15 15 Floyd McKissick (1922–1991) was born in Asheville, North Carolina. He was denied admission into the University of North Carolina Law School because of his race, and with the aid of NAACP lawyer Thurgood Marshall he successfully sued the university. Upon gaining admission, he became the first African American to earn an L.L.B. there. McKissick became active in the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) and replaced James Farmer as the head of the organization in 1966. Under his influence, CORE began to closely identify with the Black Power movement. In 1968, McKissick left CORE and moved to Warren County, North Carolina, where he attempted to launch “Soul City,” an all-black, planned community. Through the Nixon administration, McKissick successfully secured a $14- million bond issue guarantee from the Department of Housing and Urban Development. The quid pro quo for federal backing, however, was that McKissick had to publicly endorse Nixon for reelection to the presidency in 1972. McKissick’s strategy of “Black Capitalism” inevitably collapsed, and with it so did the dream of Soul City. McKissick died of lung cancer in April 1991.
WHY THE NEGRO MUST REBEL
We are given rhetoric about power sharing: “The Land of the Free. Home of the Brave.” “With liberty and justice for all.” I could name dozens of others that sound beautiful, but mean absolutely nothing for black people, here or on any other continent.
They were never intended to mean anything for black people. They were written when we were still slaves.
There are black people starving in Mississippi, millions of colored people starving in India while white Americans bask in luxury, spending millions to go to the moon, billions on a war in Vietnam which pits yellow people against yellow people.
There are rebellions throughout the United States—black people demanding that they no longer be exploited, that they be free—free to live in dignity….
In America, as we have seen, the belief in white superiority runs deep. It was a dominant factor in the slave trade. The black African wasn’t recognized as a human being.
A belief ferocious enough to allow human slavery cannot be dissipated by a mere century and, in America, it has been quietly reinforced.
Although slavery as a recognized legal institution has been abolished, economic slavery, economic exploitation, has not. Black people in this country have never been allowed to share in the economic riches of America. A few get in—here and there—a few get rich, but their success has no effect on the masses of black people.
White landlords, white storekeepers, white corporate managers and a white, Anglo-Saxon Wall Street, conspire to keep the black man in his place.
As whites quietly exit to the comfortable suburbs, they do not relinquish the economic control of the ghetto; they maintain control of the city agencies and the political scene. They determine what opportunities will be available and what will be reserved for whites only—and, occasionally, one or two good “Negroes.”
With the climate existing in the United States, we would be foolish, as leaders, to think that black people are not being politically oppressed. If black people got political power, they might be able to merge their values with the values of the dominant culture. And the white man wants to protect his values—particularly his economic values. The materialism which has distorted his dealings with the entire world….
Placing the Blame
And who is to blame for the rebellions? This point we need not argue. The white man is the judge, jury and the executioner in his system and he first made the law so as to control us. We are called the violators of his “law and order”—“criminals.”
Yet he knows that the white racist society is to blame for all of the conditions which force a man to rebel. His concept of “law and order” means the legal methods of exploiting blacks. We object and we resist.
Some so-called Negro leaders even have the audacity to join the man—by calling a liberation struggle a riot—his brothers hoodlums and criminals—and damning his brothers who seek to overthrow the yoke of oppression….
In this country, the ghetto is not defined by barbed wire: the ghetto follows the black man wherever he goes….
Yes, black people know fear and live with it each and every day of their lives—in deadly fear of the white man’s potential. We know he can kill, we know he will—because of his hurt pride—we know that his personality demands that he control whatever he sees, we know that normal dissent is treason in his blue eyes.
“He Will Kill Us”
In fact, we know the man better than he knows himself. We know him for what he is. We know he will kill us if he can—one by one or all at once….
Even our friends in the peace movement find it too easy to look thousands of miles away from home and, with much indignation, see the extermination of the Vietnamese.
On the other hand, they cannot see 10 blocks away, where many black people are the walking dead—dead in mind and spirit, because of lack of hope and lack of chance.
We cannot look elsewhere for help. We cannot lean on the crutch of religion. We cannot depend on phony “coalitions.” We must work out our own methods. We must draw our own conclusions.
To those queasy individuals who are afraid of the resolutions presented here, let me state my unequivocal opinion: The right of revolution is a constitutional right, condoned by the creation of the American Constitution itself. When we assert the right of revolution, we are asserting a constitutional right.
Revolution in America is justified by all standards of morality—religious and ethical: It is required to fulfill the basic, natural rights of man.
Even white men recognized the need for revolution when, in 1776, they revolted because they were oppressed. And today—1967—black people are more oppressed than any white man has ever been—in the history of the world.
This is the time when we must unite—brothers and sisters. We must join in making plans….
Source: Excerpts from speech delivered at the “National Conference of Black Power,” Newark, New Jersey, July 20–23, 1967. Originally published in the New York Times, July 30, 1967.
Inge Powell Bell, CORE and the Strategy of Nonviolence (New York: Random House, 1968).
Floyd B. McKissick, Three-Fifths of a Man (New York: Macmillan, 1969).
August Meier and Elliott Rudwick, CORE: A Study in the Civil Rights Movement (New York: Oxford University Press, 1973).