Tape 4, 2000 April / Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee 40th anniversary conference videocassette tapes, 2000 / Duke Digital Repository

-

And it was four years later,

0:01

coming out of Atlantic City.

0:04

There were lots of reasons for that.

0:06

That have to do with what happened at Atlantic City,

0:09

that had to do with our own development.

0:11

There's one thing, if you have, see, in some ways,

0:14

the movement had a lot of, that's why it's a movement,

0:17

it wasn't an organization, it was a movement.

0:20

Which meant it had lots of dimensions

0:21

and lots of faces.

0:23

If you're sitting in because a restaurant

0:25

has sent you here, racially,

0:27

cannot eat at this restaurant because you're black

0:30

and you decide to sit in,

0:33

it's relatively easy for anybody who agrees with you

0:34

to join with you.

0:38

And it's a fairly short step from doing that

0:41

for a while to forming an organization,

0:43

which is SNCC, in this instance.

0:46

Once you form an organization, things get more

0:48

and more complex as you, you're 18, 19 or 20 years old,

0:50

grow, develop, gain some experience.

0:56

Now I think, I'm skipping over an awful lot.

0:59

We don't have nearly enough time for a lot of this.

1:03

It seems to me, looking back,

1:06

that we,

1:10

inside SNCC, in particular,

1:14

and I would argue generally in the movement,

1:17

really didn't know enough to grapple with

1:21

many of these questions.

1:24

And I would say, well, why would we?

1:26

The society didn't know enough.

1:28

So why should we be expected as 20 somethings

1:31

to figure out how to deal with all this stuff?

1:37

All the anger that's happening and alienation

1:42

that's happening because of Atlantic City,

1:44

all the stuff we're pulling inside of ourselves

1:47

as we work in these rural counties.

1:50

All of this.

1:53

Why should we?

1:54

So that's part of it.

1:56

Now, maybe now, as we enter into the 21st century,

1:58

it may be that there's enough history with this

2:03

that there is a generation of young people who can

2:06

grapple with this more effectively than we could,

2:09

but I make the point that we, from my vantage point,

2:12

didn't know enough to

2:15

grapple, and that's not an apology,

2:19

that's just a simple observation of what seemed to me

2:20

to be the reality.

2:25

To the extent that we did make some,

2:28

it was not because we thought it through,

2:30

planned it, or had the ideology,

2:32

it almost happened by accident.

2:34

-

I think we have to grapple with it,

2:36

but I am adamantly opposed

2:39

to bringing a couple of white folks into my group

2:45

to say that I'm integrated or vice versa.

2:49

I don't have no problem with white folks organizing

2:53

and they got no blacks in there.

2:56

Ain't got no problem with black folks organizing

2:58

and they ain't got no white folks in there.

3:01

My concern is whether they're engaging in truth telling

3:03

and have created a vision or strategy and a program

3:07

of work that ultimately deals with the problems

3:11

that affects all.

3:14

Because I feel that if you do that,

3:16

as you look at broadening your base,

3:20

and getting your support, you will see where

3:24

your past intersects with mine.

3:26

Mine intersects with yours.

3:31

Now, if our paths are gonna intersect,

3:33

and we're serious, then that creates us,

3:36

or puts us to the position where

3:40

we have to begin to deal with one another

3:42

and through that process of engaging in work,

3:45

and trying to solve problems, the whole coming together

3:49

will come about and to throw it together,

3:55

up front, unofficially and superficially,

3:59

I don't see it working.

4:03

-

I want to just respond, before we go on to

4:06

another point, because I don't think we're talking

4:07

about people being thrown together.

4:10

I think in this situation of SNCC, we're talking about

4:12

people who have worked together, who knew each other,

4:14

OK, and who knew each other intimately

4:16

and my argument was, you know, we used to talk

4:18

very straight to each other, and it didn't matter

4:22

if you were black or white, I never saw that color

4:25

in my discussion with people.

4:27

You either did good work or you screwed up.

4:29

And if you screwed up, then I wanted to know why.

4:31

I mean, that was the nature of my engagement

4:34

with people, I'm gonna speak very specifically

4:36

to this young man's question, because I'll give you

4:38

a couple of examples.

4:42

I worked with one white woman who happened to be

4:44

very well placed, who had a big black book, OK,

4:46

and what we wanted to do in the state of Georgia

4:51

was to change the welfare law.

4:53

Now, the welfare law was really bad.

4:56

This goes way back, now, this is prior to 1978, so.

4:58

But the average welfare payment was $40 a month,

5:02

and I know people think that there are all these

5:04

welfare queens, et cetera, but you need to look at

5:06

the welfare checks to really get some idea

5:09

what welfare's really about.

5:10

And in any case, so $40 a month would hardly take care

5:13

of anything, so what we did, we worked with a group

5:15

of southern white Baptists,

5:19

and they said, here's X amount of money,

5:20

and we want you to change the shape

5:23

of this welfare legislation.

5:25

With her little black book, we had two telephones

5:27

and we literally sat back to back for months.

5:31

She called her little black book,

5:33

and I called my little black book.

5:35

And we just called people and all we said to them,

5:36

and this was working with white people, primarily,

5:39

we don't think it's right.

5:42

We're not gonna tell you what we think it ought to be.

5:44

We just don't think it's right.

5:46

And we just happen to be across the street

5:48

from the state capital.

5:50

I mean, we were asconsed in a little office.

5:51

And one day, I was looking out the window,

5:53

and I said, "Hey, come here and look at this."

5:55

Busloads of people were coming.

5:57

They had organized their parishes, their churches,

6:00

their schools, their whatevers.

6:02

And were just sauntering in to meet with the legislator

6:05

to talk with them about something that they didn't

6:08

think was right.

6:11

Now, that's very little, but it was a state wide effort.

6:12

It was very cheap, OK?

6:16

It was the cost of a lot of volunteer time

6:18

and two telephones.

6:21

Now, that's one idea.

6:23

Now, these things can always escalate.

6:26

We got to start somewhere.

6:27

People always say you gotta start with the big picture.

