Stokely Carmichael Discusses Organizing and Voting (1966)

[Cannon]: My name is Terrence Cannon. I'm the editor of the West Coast Newspaper for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. I'm talking today with Stokely Carmichael, SNCC Field Secretary, working in Lowndes County, Alabama. Stokely is an organizer of the Lowndes County Freedom Organization, also called the Black Panther Party. Black Panther Party is an independent political party of negroes in Lowndes County who are seeking to gain political power in their county. And to strengthen and organize independent county by county political organizations in Alabama. When SNCC puts out research material in Alabama one of the things that they stress is that Alabama is not really

run by the politicians, it's not really run by the sheriffs, it's run by the businessmen, corporations, people who have the economic power. Now when you talk about Lowndes County Freedom Organization and black political party you're talking about voting power. Now how do you feel this is going to change the real power or do you think the real power is economic or is not economic power. [Carmichael]: I don't know that it will. And some of the things that we question now in Alabama is whether or not the vote will make property-less people as equal as property owners. We don't know. I've been told in college, in my political science textbooks, that the way to get a road fixed and the way to get the lights and the way to get better jobs and better housing is through the vote. I don't know that for a fact. And that's what I've been telling people in Alabama and what we're about to do is find

out. [Cannon]: How do people in Alabama react to that? Do people in Alabama think that they're going to get real improvements in their every day situation through the vote do you think that? [Carmichael]: Well it's not that easy. A number of things that comes into play here. Number one, the attitude of the country has changed tremendously in terms of the racial milieu. Certainly read that you've had passage of several bills. The [inaudible] have changed the atmosphere of the country, they haven't done the change on the concrete basis for Negroes. There are for example a number of Negroes, a few negroes who got jobs in the poverty program, and a few Negroes who've gotten jobs on Wall Street. But other than that they haven't done very much. So that, what the negroes in Alabama now hope to do is to see whether or not the vote can really bring the changes that they want on a day to day living

whether or not the're disillusioned remains to be seen and never voted before. We're organizing people around their own interest and we're trying to hold that political power inside the community, not outside of the community as it lies throughout the country. [Cannon]: What sort of issues do you organize around? [Carmichael]: Well the first issue we organize around is poverty and lies. See it's very easy to organize around lies because this country lies. This country has been saying that if you work hard every day you can make it. That's not true. Negroes work from sunup to sundown, they make two dollars a day. That's why it's a lie. So that just isn't true. I mean the hard working person doesn't make it, it's the person's got the money that makes it and those people are poor so we organize around that. How do you in fact change it that you don't work from sunup to sundown for two dollars a day