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Welcome to Voices From The Archives
A journey through the rich history of Fountain Street Church, a unique, non-denominational congregation in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Through recordings from our archives, we bring you the voices of past ministers, guest speakers, and community leaders as they wrestle with timeless questions of faith, justice, and the evolving role of religion in society.
Each episode revisits key moments from Fountain Street Church's history, from thought-provoking sermons to pivotal discussions on spirituality, social action, and the liberal religious tradition. Whether you're a longtime member or discovering us for the first time, these archival recordings offer insight, inspiration, and a connection to a progressive legacy that continues to shape the present.
Produced by Kayle Clements with assistance from Dick Wood and Nathan Dannison. Theme music by Kayle Clements.
Ladies and gentlemen, may I have your attention please. I have been asked many times why I
or we wanted to bring Stokely Carmichael to Grand Rapids. Those who were opposed to his
coming had best expect their concern by calling me and in one case writing me.
One woman who called said that she was surprised that we would bring Mr. Carmichael to
Grand Rapids because, quote, Grand Rapids has been good to you people, unquote. Another
said she could not understand why anybody would, quote, associate with a man like that,
unquote. Perhaps a summation can best be expressed by the letter I received and the letter
reads, Dear Dr. Plummer, I am writing this letter to you in protest against the appearance of
Stokely Carmichael, a troublemaker here in Grand Rapids.
His coming here will undo all the good that Tom Skinner did during his stay here. The relations
between the colored and the white people here has been very good and it would be a tragedy
for Mr. Carmichael to come here and disturb this relationship by stirring up strife between the
two races as he has done in other places. If you wish to improve the relationships between us,
why do you not write the Reverend Dr. Joseph Jackson, president of the National Baptist
Convention, a Negro preacher living in Chicago, a man of integrity, and who is held in high
esteem by all races? And if he does not appeal to you, why don't you try and get a Negro of high
caliber like Senator Brooke of Massachusetts? Either of these men would surely improve the
relationship between the two races.
I got this letter and those of you who'd like to see it can certainly see it. Perhaps my answer to
the critics has been this. Mr. Stokely Carmichael, whether you like what he says or whether you
like what he does or whether you like what he stands for or not, is not important.
What is important is that he has tremendous influence with young people, both black and
white. They listen to him and they respect him. It would be a great mistake for our community
to assume that all is well and that nobody listens to Stokely Carmichael.
Grand Rapids is honored, I believe, to have firsthand knowledge of this national leader. The
better to evaluate and discuss our national problems, consider this an educational experiment
and profit from it, please. Now we will have an invocation by Reverend Lyman Parks.
Let us pray. Dear Lord and Father of mankind, we thank thee for privileges and opportunities
that thou dost make possible. We thank thee for freedom of expression as well as the right to
dissent.
Give us the mind to interpret and put in proper perspective those things that are a sacred trust
from thee. For the injustices practiced in our society, give or provide us with strength and
foresight to work to the end of freedom for all mankind. Finally, make us concerned that we
may become responsible citizens, that a better world may be carved for all.For all of this, we ask for strength from thee. Amen. Thank you, sir.
Before I go on, I want to extend to Reverend Littlefair and Mayor Sonnevelt my compliments
and the compliments of the people on the rostrum for the fine statements that they made
concerning the appearance of Mr. Carmichael in Grand Rapids. My office, since this
announcement, has been deluged with calls, critical calls, calls of information, and calls from
SNCC in Atlanta. But busy as I have been, Laurie Glover has been twice as busy.
And indeed, without him, we might not possibly be here tonight. Mr. Glover typifies, in my
opinion, the energetic, self-sacrificing leadership so sorely needed in our community. The
leadership not devoted to self, but the leadership devoted to the Negro community.
Mr. Laurie Glover. Thank you, Dr. Plummer, to the clergy, to our guests, to the students, ladies
and gentlemen. The Trade Union Leadership Council has a membership of approximately
20,000, which consists primarily of Negro trade unionists.
However, its membership does include a large number of white trade unionists, as well as a
significant number of non-union Negro and white liberals. Its main base of operation is the
greater Detroit area, but its influence has been felt throughout the labor movement. We will
continue to fight the Negro workers' struggle to attain their full equity in the labor movement.
The Grand Rapids chapter of the Trade Union Leadership Council was charted by the state of
Michigan in 1963. It was formed to create a better understanding and a more wholesome
relationship between the Negro people, the labor movement, nationality, cultural and religious
groups, and other liberal elements in the community to the end that our collective strength can
be utilized to protect and strengthen our democratic institutions, to secure full recognition and
enjoyment of the rights and liberties to which we are all justly entitled, and to preserve and
perpetuate the cherished tradition of our democracy. The practices of the labor unions locally is
shameful, the building trades being the largest offender.
This is a tale of the AFL, so you're aware of the fact that if the leader, Mr. Meany, is not
sympathetic to the cause, the rank and filers have little to look forward to. The major reason for
the split between the AFL and the CIO is the lack of participation by the AFL and the civil rights
movement since its merger in 1955. Brother Walter Ruehler and the international UAW
executive board was given the endorsement of the delegates at a special convention held in
April 1967 at Cobo Hall to disaffiliate with this bigot organization unless there is a change in the
policies on this matter.
It is reported in papers that our local police force is about to affiliate themselves with a certain
labor body. They should be organized. It is the only way that they can deal with the city fathers,
but I suggest to our police brothers that they do a little shopping around to see what services
are available by this organization.
If they represent you like they represent the laundry workers, you're in a world of trouble. It ishumiliating to be a part of the labor movement and know that a so-called labor organization
will permit sweatshops and working conditions worse than those on a plantation. Labor too has
made its contributions.
It isn't all bad. Take the International Federation of Trade Unions. It was founded in 1949.
It began operations with 48 million members in 67 affiliated organizations and 51 countries or
territories. Today the membership has grown to more than 70 million wage earners in 140
organizations and 100 countries of the world. New labor movements have been organized in
Asia and Africa with the International Federation of Trade Unions as guidance and support.
They have advanced to assume decisive roles in the struggle for political freedom, for economic
advance, and for social justice. The elected heads of many of new governments receive their
first training and leadership through the International Federation of Trade Unions. Except for
the role of the free labor unions, independence could never have been achieved in many
countries.
