Black Journal; No. 709; What Happened to the Revolution?

This program was made possible by a grant from Pepsi Cola Company. There are three turns that black people in this country should learn at three. One is white supremacy, one is New York colonialism, and one is black power. But I think revolution after we described what we were about, it doesn't describe what we did, but it describes what we tried to do. The evolutionary and persistent struggle of blacks for full equality began with the importation of Africans to America, and has symbolically lived on in the Frederick Douglass's Harriet Tubmans and Kuntakentes of American history. But it took a new turn in the 60s, for the first time black power was placed in the context of overt confrontation, or as many would come to call it the black revolution. Larry Coleman, a former college student of mine, would later write as a lawyer, quote, the revolution has come as suddenly as a late spring tornado in the Midwest, coming without warning it left without notice, leaving in its wake a disparate aggregation in quest of direction.

Somewhere along the line, the civil rights movement had lost its direction, and after Martin Luther King, its leadership, substituting rhetoric for substance, the charlatans, the pimps, and the agent provocateurs filled the void. Larry wrote, yesterday's flaming oratory became today's clichés. At the end of the program, you should know various interpretations of the word revolution, why the civil rights movement lost its momentum, how black leaders feel about violence, and you should know whether black leaders think their success was due to the riots in the 60s. We started out in the 50s looking for civil rights, and suddenly someone threw a rock, then a Molotov cocktail, and we were told we were in a revolution, then we started talking like we were, but little else.

Like a new dance craze, literally all blacks were into the rhetoric of the 60s, but some more intensely than others. It started with Negro becoming black, then civil rights became struggle, racism became oppression, and finally the quote movement petered out as a class struggle. In fact, emotion was acted out in an intellectual vacuum. The rhetoric of land changing hands, redistribution of wealth and collective responsibility, soon gave way to do your own thing and what's in it for me. Media's role was significant, it created and perpetuated the so-called black revolution, it even convinced blacks that they were conducting a revolution. Example, black people really never bought Elvich Cleaver as a leader, someone who tried to convince himself and others that rape would make the world a better place. But the media loved the mileage that got out of his hysterics, his fear of value frightened whites and resulted in ratings. We never really had a revolution in the 60s, not in its classic sense anyway. It was mostly an ideological war, a social movement with sporadic and unorganized assaults on physical property.

Julian Bond talks about this. Do you feel that the term revolution is really appropriate for what was going on in the 60s among blacks? It was appropriate for what was building. Revolution does not have to be the final act itself, and I think we were building a revolution. And it didn't have to have been a revolution with the gun in this hand and the hammer and sickle in the other or a bomb ready to explode, didn't have to have barricades and shots exchanged. I think we were building a revolution, but we inched up the hill toward it and we stopped. And we've been sliding slowly back down whatever sense, but we've been running so hard to keep in the same place that we haven't realized this slide has begun. But I think revolution aptly describes what we were about. It doesn't describe what we did, but it describes what we tried to do. When you say revolution, that conjures up in the minds of people, violent acts. No, I think this would have been essentially a nonviolent revolution. And by that, I don't mean black people being beaten up by white people and not resisting, but essentially a political revolution and economic revolution.

Had we continued from, let's say, the late 60s to today with the same kind of political organizing and education that we thought we were doing. And had we been able to institutionalize it not just in the rural south, but throughout black America. And had we gotten the white students with whom we had worked very closely to do in their community, what they had done very well in our community, then I think we'd be on the edge of a real economic and political revolution in this country. But you say we would have had a revolution. What were we having? We were having the beginning steps. We were having the ferment. We were having the building of discontented cadres in society. We were having the training sessions for people who would spend the next 20 or so years building political and economic power in this country. We were having almost consciousness raising sessions without calling them that as we tried this and it didn't work and we tried that and it didn't work or we succeeded here, but the success wasn't what we thought it would be. We were building toward a revolution, I think. White's have become convinced that blacks were unappreciative and reacted with law and order as a response to black demands.

The legitimate needs of poor blacks got lost. Roger Wilkins explains. What do you essentially see as well? Let me rephrase the question. What do you think happened to the black revolution? The white backlash enshrined as policy by the Nixon administration. People were tired, white people. They thought that, my God, we've made all this effort in the 60s. They've gotten a lot. And there were black success models. There were the politicians, there were the entertainers, there were the black superstar athletes. And so people could look at these statistics, they could look at the few sprinkling of superstars. And beyond that glittering facade, they could not see the poverty, the generations of kids growing up, never knowing either parent had worked. The country was anxious. You'll remember back there was a big newspaper and media fan about discovering the new black middle class about five years ago. That flowed from this. And that emphasis on the new black middle class and new black afterwards, diverted attention from the real job to be done, which was to get the poorest class of blacks economic opportunities.

