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STOKELY CARMICHAEL - BLACK POWER SPEECH - BERKELEY, 1966
Black Power
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Stokely Carmichael.
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Stokely Carmichael's Black Power
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It follows the full text transcript of
Stokely Carmichael's Black Power speech, delivered at
the Berkeley University of California, on October 29, 1966.
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Thank you very
much. |
It's a privilege
and an honor to be in the white intellectual
ghetto of the West.
We wanted to do a
couple of things before we started. The first
is, that, based on the fact that SNCC, through
the articulation of its program by its chairman,
has been able to win elections in Georgia,
Alabama, Maryland, and by our appearance here
will win an election in California, 1968 I'm
going to run for President of the United States.
I just can't make it, 'cause I wasn't born in
the United States. That's the only thing holding
me back.
We wanted to say that this is a student
conference, as it should be, held on a campus
and that we're not ever to be caught up in the
intellectual masturbation of the question of
Black Power. That's a function of people who are
advertisers that call themselves reporters.
Oh, for my members
and friends of the press, my self-appointed
white critics, I was reading Mr. Bernard Shaw
two days ago, and I came across a very important
quote which I think is most apropos for you. He
says, "All criticism is a [sic] autobiography."
Dig yourself. Okay.
The philosophers Camus and Sartre raise the
question whether or not a man can condemn
himself. The black existentialist philosopher
who is pragmatic, Frantz Fanon, answered the
question. He said that man could not. We in SNCC
tend to agree with Camus and Sartre that a man
cannot condemn himself. Were he to condemn
himself, he would then have to inflict
punishment upon himself.
An example would
be the Nazis. Any of the Nazi prisoners who admitted, after he was caught and
incarcerated, that he committed crimes, that he
killed all the many people that he killed, he
committed suicide. The only ones who were able
to stay alive were the ones who never admitted
that they committed a crime against people--that
is, the ones who rationalized that Jews were not
human beings and deserved to be killed, or that
they were only following orders.
On a more immediate scene, the officials and the
population, the white population, in Neshoba
County, Mississippi - that's where Philadelphia
is - could not condemn [Sheriff] Rainey, his
deputies, and the other fourteen men that killed
three human beings. They could not because they
elected Mr. Rainey to do precisely what he did,
and for them to condemn him will be for them to
condemn themselves.
In a much larger view, SNCC says that white
America cannot condemn herself. And since we are
liberal, we have done it: You stand condemned.
Now, a number of things that arises from that
answer of how do you condemn yourselves. Seems
to me that the institutions that function in
this country are clearly racist, and that
they're built upon racism. And the question,
then, is how can black people inside of this
country move? And then how can white people who
say they're not a part of those institutions
begin to move? And how then do we begin to clear
away the obstacles that we have in this society,
that make us live like human beings? How can we
begin to build institutions that will allow
people to relate with each other as human
beings? This country has never done that,
especially around the country of white or black.
Now, several people have been upset because
we've said that integration was irrelevant when
initiated by blacks, and that in fact it was a
subterfuge, an insidious subterfuge, for the
maintenance of white supremacy. Now we maintain
that in the past six years or so, this country
has been feeding us a "thalidomide drug of
integration," and that some Negroes have been
walking down a dream street talking about
sitting next to white people; and that that does
not begin to solve the problem. That when we
went to Mississippi we did not go to sit next to
Ross Barnett; we did not go to sit next to Jim
Clark; we went to get them out of our way; and
that people ought to understand that; that we
were never fighting for the right to integrate,
we were fighting against white supremacy.
Now, then, in order to understand white
supremacy we must dismiss the fallacious notion
that white people can give anybody their
freedom. No man can give anybody his freedom. A
man is born free. You may enslave a man after he
is born free, and that is in fact what this
country does. It enslaves black people after
they're born, so that the only acts that white
people can do is to stop denying black people
their freedom; that is, they must stop denying
freedom. They never give it to anyone.