Let's review some of the achievements of this organization specifically. One, they mobilized the
free labor movement to support in a material and decisive way the German vote in June 1953
and the Hungarian vote in 1956. It continues to help orphans of union members who lost their
lives fighting for freedom in Germany and Hungary.
It has kept alive the struggle for freedom by supporting free trade union opposition to Franco
in Spain, to the Portuguese tyrant Salazar in Angola, to the dictatorships in Haiti, in Dominican
Republic, and in Paraguay. It has helped win independence of many of the African nations,
among them Tunisia, Morocco, which is fostered and supported by the International Federation
of Trade Unions. It continues to help the widows and orphans of the men and women who lost
their lives in the struggle for freedom in North Africa.
It makes trade union solidarity meaningful when workers suffer from mine disasters, floods,
hurricanes, fires, anywhere in the world by substantial and direct aid. But most important, it
has organized the unorganized in Malaya, in North Africa, in Africa below the equator, in
Ceylon, in India, in the Arab countries, in Latin America, on plantations, in the mines, in the
shops and offices, on ships and railroads, in the factories, everywhere where people work for
wages. So you see some good is being done by labor organizations.
I thank you. Carl Smith is a student at JC. He interests me.
I don't agree with him on some points, but we respect each other. There should be no doubt in
anyone's mind, however, that here is one of the voices in our community who will not be silent.
He will not say what you want him to say just to please you.
And I give to you the voice of young leadership, Carl Smith. In the year of the Iron Sheep, the
year 1967, some people think that Mr. Stokely Carmichael just happened. Well, ladies and
gentlemen, he didn't.He's been around since, well, he's been around for some time. He has a history of working in
civil rights. He's a former chairman of SNCC.
In 1960, he was with the Freedom Riders and the Center and Demonstrators in Mississippi,
Alabama and Point South. In 1963, he was a project director for SNCC in the state of Mississippi.
And most of you know about Mississippi.
I don't have to tell you about it. In 1966, he was elected as chairman of SNCC. And as he says,
they just had an election and he liked to keep things moving.
A lot of people, as Dr. Plummer say, well, what are my views? How do I feel about Stokely
Carmichael? What about his right to dissent? Well, as Dr. Plummer introduced me of
representing maybe the young Negro or the young black man in the city of Grand Rapids, I
would like to introduce to you a man that represents the young black people of America, Mr.
Stokely Carmichael. Good evening. It's a pleasure to be in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
Before I begin, I want to introduce somebody else. You'll be seeing a lot more SNCC people this
year. I hope that you'll be seeing less and less of me.
I want to get back to the field and do some real organizing. So you'll be seeing our new
chairman, Mr. Ralph Brown. And if you think I'm bad, you should check him out.
And he's only 23. We have with tonight with me is our former program secretary, Mr. Cleve
Sellers, who also is going back to the field to do some hard organizing. Cleve is from Denmark,
South Carolina.
We were good friends at school together, Howard University. And we didn't like it. We tried to
change it and we did some good work.
They got a homecoming queen with a natural this year. I wanted Cleve to speak because last
week, Sam thought that he owned Cleve. So he said, boy, come on over here.
And Cleve said, hell no, I ain't going. And on Friday, he'll probably be going to jail. It's all right.
That's all right. We got a lot of brothers in jail and we need to organize them. Because they've
been doing business with the wrong people.
We train them and get them a political ideology. We sure enough have a force in the country.
So before I spoke, I wanted you to listen to Mr. Cleve Sellers.
Well, I'm back to the field also. And to begin with, I don't show a whole lot of lights up here, but
to begin with, I would like to, to I would like to repeat a little slogan that we kind of created. The
six, me with the other 16 members of the organization who have said, hell no, we're not going.
And it is clean myself. I'll be there soon. It is better fed than dead.So I'm trying to get other people to like join in so that when we go there, we can go with a big
bang instead of just one by one. Now, come on now, I got to have more support than that
because this Friday I will be indicted and we'll probably go to jail. But I would like to help people
understand why I take this stand.
And if you remember, or if you've been reading lately, just within the past two weeks, a past
week, there have been two brothers in Mississippi and Texas who have been shot in the by
policemen. One died. I will attend this funeral tomorrow.
Now, I think that black people have to see their fight for liberation as being a fight within this
country and that we have to and that we have to begin to move to understand that we have no
fight in Vietnam. My enemy is not the Vietnamese. It's the Jim Clarks, the Wallaces, the Maddox.
Those are the people I fight for. And a question I keep asking myself is, why must I have to die
to prove, why must I have to die in Vietnam to prove my patriotism? I think that by going into
the rural South and beginning to organize my brothers and sisters so that they can become
liberated is proving to them who I am concerned with my patriotism. I would like to read to you
a quote so you will understand some of the things that are in the back of my mind about the
war and why it's being fought, because it's not being fought for freedom, equality, and
democracy.
Back in 1953, August 4th, President Eisenhower said, now let us assume that we lost Indochina,
the tin and tungsten that we so greatly value from that area would cease coming. So when the
United States votes 400 million dollars to help that war, we are not voting a giveaway program.
We are voting for the cheapest way that we can to prevent the occurrence of something that
would be of the most terrible significance to the United States of America.
Our security, our power, and ability to get certain things we need from the riches of the
Indochina territories and from Southeast Asia. Now some people might say that that was old,
that was a long time ago, 1953, but let me move on to February 28th, 1965, an ambassador, ex-
ambassador to South Vietnam, Henry Cabot Lodge, made a statement that followed the same
trend that President Eisenhower's statement followed. Geographically, Vietnam stands at the
hub of a vast area of the world, Southeast Asia, an area with a population of 249 million
persons.
He who holds or has influence in Vietnam can affect the future of the Philippines and Formosa
to the east, Thailand and Burma with their huge rice surpluses to the west, and Malaysia and
Indonesia with their rubber, ore, and tin to the south. Vietnam thus does not exist in a
geographical vacuum. From its large storehouses of wealth and population can be influenced
and undermined.
It is obvious to me that the war in Vietnam is being fought in the interest of the industrialists, in
the interest of the capitalists, and in the interest of those who oppressed us. Therefore, I cannot
see myself participating in a war to oppress myself. Thank you.We have 16 other people in our organization who refuse to go to the draft. The United States
government is trying to break up our organization by drafting them, but as fast as they draft
them, we get new people who want to join, plus we got a whole lot of sisters who are out of
sight. Now I want to talk tonight about a couple of things and to move from concepts into
reality, because I think that what is happening in this country is that white America is about to
commit genocide against black people in this country, one way or the other, and that we have
to talk about our survival in this country, especially in this day and age, because I don't think
they're playing with us anymore.