6:29

No, you start with the small.

6:31

The racism grows by increments, OK?

6:33

It's the first comment that passes

6:38

that ought to be challenged.

6:41

It's the first act that passes that ought to be challenged.

6:43

In a reverse situation, I worked with a young guy

6:46

from South Africa, didn't like him.

6:50

Anybody knows about the South African apartheid

6:52

situation, he was a cape colored, he always thought

6:54

I was beneath his fleet.

6:56

But I saw him fired.

6:57

And I didn't like it.

6:59

And so I said, "No."

7:00

And so I organized, only got out of possibly 30 teachers,

7:03

I got six people to go down and fire him

7:07

on human rights charges,

7:10

and I mean I literally had to sit on people

7:11

to go down and fire.

7:13

And to make a long story short,

7:14

then I had to jack up to South Africa

7:16

to make him fired.

7:18

It took 12 years.

7:20

I put up $35,000 of my own money to see this case through

7:22

and we finally won.

7:26

It took 12 years, had to jack up the lawyer,

7:27

had to jack up everybody that I was with.

7:30

But I use that as an example.

7:32

If you believe in something hard enough,

7:34

you will see to it that the right comes out.

7:37

And that's just a point that I'm making.

7:40

You know, a lot of times, people keep looking

7:42

for the easy things.

7:44

I said to you this morning.

7:46

The line in the sand is always before you.

7:47

Whether it's in school, whether it's in your job,

7:50

whether it's at the store, the parking lot.

7:52

Every day, black people go through thousands

7:54

and thousands of insults every single day

7:58

by an interaction, and I'm sure, because I work

8:03

with white people in SNCC, that white people

8:06

see these interactions.

8:08

And I'm sure that white people know what is happening.

8:09

Learn to find voice.

8:12

Learn to say, "In my presence, you may not.

8:14

"You may not use my name, you may not function

8:18

"in my name, to continue this crap.

8:21

"It's over."

8:24

And when you start to speak out as individuals,

8:25

there will be a new dimension set in your environment.

8:28

Either they will choose to avoid you,

8:32

which is maybe all right,

8:34

but since you white, you can go there and say,

8:36

"You can't avoid me."

8:38

Or you can say, "I'm willing to work on the changes."

8:40

And I'm being very upfront about this.

8:43

I worked in a very high powered all white operation

8:46

at one point.

8:48

I was in charge of $14,000,000.

8:49

These white folks threw this money at me

8:52

because they thought it was gonna kill me.

8:55

They said, "She's not gonna be able to do this."

8:56

I was sick for two weeks.

8:59

I never handled anything over a couple of thousand.

9:00

And it occurred to me that the 14,000,000

9:02

is simply adding $14 with a couple of more zeroes

9:04

behind it, and if I could handle $14 OK,

9:07

maybe I could handle $14,000,000 OK,

9:11

and that was the position that I took.

9:13

One day, I found everybody, we were sitting around

9:15

in huge tables, as big as this room,

9:17

only six people.

9:20

Handling a multimillion dollar operation.

9:21

One by one, everybody got up.

9:23

I turned around, I was the only person in the room.

9:25

I got up and I went and knocked on the men's bathroom door.

9:27

And they were having the meeting in the men's bathroom.

9:31

And I told them, I said, "You know, you don't need

9:35

"to meet in the men's bathroom

9:38

"if you don't want me present."

9:40

And they were all, there were five white men and me.

9:42

I said, "If you don't want me present,

9:44

"at your decision making, it's perfectly fine.

9:47

"I'm gonna go back to my office.

9:49

"But I think it's absolutely ridiculous that you

9:52

"were gonna sit here in the bathroom to avoid discussion

9:54

"with me."

9:56

Now, I'm a direct person.

9:57

Maybe some people need to find their directness.

9:59

Because what I say to you is that part of what happens

10:02

in this country is your silence allows people

10:06

to assume your affirmation.

10:09

And when they have your affirmation at one level,

10:11

it doesn't take long for them to move it to another level.

10:13

You know, and pretty soon, you turn up with the big issues.

10:16

But you don't have any base.

10:19

And you've got to learn how to establish a base.

10:21

So people got to know what you stand for.

10:23

Who are you?

10:25

When you raise a question in class,

10:26

do you raise the question in a way that people can learn

10:29

from it, or do you raise the question so that

10:32

it is directly antagonistic?

10:33

You gotta learn style.

10:36

You gotta learn information.

10:37

Well I was reading the other day,

10:39

I know you have us reading so and so,

10:40

but I was reading the other day such and such a thing.

10:42

Why don't some of us have group meetings?

10:44

I was surprised to see how individualistically

10:45

people go to school these days.

10:48

We used to have study groups.

10:50

People used to get together, you know?

10:51

And help each other pass.

10:53

You know what I mean?

10:55

Or share material.

10:56

If the professor had 20 things in the library on

10:57

what do you call it, on reserve,

11:01

you know, we used to share that stuff.

11:04

Because our group wasn't gonna foll apart.

11:06

And I'm saying, when you do that at one level,

11:08

you build a loyalty factor.

11:10

So that people then begin to hear you a lot more clearly

11:12

when you have a difference of opinion.

11:16

You got to put out to get it, do you understand

11:19

what I'm trying to say?

11:21

I just want to give you some practical examples

11:22

of how to begin organizing.

11:24

Man

We got 10 more minutes.

11:28

12 to be exact.

11:32

So.

11:35

Go ahead.

11:38

-

I just want to focus on the idea of,

11:40

I work with different student groups

11:42

at my university, I go to NC State.

11:43

And I work with different groups in the country,

11:45

on the east coast, and the most, I'm a member

11:47

of the Asian American Student Organization,

11:50

and a member of another student organization,

11:52

a lot of different organizations around the world.

11:53

The main thing I've seen is, coming from

11:55

the suburban perspective, working with that

11:57

one aspect of the community, Asian, African, whatever,

11:58

you gotta make sure you know kind of the goals

12:02

you're setting, make sure you're dividing between

12:04

racial relations and racial justice or equality, equity.

