At Issue; 59; Inside the Ghetto

it's been for the pope h's at the following program is wrong and at the national educational television network and i used to feel it belonged on this on the streets and every thought so what i did nobody had a physicist at the office meets our level when i ran away from shelters place that they sent me to live in the city i never ran away with a lot of times coming home i always ran away to get back to the states i always thought a polymer song but i never thought about being in the house to be home with the streets i suppose there were many people felt that it was so the stage was the place to be my one of my most so miserable or if it was

that there was so much happening out in the speech that made home since it rates you might see somebody get cut steel go out next week one afternoon at sea so much that when i came in the house i be talking and talking for what seemed like hours they would say well why don't you stop that line you know you can see all that you know you didn't see no particular but you i head down here is where we used to have more of a wobble fights and by day i still got it is always broken bottles that's something that in fact there's a company in having fights and no victims and there is no place here but we knew the backyard bird well we here and where i was maggots that's thirteen

years they've the series and i would tell them to steal people's lives by throwing one of low tide on this was like a little valley way and that the confession i only found out a thousand the topic couldn't save and we were like just been this close this or the police tightened find out here israelis to come and for the delay it really played them around mountain and the seven hundred and then shows in the air when the national educational television network presents at issue a monthly commentary on people of venice and ideas this month at issue inside the ghetto a

conversation between claude brown and author of the recently published autobiography a man child in the promised land and norman podhoretz editor of commentary magazine what you know the first time i read your book man telephones land was in galleys that was published this week i thought then that it was just about the most extraordinary thing i've ever read about growing up or as you call him in the book coming out in harlem and since then since its publication and stand in the table and sent a telegram from turkey saying that he thought it was the only major american autobiography since richard wright black boy and the audience i just eat it up the school heard that tom wolfe and said this is a book about

holland tourists and i think that's a slightly and just characterization so far voters can serve them unless there's no question that this that this is an extraordinary and strait is describing in a place like this had to happen well lady and some of the tax in the nineteen sixties and as he contacted military about me to fail and on the mike fema pays for out of me a forthcoming summer issue which didn't come

out in nineteen sixty eight in the mountain somewhere world when it came out in some of sixty one the same issue with matthiessen i was contacted by karl who boasts what that time was planning a series of paperbacks book which has recently been published in hardcover but mcmillan was an allusion to be a paperback and the lower than ten was seen and that part is at the time told me into letting a book we head of age and we don't believe that now anyway graham convince me that anything i wrote would be acceptable so i signed on the dotted line and and they give me the contract and i was thinking about the manson through

well so in a way you wrote for money johnson said no member bloc and overrode anything except for money to my mind to say that i would never have been to write a book had i not been offered money but while writing it i i became so involved with what i was doing and i think i began to experience the spiritual classes and just went along with the writing of the book and i realized that if i had never received a penny for the psychological value of writing the book with a wave the thing all the payment on it dr whitson thomas ending the book of course is received enormous this is a yes to refuse a few weeks ago it was on the front page of the senate it's not in general a lot of attention and it's quite clearly and not only sell well that is a success in this theme and then a couple of pieces

literary quality are people pointing to what they regard as gaps in the narrative was wondering what you thought about those for example the idea several reviewers and this is a criticism with which i tend more lasting rate than ever becomes clear from the book itself how can like you made it out of an acute like you i guess we'll explain being delinquent on what the age of six rookie player at some point though which the thief thirteen single form some reforms a family on a promising beginning point of view of most middle class americans and it does seemed i think it will save most

people read the book and really extraordinary that you made out that you were able to muster the detachment in the spiritual strength our only get out but to write this book in which you could tell the story without affectation that special pleading without apology without their defensiveness and the straight and beautifully were fine language in the streets of harlem but critics are now been saying that you know tells how it happened just suddenly made a decision i have that is rooted in on the sea ice hit with it quite clearly how about how but when i began to pull away from that klein of homs streetlights and even why that many people seem to be asking for the critics criticizing the book because i didn't get an explanation of what they want some sort of formula seems to