Black Journal conducted an opinion poll on the subject of the black revolution. We created two samples and compared the opinions of Ebony's 100 most influential black Americans with another 100 black leaders not in the Ebony sample. Our results are based on those responding. When asked, do you feel that black America was actually involved in a revolution during the 60s, 68% of the Ebony sample said yes. And the black journal sample also perceived the 60s in a revolutionary context by an 82 to 18% majority. What came to be known as the black revolution grew out of the civil rights movement of the 50s and 60s. What you and I need to do is learn to forget our differences. You don't catch hell cause you're a Methodist or a Baptist. You don't catch hell because you're a Democrat or a Republican. You don't catch hell because you're a Mason or an elk. And you sure don't catch hell cause you're an American because if you was an American, you wouldn't catch no hell.

You catch hell cause you're a black man. You catch hell. All of us catch hell for the same reason. I have a dream. My four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. I have a dream today. We will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual. Free at last. Free at last. Thank God Almighty. We'll free at last. Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country. When we open our eyes today and look around America, we see America not through the eyes of someone who has enjoyed the fruits of Americanism.

We see America through the eyes of someone who has been the victim of Americanism. We don't see any American dream. We've experienced only the American nightmare. The white man feels that the Negro can never live with him because it's the white man who is stopping integration. I'm not the one who is stopping Negroes from integrating with whites. I'm not the one who keeps Negroes from integrating white schools and so don't put the burden of proof on me. It is the white man himself who is guilty and who's guilt proves that the Negro and the white man can't live side by side. I do think that the black man within a very few years will build up his own political party.

The politics of this world is made by the white man. You don't help any yourself. The white man makes all his politics. Then he teaches our people those laws of politics in which he has planned and devised himself. And there is so much crookedness in the white man's politics that you cannot win with his politics. There are three turns that black people in this country should learn at break. One is white supremacy, one is neo-colonialism, and one is black power. I'm here to tell you in case you don't know it. You've got a new generation of black people in this country who don't care anything whatsoever about ours.

The young generation don't want to hear anything about the odds or against us. What do we care about us? One asked, were you surprised when the non-violent movement of the 60s turned violent? The Ebony group said no by 92%. And an almost identical percentage of black journal sample agreed. One asked, do you feel the term riots used in the 60s was and is appropriate? 63% of the Ebony sample answered no, and 72% of the black journal sample agreed also. Infocizing the transition of black power in a violent context to black power in a political context, the Ebony sample unanimously said yes. And the black journal group agreed by an 87 to 13% majority. We think wrongly so that marches are no good. And some marches are no good. But the physical kinds of protests, the demonstration, the sit-in, the picket line, those are techniques that go back to the beginning of the labor movement in this country and will go forward.

I think for another hundred years, as long as they're people in need, they're going to express with their bodies what's wrong with them. And I think we have wrongly learned from the 1960s that marches don't work anymore. The anti-war movement in this country collapsed because it believed that it could march around the Pentagon three times in the war would end. And they did it and the war didn't end. They said, well, to hell with this, I'm not going to do it anymore. And so they dissipated and split away. But I think we've wrongly learned that physical movements are doomed to failure. And that's not true. Martin Luther King's philosophy was non-violent confrontation, but his end came violently. What would happen to me from some of our sick, white brothers? Well, I don't know what will happen now. We've got some difficult days ahead, but it really doesn't matter with me now, because I've been to the mountain top.

And I don't mind. Like anybody, I would like to live a long life, longevity, has its place. But I'm not concerned about that now. I just want to do God's will. And he is allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I've looked over and I've seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you, but I want you to know the night that we ever people will get to the Promised Land. So in losing Dr. King, we lost a symbol and we lost substance. We lost a man that had taken us from black men within light and minds and tingling spinal cords to a new people who had the power to stand up in front of white people.