They're really going for broke. We want to talk about self-condemnation as a theory. We want
to move in to differentiate between the concepts of giving one one's freedom and denying one
one's liberation.
We want to talk about the importance of definitions, and we want to talk about violence, and
then we want to move pragmatically to see how those theories apply to black people in this
country, talk pragmatically about the lies this country is told about black people, shame that
they've psychologically made us feel for ourselves and our people, move on to talk about the
need for developing a concept of peoplehood in this country, and finally to instilling within all
our people, and especially our young, the will to fight back when touched on by anybody. I'm
only wearing the shades because the lights are in my eyes and I get tired, and if I ask them to
put them out, they say I put the press out, but I wish they would put them out. All they're doing
really is gathering information, they're getting ready to bring some charges against me.
As long as there's breath in the body of black people in this country, especially within SNCC,
baby, we're gonna tell it like it is and move to TCB. The only way they can stop us is to kill us,
and these days we're taking them with us when we go. We want to talk about self-
condemnation now.
It is impossible for someone to condemn themselves, because if they condemn themselves,
they have to punish themselves. Very important concept, and we have to understand that, and
it's impossible for a nation to condemn herself. Impossible.
Let me give you some examples. I really wish you'd take those lights out, because then I could
see folk, you know. Hate to risk it, yeah, okay.
Give it to the editorial twins of America tomorrow, Huntley and Brinkley. I'm talking about the
editorial twins of America, Huntley and Brinkley, you know. You ever dig on TV how they judge
the whole world and black people with just a flick of the finger? Last, just today, they were on
TV, and they did something I did last night, and Huntley said, it is interesting to note that only,
with the exception of Britain, is this young man free to run around except the United States.
Okay. It's interesting to note that the United States is the world oppressor of black people, and
that would be with the inclusion of Britain and France. I would like them out.I really would. Look here. I'm sorry, gentlemen of the press, but we're going to have to have the
lights out so a man can see.
I mean, I asked you nicely. I could just take them out myself. Hey! I really don't see what the
debate is about.
No. But no speech until they, they do it now. Hey, before you decide to write, why don't you just
put them out? You can hear me? I'd like the lights out.
I don't know what the debate is. All right. We didn't come to talk to the press.
When we do, we have a press conference. Now about self-condemnation. Let us give some
examples.
After World War II, the United States formed the Nuremberg Trials with a lot of the white
Western societies, and they began to bring Nazis to trial. Now, the Nazis who committed suicide
are the ones who, when they were brought to trial, admitted that they killed human beings.
See, after they admitted they killed human beings, then they had to commit suicide.
The ones who didn't commit suicide, the ones who allowed themselves to live, were the ones
who said, and they were rationalizing away their guilt, I didn't know what was happening in
Germany at that time. Listen to the arguments, because they sound very familiar. I didn't know
what was happening.
I didn't know things were so bad. Or they said, well, yeah, we killed Jews, but they were not
human beings. They were subhuman.
So there's nothing wrong with that. And then finally, what they said more sophisticatedly and
what most Americans are saying today, we were just following law and order. Now, the ones
who said that were able to live, they didn't condemn themselves.
A more immediate example for us would be Neshoba County, Mississippi. That's Philadelphia,
Mississippi in 1964. A hunky by the name of Rainey, along with 18 other of his friends, decided
to kill three human beings because they were troubling the status quo.
Now, the entire county, Neshoba County, Mississippi in 1964, cannot indict Sheriff Rainey for
murder. They can't indict him for murder because he's doing what they really want him to do.
They elected him to do that.
If niggers get smart, you kill them, period. So they can't indict him, because if they indicted him,
they would themselves be guilty. It's very, very important to understand because we contend in
SNCC that white America cannot condemn herself for all the brutality and bestiality that she's
heaped upon black people as a total community.
If she were to do that, my brother Leroy Jones reminds me, she'd have to commit suicide and
that might not be a bad idea. So that's very important. So what it means then is that blackpeople cannot subjugate themselves to the mercy of white America, hoping that someday she
will admit all the wrongdoings that she's done and somehow grant us our liberation.
And that's very, very important. A great black man by the name of Frederick Douglass
recognized that in the 1870s when he wrote, he who wants his liberation must strike his own
blow. Understand that? Now that moves into the second theory we want to talk about, the
difference between giving somebody their freedom and denying somebody their liberation.
That's very, very important. It's perhaps the most important concept we ought to deal with. In
the past, the civil rights movement has gone under the assumption that white people could
give black people their freedom.
That is not true. No man can give any man his freedom. All men are born free.
What happens after they're born free is that they are enslaved by other people. Now black
people are born free in this country, they are enslaved by white people. So that white people
can't give us anything, they've got to stop enslaving us.
They've got to stop denying us our liberation. In other words, they've become civilized. And now
if you agree with that, we can move on and give some clear examples.
If you agree with that, then the logical extension would be that any civil rights bill passed in this
country, while it might have eased the struggle for black people, it really helped civilized white
people. And in fact, the civil rights bill was for white people, not for us. Let me give you an
example.
I am black. I know that I'm a human being. Now some hunkies don't know that, see? They don't.
Now I know that with a human being comes certain dignity that I'm supposed to have. One of
them is that I can enter any public place. So I try to enter a public place, a hunky gets in my way,
he shoots at me, beats me up, or carries me off to jail if I try to get in a store.
So the white folk in DC got to write a civil rights bill for this hunky, tell him when I come to the
store, get out of my way. So that I am totally unchanged by the process. I'm the same person.
The only person who's changed is this hunky. He's now, that's right, that's right. He is forced to
recognize my humanity.
That's the only difference. It's the same thing with the voting rights bill. I know that I can vote.
Every time I try to vote, a hunky shoots me. That's right. So they've got to pass a civil rights bill
for the hunky, tell him when I come to vote, get out of my way.
And so finally you've got to understand a concept because they're talking about this open
occupancy nonsense and they make it sound like if we should push for it. Now we know we can
live any place we want to live. Every time we try, hunkies go to acting like savages, throwingrocks and bombs.
