Who Does the Negro Think He is?

The following program is from NET, the National Educational Television Network. Los Angeles, California 1965, the answer to a police order to disperse. North Philadelphia, August 1964, a frozen moment of defiance to authority in the middle of a three-day riot. Brooklyn, New York, July 1964, moments after a city officials warning that mob rule would not be tolerated. The National Educational Television Network presents, who does the Negro think he is? An inquiry into the underlying causes of these disorders and the Negro's view of himself today, his hopes, his anguish and his self-image. Your host, James Flunning. The title of this program is not just impertinent rhetoric. Who the American Negro thinks he

is is vital, essential information for this country. And it's a very difficult communication indeed, one moment, in bits and pieces of social analysis, in the next in the shock and anger of Los Angeles in August. But says Professor C. Van Woodward of Yale, the real danger is not violence. Rather, it's that a cause and an opportunity that came once in the century may be passed up by default, dissipated by neglect, tragically missed. And Professor Woodward adds, so far, there's no evidence that the majority of Americans have any conception of the changes that will have to be made to forced all that danger. A fortnight ago on this network, Claude Brown, the author of Man Child in the Promised Land, said that nobody really looks at the Negro. They look at the Negro problem. It's just possible that Claude Brown could be wrong or be beginning to be wrong. At the national level, it may be that legislation for civil rights, the President's speech at Howard University,

the Labor Department's statement on the Negro family. Perhaps all these forthcoming and current factors deal with something less abstract than a problem and begin to communicate about an individual, Negro and White, to the end that an opportunity as Professor Woodward says that comes once in the century may not be tragically missed again. Some of our guests today are making their own individual contributions to the White House conference this autumn. Byard Rustin of the Philip Randolph Institute is well remembered in the Capitol. As organizer of the 1963 March on Washington, he's been a major spokesman for the civil rights movement and his contribution to the presidential conference will deal with the Negro family. Dick Gregory came on to the national scene as another thinking man's comedian who sharp and ironic humor carried a powerful civil rights message. He soon moved beyond show business to take an active personal role in the struggle for Negro rights which took him to Los Angeles in August. The people of Watts as Mr. Gregory were not only mad at the White Power structure, they were mad at everything.

Charles E. Silverman is the author of Crisis in Black and White, a plain-spoken analysis of race relations that won the acclaim of not only the late Malcolm X but the Urban League as well. He's a member of the Board of Editors of Fortune Magazine. Dr. Harold W. Jones remained in the Watts area in Los Angeles throughout the August uprising. As a psychiatrist for the Los Angeles County Department of Mental Health, his headquarters was at the Agency Service Center in the area. His appraisals of the meaning of Watts have been widely published. Well, gentlemen, a year ago, the members of a television discussion group who were speaking about what does the Negro think he is, would probably be talking about the South. But right now in this time and place, we're probably putting the greatest emphasis on the Northern and Western Negro. It's only a month after Watts and can we really yet apprehend on the meaning of that and Dr. Jones, you were there and perhaps we should turn to you first of all. Well, I think the thing that impressed me the most initially during the uprising was the vast number of people involved in the community. I would say that the majority of the people

in the community were involved either overtly or covertly. There were those who participated in the actual rioting and looting, and then there were those who stood on the sidelines and waved the flags, so to speak. Another thing that impressed me was that these were not people in the midst of some hysterical, hypnotic spell who were simply reacting on a much more primitive or animalistic level, that these people seemed to a large degree quite controlled in the way that they acted and that they felt they acted in a way that was goal directed and rational within the value system that existed in the situation. They expressed minimal feeling of shame or guilt indeed felt rather proud and there was a mark there of joviality about the whole situation. In talking with the people,

they felt that this indeed was the only manly way in which they could protest. They felt almost obligated to protest in his fashion, to not do so, would have indeed been cowardly and certainly not assertive. This is an image which the Negro and Watts, of course, feels not accept. They felt that they had been provoked, not by actual incidences of brutality and abuse so much as they did by continual and routine indignities suffered by them and perpetrated by the white power authority structure. They felt that they expressed the feeling that they had been overlooked and disregarded and felt indeed left out by most of the advances

