It’s good to be back here at Morgan. I used to party here when I was at school—after we sat-in in Baltimore on Route 40.
I hope some of the people who have been disagreeing with the concept of Black Power are here. I would suggest they read two articles—one that I wrote for the New York Review of Books in September [1966] and one that appeared in the Massachusetts Review in 1966.7
They explain the theoretical concept of Black Power; they criticize the exponents of the coalition theory and those who say that integration is the only route to solving the racial problem in this country.
Morgan State College, Baltimore, January 28, 1967.
I would think that at a black university it would be absurd for me to talk about Black Power, that rather I should talk to black students about what their role is to be in the coming struggle. And so my remarks today are addressed to you, black students of Morgan, to give you a chance to hear some of the things that you never hear about, your need to stop being ashamed of being black and come on home. Though there are many members of the press here, you should pay them no mind because they will not be able to understand what we are talking about.
When I was supposed to speak at this university in October, they canceled the speech. Now I understand there were all sorts of bureaucratic tieups for canceling the speech. We know that elections were close at hand in Maryland and there was a feeling—on my part, I am not saying that anyone really said this—that the people were scared, and so they canceled the speech. They were scared that if I spoke here on the “your house is your castle” concept, Mahoney would win.8 One of the reasons I want to talk about that is that I think it is important to understand what that means. What I think the country is trying to do is to kill the free speech of the Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee.
I’d like to read from one of my favorite men, Frederick Douglass—I hope he is yours. You know Baltimore was his home spot, where he spent his early age. It was from Baltimore that he escaped to freedom.
I want to read it because I think it is crystal clear in our minds what we must do in this generation to move for Black Power. Our mothers scrubbed floors. Our fathers were Uncle Toms. They didn’t do that so we could scrub floors and be Uncle Toms. They did it so that this generation can fight for Black Power—and that is what we are about to do and that is what you ought to understand.
Mr. Douglass said:
Those who profess to favor freedom, yet deprecate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground; they want rain without thunder and lightning; they want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters.
Power concedes nothing without demands—it never did and it never will. Find out just what any people will submit to and you have found out the exact amount of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them; and these will continue till they have resisted with either words or blows or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they suppress.
Following in Mr. Douglass’s footsteps we intend to strike our first blow for our liberation, and we will let the chips fall where they may. We do not wish to earn the good will of anybody who is oppressing us. They should rather try to earn our good will, since they have been oppressing us.
This country has been able to make us ashamed of being black. One of the first recognitions of a free people is that we must be united as a people; we must understand the concept of peoplehood and not be ashamed of ourselves. We must stop imitating white society and begin to create for ourselves and our own and begin to embody our own cultural patterns so that we will be holding to those things that we have created, and holding them dear.
For example: it is nonsensical for black people to have debutante balls. It is nonsensical because you are imitating that which white society has given to you and that which you know nothing about. Your fathers slaved for one year to save $500 so that you can walk up in some white dress for one night talking about virginity. Wouldn’t it be better to take that $500 and give it to Morgan so that you could begin to develop a good black institution?
Imitation runs deep in the black community in this country. It runs very deep. You know, when we first got people to go to college and they went to the first white .university in this country, there were things called fraternities and sororities. Our black brothers and sisters could not get into these fraternities. They were kept out because of the color of their skin. So what did our brothers do? They turned around and formed something called Alphas, and only light-skinned Negroes could get in. Our black sisters, not to be outdone, formed AKA, for bluebloods only. The other dark-skinned brothers, not to be outdone, set up Omega and Kappa. And then, of course, we had the counterparts, the Deltas.
Now, wouldn’t it have been far better if those people, instead of imitating a society that had been built on excluding them, had turned around and built a fraternity that included everybody, light-skinned and dark-skinned?
Perhaps that is the greatest problem you, as black students, face: you are never asked to create, only to imitate.