me to say oh look this is how somebody get us out this how one gets away into ephemeral from the wrath of the racism on the town streets and now this is something i don't even know how i started an attack ads on what it does to when i decided to get out of balance in the book when i got out of harlem ny and he said get on that anything will lead it didn't want to give them any formulas for you know why one person will get out and it's people such as this will get out of the time that seems to be what they're asking well in a way i think they are asking for that i myself would mention that it works both ways to see on the one hand there are people who want to read your book and say well of claude brown who was such a bomb to begin with could make it then in a negro plitt can make it takes character guts intelligence and so on crime despite the conditions that's on one side on the other side people want to say that the fact that floyd brown made it is enough significance one ever takes time

miracle and review for example in the herald tribune weeks ago it seemed to suggest a reviewer who is white radical liberal white liberals sympathizer the mood and we assume rights movement and lighting like the idea you made it out of there because he was afraid that this might reassure people white america into thinking that anybody can make it out of the civilizing calderon conscious and political sociological forces then sinead impossible about in the book what would your eyes and you know you see that many people seem to have to have wanted and expected and resented the fact that it was unveiled a sociological dissertation on art on the harlem like an nba or seemingly overwhelming a

disadvantage as you have coming up in harlem and because i didn't present i mean did that come from that point of view they're disappointed yet many people who aren't too intellectually and dial an incline to really perceive the message of the book puts a message and the message of the book is that hollande has been cast aside as a sign of improving our community and in new york city and all the large metropolis metropolitan society and live there and and many people you know as we've had too much psychological and social article announces he's very his generals throughout the country already and this problem of tires harlem and has acted as an obstacle in the way of people actually seeing these people and the people in the house about the nation and the ultimate unit economics in the narrative they react violently is to have a social and political pressures i have that america about a society at large to bury their human

beings nonetheless and this is what i want to try one and two obscurity another james well we've had too much of this in the welsh right and somebody from this film the maze of psychological problem that has been thrust into a second ago today you know the basic problem thank you forget the problem well one of the things and i think that's one of the reasons the book so powerful because one of the things that he communicates and the only other book i know to communicate anything like this is ralph ellison's invisible man and even there he soon mythology eisenstein with the sciences we're experiencing in places like camp what you get and i think this is one of the things that we'll go shopping like people want a great time you head coming up and hauling all playing hooky

stealing in england will win tomorrow with it the whole first half of the book is full of joy exuberance animal spirits answer you know one can read this it's a horrible thing to say in light of the problems say when you read this book in an interview the funding that in your childhood that occur to you when you're writing music you know my childhood delinquent korea was was a real battle you know the exciting adventure to me was a lot because i was for us too because i wanted to be one the people i came up with were enjoying life also they were enjoying are taking jobs they were enjoying singing each other they were in for the gang fight knowledge on was bought was it gave us a son our social status and all we

enjoyed making a rap british with this is that this was meaningful to us and it and it was perhaps the most meaningful experience available to us at the time but many of the other data from my game of what able to proceed it was time to stop playing here and now you know if i if i go on the talks actually i would've had a criminal record would set which would have presented an obstacle in the way of my advancement economic and social vision for the rest of my life and then and this was the time when i had to make a choice i had to find a way to avoid going on top of a long last book about the new york state below is the thinking on attacks at the elmira or burn of an embarrassing sing and eventually i think about what is the etiquette is the top security prison in new york and so at the ages sixteen just decided that that was if you can hear it headed soon to challenge fun and games and if you're in

college right their beauty through for life that's right sixteen the bottle so no validity didn't have any specific ambitions and sixteen alito that economic and social advance lot of people are not allowed to make money i'm at what i want to make money and i don't want to spend too much time in jail and the process of making this money well people like people like like a kenneth clark and others repeatedly poignancy than a sixteen year old kid in harlem doesn't have that feeling that no sense of possibility i can't talk about but this is one of the reasons why the harlem community has never really has never been that really analyze because the people who do make awkward comments and become a partisan experts on a monolithic quality at the lenox terrace and that's not all

of the oxygen in the is it not true nevertheless they say right now we go out on the streets of a sixteen year old kid lawyer and they have a feeling that their chances when they can make it being in the world where i don't have any feeling that day with chances for me but i know without this song when i had to get it you had to get it so it so it didn't really hurt you the negro was used to make it impossible so it was impossible to much about we knew what we wanted was so involved in all we never gave much thought to the social and economic restraints on us we knew that we had to get it get it and we wanted to get in and they are absent well i walk it's like well what about now you had no real consciousness of the social and economic restraints and you know obviously we were social and economic restraints a very considerable time in these restraints are as we all know getting even