Now we want to
take that to its logical extension, so that we
could understand, then, what its relevancy would
be in terms of new civil rights bills. I
maintain that every civil rights bill in this
country was passed for white people, not for
black people.
For example, I am
black. I know that. I also know that while I am
black I am a human being, and therefore I have
the right to go into any public place. White
people didn't know that. Every time I tried to
go into a place they stopped me. So some boys
had to write a bill to tell that white man,
"He's a human being; don't stop him." That bill
was for that white man, not for me. I knew it
all the time. I knew it all the time.
I knew that I could vote and that that wasn't a
privilege; it was my right. Every time I tried I
was shot, killed or jailed, beaten or
economically deprived. So somebody had to write
a bill for white people to tell them, "When a
black man comes to vote, don't bother him." That
bill, again, was for white people, not for black
people. So that when you talk about open
occupancy, I know I can live any place I want to
live. It is white people across this country who
are incapable of allowing me to live where I
want to live. You need a civil rights bill, not
me. I know I can live where I want to live.
So that the
failures to pass a civil rights bill isn't
because of Black Power, isn't because of the
Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. It's
not because of the rebellions that are occurring
in the major cities. It is incapability of
whites to deal with their own problems inside
their own communities. That is the problem of
the failure of the civil rights bill.
And so in a larger
sense we must then ask, how is it that black
people move? And what do we do? But the question
in a greater sense is, how can white people who
are the majority, and who are responsible for
making democracy work, make it work?
They have
miserably failed to this point. They have never
made democracy work, be it inside the United
States, Vietnam, South Africa, Philippines,
South America, Puerto Rico. Wherever America has
been, she has not been able to make democracy
work. So that in a larger sense, we not only
condemn the country for what it's done
internally, but we must condemn it for what it
does externally. We see this country trying to
rule the world, and someone must stand up and
start articulating that this country is not God,
and cannot rule the world.
Now then, before
we move on we ought to develop the white
supremacy attitudes that were either conscious
or subconscious thought and how they run rampant
through the society today. For example, the
missionaries were sent to Africa. They went with
the attitude that blacks were automatically
inferior. As a matter of fact, the first act the
missionaries did, you know, when they get [sic]
to Africa was to make us cover up our bodies,
because they said it got them excited. We
couldn't go bare-breasted any more because they
got excited.
Now when the missionaries came to civilize us
because we were uncivilized, educate us because
we were uneducated, and give us some, some,
literate studies because we were illiterate,
they charged a price. The missionaries came with
the Bible, and we had the land. When they left,
they had the land, and we still have the Bible.
And that has been the rationalization for
Western civilization as it moves across the
world and stealing and plundering and raping
everybody in its path. Their one rationalization
is that the rest of the world is uncivilized and
they are in fact civilized.
And that runs on today, you see, because what we
have today is we have what we call "modern-day
Peace Corps missionaries," and they come into
our ghettos and they Head Start, Upward Lift,
Bootstrap, and Upward Bound us into white
society, 'cause they don't want to face the real
problem which is a man is poor for one reason
and one reason only: 'cause he does not have
money, period. If you want to get rid of
poverty, you give people money, period.
And you ought not to tell me about people who
don't work, and you can't give people money
without working, 'cause if that were true, you'd
have to start stopping Rockefeller, Bobby
Kennedy, Lyndon Baines Johnson, Lady Bird
Johnson, the whole of Standard Oil, the Gulf
Corp, all of them, including probably a large
number of the Board of Trustees of this
university.
So the question,
then, clearly is not whether or not one can
work, it's who has power? Who has power to make
his or her acts legitimate? That is all. And
that this country, that power is invested in the
hands of white people, and they make their acts
legitimate. It is now, therefore, for black
people to make our acts legitimate.
Now we are now engaged in a psychological
struggle in this country, and that is whether or
not black people will have the right to use the
words they want to use without white people
giving their sanction to it. And that we
maintain, whether they like it or not, we are
going to use the word Black Power and let them
address themselves to that. But we are not
going' to wait for white people to sanction
Black Power. We are tired waiting. Every time
black people move in this country, they're
forced to defend their position before they
move. It's time that the people who are supposed
to be defending their position do that. That's
white people. They ought to start defending
themselves as to why they have oppressed and
exploited us.
