- 6 months ago
A 1967 NBC News Special Report on the rise of the black power movement and its impact on the civil rights movement and the United States overall.
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00:00Once, this was the sight and the sound of the Negro protest movement.
00:21Today, you no longer hear this song of promise.
00:25What you hear is a cry of anger and bitterness.
00:30The Jews got power!
00:45The Jews have power!
00:47I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up, live out the true meaning of its
01:11dream. We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal. I have a dream.
01:23I have a dream. I have a dream.
01:29Four years have now passed since Dr. King stood on these steps and spoke those words.
01:34Yet it all seems so long ago and in some ways so unreal. What happened to the dream?
01:39It ended as all dreams must end when it confronted reality. Perhaps the nation was living in a dream
01:46world. During those years from the Supreme Court school desegregation decision in 1954 to the Civil
01:54Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, it was out of touch with reality to the extent
02:02that it believed that court decisions and the mere passage of laws would give Negroes true and
02:07meaningful equality with all deliberate speed. For when the court decisions had been handed
02:12down and the laws had been passed and Negroes were guaranteed those rights promised all Americans
02:18by the Constitution, they were merely brought to the starting line of the race. But when
02:24they took their places at the starting line and then lifted up their heads, they found that
02:28most of their white countrymen were already 80 yards down the track.
02:33But the race had to be run. In the South, where in many rural counties, Negroes outnumber the whites,
02:47the emphasis was on voter registration. In registration was power. The Negroes knew it and so did the whites.
02:54And soon the pattern of politics in the South was changed by the very fact that the Negro vote could no longer be ignored.
03:00It had become an important factor in Southern politics.
03:07It will bear true faith and allegiance to the same, so help me God.
03:25But if there was progress in the South, there was violent resistance in the North.
03:37The nation suddenly learned what it should have known, that racial prejudice was not just a Southern problem.
03:43It was nationwide. If whites in the North formally could comfort themselves by pointing an accusing finger at the South,
03:50they could do so no longer. School segregation by neighborhood, violence against Negroes moving into all white communities.
03:58These were facts, real and immediate. And resistance to Negro demands was every bit as determined in Cicero as it had been in Birmingham.
04:07White backlash produced frustration and confusion. This turned in time to disappointment, bitterness and anger.
04:16And this produced counter-reactions expressed in the call for black power.
04:22As a radical movement, it became linked to opposition to the war in Vietnam. Its most articulate spokesman, Stokely Carmichael.
04:31The first man in this country to die for the war of independence was a black man named Crispus Adder.
04:46A black man, as I actually was.
04:53He was a fool. He was a fool. He got out there and got shot for white folks while his brothers were enslaved all over this country.
05:10He should have been getting his brothers together to take care of natural business.
05:14After the American Revolution was over and the white folk got their independence,
05:27they tapped the black people who fought on the head and gave them a medal and said,
05:32Good work, nigger. Now get back to where you belong.
05:35So along came the Civil War. And the great emancipator Abraham Lincoln wouldn't even let us fight in the Civil War
05:41because he said we weren't fitting to fight. Frederick Douglass had to go and tell Lincoln to let us fight.
05:47And they only started to let us fight when the South was winning in segregated units and we fought in the back.
05:54We weren't satisfied. Weren't satisfied, no. Along came World War I.
06:00And they started to draft people. And they weren't drafting us.
06:03So our organization spoke up, draft us. We want to fight. We're good Americans, yes.
06:10The slogan was, we're going to make the world safe for democracy.
06:14And while grandfathers and our fathers lined up to make the world safe for democracy,
06:20and we didn't even know how to spell the words.
06:22And along came World War II. And our uncles went to Poland to fight in Poland.
06:28Died trying to stop Hitler from killing white Polish people.
06:32And last summer, when we walked into Cicero, young Polish punks going to throw rocks at us and call us niggers.
06:40Call us niggers.
06:42We weren't satisfied, no sir. We're going to prove what good Americans we were.
06:51So the Korean War came along and communism must be stopped at any price.
06:56And it was our blood that paid that price.
06:59And our uncles and brothers came back with one leg and one arm to walk into a store and have some foreigners slam the door in his face and say,
07:07nigger, get out of my store.
07:09Yes, sir. In the Vietnam War, America is going to prove something to us.
07:14Because we ain't fighting.
07:23There is no need for us to go and bomb schools in Vietnam.
07:28We need to build schools in our ghettos.
07:31That's where we're going to be working.
07:33That's where we're going to be working.
07:35There is no need for us to go anywhere and fight for democracy.