more cognizant of that what we love you know dwelled upon that much we were too involved in our own problems as i said before we're trying to get some of the money here now a few hundred dollars you know get a new superintendent instant we don't have time to go around discussing this ocean so if you are legal problems and social scientists yellow on the idea of the vessel unfair that i mean whether you read the social scientists argue whether or not as though you didn't did you have any sense because there's not much of it in the book but did you have a sense at all kinds of possibilities close to you not only cause you're negro and since then it's the way i could've made i could have far emphasized even more the socialite compression of would've been to make a sociological visitation which in and

then you know i remember in the book where said i'm having a discussion with with michael haslam my hustle and two in reno and he was telling me it's embedded ahmed says the gun at me and went no money in on a wave of get any money out of him with a blunt as in take it and as levi goldberg whose goldberg where it is it's the it's not vote for me do is legends around here i was in a lot of their feelings were goldberg still is yes and it's not just the over its goldberg is because our nearest like proximity here and was always end up our hostility was always unleashed on the right simply because he was this is really like maryland's right direction and one he about it was goldberg well very simple as well

but that's an interesting question were no distinction made between for example the jewish white man and in the white world and what they call mr charlie besser union's efforts to charlie i've been very concerned well yeah there's that there is that sense in the book about fees meaner than houston series charlie infused candies main areas goldberg that was about the feeling out what when you were coming up here and i see the feeling is still problems very much so and even more so now men and because when i was coming up you know this was before the advent of the bad news in the black muslims are sort of all this hostility out into the open into the foreground and they still have read that last ad generally against whites nor is it particularly against jews writes that the white the way devil's like girls are taught was never any consciousness of all or any awareness on the part of the kids and on

about the role of say jewish liberals and civil rights organizations or mac here it's just an elementary and in la while we were almost on a way out of the end of the lazy as the blaze tv until i was eighty and the animal a cpa as a negro middle class organization it has it in the people around you how many of them out there in the story about you couldn't find two members of an ugly scene an end and there may soon be no come to this area of holland's recruiting members l e m and they don't and they know they don't represent this community it will have no desire to the senate they represent this community when you've got a congressman you call in the book we call lite brite and then you walk and you have that he's supposed to represent us but it represents himself so those in effect you would say that that nobody

really represents the negroes normally when there's something that's now this has been this has been illustrated just recently in on the same time and then in the last week last week and that was that it was not want me go anywhere in the country to the white house to get to turn to and say look around and reasoned with and this and i don't know if it if it head of showing to the white house to get at the naval masses were not represented in all of the deal is negotiated guns and signing of bills because they could do it but it shouldn't it's just don't like particle but make the masses are not represented and have not been let into power structure at house deputies all attack well that was is there anybody in the country

couldn't go says allison said to those people there would have been one man's and sonny liston regained his title on his last attempt he would've been the man to center los angeles and reason with the people in the street because i would have sonny is so like the personification of negro hostility and inventiveness and the brutality the proof was that that the name i would like to see run up against the power structure and just demolish it as hamlet that i didn't listen to any comedians isn't anyone wilkins martin begins with the young kids i don't know on a cellphone is someone with when they can identify none of that none of the other members of his dad his legal leadership can then to find themselves with a needle masses and none of that none of the members of legal masses the permission to identify with those people using his past negotiations at now ignoring

and neglecting almost totally the negro masses negotiations between the white house kept an enigma leadership leadership from the mega masses positive that's true i'll be exaggerating slightly with assuming it's true and they're about the side i hear tell you have ambitions about becoming a congressman sometime from this district enunciating mr like right and then they light you think that they're for example if you could succeed in getting a lichen someday achieve a law school now of course if you're going to politics and then try and see how all of whoever happened to be around then that you think you could do some close that gap and i'm going to try to do the effect was in a marriage is your own individual cop and senate have come i you just getting in to make a lot of money on this book and so on hopefully in what the what makes you think that

