英语演讲50.Stokeley Carmichael - Black Power

50.Stokeley Carmichael - Black Power

Thank you very much. It’s a privilege and an
honor to be in the white intellectual ghetto of the
West. We wanted to do a couple of things before we started. The first is that, based on the
fact that SNCC, through the articulation of its program by its chairman, has been able to win
elections in Georgia, Alabama, Maryland, and by our appearance here will win an election
in California, in 1968 I"m going to run for President of the United States. I just can"t make it,
"cause I wasn"t born in the United States. That"s the only thing holding me back.

We wanted to say that this is a student conference, as it should be, held on a campus, and
that we"re not ever to be caught up in the intellectual masturbation of the question of Black
Power. That’s a function of people who are advertisers that call themselves reporters. Oh, for
my members and friends of the press, my selfappointed white critics, I was reading Mr. Bernard Shaw
two days ago, and I came across a very important quote which I think is most
apropos for you. He says, "All criticism is a[n] autobiography." Dig yourself. Okay.

The philosophers Camus and Sartre raise the question whether or not a man
can condemn himself. The black existentialist philosopher who is pragmatic, Frantz Fanon, answered the
question. He said that man could not. Camus and Sartre was not. We in
SNCC tend to agree with Camus and Sartre, that a man cannot condemn himself.1 Were he to condemn
himself, he would then have to inflict punishment upon
himself. An example would be the Nazis. Any of
the Nazi prisoners who admitted, after he was caught and incarcerated, that he committed
crimes, that he killed all the many people that he killed, he committed suicide.
The only ones who were able to stay alive were the ones who never admitted that they committed a crimes
[sic] against people that is, the ones who rationalized that Jews were not human beings and
deserved to be killed, or that they were only following orders.

On a more immediate scene, the officials and the white population in Neshoba County,
Mississippi that’s where Philadelphia is could not condemn [Sheriff] Rainey, his deputies,
and the other fourteen men that killed three human beings. They could not because they
elected Mr. Rainey to do precisely what he did. and that for them to condemn him will be for
them to condemn themselves.

In a much larger view, SNCC says that white America cannot
condemn herself. And since we
are liberal, we have done it: You stand condemned. Now, a number of things that arises from
that answer of how do you condemn yourselves. Seems to me that
the institutions that function in this country are clearly racist, and that they"re built
upon racism. And the question, then, is how can black people inside of this country move? And then how
can white people who say they’re not a part of those institutions begin
to move? And how then do we begin to clear away the obstacles that we have in this society, that
make us live like human beings? How can we begin
to build institutions that will allow people to relate with each other as
human beings? This country has never done that, especially around the country of white or black.

Now, several people have been upset because we’ve said that integration was irrelevant when
initiated by blacks, and that in fact it was a subterfuge, an insidious subterfuge, for the
maintenance of white supremacy. Now we maintain that in the past six years or so, this
country has been feeding us a "thalidomide drug of integration," and that some negroes have
been walking down a dream street talking about sitting next
to white people. and that that does not begin to solve the problem. that when
we went to Mississippi we did not go to sit next to Ross Barnett2. we did not go to
sit next to Jim Clark3. we went to get them out of our
way. and that people ought to understand that. that we were never fighting for the right
to integrate, we were fighting against white supremacy.

Now, then, in order to understand white supremacy we must dismiss the fallacious notion
that white people can give anybody their freedom. No man can given anybody his freedom. A
man is born free. You may enslave a man after he is born free, and that
is in fact what this country does. It enslaves black people after they’re born, so that the only acts that white people can
do is to stop denying black people their freedom. that is, they must stop denying freedom.
They never give it to anyone.