07:45We're working for our liberation.
07:46And it's going to be in this country.
07:48It's going to be in this country.
07:50In Atlanta, where Carmichael's organization has its headquarters, a warning to Negro extremists from the editor of the Atlanta Constitution, Eugene Patterson, Pulitzer Prize winner and vice chairman of the Civil Rights Commission.
08:18Mr. Patterson, in the columns you've been writing lately in the Atlanta Constitution, you seem to be warning the Negroes to not fall in the trap that Southern whites fell into, which is mainly violence.
08:35What's motivated you?
08:37I've been a little worried about the manifestations of black power, which indicate that staying within the democratic process is becoming less attractive to them.
08:47I experienced this in the white South, where the difficulty of ending segregation led many whites outside the democratic process and into violence.
09:02I think this led to their self-defeat.
09:04I think it always will in this country.
09:06Several years ago, you wrote a memorable editorial after the bombing of the Birmingham church in which four little girls were killed, and they found the shoe of one little girl, and the editorial was called, We Hold This Shoe.
09:21The name that all of us who don't condemn violence in a way contributed to that.
09:28Is it possible that you might be writing one day the same kind of an editorial about Negroes who commit violence?
09:36Well, I would hope that the Negro in America would also remember those days, because the democratic process, the institutions of this country, I think, have been sufficient to give a start toward a better break in life for the American Negro, and I'm convinced will bring him full equality and justice, ultimately.
09:56I recognize his reasons for being impatient.
09:59I'm not against impatience.
10:01I'm not against protest.
10:02I'm not against any group in America, and certainly the Negro who has so far to come.
10:08I'm not against this man demanding his rights and working toward them and bringing pressures to bear for them.
10:13What I'm saying is that when you carry any group of Americans across the boundary that separates the democratic process from the jungle, when you threaten to burn a city or to shoot a man, when you threaten violence, either by implication or outright, then I think you're contributing to the defeat of whatever cause, whatever cause, moral or immoral,
10:37it is that you are attempting to champion.
10:41I've heard so many definitions of black power in this country, but I'm not sure really what it is.
10:46I think black power is probably pretty much what Dr. King was preaching five years ago, which is political unity.
10:54Get the vote. Use the vote to gain your rights. Develop pride in self. Develop a sense of history. Develop a willingness to solve your own problems.
11:06And stop leaning so much on the white man. But I think also that you have to stay within certain bounds. That you have to realize that there is a point of diminishing return in most affairs in life.
11:19And this includes protest movements. And so in the time of hard work that lies ahead, I would like very much to see more of a dialogue within the Negro community itself on this issue of violence and nonviolence, racism and brotherhood.
11:35We are still too divided by race in this country. And I think every step we take to fragment it and divide it further is a step toward folly for the American people and the American institution.
11:47And I think every step we take toward integration, toward brotherhood, toward working together, toward absorbing the 20 million Negroes right into the great melting pot of this nation.
11:57Then I think we're on the road toward the light.
12:03But now some white youth are hung up with democracy because they're deluded and they think there really is such a thing as democracy in this country.
12:09And so they begin to stop the war on questions of morality. That it ain't right to kill. Now that's a lot of junk.
12:15It's not either right or wrong to kill. Killing is. The question is, who has the power to kill? That's all.
12:23A policeman in a black community is a licensed killer. A licensed killer. A black man attacking a policeman is a rioter.
12:32Yeah. That's because the black man don't have the license to kill.
12:40But when I die, I'm going to die with my boots on. And it's going to be in this country.
12:44It's going to be fighting for what I know is right. The liberation of black people. Nothing else. Nothing else.
12:50And what we're going to say across this country, from Muhammad Ali to the little black boy in Cardoza High School,
12:58Hell no. We won't go.
13:01Hell no. We won't go.
13:09We won't go. Hell no. We won't go. Hell no. We won't go. Hell no. We won't go.
13:19Stokely Carmichael's voice is the most strident. But there are other voices of black power. And in a minute, we shall hear some of them.
13:33This is where it began. The rural South. And here where it began, for the Negro, the problem remains. There's no ghetto here, just poverty.
13:44The worst kind of poverty. The kind of poverty that you won't find in even the most depressing ghettos of the North.
13:51The kind of poverty that makes you wonder, can this be the United States of America, the richest country in the world, in the year 1967?
13:59It is not just material poverty. There is also a poverty of the spirit. But it is changing. There is a quiet Negro revolution going on in states like Mississippi.