I've developed the power to confront dogs, to confront sheriffs, to confront jails, to confront death. All of this malware in our bone came from Dr. King's leadership. Non-violence is not the way. I mean, we'll never get it by marching. Nobody never got anything by marching. You never got anything by sitting down. If you have to sit down to get something, you'll never get it. So the best way to get it is to get up and go get it. That's what you want. If you really want it. And even if every black person in America got together and served themselves violently, I still don't believe this would be the answer. Because I don't believe number one that we could win. And number two, I'm not at all convinced that this is the way to affect a meaningful lasting change. The effect that I'm most aware of in the assassination of Dr. King was in the final and total rejection on the part of the establishment of black people approaching the establishment on its own terms. And it was proven and made very clear to all black people that this is something that would not work, that the rewards of Dr. King's very gracious and noble and Western white Christian approach to solving black people's problems was rejected finally.

Next week, black journal examines how attitudes, nonverbal behavior and racial prejudices affect communications, interpersonal and interracial between blacks and whites. I never heard of a sit-in revolution. The only type of revolutions I've known about or read about are the bloody revolutions. Examples are the Russian revolution. A revolutionary law, my one main is it gives me liberty or gives me death. Different views about revolution by the leaders of the 60s.

Revolution is an Asia. Revolution is an Africa. And the white man is screaming because he sees revolution in Latin America. How do you think he'll react to you when you learn what a real revolution is? You don't know what a revolution is. If you did, you wouldn't use that word. Certainly, a great revolution is going on in our world today, sweeping away an old order. Bring in the being of New York. We see it in Asia, in Africa as we listen from afar to the deep rumblings of discontent. We're going to devout the coalition all over across this country, and we're going to organize. Black Panther Party all over the world across this country. I think the Panthers, very much like we in SNCC, did not build a kind of community base that they had to build to come into a community, a black community. And to call the owner of the neighborhood barbeque, stand, an avaricious capitalist, is just to misunderstand the way black communities work.

To denigrate the black minister, who can stand some denigration, but to denigrate him just out of hand, as many of the Panthers did when they'd hit a community firsthand, is to immediately alienate yourself from all of that congregation, from all the people who shop at that barbeque stand, from all of the people whom the Panthers said they wanted to be near. So the combination of official harassment and destruction, and then I think sort of a built-in, destructedness destroyed the Panthers, and it ultimately destroyed all of these groups who hadn't established a base strong enough to sustain them. Although we can't call it a revolution in the classic sense, a lot of young people got hurt in the name of one. Most notable for self-destruction was the black Panthers. One day in 1967, a group identifying itself as the black Panthers armed to the teeth with shotguns and rifles marched into the California General Assembly to demonstrate what they call their need to defend themselves, and provided a sensation-hungry media with all the evidence it needed that a revolution was really taking place. Death to the pigs, power to the sniper, became standard rhetoric for a group that J. Edgar Hoover would erroneously identify as the single greatest threat to our national security.

The black Panthers first made national news just a year ago when they entered the state capital and Sacramento armed with rifles and pistols. They were there, they said, to demonstrate opposition to the proposed legislation that would outlaw the carrying of loaded weapons. In the year following this incident, there were a series of armed confrontations between the Oakland police and the Panthers. The police maintained the Panthers have provoked these incidents. The Panthers claimed the police are trying to liquidate their leadership and destroy the party. Oakland police chief gain. There have been many people in the city who have maligned this police department, who have through some more than sentimentality or other reason, sympathize with the black Panthers in a peace and freedom movement. And what really, what real evidence is there to cause people to be so sick as to do that aligning?

Take a look at this moral and unjustified junk that has been put out. Bobby Hutton, they tried to deify one who tried to murder policemen. And what do they say on this piece of paper? A black man who dedicated his life to defending the black community from racist oppression was murdered in cold blood by Oakland police, ridiculous lies, ridiculous attempts to create prejudice. The black Panther Party poses a real threat to the peace and tranquility of the city of Oakland. The Panthers have a different version of their role. Huey Newton, Panther leader, will soon be on trial for his life. We asked him about the origins of the party and their concept of self-defense. We use the black Panther as a symbol because of the nature of Panther. Panther doesn't strike anyone, but when he's a sail of bond, he'll back up first, but if the aggressor continues, then he'll strike out. White Bout is aggressor, thoroughly, wholly, absolutely, and completely.

The Party is a, I like to call it a third, a second party, rather than a third party because we see very little difference as far as black people are concerned between the Republican or Democratic Party here in the United States. We view ourselves as a colonized people, so we're in a situation of a mother country and a colony, and the politics of the mother country is not the answer to the needs of the black subjects and the colony. Therefore, this is the black political party, and it's a vanguard group for the freedom of black people. Originally, a party was called the Black Panther Party for self-defense. The name now has been changed to the Black Panther Party because many people misunderstood the scope of self-defense.