the negro masses will be alienated from you once you make it and given how long my life i have i have never gone i've never tried to be widened never had any desire for the way and the people on the stage and yet i still i still speak to them in our goal at the very few people around here don't know me by now so they would you know it's those valuable and that's fine with me you know and i know that we grew up again i still feel as though i'm an integral part of the community and that they did and they do feel that way that you you know we won't you know the street was before and early this morning when people coming up to fear autographed them making great fuss over you already i noticed especially some of the older women i want to ask you now

now we have a like a kind of i'm in the highland streets with somebody might not already there's the implication of alienation from that well let's walk that gets actually built that's only a problem to you in the future if you pursue political career thank you they come up and moving framework the streets with the other people know you know fear in the community constantly oh they were going to do our love that you need to come back from the stanford law when you graduate on an eleven foot fist is similar to themselves so it was a lie and you think that the us and by virtue of that fact because your own flesh of this neighborhood you could do something to bridge the gap between these between leadership only romances

well it is one there's one advantage that i have already we have already me and a community already have an unbroken commute ability which the community doesn't have with any other members of the naval power structure you know what's funny i'd like to believe that but you know i i grew up or came up in the brownsville section of brooklyn where your friend jb in the book or so and as i got out you got out on wednesday outline i find going back to the extent that i do that it's not so much the daily show probably do and yet i'm not i don't think it will happen to me as that affect what happened to me it hasn't happened yet and is unlikely to happen because i have no design on you if you stayed in the community have you come right that once you

you know you could and communities are gone it's another thing on my community is still here and all well most of the people with a landmark hostility it was to have knowledge of the we still have a growing relationship and we would you know i had never i had never really left heart you sing my parents to live he had been in washington for the last four years but i'm numb as they are higher for more than two months i live in new york city right here and sales on the wheel you mentioned the riots in los angeles before did it surprise you know when no riots occurred in harlem were triggered in harlem after the los angeles riots have some people were scared that it might spread among its people and i look at mit

who are ten of our trading positions i'm actually a watts riots all about why the people out here in the streets it's like this thing that may lag needed and we had the right here in holland less some of what does he do instead of it that if he had any can encourage that if he were a competent mayor what he would've done was to have made a public announcement addressing the harlem community and and stating that he would be at a specified location at some speak a time in the near future and in what are the disgruntled riders to appear there and and voice their grievances doesn't was the way this with a way for him to deal with the prop eight was that she was now suffer not getting involved you know some three july we've gone around talking about bees nonviolence that let group has to do with you oh since you know it's a math and as the community

right right right well how come with wagner said he was going to be big listen the grievances do you think this would stop the riots who feeds into no one to stop the riots got it i think it would have been one of the top and then and there it does the deed more than just say that more than just a year end and forget about the people once you heard the grievances and that anyone thought federici approaches that simply does not have built up i'm a player between the highland communities throughout those cities such as memphis ads in areas of the barns and then brownsville brooklyn end up there would've been a basis for future cooperation women were no need for rides anymore you know and so you think this caught a rational causes varieties which are applying as it was of riots my father

my father jerry lives in one of the riots and when i was a little boy looking out the window you know thinking we invaded by that estimate was done on the florida law doesn't that there's a lot in that is not familiar and he does with what a rat was supposedly italy but now that that has nothing to do with it you know like this is it a lack of alive is like a last resort you know of the whole lives in well it and hot in los angeles when those rides the reason they couldn't they couldn't find anybody to talk to those people and the gunman were they meeting up to the wine land a year well that's a that's a tricky question is does the rise it has been suggested that isn't it isn't it is because you have never looked better before nobody's ever been quieted down nobody wants to look at the rise of the day you know they have the best ibm was anticipating that isn't about any of the ghettoes yet begun to the man

is nothing tricky about reason and rebuild what are really variable those in the bill where does demolish it would leave or somebody suggested that one of the reasons there weren't any riots and hollande was at the poverty program has been no has been working in the summer and that's true with into poverty program the program has built into what they are even needed to fulfillment of the potential of the program has yet it wasn't it wasn't entirely program before it that on the light and for now they've figured you know well we have to do is give them some money in the people who will be the primary recipients of of the poverty program only destitute materially nominees the money and money will solve the entire problem and assumed the grant policy well i think that was

