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NDE are the national educational radio network presents special of the Week this week from the WUOM series called background instead of investing in the life given measures of peace and justice. We have invested in death dealing wall assassination and data to the full state of meaningful action on the Qana report one year later. We have one of those. Did all that kind of report with not a single recommendation having been implemented. You see in this country what we have is a report and then we have with us today that report and then we have and I'm not like that is all of us did and then we have an analysis of the analysis. There is a tragedy of my friends I say to you my young student friends and my faculty here at this great university that in America
we're going to get bogged down in the paralysis of analysis. Thank you. This is background. A program of common conversation and analysis produced at the University of Michigan. Today the Reverend Ralph David Abernathy president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in excerpts from a speech given recently at Eastern Michigan University. Reverend Abernathy spoke about promises and realities the Kerner report one year later. We had the promises of many recent analysis on racial and economic problems in this country including recommendations from backstabbers business leaders it's the report of the White House Conference on Civil Rights. The volume of printed material from the United States Commission on Civil Rights. President Johnson's Asian
operates a sacked. The repeated eloquent call to action from my predecessor Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. And finally we had the kind of report and again one of the realities. All of the good news and all of these reports and co-owns have been timed aside. And stead of the great society we have a nation gone made an uneven whole and on winnable wall in Vietnam 6000 miles away from the shores of the United States of America instead of the reef recommended by moderate business and professional commission made up by our conservative leaders including the chief of police of my home town. She didn't get in and out of Georgia. We
have the same old subsidizes and protection for the rich and oppression for the pool. What I call socialism for the rich and the rich get free enterprise for the pool. Ladies and Gentleman I'm here to use. I'm sick and tired of promises. I'm sick and tired of the realities of war. Poverty and racism. I'm also here to you that Ralph David Abernathy. Has his own promise to make and a reality to create. I promise that I'm going to take action. To make the recommendations of the report. To the man and to the poor people's campaign and the dozens of other reports I have mentioned to live in reality and not just
from black people but from white yellow believe believe Catholic-Protestant and Jeep in this nation in which we live. I'm going to come from this nation and the world with the reality of massive. Ceaseless confrontation. Until America deals with the reality of it all equal I'm going into the streets of our cities and the plantations of the South. I would take every student every housewife every businessman every waking man. The only man the young the ropes and the weak the black and the white. Everyone who believes in justice and who is willing to stand with me. I'm tired
of the promises of reports. I want the reality of action and I want it now. Find out what this nation must do in 10. I mean we need only to turn again to the kind of report. That report recommended First of all that full opportunities rights and benefits be extended to roam America in the areas of jobs education welfare and housing. Kind of commission disposed of the myth that America cannot afford these Rifan and the myth that problems in jobs education and welfare as well as housing do not exist. But let me just remind you I want a few facts in the case of jobs it was recently disclosed that the Johnson
administration suppressed a state which found that black workers are hailed now. Not so much by inadequate education as racial discrimination. Even among Negroes What's a period of education. And we all know that blackmail but to kill all young black men suffer from. Depression level rates. I say that we must follow the kind of commission to create at least one job in the public sector. And one in the private sector to do in the next three years and do a massive recruiting and training program for the pool. We must also have full inforce mood of anti discrimination law
all but lip service promises on the pads. Did you know that the president signed an all of three years ago which would remove Defense contracts from companies which practices racial discrimination. And. And that not one thing will contract has been with hair not even in the South Block. In Atlanta Georgia. Anyone who asks Can we afford to create these jobs. My answer is this. If Congress can raise its own pay 40 percent. In 1969. Span two in one have billion dollars a month on our senseless and non winnable war and Vietnam. You job to.
