Eyes on the Prize II; Interview with Sonia Sanchez

In fact, then, what was your impression of the Southern Civil Rights Movement and the impact it did or did not have was not having on the Black folks in the North? What was interesting, observing the Civil Rights Movement, I observed it from New York Corps. I was in an organization called New York Corps. I and some other people had made that trek down to Washington to listen to Martin talk about the dream, became very much involved with that dream, and also very much involved with being the people who were going to do some real work in this country. And I continued to be involved with that whole movement of New York Corps, but we always, at least I did, I'm not sure about everyone, I always viewed what was happening there

as necessary for the South. I always viewed it not necessarily necessary for us in the North because we could sit or we could go into subway trains and sit in any place, we could go on buses and sit in any place, we could actually eat many places if we had the money. I do know there was a subtle, very subtle segregation that existed in New York City still, but so it was something you observed and were very proud of, and new people who were doing some of that work also in the South and who came back and talked about it. But it was not necessarily talking about some of the things that we were talking about in the North, and I think that's probably how Malcolm talked about what we felt. It was not just give me a seat on the bus, let me go to a pool, let me wait in and pray in and sit in, but let me also go downtown and get some jobs that most certainly we need it.

Let me live on Riverside Drive when we were living in the Harlems, and if you were walking over to a Broadway in Riverside Drive, you couldn't get apartments in New York City. So there were other things, and when he began to talk about our oppression, we looked up because we knew there was a freedom we had, but we knew also that there was a non-freedom that we had. So when he articulated that kind of oppression and what we needed to do to feel good about ourselves and to make for some kind of movement, when he said it in a voice like we had never heard before, when he said it for even the brothers on our block, who didn't go to church, so couldn't involve themselves in the civil rights movement, okay? Who were hanging out on corners, when he told people like me in a sense, who had come out of Hunter College, who had gone to grad school, really thought that she had most things that she really needed at some point. I mean, I was exceptional blood, is what I'm saying.

They called us the exceptional niggas, in quotes. I really didn't really didn't think that there was much that I needed at all, and really thought that was a movement there in the South, okay? Because we up north in New York City, and we in Chicago, and we in Philadelphia, we were like, okay, I mean, we were doing okay, although a part of us knew we were not doing okay. There was some part that knew something was wrong. Every time we experienced that peculiar, subtle prejudice, segregation that New York was about. Tell me about your first impression about him. He was interesting about talking about Malcolm, is that quite often people always want to make you believe that he was some terrible, terrible man who never smiled, who was always scowling, and demanding something that was obscene almost. When I first saw Malcolm on a television, he scared me also.

Maybe the family said, turn off that television, that man is saying stuff you ain't supposed to hear. Of course we did. But always, you know, when the sun comes in the window, and you kind of jump up to get it, to close the blinds or pull down the shape, but before you do that, the sun comes in. But before each time we turn the television off, a little sun came in, and you'd be walking someplace, and it would resonate in the ear, what he said, and you would say, no, I can't listen to that because I'm in New York core. You know, I can't listen to that because they say he's a racist, and he must be a racist if they say he's a racist, so don't listen. Well, one day, we were doing a huge demonstration in Harlem, right in front of the old Hotel Teresa, which doesn't exist anymore in Harlem, right diagonally across from Mr. Michelle's bookstore, there on 7th Avenue, before he had to move to Linux, because of that building, the state building that was going to be built there.

My fingers? No, the things are fine. I'm not talking about Michelle's moving, and it'll stay out in. Yeah, if you could stay right there. Got you. The first time that I really listened to Malcolm was when New York core was doing a large demonstration, and Malcolm has sent out a directive to all of the organizations, most especially the civil rights organizations, that you cannot have a demonstration in Harlem unless you invite me to speak. So in our office at 120, we moaned and groaned, and said, who is that man? Imagine that man saying such a thing, who does he think he is? And of course, we had to say yes. So we went to this big demonstration, Malcolm came with his bodyguards. I shall never forget that day. It was a day where it was cloudy. There was no sun.

And in New York City, when it's cloudy and rainy, you finally see the colors of the buildings. The yellows came out on the buildings, and the reds came out on the buildings, and when Malcolm got up on this man-made stage, the reds on his face came out. The red in his hair came out, with that kind of blonde red thing. I was standing on the island there, looking at him, and my friend said, I'm going back to the office. We're going back. And I said, I'm going to stay, because I like the rain. This is kind of quiet drizzle that was happening there. And I looked up and looked around, determined not to look at him, determined not to listen, but he started to talk, and I found myself more and more listening to him. And I began to knock my head and say, yeah, that's right. That makes sense. That's logical, whatever. And the audience was like, yeah, Malcolm, yeah, man, Malcolm, amen, yes, right on, yes, brother, whatever.

There was this great call and response that goes on in the African-American community. When he came off the stage, I jumped off the island, walked up to him. And of course, when I got to him, the bodyguards moved in front, and he just pushed them away, and I went in front of him and extended my hand, and said, I like some of what you said. I didn't agree with what all that you said, but I like some of what you said. And he looked at me, held my hand in a very gentle fashion, he says, wonder, you will, sister. Wonder you will, sister. And he smiled. And I remember just standing there, because I was ready to withdraw my hand in a very fast fashion. But extending the hand like here it is, for being polite, but don't really, that's it. But I left it there, and he smiled at me. And I remember walking back to the office, the core office there at 125th Street, smiling. Well, what happened then, it's that every time he was speaking in New York City, I was

there. I came there to the temple, but what was strange is that everybody else was doing it. The rocker was doing it, the poets were doing, the musicians were doing, the teachers were doing it, the nurses were doing it. Everybody who was an intellectual was coming out to hear what this man had to say. People don't want to remember that or talk about it. And that's how we became very much involved. And he saw us coming. You know, we tried to disguise the fact that we were coming. We didn't tell people we were coming. You come in and sit on the side and you wouldn't say anything, and you just kind of sit there, and you look around there, you see all your friends, whatever, you nod your head and then keep looking at him. And I began to, through him, I began to go to the Schaumburg more and read up on history because he began to give us black history. He began to give us a sense of ourselves and, okay, Malcolm began to make us understand of how we have been denied the history of African-American people in this country.

So I began to go up to the Schaumburg and when he mentioned a name, I go search the name out at the Schaumburg. When he mentioned a time, I would go and search out in the Schaumburg what that period was. So Malcolm sent us back all to the history books. He began to make us begin to move to a point of like, what was he talking about? Why was that period important? Who was that person he was talking about? He sent us back to the libraries of America. But above all, it was when you watched him talk, he would fire you up and you would simply respond, yes sir, yes, that's right, aha. But then also he turned his smile and his smile warmed us. The smile said, I know you're lost. The smile said, I know you don't want to hear that. The smile said, but I will protect you with my smile. I will love you, above all, above all, the smile was about love. We knew that man loved us.

We knew Malcolm was saying simply, I can take the weight for everything that I'm saying. But I will raise up a generation, your generation, my generation that will begin to talk and preach truth in this country. I will listen to you. I will even fend off your scales. I will like fend off when you get angry because we get angry quite often because he called us names. We were the educated group, don't forget, okay? We were the group that simply had come through and had been exceptional people. So all of a sudden he was telling us that we were not so exceptional, that we were dumb probably, that we didn't know our own history, that we didn't really know what it was to be a black person in America. As a consequence, we got to know it quite often, but we kept coming back. Let me ask you, what was it a back of thought? What did you feel like when you listened to him, what was his role at? Yes, okay.

Hold that point. Okay. Do you think that back on a rally where he was present, where he was the speaker, to give a sense of what electrifying, what an electrifying speaker he was? Well I think that the reason why he was so effective, the reason why Malcolm was so effective was because the moment that he came into an audience, he told them exactly what he intended to do, what he intended to do with them. What he said to an audience was that almost like we are enslaved, and everyone looked at first and said, who, we are enslaved, we're free. And he began to tell us and explain to us in a very historical fashion, just as to what our enslavement was about. The moment he did that, he always had some information for you, some new information as a consequence you see, he drew an audience towards him. Malcolm knew how to curse you out in a sense and make you love him at the same time for doing it.