12:06

Because you have to build with the students

12:10

you're working with on a racial understanding.

12:11

Not just an understanding from an aspect

12:14

of a dominant group saying,

12:15

"Well, these are the issues, this is how we feel.

12:17

"These are the issues, this is how these groups

12:19

"are being oppressed, or pushed into these situations feel."

12:21

Making sure you're bringing in information

12:24

from those outside sources, versus putting on

12:26

your impression or perspective on those groups.

12:28

And then once you build the net of understanding

12:30

of information through those students you're working with,

12:33

be it through books, readings, current time information,

12:35

or bringing in people to speak to you,

12:38

then you look at setting up relationships with

12:40

other dominant groups,

12:43

be it Society of African Culture,

12:44

be it Asian Students Association,

12:46

set up things where you meet maybe on an issue for.

12:47

Or you meet on an outing or something.

12:50

You share that way.

12:53

Once that's kind of established,

12:54

you got yourself kind of fixed,

12:56

then you look at the issues of racial equity

12:57

or racial justice because you got an understanding

13:00

of perspective, not from your own diatribe,

13:02

your own group, but perspective from a broader sense,

13:06

of those being oppressed.

13:08

If you just walk up in there with the liberal,

13:10

kind of the white liberal mentality,

13:11

well this is how we white liberals feel this should

13:13

be fixed, this is the way we should fix it,

13:15

not thinking of how they would want it to be fixed,

13:16

versus applying stuff onto them,

13:19

in another dominant form,

13:20

then you're setting yourself up again.

13:22

And so before you come to the base,

13:23

you ask people around them who are dealing

13:25

with these questions what they're really feeling.

13:27

You can understand from reading whatever,

13:29

what they're going through, versus implying

13:30

what you think they're going through.

13:32

Then you look at the racial equity and the racial

13:33

oppression through justice and apply that

13:35

in whatever way.

13:38

That's how we work with different student groups.

13:39

Woman

Let's see if we can move around.

13:41

Sister here, then you.

13:43

-

My name is Sanclair, I'm a graduate student

13:45

with Cav University.

13:47

I have a question dealing with the evolution of SNCC.

13:48

We didn't talk about, talking about a few minutes ago.

13:51

I wanted to know what impact did the liberation

13:54

struggle in Africa, the rising black consciousness,

13:57

and the meeting of Malcolm X affect SNCC's decision

14:00

to move to that exclusive black organization?

14:02

I think you start talking a little bit about

14:08

the personal evolution of SNCC,

14:10

members individually, but as an organization,

14:12

how did that affect the direction that they went in?

14:15

-

Well, there's no short answer to this.

14:20

Just, suffice to say that, I mean,

14:23

as we developed part of an important part

14:26

of our development was exposure to this wider,

14:30

ever wider range of people and ideas.

14:34

I mean, you know, when we started out, literally,

14:38

with the civil rights idea.

14:41

And then over time, we, because of what we were doing,

14:43

got exposed to, there's lots of ways to talk about that.

14:46

Dingo Dinga coming to Atlanta and what happened.

14:49

Malcolm X and the young people in Alabama.

14:52

The African Liberation movement,

14:56

the emergence of independent African nations

14:59

that were occurring at the same time

15:02

as a lot of the '60s civil rights movements.

15:03

Particularly what was happening in South Africa,

15:07

from Sharkville all the way through the arrest

15:10

of Neslon Mandela, all this is affecting us.

15:13

Films and books and ideas are all affecting.

15:15

And we, I don't think you can speak to it organizationally

15:20

in any significant way.

15:23

I think you could say,

15:25

yes, I could talk about people I was close to,

15:26

and I could tell you in very precise terms

15:29

how they took these ideas and what kind of impact

15:31

these ideas had.

15:35

And I think it must not be very different,

15:38

with students who are active today.

15:41

But.

15:42

-

Well, we're also having

some affect on them.

15:45

I think the African.

15:47

(chattering)

15:49

And one of the ironic things is that SNCC moved

15:54

to become exclusionist at the same time

15:59

Malcolm X was moving from a separatist position

16:02

to an inclusive, more revolutionary.

16:04

-

I just wanted to say that, we did a couple of

16:07

accommodations testing, route 40, which used to be

16:10

highway from New York to Washington DC,

16:14

and part of the focus on that was because

16:16

African delegates could not eat at any of those

16:19

restaurants or you know.

16:22

So to that degree, yeah.

16:24

And I can remember one time when Stanley Weiss

16:26

was arrested in the car, and Stanley took on

16:28

the monocle of an African diplomat as a means

16:32

of getting out of the arrest.

16:35

So, I mean.

16:37

I'm just, that was the humorous part,

16:39

but there was a cross fertilization with

16:40

organizations, I can't say you can put it on the table,

16:43

as something that we looked at.

16:45

-

Thank you.

16:48

Hate to have to compete with that, but.

16:49

For all of the sort of,

16:54

of your concern about not linking up and not talking about

16:58

different things, it seems like there's a really powerful

17:01

set of themes running through everything that you guys

17:05

have been saying today.

17:08

And I think there are elements of it that

17:10

are really crucial to answering the question

17:12

that you raised, what does this organization look like?

17:15

And I think a big part of the answer is,

17:17

you don't know until you're in the middle of it.

17:19

And that each organization is gonna be different,

17:22

each struggle is gonna be different,

17:25

each one is gonna come out of the local circumstances

17:27

and your success is going to be from being open

17:29

and learning and humble, as Joan was suggesting,

17:34

and willing to absorb all of the stuff

17:37

that's going on and reflect back what's best in it,

17:39

what's most important in it.

17:42

And that if you are approaching it from

17:44

the local perspective, and trying to do a little bit,

17:48

trying to see what's moving in the direction

17:50

and move it a little bit further,

17:53

that's when you're going to have the opportunity

17:55

to take advantage of the luck that comes your way.

17:58

When something is going on, but nobody's found it yet.

18:01

And you move it a little bit further,

18:05

then suddenly it blossoms into this thing

18:07

that nobody could have directed from the outside.

