools we went to and the product of our minds today shows that other influences in school were at work and in most of these cases I would bet it was our parents who were able to exercise the kinds of influences they want. School can't do it all. I can understand why that gentleman from Louisville, Kentucky as a question because the more cells organization has been successful in this person, black people in Louisville so much so you can hardly find a black administration school until this young man is able to go to school control by his people he can not get a good education. Thank you. I have a very direct question and this viewer would like a simple yes or no answer. This is directed to Degregory, Imamo Baraka and Dorothy Hike. Simple yes or no. Are you four or against busing? I suppose I should say or are you four busing? Yes or no? Degregory. I'm four and I'm a certain condition. Miss Baraka? No I'm not four. I think it's a new relevant question

actually Miss Hike. I'm four busing and anything else that assures quality education. I think that's a new relevant question though the question should be how can we create institutions to benefit our own people you know our control institutions that our people are in. How can we get control of the public institutions like schools now? We only have two minutes left one minute and the messenger would like to make a closing statement and I hope he can make a brief because we're going off the air in a minute. Mr. Muhammad can you hear me if you can would you go ahead please? Pardon me? Go ahead please we only have one minute left. Hello? We only have one minute left would you go ahead please? All right this question we're having technical difficulties with the phone. This last question it has to be with someone answered very briefly to the panel. What are we going to do about the forgotten Black brothers in prison? We're going to work on prison programs

with penal reform. We're going to try and change the whole system of the way we deal with crime and criminals and we're going to see that our largely Black criminal populations are not watched over by largely white are all white guards wardens and other and other caretakers. A power like people can't do anything about the prisons. It's just time. We are doing something about it. That's illusion that Black people go through that they can do something about the problem. I think also it's very important that we realize that at the heart of the problem is how do we keep the amount of prison. Thank you very much. And that's all we can. In that while we're working by law and order we have to be sure we're working for equality and justice. Thank you our time is out and we would certainly like to thank all of you for not necessarily an agreeable panel but certainly a very interesting panel. And I think that some extent we have to reflect the diversity in the Black community which is very honest. Thank you again.