14:11In hundreds of hamlets. Places that southerners call wide places on the road. Where you can see it, you can feel it, and you can hear it.
14:21The revolution is quiet. It is also armed. Churches have been bombed and burned too often.
14:33It is also armed. You can hear it, and you can hear it, and you can hear it.
14:38Thank you very much. We don't believe in black power. That's the wrong word. That's a dirty word.
14:47But we believe, and it just happened that we have what? We just happened to accidentally have population power.
14:56And we're here because we're concerned about getting a sheriff that's going to be fair and square with all of the citizens.
15:02Charles Evers is the NAACP field director in Mississippi. The man who had the job before him was his brother, Medgar, killed in an ambush in the summer of 1963.
15:14We are here to serve notice on all of those who have been so brutal to us in the past. That your day is gone.
15:24Because here in Jefferson County, we outnumber you any way you come.
15:29We got you outnumbered physically, we got you outnumbered mentally, we got you outnumbered economically, and about to outnumber you politically.
15:37We've got to vote right, walk right, and talk right, and let America know that we're not going to let nobody turn us around.
15:45Turn us around.
15:49To start off with, let them know that we're going to take down that old confederate statue we got standing down.
15:55We're going to put a statue of a man who lived and died for all Americans.
16:03Somebody like maybe George Washington, or maybe Medgar Evers, or somebody who died that all men may be free.
16:20Evers does not call for black power. Instead he uses the power of blacks.
16:26In five counties of southwest Mississippi, where blacks outnumber whites.
16:31In Fayette, in Jefferson County, where Evers lives, he's built a shopping center, modest by white standards, but significant as a symbol of the growing Negro economic and political power in Mississippi.
16:44White politicians, aware of this growing power, openly seek Negro support in the August Democratic primary, in which Negro candidates are also running.
16:52Along with political power, the Negroes possess economic power, which can be dispensed or withheld.
16:59Evers is leading a boycott in nearby Natchez in an effort to get white merchants to hire more Negroes, and the city to grant greater Negro representation on the police force, the fire department, and the school board.
17:11The current boycott is already having its effect.
17:15Negro housing in some parts of Mississippi is unbelievably squalid, but even this is slowly changing.
17:21Credit, a commodity always difficult for Negroes to obtain, suddenly has become easier to come by.
17:28The Farmers Home Administration, an agency of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, is granting low-interest, long-term loans, which are being used by Negroes to build decent homes.
17:38But the building is not just a matter of new homes, it's also a process of developing the Negroes' abilities.
17:45The steaming jungle of French Equatorial Africa welcomed a young German doctor and his wife.
17:51The year was 1913, and the pair had come to minister to the natives who had never known any other medical treatment that was given by the local witch doctors.
18:01As part of the effort of self-improvement, Negroes are taking advantage of literacy programs.
18:09This one conducted by Star, a private, non-profit organization operating in Mississippi with funds from the Federal Poverty Program and encouraged by Charles Evers.
18:19All right, let's pause for a minute now. That is strife. Let's go again. Read again. His label.
18:26His label of love in the jungle was made doubtly hard by the outbreak of war and strife both in Europe and Africa.
18:39At the site of the old slave block in Natchez, on the Mississippi, where Negroes once were bought and sold, Charles Evers talked about the New South, which his power is creating.
18:51We're now working strongly on our areas, on politics, getting them registered, getting them qualified, having voter education, voter registration, and the importance of the vote and what it can do.
19:05And this already has changed the gubernatorial old patterns, where they used to be nigger, nigger, nigger, now they're talking about better highways and better education and more industries.
19:18So you see, this is, the politicians, Mississippi politicians are funny. They look at two things, the ballot and the dollar. And in this area, we control both.
19:28Yeah, but you still go around with a gun. How much has really changed in Mississippi if you still go around with a gun in your car?
19:36Well, I don't get the impression that it's changed that much. Sure, I have a gun. I have two guns. I have a rifle and a .38. And it's all for my protection.
19:47And I still feel I'm going to get it sooner or later anyway. But we had to stay on and continue to fight for the thing that we know is right.
19:55Because in every great movement, men have had to give their lives and families have had to suffer.
20:01I'm going to live as long as I possibly can. And when I can't live any longer, then I'm going on in.
20:07How do you feel about the situation with the war in Vietnam and some Negro leaders urging Negroes in Mississippi not to register,
20:17saying if you haven't got democracy in Mississippi, why should you go fight for it in Vietnam?
20:22Well, I take a different stand, I guess, on that, too. I'm against the war in Vietnam. There's no question about it. I think all of us are.