the idea i think the idea is that with the idea that we're trying to do planet money a lot of social workers any money and to the destitute of the notion of you know training people for jobs a thing like operation head start to get furlough kids in nursery school early enough so that they can overcome whatever handicaps they may have about time to get to school things that's so i myself don't know exactly what to think of this do you think that on the whole it is the idea that some programs are working so public relations slogans play no i don't think it's our public relations i don't think it's all slogans and i think that there are people behind it and authoritative positions are sincerely interested in and are elevating the people all of the night it is economically politically and socially but right now the poverty program that it's all bogged down in a lot of the

states it's actually a lot on poverty and that it's being fought like a war ends in a poverty program that one of them what it means for his ballets war isn't just like a military campaign and the people are being neglected for one thing the people were supposed to benefit by any end up on that it was always the hang up in the chain of command and an endless so many different agencies involved there that's an art to cooperate with these agencies and for future cooperation from the agencies they have the money to actually collect the people you and we'll have as his hand on this is that it's mostly an administrative tango there's a basic thrust of the program is a good one and that could help get the idea behind it is beyond reproach but it's just that it hasn't gotten under way yet well it's still it still it still have

a great deal of the tension that is about a single roman columns for instance now i mean is it are you when he says that you don't get caught are you at what they've done they've gotten middle class enables and given the money and given them job and possessions and said well everything is all set up in holland the blobby and take in the job can be done for the children and how about doing something for the parents you as a matter of fact it's it's almost an actual anthology to say well here's a minute forget about the adults now and went on the edification of a young generation that's coming up people at that moment their parents lose jobs and everything that's done in how you act when the neglect of the grant will be un done almost immediately by the parents know what the hell let's

talk a little bit about the role those statistics it takes to succeed in a social science and all on something that there's a certain truth truth in these reports i recently a report on the negro family was made this the socal moynihan report it hasn't been made public yet another one of the things it does very high rate of illegitimacy in harlem line about something like forty four civil rights last year added dave talks about the difficulty of kids growing up with an absent father which was was that your case with a family of sisters do you feel that this is a really crucial problem money from the way you look at it say from the way you look at it as that as a kid you'd

think that there's this sort of banality and analysis is misguided do you think that there is evidence that ian government agencies not always so anxious to come up with that we thought you know the people are not need any reports where the people and hauling who people who are sincerely interested in them as members of the power structure what they need is a genuine representation right and this is something which didn't have given how they get that so we can restart that before they get home they get it they get it buffy while the pasta to the administration on the current power structure on top you know about them to the top of that you weren't as good as you know but he and study the communities themselves don't sit around and gives and the son's ipod as an old less

about than they do actually live again timothy at only about those labeling it as a psychological report that there's nothing well nevertheless it says something when you talk when you're talking about parliament and wondering for example i'll tell you one and says you know what he says it says well here is the most recent were on on the negro community and now you can take this and all over it for another couple years and not forget the mid welcome to let that the yard has said that's pollack says today you think it's it you think it's it is it's kind of evasive actions to say that's right nowlin agree with that because a lot of these reports are precisely what triggered actions like the war on poverty which are thrown by your own account valuable or they haven't really got off the ground and i think that i think recent riots and distances and negro communities as head of a much more pronounced influence on the lawn oh sure i would mention that except that this is the way

this is the way the iraq war and they got to get the facts and figures and before that they were making the sidelines oh well genocide as like a psychological reports again a sociological reports is that it's all a theory you know they don't even approach the people as a matter of fact that they tend to they tend to make people eat lots of people here are just a math problem that's all well yeah i know that i don't think they really educate and the administrators who are sincerely interested in the community where you still haven't answered my question to the one i started with his do you think that that this business of illegitimacy members of the problem because people who don't know you you you give people union people of nothing literally nothing

threatening whatever they get and that is things about sex is the most natural world yeah but then that that is the big problem with this is not a problem in the community isn't that concerned about if they're so concerned about that what you know you know what you know what you're saying actually say now when i'm a nice if we could get the negroes to accept what little they have in the ghetto throughout the nation and still not have too many illegitimate children and they've also been something i've been in this country about what about the past he was on this won't be how minimal and nobody is suggesting that they are worried that the power structure disturbance the question is whether this is a factor i think let's talk about drugs in the book