Now it is clear that when this country started
to move in terms of slavery, the reason for a
man being picked as a slave was one reason,
because of the color of his skin. If one was
black one was automatically inferior, inhuman,
and therefore fit for slavery. So the question
of whether or not we are individually suppressed
is nonsensical, and it's a downright lie. We are
oppressed as a group because we are black, not
because we are lazy, not because we're
apathetic, not because we're stupid, not because
we smell, not because we eat watermelon and have
good rhythm. We are oppressed because we are
black. And in order to get out of that
oppression one must wield the group power that
one has, not the individual power which this
country then sets the criteria under which a man
may come into it. That is what is called in this
country as integration: "You do what I tell you
to do and then we'll let you sit at the table
with us." And that we are saying that we have to
be opposed to that. We must now set up criteria
and that if there's going to be any integration,
it's going to be a two-way thing. If you believe
in integration, you can come live in Watts. You
can send your children to the ghetto schools.
Let's talk about that. If you believe in
integration, then we're going to start adopting
us some white people to live in our
neighborhood.
So it is clear
that the question is not one of integration or
segregation. Integration is a man's ability to
want to move in there by himself. If someone
wants to live in a white neighborhood and he is
black, that is his choice. It should be his
right. It is not because white people will not
allow him. So vice versa: If a black man wants
to live in the slums, that should be his right.
Black people will let him. That is the
difference. And it's a difference on which this
country makes a number of logical mistakes when
they begin to try to criticize the program
articulated by SNCC.
Now we maintain that we cannot afford to be
concerned about six percent of the children in
this country, black children, who you allow to
come into white schools. We have ninety-four
percent who still live in shacks. We are going
to be concerned about those ninety-four percent.
You ought to be concerned about them, too.
The question is,
are we willing to be concerned about those
ninety-four percent? Are we willing to be
concerned about the black people who will never
get to Berkeley, who will never get to Harvard,
and cannot get an education, so you'll never get
a chance to rub shoulders with them and say,
"Well, he's almost as good as we are; he's not
like the others"? The question is, how can white
society begin to move to see black people as
human beings? I am black, therefore I am; not
that I am black and I must go to college to
prove myself. I am black, therefore I am. And
don't deprive me of anything and say to me that
you must go to college before you gain access to
X, Y, and Z. It is only a rationalization for
one's oppression.
The political parties in this country do not
meet the needs of people on a day-to-day basis.
The question is, how can we build new political
institutions that will become the political
expressions of people on a day-to-day basis? The
question is, how can you build political
institutions that will begin to meet the needs
of Oakland, California? And the needs of
Oakland, California, is not 1,000 policemen with
submachine guns. They don't need that. They need
that least of all. The question is, how can we
build institutions where those people can begin
to function on a day-to-day basis, where they
can get decent jobs, where they can get decent
houses, and where they can begin to participate
in the policy and major decisions that affect
their lives? That's what they need, not Gestapo
troops, because this is not 1942, and if you
play like Nazis, we playin' back with you this
time around. Get hip to that.
The question then is, how can white people move
to start making the major institutions that they
have in this country function the way it is
supposed to function? That is the real question.
And can white people move inside their own
community and start tearing down racism where in
fact it does exist? Where it exists. It is you
who live in Cicero and stop us from living
there. It is white people who stop us from
moving into Grenada. It is white people who make
sure that we live in the ghettos of this
country. It is white institutions that do that.
They must change. In order for America to really
live on a basic principle of human
relationships, a new society must be born.
Racism must die, and the economic exploitation
of this country of non-white peoples around the
world must also die.