He knew how to, in a very real sense, to open your eyes as to the kind of oppression that you were experiencing. On the one hand, he would say something in a very harsh fashion, and on the other hand, he would kiss you and hug you, and said, I understand why you feel the way that you feel because you have the following, you see. The joy of Malcolm was that he could have an audience, college professors, school teachers, nurses, doctors, musicians, artists, poets, and sisters who were housewives, sisters who work for people in their houses, brothers who were out of prison, brothers who were on drugs and were coming off drugs, brothers who were workers, brothers who were just hanging on the streets, whatever, or were waiting outside the temple to get inside. The point is that I've never seen anyone appeal to such a broad audience, and the reason why he could do that is because he understood the bottom line is that if you tell people

the truth, then it will appeal to everyone. If you tell them all about their oppression in a fashion that they had never heard before, then they will all gravitate towards you. So he could have an audience of people who were sedidding, like I'm in here to listen to you, perhaps, but I really don't want to hear too much, whatever, and a sister sitting next to her, yeah, you're right, man, go on, tell it like it is, and all of a sudden, you will find yourself not saying, yes, tell it like it is, but you say, yeah, man, you're right. You went back to roots, very fantastic roots you see, and he cuts through all the crap. In other words, he says, I know you have learned how to speak this English in a proper fashion, but you forget that. You said, man, you're right, at some point. So yes, he cuts through a lot of nonsense in this country. At the same time, he informed us, and he made the broad mass of people respond to it. The joy of Malcolm is that he would get on a television, and he would be sitting there

with bright, bright people, this man with no PhD, this man with no MA, this man with no BA, and would listen in a very calm fashion to what people, how people analyze the world, be they black, or be they white, or whatever, and then he would come right around and speak in a very articulate fashion, and you see what he said out loud is what African-American people have been saying out loud forever behind closed doors, and he said, I'm not going to say out loud for everyone to hear what African-American people have been thinking for years, and he did it. The reason why initially we cut off the televisions is because we were scared. What he did? He said, I will now, in a very calm fashion, wipe out fear for you. He expelled fear for African-Americans. He says, I will speak out loud what we've been thinking, and he said, you'll see, people will hear it, and they will not do anything to us necessarily, okay, but I will now speak it for the masses of people.

When he said it in a very strong fashion and is very manly fashion, and this fashion that says, I am not afraid to say what you've been thinking all these years, that's why we loved him. He said it out loud, not behind closed doors. He took on America for us. He assumed the responsibility of father, brother, lover, man. He became, again, Martin Delaney's Blake, the first black revolutionary character in literature. He came out and he became the person that we wanted to see, the man that we needed to see in the North and in the South. He became the man that most African-American women have wanted their men to be. Strong. Say, I want to take you on America. Here I is. Look at me. I want to say the things that you've wanted people to say. That's why the men and women loved him. That's why we all loved him so very much because he made us feel holy and he made us feel whole.

He made us feel loved and he made us feel that we were worth something finally on this planet earth, finally we had some worth. What was black folks' reaction, particularly in Harlem, but generally black folks' reaction to Malcolm's chickens coming home to roost, come at Africanities assassination? Well, I think black folks were an agreement. Sorry if you could just mention this. You know, when JFK was assassinated, you know and I know that this country had what we call an opportunity for people to expel that horror via the television, okay? So they said simply, we will assassinate on television, but we will also allow you an opportunity to get rid of the horror and your pain via television. So they televised everything. In Malcolm, of course, made a statement about this is just an example of chickens coming

home to roost. This country also will not only kill African Americans, this country will kill its own also too, especially people who think they can be presidents. When certainly that is not what happens in this country. You don't run a country as president. You are just there for, to be, you know, artifacts, you are just there to be the heads of states etc. Of course, he was then sat down, what happened then for us, many of us, as we were watching that from the Holland's of America, we thought it was a very unjust thing. We thought what he said was hip was like, yeah, why couldn't he say that? We didn't have a sense of the nation at that particular time being threatened, feeling threatened by the government. I thought I did. I said chickens coming home to roost at the beginning. I did. I did. I did. We, since we were not in the nation, okay, at that time we didn't have a sense of like

there was a hierarchy involved. We saw the nation as Malcolm, you've got to understand that, although there will be knew that there were other people involved with the nation, our sense of the nation was always Malcolm, our sense of the nation of coming around the nation and involving ourselves the nation, Malcolm was indeed the person, so when someone could say, we are sitting you down because of your statement, we thought the dialogue in the Holland's of America was simply on why he said what was true and why shouldn't he say what was true because he had been a person who could always say what he wanted to say. So we began to have a dialogue among ourselves about, there's something wrong, there must be something more than what is happening here. It is not just the statement, perhaps there are other things involved at this particular point. So we began to watch, very carefully, watch Malcolm, watch his movements, watch his none movements and then all of a sudden when he announced that he was no longer a part

of it, then we sort of said, well, good, you know, I mean, we were all said, okay, because he was our connection, he was our lifeline. In retrospect, you see, you do understand some things that were happening there and certainly we realized now from reading, you can't do that, okay, I'm sorry, okay. So if you could also talk about what it meant in terms of what he was trying to do with the African continent and connecting Africa, and so of course, there was his disconnection from the nation, there was our disconnection as artists and observers of the nation. We became very much disconnected also from the nation and then we began to observe Malcolm's movements towards Africa and we're very much involved in talking to people who were involved with that. There were people who had strong connections with Malcolm and had letters back and forth from him at that particular time and would let us know what was going on at that particular point.

What we saw and didn't see, however, I think was that we didn't really know what was going on. We heard the roar from Africa. They responded in a very splendid fashion towards Malcolm, you know. When he traveled, the students must especially loved him. So they loved him in the same fashion that we loved him. So we knew that he had a very successful movement there on the continent. When he came back, his movement to the Ordeban, the movement to form his own organization, many of us went up to the Ordeban ballroom to see him and to hear him talk at that particular time. The fire was still there. You saw some disconnections and turns of crowds. The crowds were not the same anymore, you see. Because people didn't know really what to do. People had come into the nation, you must remember, because of Malcolm. So many people stayed in the nation, many left also. Many came to listen to Malcolm, but he didn't have the support that he had had in the nation.

He didn't have the temple. He didn't have all the people who would go out and make sure people came out to hear him speak. So you had other people who were involved more with an African-Africanist kind of attitude coming towards him at that particular point. So I think that it was probably a low period on many levels for Malcolm, and for many of us also who were observing him, not in a discipline fashion, but in the fashion when you thought about going on a Sunday to hear him talk. And when you came, you know. OK, that's a low level. OK. OK. OK. Can you give me a sense of the black reaction to Malcolm's trying to do a broader appeal in terms of human rights and going to the United Nations. And how people black folks saw that? When Malcolm went to the UN and began to say, this is no longer just about black folks

in America, but it's about the whole movement of human rights, that this is now a human rights problem. It is a problem that the world has got to deal with. I think it made him much more dangerous. I think that many blacks in the country were not exactly sure as to what he meant to be Frank. And I think again, because he was not in a base, a real strong base, the way he had been, that it made him less effective, he became as a person who was having ideas, but not really having a strong base to bring those ideas into motion or to make them really become effective. You see, when you have a base, the way the nation was at that particular time, then if this is what you want to send out to the world, it got out because you had people working.