Now we want to take that to its logical extension, so that we could understand, then, what its relevancy would be in
terms of new civil rights bills. I maintain that every civil rights bill
in this country was passed for white people, not for black people. For example, I am black. I
know that. I also know that while I am black I am a human being, and therefore I have the
right to go into any public place. White people didn"t know that. Every time I tried to go into a
place they stopped me. So some boys had to write a bill to tell that white man, "He’s a human
being. don’t stop him." That bill was for that white man, not for me. I knew
it all the time. I knew it all the time.


I knew that I could vote and that that wasn’t a privilege. it was my right. Every time I tried I
was shot, killed or jailed, beaten or economically deprived. So somebody had
to write a bill for white people to tell them, "When a black man comes to vote, don’t bother him." That bill,
again, was for white people, not for black people. so that when you talk about open
occupancy, I know I can live anyplace I want to live. It is white people across this country who
are incapable of allowing me to live where I want to live. You need a civil rights bill, not me. I
know I can live where I want to live.

So that the failures to pass a civil rights bill isn’t because of Black Power, isn"t because of the
Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. it"s not because of the rebellions that are
occurring in the major cities. It is incapability of whites to deal with
their own problems inside their own communities. That is the problem of the failure of the civil rights bill.

And so in a larger sense we must then ask, “How is it that black people move?” And what do
we do? But the question in a greater sense is, “How can white people who are the majority and
who are responsible for making democracy work?”

They have miserably failed to this point. They have never made democracy work, be it
inside the United States, Vietnam, South Africa, Philippines, South America, Puerto Rico. Wherever
American has been, she has not been able to make democracy work. so that in a larger
sense, we not only condemn the country for what it"s done internally, but we must
condemn it for what it does externally. We see this country
trying to rule the world, and someone must stand up and start articulating that
this country is not God, and cannot rule the world.

Now, then, before we move on we ought to develop the white supremacy attitudes that were
either conscious or subconscious thought and how they run rampant through
the society today. For example, the missionaries were sent to Africa. They went with
the attitude that blacks were automatically inferior. As a matter of fact, the first act the missionaries did,
you know, when they got to Africa was to make us cover up our bodies, because they said it got
them excited. We couldn’t go barebreasted any more because they got excited.

Now when the missionaries came to civilize us because we were uncivilized, educate us
because we were uneducated, and give us some literate studies because we were illiterate,
they charged a price. The missionaries came with the Bible, and we had the land. When
they left, they had the land, and we still have the Bible. And that has been
the rationalization for Western civilization as it moves across the world and stealing and plundering and raping
everybody in its path. Their one rationalization is that the rest of the world is uncivilized and
they are in fact civilized. And they are uncivilized.

And that runs on today, you see, because what we have today is we have what we call
"modernday Peace Corps missionaries," and they come into our ghettos and they Head
Start,Upward Lift, Bootstrap, and Upward Bound us into white society, "cause they don’t want
to face the real problem which is a man is poor for one reason and one reason only: "cause he does not
have money period. If you want to get rid of poverty, you give people money period.

And you ought not to tell me about people who don’t work, and you can’t give people money
without working, "cause if that were true, you’d have to start stopping Rockefeller, Bobby
Kennedy, Lyndon Baines Johnson, Lady Bird Johnson, the whole of Standard Oil, the Gulf
Corp, all of them, including probably a large number of the Board of Trustees of this
university. So the question, then, clearly, is not whether or not one can work. it’s Who
has power? Who has power to make his or her acts legitimate? That is all. And that this country,
that power is invested in the hands of white people, and they make their acts legitimate.
It is now, therefore, for black people to make our acts legitimate.

Now we are now engaged in a psychological struggle in this country, and that is whether or
not black people will have the right to use the words they want to use without white people
giving their sanction to it. and that we maintain, whether they like it or not, we gonna use the
word "Black Power" and let them address themselves to that. but that we are not going to wait
for white people to sanction Black Power. We’re tired waiting. every time black people
move in this country, they’re forced to defend their position before they move. It’s time that
the people who are supposed to be defending their position do that. That"s white people. They
ought to start defending themselves as to why they have oppressed and exploited us.