drives the drugs iv i the villain in your book you say what about nineteen fifty five it swept harlem like of playing and the way you think about escape from the allies think drugs took over in a way the oldest son it's in my generation was an almost totally value good belly rebelling against both our previous generation of parents are rebelling against the pawtucket ri rebelling against the adult world you rebelling against almost everything art forms of authority and as the drugs came at a time when a game we gave some substance to our live audience if we want to say that we were different from our parents would come from the south and why have been working there when thousands were down south of one in fifty dollars a week and think you're doing it's like how can we show that we was so before we were living in the same house with them when accepting the same social economic conditions they were accepting so what made us so different well i'll tell you one of the one of the most prominent feature of our

behavior that distinguished us from our parents and the fact that in nineteen fifty one when drugs again the point in the hall we went to dallas we used we used to have begun how thorough when we live what we would call we like that family so for plantation days get drunk on saturday night and on route cutting each other up in a german hit with taxes in the cleveland city gem high and we not only became lost in our own selves you weren't while and as well there's been one thing that's right now in there was a rebellion in this case against violence at a single aspect of operas behavior enabled me down a rebellion against being identified with other areas also and of that i went on the set to say that the reason my generation had so much difficulty and in the american society of my time with because i never sing as he would say things like ours to us that had been set of the

of our fathers without feeling any family's ethnic hostility louisa down and you know sitting down and there are working in my house my wife was twenty five years old and this valley isn't if the detective was about sixty eight thousand unusual in at the goldberg if the anti white society clothes and their lives but you yourself always knew the drones were really bad business news anchor from the beginning they always knew it was the worst kind of thing you think that the they could legalize always know this one the ways that i think i would've been a drumhead egghead and matt hansen to traumatic experience first and the first attempt at getting high off of our lives on the back and so i never went on the other two people who tried it with me for the phrase then they went on to become delegates and a majority of many many people who tried for the first time even though he gets a

almost actually say they will they still went on to become drug addicts in jail or do you think that the legalization of drugs which would help significantly is probably using drugs a big problem that i don't think i don't think for the incentive and i don't think the legalization what how drug addiction and what would help to alleviate many the detrimental and the wealth and terribly destructive ramifications of drug addiction second job caitlin have to go around speaking up people breaking into people's phones have been much less violence associated with it and the slip and that's in my opinion would be one of the primary reasons for legalizing drugs and it would know what about using legalization would not really help in getting people of thrones and kicking him that would help some of them because many of the people of that that's not

getting off what would the answer that would prevent many people from becoming the ged specially kids you know of thirteen fourteen fifteen violence on the use of drugs has a sort of romantic appeal is i play one of the it is something which you about if you wanna be all the world to do what the old wood as going over their lives and not a and in talking with heavy legs in the void ma ma kent was that they don't think it's cool it's big it's that same reason kids that smoking cigarettes and right now what else do you think long given only the enormous complexity of the situation especially as the situation has to be viewed by somebody like you in that came out and it is going to stay and stay in the community what sort of thing you think you know some of them that is some other people

like you i couldn't really do this kind of troubles knew that if you're buying fat magic wand and they do the congressman from this district tomorrow i would tell you but i can't because i'm afraid that somebody is liable to steal my campaign is setting as you're very you're welcome you can look all around you tell me what do you think is this community is in need of does take a look at any that direction too well i know that in the america we know that housing jobs so happen the fact that this is so one really good right congressman from home from the watts this week in los angeles it really think that this could and they want to attract good people thing and people are going to attack on those and then we'll have a conglomeration

of people who are continually interested and also qualify in the community working within the community and doing things for the community isn't the whole community is fat is neglected of all the fuel about a negro maltreatment in the world then in this idea of all you have the aisle to out to most most vocal expos of the negroes to most vocal exposed i had never lived in saudi arabia donors not from i don't lose latino is about the harlem a groan throughout the main thing when they might be a bit hollow lila yeah because i was curious i have to see what's very remote village funded well and i found that nothing nothing the recipes that

unified if you want to if you'd been making all that noise that you are and i didn't enjoy about abuse of a black man and they have it all life support you when you when you say oh how awful they are monsters they're so what you say servant plies that you're terribly concerned about the the idea of the ideal of integration is a true i mean as you look forward to a time when the lights and negroes will be living side by side together everywhere with no regard for quality think there's a lesson to be real estate when speaking about integration alienation even with an ethnic groups are a nation within ethnic group you can tell you can tell some some data while who doesn't like taking him and he doesn't like the limits that the guys always getting drunk and beat up and beating up his wife because the same time you can't tell a man about a dozen knives and it was about people around the one that would do is amazing roles