Now there are
several programs that we have in the South, most
in poor white communities. We're trying to
organize poor whites on a base where they can
begin to move around the question of economic
exploitation and political disfranchisement. We
know, we've heard the theory several times, but
few people are willing to go into there. The
question is, can the white activist not try to
be a Pepsi generation who comes alive in the
black community, but can he be a man who's
willing to move into the white community and
start organizing where the organization is
needed? Can he do that?
The question is,
can the white society or the white activist
disassociate himself with two clowns who waste
time parrying with each other rather than
talking about the problems that are facing
people in this state? Can you disassociate
yourself with those clowns and start to build
new institutions that will eliminate all idiots
like them.
And the question
is, if we are going to do that when and where do
we start, and how do we start? We maintain that
we must start doing that inside the white
community. Our own personal position politically
is that we don't think the Democratic Party
represents the needs of black people. We know it
don't. And that if, in fact, white people really
believe that, the question is, if they're going
to move inside that structure, how are they
going to organize around a concept of whiteness
based on true brotherhood and based on stopping
exploitation, economic exploitation, so that
there will be a coalition base for black people
to hook up with? You cannot form a coalition
based on national sentiment. That is not a
coalition. If you need a coalition to redress
itself to real changes in this country, white
people must start building those institutions
inside the white community. And that is the real
question, I think, facing the white activists
today. Can they, in fact, begin to move into and
tear down the institutions which have put us all
in a trick bag that we've been into for the last
hundred years?
I don't think that we should follow what many
people say that we should fight to be leaders of
tomorrow. Frederick Douglass said that the youth
should fight to be leaders today. And God knows
we need to be leaders today, 'cause the men who
run this country are sick. So can we on a larger
sense begin now, today, to start building those
institutions and to fight to articulate our
position, to fight to be able to control our
universities, we need to be able to do that, and
to fight to control the basic institutions which
perpetuate racism by destroying them and
building new ones? That's the real question that
faces us today, and it is a dilemma because most
of us do not know how to work, and that the
excuse that most white activists find is to run
into the black community.
Now we maintain that we cannot have white people
working in the black community, and we mean it
on a psychological ground. The fact is that all
black people often question whether or not they
are equal to whites, because every time they
start to do something, white people are around
showing them how to do it. If we are going to
eliminate that for the generation that comes
after us, then black people must be seen in
positions of power, doing and articulating for
themselves for themselves.
That is not to say
that one is a reverse racist; it is to say that
one is moving in a healthy ground; it is to say
what the philosopher Sartre says: One is
becoming an "antiracist racist." And this
country can't understand that. Maybe it's
because it's all caught up in racism. But I
think what you have in SNCC is an anti-racist
racism. We are against racists. Now if everybody
who is white sees himself as a racist and then
sees us against him, they're speaking from their
own guilt position, not ours.
Now then, the
question is, how can we move to begin to change
what's going on in this country. I maintain, as
we have in SNCC, that the war in Vietnam is an
illegal and immoral war. And the question is,
what can we do to stop that war? What can we do
to stop the people who, in the name of our
country, are killing babies, women, and
children? What can we do to stop that? And I
maintain that we do not have the power in our
hands to change that institution, to begin to
recreate it, so that they learn to leave the
Vietnamese people alone, and that the only power
we have is the power to say, "Hell no!" to the
draft.
We have to say to
ourselves that there is a higher law than the
law of a racist named McNamara. There is a
higher law than the law of a fool named Rusk.
And there's a higher law than the law of a
buffoon named Johnson. It's the law of each of
us. It is the law of each of us saying that we
will not allow them to make us hired killers. We
will stand pat. We will not kill anybody that
they say kill. And if we decide to kill, we're
going to decide who we gonna kill. (applause)
And this country will only be able to stop the
war in Vietnam when the young men who are made
to fight it begin to say, "Hell, no, we ain't
going."
Now then, there's a failure because the Peace
Movement has been unable to get off the college
campuses where everybody has a 2S and not gonna
get drafted anyway. And the question is, how can
you move out of that into the white ghettos of
this country and begin to articulate a position
for those white students who do not want to go.