He had a limited group of people around him. Can you make him more vulnerable? And I think of course, it made him much more vulnerable because you see, for him to have said to people, I don't want to search you. When you realize that people have searched now, it made him actually literally vulnerable in the sense you see. But the point is that he couldn't change. He had to do what he had to do because of course, the movement towards human rights was a very real movement. And African Americans have always been at the forefront of the human rights movement. So he was on time. The point is that his organization hadn't grown to support him as he was moving. His ideas had grown in a very real sense, but he didn't have the platform, the real platform. So he was in the Ottoman ballroom. You see what I'm saying? A place that was crumbling, a place that didn't have the kind of security that it should have had.

And so I think that when he came out on that stage, that's the morning that I heard. I was going to the Audubon that day, had been out the night before reading, had gotten lazy, and had said simply, ah, I'll go next week. And so proceeded to go into the kitchen, put some coffee on, turn on the radio. In my little apartment there, I had a little black and white kitchen table with these little black chairs, and I had this little black radio on that table, and I clicked the radio on, as I stood there thinking about what had happened the night before, turned towards the stove to pick up my coffee, and the flash came through on this station and said, Malcolm had been assassinated. And I froze, I remember turning in that kitchen and screaming.

I remember walking down through my living room, to my bedroom, to put my clothes on, and I remember cursing myself for not being there, because I thought maybe in some strange obscure fashion that if some of us had been there, perhaps it would have happened, but of course it would have happened, but still, I remember coming back saying, no, no, this can't be, this has not happened to us at this particular point, I remember the rage, the sheer rage, not helplessness, just rage, and then sitting down and just sitting still for the rest of the morning, because the telephone began to ring, but people asking me had I heard, and I said, of course I'd heard, and I remember hanging up the telephone,

the telephone ringing again, and they said, did you hear, is he really dead, Sonya? And I knew he was dead at that point, and I said, yes, he's dead. And I remember what all that was about, that point, that sheer rage, that this man was no longer on the earth, and then I began to later on that night, I began to write a poem that I had done for him that night, didn't finish it, but I begun it, and I began, I understood it finally that, I came to some terms with death, I think, that night, I said simply in my anger, why, why him, why not some other person, etc., and then I began to talk to myself, I began to understand insanity for the first time in my life, because I knew that many of us would speak out about it, and we had to be sane about it, we had to have some

sense of it. I knew also at that particular point that we were looking at a country that not only would kill, but also would begin to explain, because already on the radio, all day long, and the television, the explanations were coming, as to who it done it, why it was done, etc., so we had to be prepared for like looking at it, analyzing it in a very real sense. I remember that night, I didn't sleep, I remember some people came by and we talked about it, I remember walking them downstairs from my apartment, and they coming back up, I remember the faces of people, people like, we're crying, we just stop, and we cry, and I remember hugging people, saying simply, yes, this has happened, but you always live

on, as long as I breathe, a new breath, and you truly believe that African-American people need to be free, and all oppressed people need to be free. I remember saying that, but I remember also not being that lucid in my own place, in my own time, with my own quiet, with my own pain, but I knew at some point that we would come through it, because he had given us so much, much more probably that we had given him, and I knew also, because someone wanted to say that he was before his time, I said, I remember saying he was on time, we're always on time, you see, whether people want to deal with what we say, when we say it, it's not the point. What I remember, and what I know, what Malcolm gave us, those people who sought him out,

those people who came to hear him speak, he gave me what I needed in order to move into another arena, and to an arena that began to talk against oppression, so I did not receive the whole idea of a sexist message. I do know that you know, and I know that there was much sexism within the movement, but the point is that the message that he gave was a message that came out to men and women, and each one of us took that message and went on to do the work that needed to be done. I never, in a very real sense, allowed myself to be relegated, or if I saw people relegating me to an arena, I complained about it, and would say something about it, and I think that most of the women who were involved with that movement did it, I mean, they would do things like get coffee and do stuff like that, but at some point they recognized the fact of

what they were doing. So Malcolm's message was a message that came out to men and women, and he did not say, now, women, you be this way, he was, his message was quite often, like he'll say, I want to say this to the men, be the man that I want you to be, but, and also he made women to feel like they were queens of the universe, whatever, but it was a queen, not in a sense that set on a throne and did nothing, it was a queen that worked, a queen that taught, a queen that led, a queen that was very much involved with the movement you see. So yeah, you said, hey, I am pretty, mmm, look at here, look at this, mmm, look at these big lips, aren't they full? And you, when you've been kissed by these lips, you know you've been kissed by these lips, that's why they're so full, mmm, no one kisses like these lips, kiss, I mean, it was that kind of beauty you see, and if your nose was wide, your nose was wide because simply that you could breathe well in the summertime when it was hot, you see, and the hair was what it was, simply because, you know, it jumped back when we went swimming, but, you know,

we could go swimming again. I mean, all those things, we began to integrate from his words, so when he began to talk to us about our beauty, we understood that beauty, but it was not to relegate us and on arena that we got quiet and didn't say anything, I mean, my listening to Malcolm was like, here is, here are the words, you know, here's the message, now go forth and spread the message, and that's what we did listening to him. You see what Malcolm did, I think, is that he freed those people who needed to be freed, who were waiting for someone to say, hey, come on, you can do this in this fashion. So as a consequence, I never saw Malcolm as an icon of sorts, okay, so I never saw anyone else.

I saw them all as my brothers in the struggle, now of course Malcolm maintained a rarefied position for all of us, make no mistake about that, okay. But what I'm saying is that when I heard the message at the same time that many of these other people had heard the message, so therefore they were my brothers and sisters in the struggle, so when I went to see people, I remember a point in Baraka's life hitting Newark, hitting for the University of Pitt, very much in need of some kind of help, they had that particular point. I saw it and couldn't, I saw it and couldn't say anything. What were you saying about not seeing blacks and positions of power in the North, we never really saw African-Americans in any position of power except in a church, even at the corner stores, the supermarkets, African-Americans were not in a position of power. You had other people who would sell your food and sell your vegetables, whatever.

When you went to church, quite often you would have a black pastor if you went to a black black church, but if you went perhaps to a Catholic church you would not necessarily see African-American priests up there preaching to you or talking to you or doing the sacraments. So I guess Malcolm made us say simply, there is a man in the position of power and he's exerting power and he's spreading that power around and he's saying, here's some power for you, it's spelled POW, it is indeed black power because I is black, excuse my English. We understood that almost in some very instinctive fashion because we extended our hands very fast and said simply, I'm going to be seeing whatever. When we simply got naturals in the early 60s and I walked across a street in Harlem in 135th Street, I stopped traffic with this natural.

Now you must remember the natural was not big, it was like not a huge natural as many of us got to be known for, but it was a natural and people recognized, it was different. And the taxi cab driver would stop and as soon as I got across the street he would lay not and go, and I would draw myself up real, real proudly and keep on going in a very real fashion. But my father said, girl, what's your problem? No, why don't you get married and have some babies and move to Long Island or the Connecticut someplace and we would say you just don't understand period and what we understood is that we have been released, the power energy has been released in the North via Malcolm. The energy that says you could be whatever you want it to be, you can do whatever you want to do. You want to write a play, you're a writer play, write a play tonight, bring it out tomorrow and do that. And I did that. And so I said, oh, you're a playwright. I said, mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. They said, isn't this strange the connection between the poet and the playwright?

And I was saying, mm-hmm. You know, they said, isn't it really interesting that you write play, you write plays and poetry? And I said, when do you want that play? They said, tomorrow I said, no problem, when home, set up and wrote a play, type the play, brought it back to the next day and said, yes, isn't it amazing the connection between the poet and the playwright and walked out, burst out laughing, going on the steps because you could do whatever you wanted to do. He had released that kind of energy within us and we still have it. I mean, I still have that energy that says simply and everybody I know who came from that period has that energy also too. Mm-hmm. Okay. Give me the baroque. Malcolm made, you believe, that the message was not a separate message. I mean, even when he was saying, this is for the brothers, you know, listen, you know, you see, yeah, I bet. You felt that it was all so for you too. So it made us feel as equals.

