Black Journal; 28; The Black Woman

The following program is from MET. This show will concentrate on one of the greatest institutions in the world, the black woman.

In order to get the real feelings and perspective of our sister, we went to her. A group was brought together with as many differences as likenesses, but held together by the common thread of the black experience. Another institution was added, Sister Lena Horn, who can, from first experience, speak about survival if you are born a woman and black in this society. Our woman is bornous, nurturedous, and saved our race, and in the process, she often got the worst of it. As a unique institution, the black woman remains. I believe the role of a black woman is to work for a just society, to kind of a society

in which children can grow up without fear, in which they can hope, don't you think so? Really, you know, to boil it all down, black woman is a mother's civilization, that is it? She is. She is actually the mother's. That's it. She is a mother of the earth. She brings the best for the fruit to fertilize the soil. I agree. We have it. I think that we have overlooked the fact that black women have been for the white nation. We have sucked, they have sucked as dry, that we have nursed the children. We have fed them. We have done everything, put all our energies, all our work into working for the white family. And now it's time for us to take all our strength, all the strength that Manna Han says we have. You know, we suppose to be the strongest one, anyway, it's time for us to take all our

strength, all our milk, all of that, and put it into working for the black nation. I'd like to touch on something here. I'm glad you brought this up. And I don't know what reaction this is going to get, a lot of people jump at me when I say it. But unfortunately, all people in this country, black people and white people, are subjugated to the same system of media, are subjugated to the same systems of communication, are subjugated to the same conditioning. And that's something we definitely have to reckon with if we're going to ever get through any of this stuff. Manna Han, that's sort of the name that's associated with that word matriarchy, definitely has to be dealt with. I'd like to deal with it in the face to face. Right, right. I think that unfortunately, a lot of us, black men and black women, believe in the myth of that matriarchy. And I think that that belief engenders a lot of negative things. Number one, it says that matriarchy is inferior to patriarchy, which is a whole thing right there.

So patriarchy is a sort of natural or divine order of things, which is not so. It's two that black men have believed and internalized the myth of white womanhood in this country. And Anglo-Saxon impositions so that they place us in relation to where white women are. It's two things a woman, I believe, being a black woman and a very proud black woman can do for a man. Make him a break him. And then you take him to consideration how a black man has been berated by the white man. His woman, you know, adequately couldn't have the luxuries of another woman born, same just like her. This man has to, you know, black men have stood by for a very, very long time and then you humiliated by the system. He can't get the job that this fellow can get. And he must understand that his wife might have to go on welfare.

He has to stand in the unity of black. He has to watch the plumber duck if the welfare worker come in there. You understand? He has always been like made to feel he's below the next man. So you must all this, you must come, you know, taken to consideration. You know, now black men are learning, you know, their part, their beginning to feel like a man. They get in their dignity and their pride back. So he needs a woman to keep on pushing it. Priced versus, you know, when you say about, you know, in the system, this system has destroyed actually the black man, you know, because everything that we've ever done is no part of this country that you can say. You touch that, that a black man didn't bring it in here. You know, everything that they built, they've never been able to share with it. I don't even want to hear that, you know, what society have done just took our black men and destroyed their men. Oh, that's what they've done. Ain't the better. I'm certainly not in this agreement. I'm in 200% agreement with everything you said.

I think we all are. But might be all, excuse me, might be, you know, like we understand that what the brothers are going through now, just say the cultural national. But might it all be very revolutionary and you might be the better woman for understanding it. At this point, they need you to walk a few feet behind and get their manhood together. So, if they take that, then I'm going to do whatever the brothers need. Now, I mean, I've been doing a lot of research on slavery and talk about wiping out and ripping off of people. They did it to the black man. They did it. And if it takes, you know, at this point, you know, a cultural national say you got to walk four pieces behind it, baby, slow. If that might be rubbish, I'm going to do that. I mean, I'm going to do anything at this point. Where do you mean it? It's that revolutionary. Our revolutionary is that if one half of us is in condescension and a kind of almost weird thing, saying, walking ten pieces behind it, saying that in order for me to, quote, regain my manhood, I have to deny you your peoplehood.