So that what they have to do is to pass a civil rights bill to tell hunkies when we move, any place
we want to move, don't go to acting and showing your color. So that if you really understand
that, you would really recognize that the black power fight in this country is a fight to civilize
white America because she's uncivilized. Now then we want to move into the concept of
definitions because they're very important.
White Western society, and notice I say white Western society, never Western civilization
because that's a misnomer. As a matter of fact, it's a lie. White Western society has been able to
define everybody and everything.
And because she's had the power to define everybody and everything, she has been able to
prescribe their actions. That's very, very important. If you got to understand, let me give you
some examples.
Television. The red man and the white man are fighting, right? The white man beats up the red
man. What happens? What happened? We beat up and we killed all the Indians.
We had a victory, right? The red man beats up the white man. What happened? Those dirty
Indians massacred us. And you've got to understand that concept because what they're saying
is that a victory is honorable and a massacre is not.
A massacre is dirty. So the poor red man would be always fighting, but he never won a victory.
He'd always get a massacre.
I guess the difference is that in a victory, you're shot to death and a massacre, you're cut to
death. And if we're going to die, we'd rather be shot to death. You can see that today.
If you ever dig the editorial twins of America, Huntley and Brinkley, sit up there. Today, Viet
Cong, dirty, rebel, filthy communist forces threw Molotov cocktails and wounded 17 civilians.
And there's a flash.
He says, in the meantime, our good G.I. boys have been bombing the hell out of North Vietnam.
And that has to do with definitions because they're defining it. So these poor people are
fighting for their country, a dirty communist, you know, and they defined us as Negroes.
And that means you're lazy, stupid, apathetic, eat watermelon and got good. But now the first
fight of anybody or any people is to define themselves as they see fit, define the struggle as
what they call it, and to have those definitions recognized by their oppressor. And that's a big
fight in the country because what they did in the past was they had us react to their definitions.
Let me give you an example. You remember in 1954, Dr. King would get up and say, we want to
integrate. In the minds of all black people, Dr. King was talking about good schools, good
houses, good jobs, and a good way of life.And that's what all black people knew. But not some hunky. He'd jump up and say, you want to
marry my daughter, don't you? And so what would happen is that you would have the black
man now getting scared of his definition of their term integration, and they would start
reacting to him.
They'd say, oh, we don't want to marry your daughter. We don't want to be your brother-in-law.
We just want to be your brothers.
And we don't want to sleep in your bedroom. We want to sleep in the house next to you and all
that junk, you know. What they allowed white people to do was to define their terms and to
have them react to the definitions of white people's terms.
They don't do that in SNCC. They ask us. You know what we tell them? Your daughter.
Your sister. Your mama. The white woman is not the queen of the world.
She's not the Virgin Mary. She can be made like any other woman. Let's move on to something
important.
So that we will never allow them to define our terms and have us react to them. That's what
they try to do with black power. We say black power, and they say, oh, you mean violence, don't
you? And they want to say, uh-uh, boss man.
Oh, we don't mean violence. No, sir. We say black power.
We will define it. You will shut your mouth and listen to the definition of it, period. That's all.
That's all. Black power is the coming together of black people to fight for their liberation by any
means necessary, period. And that's very important because we must be able to define
ourselves as we see fit because they have been defining us and we have been accepting the
definitions of them, of us.
We should say we're black people, beautiful, strong, intelligent, and aggressive. We want to
move in then to talk about violence because I'm really upset when I see a black man on
television talking about violence because we're the most violent people in this country. We cut
and shoot each other more than we do anything else on Friday and Saturday night in the
government.
But don't anybody in the country talk about the violence of black people to black people
because they don't care about black people. They don't care. The only time they talk about
violence is when some brother moves to get rid of some hunky cop who's been riding his back
all his life.
Then they talk about violence. And that's very, very important because you've got to
understand that. They try to put us in a trick bag.Oh, how you gonna do it? Humphrey gonna get up there and talk about violence, don't get
nobody nowhere, and he bombing the hell out of North Vietnam. Who he kill? Who he kill? Who
he kill? They talking about violence don't do us any good. In the time we reach 18, they put a
uniform on us and sent us out to Vietnam to kill people.
And they, oh, violence don't, what they're saying is that violence is okay against everybody
except the white man. And what really annoys me about these black people who after every
rebellion, not a riot, a rebellion, jumps up and says, oh, they shouldn't do that, they bad, they
this, they that, is that they're using them to condemn their own people and that's the only
power they have, the power to condemn black people. That's all.
They do not have the power to condemn white people because you never hear them speak out
about police brutality. You never hear them speak out about white landlords who've been
charging us high prices. They never talk about white merchants who charges high prices for
rotten meat.
They never talk about it, never talk about it. Half the time they living out in the suburbs and
they only know something going on when some brother moves to take care of natural business
and then they open their mouths because what they're saying is that it's okay, y'all shut and cut
each other, but don't touch that white man. That's what they talk because if they cared about
non-violence, if they cared about us, they would be preaching non-violence in the black
community because we need it desperately in the black community.
We need to love and respect each other. If they cared about non-violence, they would be
practicing it in Vietnam, but it's not a question of violence, it's a question of black people
moving for their liberation and every time we move, they try to stop us and they use so-called
leaders to stop us. So I just throw that junk out the window about violence.
The most violent man in the black community is a white cop. He has the license to kill and the
power to do it scot-free, so it's not a question of violence. The real question is who is controlling
the violence? That is the question.
If I shot 30 yellow men with slanted eyes, I would get a badge if I were in Vietnam. If I shot 30
white men who call me nigger in this country, I would get the electric chair. It's just a question
of power.
He who has power to make his acts legitimate and we don't have none and that's why we
where we at because if we had the power, we would make our acts legitimate and you've got to
understand that because that's what they're going to do as we move this summer. Have you
ever noticed them? They had that Fort Lauderdale thing with kids throwing bottles and bricks at
policemen, the headlines, college kids go on a spree. A brother throws a rock, negroes riot.
So that we ought to incorporate those concepts and I just say I'm not going to discuss violence.
It happens to be a way of life of man. The question is who uses it, who controls it? I'm going tofight to be able to control my violence to decide who I'm going to kill.
I'm not going to let nobody tell me who I should kill. It's very important because I'm not going
to Vietnam. I'm not going to Vietnam and shoot nobody because Lyndon Johnson told me to go
shoot him.