made by the civil rights movement. That's what says you, a psychiatrist, a Dr. Jones, Dick Redbury, you were there. How did you see it? Well, I almost do the same parallel to history books I read when I was a kid where in early America we told the mother country not only where we not going to pay the taxes but we dumped a tea in the water and didn't feel ashamed of the Boston Tea Party. I met in the British, looked at it as looting and vandalism. I think had the British looked at it as a protest and tried to solve the reason for the protest. We might all have a British accent today. I think they looked at it as riding and looting when it was four more than that. I watched five people turn over a bus. I looked at a guy standing on the corner that threw a brick and hit a moving car and completely knocked a car over. This is not normal in no sense of the word. It was more of a picnic atmosphere, gaiety and laughter and the way they got

into the stores was very interesting to sit and look at the pattern. 90% of these places that were looted, they jumped through the plate glass with their bodies, not with a brick or a stick with themselves. The pattern of the looting was not all the stores in the block but one store at a time. This was very important to see this pattern like this because then when you hear say mob action and how referred to law and order was broken down. I think man's law and order had broken down but human law and order seemed to have prevailed because with all of this lawlessness there was not one cape of a rape in this whole area. With all of this law and order had been broken down for this law. There was not one case of armed robbery. There was not one case of the usual form of law and order that I'm sure they have tremendous records of there. I think it was something to be studied

and something to be watched and something that we can learn something from. Basically if we look at this as an American problem, the frightening thing is you have to go outside of the United States to find out where this really happened. It happened in America, not in L.A. as we tried to put it. We've said for so long, it's pitiful that 30 churches was blown up in Mississippi. 30 churches was blown up in America and we realized that this was happening in America. Los Angeles might not have caught us so much by surprise. If one Jewish temple is blown up tonight in Moscow, Russia, we won't say that you hear about the temple blow up in Moscow. This is what happened in Russia. I think this problem is an American problem and it is bigger than Los Angeles or Mississippi and the day that we realize this and try to come grips with all of these problems in every area. We might come up with some answers. Well, it's a powerful and overwhelming kind of communication that is new to our society and certainly something is changing in the way we're talking

about social issues to say the very least, Mr. Solomon. Is this a transition time in Negro white race relations, Negro leadership? How do you see the times? It seems to me that Watts does mark a real change or a turning point. As Dr. Jones describes it as everyone that I've spoken to, all of the accounts that I've read describe it. This was not a riot. It was a rebellion. It was the sense of control. There was, oh, I think it was you, one of the accounts that I read Dr. Jones describing a man loading a station wagon with furniture and driving down and stopping for red light at the corner. The accounts keep telling of this sense. We've never seen the people so happy before. I think another aspect of it is that the hatred of everything white emerged more explicitly

than ever before. Then in the riots last year, the racial aspect got more diffused in New York. It was obscured by the police brutality issue. As James Baldwin has put it to be a Negro in the United States and to be relatively conscious is to be in a perpetual rage. That Negroes have been angry for 350 years. The anger has been suppressed because until very recently, it wasn't safe to express it. Negroes are now just beginning to be able to release that anger and to express it. One of the critical factors, I think, is the great discovery that money Negroes have made after 350 years of Negroes being afraid of whites. They've discovered that the white man is afraid of the Negro. This is a great

releasing factor. I think what Watts demonstrates is the release of this anger. Much broader spectrum of the community was involved. Dr. Jones suggested that in any of the riots last year. Outside of Los Angeles, the middle class, Negroes, and intellectuals elsewhere, instead of the feeling of shame that they had last year, had at the very least some ambivalence. Well, I, of course, deplore this. They shouldn't have done it, but you can't really blame them or a feeling of rapport or of empathy, of sympathy, that this anger has to be expressed. I think this is one of the most significant aspects of Watts. Mr. Rustin, what do the events and Watts, how do they relate to the Negro leadership? It's been said that the Negro leadership has achieved its traditional goals and that

Watts represents the Negro mass not in touch with. I want to quote from Claude Brown again, who was on this network the other night, he says, all negotiations ignore and neglect almost totally the Negro masses and negotiations between the white power structure and Negro leadership. Do you feel the Negro leadership, as we know what nationally, was in touch with Watts? Well, I think this kind of statement is often made, and I think it is true to say that a great deal of the national leadership was not in close touch with Watts. But I don't think that it is ever possible in a revolutionary period of this kind, and I don't think it happened in any of the other minorities that the top leadership was at times in very close touch with the masses. For example, in New York, when they were rioting on the part of the Irish, the same thing was said, that the respectable Irish leadership were not in touch with the