20:29But I take another position that America doesn't belong to the white. It belongs to all of us.
20:36And if America is in Vietnam wrong, then we all are wrong. I feel that we all should defend our country, not the white man's country. It's our country.
20:45And anyone who takes the position that it's a white man's country, then he's been misled.
20:49I feel that we should go and fight for America in Vietnam. And we certainly should just come back and fight for it here.
20:56Now, you've probably read what I've said, and I mean this, that I'm going to personally ask Negroes in Mississippi not to go to the Army.
21:04It becomes June 1st. But it's not to defend our country in Vietnam, but it's because we have 90 selected service boards in Mississippi.
21:13And there's not a single Negro on one of them. So what we're saying is, unless Negroes are on the selected service board in Mississippi,
21:20we don't feel that it's fair for a little white board to send Negroes off to the Army.
21:24What do you mean when you use the word black power?
21:27If black power means what I have been told, it means that we're going to take over and mistreat the whites and abuse the whites as they have done us,
21:35then we are going to be just as guilty as the white man has been.
21:39Did you feel this way before your brother was killed?
21:42I'll admit that once upon a time that he and I both admired, and I still admire Kenyatta.
21:48I'll admit that once upon a time he and I had planned to do the same type of thing that Kenyatta had done.
21:54Maybe you know his son, his oldest son is named Darryl Kenyatta. But we found out that that wasn't the way, and it wouldn't do.
22:03And that we couldn't win by taking an eye for an eye and a two for a two.
22:08What do you mean, Mau Mau in Mississippi?
22:11We had once thought about that, but as boys youngsters, because we've been mistreated so badly.
22:17And if they, we found that this wasn't the way, because even Kenyatta himself was defeated.
22:23And the reason why the whites are losing, because they're wrong, and they can't survive this.
22:28So we're going to do unto others that we'll have them do unto us.
22:32We're not going to have anyone who's going to do the white people wrong either.
22:36This is what's been wrong all the time. Them dirty rascals have treated us wrong, and now we're not going to get them to treat them wrong.
22:43Because if we do right, it's going to hurt them bad enough. Oh yeah, it's going to hurt them bad enough.
22:48Because they can't stand to do what's right.
22:51Now maybe some of you don't understand why it's so important and why we run some injustice pieces.
22:54Those are the rascals who have done us so bad.
22:57And we've got to eliminate, see we're going to build a foundation that you can't shake.
23:02So at this time, let's bring to, for the first time in history, that we know of, a woman, and most of all, a Negro woman,
23:09who's running for Justice of Peace in District 2, Mr. Lee. Come on up, Mr. Lee. Give her a hand. Give her a hand.
23:18We're going to be right by our side, too, when they come in there.
23:25To Mr. Evans, our great leader, to our president, Mr. Allen, to the full-pitched guests,
23:35officers of the board, and all who goes to make up this group,
23:39it is indeed a pleasure for me to stand before you tonight to run as a candidate for Justice of the Peace in District 2.
23:48I will give justice to one and all, regardless to the race, the creed of the color.
23:56So let us stand together, and let us vote for one another, because this is the first time in life that we have had this opportunity.
24:06So since we have this opportunity, let us make the best of it. So I thank you.
24:12We're going to do what the spirits can do. We're going to do what the spirits can do.
24:28We're going to do what the spirits can do. We're going to do what the spirits can do. We're going to tell that the spirits can come out.
24:43Oh, yeah.
24:45Oh, yeah.
24:47Oh, yeah.
24:49Oh, yeah.
24:51Oh, God, we're gonna tell you that the spirit is taking.
24:55We're gonna do a test to tell us we do.
24:59We're gonna do a test to tell us we do.
25:03Oh, yeah.
25:05We're gonna do a test to tell us we do.
25:09In Atlanta, where he was raised as a minister's son,
25:37Dr. Martin Luther King seeks to pursue his dream of Negro equality through nonviolence.
25:46His leadership has been challenged, and so has his dream.
25:50The black man in America is saying in substance that either you solve this problem and make
25:57freedom a reality, or you annihilate us.
25:59This is the choice that America has, either exterminate us or make it right for us to
26:06live, and that it boils down to just that.
26:09And I don't think that America has degenerated to the point that it will seek to exterminate
26:15the Negro.
26:16So I think quite America is going to eventually adjust to living creatively and brotherly with
26:25the Negro.
26:26But I do think that we will have to work a long time to get even the English language
26:35to the point of really recognizing the Negro or the black man as a man, because everything
26:45black in our language is considered low and worthless and inferior and degrading.