18:09

I'm an ex-student activist now,

18:13

I was a student activist about 10 years ago.

18:17

And worried a lot about these questions

18:20

and frankly I think I was, in many ways,

18:22

kind of a piss poor student activist.

18:24

But and I, but the thing was that the experiences

18:26

of immersing myself in a local situation,

18:33

learning how to talk to all sorts of different

18:35

kinds of people, learning how to listen

18:37

to all sorts of different kinds of people,

18:39

wound up, years later, in a direction that

18:40

I never could have anticipated,

18:45

giving me the tools to be a historian and to be

18:47

a teacher in the city university of New York,

18:50

so that I can go into a classroom and all of the stuff

18:52

that I learned that didn't really get put

18:56

to great world changing affect,

18:58

in the movement, is now the stuff that I'm able

19:00

to use to make a difference as a teacher

19:03

and to have a perspective on the movement

19:05

and write some of the histories.

19:08

So, and I think that that sense of localism,

19:10

and that sense of openness, is something that

19:14

came through beautifully in all five of your talks.

19:16

So thank you.

19:21

-

And all of those

organizations should be grounded in work.

19:22

Woman

That's right, work.

19:26

Absolutely.

19:27

-

It's too late.

It's too much.

19:30

-

Did you have a short one?

No.

19:33

OK.

19:35

Well.

19:37

I'm hoping that we will continue to dialogue

19:39

with one another, one on one, one on two.

19:42

(chattering)

19:46

(applauding)

19:50

♪ Ain't gonna let nobody ♪

19:55

♪ Turn you round ♪

19:57

♪ Turn you round ♪

19:59

♪ Turn you round ♪

20:01

♪ Ain't gonna let nobody ♪

20:03

♪ Turn you round ♪

20:06

♪ Gonna keep on walking ♪

20:09

♪ Keep on talking ♪

20:11

♪ Marching after freedom ♪

20:14

(chattering)

20:19

-

All right, let's hear the next

21:09

what you wanted to see out of this workshop.

21:10

-

I'd like to hear your

21:13

personal

21:17

beliefs about

21:19

in the long run,

21:21

what did desegregation of schools,

21:24

and public facilities,

21:27

what were the gains and what were the losses

21:29

of desegregation?

21:30

-

Of schools?

Quite specific.

21:34

-

Well, schools

and public facilities, but I think public schools,

21:36

the issues that, form public facilities were even more

21:38

heightened in schools.

21:42

-

Yes.

21:52

-

I'd like to hear

you talk about how organizing today,

21:53

is it more inclusive to organize around race

21:57

and race issues, or class and those issues?

22:01

And if one has become more or less important

22:04

since the time of SNCC in the '60s.

22:06

-

Yes?

22:13

-

Since you're both

clergies, I was wondering if you could talk briefly

22:16

about the role of the clergy and religion in general

22:18

on SNCC, in '61, and what is the role of religion

22:21

and clergy today in the movement for social justice?

22:26

-

OK.

22:36

-

Reverend Shrev,

you brought up wanting to see new leaders

22:38

in the SNCC Society right now.

22:41

I wanted to know, how could SNCC be useful right now

22:45

and what's its purpose and where's it going?

22:49

What's the future of SNCC, do you see it as?

22:52

-

OK, yes.

22:59

-

What do we do

about the resurgence of the segregationist politics,

23:00

at the electoral level?

23:04

(chattering)

23:18

-

All right, who next?

23:25

(laughing)

23:27

Woman

I wanted to know how we maybe,

23:30

some of these same issues of the '60s are still,

23:33

and how they expand, extend past black white,

23:36

extend into other like communities?

23:40

-

The images of the '60s?

23:44

-

Issues.

-

Say it again.

23:47

-

How these same issues

like, how they're more than black white,

23:49

how they affect other like racial ethnic groups?

23:54

-

You want to restate it?

24:01

-

I think you're asking,

you know that the issues are more than just

24:03

issues of race, they're larger issues here

24:05

that affect all groups of people.

24:08

And other ethnic groups, whites, too.

24:10

And what's going on?

24:13

How can they talk about what's, how does race fit into this,

24:15

but what's the larger picture?

24:21

-

Right.

And also, how do the same issues

24:24

touch different groups besides black and white issues?

24:28

Does that make sense?

24:35

-

Yes.

24:38

-

I'd like to be,

the opinion on how to inspire or motivate today's youth

24:41

to tackle these issues, because that's a very big problem.

24:46

Before we even get to.

24:51

-

Today's youth.

(laughing)

24:54

-

No, well.

24:56

Myself inclusive.

24:57

(chattering)

25:03

-

All right.

25:07

Man

We'll give you another set.

25:12

When you finish this.

25:14

-

Well, one assumption I'd like you to make,

25:20

at the very beginning is,

25:24

that is that we,

25:28

we did not dismantle racism

25:31

in the United States in the '60s.

25:34

Be sure you understand that.

25:38

I understood it, King understood it.

25:41

A lot of us, Charles Sherard understood it.

25:43

And while we wanted to desegregate, we did not

25:46

complete that task in the '60s.

25:49

It's still an unfinished task.

25:53

80% of children of color in our country

25:57

are in segregated schools.

26:02

North, south, east, west.

26:04

80 plus percent.

26:09

And Mississippi is one illustration.

26:13

Private academies are white.

26:15

Because that's what Trent Lott and his company

26:18

in the '60s decreed as

26:22

lawsuits were coming down the pike.

26:24

And pressures changed.

26:28

So, Trent Lott and the Mississippi Sovereign Commission

26:30

and the White Citizens Council moved to put

26:34

white children into white academies,

26:37

and in some counties, the public schools

26:40

were all black, and the private academies

26:43

and private schools were all white.

26:46

That's why Trent Lott is full of school file suits

26:48

because he wants to destroy the public school system period.

26:51

Lott.

26:56

-

Same thing in Georgia.

-

Georgia.

26:58

-

Same thing.

26:59

-

Yeah.

All across the south, that's the case.

27:00

So, we did not dismantle racism.

27:03

That is a task still to be done.