people raising hell in hell's kitchen. So I think we have to be careful how we analyze this. Now, an example of what boy and girl in Watts is significant to me. I was talking with them, he was holding her hand, and they were sitting around a small room. There were about 15 youngsters. This is a few days following the riot. He keeps referring to a manifesto. I did not understand what he was talking about, and I asked him if I could see a copy of this manifesto. We're upon all these teenagers broken to the most intense laughter, and he said, man, you're square. And he pulled his hand, he's parking, he pulled out a match, and he shook it, and he said, our manifesto, daddy, was at fire. We're upon the young girl took his hand, and squeezed it, and moved very close to him. And therefore, I want to

get back to the first question a moment. And that is that I think three things happened at Watts, that the American people had better understand. One is that the Negro, as pointed out in Mr. Dollard and other study at Yale, frustration and aggression. The thesis was to the degree that there is frustration, there will be aggression. Mr. Dollard and his colleagues went at pains to point out that the Negro turned back on himself, the inevitable frustration which emerged in this society. Now we've got to learn number one, that the Negro is no longer prepared to hate himself in terms of throwing his frustration back on himself. He is going to direct it now to those whom he feel brutalizes him. Number two, I think we have to understand at the beginning of this discussion, that what happened in Watts was for many, many Negro women watching men loot a symbol finally of the assertion

of Negro manhood, that the Negro male who has been brutalized by this society has to find some means now, if it is not getting a job in supporting his family, of proving that he will even resort to violence in the effort to call attention. And the third thing was that when I said to a young man, now what do you think you accomplished by this? And he said we won. And I said what did you win? He said the police chief is now knows that we can make trouble. The mayor has now come down to talk to us which he would not do before and the governor, all over the world, baby. They know that we are in Watts and if they don't know, we're going to tell them. And I think that the Negro masses will be listened to, they will be heard, and like a child, if they are not given attention, they will create

a tantrum. And what are they saying in that tantrum? Pay attention to me, solve my problems, and if you don't, I will have another tantrum and a worse one. And I think we must take this as a warning that the problems in these ghettos must be solved. But we must also take it as an appeal, that people are not really saying I don't want. They are saying I want in. I want to be long. I want to have what others have. Dr. Jones, you work as a psychiatrist in Watts. How is the larger community of Los Angeles responding to these events? Well, I think in two ways. I've had a good many letters from people who have pointed out to me that people who previously would have championed the Negroes' rights have been now thrown into the opposite camp, that they no longer sympathize with the Negroes

right, and they feel obligated to defend themselves against the Negro who may feel is now aggressive and pursuing his aims in a way which bridges them of their rights in the process. I've had also great many expressions of sympathy from the white community at large, and I was delighted to find out the lay community. Neighborhood groups have called me up, not a part of any organization, but just people who are indeed concerned. They cared. I think that the Negro and Watts is impressed by this confirmation of his hope, which is that man is basically humane to his, to man, to his brother. And I think this is the one thing that will give

the Negro the patience to wait for the gains which he feels entitled to immediately, is that there are people who are concerned, that are genuinely concerned, but he wants more than that. But I think that will help a great deal. Is there any new Negro leadership that you sense in Watts coming out of this affair? I don't think there is any new leadership because I don't believe that there ever was any denial on the part of the Negroes in Watts of the leadership that exists there. I feel that they felt that their leadership was not in the proper bargaining position to deal with the white power structure. They recognize their inability to articulate their grievances, and they are quite willing to relegate that task to those people who are most articulate in their community. However, they felt that at this particular time that

the leadership would be ineffective in dealing with this particular grievance. Now, Mr. Solomon mentioned that the middle class Negro and Los Angeles wished this group in Watts well, but did not participate. Now, are two kinds of leadership necessary here? One leadership for the masses of Watts, another kind of leadership for the middle class? No, I don't really think so. I think that simply what has to happen is that the problem has to be further delineated. That many too many Negroes have solved their problem of their Negroness by simply denying that they are Negroes. And any confrontation with that in reality is, of course, annoying and irritating to them. And I think that once they are able to accept themselves as Negro and that this image being a value and I've worth, there won't be that need to separate themselves from the masses of Negroes as it's been the case in the past.