as finley as whites retreated in the country the possibility of freedom and has now been given a plentiful integration wasn't too anxious to live among white people they think that would just like to have the freedom to live with an image and live in where you think it's been a mistake there in the cell right it has it has yet as it has and they've had a very valid purposeful advocating integration as it's in a beirut following tyler still does to a great extent that the power structure was never want to give them that then they go communities throughout the country anything you know separately so the neighborliness it began to advocate well let's then to greatness again and again that we get in what the white people then it would be very difficult for them that for the prospect of getting us out of what is rightfully ours and we're beginning to have the lights so you think it was tactically an idea really

ideologically that's a little farfetched as are any of the particular branch of the civil rights movement you say you were any particular organization you think more highly of the others i gather you are not so hot many analysts see the virulently be enthusiastic about snake for example i'm very enthusiastic thanks steve susie essman as they can about who won the freedom democratic party mississippi i believe and what these people are going on one of the most and then within those branches of the name of the civil rights movement and met the most insane people and the truly dedicated to the cause of the levee billions into what we want

mosul in any of the other routes valley and double a cd that i really love twelve of them are the negro united negro college fund the people i'd never named identify with them and i'm always been a solo play column streets and they never meant anything to me and this will fight with them and it was intensified within a year into the market in a month and they've done very little fortune he will add to that that the middle class to which i belong you think so what about earlier they doing something for the class to which you belong to be on record and it's called mostly about race in the south and college operates at the grassroots in a court is very active an arm men's rights sort of a ban it's been that way

but i take it that your own ambitions are not so much to work with in the civil rights movement which is in a sense outside the ordinary political process your work right smack within the political process is that you can make it americans know it well us off we can see myself wondering you met you met with us for this foreign enormous confidence and leadership in intelligence an imagination chances are you well you know this is a discrepancy between a wave and talking point in the impression i got from the book which if you like it's a detached that was the impression i got from the book is that you had read twice is virtually no the feeling of bitterness on your part to a white world

expressed in the book you talk about other people's feelings that i certainly got no impression again it's one of the one of the unusual qualities of the book to this particular period while you were talking before i sensed a certain kind of anger in unison as it chases but was written three and i i was that it's an apple or any new ebola wards the awards the white society but as i was coming up i was releasing all london is not my job that's what my mind illegal activities are about you know it was a rebellion was parents and there's the right amount of tension it as though very little from out as they have a little steel and as though more from the whites is that i mean you rebelling against the water that's right you know from the top for now what you just say about my lack of bitterness it had it in your mouth i can never become a bachelor's

because i have had i have been i've been all hoped along the way in immensely by white people it's hard for some identity laying down on the ground that you know anne and some may notice is as they have you a lady then i'm enough a debate about other minerals come back and i'm watching it on step over you a step on your on the way and some white man comes in picking up how do you say oh no good wide man and man is that in the fourth and two closely related terrorism else speaking of your relation to the white world like to dedicate the book to will quit look school because the school a world which is a non denominational are therapeutic institution for the lake when boys ages of a big support from ages of eight to eleven <unk> at a hard time and i was living in spain and within eighteen months two for

five years then there was that crazy gravely ill he was the city lies with the police i will again that the first people i was close to living with the first college fair that have no counselors that's right and this made this made an impression on me also of a word they would tell me about the iran be a child of the adolescent experience is in college and for the first time to me this seem realistic in it as you could sit and listen at night it may seem impossible and it's a man that might've been fine you know maybe out that somebody has it hasn't we're at that age in that transcend there's a kick fear that have a profound impression on me that these were people who identify with the lives of the rest of the morning goes on to say well you have i could go to college so yeah so you've been so you finally did the

agents going on record it's been great talking to you and i don't know it's one of those cold detached intellectuals but i think i'm beginning to get some kind of sense of what you're talking about you know i must say i've gotten more powerful sense of that from reading your book and even from sitting around here all i can say is that in about four ad is the city congressman brown so that it's clear it's

been a week dickens is used only at the national educational television network