26:52If one would come through Roger's thesaurus, there you would see 125 synonyms for black, and they
27:00are all negative and low and degrading.
27:03And 118 synonyms for white, and they are all high and pure and chaste and everything else
27:09that you would consider high, noble, and good.
27:14But in spite of this, I think that a strong, vigorous, determined movement can force the
27:22whole society to begin the process of accepting the Negro as a fellow human being, a person,
27:30and as a man.
27:31Is this not black power you're talking about?
27:34I guess that is, in the sense that it is a psychological call for manhood.
27:41Now, I've made it clear that I believe in the concept of black power if it means that,
27:49a psychological call for manhood when the Negro is not ashamed of his heritage, he's proud
27:55of it, and where he is not ashamed of being black, he comes to see that there's nothing
28:03wrong with being black, and black is as beautiful as any other color.
28:07And if it means an amassing of political and economic power to achieve our legitimate goals,
28:13I can go for it altogether.
28:15Unfortunately, the slogan black power has some negative connotations, and those I can't go
28:22with, certainly I can't believe in black separatism, and often this is one of the connotations,
28:29and I can't go along with violence, and unfortunately some who have used violence and engaged in riots
28:38have shouted black power in the process.
28:40A riot ends up creating minimal problems for the Negro community than it solves, than for
28:47the larger community.
28:49And certainly you can't establish brotherhood through violence because it only intensifies
28:54the fears of the white community while relieving the guilt.
28:57You can, through violence, burn down a building, but you can't establish justice.
29:02You can murder a murderer, but you can't murder murder through violence.
29:05You can murder a hater, but you can't murder hate.
29:08And what we are trying to get rid of is hate and injustice and all of these other things
29:14that continue the long night of man's inhumanity to man.
29:19But I find that even the other groups that are preaching violence are willing to go along
29:23with nonviolence if they feel that something is being gained through nonviolence.
29:32And this is why I say that the power structure often aids and abets a few forces that are preaching violence,
29:41because the only time they will make concessions in many instances is when Negroes riot.
29:47And then they make a few token concessions and give the Negroes impression that the only way you can get anything
29:53in the northern community is start burning the town down.
29:57What is it about the Negro?
29:59I mean, every other group that came as an immigrant somehow, not easily, but somehow got around it.
30:06Is it just the fact that Negroes are black?
30:09The fact is that the Negro was a slave in this country for 244 years.
30:15That act, that was a willful thing that was done.
30:21The Negro was brought here and changed, treated in very human fashion.
30:26And this led to the thingification of the Negro.
30:30So he was not looked upon as a person.
30:33He was not looked upon as a human being with the same status and worth as other human beings.
30:40And it seems to me that white America must see that no other ethnic group has been a slave on American soil.
30:50That is one thing that other immigrant groups have had to face.
30:54And so emancipation for the Negro was really freedom to hunger.
30:58It was freedom to the winds and rains of heaven.
31:01It was freedom without food to eat or land to cultivate.
31:04And therefore, it was freedom in famine at the same time.
31:07And when white Americans tell the Negro to lift himself by his own bootstraps, they don't look over the legacy of slavery and segregation.
31:17I believe we ought to do all we can and seek to lift ourselves by our own bootstraps.
31:22But it's a cruel jest to say to a bootless man that he ought to lift himself by his own bootstraps.
31:29So that I must say that white America must assume the major responsibility for the Negro's dilemma today.
31:39The Negro's dilemma grows out of white America's dilemma.
31:43We've got to recognize that the black man is the key figure in America now.
31:48You either deal with this problem in America or America can bring down the curtains of disaster and doom on its own civilization.
31:58When you stood on that August day in 1963 on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, and you said you had a dream,
32:06did that dream envision so soon a war in Asia, preventing the society doing for the Negroes, that which you think had to be done?
32:16No, I didn't envision that then. I must confess that that period was a great period of hope for me.
32:23And I'm sure for many others all across the nation.
32:28But I must confess that that dream that I had that day has at many points turned into a nightmare.
32:36And I think the realistic fact is that we still have a long, long way to go and that we are involved in a war on Asian soil,
32:48which if not checked and stopped and poisoned the very soul of our nation.
32:53When a nation becomes obsessed with the guns of war, it loses its social perspective and programs of social uplift suffer.
33:06This is just a fact of history so that we do face many more difficulties as a result of the war.
33:15It's much more difficult to really arouse a conscience during a time of war.
33:20Dr. King, do you find it somewhat surprising that so many people should be shocked that a Nobel laureate like yourself has come out against the war in Vietnam?