I think you put it one way, Mr. Solomon, that there is a white Negro problem and a Negro Negro problem. Is that relevant here? Would you describe what you mean? Yes, I think the white man's Negro problem is the prejudice, discrimination, racism, which is built so deeply into American society, where I think as the problem erupts in the north, finally beginning to recognize that this is a racist society in a degree in the sense that we've never been willing to admit or face up to in the past. It's virtually impossible to grow up as a white man, I think, without at some level feeling some degree of prejudice or superiority or what have you. And what is crucial is that the white man begin to deal with the prejudice in himself, to face up to his own prejudice. What's crucial seems to me is not whether we are prejudiced, it's what we do with it, how we behave. It's

behavior action that's crucial. And the essence of this white man's Negro problem is this tradition of treating the Negro as a child as a dependent. Negro white relations have always been structured in this patron client. Why? One favorite story in my wife was in the hospital a few years ago, Negro Porter came in to wash the floor. White housekeeper came in to inspect what he was doing. As he was finishing, she gave him a compliment. She said, why Jimmy, the floor just gleams, you're a good boy Jimmy. But Jimmy was 48 years old. And in a million years it wouldn't have occurred to that housekeeper to have said to the white orderly by way of compliment, you're a good boy, Bob. Boy is a term that we reserve for Negro men. And this whole sense of denial of manhood that we patronize Negroes in a million in one ways that we're not conscious of. The theme that kept erupting in Watts was this sense

of manhood. Mr. Rustin put it so eloquently a couple of minutes ago. The Negro's Negro problem, I think, is in a sense equally serious. It's the residue of what 350 years of white racism have done to the Negro, the denial of his own sense of self. The feeling that Negro men have that the only way they can assert their masculinity is by violence or rioting or what have you. The self hatred, the flight from being Negro that Dr. Jones talked about, the family breakdown, the legitimacy. All of these are the products of 350 years of being excluded from white society. But they are not any longer problems that white men can solve. The essence of the problem precisely because whites have kept Negroes in a dependent

relationship is that Negroes must act on their own to solve many of these problems. And so it seems to me solving the white men's Negro problem is a prerequisite to any solution of the Negroes Negro problem. The Negro can't do it if the white man doesn't solve his problem. But the white man solving it won't eliminate the problem by any means. The Negroes Negro problem remains and unfortunately he must act himself. Well now the white man, let's say most of the white men who wrote the policy paper for the labor department, the president of the United States, all the institutions of Washington that have been talking far more candidly about the Negroes' real problems, is that going to be a meaningful operation? Is anything going to come of the analysis of the dreadful social conditions that Negroes must live in Mr. Rustin?

Well I think something can come up if people are prepared to face the problems involved. Now I want to go on record as agreeing with Mr. Silverman that we have problems which Negroes must be largely responsible for solving. And we have another problem that is problem which we must all solve together. But I want to make a difference in emphasis. If you talk about illegitimacy or crime and the other problems which plague the Negro family out of its history, that's all well and good. But I want to go on record that I don't believe any other problems which Mr. Silverman would rightly describe as problems that Negroes have to solve themselves. Can be solved out of the first move being made by Negroes? Most of those problems will be solved when the society sees to it that the heads of Negro families

are independent economically. Now I don't want to be unclear here. A Negro male who loses his malehood because he cannot find a job very often is so harassed by the woman because he doesn't bring in money. And so lacking in respect from the children that he feels he's just got to get the hell out of the house. He runs out but he's still a male. He therefore takes up with another woman. And then he has a second family and this can go on a couple of times. But it comes back to the fact that he has not been economically independent or you find children as I have found jobs for them but they cannot keep these jobs. And it goes back to the fact that the father who never had a job never gave them any training in getting up in the morning, in getting to work on time and all the other things that happen in a normal family. This goes back to the fact that he doesn't have

work. And so I believe that there are problems which Negroes must help in solving and there are problems which the entire society including Negroes must help solve. But that the cornerstone of the solution of the Negro families problems comes back to the economic independence of the head of that family. Whether this is woman or a man. And I think some attention therefore must be given as at some point as to how now we find that economic independence. Mr. Gregory, you have some very strong views about that. You think that heroic martial plans and missile programs and social form ought to be taken off right away. Right away, sure. I have problems that I live with now from my childhood that could be said a Negro problem but that wasn't the cause of it. I remember when I was seven years old and went to see my first Frankenstein movie and I was a very hard-fired effect that Frankenstein

really didn't frighten me. And as I grew up it dawned on me that I was pulling for Frankenstein because Frankenstein was chasing what was chasing me. Now had that been Charlie Chan and that Negro Charlie Chan ran around where the frankly was chasing them I might have relayed it. But it's a heck of a thing as a child to go and see King Kong and when King Kong standing on top of the Empire State Building and you little poor kid in a ghetto that have never been out of your neighborhood and you've heard of the Empire State when you heard of New York and you've heard of airplanes. And to see this gorilla stand on top of the Empire State Building, snatching at an airplane and you pulling for the gorilla. Again, he's pulling what had been pulling me and I see this as a kid. And to a very important thing that I was quite old before I realized is to go to a Negro movie and this is all we had and we were kids. The tremendous amount of loud noise and I was part of this laughing at the wrong place is what the older Negroes would say we were doing and uncouth.