Now it is clear that when this country started to move in terms of slavery, the reason
for a man being picked as a slave was one reason because of the color of his skin. If one was
black one was automatically inferior, inhuman, and therefore fit for slavery. so that
the question of whether or not we are individually suppressed is nonsensical, and it’s a downright
lie. We are oppressed as a group because we are black, not because we are lazy, not because
we"re apathetic, not because we’re stupid, not because we smell, not because we eat
watermelon and have good rhythm. We are oppressed because we are black.

And in order to get out of that oppression one must wield the group power that one has, not
the individual power which this country then sets the criteria under which a man may come
into it. That is what is called in this country as integration: "You do what I
tell you to do and then we’ll let you sit at
the table with us." And that we are saying that we have to be opposed to that. We must
now set up criteria and that if there"s going to be any integration, it"s going
to be a twoway thing. If you believe in integration, you can come live in
Watts. You can send your children to the ghetto schools. Let’s talk about that. If you
believe in integration, then we’re going to start adopting us some white people to live in our neighborhood.


So it is clear that the question is not one of integration or segregation. Integration
is a man"s ability to want to move in there by himself. If someone wants to
live in a white neighborhood and he is black, that is his choice. It should be his rights. It
is not because white people will
not allow him. So vice versa: If a black man wants to live in the slums, that should be his right. Black people will
let him. That is the difference. And it"s a difference on which this country makes a number of logical mistakes when
they begin to try to criticize the program articulated by SNCC.


Now we maintain that we cannot be afford to be concerned about 6 percent of the children
in this country, black children, who you allow to come into white schools. We have 94 percent
who still live in shacks. We are going to be concerned about those 94 percent. You ought
to be concerned about them too. The question is, Are we willing to be concerned about those 94
percent? Are we willing to be concerned about the black people who will never get to Berkeley, who will
never get to Harvard, and cannot get an education, so you’ll never get a chance to rub shoulders with
them and say, "Well, he’s almost as good as we are. he’s not like the others"? The question is, How can white society begin to move to see black people as human beings? I am black, therefore I am. not that I am black and I must go
to college to prove myself. I am black, therefore I am. And don’t deprive me of anything and say to me
that you must go to college before you gain access to X, Y, and Z. It is only a rationalization for one"s oppression.

The political parties in this country do not meet the needs of people on a daytoday basis. The question is, How
can we build new political institutions that will become the political expressions of people on a daytoday
basis? The question is, How can you build political institutions that will begin
to meet the needs of Oakland, California? And the needs of Oakland, California, is not
1,000 policemen with submachine guns. They don"t need that. They
need that least of all. The question is, How can we build institutions where those people can
begin to function on a daytoday basis, where they can get decent jobs, where they can get
decent houses, and where they can begin to participate in the policy and major decisions that
affect their lives? That’s what they need, not Gestapo troops, because this is not 1942, and if
you play like Nazis, we playing back with you this time around.
Get hip to that.

The question then is, How can white people move to start
making the major institutions that they have in this country function
the way it is supposed to function? That is the real question.
And can white people move inside their own community and start tearing down racism where in fact
it does exist? Where it exists. It is you who live in Cicero and stop us from living there.
It is white people who stop us from moving into Grenada. It is white people who make sure
that we live in the ghettos of this country. it is white institutions that do that. They must
change. In order In order for America to really live on a basic principle of human
relationships, a new society must be born. Racism must die, and the economic exploitation of
this country of nonwhite peoples around the world must also die must also die.

Now there are several programs that we have in the South, most in poor white communities.
We"re trying to organize poor whites on a base where they can begin to move around the
question of economic exploitation and political disfranchisement. We know we"ve heard the
theory several times but few people are willing to go into there. The question is, Can the white activist not try to be a Pepsi generation who comes alive in the black community, but can he be a man who’s willing to
move into the white community and start organizing where the organization is needed? Can
he do that? The question is, Can the white society or the white activist disassociate himself with
two clowns who waste time parrying with each other rather than
talking about the problems that are facing people in this state? Can you dissociate
yourself with those clowns and start to build new institutions that will eliminate all idiots like them.