Vietnamese ain't never call me nigga. I know who I'm going to shoot. Now if we can accept
those four basic premises, self-condemnation, the difference between giving one one's
freedom and denying one one's liberation, the importance of definitions in the world today and
violence, we can then move into how they've been pragmatically applied to us as a people to
oppress and suppress us.
Now what white America's had to do like Nazi Germany is to lie about what she did. So what she
does is that everything that happens to black people she blames us because she can't blame
herself. Just like the Nazis blamed the Jews.
They said well they deserve to be killed. You know they were filthy and they were sloppy and
they were trying to take over our economy and you know so they and they had to believe those
lies because you got to believe them when you build them up. Now white America has told a lot
of lies about us and she's got to believe them because if she ever stops she'll commit suicide.
Now that doesn't bother me. What bothers me is that those lies have been so calculated that
some black people believe them and that's what we want to talk about. We want to be able to
clear the minds of black people who believe the lies that white America have told about us
about themselves.
The biggest lie that white America has told about us is that we are lazy. That's right and you
have some black people running around here. Oh we so lazy.
Oh we so lazy. If we were like white folk hard working we'd make it but not us. We lazy.
That's a lot of junk. White people lazy. Look here.
They so lazy they went to Africa to steal us to do their work for them. That's not a question of
being lazy. We are the hardest working people in this country.
Our sweat built this country scot-free. It's not a question of whether you're lazy or not. It is a
question of who has the power to control the resources in a given area.
That's what counts. If it were true then the real lazy people in this country be people like Bobby
Kennedy. He ain't never worked in his life.
So that we ought to get that out of our minds and understand that we are a hard working
people but what is wrong with that and what is closely associated to that is the other lie they
tell. If you work hard you will succeed. You know we believe that man.My mother used to tell me. We do man. My mother used to tell me go ahead and work hard
you'll make it.
You know my father believed that junk and he went ahead. That's a lot of junk man because if
that were true we would own this country lock stock and barrel. We would own it because we
are the hardest working people in this country.
Our mothers take care of two houses every single day. Ours and Miss Ann's. We are the
sharecroppers in Mississippi from kin to kin.
Can't see in the morning to can't see in the night. That's us. We are the porters and the elevator
men in the north.
We are the garbage men. We are the ditch diggers. We are the street cleaners.
We are the maids. It is us. We are the hardest working and the lowest paid people in this
country.
So it is not a question. It is not a question of who works hard. It's a question of who controls
because if that were true Bobby Kennedy would be the poorest man in this country.
So that you have to understand that in your mind because tied very closely with that is what
they finally said to us. Well if you want to make it you got to get an education. That was the
biggest trick bag we ever fell into.
So we really believe that man. We started sending our children to college and school and all
that boom boom boom. And if we had any sense we just stop and dig.
If I come out of college with a college diploma and a white boy come out with a high school
diploma he get a higher paid job from the jump. So that it's not a question of getting an
education but we got too many doctors and masters working in the post office around this
country. So that again is not the question but what is really insidious about that is that they
were telling us that junk so we could go to school so they could brain, I mean whitewash our
minds.
And now that's what we want to talk about because what Fanon says and France Fanon is a
black revolutionary philosopher and he's out of sight. Look at he's so deep that Camus and
Sartre can't even begin to figure out what he's talking about. Fanon says that an educational
system is nothing but the reinforcement of values and institutions of a given society period.
And they just keep putting it in your mind you never question you just accept it. Let me show
you what they've done to us. We sent our kids to school they give them these books Tom Dick
and Jane little readers you know.
Tom is white, Dick is white, Jane is white, even their dog Spot is white. And here we come and
we see ourselves on the back little black Sambo eating watermelon with torn overalls. So thatthe very projection of the education that we were getting was slanted against us to accept
white superiority without even questioning it.
That's what they've done to us. They have degraded us to the point where we accept white
superiority by definition and black inferiority by looking in the mirror. That's what they've done
to us.
And it works real real look they've not only done that they have distorted and lied about history.
Lied about history. They have cut our roots from Africa because they know that a people
without a history is like a tree without its roots.
And that we have been floating for 400 years it's time we got us a stable root and become a big
tree and spread out all over. The first university in the world was the University of Timbuktu in
Africa. But they never print that in their books because they would have to admit that black
people were way ahead of them.
What do you study in school? Greek? Rome? What do you know about Africa? They've cut it from
you. Hannibal was a black man from Carthage, Africa who crossed the Alps and beat up the
Romans to death. They never put Hannibal in the books and when they put him in the movies
they got a honky named Victor Mature playing the part.
And the reason they do that is because they don't want to instill any feeling of pride in black
people because their job is to dehumanize us to the level where we still remain productive. That
is the worst thing you can do to any human being. You should have killed them in the first
place.
You should have killed them in the first place. They tell you about Greece and Rome but they
never tell you about Hannibal, a black man who crossed the Alps and beat up their flourishing
white empire. But if you had any sense you would know that Hannibal was black.
Have you ever looked at these Italians with brown skins and dark eyes? Hannibal did that. If you
ever have an Italian cop come up in your face and say something to you tell him get out my face
I'm your daddy. But that's the way the education system was geared to make us feel like we're
nothing and they're doing it in this very day and age.
Make us feel like we're nothing. They tell you about Napoleon Bonaparte. Did they tell you a
little black man who was a slave from Haiti named Toussaint L'Overture beat him up and sent
him back to France crying like a baby? Did you know that? And that when he got back to France
his wife was pregnant for a pygmy.
We had him on both sides. But they don't do that because they must cut it out. But something
else they don't even recognize their racism.
They don't. You know what is wrong with white education? They do not recognize the existence
of anybody who is not white. Let me give you an example of that.You got to understand that. If I said to you that Dr. Kwame Nkrumah who's a brilliant black man
and a beautiful black leader don't believe that junk they're telling you about. He's out of sight if
the CIA would leave him alone.
But they got to get his cocoa so they got to mess with him. If I said to you that Dr. Nkrumah
discovered England in 1964 you'd laugh him a face. Well now that was the first time that black
man stepped foot on England.
And if we did not recognize the existence of non-black people that's when he would have
discovered it. But let me do it the other way. If I said to you Christopher Columbus discovered
America in 1492 you would say yeah that's right.
When he got here there were people already here. He didn't discover it. But what happened is
that the white people did not recognize the existence of red people.