No. It's that revolutionary. I think we really have to explain, but it really needs that, you know, I don't, what we just said, we just have to do whatever we need to do to do that. See, that says to me that you really believe that there has been this thing called a matriarchy that, as Moine has believed, we've been ripped off as a people, black people has been ripped off. No, we have been ripped off. But you know, all the internal things that really, black people have been ripped, black people have been ripped of every ounce of human, human things that's in title and do another human being. Do you know how we really can't get this together? And really, because to me, this is very alien, and we shouldn't be sitting here talking about defining something which has been defined for us, we should be about redefinition. And I don't particularly care whether I walk alongside and back of or in front of, that is going to have to be defined for me by my man. We know too well what our being is all about in the United States of Europe.

We have to deal with that, that's why I started out by saying, are we talking about changes within existing systems, because that's all we're talking about. We're talking about a black nation within a European nation. And if we have to deal with that, then let's redefine our own culture and stop being a subculture. We're not worrying about the man, that's deifying him, who is the man? You know, I agree with you, except, sorry, go ahead of me. No, I just went to mention in terms of cultural nationalism and what, you know, brothers feel, I don't know, you know, but if it's all true that brothers would like you to walk ten paces and back at them. But I do know that we do have a definite role, and until we play our definite role, they cannot play their definite role. And our role is a complementary, complete and make perfect, that which is imperfect. And that if we go about being the inspiration of the nation and, again, educating the

children of the nation and participating in the social development of the nation, that it would be no problem. And when we say we should not discuss things, we start out to discuss them. Like why raise my hand if he's invalid? Don't raise him. Don't talk about him. I really believe this very strongly that as much as we would all like to say that and struggle every day, re-examining ourselves to do just that, that we are, unfortunately, very much a part of that dominant culture, it does affect us. Now, if it didn't affect us, we wouldn't be fighting crackers. And that's the truth of it. If it didn't affect us, we wouldn't get mad about what Mr. Moynihan writes. If it didn't affect us, certain people would not react to the myth of the matriarchy in the way they do. And that's why it has to be exposed and destroyed. It's not that I really want to spend time talking about Mr. Moynihan.

It's that I think that we have to get rid of the illusions, we have to get rid of the poisons, we have to get rid of the lies. And one way to do that is expose it and dissect it. Another way, if we create a new life, a new value system and living. That's what I'm talking about. That would probably be the best way. Because then people could see it as a living thing and that is a theory. Because what we need to do is to reestablish a new value system. That's what black people know about that and how exactly and how do we go about that. We go about it the way you go about daily work. First of all, you decide what you want. You establish your values and you start to live it. And the people in your community, you start talking to your neighbors. You get yourself together first. Exactly. Then you get your community together. Then you get your name, where you get, where you going. And then you can move on out. But in the beginning, you got to make sure you got yourself together. Right, right. OK, we have to start right here. But I think we ought to be sure we understand what she's saying. This relates to what you said earlier about the black nation.

I'm not sure I understand what you mean by the black nation. I mean, black people's lives being self-determining, defining yourself, naming yourself. And having political power, we're a nation already without political power and military power. We're a cultural nation without political and military power. We're a nation, you know, in captivity by another people, a people who have a totally different culture than we have. We cannot even relate to the things that we relate to, that is the problem. And as black women, we have to be the inspiration for the nation, for our men. We have to start out into the community educating the children, educating ourselves. Because once we educate ourselves, the children will become educated because we are the ones that teach the children. We are the ones that decorate the homes.

We are the ones that are with both female and male children. We are the ones that the children look to as the image in terms of their daily education. So it is important that we don't get our values mixed up and feel that we have to educate the world. We haven't first educated ourselves. Still always a self thing. I mean, the world will relate to us. Once we can relate to ourselves, I mean, I think we are afraid of definitions and afraid to set guidelines because we might have to live by them. If you stand up and say a black woman should do this and that, then you might have to do that. But if you say, well, we don't have to say anything, you know, we can just do it. Do what? So like everybody can do their own thing. But every society needs a value system, every society has a criterion which they live by.