27:06

And I do not care what president, I mean,

27:09

former President Reagan says or Bill Clinton,

27:11

racism is epidemic, pathological, and securely in place.

27:16

And I want you to make the second assumption

27:21

that racism is not a peripheral issue in the United States.

27:24

Thereby, the concern primarily of black people.

27:28

Racism, as it comes out of slavery,

27:33

was an economic institution, and it was a national

27:36

economic institution.

27:39

It was an economic institution which Wall Street

27:41

and the financial pages today still preach and teach.

27:44

Namely, that it's important for there to be

27:49

a lot of people who work, but who are kept poor.

27:51

So that their work, the results of their work

27:57

go into the hands of a few.

28:00

That was what slavery, slavery was an economic theory.

28:03

Understand that.

28:06

Nearly 4,000,000 people were released from slavery

28:09

by the Emancipation Proclamation,

28:11

those 4,000,000 people working,

28:15

for 250 years, produced massive wealth

28:17

for a few people.

28:23

And provided the development of capital

28:27

for the industrialization of the United States.

28:30

I did not say for the industrialization of Birmingham,

28:34

but for the industrialization of the United States.

28:38

And the banks of the north and the industrialists

28:40

of the north greatly benefited from slavery.

28:44

So when we talk about slavery, when you talk about racism,

28:48

you talk about a problem that has affected

28:52

the body politic, the spiritual politics,

28:55

the political politics, the social politics,

29:00

the cultural politics of this nation for over 250 years.

29:04

-

And still does.

29:09

-

And still does.

Exactly.

29:11

It is an issue for all people.

29:13

Now, both the church and the Democratic

29:17

and Republican parties and Wall Street want you

29:20

to think that racism is a peripheral issue.

29:23

But speaking as a pastor,

29:30

the critical law of the spiritual life,

29:33

according to the scriptures, Moses and Jesus,

29:36

the primary figures of the Judeo Christian scriptures,

29:40

the principle law is you shall love the Lord your God

29:44

with all your heart and mind and soul and strength

29:47

and neighbor as yourself.

29:49

This does not represent four or five different laws,

29:51

but a single law.

29:54

A human being cannot be a human being

29:56

without their neighbor.

29:59

Race, racism, and prejudice and bias and violence

30:06

and sexism are all denials of that fundamental

30:10

religious principle.

30:15

Those are two assumptions I want to put on the table.

30:19

-

Describe, what was the first question?

30:36

Woman

OK, I didn't catch Leia's question.

30:39

Your question, the one that came before you started

30:42

the list, that one.

30:44

And everything after that.

30:46

Man

Beloved community, is that community,

30:47

and does it have a role for white people?

30:50

(chattering)

30:55

Man

Particularly like suburban, wealthy white people.

30:56

(chattering)

31:01

-

In our country.

31:06

Is made up of.

31:11

All kinds of people.

31:14

We got people from every, just about every country

31:17

in the world.

31:23

So.

31:26

Whatever the solution

31:28

to the problem of race in our country

31:31

is gonna be solved by the people of our country.

31:34

So, I cannot see how

31:39

each one of us

31:44

can not be a part of the solution.

31:49

And that was the reason why in

31:53

the '60s, I was

32:00

kicked out of SNCC.

32:03

Because of that.

32:06

I made a proposal and acted on the proposal that

32:09

white students, before the Mississippi Program, before,

32:15

about two or three years before,

32:23

before the Mississippi Project,

32:26

I had 16, 30, large numbers of white students

32:28

on the project.

32:37

And it was based

32:39

on the fact that I believed, and learned,

32:42

I believed in

32:47

that whatever solution we come up with,

32:50

it's got to be a multifaceted solution.

32:53

And we all must participate in this.

32:58

No matter how unsettling it makes me,

33:02

I got to deal with it.

33:07

I got to deal with your problems, your culture,

33:08

and you gotta deal with mine.

33:14

And by working together,

33:17

being close together,

33:20

there's no better chance to observe those difference

33:25

and make adjustments in our working together.

33:28

So.

33:34

What I found out,

33:36

that SNCC found out, that's why they did

33:40

the Mississippi Project, which I figured would happen,

33:42

was that anywhere we wanted action to happen,

33:46

if we wanted action to happen,

33:51

we would put some white students there

33:53

and action would happen, some kind of action.

33:56

Maybe action we didn't want.

33:59

Somebody would get hurt or whatever.

34:00

But there wouldn't be a quiet moment.

34:03

From the time that white students appeared

34:06

on our project, there wasn't quiet one.

34:08

There wasn't a quiet moment.

34:11

But.

34:13

White students from these universities brought with them

34:15

the media and protection of the United States.

34:22

At all levels.

34:26

Way back then.

34:29

Through long haired boy was thinking like that.

34:31

And I knew that

34:36

if one of 'em got hurt down there,

34:39

we would get the resources of a whole lot

34:43

of cousins and aunties.

34:46

Now, I don't have no auntie that owns a big company.

34:48

No cousins, no brothers, no sisters

34:54

that own nothing.

34:59

But they did, and they do.

35:03

Y'all do.

35:05

See?

35:07

And all those resources that you have,

35:09

that you don't even think about.

35:12

Because you just go without thought.

35:14

I knew that they would be at our fingertips.

35:18

At some point.

35:21

And that was the logic among other things,

35:23

in bringing whites into our confines and

35:28

trying my best to

35:36

prepare my people for it.

35:41

They, some of the black guys.

35:45

Every time, we gonna talk to the people,

35:49

and they be looking at the white folk.

35:53

And that's the white folk.

35:55

I'm sick and tired of,

35:56

well, tell 'em to shut up, bro.

35:58

Tell 'em, just tell 'em to shut up.

36:00

They'll shut up if you tell 'em to shut up.

36:02

Just tell 'em before you go to the house.

36:04

But they'll keep looking at the white cat.

36:07

You talk.

36:10

And let,

36:14

and adjust.

36:15

We had to adjust.

36:17

What I'm saying is,

36:18

and I understood it would be hard for,

36:20

we all were young.