But it was the only time we had the American white man to I self, man and we took him apart. The only time I had him when someone really couldn't misuse me but another Negro. The white police wasn't inside that movie. Sometimes we got so riders almost. At a Tarzan movie I remember when Tarzan refused to let the great white hunter shoot the line with the elephant gun but when the Negroes jumped out the bushes they shot them and we turned the movie out to a ride and the cop came in and we stopped. But the movie in a Negro neighborhood was a predominantly place where we had this white man to I self and we took him apart. The doctor who lived across the street for me who's in a $300,000 year income bracket and at eight years old I didn't know that due to segregation he can't live where people that's making $300,000 live. So at eight years old I'm asking my mama how can we don't go to Europe in the summertime? How come I didn't get a red wagon for my birthday instead

of a youth wagon for Christmas? And so until you can remove all of these sure there's going to be a like a breakdown and respect with family. I couldn't respect my mother as much as I would like to because at seven years old I didn't know it was a system that caused Dr. Young to live next door to me on relief that had this system let him move out and live in an area where people that made $300,000 lived I wouldn't have been in direct competition with him with his kids. So consequently my mother would say well don't worry about that you're doing all right and to watch my mother come home out of the white folks kitchen and steal food. Well mama's a thief and you as one beautiful thing man's never been able to do he can change the way he talks but he can never change the way he walks and when she would come home with this food and the shopping bags and demand that we say the blessing over it and it was nine years old for I told her I'll pray over what you stole if you come down to basement and pray over what I stole but I'm a better

thief than you I just can't justify mine. So of what age do you watch your mother your father steal under the pretense of keeping you from starting the death which society have forced this on them but mama was still a thief. So once you change all of these things basically then you have some changes. And how do you bring about the change? Now President Johnson says the civil rights is the end of the beginning he says to Howard University at that famous speech that the breakdown of the Negro family structure we've been talking about for that white America must accept responsibility very well but how much have we changed really how much better is the way we say how do we bring about the change my own solution it would be the same way we solve the the missile gap the same way when we needed to come up with an atom bomb we didn't solve this in the Senate of Congress because these men are not prepared nuclear physics wise to come up with a nuclear bomb or solve the missile gap they appropriated the right amount of money and we went out

and we brought in the best minds money could buy and they came up with the solution and we listened to them we didn't air it out for public opinion we didn't take it and try to solve it on emotions put these scientists at the University of Chicago and they came up on an atom bomb we built our missile plants and we said these people there or who the masses don't even know their names but these are the people who solved the missile problem this is the same way we're going to solve this problem here is bringing in the right type of intelligent people that know these problems have researched the problems know the direct parallel know where we had it know which direction we coming from then we can solve problems Dr. Jones you go along with the idea of sending a body of social sciences to El Magardo in a new context well I think if they do they had better be a special brand of social scientists that they must and I find this not to be the case always that they must understand the problem they must understand the subject I think that we sometimes underestimate for

instance the ghetto Negro's capacity to overcome what's been a lifelong experience degraded inferior experience as a dependent person on the welfare system and I think that we oftentimes underestimate his capacity to respond is resilience really as a matter of fact we even obstruct it very often in the eyes of helping you know I know often in my own clinic that I have to work very hard with my workers to insist that some of the welfare recipients pay a fee of 25 cents for a visit they don't want to permit these people that feeling of responsibility which comes for paying for a service in any sense and I think you know this is very easy to fall prey to in helping professions one other point I want to make

and incidentally the community is showing up making some efforts to assume more responsibility for seeking out their own well-being they are demanding as a matter of fact more participation in whatever solutions be undertaken for their own well-being this has been the issue which has obstructed the distribution of anti-poverty funds and law scientists has been the Negro communities demand that they be represented by some other means than appointment an appointment process on the board which controls the funding of such projects the other point that I want to make has to do with this the Negro resents the middle class Caucasians assertion which I've had made to me many times that if you want respect then you must earn it and I think the Negro's position is that it should be such that disrespect must be earned that in