And we live by everybody else's power. Exactly. I'm a copy in the burning sun, I'm the lash of the wind. And the day is done. I'm a mother taking her son from the ends of a road, what he's done, God don't know I'm the pain, my mama, why she was breaking that cold, cost the boss man me her, till the hour I was born.

She are the head, the fix the food with the smile, for in my mama's lap she wrapped the boss's child. Do you want to see this lad, then listen to what I say, do you want to see this lad? Look in my face, I'm a soldier on a battlefield, far away from home, who's fighting for something he's never known, a ghost from my past, God don't be from day to day. And to know I'm going right, keeps me on my way.

Do you want to see this lad, listen to what I say, do you want to see this lad, then look in my face, my mama, I'm a soldier on a battlefield, I am the last of a wave, I am that cockles me, but a ghost, a ghost, God don't be from day to day, and to know I'm going right, keeps me on my way. Do you want to see this lad, listen to what I say, do you want to see this lad, then look, come on, look, go on and look, look in my face.

Come for a lady whose voice I like. So he said, you ain't got no talent, if you didn't have a face, you wouldn't be nobody. And she said, God created heaven and earth, and all that's black within them. So he said, you ain't really no hard stuff, they tell me plenty sisters take care of better business than you. And she said, on the third day he made chitterlings, and all good things to eat, and said, that's good. So he said, if the white folks hadn't been under your skirt, and been giving you the big plate, you'd have had to come up town like anybody else. And she replied, then he took a big black greasy rib from Adam, and said, we will call this woman, and her name will be sapphire, and she will divide into four parts that Simone may sing a song. And he said, you pretty full of yourself ain't you? So she replied, show me someone not full of herself, and I'll show you a hungry person.

That's the form I did for you. Yes, I think I should probably tell you, you know, maybe other people don't, that I had that said to me in 1942, I worked at the Howard Theatre in Washington, and a black band leader told me, there's millions better looking, sing better, and a headman for you being picked by white folks, you know, you couldn't make it, and it stuck with me a long, long time in my life, and I'm still trying to learn how to sing, but I say inside every black woman, there's an oasis screaming to come out, and you better believe it. And that's me. That's, you know, I think that, I don't think you are the most imitated singer, black or white as they say in the world.

I think that happened because I was picked to, like the man said, I was picked at that time to be what they thought a black woman was like. I was picked even before my own development, and when they picked me, they found they had a tag about the tale because they really didn't know what was inside of me, and I was made to look like someone, not me, I was made to look like I had to learn to sing, and I was not allowed to imitate rhythm and blues records because they weren't played very much, and I was raised by middle class people who didn't believe in singing the blues, and I was made to look like Harry Lamar, and so forth, and so on, that's wait for your time, but I think then the girls who began to have the opportunity at that time because they had

finally opened the way for one, they began to put them into the same image too, and so we had a whole decade or so of girls who saw that expedient to imitate me because I was making it, you see. They say you've been trying to change your image, I don't know what that means. Well I think what it means probably is that since Greensboro, as recent as that, and sit-ins, I was able to flee my establishment stereotype because young people had freed me, and I think that since I always have been what I am inside that I've been able to survive because they really didn't kill anything black in me. I was, because I remember you were out in Las Vegas, and you beat that guy bloody with your shoe.

Yeah, well I drew a little blood, it was in Los Angeles, it was in Los Angeles. That probably was the first time I felt less lonely by the isolation that was imposed upon me by a very nature of it, and it's definitive isolation from my own people, from white people, this middle thing that I was in, had kept me very much alone spiritually too, and I got insulted, I had frequently done so, but I hadn't done it at the place where there were a couple of reporters around, and the guy made me mad, and I struck him violently because I am violent in a way, and Dr. Lee violence bridges this alone. No, you just made me mad, and sometimes your madness just mounts into beautiful madness, and I struck him, and I got tons of mail and letters and telegrams from black people who said, hey, thank you, and how wonderful, and all I said, my God, I'm not alone, and that was in the 50s, I had lived a long time without that feeling, and there are so many young black