I mean, I felt equal to the brothers and everything that we could all do, et cetera. So I was heading to the University of Pitt, coming out of Indiana, came through to see Baraka and Amina and their family and that whole organization that they had formed there. I'd come to that organization to do a talk once. So I was coming back through on my way to the University of Pitt. I walked, I came up, I came into the office and I was stricken by the way the men were dressed in the way that they were like rushing around. So I said, hey, I'm expected, my name's Sonya Sanchez, how you're doing sister, what it was, et cetera. And we, some people talked to me very respectful. When I got upstairs, I was led upstairs to the office where Baraka's office. And as I was walking in, I observed that many of the men were doing this and bowing down and backing out. And I said, hey, how you doing, Mitty, how's everything going?

I remember he looked up at me and I looked up at him and my eye said, because ain't no way, I'm going to do that. And ain't no way, really, I know you expect me to do that because I understood fully that we had come through some other times together and that was not in our, that was not our agenda, that was not in our history. And in no way, we've been taught that kind of history at all too, which was interesting. So I went over and hugged them him. And I remember watching some of the people watching me and we looked at each other and I began to talk about, you know, some problems I was having at that time and he began to talk about what they were going to do and what he was going to do, et cetera. And I left and went on to stay over in Newark. I stayed in Newark perhaps for about a day or so with my twins. But I thought about that whole, that arena that he had moved in too. And I thought to myself, I remember writing in my journal because I keep journals. And I said simply, what does this mean?

What does this mean when we have in a very real sense made people, put people on strange pedestals or we have in a sense made people believe that people have to bow down. I hadn't quite gotten to what it was really all about. But I knew in some strange fashion that it was not where we were supposed to go at all and didn't verbalize that with him at that particular time. Years later, we all managed to laugh at some of these things. Yeah, when we cut you there. Yeah, I got it. I know the moment I said it, the more I realized. Yeah. Okay, as a black woman, what attracted you to the nation? What brought me and a lot of women and men to the nation was that finally the continuation of what had gone on before. When we began to search out how had we come into this sense of ourselves, this blackness, this sense of like what it meant to be in African-American woman or man in America, we realized

that a lot had come via Malcolm, he had been a vessel, but a lot of the information had come also through Elijah Muhammad in terms of his ideas. So many of us, because of other things that had happened in the country at that time, began to go to the various temples again and sit and listen. And it was because of the sense of support of this blackness. Also at that particular time too, it was the strongest organization in America. And so many of us who were working very hard felt an obligation to go as people were saying to the source of the information that we had become familiar with. So many of us went in, I went into the nation I think in 73 and stayed until 75. What I saw and experienced as a person who was very much involved with ideas and writing books that I ended up teaching some classes.

And my classes were controversial, but I taught women, I taught poetry, I taught also the whole idea of you cannot have 25 children in three years and stay sane, it's impossible. I continued to lecture, I was called not a Muslim but a pan-Afghanist at that time and people wondered why I was in the nation, I had children, I had twin sons and I took them into the nation in a sense I think for probably protection. There was a very weird atmosphere of strength in the nation, almost the same kind of strength that had emanated from Malcolm. And so I went into the nation with my children for I suppose Cersei's from a lot of the turmoil that we were all in very much involved in and with. And also to begin to study more about the nation that I had, I had not studied the doctrines of the nation, I had not really looked at it, I looked very much at Malcolm and all the

other information I had gone into as far as black history and black literature in America. So I began that interesting look at some of the mythologies that the nation was involved in and with. And so that's what I did. Can you get a sense of, when you said the nation was blackness, what did you mean by that? The nation actually made America begin, black America began to use the word black, you know, we use Negro and I for American, the nation said you are a black man and a black woman. And it's very obvious, it is for my study of it at that particular time, it was like you're black in the diaspora, wherever you are and you're looking like you look, you are black in the diaspora and it's something to be proud of. You know and I know that when someone called you black in America before then, you said not me, I'm not black, I'm brown, I'm yellow, I'm, you know, I'm whatever. But you were not black.

That's it. Okay. Okay. Okay. You were talking about the blackness that the nation represented. Could you talk a little bit more about that? You see, Malcolm made the country receptive to blackness, it said simply, it's okay to be black, it's beautiful, it's okay to have that history, it's okay to understand that part of what it really means to love yourself. So where were those people going to go? You see, there was no other place for them to go with that information, with that intelligence, with that kind of movement and so they moved in almost unmask into the nation, you see. The nation says, here I am, here, yes, I respect your blackness. I say you're a black woman and you're beautiful and you're clean of the universe and you walk up and be correct, be moral. It was the greatest moral place for people who were trying to be correct, who were trying to be political, who were trying to be very much involved with their blackness, people who were trying to learn about themselves, that was the place to go.

And of course there were restrictions involved, there were problems with it, make no mistake about it, but that was that arena that had been left, the legacy that Malcolm left was that legacy right there for many, for many people, masses of people. It was an arena also where people said, I want to get off drugs, see what people forget during that period drugs were decimating the black community, people want to forget that they say, now crack is new, crack is new, but the whole idea of people being on drugs was not new. And so people were, I actually saw a man come into the temple who were out and women were out and they were resurrected in one week and would come back, it was like seeing people rising from the dead, stand up straight, brother would stand up and say, I was yesterday here and was standing up straight and was walking, they had the best drug rehabilitation program on the planet earth right there. And the same with women, the same thing happened with women, when you told a woman, you're not a whole, you're not a whore, you know, you're not somebody's whatever, I saw women who, and one thing came in, you name it, whatever, and three weeks later, two weeks later, they

were coming in saying, I know I'm not on that level. So here was this organization talking about resurrecting and reordering your life and not just, I don't mean moral in terms of dress, I mean moral in terms of responsibility to your people. It was that kind of morality that they were talking about, you are responsible to your people. So therefore you must do the following, you see, you must act in a certain fashion, but you must also preach this message to bring people to the sins of themselves. You must indeed do as the boys and others said in the thirties, you know, go and frequent black businesses, you see, a wrecked black businesses, work for black folks, it was that whole push in terms of blackness, it was a sea of blackness there, to see people saying to themselves, I like me, I saw people liking themselves, I would walk down a street and people who were like, you know, were not doing right as such, we say, oh, the word

not, it's just a sonia, I'm going to get it together, yes, I know, but it stand up better, you see, at some point, there was a moral energy in the country that made people, whether they wanted to get Muslim or not, think in a fashion that was healthy towards each other. Old people, old women in Harlem, could cross the street and no one mugged them. Women could walk down the street with diamonds and no one, because even though the brothers were poor or poor, they knew they could get a meal if they went in there, they knew that someone would give them food for thinking, which would make them say, I don't need to do that. Let me go out and get a job, let me go out and sell the paper, let me do something else. So there was that moral fiber that was given to that black community that was so necessary and so needed. And what was the image that black men had within the nation? What was your sense of that? The image of black men in the nation was one of the F.O.I. The F.O.I, the fruit of Islam, was an organization that came over as being extremely strong, extremely

powerful, extremely protective, and they brought back the whole aura of Gavi, that whole era where you came into uniforms, you came in, and you didn't mess with them. There was some bad bloods, you know what I'm saying? I mean, you did not mess with the F.O.I. When they came out on the street, people said, yes sir, but even the brother who came into the nation and just wore the suit every day, they had to wear suit into the temple, whatever. And you saw the brother selling the paper on the street. It was an image of like an upright brother, you know? I have come from being powerless to a position of being having power on selling the newspaper, and they were like, push a newspaper on you, and you bought that paper, you know? And they really believed in that. Brothers going around selling fish that came from Latin America, if you remember Central America at that time, brothers selling bean pies, brothers with businesses, it was like