So they said nothing happened until we came. Until we came. And white people don't even
understand that.
If you tell them Columbus didn't discover America they get upset. That's right. But that's the
truth.
You don't read about anything until white people discovered it. Nothing was happening until
some hunky came along and said I discovered you. Here was all of Africa not doing anything
until a white man named Cecil Rhodes came along name it Rhodesia stole our gold and our
diamonds.
And they said that it didn't happen until they came. That's because they always move with the
assumption that they're superior and they don't even recognize it. Another example.
The white man has felt that he's civilized and at his job to civilize everybody else. Because
everybody's a savage, dumb, stupid, ignorant, and he got no religion and all that junk you
know. And he's God's gift to humanity.
Yeah dig him. So that when they talk about Africa they talk about their famed blue-eyed blonde
here fair boy Rudyard Kipling who said to the whites go and pick up your skills and give it to
your half found friends half native half savage and half child and train them how to be good
human beings. Because we didn't know see we were in Africa we were savages that's what they
call us and you don't want to go along with Africa because you think Africa is savages.
You don't ever ask what a savage is or what he does because if you did you'd recognize who the
savages were. Yeah you wouldn't. A savage shoots, burns, kills, and takes what he wants.
Check the United States out in Vietnam and tell me something. Tell me something. So they
came to Africa because you know we weren't what's happening they're going to tell us what to
do.We were running around with our chest uncovered and our breasts were hanging around and
they said cover up yourself because I'm excited. Yeah we were we were so stupid we thought it
was for feeding the young. And so obviously the filth must have been in somebody else's mind
not ours but we didn't even know.
But leave that as it is the worst thing they could have done was to say to us that they were
going to Christianize us. Now notice they didn't say we were irreligious we had religions we had
different gods and they said that was not the right way but we were stupid and we had to get
the right way and the right way was one God Jesus Christ you know and that's who we were
supposed to listen to. And they brought the bibles man and they came into Africa with bibles
and we had land and when the hunkies left they got the land and we still got the bibles.
Yes sir they came in there and they told us to talk about Jesus and we kept our eyes up to the
sky looking and they robbed all the golden diamonds on the ground. So that if you really begin
to relook at history you'd understand that the white man has been whitewashing everybody in
the world and the fight today is for people to do their own thinking and recognize their own
culture and not say that white people are good because they are white. What they've done is to
force their culture on everybody around the world with their guns and their bombs their guns
and their bombs.
So that the type of education that we get in schools are geared to keep on looking up to the
white man as the great father and to leave us plundered. So it's all right when our kids you
know act the way they act we should understand that because they don't understand what's
happening. I mean the education system in this country is anti-black anti-black.
There are only two black people you can find in any history book in this country Booker T
Washington super tom and George Washington Carver ignorant super tom. They let us read
about George about Booker T Washington because they want us to be like him because he
used his mouth to do two things to eat and to say yes sir. And look George Washington Carver
was so stupid he invented the peanut and all the peanut butter factories today are owned by
white folk.
Oh he loved him so much he gave them the patent yeah. And the reason I guess they let us
read about him because if they didn't have them I guess white folk would be eating jelly
sandwiches all their lives. They do not have in the history books anything about Frederick
Douglass, Dr. W.E.B. Du Bois, County Cullen, J.A. Rogers, Lerone Bennett, Leroy Jones and the
history books today won't even mention brother Malcolm X. It is as if you did not exist.
The Denmark Bessies are not there. The Nat Turners are not there. They have wiped out a
whole race of fighters and given us nothing but a bunch of Uncle Toms who bow and scrape
and every time white folks say jump they how high boss man.
So that if you talk about moving for your true liberation you're talking about controlling your
school systems and giving your children education which make them know themselvesunderstand they're proud and be willing to do what anybody else is willing to do. But because
that education system is like that we accept whatever is told. We accept white people as god
and master and that nothing happens until they come along and that's why the civil rights
movement was the way it was because they were expecting the goodwill and sanction of white
folk to freedom and white folk oppressing them.
Ain't that a guess? Jim Clark is going to wake up one day and free you. Yeah now what all those
lies were meant to do was to make us ashamed of ourselves. It's very very important because
they've been able to succeed in doing that and today it's our job to change it.
They have made us ashamed of each other and ourselves so that what we do is we try to
imitate and be as white as we can physically and mentally. Since we haven't ever produced
anything and since white folk tell us they produced everything we try to be like them. And since
they tell us only thing beautiful is white because every time you pick up a magazine you look on
television beauty is somebody who's got a slender nose, thin lips, stringy hair, and white skin.
That's right. That's right and that's what beauty is. You read in your book about Dick.
You read all the books they give you to read the novels about Babbitt and Arrowsmith. All the
people are white looking beautiful and we don't have those features so we figure well if we
don't have these features we're ugly. But whenever we try to get a girl who's beautiful we find a
light bright and damn near white because we don't believe that we can be beautiful and we
must begin to get the strength today.
Yes to say that we are different as black is different from white. Our nose is broad. Our lips are
thick.
Our hair is nappy. We are black and beautiful too. That means that our women can throw away
their natinola jars.
That means our young brothers can stop getting their hair slicked down. I hope you're happy
because I tell it like it is to everybody and that means our women can stop wearing wigs and
getting their hair messed up. But we're so ashamed of our very features that we try to mess it
up.
I mean we really mess it up. Do you know chicks who wear naturals? Can go outside and the
wind and the rain can't do nothing to their hair? And do you know mines are so messed up that
our women pay $30 a week to mess up their hair so the wind and the rain can mess it up? And
that we just have to begin to grow that strength where we can say that and where we can feel it
so we stop imitating and begin to create for ourselves. Then very closely tied with that is the
concept of what we need to do in this country.
We must begin to build a concept of peoplehood. We have to see ourselves as a people. We can
no longer let them make us individuals.They do not oppress us because we're individuals. They oppress us because we are black. You
are a slave because you are black.
You live in a ghetto because you are black. You get a bad education because you are black. You
get a lousy job because you are black.
It's not because you are an individual who don't have a good education, who can't speak good
English and all that junk. It's by the time they see you coming, there goes that button. And they
never even ask you, you know, what you got going for you.
All they know is you are black. And because we're black, we're going to come together and use
the power that we have as a group of people to break out of this here oppression. That is the
most important thing we can do.