And the question is, If we are going to do that when and where do we start, and how do we
start? We maintain that we must start doing that inside the white community. Our own
personal position politically is that we don"t think the Democratic Party represents the needs of black people.
We know it don"t. And that if, in fact, white people really believe that, the question
is, if they’re going to move inside that structure, how are they going to organize
around a concept of whiteness based on true brotherhood and based on stopping exploitation,
economic exploitation, so that there will be a coalition base for black people to hook up with?
You cannot form a coalition based on national sentiment. That is not a coalition. If you need a
coalition to redress itself to real changes in this country, white people must start building
those institutions inside the white community. And that is the real question, I
think, facing the white activists today. Can they, in fact, begin to move into and tear down
the institutions which have put us all in a trick bag that we’ve been into for the last hundred years?

I don"t think that we should follow what many people say that we should fight to be leaders of
tomorrow. Frederick Douglass said that the youth should fight to be leaders today. And God
knows we need to be leaders today, "cause the men who run this country are sick, are sick. So
that can we on a larger sense begin now, today, to start building those institutions and to
fight to articulate our position, to fight to be able to control our universities We need to be able to do that and
to fight to control the basic institutions which perpetuate racism by
destroying them and building new ones? That’s the real question that face us today, and it is a dilemma because most of us do not know how to work, and that the excuse that most white
activists find is to run into the black community.

Now we maintain that we cannot have white people working in the black community, and we
mean it on a psychological ground. The fact is that all black people often question whether or
not they are equal to whites, because every time they start to do something, white people are
around showing them how to do it. If we are going to eliminate that for the generation
that comes after us, then black people must be seen in positions of power, doing and articulating
for themselves, for themselves.

That is not to say that one is a reverse racist. it is to say that one is moving in a healthy
ground. it is to say what the philosopher Sartre says: One is becoming an "antiracist racist."
And this country can’t understand that. Maybe it"s because it"s all caught up in racism. But I
think what you have in SNCC is an antiracist racism. We are against racists. Now if
everybody who is white see themself [sic] as a racist and then see us against him, they"re
speaking from their own guilt position, not ours, not ours.

Now then, the question is, How can we move to begin to change what"s going on in this
country. I maintain, as we have in SNCC, that the war in Vietnam is an illegal and immoral
war. And the question is, What can we do to stop that war? What can we do to stop the people who, in
the name of our country, are killing babies, women, and children? What can we do to stop that? And I maintain that we do not have the power in our hands to change that institution, to begin to recreate it, so that they learn to
leave the Vietnamese people alone, and that the only power we have is the power to say, "Hell
no!" to the draft.

We have to say to ourselves that there is a higher law than the law of a racist
named McNamara. There is a higher law than the law of a fool named Rusk. And there"s a higher law
than the law of a buffoon named Johnson. It’s the law of each of us. It"s the law of each of us.
It is the law of each of us saying that we will not allow them to make us hired killers. We will stand pat. We will
not kill anybody that they say kill. And if we decide to kill, we"re going to
decide who we going to kill. And this country will only be able to stop the war in Vietnam
when the young men who are made to fight it begin to
say, "Hell, no, we ain’t going."Now then, there"s a failure because the Peace Movement has been
unable to get off the college campuses where everybody has a 2S and not going to get drafted anyway. And the
question is, How can you move out of that into the white ghettos of this country and begin
to articulate a position for those white students who do not want to go. We cannot do
that. It is something sometimes ironic that many of the peace groups have beginning to
call us violent and say they can no longer support us, and we are in fact the most militant
organization [for] peace or civil rights or human rights against
the war in Vietnam in this country today. There isn’t one organization that
has begun to meet our stance on the war in Vietnam, "cause we not only say we are against
the war in Vietnam. we are against the draft. We are against the draft. No man
has the right to take a man for two years and train him to be a killer. A man should decide what
he wants to do with his life.