people now who I see doing things that are revolutionizing me and the world. Let me sort of ask a question, maybe difficult, like you grew up with professionally with Billy Holiday, and down in Washington, and you survived, and they didn't, I'm sort of asking you to respond a bit, like, fly. I don't know, I didn't want anybody to kill me, I think, I didn't want them to destroy me, I mean, let's say my, I won't say hate because it's very bad, and I've not allowed myself until recently to love and open myself up to love, I was strengthened by my, by my active disenvolvement, the hidden, but it kept me surviving, and I think my background, my people must have, I find great migrations made by my great-great-grandmother, on both

sides, that I didn't know anything about until I was in my forties, and they survived, and it must be in us. I'm sorry that you see, I love Billy very much, and I love Dana, and they were both very gentle women to me, they were very good to me when I was starting, and I think they formed, I began to know about the sisterhood during those years. You heard a personal tragedy, your father died, and then your son? Yes, this past six months I've lost my father and my son, and they were both black men that I was denied until I was in, along in my years, my father and my mother separated when I was three, and my son was taken from me when he was three, but I got to know them when I was older, and they really fulfilled a great deal. When you got married to Mary, many Hayden, one of the statements that you made was that

you didn't have the strength to marry a black man. I had married first a black man, and I wasn't big enough woman to help him, I didn't, I married him because I had nobody. I ran away from life as a chorus girl at sixteen, and a stepfather who was white that I didn't understand, and then I found out how difficult it was for a black man to live at that time and to exist, and I failed him. I didn't know, I didn't have enough consolation in myself because I'd never had it to give to him. What do you think about the Angela Davis case? I think that I hate to see another one about my young woman being destroyed. When Angela was arrested, they had a thing uptown, her mother came and her sister was up there, and one of the parents at 13, I believe, one of the young ladies, who say, you know,

they can say Angela is beautiful, and they can say she's brilliant, but she's right in the same woman's detention home that the sisters at walk the street are in. What I'm so afraid of is this actually is a calculated genocidal move in many instances because the threat of this kind of strength that these young people have, which may not always be comparable to the kind that our ancestors had, is so positive and so fearless that it frightens people, and I don't want to see this continue, but sometime I worry that it's a concentrated thought-out effort to not have a young generation so strong and so beautiful. I am trouble, I am trouble, I'm trouble, trouble in my, if someone don't help me,

I surely will die, trouble, trouble, I'm trouble, in my, oh, trouble, trouble, trouble, trouble, never leaves me behind, if someone don't help me, I surely will die, I will die, I'll die, I'll die.

I don't think maybe all the sisters don't know what K-Building is. Well, K-Building is building up in Harlem Hospital that was taken over by a community of people, I for one. And the first time it ever was done, we still fighting to keep control. But like we, you know, like we tell the doctors, we do our thing or don't be no thing, be blowing up. And I don't get the CIA, you know, blow it up because it has to be a change and people have to stand up, especially black people for their principles because, you know, other

groups don't think that we have too many principles and it's nothing really that we want that we think is worth fighting for. We can always go over and Vietnam and kill somebody, family look like us. But we never, you know, have banned our resources and our dreams to actually get something constructive. We're always fighting somebody else's wars, fighting for somebody else's ideals. We never really want to fight for ourselves. That's why as a system was saying, K-Building meant so much. This was something for our people, something we believed in to the extent that we would have died right there, you know. And for me, myself, it was the first time I've ever had anything that meant that much to me. And there's a drug addict who wanted to, you know, we opened it mostly because we took it, we had just like you say, we went here, we went there asking everybody, you know, could we get facilities without a lessons? And every day you always heard, I'll call you, you don't call me. So then one rainy evening we decided to go up there and take two floors that were badly

needed in the community of 150,000 addicts because as a sister's here, say, you get tired of watching your people die. So we took it. We had a principle, this is what I'm saying. The principle is still there and every day we don't relax. We keep right on so we can get it perfect. At least we're able, like she say, to save the children. And this is what we have to do. You have to save the children in order to save the race. I want to say something that some of you may disagree with and that is, I don't think you can just work for black children. I think that the minute you start working on the problems of the black child, you find that you have to be concerned about all children, don't you? I mean, if you're working on drugs. Well, don't ask me that. I will never refuse any human being to come in there, but I'm concerned about mine because you can't go, you know, up in the Bronx when you haven't even cleaned up. I can't clean up. I can't clean up my house in other words, I don't know how I'm going to clean up yours. I've got to clean up mine first, just like this, just like that.