We cannot do that. It is something, sometimes
ironic, that many of the peace groups have
beginning to call us violent and say they can no
longer support us, and we are in fact the most
militant organization for peace or civil rights
or human rights against the war in Vietnam in
this country today.
There isn't one
organization that has begun to meet our stance
on the war in Vietnam, 'cause we not only say we
are against the war in Vietnam; we are against
the draft. No man has the right to take a man
for two years and train him to be a killer. A
man should decide what he wants to do with his
life.
So the question
then is it becomes crystal clear for black
people because we can easily say that anyone
fighting in the war in Vietnam is nothing but a
black mercenary, and that's all he is. Any time
a black man leaves a country where he can't vote
to supposedly deliver the vote for somebody
else, he's a black mercenary. Any time a black
man leaves this country, gets shot in Vietnam on
foreign ground, and returns home and you won't
give him a burial in his own homeland, he's a
black mercenary.
And that even if I were to believe the lies of
Johnson, if I were to believe his lies that
we're fighting to give democracy to the people
in Vietnam, as a black man living in this
country I wouldn't fight to give this to
anybody!
So that we have to
use our bodies and our minds in the only way
that we see fit. We must begin like the
philosopher Camus to come alive by saying "No!"
That is the only act in which we begin to come
alive, and we have to say "No!" to many, many
things in this country. This country is a nation
of thieves. It has stolen everything it has,
beginning with black people. And that the
question is, how can we move to start changing
this country from what it is, a nation of
thieves. This country cannot justify any longer
its existence. We have become the policemen of
the world. The marines are at our disposal to
always bring democracy, and if the Vietnamese
don't want democracy, well dammit, "We'll just
wipe them the hell out, 'cause they don't
deserve to live if they won't have our way of
life."
There is then in a
larger sense, what do you do on your university
campus? Do you raise questions about the hundred
black students who were kicked off campus a
couple of weeks ago? Eight hundred? And how does
that question begin to move? Do you begin to
relate to people outside of the ivory tower and
university wall? Do you think you're capable of
building those human relationships, as the
country now stands? You're fooling yourself. It
is impossible for white and black people to talk
about building a relationship based on humanity
when the country is the way it is, when the
institutions are clearly against us.
We have taken all the myths of this country and
we've found them to be nothing but downright
lies. This country told us that if we worked
hard we would succeed, and if that were true we
would own this country lock, stock, and barrel.
It is we who have picked the cotton for nothing.
It is we who are the maids in the kitchens of
liberal white people. It is we who are the
janitors, the porters, the elevator men. It is
we who sweep up your college floors. Yes, it is
we who are the hardest workers and the lowest
paid.
And that it is
nonsensical for people to start talking about
human relationships until they're willing to
build new institutions. Black people are
economically insecure. White liberals are
economically secure. Can you begin to build an
economic coalition? Are the liberals willing to
share their salaries with the economically
insecure black people they so much love? Then if
you're not, are you willing to start building
new institutions that will provide economic
security for black people? That's the question
we want to deal with.
We have to
seriously examine the histories that we have
been told. But we have something more to do than
that. American students are perhaps the most
politically unsophisticated students in the
world. Across every country in this world, while
we were growing up, students were leading the
major revolutions of their countries. We have
not been able to do that. They have been
politically aware of their existence. In South
America our neighbors down below the border have
one every twenty-four hours just to remind us
that they're politically aware.
And we have been
unable to grasp it because we've always moved in
the field of morality and love while people have
been politically jiving with our lives. And the
question is, how do we now move politically and
stop trying to move morally? You can't move
morally against a man like Brown and Reagan.
You've got to move politically to put 'em out of
business. You've got to move politically. You
can't move morally against Lyndon Baines Johnson
because he is an immoral man. He doesn't know
what it's all about. So you've got to move
politically. You've got to move politically.
And that we have
to begin to develop a political sophistication,
which is not to be a parrot: "The two-party
system is the best party in the world." There is
a difference between being a parrot and being
politically sophisticated. We have to raise
questions about whether or not we do need new
types of political institutions in this country,
and we in SNCC maintain that we need them now.