Political patronage worker. And Bill 1070 and team Continental when this list of missiles with the bomb then America can create the jobs that desperately need it and can put every able bodied American to work. Within a few months. If she only had to we. Get. Did you know that we are the richest nation in the history of mankind. We are the richest nation that is every existed in the world. Gross National Product has almost a trillion dollars with. This time that we can put an end to poverty in this country. Education
Report stated that we must eliminate segregation and provide the best modern education for all. From preschool to college and vocational training. If you doubt the need for this. Go in day in a black school in this nation today and see the terrible inadequate facilities teachers and curriculum for black children are going in white schools and see the failure to teach the evils of racism economic oppression and war. Go into a public hospital and see poor people. Because we have not educated enough doctors black or white. We afford to educate our
children. Second to the massive spending on school in the a fluid for example County Maryland. A few months from capital. Say 15 much on gone wall to reduce the killin to teaching. Thank you. Report recommended in the field of welfare and in. Full rights and benefits to all. United States of America. The richest country in all history should follow the example of industrial. And civilized nations by providing a guaranteed
income. When I talk about welfare. I think the Vera Wu it will fare is a joke as it exists today that will fast system great and punishes people it has no product save for helping people to get out of the will fast cycle. Which they desperately want to do. It denies most recently guns as much as care of the benefits to which they are entitled and it prevents hundreds of thousands of people eligible for welfare. From getting any benefits at all. When I talk about income. I do not mean a family. A line proposed by Mr. Daniel Patrick Monaghan the vast majority of people would be helped by this. We are
not poor at all and even the rich would get the airlines. I think the rich already receive too much. Check it tax advantages and government handouts. The pool or shoot began t decent annual income. Once again. Aps. Can we afford a decent welfare system and a guaranteed income. My answer here is that if we can pay some of the Eastlands nation think TIENE thousand dollars a month to grow food off I bought on that plantation and let it grow up in the grass and we we can pay more than nine dollars a month to a child who receives welfare in that various state of Mississippi who is dying from starvation and malnutrition. And if
we can guarantee the end of that time. Congressman. And a president. We can guarantee in sick people who cannot get jobs and mothers of infant and old folks. And sick people. If we can guarantee a few files on tobacco and should go down more subject to the payments for a million pool people get in the entire program. We can have a guaranteed in for all. Day. If we really believe in equality in America. We can ask our sales. There is nothing close to eat quantity of income from black people. Americans now receive five hundred and fifty billion dollars in personal income
each year. I repeat. Americans now receive a hundred and fifty billion dollars in person alone in each year black people make up 11 percent of the population. Actually the census does not count. Millions of us. Are. What if we had he won 11 percent of the girl. We would be earning six day and one half billion dollars and away. But in reality. We receive only twenty seven. Billion dollars. Something is wrong. I don't like it. I have the feeling that you know they're not like we must do something about it. Q.
You see we must do something about it because you will never be free do your black brothers and sisters down in Mississippi Alabama and Georgia all over Michigan is free. Q. Thank you mate. Secure. In your. Loveless neighborhood poverty has a way of infesting whole communities and the whole nation because it is a terrible. Housing Commission that open housing. And building codes must be in force and we need massive housing programs for the poor supplement housing.
None of these things have been. In enforcing housing. Open housing law covering all housing in the nation in eighteen hundred sixty six hundred in three years. It has never been enforced even in spite of the open Housing Act of 1968 and the Supreme Court's decision on housing last summer. Existing housing programs have never really saluted poor people and black people. More people have been made homeless by urban renewal than have been provided with a new home. Public housing project prison where the occupants have no rights and a terror spot of
wrecks. Is Rule 1 Rex. That is the absolute. It is supplements have never been fully funded and the existing ceiling these programs should be greatly increased. Once again it is x. Can we afford decent housing. Class of America. Tax concessions for homes. Then we can provide housing for poor people. If we can give free housing to military people not to poor people we can talk piously about all
and all out. In forcing. And forcing the open housing law all cracking down on. The slum as the. In the. Thank you. Those. Clues are and reference to the. Report's recommendations on jobs education welfare and housing. After his review of the current report one year later the Reverend Abernathy outlined his goals of the second phase of the Poor People's Campaign. In the second chapter of the Poor People's Campaign. I recommended to the board of directors on yesterday in Chicago. It was unanimously adopted that the
goal of making a father and a man on the federal government in 1969. 1968 the press thought that they could not understand what our goals were because they were in a document. One hundred and twenty five pages and they didn't want to read that much. So I have reduced the mole to one. Less that even a third grade student can understand. And this is what we are demanding. Number one. Hungry America by providing free food stamps to all family is running less than three thousand dollars a year. Number two in a uniform national will pass them so that welfare rights
are nationwide. And will not be rare. From Mississippi. To Michigan and all persons receiving welfare have a decent income. Number three provide productive jobs and training for all people in need of work so that they may provide for the Af-Am even if the federal government has to be the source of last result. Number four. Repeal the vicious welfare 3 that threatens poor mothers and children. If it goes into effect July 1 1969. Make all government payments. To a pool in Greece in proportion to the rise in
cost of living. Number six in force and vigorously the federal Equal Employment Opportunity by withholding federal contracts from company is which practice racial discrimination. This law has never been enforced. By those who follow the law and all. George Juanes forces. When he was preachy lolled and number seven. Also in forests in the north as well as the South. The food grown all home school desegregation by withholding funds from the school districts would spray old to desegregate again.