33:31Well, I find it very paradoxical in a sense that people would praise me so strongly and applaud me so vigorously when I say be nonviolent,
33:48where Boal Khan is concerned when I urge Negroes to be nonviolent toward Jim Clark,
33:53and yet condemn me so vigorously when I say that our doses of violence in Vietnam, where little children are suffering, where villages and huts are being burned down,
34:07are certainly injurious and destructive of many of our values.
34:11So there's no alternative for me on the basis of conscience.
34:17I must stand up against this war.
34:20And just as I'm against segregated lunch counters and segregated public facilities in the House,
34:27I mean in the South, I'm against segregating my moral concern.
34:32And I'm not going to limit my moral concern to civil rights for Negroes in the United States when I have a humanitarian concern.
34:42Without doubting Dr. King's motives, a Negro leader like the executive director of the NAACP, Roy Wilkins,
34:49questions the tactics of mixing Negro equality with opposition to the war.
34:54All I can say is that in the tactics and strategy of the civil rights movement, which is here and now, not in 1970 or 71,
35:05all such devotions to another ideal inevitably detract from the main show.
35:14The main show for us is right here, civil rights.
35:17It must be remembered in this connection, gentlemen, that the problems that we seek to attack here
35:23will not wait for the end of the Vietnam War.
35:26They didn't wait for the end of World War II.
35:28They didn't wait for the end of World War I.
35:31If you're going to fight for civil rights, you have to fight it year round, year in and year out,
35:37no matter what the overriding issue is.
35:39We fought it with President Wilson in World War I.
35:43We fought it in World War II with President Roosevelt.
35:47We didn't back up on civil rights.
35:49We don't see any reason for downgrading civil rights and elevating the peace movement above it,
35:54especially the indignities our people are suffering.
35:58When Roy Wilkins talks about the indignities Negroes are suffering, he is talking about conditions in cities like Baltimore,
36:21where today 40% of the population is black.
36:24It has a problem, as all major cities in the United States have this problem.
36:28Today, few whites dare enter the ghetto.
36:43Most of them are aware of the black ghetto as a place to be avoided, as a place where there is likely to be trouble.
36:50Negroes insist that there will be trouble in the ghetto, so long as they have inadequate housing, poor schools, high unemployment, and no money.
37:00All right, yeah, I am, what you want.
37:07Great, 30 cents a pound.
37:09Yeah, is that enough?
37:11Yeah.
37:12Give me some money.
37:14You ain't got no money today.
37:17Hey, look, look, girl, I don't want no foolishness out of you.
37:22All right, just give me your number.
37:24I got it in here.
37:26There are about 20 million Negroes in the United States.
37:32Most of them live like this.
37:35I can get it in here.
37:36No, no.
37:37No, no.
37:38No, no, no.
37:39No, no.
37:40Yes.
37:41No, no, no.
37:42No, no, no.
37:44No, no, no.
37:45No, no, no, no.
37:46No, no, no.
37:47No, no, no.
37:49No, no, no.
37:51No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.
37:53No, no, no, no, no, no.
37:58Corp, the Congress of Racial Equality, picked Baltimore in 1966 as a target city, at a time when everyone
38:04said it was ready to explode. When CORE came in, most whites feared that the black power
38:09advocated by CORE meant violence. It has not. In Baltimore, black power has not been a call
38:15to violence. It has been a program of constructive action, economic and political, like ghetto
38:21candidates running for the first time in local elections. It all points to the most crucial
38:27area, and that is that behind each one of those areas where you see a number is the
38:33part of political action. And that's where we begin to develop the kind of black political
38:37power we're talking about. Many people ask, what is CORE doing? Well, I want them to point
38:46a finger at- CORE also has pressed for job equality in Baltimore's major industries. Only when
38:52we grasp this weapon of black power, only when we grasp this weapon firmly in our hands can
38:59we begin to go forth to the battle.
39:06One of CORE's major concerns has been young Negro dropouts, many of them with police records.
39:12A program to train them as gas station attendants is carried on with a grant from the Department
39:17of Labor and the cooperation of several large oil companies.
39:21Each load inside the distributor at the proper time.
39:30Despite the success in Baltimore, Floyd McKissick, CORE's national director, admits that his organization,
39:36like other militant civil rights organizations, is in deep financial trouble. Today, CORE's program
39:42in Baltimore is threatened by a lack of fun. Black power, plus his opposition to the war
39:47in Vietnam, scares away white support. But McKissick still sees black power as the only way out.