We need new political institutions in this
country. At any time, any time, Lyndon Baines
Johnson can head a party which has in it Bobby
Kennedy, Wayne Morse, Eastland, Wallace, and all
those other supposed-to-be-liberal cats, there's
something wrong with that party. They're moving
politically, not morally. And that if that party
refuses to seat black people from Mississippi
and goes ahead and seats racists like Eastland
and his clique, it is clear to me that they're
moving politically, and that one cannot begin to
talk morality to people like that.
We must begin to think politically and see if we
can have the power to impose and keep the moral
values that we hold high. We must question the
values of this society, and I maintain that
black people are the best people to do that
because we have been excluded from that society.
And the question is, we ought to think whether
or not we want to become a part of that society.
That's what we want to do.
And that is precisely what it seems to me that
the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee is
doing. We are raising questions about this
country. I do not want to be a part of the
American pie! The American pie means raping
South Africa, beating Vietnam, beating South
America, raping the Philippines, raping every
country you've been in. I don't want any of your
blood money! I don't want it, don't want to be
part of that system. And the question is, how do
we raise those questions? How do we begin to
raise them?
We have grown up
and we are the generation that has found this
country to be a world power, that has found this
country to be the wealthiest country in the
world. We must question how she got her wealth.
That's what we're questioning, and whether or
not we want this country to continue being the
wealthiest country in the world at the price of
raping everybody else across the world. That's
what we must begin to question. And that because
black people are saying we do not now want to
become a part of you, we are called reverse
racists. Ain't that a gas?
Now then, we want
to touch on nonviolence because we see that
again as the failure of white society to make
nonviolence work. I was always surprised at
Quakers who came to Alabama and counseled me to
be nonviolent, but didn't have the guts to start
talking to James Clark to be nonviolent. That is
where nonviolence needs to be preached - to Jim
Clark, not to black people. They have already
been nonviolent too many years. The question is,
can white people conduct their nonviolent
schools in Cicero where they belong to be
conducted, not among black people in
Mississippi? Can they conduct it among the white
people in Grenada? Six-foot-two men who kick
little black children, can you conduct
nonviolent schools there? That is the question
that we must raise, not that you conduct
nonviolence among black people. Can you name me
one black man today who's killed anybody white
and is still alive? Even after rebellion, when
some black brothers throw some bricks and
bottles, ten thousand of us has to pay the
crime, 'cause when the white policeman comes in,
anybody who's black is arrested, "'cause we all
look alike."
So that we have to raise those questions. We,
the youth of this country, must begin to raise
those questions. And we must begin to move to
build new institutions that's going to speak to
the needs of people who need it. We are going to
have to speak to change the foreign policy of
this country. One of the problems with the peace
movement is that it's just too caught up in
Vietnam, and that if we pulled out the troops
from Vietnam this week, next week you'd have to
get another peace movement for Santo Domingo.
And the question is, how do you begin to
articulate needs to change the foreign policy of
this country, a policy that is decided upon
race, a policy on which decisions are made upon
getting economic wealth at any price, at any
price.
Now we articulate that we therefore have to hook
up with black people around the world, and that
that hookup is not only psychological, but
becomes very real. If South America today were
to rebel, and black people were to shoot the
hell out of all the white people there - as they
should, as they should - then Standard Oil would
crumble tomorrow. If South Africa were to go
today, Chase Manhattan Bank would crumble
tomorrow. If Zimbabwe, which is called Rhodesia
by white people, were to go tomorrow, General
Electric would cave in on the East Coast. The
question is, how do we stop those institutions
that are so willing to fight against "Communist
aggression" but close their eyes to racist
oppression? That is the question that you raise.
Can this country do that?