our relationship with each other we should already assume relationship which connotes respect until something is demonstrated to the contrary speaking of disrespect in the last analysis even though these dreadful uprisings are really necessary to get a certain message across isn't finally what the Negro wants in a free society finally a rule of law finally isn't it rather dangerous to to tamper too much with the rule of law if we're going to keep the society glued together Mr. Reston well I often hear these words used and I don't know what they mean what I do know as a philosophic and social truth is the following law and order do not are not maintained in vacuum if you want law and order they proceed from the pursuit and accomplishment of justice and where justice does not exist there is always

law at this order and while we're talking about what I would like to remind all of us that the most vicious riot that ever took place in this country took place in 1863 in New York city where the Irish were called shanti the way we are called nigger where the economic position of the Irish was similar in New York to the Negro's position in Watts where there were ordinances against the Irish owning property in certain parts of New York the Irish revolted lynched and murdered many people in New York tore up property and I mentioned this because I think it is important for us all to see that not only with the Negro but with whatever group is being mistreated law and order is established out of the sense of community by which I mean justice you did not get law and order in the west until institutions like schools

and churches came in then people put away their guns because there was a reason for doing so where people are outcasts where they had nothing to lose they will attack the society where they have a stake in that society law and order is maintained I want to make one other point if law and order was the way in which we usually think about it then we would need one policeman for each person in the society it is that law and order is fundamentally made by this sense of community that people feel and where they do not feel it law and order is not possible as in the far west in the 1850s. How did the people of Watts respond to the statements from say the police chief just after the uprising was the antagonism stronger to chief parker before or after Dr. John's I would say yes the Negroes and what following the chiefs public statements to the extent

that all the people participating in Watts riot were hoodlums and criminals and that as such they did not need to be considered than any deliberations with regard to what happened in Watts yes this was regarded by the people in Watts as arrogant that again here was a demonstration that the white man approached no problem with any humility only arrogance with regard to the Negro and that it never dawned on them that they could lose and I think that this in itself was provocative and inflammatory as far as the Negroes and Watts were concerned. Mr. Rustin spoke of the morality of the law and speaking of morals how about religious leadership in this area.

I think of the few groups that were truly operating and making active efforts to abort the uprising at Watts that the religious leaders were most apparent and did indeed exhort people to refrain from this kind of solution to their problems and were heard by the people in Watts as a matter of fact I think that the right would have gone on had not such people as these ministers indeed people like Mr. Gregory himself exhorted people and demonstrated their conviction that a settlement was feasible. There's one kind of fundamental difference that between the riot in Watts and the draft riots in New York in 1863 that's important in terms of getting this in perspective for one thing when they irish rioted in the draft riots in 1863 in New York the main target

was Negroes and the toll was if I remember correctly several hundred Negroes killed. In Watts 34 people were killed three of them were white and 31 were Negro. This is an aspect of the riot that is not generally understood that one aspect of this strange control that seems to have existed was that the Negroes were not shooting to kill and they distinguished very carefully according to the reports that I've read between the police and the National Guard they shot at the police they did not shoot it at the National Guard and when you raise the question about well don't we need law and order of the answer I think is obviously yes we do but we're not dealing with a logical rational reasoned response because the response to 350 years of brutal treatment is not likely

to be sweet reasonableness the mistake that the tragedy is that the white reaction tends to be oh this is irrational unreasonable let's put them down but without any sense condoning violence yes we must uphold law and order it's essential that we understand what it was that produced this riot and not just sit back and in kind of smug self-satisfaction say you know they shouldn't have they shouldn't have done it the riots had to be put down society cannot tolerate violence but it isn't enough simply to put it down we have to understand why this anger exists why this sense of denial of manhood is so strong I think this is very evident as a matter of fact I think that most Negroes and watch were quite relieved when

the guard came in because it afforded them a way to surrender as it were with some degree of self-respect and honor so to speak it was not surrendering to the immediate local authorities it was surrendering to an authority that they'd deemed more caring more lovable the nation as a whole I would like to point out again the two reasons for my bringing up the so-called draft riots in 1863 I brought it up number one to make clear that the newspapers which have described what happened in Watts as a worst riot that ever took place in our history is a lie the Irish killed over 300 people number two I brought it up to show that the causal factors in Watts for Negroes were similar to the causal factors for that riot now therefore