39:54Black power is really what we are carrying out here in Baltimore. Unfortunately, black power
40:02is a program. It is a philosophy and a program. And a program is really to rebuild a man in
40:10a philosophy. Build him to learn to love and respect himself and not hate himself because
40:16he's not white. And I'm saying that we must be exactly who we are, be proud of who we are,
40:22be proud that my hair is like it is and your hair is like it is too. But you respect me because
40:29I am a black man. And because we have contributed to the goods and the services in this society,
40:35and we have given our labor to make this society what it is.
40:40What are the manifestations of black power within your project, Target City, like the
40:46gas station, for example? Is that a manifestation of black power?
40:50Yes. And this is what a lot of people don't understand. When we talk about economic power,
40:57here we mean the organizing of the people into compact units. Some of the gang leaders, ironically
41:05enough, who went through the training program, some of the gang leaders that were supposed
41:10to be the most explosive people in the community that were going to stop the so-called disturbances
41:16in Baltimore, went through the training program. And after coming out of the training program,
41:21they were the first people that went back in the community when the Klan marched through last year
41:27and got all of the gangs to cool it. And you didn't have any trouble here. The same guys that were going
41:33to be the producers of violence turned out to be the very guys who stopped the violence in the ghetto.
41:39This is just the way you're going to feel when you go in and start laying your story down to get the job.
41:46Now, this is the exact same atmosphere. You're going to be a little nervous. You're going to feel a little uneasy.
41:51But I want you to watch one guy that's been doing it, and he knows just how to get the story down.
41:56And we're going to check him out to see if he's got it down pat. So let's give a listen for a second.
42:00John, come on. Let me see how you make it up.
42:05Good afternoon, each and everyone. My name is John Abel, and I am speaking on behalf of the Target City Youth Program.
42:13And I am also a trainee. I'd like to say being in here ten weeks awfully really have learned me a whole lot in this little bit of time.
42:25And I believe that I'm also eligible enough to be a manager or a owner of my own service station.
42:31It's no good walking around the street wondering what can you do.
42:36You have to learn and earn and stick with what you have started.
42:42It's no harm in trying. Anybody can say they can't do it.
42:45But to my opinion, I think I'm ready to be a manager. Thank you.
42:50Okay. First of all, remember, he's a pro. He's supposed to know how to do it.
42:57Now let's see just how good he was. We're going to get a few comments.
43:00I want you to tell me what you think he did wrong. Come on.
43:04Well, to my knowledge and my fact, I do not think that he did anything wrong. Everything was perfect.
43:13He put enough life in it, but he could have put, say, about an inch more life in it.
43:20Okay. All right.
43:22Well, to my opinion, his presentation was so realistic and so nice that if he went for president, I would vote for him.
43:30You see, we live in two worlds. We've got a black world and a white world.
43:37And we have never understood, and most people don't understand how I think, because they think I should think the way that they think.
43:44Now, a kid born in this neighborhood can't think the way that a white man thinks.
43:50You see, our white kid thinks. We've developed what you call defensive thinking in order to make it in a society where we are oppressed daily in everything that we do.
44:00And these two worlds have not been able to come together and get a meaningful dialogue.
44:06And even when we really tell the truth, if the truth hurts, it's not accepted.
44:11So here you have the ghettos this summer where people feel that nobody listens to them. Black people feel rejected.
44:20They feel like they have been pushed into a corner. They can't get anyone's ear.
44:26There's a failure to support them in their endeavors and undertaking. And the youth feel totally rejected.
44:34They feel that there is no hope. There's not a chance. It's a matter of hopelessness. It's frustration.
44:40I just want to be dead, some of the kids say. That's the attitude that they take.
44:45On one hand, we say, let's be nonviolent. The whole civil rights struggle ought to be nonviolent.
44:50On the other hand, we use violence, the society uses violence, to accomplish most of its goals, or the majority of its goals.
44:58This country was taken by violence from the mother country, and then by violence we destroy the Indians,
45:04and now by violence we are fighting another war, and that's the Vietnam issue.
45:10We know that the white man has the guns. Everybody knows that.
45:14And what we are fearful of right now, and we wonder if there's not a commitment and a hope that riots will occur,
45:21so that they can shoot down black people in the streets.
45:24And what we really have not recognized is that there is now thought control over the black man.
45:31They say, you are wrong, and we don't support you because you don't think like us.
45:35You ought to support the war. And, of course, I don't believe in supporting the war.
45:40So they said, we don't like that about him, which means that they aren't respecting me for my difference of opinion,
45:46my ability to think and come to a different conclusion.