36:25

And getting used to authority.

36:28

Getting used to power.

36:33

Because it's power.

36:34

We had a little power.

36:35

We could pull a thousand people here,

36:37

a thousand people there, that's power.

36:38

We getting used to that.

36:42

But then when we had to share that power

36:43

with somebody who represent what you're fighting against,

36:46

you getting two things you got to unmix those things.

36:51

But you see, that mixture is internalized.

36:55

The hostility is internalized.

37:00

You know, we would be free from this hostility

37:02

that was in us because of our history.

37:06

And we had to deal with.

37:11

To get ourselves free.

37:13

It's a whole process.

37:16

And so.

37:18

We saw some young people becoming free.

37:20

In the short time that we had whites.

37:23

Whites working with us.

37:27

And all those things happened that didn't have to happen

37:30

if the whites weren't there, we wouldn't have had

37:34

what we thought our church surrounding.

37:36

We wouldn't have gotten that church burned down,

37:40

that church burned down in one of the other counties.

37:44

But.

37:50

They were burning churches before they came.

37:51

I'm telling you what my response would be.

37:55

Woman

Can you remind me why these accusations were made?

37:57

I mean, what was the reality there?

38:03

-

The reality was

38:06

that we had college students.

38:09

College students who talk better than we do.

38:11

Express things better than we do.

38:15

And our people are used to

38:19

saluting white folk.

38:24

That's the way I talk.

38:28

(laughing)

38:31

And we couldn't stand it.

38:34

They looked, they respected the white man

38:38

more than they respect me.

38:40

And there's some ego involved.

38:45

So these folks coming around, they're gonna leave,

38:48

I'm still gonna be here.

38:50

All kinds of excuses.

38:51

-

SNCC break.

Why the SNCC break?

38:56

Why did SNCC kick, in the mid '60s,

38:58

the white members of SNCC out?

39:02

And tell the whites to go home?

39:06

This was of course primarily encouraged by.

39:08

Development.

39:12

-

And in a word, we were feeling our Cheerios.

39:16

We could tell thousand students all over the country

39:24

to bare their ass

39:30

at four o'clock

39:36

October the 15th.

39:39

In front of every college in the country.

39:46

And we would have a representative number.

39:50

Now, again, I'm sort of exaggerating,

39:54

but on the other hand, there were moonings going on

39:58

at the time.

40:01

(laughing)

40:03

We didn't, we never promoted any of those kinds

40:04

of demonstrations, but I'm saying,

40:07

that's the kind of power that we had.

40:09

And you know, we had 15, we had a fleet of cars.

40:13

We had walkie talkies.

40:17

We had numbers of people coming to mass meetings.

40:19

To listen to what we had to say.

40:23

We had support.

40:29

-

And money.

-

We had money coming in.

40:34

Yeah, we had, at one point, we had about $300,000 a month,

40:36

almost, 300,000 a year, at least.

40:42

Would you say, coming in.

40:45

That was a lot of money.

40:47

(chattering)

40:49

(laughing)

40:51

-

Yes, please, please.

40:54

-

I think there's another

slant on this, and I want to certainly support

40:56

and congratulate y'all for openly running

40:59

biracial projects before anyone else did.

41:02

But I think the other tack on this is

41:06

SNCC was then faced with, we were suffering

41:08

a couple of attacks.

41:11

One internally, a lot of the leadership in SNCC

41:12

decided to write off the Democratic party

41:15

after Atlantic City.

41:17

And they led, they were followed by a lot of people.

41:19

Two, the money was cutting down.

41:21

And three, in this period, we just followed

41:23

the aftermath of taking a position on Vietnam.

41:26

And we have to work all of those factors in,

41:29

and we had some people who were tired,

41:32

battle weary, and I think that when any group

41:34

who has been, after all, we're only talking

41:39

about the most sophisticated local group in American

41:41

history when we talk about SNCC.

41:45

But it had reached a point where it was no longer

41:47

externalizing its creativity.

41:49

It turned inward, and it stopped being creative.

41:51

It became rigid, it became,

41:55

once the rigidity set in,

41:57

the question was who gets excluded?

41:59

Not whether or not it would be exclusion.

42:01

So we have to be very fair on that.

42:03

Because I think, I don't think you can study

42:04

American southern politics without studying SNCC.

42:07

And the law and others.

42:09

And I just think it is so important because I think that

42:11

as the south was in the '60s, America is now.

42:15

Yes, I think we have a country in America

42:23

that is racially polarized and as it relates

42:26

to income disparity and as it relates to

42:30

the social acceptance of racism.

42:32

That's what gets me.

42:34

So.

42:36

-

It's socially acceptable.

In all sorts of areas.

42:41

And it's also, there are signs of racism that no one

42:42

deals with.

42:47

And of course, you had the

42:49

racist right, religious and political,

42:52

pretend that we solved the problems of races.

42:57

Reagan said during his presidency that we had

43:01

put those behind us.

43:04

But what, the only thing that's really happened is

43:07

that with the push of the conservative elements,

43:09

of the racist elements like Trent Lott and I name names

43:12

quite deliberately so that we can identify these.

43:15

With their assent, that their drive and push,

43:19

George Will, William Buckley, Pat Robinson,

43:25

James Dobson, and a whole host of guys.

43:30

Well documented in the literature.

43:34

What they pushed for then was a racism being firmed up

43:37

in the institutions of America

43:44

so that as an illustration,

43:48

one of the signs of racism in the United States

43:52

is clearly the criminal justice system

43:55

and prisons, law enforcement, capital punishment.

43:58

I link those all together.

44:03

But it is an atrocious part of racism

44:05

in the United States that is probably as destructive

44:13

and rapacious as any time of lynching or as

44:16

any time of slavery.

44:20

2,000,000 people in jail.

44:24

Over 3,500 people on death row.

44:27

I, from time to time, said and continue to say,

44:31

50% of those in prison would not be in prison

44:37

if the Constitution had been obeyed,

44:41

if they had had proper defense in their courtrooms.