We must begin to see ourselves as a people. We must begin to see that when white people
oppress one of us because he's black, the next day it's going to be another one of us because
we are also black. We've got to understand that.
But because white society has made us ashamed of ourselves, we want to run from each other.
We walk down the streets and we will see a hunky cop hitting a black brother upside the head.
And we know the hunky hitting him because he's black.
And we're going to turn our heads and keep on going. We will see some landlord squeeze
blood out of a family across the street till they have nothing left to give and put them out on the
streets, put their furniture out on the streets because they're black. And we're going to go by
the end of daytime to see what we can steal at night.
We will watch each other beat up and not raise our voice because he is black. It's time to stop
that. It's time to stop that.
It's time to let them know that we are all black. And when they touch one, they got to touch all.
That is going to be our only salvation for survival in this country.
That's what they're beginning to recognize because the brothers are letting them know across
this country. Touch one baby and we're ready to go to war with all. We're not going to let you
decide how you're going to kill us off.
If you want to kill us off, then we're all going together. All going together. We're not going to let
you siphon off 30% in Vietnam and let your hunky cop shoot the other 30% of young brothers in
the ghettos.
That was yesterday. That was yesterday. You touch one, you got to touch all.
That's what we have to do. That will be our only salvation. That's the only deterrent so that the
white man will know that his days of free head whooping are over.You come into our neighborhoods, beat us up, and we stand behind the door and whisper, did
you hear what happened to Cousin John? Policemen beat him up last night. Shh. Yeah, all right.
Let them try it. That's over. Completely over.
Only as a group can we begin to move to take the power that we have. And then as long as
we're able to do that, they will be able to siphon off people. That's why they have Negro leaders
that they pick for they pick them.
Everybody out here hustling for themselves. Instead of recognizing we got to hustle as a group.
We always hustling and hustling off of each other.
We don't even have the guts to hustle off the hunkies. Don't even have the guts to hustle off the
hunkies. Hustling off of each other.
You on welfare, I'm on welfare, and you trying to hustle me out my little welfare check. Here
come the white man giving out the welfare checks and you won't even touch him and take him
for all he got. You're going to mess with me.
And the reason you do that is because you know they not going to do nothing to you if you
mess with me. But if you mess with him. So that means that we have to move to reverse that
trend and build a concept in our community where we will not even begin to talk about crimes.
The only crime we will talk about is crimes against black people. Period. Period.
We have to move to the position where we will not tolerate in our community crimes against
black people. And we have to understand the reason we must do that is because white people
will punish you for everything except that. Except that.
If you cut your husband on Friday night the judge let you out Monday morning $10 fine. We
know it. We know you rob a black person they ain't even gonna look for you.
You can call them you live in the ghetto and your house get robbed. You can call the cop till you
turn white. They ain't coming.
See and you shouldn't get caught up with questions about stealing because if black people steal
from white people white people can't say nothing about stealing. They can't say nothing about
stealing because their history has been nothing but a nation of thieves. A nation of thieves.
I laugh at them because they really think they own the world and everybody in it. All you gotta
do is check out examples. How can the white man judge the black man for stealing? The hunky
stole me.
He's guilty before he even talks about it. You ever see him in their courtrooms in the south? I
have to laugh. Man get me up there and if I say something he says I'll charge you for contempt
of court.Who's gonna charge you for contempt of justice? You don't know nothing about it. Look at a
clear example. We have a beautiful black brother named Muhammad Ali who is out of sight.
Now here sit white folk with their ingrained racism not even recognizes how dumb and stupid
they are. They're gonna sit up there and say well of course he won't go. We gonna take his title
away.
We gonna take it away like if they gave it to him. Ain't this a blip? They can't take his title away.
The brother got the title by getting in the ring and beating up every hunky and Uncle Tom they
put up against him.
If they want the title tell them to get in the ring with the brother and try and get it. But see they
wrap a grame on us that we don't even think about that we get arguing about should they take
the title. You don't argue with that because they can't do it and there is no argument.
See that's what white people do all the time. They bring you in an argument on some technical
garbage and you bother when they even got no right saying nothing about it in the first place.
See that's what you got to understand.
They get up and they talk about should I talk about black power. They ain't got nothing to say
about black power. I won't even talk to them about it.
Period. You know boom. I ain't got nothing to say about white power.
It's for them. You know so that that question isn't. I mean they're clearly a nation of thieves.
Their conception their birth of this country was thievery. They stole this country from the red
man. Committed genocide against them and they call it taming the west.
And they got the people living on reservations to this day talking about it's good for them. They
decided for everybody in the world what's good for everybody else. They tell in a country you're
not ready for democracy yet.
We'll keep you in slavery another five years. Who are they? Who do they think they are? They
don't own the world and when somebody challenges them they talk about dissent. Dissent.
Ain't nobody dissenting with them. People talking about their liberation. They better get hip.
Ain't nobody dissenting with them. I'm not even dissenting with Lyndon Johnson. As far as I'm
concerned he's a buffoon.
He ain't got nothing to say to me. Nothing to say to me. I'm not dissenting with him.
There is no dissent in this country when it comes to black and white. Black people are talking
about survival. That's not dissenting.
That's not dissenting because when they talk about drafting 30% of our brothers to go toVietnam they're talking about black urban removal. That ain't no dissent. That's survival.
Survival. Survival. Survival.
But they introduced that question. Everybody's caught about whether or not you should or you
should not dissent. That's not the issue.
It's an issue of survival. White people cannot any longer define the terms under which they
would enter the battlefield. The people who they're fighting will define the terms under which
they will enter the battlefield.
That's very important because once you do that you got a man whooped. That's why they can't
win in Vietnam. Never will because the Vietnamese decide when to fight.
The trouble with black people is that we never define our terms. We always undefine it. If you
want to win your liberation go to school.
Okay. Send all our children to school. If you want to get freedom be non-violent.
Okay. Thank you. If you want to get freedom go through the courts.
Okay. And all the things they've been telling us we have been accepting without questioning.
We will decide in this day how we will get our liberation.
We will decide. You've got to understand those concepts because they're very very important.
Because what I'm saying is that the white man even deciding the arena in which I fight.
That's why they can't even begin to understand SNCC. Because they cannot any longer decide
for us the arena in which we fight. So don't even let them define for you how you fight because
that's what they do for the world.