a sense of people trying to do, be correct with each other, that people weren't going to hustle you out of anything, that you could trust them, you could trust the sisters, you could trust the brothers, and so therefore, in that sea of blackness, you were home, and you didn't have to, you could let down and say simply, these people were good, they can take care of me. And what was your sense of trust with respect that brothers and the nation had to sisters? You could put it in and outside of the nation. Right, well, brothers did, I mean, you felt that respect that brothers had for sisters, because they were taught that, they were taught, I'm not talking about problems with that at all, okay? Because certainly there were problems with that, but certainly on a level of sisters were queens, sisters were to be respected, sisters were to be taken care of. All those kinds of things were interesting kinds of things, some women had never experienced. I mean, some women told me they had never experienced anyone saying to them, I like to protect

you, I like to take care of you, I like very much to, in a sense, make sure that you are protected. So when sisters came into a neighborhood, whatever, and the brothers were studying outside, they felt safe. You hit 116th Street, or two blocks before 116th, so you felt protected. You knew no one was going to mug you, and you knew that brothers would not mug anybody within that area, within that arena, because they knew if they did that, they were in deep trouble. They wouldn't even think about doing it, you see. So there was that, that wall of protection that was there, all the way from 125th Street, all the way down to 110th Street, you know, from Linux, out into 7th Avenue, you didn't commit stuff in that area, you know what I'm saying? Because the temple was there, the mosque was there, yes, you better believe it, you see. And if something did happen, they was, you know, you felt that they would go out and say, you know, what's happening, what is this really all about, you see? And I think that you have to, we have to understand that when the temple was attacked once by the police, that the neighborhood came out and surrounded the mosque and said, no, no,

no, no, no, no, no, no, what are you doing here? And the police said, we're looking for someone who's supposed to stole something, they said, no, no, no, no, no, no, you know, it won't be here. I mean, you had people coming out, you had poets and writers and social workers and all kinds of people coming out doing that, you know. Okay, if you can give me a sense of protection and kind of lag a crime within the area around the mosque. But what the mosque was, I think, for many people, it was a beacon, a haven, and as a consequence, you know, or you knew that you were safe within the confines of, like, what you hit Lennox Avenue coming down towards 116th Street, that you were going to be okay, because actually there were brothers up and down that avenue selling the papers, and it meant simply that if they saw anything happen, or people wouldn't do anything around them, first of all.

So once you got to 116th Street, you were like, free, you were home, you were okay, you were safe, and people knew that, and so therefore, and if anything happened around the confines of that mosque, I mean, you knew the person had to be crazy to do it, because someone would find them out and go and say, what's your problem, brother or sister? So there was that sense of being safe within that arena, which was very important. I think that it was that aura and that mystique, and that sense of seeing brothers and sisters around. I mean, we saw sisters walking in a certain fashion, and dressed in a certain fashion, and even though it seemed different from the rest of the populace, people respected that. You have to go back and look at the respect that ordinary people had for the sisters. I mean, there was a sense of respect for these good sisters, and people would say, the church was like, how are you doing today, sister? Everything okay, because you said, I'm fine, sister.

And there you were, there was a common ground of respect, and love for each other. And someone would stop you and say, you know, I don't know if I really believe in this stuff that you people's talking about, but you know, my daughter's in this, you know, and she done changed. My daughter used to run and do this, and drink, and smoke that pot, and just run with all kinds of men, but she don't do that no more. And so even though I don't quite understand what it's all about, I like my daughter now. My daughter is nice now, and she's respectful. So keep on doing what you're doing, girl, you know, because I know there's some good in that. That's what I'm talking about. You can't fight that. And I was a very real kind of movement there, and we have to remember that and understand that. So young boys would not hit or knock down older women for anything at all, because they knew that they were supposed to be that way.

That's why I understand, truly, the feelings that some people have now about saying, talking about that in these new rap songs, okay, I know what they're saying, that's why I stop. You know, but the- This is a question about Muhammad Ali back then. What was your sense of him? I don't like fights and fighters, but I love Muhammad Ali. And I love Muhammad Ali because he was not just a fighter. He was a cultural resource for everyone in the time, in that time. Black students, white students, green students, brown students, blue students, he cut across that, I mean, every race, every religion, because he said, no, I will not go. And then tried to continue to fight at the same time. And students loved him because they said simply, he articulated what they were thinking that indeed it was unjust war.

So you had to love him. And so I would- when he fought, I would like make myself, force myself to come and watch him fight. But I knew that I was not just seeing him in a arena because you're seeing these things are not just about fights. They're always about the struggle for people's minds. So when people play baseball or fight a fight, they're struggling for the minds of people saying, come over to my side, you see. And not that other side. So I recognize this. I was always pulling for him to win because then it meant he wants some other people over to his side, you see. So- What did you think when he joined the nation? Most of the people I know. I'm sorry. I think you just say when he joined. When Muhammad Ali joined the nation, it was a continuation of what we knew was happening already, everyone had seen Malcolm down in his camp. Everyone had seen knew that he was teaching him and struck to him at that particular time. So when he changed his name, we said very simply that's his name. When people- in fact, when people call him Castus Clay, we would say, that's not his name.

Call the brother by his name. His name is Muhammad Ali Gohan, do it, get it, walk on, and we were very pleased and very happy. So it was not a bone of contention unless people wanted it to be. You said, I can't pronounce that name, or I don't want to pronounce that name, or what it meant, perhaps at some point that maybe they thought that he had gotten to be too big, but the man knew what he was doing, could do it, did it, and brought everybody along with him when he did it. Because he had that sense of himself, that sense that when he said, on the greatest you say yes, you are, there's no doubt about that, Muhammad Ali, you are indeed the greatest, the greatest. They were done walked on this earth, whatever. And you believe that. But you also, again, this man was a gentle man. I mean, he'd get out of the ring and then would grab your hand and be very gentle with you and said, did you like that sister? Did you like what I just did? Did I tell him really off? And he laughed, that very infectious laugh, and you would say yes, you did, and that was good.

Good. Cut. Okay, that sense of pride. When you really imagine whole generations living and dying and never once have in love themselves, that's what we tried to change when we moved into the black arts, black culture, black consciousness movement, I said, never again, will I allow anyone to live and walk on the planet earth and not like what they are, what they be, not like the full lips and the flat nose and the hair that was curly or not curly or so-called nappy, but just like the skin, the brownness and the yellowness and the blackness and the blue blackness and the brown beariness of it all. And that's one of the things we attempted to do. We initially, many of us wrote in black English, and many of the people, black, white, green, purple, blue said this is not proper English, so it's not proper poetry.

But I remember my grandmother speaking in black English, and I remember what held me and drew me to her was that sound and that beauty of it. So I implanted it in my psyche and at an appropriate time I pulled it out and used it and said, here it be, this is what this is really all about. And I loved it and I loved those words and I knew those words loved me, but I knew also those people who had used those words said, finally, oh girl, you done used us, is we home yet? And we all looked up and said, yes, you're home, we're all home now because we understand home finally. What are the influences where they're on your poetry this time? Of course, Brother Malcolm, of course what was going on, the influences on my poetry at that time was of course Brother Malcolm, his sense of hardness, his sense of humor, and his sense of playing the dozens.