So the question then is it becomes crystal clear for black people because we can easily say
that anyone fighting in the war in Vietnam is nothing but a black mercenary, and that"s all
he is. Any time a black man leaves the country where he can’t vote to supposedly deliver the
vote for somebody else, he’s a black mercenary. Any time a black man leaves this country, gets
shot in Vietnam on foreign ground, and returns home and you won’t give him a burial in his own
homeland, he’s a black mercenary, a black mercenary.

And that even if I were to believe the lies of Johnson, if I were to believe his lies that we"re
fighting to give democracy to the people in Vietnam, as a black man living in
this country I wouldn’t fight to give this to anybody. I wouldn"t give it to anybody.
So that we have to use our bodies and our minds in the only way that we see fit. We must begin like the philosopher
Camus to come alive by saying "No!" That is the only act in which we begin to come alive, and we have to say "No!" to
many, many things in this country.

This country is a nation of thieves. It has stole everything it has, beginning with black people, beginning with black people. And that the question is, How can we move to start changing this country from what it is a
nation of thieves. This country cannot justify any longer its existence. We have become the policeman of the world. The marines are at our disposal to always bring democracy, and if the Vietnamese don’t want democracy, well dammit, "We’ll just wipe them the hell out, "cause they don’t deserve to live if they won’t have our way of life."

There is then in a larger sense, What do you do on your university campus? Do you raise
questions about the hundred black students who were kicked off campus a couple of weeks ago? Eight
hundred? And how does that question begin to move? Do you begin to relate to people outside of the ivory tower and university wall?


Do you think you’re capable of building those human relationships, as the country now
stands? You"re fooling yourself. It is impossible for white and black people to talk about
building a relationship based on humanity when the country is the way it is, when the
institutions are clearly against us.

We have taken all the myths of this country and we"ve found them to be nothing but
downright lies. This country told us that if we worked hard we would succeed, and if that were
true we would own this country lock, stock, and barrel. It is we who have picked the cotton for
nothing. It is we who are the maids in the kitchens of liberal white people.
It is we who are the janitors, the porters, the elevator men. we who sweep up your college floors. Yes, it
is we who are the hardest workers and the lowest paid, and the lowest paid.

And that it is nonsensical for people to start talking about human relationships until they"re
willing to build new institutions. Black people are economically insecure. White liberals are
economically secure. Can you begin to build an economic coalition? Are the liberals willing to
share their salaries with the economically insecure black people they so much love? Then if
you’re not, are you willing to start building new institutions that will provide economic security
for black people? That’s the question we want to deal with. That"s the question we want to deal with.

We have to seriously examine the histories that we have been told.
But we have something more to do than that. American students are perhaps the most politically unsophisticated
students in the world, in the world, in the world. Across every country in this world, while we
were growing up, students were leading the major revolutions of their countries. We have not
been able to do that. They have been politically aware of their existence. In South America
our neighbors down below the border have one every 24 hours just to remind us that
they"re politically aware.

And we have been unable to grasp it because we’ve always moved in
the field of morality and love while people have been politically jiving with our lives. And the question is, How do we
now move politically and stop trying to move morally? You can"t move morally against a man
like Brown and Reagan. You"ve got to move politically to put them out of business. You"ve got to move politically.

You can’t move morally against Lyndon Baines Johnson because he is an immoral man. He
doesn’t know what it’s all about. So you’ve got to move politically. You"ve got to move
politically. And that we have to begin to develop a political sophistication which
is not to be a parrot: "The twoparty system is the best party in the world." There is a difference between
being a parrot and being politically sophisticated.