Then clean up yours, you know, because drugs with us has been in our community for 25 or 30 years. Nobody ever cares. You know, we have kids up there 13 years old, been on drugs three and a half years and the Board of Education have even missed the minuscule. You know, like we say, they've freed us 300 and some years ago, turned around 50 years later and gave us dope, you know, so I don't really go for all of that by going across the river and doing something. I think we should stay on this side to try to do what we have to do for each other. I don't think that we can work just on our own problems unless we are concerned about the total society and as a matter of fact, unless we go across the river too and we're concerned about a lot of things happening in the world, this is a very small planet and we feel the impact of these forces. I don't think that we can concentrate just on what you call the black nation, so long as we exist in America, which is a six society, don't you think we have to work on that?

No, I don't. I really just want to define this as a difference of opinion. I appreciate everything you're saying, but quite often when people do not understand they cannot relate and I don't really think you understand what's going on in black communities. I think you're very comfortable. I mean, I, please go ahead. I think you're very comfortable sitting in your office and trying to be very community oriented from your desk and in your plush air-conditioned place. It's not very important. No, no, but you have to get, I would like to see your office moved to a rat infested apartment. If, if I can, I'm going to enroll in a rat infested apartment. We've all known what it is. No, but I live there right now. I mean, I live there right now. But my point is you have to understand how the system operates in order to take it over and to make it more responsive to you.

Now, there are ways of turning programs around, I think, all of you are in the wrong district. You take a walk, really. Pardon me. Take a ride. I mean, really, if you live there, go ahead, 114th Street in 8th Avenue, then carry it all up through there. You see how the system works. Indeed. You will see how the system works. And when we see professional people of our own race start to work with that system, then we know where it's coming from. And a lot of us, like people, have to begin to learn that we are black and not me and we'll always look at us just as that. Regardless of how much he may eat with us and pat us on our back, he still look at us for just what we are. This little light of mine, this little light of mine, I'm going to let it shine. I'm going to let it shine, so bright, let it shine. This little light of mine will burn so bright that not only my people, but all people will

see it burn. Burn baby, burn. Burn baby, burn baby, burn baby. Burn baby, burn baby, burn baby, burn baby, burn baby. Burn baby, burn baby, burn baby.

The shrine of the Black Madonna here in Detroit is an interesting church for many reasons.

First of all, it has a Black Madonna. Secondly, it celebrates a Black theology and third, it celebrates holidays in an interesting way, a Black way, as it should be. Case in point, Women's Day, October 25th. Here at the shrine, the theme was New Directions for Black Women in the Liberation Struggle. Traditionally in Black churches, there's a Women's Day which has no relevance to anything that's important to Black people. It's just a fundraising activity by Black churches where women go out and try to raise as much money as they can. We are concerned with making the Women's Day a festival which symbolizes, points out, highlights, the importance of Black women to the church and to the total Liberation Struggle. What time is it?

It's eight o'clock. Then let the Black Nation rise. Then let the Black Nation rise. What I'm going to say will be in two parts. The first part will be talking about Black women in the struggle and it's called Queens of the Universe because Black women be Queens. If they could just see their beauty, you see. We Black women have been called many things. Foxes, matriarchs, sapphires, sisters and recently Queens. I would say that Black women have been a combination of all of them words because if we examine our past, history at one time or another, we've had to be like them words, be saying. But today, there are some words we can discard. There be some we must discard for our own survival, for our own sanity. For the contributions we must make to our emerging Black Nation.

And what how we must move to as the only Queens of this Universe to sustain, keep our sanity in this insane, messed up, die conscious, pill-taken, masochistic, misan-orientated society gets to be dealt with because that's us. You all hear me us, Black women, the only Queens of this Universe. Even though we be stepping on Queens sometimes, like it ain't easy being a Queen in this unrighteous world full of misand and misdeeds, but we steady trying. Women have been traditionally, historically tremendously important to any oppressed people. In a sense of making it possible for an oppressed people to survive, making it possible for them to pass on some of the traditions and culture of a people when the existence of a man was seriously threatened from day to day and from week to week and month to month.