People forget that, you see. We integrated all of that in our poetry, so we had heart hitting poetry, but after we hit people we were like in the sense given a chance to breathe and say, okay, you have a little breath, you have a little leeway here. Also what was going on in the south, the movement in the south played a great importance in my poetry, in that I wrote about the children being killed in Birmingham. I wrote about people moving in the south, trying to move towards what it meant, not only to be black, but also the grass power at that particular time. Also I read a lot of people of what was going on in Cuba, influenced me, what was going on in terms of a Guillain and on the ruda, we extended ourselves, we had to teach third role literature because we were teaching in black study, so I couldn't relegate myself just to fill us weekly or do boys. I had to then move out and read what the chairman was saying, what the ruda had said, what Guillain was saying, Guillain was saying, what other people were saying in terms of leadership. So we went to Africa and we all of a sudden looked up and began to read the African

poets. I met in Google came to this country and I met him and he listened to me read, he said, and I go back home, I got to write like you people are writing now about yourself a sense of identity. So all of those influence, what was going on in the world and the black diaspora you see, influenced all of us and we began to come together, we met, we shook hands, we hugged, we said, this is what we've got to do worldwide. This is a movement that must go worldwide, people must hear what we're saying about ourselves and about the world. And so there was a sense of not only black identity, black consciousness, but always the sense of black politics also being weaved in because when people said black power, we say, yeah, here it is in poetry, look at this whole whole whole. When people said, we need lamps, here it is, let me tell you about land, okay. When people said, said something that we need black schools, let me tell you about black schools, here's a poem about a child loving herself and she'll love herself more if we take over these bloody schools or if we have our own schools period.

So there was always the coming together, we were like weaving together, moving amos, someone said something we picked it up in the literature. When someone said, simply we need to go south, I did a trilogy of plays that talked about the bronces next and moving south, the trek south, returning home, whatever. And someone said something else, we said, oh, we got the poem for you, we got the music for you, we wrote songs for people to sing and record, you see. There was that moving coming together, you see, when I saw Coltrane playing his last concert, I went home and wrote a poem about Coltrane and then began to use my voice at the same time. So when I did a Coltrane poem, I got to the poem, the part where we didn't understand what Coltrane was doing at the time, I went, oh, what my voice. And I brought up Coltrane at the same time. And I said, are you sleeping brother John, are you sleeping brother John, I responded with my voice when I said those words also too. It is that kind of motion and movement that we did.

And I saw the paintings for the first time, when I saw Charles White painting for the first time, stumble over his painting, when I saw a bearding for the first time, stumble over his paint, I responded in terms of my writings also too, about we were like in every arena looking at each other. And I heard people speak all the way from a stalk lead to a baraka, to a Mohammed Ahmed, you know, you name the people, you know, Akbar, you name the people we responded to each other. When Queen Mother Moore stood on the stage and said, reparations, I said, what the hell, what's reparations? And she came down off the stage and said, honey, let me tell you about reparations, it's what we all should have, you see. And then I wrote about that also too. This is what I'm talking about, is that kind of moving in and out of each other, that kind of coming together, no separation of the art, the culture and the politics. And so we said simply, I wrote an essay that said culture is the consciousness of a people. If you don't own and maintain the culture, you will not keep a conscious people, they

will become unconscious, they will give you all kinds of peculiar people and call it your culture and it's not your culture at all. Can you give me a sense of what you were fighting against in terms of the image of black folks at that time? The image of black folks in the late 50s, early 60s was one in the movie still of like the Big Fat Mami syndrome, you know. I mean, it's not by chance that people say the most important movie is gone with the win. You know, come on, because you had like Miss Lucy made honey child, you mean that no good man don't let you honey child, honey, honey, honey, honey, honey, honey, cause I'll come, I'll stay with you and work for you, I'll do all I can for you. She said, but I can't pay you in the money darling, honey, I don't need no money, I don't need no money at all, I'll work for nothing cause you is my family. And then of course she has six look problem crushes at home, we saw that, you know, and we said no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, that's not what

African American women be, that's not what they are, not at all, period. And we began to really reconstruct the image, whatever, of course we still had those funny movies come with Tarzan movies, you know, we grew up on African people, we're always scared, people, whatever. And we said, I came through home, I couldn't have been scared, you know what I'm saying? If I was scared, I was dead, you know, so therefore we began to say simply, that's why people were always brash, you know, very much sure themselves. People wanted to say, we didn't see always like a human quality, well the human quality was to make them bad, you know what I'm saying? I mean, like, that was like the human quality, we saw bad, you don't mess with us, you see. And what that did, oh the telephone, yeah. What was the new black image that came out with the black consciousness movement? Well, the new black image was one of people who were taking control of their lives, one

that denied that Africans in the diaspora were weak, childish, childish, childlike, incapable of doing anything. We denied that whole image of black woman as horror, I mean, we as black women put that down to rest, to sleep, the whole image of the picking any kind of thing, and we did that by braiding our hair and sensing, look at here, look at these braids, you see, because we've been braiding our hair for a very long time, don't forget. These are the kinds of things, weeks, and African American men who were taking control of their lives, they're not scared and shaky, the images that we gave in our poetry were men and women who were very certain of what they were doing, strong men and women, complex, weaknesses, yes, okay, but not weaknesses that would destroy them, you see. And I think that initially, at the very beginning, a lot of the writing was on purpose one

sided, and that maybe even one dimensional on some levels to show simply an audience, this is a possibility, this is really how people are, but if you really read, if you do a close reading of the literature of that period, there was always the other that was there too at the time, quite often people push one side of the literature we were doing, but you always had the poems about being lonely, the poems about being a woman, the poems about being a mother, a single mother, the poems about being oppressed along, but there was a double and a triple oppression that we all had at the very beginning, as we wrote, you see, most certainly as the women, the African American women were writing the pieces, and always, most of the times, the difference is that we were not victims, and we must understand that, we said, yeah, I'm lonely, but the point is that, and I'm by myself, and I'm not even show something fear every now and then, but most of us had gone

to the whole process of expelling fear, you know. If you listened to Brother Malcolm long enough, you'd expel fear, you know, if you really got up and did something, if you became active, fear was expelled from the body, it's when you are an active, that fear accumulates, like fat in the body, okay, and that's what I'm saying, so the moment you, we were lean, we were lean, you know, we stayed lean because we moved around a lot, we were lean with action and lean with courage, you see, and we leaned against the country with that courage, you see, but the activism made that happen. And why was it important that blacks define their self-image? One of the things we learned from Malcolm and others, that we had not been in control of defining ourselves, there was no such thing as self-determination, we were very much concerned about doing that for ourselves, who are we? The whole question of identity came up, are we Negroes with a capital N, because America

didn't capitalize Negro until the late 1920s, okay, in the newspapers and books, are we Afro-American, and what that means also, are we black? And so all of a sudden people kept saying, well, I'm not black, please, you know, and they said, no, no, we're not talking about the color, we were talking about are we these black people who populate the earth? So it became important that we define ourselves as black men and black women walking on this planet earth, doing what we need to do, it became important that we write our own books, that we write our history books and our poetry books, that we write in the language that we wanted to write. It became important that we educated our children, that we started, that we began to talk about black religion, you know, black Christian theology, black history, black English, black poetry, black sociology, people began to look at little black girls and say, yeah, okay, maybe they do have some problems in these urban cities, but there's a strength about them that

is fascinating, whatever, and how then do we change that? We began to teach black literature. For the first time people in our classroom in San Francisco, we had like people sitting on the floor to read a write, to read a Du Bois, to read a Garvey, to read Zorinill Hurston, to read all these people, and they cried, people literally cried in a classroom and said, how can I say that I was educated when I didn't know these people existed? People cried, and so when you gave a syllabus up with 13, 14 books, people said, hey, I'll read it because they wanted to read, because they knew that they had been deprived of that information about themselves. That is the kind of joy. So at some time, so you began to have in the churches at the shrines of the black Madonna's Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ, you know, a black Jesus Christ up there, and people said, sacrilege, sacrilege, and we said, no, no, no, no, think of the place, think of the time

and say, it's not sacrilegious to say, a black Jesus Christ, you see. People began to put up black marries and black, you know, all of these things, and people said, hold it. Now that might be the case. They would think of ISIS, and you'll know something then, think if you go into certain countries, if you go, you'll see that the people that they worship all these black women. And so people said, hold it. If they worship black women, how we become to be people who are not women, who are not worship, and who are damn, you see. And so that whole movement began to come in terms of women beginning to look at themselves in a different fashion. I began this poem after Malcolm was assassinated, and I never finished it. I used to come to it, look at it, hold it, put it down. But the great Joe of poetry said, it will wait for you, novels don't wait for you, characters change, but poetry will wait.