45:48I must think the way that he says that I must think. So we lose support for that reason.
45:53Some people say, we don't like your position on Adam Clayton Power.
45:57Well, Adam Clayton Power was the only man that we had in Congress to represent us.
46:01Out of 22 years of buying Adam on that installment plan to send him up there to talk for us, you take that away from us.
46:07And then they expect us to be happy, and they withdraw funds.
46:10I think they've got to recognize, we go right back to the same point,
46:14that they have got to let the black man develop his independent pattern of thought,
46:19which is going to sometimes hurt him, in a sense, because we don't think like him,
46:25but it certainly ought to be the understanding that we are never going to think of like in all aspects,
46:33not until all other things are equal.
46:36It is difficult for a white man to talk about black power.
46:58One reason is obvious. He is not black. The other reason is less obvious.
47:03Black power right now is a kind of disembodied phrase with many shadings and definitions.
47:08It means one thing to some Negroes and something else to others.
47:12There is no such thing as yet as a Negro community, some great monolithic political and social entity,
47:18poised in anger and frustration, ready to storm the barricades of white America screaming black power.
47:25The war in Vietnam has also complicated the white problem of understanding black power.
47:30The phrase has become most recently identified with opposition to the war.
47:34Blame or credit for this can be given Stokely Carmichael.
47:37He is the Negro leader whose views on the war are the most radical, but his views are not those of Dr. King,
47:43whose views in turn are different from Floyd McKissick's.
47:46And even if the war ended tomorrow, then whites would still be confronted with the Negroes' search for black power,
47:52which seems to be now, after civil rights, the next phase in their struggle for true and meaningful equality.
47:58There are, however, in the search for black power two elements which white America should be able to understand.
48:04One is that Negroes are not searching for something which is alien to our system.
48:09All minority groups in this country at one time or another have sought to better their condition
48:13by demonstrating their collective power, real or imagined.
48:17But what is alien and what will not be understood or accepted is the black power which advocates violence to achieve its aims.
48:24The other element is a common denominator among the advocates of black power.
48:29And that's a new pride in being black. It's part of a search for identity.
48:34You find it especially pronounced at Negro colleges and universities which ten years ago formed the backbone of nonviolence.
48:41And where in the next ten years black power may be given coherence and form.
48:48The only thing which is radical about this search for identity is that many Negroes are no longer willing to
48:54be what whites would wish them to be. And that may be precisely what makes so many whites fear the words black power.
49:02The other day the law school had its talent show. And you know what turned out the talent show?
49:08Some sisters and brothers from the church who came to sing gospel to us.
49:12And we were pretty. And we felt good. Because that was our heritage. And we are not white. We are black.
49:19And as black people we must act according to our nature. You can't teach a snake not to crawl on its belly.
49:36Nor can you teach a baboon not to sit on its haunches. Because that's his nature. And it's nature for black people to have soul. And we exhibit that soul.
49:47In various and sundry ways. Why do you think those brothers and sisters come out here on Friday and sing around that tree?
49:55Because that's the way we do things. And we can't be ashamed of that. Because if we are ashamed of our culture we become manifestly ashamed of ourselves.
50:05And brother, I'm not ashamed of myself because I'm beautiful.
50:11And as if we see the things in a nice soured romance in the M basket, I'm a great anchor.
50:13And this is a big mascot, I feel the middleware. And it's a thought that for me.
50:14The music waslında show. And social media not to sit on eux are worth it or they hing on you.
50:17Join me round, no lordie, join me round. No lordie, join me round, ain't gonna leave nobody.
50:26Join me round, we're gonna leave all the crap, oh lordie, reach all the crap, oh lordie,
50:33aint gonna let no mayor Allen, join me round, no lordie, join me round, no lordie,
50:43Sign me round, ain't gonna fill your mail and sign me round.
50:48We're gonna keep on a walk, oh Lord, keep on a pop, oh Lord.
50:53We're watching us in freedom and we're gonna die if the spirits may die.
51:00We're gonna die if the spirits may die.
51:04But if the spirits may die, we're gonna die, oh Lord.
51:09We're gonna die if the spirits may die.
51:13Iya, i'm not rappers, bandwins take you out.
51:17I can't see but the spirits may die.
51:21We're gonna die if the spirits may die.
51:23So, of course.
51:26I think the spirits may die.
51:28By the spirits may die for us all.
51:32So, please do the
51:34spirits may die over
51:35the spirits may die over there.
51:39Alright, listen.
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