And so really for that reason we called the Church the Shrine of the Black Madonna to symbolize not only the religious significance of Mary as the Mother of Jesus, but the significance of all Black women and the generations of struggle and sacrifice that Black women have made in making it possible for Black people to survive and come to this day. It's also important that we realize that in this day the role of Black women has changed because we're much more clear about what the liberation struggle is all about. And Black women have the task now of creating young Black people, Black children, and Black adults who can participate in a liberation struggle that seeks for independence and for freedom and for community control and the things which are important to people who are seriously engaged in liberation. Whenever someone speaks of revolution, we don't have to say that revolution, what are we doing now trying to change things?

We didn't just wait until now to start trying to change things. That evening the women put together a festival that spoke to the Church members about Blackness and history of Black Revolution. Recognition was awarded the most interesting presentations and a soulful dinner was served. A Black celebration for a woman's day and a Black Church, the Shrine of the Black Madonna. This is George Martin in Detroit for Black Journal. Lady Bird. Lady Bird, Lady Bird, fly away home. Your house is on fire and wraps on the phone. Can I ask you one question you don't have to answer it? Recently a white show asked you to give them 90 minutes. Why did you turn that down? I turned it down because the first place I'd rather do it on my own show if I had one, if we had one. And I didn't feel like giving my life to someone that I don't feel very close to.

I don't want to ask you question, but what's the sisterhood? Well I wouldn't be so crude as to call it a black mafia. No, I would say anybody that has a feeling of plan and not KK, but relativeness and familyness is what my sisterhood means. I'm afraid that because I didn't have one of my own, I've latched on to the one I'm entitled to. Well, I didn't have sisters or brothers or my mom and papa, you know. And so I have you all. Where do you think you're going? You know? Well, I'm still a little numb at the moment from the past six months, but I feel adventurous some. I don't think I'm just going to stop sitting down.

I don't necessarily mean singing or... I'm not a lecturer, I'm not a writer, I'm not a... I'm just, I guess I'm a performer, but I feel creative. I feel I need to be around people, I like it now. And I don't know what I'm going to do, but I'm not going to stop. There are many, many things that we can do if we take. We look at ourselves seriously as a nation and not get preoccupied with the goings on of someone else and get preoccupied with what we're doing. You know, they actually say resources in the black community. We should use those resources and we should move around, you know, in such a way. So we were seriously thinking about having a nation. I agree.

And seriously, seriously, and not just saying it because it sounds good to say it because it is hip, because nationalism is not faddism. And I think that a lot of people are identifying with different things because it is hip to identify with certain things. But it is hip to understand that we are slaves and we got to be free. And it's even hip to work at out, at work at out, you know, our freedom, national liberation for black people. Well, what about the sisters who don't agree with you? Who has to deal with them? Well, it's not about agreeing with me. It's about doing. It's not about agreeing about it. No, but we'll just say I don't agree. It is. You know, we just have that, you know, she could say I don't agree with you. Right. My man won't let me do that. I don't want to do that. And what will happen to these people? I'm not going to preoccupy myself in terms of what will happen to them because I know that more people are preoccupied with freedom. No one wants to be a slave. But are we talking about black nation? I'm talking about black people who haven't quite gotten the mind thing together. So we have to preoccupy ourselves. I think that we are. Because all black people don't say they're nationalists.

And because all black people don't, you know, wear braids or naturals in traditional clothes, don't mean they're not nationalists now. Now they're nationalists. But they just don't use the word. Because no one wants to be a slave. Okay. And there's no black person on this planet who disagree with freedom. So like, I don't know whether, you know, we can consider that or not. What you're saying is that many people will be working on things from different perspectives. They'll be working on the problems of freedom in different ways. Exactly. Sure. They'll work on people who work at the level they can understand. Because they don't understand certain levels does not mean that they're not nationalistic. It just means they're not conscious enough to understand certain levels of what's going on. But that is your job. If you were conscious enough to understand it, then it is your job to make sure that those who understand one will understand two.