Then we come to the question of definitions. It is very, very important, because people who can define are the masters. Understand that. You remember a couple of years ago when our black leaders would talk about integration. They would say we want to integrate. They would be talking about good houses, good schools, good neighborhoods. White people would say, You want to marry my daughter. They would say, No, I don’t want to marry your daughter; we just want to be your brother, we don’t want to be your brother-in-law. Or: We want to live next door to you, we don’t want to live in your bedroom. What the white people were doing was defining integration for those black leaders, and those black leaders allowed them to. By the time those cats finished reacting to a definition by a white man, they were out the window. And by the time they came back to being aggressive the black community said later for those cats. They allowed white people to define their reaction.
Now when we get asked that question in SNCC you know what we say: Your daughter, your sister, and your mama. The white woman is not the queen of the world, she is not the Virgin Mary, she can be made like any other woman. Let’s move on, let’s move on.
They try the same things now. These days, I say Black Power and someone says, you mean violence. And they expect me to say, No, no, I don’t mean violence, I don’t mean that. Later for you, I am master of my own term. If Black Power means violence to you, that is your problem, as is marrying your daughter.
I know what it means in my mind. I will stand clear. And you must understand that, because the first need of a free people is to be able to define their own terms and have those terms recognized by their oppressors. It is also the first need that all oppressors must suppress. I think it is what Camus talks about. He says that when a slave says no, he begins to exist. You see you define to contain. That’s all you do. If we allow white people to define us by calling us Negroes, which means apathetic, lazy, stupid, and all those other things, then we accept those definitions.
We must define what we are—and then move from our definitions and tell them, Recognize what we say we are!
We all watch cowboy movies all the time. You know, there would be a fight and there would be Indians and they would be coming from the hills and Chief Crazy Horse would have a million Indians and they would be yelling, “Wha, wha, wha,” and they would be killing the good white women. And at last here comes the cavalry. They would come riding in and they would get out their guns and shoot up everybody—men, forward march, forward, shoot. Look out, that one on the right. Boom, we’ve got him, he’s dead. They would come back and they would say, we had a victory today. We killed the Indians.
The next time the Indians would win; they would beat the hell out of the cavalry and the white man would come back and say, Those dirty Indians, they massacred us.
See what they were doing. They were putting connotations in our minds. A massacre is not as good as a victory because in a victory you shoot people and you kill them in an honorable way, but in a massacre you kill with a knife and everybody knows that’s foul.
But the Indians had victories too. That we must begin to recognize. That’s very important.
You ever listen to the news? Every day now, Viet Cong terrorists bomb and kill fifty women and children, what a shame. In the meantime, United States jet bombers have been flying heavily over Hanoi, dropping bombs.
The power to define is the most important power that we have. It is he who is master who can define; that was cleared in the McCarthy period. If McCarthy said you were a communist, you had to get up and say, No I am not a communist. Who the hell is McCarthy? I mean who is he? He had the power to define. It is the same thing. “My fellow Americans, the communists, the slanted-eye Viet Cong are our enemy. You must go kill them.” You don’t have the right to define whether or not that cat is your enemy. The master has defined it for you. And when he says “jump,” you say, “how high, boss?” We must begin to define our own terms and certainly our own concept of ourselves and let those who are not capable of following us fall by the wayside.
You must begin to understand the nature of this country called America, which exploits all other, non-white countries. You know what they are talking about—you see that’s the thing with definitions—you know, we are fighting for freedom, democracy, for peace. Nobody questions it. Yes, we are going to kill for freedom, democracy, and peace. These little Chinese, Vietnamese yellow people haven’t got sense enough to know they want their democracy, but we are going to fight for them. We’ll give it to them because Santa Claus is still alive.
I want to read a quote made August 4, 1953, before the United States Governors’ Convention in Seattle. Incidentally, I highly recommend this book. It is Vietnam, Vietnam, by Felix Green.
I think the trouble with our black students is that they just don’t read enough. If we could get books like we could boogaloo we would be uptight.
“Now let us assume,” the quote says, “that we lost Indochina . . .” Now that is in 1953, the U.S. was not fighting the war, the French were fighting it for the United States. America was just giving them the money.
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 to help that war, we are not voting a give-away program. We are voting for the cheapest way that we can to prevent the occurrence of something that would be of a 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 Indo-Chinese territory and from Southeast Asia.