44:43

If police departments could not frame, lie,

44:49

and DAs could not insist that their task

44:53

is to put people in jail, not justice.

44:56

The executions that have taken place since 1976,

45:00

when the Supreme Court

45:05

basically appointed, by the attacks from the right

45:08

on activist judges, that therefore permitted

45:14

the likes of a William Renquist to get into

45:18

the court and a number of others, the nine today,

45:21

most of whom are of that ilk.

45:24

Reinstated the death penalty in 1976.

45:27

After it had been pretty much engaged

45:33

in a national moratorium.

45:37

Since 1976, 625 people have been executed

45:42

across our country.

45:47

And any number of these people committed their crimes

45:50

when they were children or teenagers.

45:56

Any number of them were mentally retarded.

46:01

Any number are, any number were, rather, mentally ill.

46:03

Sizeable number have been black or Native American

46:09

or latino.

46:13

And killing goes on.

46:16

Surely racist.

46:19

Then in the meantime, since that 1976, 87 people

46:20

who were convicted and on death row

46:25

have been exonerated by independent investigations,

46:29

not by the DAs, not by the police.

46:34

But by independent investigations.

46:37

One such group has been Northwestern University

46:40

School of Law, where they have gotten off of death row

46:43

in Illinois five people.

46:47

I think a couple of those cases

46:49

they found, they solved the murders.

46:52

They found the murderer.

46:54

But the person on death row had already

46:56

been convicted and there faced execution.

46:58

So that's, in the state of Illinois,

47:02

12 out of 13 out of 25 on death row

47:05

were found innocent.

47:08

And that's why the Republican governor called for

47:11

a moratorium in Illinois.

47:14

Now, I'm saying, I'm saying that, that's only one.

47:16

But that's one huge symptom of racism

47:19

that is highly destructive of families in this country.

47:23

Woman

I'm from Chicago, so I mean,

47:29

the other part of that is that a number of those people

47:31

had been defended by lawyers who had been disbarred,

47:33

and it was found out later.

47:35

But I actually wanted to ask both of you and Jim Lawson,

47:38

particular to the link what you're raising now

47:43

about the state affairs with something I think

47:46

you were getting at earlier, in the earlier session,

47:50

you took objection to, to the comments about,

47:52

one needs to become a part of the middle class,

47:56

and all this kind of stuff,

47:58

and I think that comment, I appreciated your intervention,

47:59

I supported the sister trying to chair the meeting,

48:02

but I appreciated the importance of your intervention

48:04

because I think that that outlook

48:06

is directly linked to perpetuating some of the problems

48:08

because it offers a kind of counter explanation.

48:12

That is, the reason that people are in jail,

48:15

the reason that people are in poverty, et cetera.

48:17

And that's coming from within

48:19

the African American community.

48:21

Actually, I also think it's very much linked to

48:23

a kind of romanticization of patriarchy

48:25

and the idea that what we need is strong, nuclear

48:28

male headed families and that's gonna cure all.

48:33

And it becomes a very conservative message,

48:35

very much linked to indicting people who don't

48:38

fit that model, the so called underclass.

48:41

So, I don't know if you want to address that.

48:43

Yeah.

48:46

-

What's that now?

48:48

Larry.

48:50

I hope you feel free to step in because you know

48:51

one of our outstanding warriors.

48:54

-

What?

48:56

-

Still in the struggle

from the '60s and still today.

48:58

-

From you, I consider that the ultimate compliment.

49:01

Let me say this.

49:03

I was glad to witness that because I believe,

49:04

I do a lot of talking and speaking and talking

49:06

and analyzing on the question of race.

49:09

And for someone to say that in the name of SNCC

49:11

is treasonous.

49:15

-

To say?

-

To say that the ideal today is

49:19

a member of the middle class--

49:24

-

I'm just wondering.

Maybe you need to tell the story of what happened.

49:28

-

OK.

49:30

Why don't someone who heard all of it tell the story?

49:32

Because I walked in.

49:35

-

One of the students

had asked--

49:37

-

Thomas, who was

in the east conference in 1960.

49:39

Man

Right, but one of the students asked a question,

49:42

what can I do as a young black man to help the struggle?

49:46

And Mr. Thomas stood up and said, "Join the middle class

49:51

"and be a good father.

49:55

"Stay with your family."

49:58

And that's it, that's all, that was his whole answer

50:00

to the problem.

50:03

-

Now, what that does not deal with.

50:04

Man

He also said, it was the cause of poverty.

50:06

Woman

Yes, which is not true.

50:08

Man

Education would automatically put you into

50:11

the middle class.

50:13

-

Yes, he said

"Get your college degree and you will automatically

50:15

"be in the middle class."

50:16

This is what, and Jim, you should probably say

50:18

what you said.

50:21

(laughing)

50:22

Let's have a reenactment.

50:23

-

Well, I said I protest.

(laughing)

50:26

I protest.

50:34

Larry, go on.

50:35

-

Let me be not

as gentle as he was.

50:38

(laughing)

50:39

And say directly, if SNCC had been designed

50:43

to extend and perpetuate the middle class,

50:47

it would have never have done anything it did.

50:50

We have, it would have never decided to go into

50:54

the least and the most impoverished,

50:58

the most controlled communities and say,

51:01

"We are about facilitating your empowerment."

51:03

I think, also, we have to be very careful.

51:08

When we look at the black middle class,

51:12

we look at people that we facilitate their

51:15

pragmatic psychological and financial escape

51:18

from responsibility.

51:22

And I do that in contradiction to the Jewish community.

51:23

In the Jewish community, the more money you make,

51:28

the more you have to answer to the community.

51:32

In the black community,

51:35

the more money you make, the less you have to answer.

51:36

Now, some people may not like that.

51:40

But I think this conference is about forcing us

51:41

to think and we should use honesty and raw credibility

51:44

to have this kind of dialogue.

51:49

I think that unless, you see, because we fall into

51:51

the trap of simply becoming a member of the middle class,

51:54

then we don't have to deal with national health

51:57

insurance, we don't have to deal with housing.

52:00

We don't have to deal with the fact that

52:03

internationally, we are 18th in educating people.