Can you see them sitting up in the United Nations deciding whether or not South Africa should
be free? Like if they own the world they're sitting up there deciding and they vote that they
can't vote on it so South Africa should remain free. The blacks in South Africa should pick up
guns and shoot the hell out of every honky in there. That's how you do it.
But if you say that you're violent. You're violent. But did they ever tell you about when England
was oppressing them? They picked up guns and shoot England to death.
Didn't say a word about it. Didn't say a word about it. When they wanted democracy they
decided it was time for them to get democracy.
When everybody else wants democracy they decide when to give it to them. And you debate in
a question about a man can never debate the question of his liberation. Either he is free or he's
not free.
Either he dies fighting for his freedom and gets it or he listens to his oppressor and he stayswhere he is. One quote from a great black man who they don't teach you about, Frederick
Douglass. He said if a slave wants to remain a slave he should obey the laws of his master.
That's deep. That's deep. Because if we want to get free we got to stop listening to the honkies
and listen to each other.
Now then finally we want to talk about fighting back and about the other issues they raise. Now
whenever you talk about fighting back in this country the first thing the honky gonna talk about
is law and order. And everybody gonna get upset again and start discussing law and order.
You ain't discussing justice you're discussing law and order. The white man put you in a trick
bag again. Again.
This country has law and order. It does not have justice. It does not have justice.
It is not a question of law and order. It is a question of justice versus injustice. That is all.
Hitler had the most efficient system of law and order in 1941. He did not know how to spell
justice unfortunately. Jim Clark has efficient law and order.
George Wallace knows law and order. Ross Barnett and big-headed honky Maddox knows
about law and order. Now they know about it.
So when somebody moves to get some justice they say you're disrupting law and order and
everybody starts talking about law and order. But now as religious people we should have read
the bible. And if we read the bible we would believe it.
Of course Jesus Christ answered that question a long time ago. He said I have come to bring
the sword not the shield. I have come to turn son against father.
Daughter against mother. Nation against nation. For where there is injustice there shall be no
peace.
So when they raise the questions of law and order we're not even concerned. We're gonna tell
them baby if you ain't got justice in your country we're gonna burn it down to the ground. To
the ground.
Ain't no ifs ands or buts. You can't have law and order unless you got justice. And that's what
people are saying across this country today.
And you arguing about law and order. Later for law and order people talking about justice.
That's the fight.
See he ain't coming in on that argument because he know he wrong from the jump. He not
even gonna talk about that so he gonna get you confused about law and order. And you well
yes you're right we should have law and order.Yeah it's true you control all the law and order in the country and that's why we should listen to
law and order. Don't forget brother Douglas. He who will be a slave listens to his master.
He who wants his liberation strikes his own blow speaks his own peace. Remember that. It's
very very important.
Finally. And that just leads to the final statement about fighting back. Ain't no need for anybody
to get upset about fighting back anymore because it's already established.
If a hunky lays his hand on one of us before God get the news he's dead. And don't let them
pick your heroes. You let your heroes be the brothers and sisters in Nashville Tennessee who
fought back.
You let them be the brothers in Texas Southern who fought back. Who fought back. That's
right.
We've got to pick our heroes because they pick heroes for us and we listen to them and we'll be
where we've been for the last 400 years. We must pick our heroes and don't let them tell you
about those brothers acting like savages shooting back. Baby for 400 years we've been the
recipients of violence in this country.
In this country. For 400 years we've been spat upon lynched burned shoot beat up and didn't
anybody do anything about it? Didn't anybody say anything about it? And when some brothers
move to take care of it then other people are going to jump up and say you can't do that.
There's another way.
They haven't found another way in 400 years. They control the country. They control us.
Why can't they find another way? They're incapable of finding another way because they are
trapped by their own racism. Now you've got to understand that. They are trapped by their own
racism because when the question is white and black they got to side with whites.
Faulkner told you that. Got to do it. They have to do it because white people can be
intellectually committed to theories of equality but emotionally they are racist.
They have to be if they lived in this country. We all have to be racist if we live in this country
because that's the way the country is. It is imbued with racism not only nationally but
internationally and that's why internationally it becomes so important for us to recognize.
You watch and see. They drop bombs on who? Hiroshima, Hagasaki. Who do they napalm?
Vietnam.
Who do they start all the fights with? The colored world. The colored world. What have they
been doing and who do they use as the cannon fodder to fight their wars? Black people.
We are being used to fight each other. If you got a question, we got a question answer period.You can get it then.
You know I'll take care of you in the question answer period. So that's what we have to
understand. We cannot be fighting other black people and non-white people around the world
because they are being oppressed by the same people who are oppressing us.
You cannot send your son to Vietnam to shoot those cats. They ain't done nothing to you. They
ain't done nothing to you.
And don't let them raise an irrelevant issue about communist aggression. It's like law and
order. Tell them you want to talk about racist aggression.
That's what we want to talk about. Let us see if they can come in on that issue. They're not
going to come in because they're wrong from the jump.
So they're going to talk about communist aggression. Now what do you know about
communism? You don't even know what a communist is. If one was sitting next to you, you
don't know it until somebody come along and say, my fellow Americans, he is a communist.
Shoot him. Then you say, wow, he said he's a communist because he's a white man. He said, he
must be right.
Wouldn't it be funny if you got up and found out the man wasn't really a communist? That
maybe he was just fighting to control the resources of his country, just like we fight to control
the resources of our communities. Did it ever dawn on you that you were bombing houses and
churches and schools and we need schools and houses right in this country? We need to be
building them. That 70% of the tax money is made to build guns and bombs to continue to
bomb and kill people.
And we need 70% of the economy to be building schools and houses and getting decent jobs in
this country. Until you wake up and question that yours will not be the reason why yours will be
to do and die. So then in conclusion, I think that we ought to make it clear, crystal clear that for
all my many black brothers and sisters who feel that somehow they will be immune to the
summer, let me tell you that when one simple slick haired black boy throws a Molotov cocktail,
the whole black community is in trouble.
And you better understand that because in every area in this country where there have been a
rebellion, once it starts, they lock off the entire black community. The entire black community.
So you know we all look alike and they can't tell a rioter from anybody else.
So that you have no choice. So we better start coming together and prepare for our survival in
this country. And then just, I can speak to the older generation about our generation.
Now we sat and watched them make our great grandparents run. We sat and watched them
make our grandparents run. We sat and watched them make our parents run.And we are out of breath. We are not running.