We have to raise questions about whether or not we do need new types of political
institutions in this country, and we in SNCC maintain that we need them now. We need new
political institutions in this country. Any time Any time Lyndon Baines Johnson
can head a Party which has in it Bobby Kennedy, Wayne Morse, Eastland, Wallace, and all
those other supposedtobeliberal cats, there’s something wrong with that Party. They’re moving
politically, not morally.


And that if that party refuses to seat black people from Mississippi and goes ahead and seats
racists like Eastland and his clique, it is clear to
me that they’re moving politically, and that one cannot begin to talk morality to people like that.

We must begin to think politically and see if we can have the power to impose and keep the
moral values that we hold high. We must question the values of this society, and I maintain
that black people are the best people to do that because we have been excluded from that
society. And the question is, we ought to think whether or not we want to become a part of
that society. That"s what we want to do.

And that that is precisely what it seems to me that the Student Nonviolent Coordinating
Committee is doing. We are raising questions about this country. I do not want to be a part of
the American pie. The American pie means raping South Africa, beating Vietnam, beating South
America, raping the Philippines, raping every country you’ve been in. I don’t want any
of your blood money. I don’t want to be part of that system. And the question is,
How do we raise those questions? How do we begin to raise them?

We have grown up and we are the generation that has found this country to be a world power,
that has found this country to be the wealthiest country in the world.
We must question how she got her wealth? That"s what we"re questioning, and whether or not we want
this country to continue being the wealthiest country in the world at the price of raping everybody else
across the world. That"s what we must begin to question. And that because black people are
saying we do not now want to become a part of you, we are called reverse racists. Ain’t
that a gas?

Now, then, we want to touch on nonviolence because we see that again as the failure of white
society to make nonviolence work. I was always surprised at Quakers who came to Alabama
and counseled me to be nonviolent, but didn’t have the guts to start talking to James Clark to
be nonviolent. That is where nonviolence needs to be preached to
Jim Clark, not to black people. They have already been nonviolent
too many years. The question is, Can white people
conduct their nonviolent schools in Cicero where they belong to be conducted,
not among black people in Mississippi. Can they conduct
it among the white people in Grenada?

Sixfoottwo men who kick little black children can you conduct nonviolent schools there?
That is the question that we must raise, not that you conduct nonviolence among black
people. Can you name me one black man today who"s killed anybody white and is still alive?
Even after rebellion, when some black brothers throw some bricks and bottles, ten
thousand of them has to pay the crime, "cause when
the white policeman comes in, anybody who’s black is arrested, ""cause we all look alike."

So that we have to raise those questions. We, the youth of this country, must begin to raise
those questions. And we must begin to move to build new institutions that"s going to speak to
the needs of people who need it. We are going to have to
speak to change the foreign policy of this country. One of the problems with
the peace movement is that it"s just too caught up in Vietnam, and that if we pulled out
the troops from Vietnam this week, next week you’d have to get another peace movement for Santo Domingo.


And the question is, How do you begin to articulate the need to change the foreign policy of
this country a policy that is decided upon race, a policy on which decisions are made
upon getting economic wealth at any price, at any price.

Now we articulate that we therefore have to hook up with black people around the world. and
that that hookup is not only psychological, but becomes very real. If South America today
were to rebel, and black people were to shoot the hell out of all the white people there as
they should, as they should then Standard Oil would crumble tomorrow. If South Africa
were to go today, Chase Manhattan Bank would crumble tomorrow. If Zimbabwe, which
is called Rhodesia by white people, were to go tomorrow, General Electric would cave in on
the East Coast. The question is, How do we stop those institutions that are so willing to fight
against "Communist aggression" but closes their eyes to racist oppression? That is the
question that you raise. Can this country do that?

Now, many people talk about pulling out of Vietnam. What will happen? If we pull out of
Vietnam, there will be one less aggressor in there we won"t be there. And so
the question is, How do we articulate those positions? And we cannot begin to articulate them from the
same assumptions that the people in the country speak, "cause they speak from different
assumptions than I assume what the youth in this country are talking about.