The power structure, the establishment has been aggressive towards us in every area, the social area, the economical area, and the political area. So therefore, we felt it necessary to erect a political party to defend and promote the general interest of black people. Continuing their defined stand against the police, they seek support by running candidates on the white organized peace and freedom party ticket and are publishing their own newspaper, Bobby Seale, Panther Chairman. This paper is did by black people, trying to unify black people around this program here. This is the fact that the program of the party is a bomb. We say, we want full employment, every black man wants full employment. You know that? We want to enter the robbery by the white man of our black community. That's what we're talking about, like number three. Number four, we want decent housing, pick the shelter, human beings, the day, and then we've got, we want education for our people that expose the true nature of this darkened and American society.

We want education that teaches us our true history and our role in the present-day society. We want all black men to be exempt from military service. We want freedom for all black men, held in federal, state, county, jail, city, prisons, and jails, right? We don't know how black could heal. We're hung up at the man's railroads through the prisons. We want to immediately end the police brutality and murder of black people. Basically, we want land, bread, housing, education, clothing, justice, and people. We don't want no way man, you know, in our organization. We don't have white people in our organization. When we do white people who want to help, this organization is so controlled by black people. We direct those white people what they can do and what they have to do to start stopping that racism. There are right now involved in a struggle against certain black people who have joined the power structure and are now helping the power structure to oppress us. We have a United States man by name of Roy Wilkins, who can be acquainted with the Chiang Kai Shaq, or Batista, or Mahbootu, or Shambi, or all the bootmickers that exist on the face of the matter.

As to what happened to the panther biggies of this quote, revolution. The newton jumped bail and is supposedly in Cuba working on a sugar plantation. Bobby Seal unsuccessfully ran from mayor of Oakland, California, hitting hard against crime. Recently he wrote President Carter asking for a job in the new administration. Eldridge Cleaver turned from fugitive to pornographic fashion designer, then to the stars and stripes and patriotism, and now he alleges to having been born again for Jesus. He once wanted to overthrow the American nightmare, now he is promoting the American dream. Once called the minister of information for the black panthers, many now label him opportunist. 57% of the Ebony sample said no, when asked, do you feel that Eldridge Cleaver is sincere about his conversion to patriotism and Christianity? But the black journal sample was split, 50-50.

The question, do you feel that your success is related to the alleged riots of the 60s, was given a no by 54% of the Ebony sample? But 80% of the black journal sample feel the opposite. To the question, are you optimistic about a future for blacks in America? Ebony said yes by 91%, and the black journal sample agreed by a 65 to 35% majority. There were more universal principles involved in what was called the black revolution than one would suspect, or than we were led to believe. The media saw it as a freak show, with star billing going to publicity starved men and women. But for whatever its failings were, and they were legion, it called for a time when no one would want for the basic necessities. Black leaders now work in various capacities. To bring about a time when all men and women will be free, will be equal. A time when no one will want for the basic necessities. Case in point, Detroit would suffer tremendously from its image as a crime-infested city. Has under a black mayor and a black police chief reduce crime substantially.

Statistics from October 1976 through February 1977, as compared with the same period a year before, documents a significant reduction in crime. Homicides are down 26.5%, robberies down 36.7% and rapes have been reduced by 12.7%. The city leadership has adopted an anti-crime slogan called, one will get you two. This new anti-crime policy abolishes plea bargaining and any crime committed with the gun results in an automatic two-year jail sentence. No pleas to a lesser charge are allowed. This tough anti-crime program in Detroit is typical of the new thrust of black leaders around the country. The black revolution of the 60s has embraced a common regard for mankind's dreams and aspirations in the 70s. Black started off fighting white people and ended up fighting injustice. The preceding program was made possible by a grant from Pepsi Cola company.

The preceding program was made possible by a grant from Pepsi Cola company. The preceding program was made possible by a grant from Pepsi Cola company. The preceding program was made possible by a grant from Pepsi Cola company. The preceding program was made possible by a grant from Pepsi Cola company. The preceding program was made possible by a grant from Pepsi Cola company.

The preceding program was made possible by a grant from Pepsi Cola company. The preceding program was made possible by a grant from Pepsi Cola company.