I think it's the greatest art, because it will wait for you in a drawer, in a notebook, and when you open that notebook and say, I'm ready to finish it, the poem will say, welcome, come on, get to it, do it. And I did it, Malcolm. Do not speak to me a martyrdom of men who die to be remembered on some parish day. I don't believe in dying, though I too shall die. And violets like castenets will echo me, yet this man, this dreamer, thick lip with words will never speak again, and in each winter, when the cold air cracks with frost, I'll breathe his breath and mourn my gun, feel nights. He was the sun that tagged the western sky and melted tiger scholars while they searched for stripes. He said, forget you, white man, we have been curled too long. Nothing is sacred, not your white face, nor any land that separates until some voices squat with spasms.

Do not speak to me of living, life is obscene with crowds of white on black. Death is my pulse. What might have been is not for him, or mean, but what could have been floods the womb until I drown. That poem for him was done almost. I finished it in one night, in one sitting, as I walked through it, and thought about how to, at some point, say to people, don't talk to me about martyrdom. I know it. I feel it. I taste it. I've lived through it. I don't believe in dying, but we're all going to do it, you know? And then go to the man. Talk about this man, this dreamer, this man, thick lip with words, who will not speak again, or in a sense when he spoke, we listen, and we heard, and knew, and felt, and lived, and loved, and we were. Good.

Why was the Congress of African Peoples Convention in 70 important as a first step in building that national black movement? The Congress of African Peoples was in 1970, and a place called Atlanta, Georgia. And it came about, I think, because Stokely Carmichael, or Kwame Turey, and Oussi Sadaki, decided or began the discussion about bringing this into the international arena, bringing the sense of being black into an international arena, an African arena, or so at that particular time. So Stokely, Kwame had been discussing this from 68 until 1970. As a consequence, there was a gathering there, and we all came. You had it that gathering, don't forget now. Everyone from Farrakhan, two digs, Whitney, young was there, you talked about two years before his death, also, in a dashiki.

Could you tell me about the Congress of African Peoples Convention in 1970, and this sense of being a first step to this national black movement? The Congress of African Peoples happened in 1970, in a place called Atlanta, Georgia, to have been there, to have felt that excitement, to have seen on a stage, a minister Lewis Farrakhan, a Whitney young of the Urban League, a congressman digs, to have seen people come together, holding hands, saying simply, we are going to advance the cause of blackness and take it to a level that this country had never seen before. Is that excitement that kind of mood, that permeated the room there in Atlanta, Georgia? And we knew many of us that it had been, in a sense, the brainchild of a number of people

who had begun to push for an internationalizing of the movement. It was not just nationalizing the movement, but internationalizing the movement, saying simply, we are moving to, we are taking it to an African arena now. We are bringing people along who perhaps don't want to come along because the mass of people, the mass of black people in this country are saying simply, get on board this train just as Tubman said, if you don't get a board in 1970, you might get left. So a whole lot of people got on board that train in Atlanta, Georgia, because they knew that that train was running and was on high speed at that point. What are you strong as images of their convention? Watching people, I'm an observer of people, you know, if I were not a writer, you know, I think I would just enjoy watching people. My children always tell me that I'm a snoop that I watch people all the time, and it's true.

I do. I watch people, and I went into workshops and saw the workshops function, saw people function with people, people came to that convention, ready to learn, ready to be moved, ready to hear about how we were going to cooperate and do things, ready to talk about the idea of African liberation on a global scale, ready to see people make alliances. That was the important kind of things. I watched the faces of people as they gave talks and speeches. I watched the people respond, the crowds, the crowds, the crowds, people stood up almost at every line that people said, you know. When I got on the stage and walked on the stage, everyone who walked on the stage, people were given standing ovation. When you walked on the stage, I had my head wrapped in a gala, I had a long African dress on.

You looked out and you saw all of that in there. You saw people not dressed in that fashion, but people got up and the women were especially happy because there weren't that many women involved there at that cap meeting. You knew you were there for the women and you said, I'm here, how you doing sisters. First thing you said is how you doing sisters and sisters cheered, stood up and cheered because you were about them. You were there because of them. You were not there because you were an exception, I never liked that role. I was there representing the sisters and the brothers, but also saying, sisters, I'm here. Now you are here. And we're going to look at this and talk about it and see what our interests are also too. That was a really great time and a great movement also too because you saw people willing at some point to put aside differences and began to come together also. What do you think that happened at that point? Planning is a contrary to what people want to believe. A lot of this stuff was always in front of people planned it.

People saw. People had ideas about, see my idea has always been that we're going to be called ourselves African people eventually, but I know that we have to go through stages. We have to go through Negro and Black and African-American and now found the African. So, one of the things we understood fully is that if you're talking about piggybacking off brother Malcolm, you had to understand what his trip to Africa meant. It opened up avenues to all of us. What it also meant too at some particular point is that it meant that people were asking for help. But we were doing in this country, people were doing, began to do in the Caribbean, began to do in Africa on the continent, you see. So what was happening here, we had to be in the sense, in the vanguard. So we were in the vanguard. But we did here, it became, it happened in the Caribbean, it happened in Jamaica, it happened in Barbados, you see, it happened on the continent. So therefore, those lines were open finally. So we truly understood what we had to do at that particular point.

It was a realization of being at the forefront, pushing people to their roots in a very real terms, not in superficial terms. Can you give me a sense of Barak's poem, The Nation Title, do you remember it? Oh yeah, I think I'd heard that poem before he did it there, I could be wrong. But you know, Barbara Antier, and a lot of people, who was, she was the head of the black national theater, people came down and recited what it was to be involved with Nation Time. What was interesting about that is that people said Nation Time, and people began to sing it and chant Nation Time. And so when Barbara Antier and Hug Theater Group began to say it's Nation Time, and Baraka began to say it's Nation Time, and when we began as poets to say it's Nation Time, get it together brother, get it together sister, this Nation needs you, requires you, this Nation requires your energy, your intelligence, your abilities, whatever, the people began to

chant in the house, it's Nation Time, Nation, Nation Time, and we knew what Nation we were talking about, because the country told us there was a white nation and a black nation. So we knew we were talking about a black nation at that time, and that was important for people to understand that, so people chanted, it was a call and response that was going on there, and we responded to the call for Nation Time, and Nation Time meant very strict response to what was going on in the country, get your life together, get your politics together, get your eyeballs straight, you don't understand, get the body straight, the hair straight, the face straight, and get your job straight, who are you working for, and what are you working for, and what is this world all about, are you indeed a human being, or do you think you're a human being, if you think you're a human being you're probably not going to act like one, become the human being, that people really want us to become, as a consequence

you found people walking out of each cultural night, you see the cultural night reinforced the workshops, what happened in the workshops you see, the cultural night set it again, invoice, and singing, and poetry, and dance, and whatever, and music you see, when people talk to you in the day, they sign it at night, when people argue you in the day, at night it came together, you see, and people's names were mentioned, so we mentioned all the names, we didn't need anybody, we'll be saying it's Nation Time, for you too Whitney, for you too digs, you know, for you too Baraka, for you too Farrakhan, you see, everybody was included, you see, in that you see, and as a consequence you see, people are left there humming, it's Nation Time, it's Nation Time, and it got all the way into their insides, all the way down to their toe jam. While you were at the Congress of African People's Convention, what did you hope would come out of it?