Now, many people talk about pulling out of
Vietnam. What will happen? If we pull out of
Vietnam, there will be one less aggressor in
there, we won't be there. And so the question
is, how do we articulate those positions? And we
cannot begin to articulate them from the same
assumptions that the people in the country
speak, 'cause they speak from different
assumptions than I assume what the youth in this
country are talking about. That we're not
talking about a policy or aid or sending Peace
Corps people in to teach people how to read and
write and build houses while we steal their raw
materials from them. Is that what we're talking
about? 'Cause that's all we do. What
underdeveloped countries need information on how
to become industrialized, so they can keep their
raw materials where they have it, produce them
and sell it to this country for the price it's
supposed to pay; not that we produce it and sell
it back to them for a profit and keep sending
our modern day missionaries in, calling them the
sons of Kennedy.
And that if the
youth are going to participate in that program,
how do you raise those questions where you begin
to control that Peace Corps program? How do you
begin to raise them? How do we raise the
questions of poverty? The assumptions of this
country is that if someone is poor, they are
poor because of their own individual blight, or
they weren't born on the right side of town;
they had too many children; they went in the
army too early; or their father was a drunk, or
they didn't care about school, or they made a
mistake. That's a lot of nonsense. Poverty is
well calculated in this country. It is well
calculated, and the reason why the poverty
program won't work is because the calculators of
poverty are administering it. That's why it
won't work.
So how can we, as
the youth in the country, move to start tearing
those things down? We must move into the white
community. We are in the black community. We
have developed a movement in the black
community. The challenge is that the white
activist has failed miserably to develop the
movement inside of his community. And the
question is, can we find white people who are
going to have the courage to go into white
communities and start organizing them? Can we
find them? Are they here and are they willing to
do that? Those are the questions that we must
raise for the white activist. And we're never
going to get caught up in questions about power.
This country knows what power is. It knows it
very well. And it knows what Black Power is
'cause it deprived black people of it for four
hundred years. So it knows what Black Power is.
But the question of, why do black people,
why do white people in this country associate
Black Power with violence? And the question is
because of their own inability to deal with
"blackness." If we had said "Negro Power" nobody
would get scared. Everybody would
support it. Or if we said power for colored
people, everybody'd be for that, but it is the
word Black, it is the word Black that
bothers people in this country, and that's their
problem, not mine - their problem, their problem.
Now there's one
modern day lie that we want to attack and then
move on very quickly and that is the lie that
says anything all black is bad. Now, you're all
a college university crowd. You've taken your
basic logic course. You know about a major
premise and minor premise. So people have been
telling me anything all black is bad. Let's make
that our major premise.
Major premise: Anything all black is bad.
Minor premise or particular premise: I am
all black.
Therefore ...
I'm never going to be put in that trick
bag. I am all black and I'm all good. Anything all black is not
necessarily bad. Anything all black is only bad
when you use force to keep whites out. Now
that's what white people have done in this
country, and they're projecting their same fears
and guilt on us, and we won't have it, we won't
have it. Let them handle their own fears and
their own guilt. Let them find their own
psychologists. We refuse to be the therapy for
white society any longer. We have gone mad
trying to do it. We have gone stark raving mad
trying to do it.
I look at Dr. King on television every
single day, and I say to myself: "Now there is a
man who's desperately needed in this country.
There is a man full of love. There is a man full
of mercy. There is a man full of compassion."
But every time I see Lyndon on television, I
said, "Martin, baby, you've got a long way to
go."
So that the question stands as to what we
are willing to do, how we are willing to say
"no" to withdraw from that system and begin
within our community to start to function and to
build new institutions that will speak to our
needs. In Lowndes County, we developed something
called the Lowndes County Freedom Organization.
It is a political party. The Alabama law says
that if you have a Party you must have an
emblem. We chose for the emblem a black panther,
a beautiful black animal which symbolizes the
strength and dignity of black people, an animal
that never strikes back until he's backed so far
into the wall, he's got nothing to do but spring
out. Yeah. And when he springs he does not stop.