This law has never been adequately enforced by the same officials call for Law and Order. And who say that they want to bring us together but who are keeping children the POB by eight and that senseless unwinnable and this wall and Vietnam and bring our home so that they will not have to. Have somebody to match. These demands explicit and simple enough for everyone. They are reasonable and they octane. They are made and will be dramatised. Away because I happen to know.
In this country that we only play into the hands of the oppressor when we lose. You only give them the excuse to brutalize. Innocent people who are seeking to exercise their constitutional God given rights. I know also. That the philosophy to have followed to its own conclusion to this generation. Rev. Abernathy summarized by speaking directly to the audience president and America in general. The last objective stated in our report was simply.
That we. Have increased communication. Across racial lines. To destroy stereotypes to hot polarization and distrust and hostility and to create common ground and efforts toward a common goal. Stop putting order and social justice the need for this is so obvious that I need not elaborate on it except to say this in case of all of the current report's recommendations the important thing here is to go or hear it and do it. I'm confident that students and young people especially there. Are rich there if you're willing and that you'll able to see interracial communication. We are talking about. Indeed this process
began among young people and it is continuing. I only need you to accelerate it with all deliberate speed. My colleagues it's a huge day. I speak. It is you allow him history to take action with me. Well the kind of reforms suggested by the coroner report. We must admit that white racism is in America. Just as the kind of commission had made and then we must take the steps to him. Once we had that there is
racism in this country that we live in a white racist society. Then we can be about our Father's business to put an end to normal a normal amount of talk and certainly no report. Produced the changes we need in America. Com home America from you will all been out there in outer space and deal with inner space problems that plague young people and young students and making them a because they are not certain whether they will have a future in America because they are not certain that there will be America to live in.
Tham home America from your peers. You will raise with a Russia to be the fish to live on the moon. Come on back home America. And let us live. As black and white brown and yellow up rich and cool. Th. Dear No Pete. Those who have been in a more house and those who have no house. Thanks. Thank you I respect for their submit to you deceive me that it is your opportunity as students and as faculty and as members and guest of this community. It is even your responsibility to join this movement and to work with us until there comes a day that we will not need a car to report.
With it promises because we will have a poor people's report. That freedom justice and brotherhood and peace a reality and that these fundamental principles because this way has no water cup are the see today on background. You have heard the Reverend Ralph David Abernathy president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in excerpts from a speech given recently at Eastern Michigan University. Our Special thanks go to radio station WEAA mule for making the recording possible. NPR's special of the week thanks both W E M U website Hey and WUOM in Ann Arbor and the program background for this half hour. This is NDE are the national educational radio network.
Series
Special of the week
Episode
Issue 22-69
Contributing Organization
University of Maryland (College Park, Maryland)
AAPB ID
cpb-aacip/500-tx355s48
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Description
Description
No description available
Date
1969-05-09
Topics
Public Affairs
Media type
Sound
Duration
00:30:22
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Credits
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University of Maryland
Identifier: 69-SPWK-424 (National Association of Educational Broadcasters)
Format: 1/4 inch audio tape
Duration: 00:30:00?
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Citations
Chicago: “Special of the week; Issue 22-69,” 1969-05-09, University of Maryland, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC, accessed March 19, 2024, http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-500-tx355s48.
MLA: “Special of the week; Issue 22-69.” 1969-05-09. University of Maryland, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC. Web. March 19, 2024. <http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-500-tx355s48>.
APA: Special of the week; Issue 22-69. Boston, MA: University of Maryland, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC. Retrieved from http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-500-tx355s48