That we"re not talking about a policy or aid or sending Peace Corps people in to
teach people how to read and write and build houses while we steal their raw materials from them. Is that
what we"re talking about? "Cause that’s all we do. What underdeveloped countries needs information
on how to become industrialized, so they can keep their raw materials where they
have it, produce them and sell it to this country for the price it’s supposed to pay. not
that we produce it and sell
it back to them for a profit and keep sending our modern day missionaries
in, calling them the sons of Kennedy. And that if the youth are going to participate in that
program, how do you raise those questions where you begin to control
that Peace Corps program? How do you begin to raise them?

How do we raise the questions of poverty? The assumptions of this country is that if someone
is poor, they are poor because of their own individual blight, or they weren’t born on the right side of town. they had
too many children. they went in the army too early. or their father was
a drunk, or they didn’t care about school, or they made a mistake. That’s a lot of nonsense. Poverty is well
calculated in this country. It is well calculated, and the reason why the poverty
program won’t work is because the calculators of poverty are administering it. That"s why it won"t work.

So how can we, as the youth in the country, move to start tearing those things down? We
must move into the white community. We are in the black community. We have developed a movement
in the black community. The challenge is that the white activist has failed
miserably to develop the movement inside of his community. And the question is, Can we find
white people who are going to have the courage to go into white communities and start
organizing them? Can we find them? Are they here and are they willing to do that? Those are
the questions that we must raise for the white activist.

And we"re never going to get caught up in questions about power. This country knows what
power is. It knows it very well. And it knows what Black Power is "cause it deprived black
people of it for 400 years. So it knows what Black Power is. That the question of,
Why do white people in this country associate Black Power with violence? And the question
is because of their own inability to deal with "blackness." If we had said "Negro power" nobody would get
scared. Everybody would support it. Or if we said power for colored people,
everybody’d be for that, but it is the word "black" it is the word "black" that bothers people in this country, and
that’s their problem, not mine they"re problem.

Now there"s one modern day lie that we want to attack and then move on very quickly and
that is the lie that says anything all black is bad. Now, you’re all a college university crowd.
You’ve taken your basic logic course. You know about a major premise and minor premise. So people have been
telling me anything all black is bad. Let’s make that our major premise.

Major premise: Anything all black is bad.
Minor premise or particular premise: I am all black.

Therefore....

I’m never going to be put in that trick bag. I am all black and I’m all good, dig it. Anything all
black is not necessarily bad. Anything all black is only bad when you use force to keep whites out. Now
that’s what white people have done in this country, and they’re projecting their same fears and guilt on
us, and we won’t have it, we won"t have it. Let them handle their own
fears and their own guilt. Let them find their own psychologists. We refuse to be the therapy
for white society any longer. We have gone mad trying to do it. We have gone stark raving mad trying to do it.

I look at Dr. King on television every single day, and I say to myself: "Now there is a man
who’s desperately needed in this country. There is a man full of love. There is a man
full of mercy. There is a man full of compassion." But every time I see Lyndon on television, I said,
"Martin, baby, you got a long way to go."

So that the question stands as to what we are willing to do, how we are willing to say "No" to
withdraw from that system and begin within our community to start to function and to build
new institutions that will speak to our needs. In Lowndes County, we developed something
called the Lowndes County Freedom Organization. It is a political party.

The Alabama law says that if you have a Party you must have an emblem. We chose for the
emblem a black panther, a beautiful black animal which symbolizes the strength and dignity of
black people, an animal that never strikes back until he"s back so far into the wall, he"s got
nothing to do but spring out. Yeah. And when he springs he does not stop.