Now there is a party in Alabama called the
Alabama Democratic Party. It is all white. It
has as its emblem a white rooster and the words
"white supremacy" for the write. Now the
gentlemen of the press, because they're
advertisers, and because most of them are white,
and because they're produced by that white
institution, never called the Lowndes Country
Freedom Organization by its name, but rather
they call it the Black Panther Party. Our
question is, why don't they call the Alabama
Democratic Party the "White Cock Party"?
It's fair to us, it's fair
to us. It is clear to me that that just points
out America's problem with sex and color, not
our problem, not our problem. And it is now
white America that is going to deal with those
problems of sex and color.
If we were to be real and to be honest, we would have to admit that
most people in this country see things black and
white. We have to do that. All of us do. We live
in a country that's geared that way. White
people would have to admit that they are afraid
to go into a black ghetto at night. They are
afraid. That's a fact. They're afraid because
they'd be "beat up," "lynched," "looted," "cut
up," etcetera, etcetera. It happens to black
people inside the ghetto every day,
incidentally, and white people are afraid of
that. So you get a man to do it for you, a
policeman. And now you figure his mentality,
when he's afraid of black people. The first time
a black man jumps, that white man gonna shoot
him. He's gonna shoot him. So police brutality
is going to exist on that level because of the
incapability of that white man to see black
people come together and to live in the
conditions. This country is too hypocritical and
that we cannot adjust ourselves to its
hypocrisy.
The only time I hear people talk about
nonviolence is when black people move to defend
themselves against white people. Black people
cut themselves every night in the ghetto, don't
anybody talk about nonviolence. Lyndon Baines
Johnson is busy bombing the hell of out
Vietnam, don't nobody talk about nonviolence.
White people beat up black people
every day, don't nobody talk about nonviolence.
But as soon as black people start to move, the
double standard comes into being.
You can't defend yourself. That's what
you're saying, 'cause you show me a man who would advocate aggressive violence that would be
able to live in this country. Show him to me.
The double standards again come into itself.
Isn't it ludicrous and hypocritical for the
political chameleon who calls himself a vice
president in this country to stand up before this country and say,
"Looting never got anybody anywhere"? Isn't it
hypocritical for Lyndon to talk about looting,
that you can't accomplish anything by looting
and you must accomplish it by the legal ways?
What does he know about legality? Ask Ho Chi
Minh, he'll tell you.
So that in conclusion we want to say that
number one, it is clear to me that we have to
wage a psychological battle on the right for
black people to define their own terms, define
themselves as they see fit, and organize
themselves as they see it. Now the question is, how is the white
community going to begin to allow for that
organizing, because once they start to do that,
they will also allow for the organizing that
they want to do inside their community. It
doesn't make a difference, 'cause we're going to
organize our way anyway. We're going to do it.
The question is, how are we going to facilitate
those matters, whether it's going to be done
with a thousand policemen with submachine guns,
or whether or not it's going to be done in a
context where it is allowed to be done by white
people warding off those policemen. That is the
question.
And the question is, how are white people
who call themselves activists ready to start
move into the white communities on two counts:
on building new political institutions to
destroy the old ones that we have, and to move
around the concept of white youth refusing to go
into the army? So that we can start, then, to
build a new world. It is ironic to talk about
civilization in this country. This country is
uncivilized. It needs to be civilized. It needs
to be civilized.
And that we must begin to raise those
questions of civilization. What it is? And who
do it? And so we must urge you to fight now to
be the leaders of today, not tomorrow. We've got
to be the leaders of today. This country is a nation of thieves. It stands on the
brink of becoming a nation of murderers. We must
stop it. We must stop it. We must
stop it. We must stop it.
And then, therefore, in a larger sense
there's the question of black people. We are on
the move for our liberation. We have been tired
of trying to prove things to white people. We
are tired of trying to explain to white people
that we're not going to hurt them. We are
concerned with getting the things we want, the
things that we have to have to be able to
function. The question is, can white people
allow for that in this country? The question is, will white people overcome
their racism and allow for that to happen in
this country?
If that does not happen, brothers
and sisters, we have no choice but to say very
clearly, "Move over, or we going to move on over
you."
Thank you.
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