I think with some humility white people ought to face these two facts and not go about as they have done with no understanding or sympathy for how this could have emerged and I refrained specifically from mentioning the fact that it was the Irish killing fundamentally Negroes because it did not seem that we had any particular lesson to learn from that but as Dr. Sableeman says it is a fact and therefore it was a more vicious riot it was interesting the fact that the Negro was shooting but not to kill I watched this and the only thing I could come up with I don't know how basically sound it is is that the one thing that the Negro do not say we see white folks down television every night but we very seldom see him run and I think he was more so shooting to make it and he did and he ran baby and he was nowhere around and then with a national garden move then it was a matter

of the change of the uniform to the uniform plan a very important part of this we talk about the early American the British the red coat this is very important the red coat because it was a uniform today it's a uniform it says blue uniform that many Negroes cannot identify with whereas when the green uniform came in we can identify with the green uniform there's been more Negroes in the army than on the police department the army treated us better than the police department have treated us and we always talk about you know upholding law and art and have respect for law and art but law and art have to have respect for people to it works both ways why did you get shot what were the what were the circumstances well I was standing on a corner talking to some people on on one side of the street when the police moved in and these people were in their front yard they wouldn't come in this area for about six hours and we had when we got there was about 10,000 people or more in this one area and we had got it down to 300 and when we got it down to 300 this is when the police moved in swinging and hitting anybody going

up in people's yards hitting them knocking around when the looters were gone and if they really wanted direct contact with the looters they should have come in six hours earlier then this is when the guns start coming out of the house and they were shooting at the police is when it hit me but we had been in this area when it was difficult we had to go get the farmer and almost leave them by the hand and guarantee them that wouldn't anything happen to them. Once we got this crowd down to the size then the police came in and they were very very brutal more scared than brutal though I could I could almost justify their fright when they came in and they they was completely out of reasoning the same way the riders were out of reasoning you had two people that was clashing together there Dick I want to ask your brother rough question you're very certain that the shooting of yourself was not a hostile act no it's one thing I do know is my brother of course of course it's been said and that the Reverend Martin Luther King he was accompanied by Dr. King

to watch and I gather from press reports if they are accurate that he was not received in grade 11 I almost overplayed my shooting by Negro so no one would think in the country I was shot by a cop this was deliberate I mean over so to the extent that it might have looked that they were shooting at me but this was strictly so it wouldn't be said that I was shot by a cop because once a rumor gets out and Philadelphia the biggest rumor there was that a cop hit a pregnant woman in the baby died and we had to get on loudspeakers the next morning and go all the way through the Negro neighborhood and say this didn't happen. Now Dick the question of course I was leading up to the strength of the National Negro Leadership in the Watts community and the general subject of the strength of the National Negro Leadership Mr. Rustin. Well I think the press deliberately misplayed Dr. King's visit for an example when we were in the Watts community center talking with great numbers of leaders and ordinary

people one man stood up and said Dr. King we don't need you here we want you to go downtown for us because you got a national image and tell that mayor to get up here by tomorrow at three o'clock and tell the governor we want him here by four. The press takes this out of context and says Dr. King was not wanted and a man in the audience yelled we don't want you here. Now the fact of the matter is no one got greater respect than Dr. King's but having said that I want to make it clear that they told Dr. King in no uncertain terms that they felt all the National Leadership were not doing enough and that they felt that they had to take matters into their own hands because the National Leadership couldn't be trusted. But here again you cannot talk about the American Negro without talking first of all about the word ambivalent. They love Roy Wilkins, Jim Farmer, Martin King and they hate him.

They love the Negro middle classes and are trying to become just like them and they damn them. This is a part of the schizophrenia of the revolution. They love white people and damn them. That's a very big part of human nature too but nevertheless hasn't a critical point to have been reached as Mr. Silberman suggests. Haven't the traditional goals of voting rights, civil rights legislation been achieved and Mr. Silberman you say that it's a time for decision making about Negro leadership? Well let me I think we've reached a critical time and that the failure of the civil rights movement to have organized a broad base within the Negro community is now coming to haunt us that the movement has achieved most certainly not all but most of the formal changes in terms of voting laws, things of that sort.