Now there is a Party in Alabama called the Alabama Democratic Party. It is all white. It
has as its emblem a white rooster and the words "white supremacy" for the write. Now
the gentlemen of the Press, because they"re advertisers, and because most of them are white,
and because they"re produced by that white institution, never called the Lowndes County
Freedom Organization by its name, but rather they call it the Black Panther Party. Our
question is, Why don"t they call the Alabama Democratic Party the "White Cock Party"? (It"s
fair to us.....) It is clear to me that that just points out
America"s problem with sex and color, not our problem, not our problem. And it
is now white America that is going to deal with those problems of sex and color.

If we were to be real and to be honest, we would have to admit that most people in
this country see things black and white. We have to do that. All of us do. We live in a country
that’s geared that way. White people would have to admit
that they are afraid to go into a black ghetto at night. They are afraid.
That"s a fact. They"re afraid because they’d be "beat up," "lynched," "looted," "cut
up," etcetera, etcetera. It happens to black people inside the ghetto every day,
incidentally, and white people are afraid of that. So you get a man to do it for you a
policeman. And now you figure his mentality, when he"s afraid of black people.
The first time a black man jumps, that white man going to shoot
him. He"s going to shoot him. So police brutality is going to exist on that level
because of the incapability of that white man to see black people come together and to live in the conditions. This country is too hypocritical and that we cannot adjust ourselves to its hypocrisy.

The only time I hear people talk about nonviolence is when black people move to defend
themselves against white people. Black people cut themselves every night in the ghetto
Don"t anybody talk about nonviolence. Lyndon Baines Johnson is busy bombing the hell of out
Vietnam Don"t nobody talk about nonviolence. White people beat up black people every day Don"t
nobody talk about nonviolence. But as soon as black people start to move, the double standard comes into being.


You can’t defend yourself. That"s what you"re saying, "cause you show me a man who would
advocate aggressive violence that would be able to live in this country. Show him to me. The
double standards again come into itself. Isn’t it ludicrous and hypocritical for the political
chameleon who calls himself a Vice President in this country to
stand up before this country and say, "Looting never got anybody anywhere"? Isn"t it hypocritical
for Lyndon to talk about looting, that you
can’t accomplish anything by looting and you must accomplish it by the legal
ways? What does he know about legality? Ask Ho Chi Minh, he"ll tell you.

So that in conclusion we want to say that number one, it is clear to
me that we have to wage a psychological battle on the right for black people to define their own
terms, define themselves as they see fit, and organize themselves as they see it.

Now the question is, How is the white community going to begin to allow
for that organizing, because once they start to do that, they will also allow
for the organizing that they want to do inside their community. It doesn’t
make a difference, "cause we’re going to organize our way anyway.

We"re going to do it. The question is, How are we going to facilitate those matters, whether
it’s going to be done with a thousand policemen with submachine guns, or whether or not it’s
going to be done in a context where it is allowed to be done by white people warding off those
policemen. That is the question.

And the question is, How are white people who call themselves activists ready to start move
into the white communities on two counts: on building new political institutions to destroy the
old ones that we have? And to move around the concept of white youth
refusing to go into the army? So that we can start, then, to build a new world. It
is ironic to talk about civilization in this country. This country is uncivilized. It
needs to be civilized. It needs to be civilized.

And that we must begin to raise those questions of civilization:
What it is? And who do it? And so we must urge you to fight now
to be the leaders of today, not tomorrow. We"ve got to be the leaders of today. This country is a nation of thieves. It
stands on the brink of becoming a nation of murderers. We must stop it. We must
stop it. We must stop it. We must stop it.

And then, therefore, in a larger sense there"s the question of black people.
We are on the move for our liberation. We have been tired of trying to prove things to white people. We are
tired of trying to explain to white people that we’re not going to hurt them. We are concerned
with getting the things we want, the things that we have to have to be able to function. The
question is, Can white people allow for that in this country? The question is, Will white people overcome their racism and allow for that to happen in this country? If that does not happen,
brothers and sisters, we have no choice but to say very clearly, "Move over, or we’re going to
move on over you."

Thank you.