And that is the job of, you know, the conscious nationalist. And you might always say that if you're a nationalist and you're talking bad about someone else, and you're not doing anything to, you know, to get them where you think they should be, then it was you. Because if it was that hip, then you should be hip enough to change them. Painters, why do you always paint white virgins? Don't you know they are beautiful black angels in heaven also. Painters paint beautiful black angels. Painters paint beautiful black angels.

Painters paint beautiful black angels. Painters paint black angels. Painters paint black angels. Painters paint black angels. Painters paint black angels. Painters paint black angels. Painters paint black angels.

Painters paint black angels. Painters paint black angels. I used to wonder who I'd be. When I was a little girl in Indianapolis sitting on doctors' porches with post-on pre-debs, wondering with my aunt drag me to church Sunday, I was meaningless. And I wondered if life would give me a chance to mean. I found a new life in the withdrawal from all things, not like my image. I found a new life in the memory of the embryonic eyes about the essential essence of the universe, recognizing the basic powerlessness of me. But then I went to college where I learned that just because everything I was was unreal, I could be real and not just real through withdrawal into emotional crosshairs,

or colored bourgeois intellectual pretensions, but from involvement with things approaching reality, so calatonic emotions and time wasting sex games were replaced with functioning commitments to logic and necessity, and the gray area was slowly darkened into a black thing. For a while, progress was made along with a certain degree of happiness, because I wrote a book and found a love and organized a theater, and even gave some lectures on black history, and began to believe all good people could get together and win without bloodshed. Then Hamish girl was killed, and Lumumba was killed, and DM was killed, and Kennedy was killed, and Malcolm was killed, and Evers was killed, and Swarner Cheney and Goodman were killed, and Luizio was killed, and Stokeley fled the country, and LaRoy was arrested, and Rap was arrested, and Polar, Thompson, and Cooper were killed, and King was killed, and Kennedy was killed.

And sometimes I wonder why I didn't become a debutant, sitting on Doctor's porches, going to church all the time, wondering, is my eye makeup on straight? All withdrawn, discoursing on the stars and the moon, instead of a real black person who must now feel and inflict pain. Pintas y pintas con amor, porque desprecias su potlor, si si ames que en el cielo también los quiere dir, pintas de santos de alcova, si llenes a mano en el huero, porque al vinto rendos cuadros, te olvidaste de los negros.

Siempre que vintas y pintas en iglesias, pintas anelitos veo. Let us know what you think of Black Journal. Send your letters to Black Journal, Ten Columbus Circle, New York. Proper stickers and buttons are also available. Send stamp self-addressed envelope to Black Journal, Ten Columbus Circle, New York. Because of our emphasis on the Black woman, all of our letters are from sisters.

Each show says this writer has a great variety of interesting and very talented people. From Albany, California, I wonder why it doesn't appear daily. Sister Weddington says, I am so proud to be among the many to claim this rich heritage that you bring to us. Kim Weston's singing of the Black National Anthem is especially interesting to this sister. And her entire family, she says, proudly displays Black Journal buttons. Cherry Hunter and Houston, I am particularly proud to say that as long as programs like Black Journal are produced and made available for television viewing, the problem of Black identification will be alleviated. This sister says, I especially enjoy the chance to get more than one side of the news presented by network television. Olive Benton in the Bronx wants to know what the viewers can do to get the show aired more frequently. Peter and Karen Murphy are also fans of the Black commercials, and they write. Using the sophisticated psychological techniques developed by the advertising industry

to sell people on themselves instead of soap is a most welcome innovation. This sister says, for the first time, I felt I was seeing a part of me within those lovely brothers and sisters on television. And we are tonight, of course, dedicating the Black National Anthem to the Black Woman. With everyone, I'm seeing the earth I'm having. Breathe with the heart of me. Breathe with the heart of me. Let our rejoices rise high as the news. Breathe with the heart of me.

Breathe with the heart of me. Breathe with the heart of me. Breathe with the heart of me. Breathe with the heart of me. the w

the The abundance The difference the Oh, and I can't give a damn. I can't give a damn. Oh, and I can't give a damn. Oh, and I can't give a damn.

Oh, and I can't give a damn. Oh, and I can't give a damn. Oh, and I can't give a damn. I can't give a damn.