52:06

And we don't have to deal with the solution now

52:09

to urban America, and that's encapsulated in one book,

52:12

the Future Happened Here, by Fred Siegal.

52:15

He looked at New York, San Francisco, and Washington DC,

52:18

said, "It's very simple.

52:21

"Subway system.

52:22

"Subway, black people work in the suburbs.

52:24

"Don't build any housing, schools, facilities.

52:27

"And subway back home."

52:29

That's the way to protect our interests,

52:31

and that's where we are.

52:32

Fred Siegal gave a conference at institution

52:34

and every federal agency you can imagine was there.

52:37

So we're not talking about,

52:41

I'm simply saying that, if we fall into the,

52:43

I hesitate and try to restrain myself

52:46

from slapping people when they raise the question of class.

52:50

Because, Marty Saver was interviewing me for

52:53

teacher to be shown about Anthony Williams,

52:57

and he said, "What do you think of Anthony Williams?"

52:59

I said, "Well, Anthony Williams is a racial illiterate."

53:00

In a city that all of the decisions

53:03

are made in Washington DC on the question of race.

53:06

And he said, "Well, look, that's not right."

53:08

You see, Anthony Williams was concerned about

53:10

picking up trash, whose trash?

53:13

Whose trash?

53:14

And we get down to the question of, he said,

53:16

"Well, look, maybe the middle class passed you by."

53:18

And I said to him, "Look, remember what Malcolm X said.

53:21

"What do you call a black millionaire?

53:25

"And the answer is nigger."

53:28

And I said, "OK, OK, go on to back."

53:30

(laughing)

53:33

But my point is this, and I went on to say,

53:36

I went on to say, "There is no class to get into

53:38

"to make yourself insulated from the question of racism."

53:41

I finish.

53:47

-

Good.

Well, the difficulty with that response this morning,

53:49

of course, is that racism is a form of depriving people

53:52

of humanity and opportunity, and that's what's

53:58

going on in our society.

54:00

The poverty did not produce the dysfunction,

54:03

no, I'm not saying that right.

54:06

Dysfunctionality did not produce poverty.

54:08

Poverty is present.

54:10

It's been here.

54:12

Now, if you want to see the effect

54:14

of economic impoverishment in the United States,

54:17

go and read some of the case studies of communities

54:22

in the United States and in some instances,

54:29

all white communities, where the company factories,

54:32

the factories close down.

54:38

The workers, people who had been in those factories

54:41

10, 20, 30 years and who followed their fathers

54:45

in those companies, those companies stopped,

54:48

they made it, they shipped out, they closed down.

54:53

Go read the case studies of what happened to those

54:56

families and those communities.

54:59

They found an escalation of drug addictions of all kinds.

55:02

Escalation of suicide.

55:09

Escalation of all kinds of crime, including family abuse

55:11

and wife battering.

55:16

Escalation of diseases of depression

55:19

and especially alcoholism.

55:23

I was, one morning early, I opened up the Los Angeles Times

55:28

about two years ago, and it had a front page story

55:32

on Sawhitley, Pennsylvania.

55:36

And my brother Phil was born in Sawhitley, Pennsylvania.

55:38

And I was astonished.

55:43

Sawhitley is a steel town.

55:45

Just short, just south of Pittsburgh.

55:47

The steel mills closed down, period.

55:50

And the churches and the schools then discovered this

55:57

radical escalation of dysfunctionality,

56:02

break up of families, and juvenile delinquency,

56:08

and the whole bit.

56:13

And you can study this in Racine, Wisconsin,

56:15

Youngstown, Ohio.

56:19

A whole slew of cities, all across this country,

56:21

where the factories, and therefore the economy,

56:24

have shut down.

56:27

Now, that's what slavery was all the time.

56:29

That's what racism has been all the time.

56:33

Not occasionally, but all the time.

56:39

And none of that has been dismantled.

56:41

Task of dismantling racism and education and the economy

56:45

and law enforcement and the courts in congress,

56:50

and the white house, and the governor's mansion,

56:54

the legislator, the task of dismantling the racism,

56:57

the economics of racism,

57:01

the color prejudice, the white male domination of racism,

57:04

the sexism of racism,

57:08

the patriarchal standards of racism,

57:11

that is the unfinished task and that's why

57:14

in the '60s William Buckley and Paul Ranock

57:18

called a meeting of some of their friends and said,

57:23

"We must organize now

57:26

"to not only reverse what the '60s are saying,

57:28

"but to put our agendas back on the front burner

57:33

"of the American people."

57:39

And if you read the New York Times or the LA Times

57:41

or the Washington Post or the Atlantic Journal

57:43

you'll find that their language is on the front page.

57:46

Reverse discrimination.

57:50

Welfare reform.

57:53

(laughing)

57:55

Remember some of them.

57:56

The Heritage Foundation coined.

57:57

But they're on the front pages.

58:00

They're in the commentaries.

58:01

-

And that's why.

58:03

You must organize.

58:07

And you and you and you and you.

58:09

Those are the issues of today.

58:11

They're the same issues.

58:15

They haven't changed.

58:16

They've just been glossed over.

58:19

Woman

But they're not just black white.

58:22

-

They're not just black white.

58:24

-

This affects everybody.

58:25

-

People are hurt.

Whatever people are hurting is where you can organize.

58:28

How you do it, you find the people who are hurting.

58:33

You can't manufacture an issue.

58:37

And expect people to come to a meeting and talk about

58:42

an issue, people will come to a meeting.

58:45

-

I want to take issue that the issues are the same.

58:49

Because I think the issues are different.

58:53

And they're different because of globalization

58:56

and the INF and the fact that has consolidated its

58:59

power, so therefore, I think that

59:08

because they've consolidated their power,

59:14

the oppression is greater.

59:18

And that at least in our country,

59:22

we have been educated to think that

59:27

we have this good life.

59:32

And this is across the board with black and white.

59:36

You get a couple of pennies and you think you're hot.

59:39

Tape 4, 2000 April

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John Hope Franklin Research Center