You know, that's a difficult to say that I came to the Congress of African people with specific agenda, and specific hopes beyond ringing people together, and beyond moving them to an idea of what it was to connect with African people all over the planet Earth. As a woman, what were your expectations going into the Congress of African people? I'm not sure what my expectations were as we moved into Atlanta for the Congress of African people, because most of the women had not planned that conference, and so we wanted to show what was expected of any of us as women other than perhaps to be participants or performers or to lead a workshop, but as we moved in and looked and observed and worked and listened to conversations, and listened to arguments, we understood that certainly

out of that would come some other things, and they did come good things, African liberation day came, of course, the movement to Gary also, all of that made for the movement to Gary, going into Gary to try to fuse together the politics of the time with the politicians of the time. I didn't make that meeting, I didn't make it because at some point I had begun to say simply, and this had nothing to do with control of power, it had to do with finally the realization that we were getting a one point of view, it was a point of view always usually of men, and of perhaps a woman or so who reflected the views of the men you see, and that was, I didn't want to be divisive, and so I thought it was much more important at some point to observe it, to listen to people when they came back, to read the writings of what happened, and just say simply at some point that too is not going to make it, and I think it didn't make it necessarily because it did not have the input of women who quite

often can mediate, could take it in different directions, can sometimes insist that that not be the case, and also could say simply, it's not about egos here, people, it's about the survival, and the movement of African people to a different level, let us not involve ourselves with this at all. What was the reaction of brothers? I need to recreate the people. Could you talk again about the not-evolvement of Black women in the leadership in terms was a planning for the Congress of African People's Convention? Well, one of the things that one understood as one appeared in Atlanta, Georgia, one understood that there was no real leadership of black women in the planning, in even the execution,

maybe in the execution, maybe in the doing of running around making sure that things were kept on time or passing out pencils or making sure that we had directions in terms of places to eat, et cetera. But you came there not really knowing what that agenda was all about. You came there not really knowing what the expectations were. So therefore, you came out of great love for our people. You came out of great love for the people who were going to be participants there. And you came because you knew you were involved with history. You were indeed a part of history. So you came wondering exactly what would come out of all of that. What came out of all of that was, of course, African liberation days. What came out of that, of course, was Gary later on, where we saw the fusion of poets and writers and cultural workers and politicians and the fusion

of people who were involved with politics, with people who were just ordinary students and workers, et cetera. But what we also knew at that particular point, that there again was an example of things being planned without the participation of African-American women. And I decided at the last minute that I would not participate in that. I decided that I would not go, that I would wait for the conclusions of that meeting. OK. If you could pick it up and just mention where we're going, I need to get Nikki growing, the sense of not participating in Gary. So as a consequence of observing what was going on, I decided that I would not go to Gary in Anna, that I would not be a participant of what I call an observer only, a non-participant asks to be a participant

on a limited level in the Gary experiment, where people came to involve themselves with politics and culture, with politics and staying alive in America. So I didn't go. And I got the results of that event, from other people who did participate. I got the problems that came out of that. And really thought at some point that maybe if women had been very much involved with the planning of some of that, that some of the emphasis might have been somewhat different, maybe. What were you fighting against in terms of the attitude of black men at that point? Who were in struggle? I mean, their nationalists, their militants? I think what we recognized, finally, as women in the movement, in spite of what organization we were in, that African-American men had been socialized by America, and they were socialized to be patriots,

and they were socialized to be people who control things. Also, we don't forget we had come out of the time of Monahan. Monahan, when he came out with his report, that said, the problems with America is black women. What I'm saying, they have the power, which was sheer nonsense. So we also were coming out of some of the literature that damned black women. We came out of the literature that said the reasons why black men couldn't evase is that black women were holding them back. So we were coming out of a lot of madness, you see. And at the same time, we were trying to refocus some of that and say simply that black women were not responsible for the suppression that we were involved in and with. And that was very difficult. So you see, we, I lost my thought. OK, what? Can we give an incident of that, an example that at the Congress of African People's Convention? No, that would be hard. OK. Yeah, let me cut it out. 1966 through 1968 when you're in the debate area.

What was the black Panther Party offering the black community that went in different from one other sort of cultural national groups to use that word or other organizations were offering? What place did they fill in the black community? The Black Panther Party actually was a very important movement in the black community. The people, what the party did initially was that they escorted people home when they got off those buses late at night to their homes. They were like an escort service initially for the women who were coming in very late and for anyone because the cops over there where they lived would like were menacing people. They would be a menace by policemen there. As a consequence, they offered a service. And so they were very much a part of the community. And the community was very thankful that they could do this kind of thing for them. And then we saw a different kind of motion

of movement of Huey and Bobby Seal and Huey Newton as they moved into the classes with a woman by the name of Sarah Fabio who was teaching in merit college. And I first met Huey when I went to his class to read for Sarah Fabio there and began to talk to them about some of the things they intended to do. Their newspaper was a very important paper just as Muhammad speaks was an important newspaper at the time. It gave you all the news that you needed to have. The Black Panther paper was modeled after the Muhammad speaks paper, but the same kind of demands that we want the following on the back, et cetera. It had news that the other newspapers did not print. And it had something that was different from the Muhammad speaks paper. It had poetry. It had a cultural side. It had the cartoons. It had the artwork by the cultural workers there. And it was a fantastic, very good paper, a very important paper. Emory, the artist, did the cover for my first book, Homecoming.

And he's a very fine artist. This is the kind of thing that the Panther Party did. And what it offered young men was a sense, the kind of thing. The Panther Party was probably the manifestation of Malcolm on many levels, again. It gave that sense of we were men and not boys. And arena with fathers, OK? We were not boys. Don't call us boys. Call us young men walking down the street. It was not new to me in terms of look, however, because I grew up in Harlem where all the very hip people were black leather jackets. I wanted to have a black leather jacket, because all the so-called bad kids in our school had the black leather jackets and the black berets. And of course, I didn't have that in the black skirt. So I was not new at all. That was a familiar kind of scene. And I thought they were very hip, because I always wanted to wear those kinds of things. So I would say simply that the image they gave, the men,

a very powerful image. And of course, the whole image that went around the world of them going into the assembly with the guns, however, they were not loaded, by the way, OK? But it was just something that said simply, don't mess with me. And I remember talking to some old folks at the time, they said, well, girl, that ain't nothing new. We always own guns. We just kept them in our top drawer. You see? But the whole point of the newspaper articles was simply that this was a new phenomenon that we never thought black men had guns. But if you go south, we've been went out west. Black folks always had guns. Some place in the house, and you were told, don't touch those guns that were in the second drawer on the right underneath some shorts, some place. Thank you. Cut. Cut. Put it. OK. OK. Could you speak about the interaction between the panthers and the more cultural Africanists at that time? There was a lot of interaction between the cultural workers

and the Black Panther Party. If the party gave a demonstration in the park and in the Bay Area or in Oakland, the cultural workers were called upon to read their poetry to talk to the audiences. There was no division between the Black Panther Party and the people at Black Studies, Baraka, or myself. We were all in the same area or in at villains. The division came somewhat later on. But when we did programs at San Francisco State, the Black Panther Party was Huey came to speak. Bobby came to speak, OK. The sisters had their own little ditties that they would do. And they would come up and do their little ditties and do their little talk and do their little marching thing, et cetera. So there was always great interaction there. Because we had the Black Arts Repertory Theater in New York as a consequence of that, we had in San Francisco the Black House.

Cut. Do you talk about the Black House and its influence on the Panthers and how the Panthers made influence it in San Francisco? Black House was really the Western extension of what we had done in a place called New York City, the Black Arts Repertory Theater. And there at the Black House, you saw Baraka's plays and Bullens plays and we read our poetry. And you saw Emery's works, Emery Douglass's paintings and drawings and whatever. And you saw people cooperating with each other. You saw students and Panthers and artists coming together there. And I think what you saw also too is that the Panther Paper allowed us to print our poems, our poetry, and our messages and our articles in its newspaper. And also the Panther Party allowed us an arena for reading our poetry at the various events that happened. There was a fantastic coming together. There was a great collage of people from Panthers

to so-called cultural nationalists, to students, to people from the Black Studies. And they supported each other. And the audience was one that lived for that kind of interaction. It's not a great thing, it's not a great thing, it's not a great thing.