The changes that have to take place now are substantive and these achievements have come I think very much faster than anybody in the movement would have predicted a year or two years ago, certainly faster than anyone would have predicted given Lyndon Johnson's record in Congress. But now what we're facing up to is a double problem on the one hand as Mr. Rustin keeps emphasizing and quite rightly the critical need of jobs that the Negro male must be able to support his family. The Negro unemployment has been declining but it is still double the white unemployment rate in sections of what's the Negro male unemployment rate runs as high as 30%. Far above anything we experienced in the depression on a national level that on the one hand

there is need for some kind of action to make employment possible on the other hand and this is what I'm emphasizing simply because I think it has to happen simultaneously it's not either or both must happen there must be some kind of mobilization of the Negro community from within because we have passed the point where whites can do it to them. Dr. Jones put his finger on part of it and his insistence that his patients pay if it's only 25 cents they must they must pay for what they get because this is crucial to their sense of dignity and because part of the problem so much of the problem is precisely the sense of dependency that in the past whites have insisted Negroes have whites cannot give it to Negroes anymore and Negroes must take it for themselves and this means there must be an organization from within the Negro community and it's this that the civil rights organizations

have not done up till now and we're being haunted by their failure. I think the one thing when we leaving out though had the civil rights organization taken this into consideration earlier that would not have been a vote and bill or civil rights bill because it would have been so spread it out then maybe we would have reached all these gains 20 to 30 years from now but other problems would have created. I think the fact that the civil rights organization concentrated on those certain things is the cause that we have them and had they not concentrated on them then maybe we wouldn't have this problem we have today which I don't know if we would be worse off if we wouldn't have the problem today because we just give cancer what 20 more years to sip in and well I think in a sense having gotten some of these things so rapidly may almost be a curse that expect part of part of the psychology of Watts it seems to me is that expectations have been aroused that cannot be fulfilled that aren't being fulfilled and I don't in

any sense mean that less should have been done but we are in a situation where so much of the Negro community can't take advantage of the changes that are occurring so that the failure to have organized the Negro community I think now is a great tragedy I think sir that there is another crisis of Negro leadership and it is that as the American Negro asked for decent housing quality schools and for work he is asking for what no Negro movement can give he is asking for adjustments in society that the entire society must now give it attention to Dr. Johns in Watts asking who does the Negro think he is does he think he is part of a society of hope I think he wants to feel that way I think that recently

he has been quite disillusioned in that regard you don't finally say as many do that this is a completely nihilistic human condition no I don't I think that the Negro they say hope is eternal and I hope that's true and I really believe that it is true in Watts now do you see we've been talking about the necessity for a mass base at least not for a Negro organization Mr. Rustin at least for concerted Negro action by Negroes do you see a promise of that in Watts or anywhere or in Los Angeles yes I don't think there has been any question but they have been initiatives exercised by community leaders right along the problem to me is that the white major culture must become more cognizant of its own pathology because if they do not remove the obstructions there can be no progress so I believe that we need a grassroots movement but it needs to be a grassroots movement made up of all

segments of this society which say we will not have slums for black or white we will have jobs for all we will have quality education for all people and integrated education now when you get a mass movement of people including the trade union movement the churches the Negroes the students the intellectuals the fight for that the key to the solution of the Negro problem fundamentally lies there in a society committed to eradicate poverty do you see our society going to make that commitment I am working for it I believe in it I have hope and I know that when American people want to do something and understand it needs to be done by garlic we can do it well do you think the communication is being made to the American people or do you think and Professor Woodward's words that the conception of the scale of change is necessary is just not known I think it isn't known but I fought

myself for that as much as anybody else it's out for me to get up to me to get out and beat those bushes until people listen well Mr. Rustman in gentleman at the outset we ask the question who does the Negro think he is and we've discovered at least in part that the question is all embracing it's finally who does the American of every race and color think he is the answer will shape and determine the character and prospects of this free society as we move along toward the final third of this 20th century we're most grateful indeed to our guests for their contributions to this hour Byard Rustin of the Philip Randolph Institute a leading civil rights spokesman Dick Gregory who moved most successfully from entertainer to communicator in the cause of race relations to Charles E. Silberman a member of the Board of Editors of Fortune magazine author of crisis in black and white Dr. Harold W. Jones psychiatrist physician and charge of the agency service center Los Angeles County Department of Health this is James Fleming for National Educational Television thank

you very much and good night. This is NET the National Educational Television Network. NET the National Educational Television Network.