That quote was made by President Dwight D. Eisenhower—now we may say that Dwight wasn’t too smart. But that was in 1953. So, well, we figure, you know Dwight wasn’t too smart and that was a long time ago and we have become more civilized.
I want to read you a statement now by Henry Cabot Lodge. He’s the good-looking one, you know—tall, blond hair, blue eyes. He said, a year ago:
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 it large storehouses of wealth and population can be influenced and undermined.
He is absolutely right. That’s what that war is all about. And that’s why we are not going.
Those are the words of the ambassador to Saigon, they are not my words. And he outlines very clearly what the war is being fought for.
If you understand anything about this country, you know that 75 per cent of the budget is spent on war materials. That means that for this country to survive it must always be at war.
You will not get a victory for this country if you win in Vietnam. That’s no victory. The country must keep fighting. You do not invent things that have no use. You invent them so that they have a use. And every time you invent a better bomb, you must drop it. So you invent another bomb. That is why this country keeps going at the breakneck speed it is going in terms of its military might. We are told that it is civilized—another word to define.
You know Rudyard Kipling defined civilization for us. He talked about the white man’s burden. Pick up your whiteness and go to Africa to cultivate the savages and illiterates. So all these nice, white people of good will who wanted to do well, they got in their little black robes and they went to Africa and they saw these little black savage women, man, running around with no shirts on. “Why, you dirty thing, cover yourself up.” Africans were never excited, so it must have been the nice, white people who were excited because they wanted them to cover it up. Africans didn’t even know what breasts were for except to feed their young.
But the white people brought their concepts. When they left they had the land and we had their religion. And that was civilization for them. Indeed, what is civilization? To be able to drop bombs on Hiroshima? To be able to drop bombs on Hanoi? Is that civilization? Do we want to be civilized too?
This country has said that civilization is at stake and there is no other solution but war. So what they do is train us in ROTC. You dig it? All they do in ROTC is teach you how to kill. You may try to justify it all you want, but your job is to kill. The job of the army is to kill. ROTC doesn’t teach you how to become anything. If you want me to be taught something, build a school in my neighborhood and let me go there. Don’t tell me about going to Vietnam to learn anything.
I have to be appalled at the president of the university who stands up and says that Black Power is about violence while at this very campus he encourages institutionalized violence—compulsory ROTC—and does not speak about that. Who does he think he is kidding? There is nothing wrong with violence. It is just who is able to control it. That’s what counts. Everybody knows that. You have institutionalized violence on your campus. You have to dress up in a monkey suit and train how to kill once a week. And what is your response to that as black students, coming to a university where they are supposed to teach you civilization? Is that civilization too? That one must kill?
Is that what you are imitating? Is it for you not to reason why at a university, but to do and die? Do you not have the guts to say: Hell, no. Do you not have the guts to say, I will not allow anyone to make me a hired killer.
When I decide to kill, since it is the greatest crime that man can commit, I alone will make that decision, and I will decide whom to kill.
You are now at a vast black university where they have already incorporated violence in your thinking. And here you are marching around every Friday, or Thursday, or Wednesday or whatever it is, with your shoes spit-shined, until three o’clock in the morning—marching with a gun in your hand, learning all about how to shoot.
And somebody talks about violence. No, I am not violent, I don’t believe in violence. I don’t want no Black Power. I ain’t got nothing to do with violence. Over in Vietnam they put you on a front line and you are shooting. But that is not violence because you can’t define for yourself. You ought to tell the school that if you wanted to learn how to kill you would have gone to West Point. You came here to learn how to help your people of Baltimore in the ghettos, and then you turn your backs on them as soon as you get a chance.
What can you tell a black man who lives in the ghettos in Baltimore about killing? Hasn’t he been subjected to it all of his life? What is your analysis about the rebellions that have been occurring all around the state?
Are you like everybody else? Are you against violence? Do you analyze? Do you recognize what it means?
The reason they say that we preach violence isn’t because we preach violence, but because we refuse to condemn black people who throw rocks and bottles at policemen. That is why. And I say that is the only reason why. Look at all the other Negro leaders—so-called leaders—every time there is a riot:
We deplore violence, we avoid use of violence, it is very, very bad, there is only a small group of vagabonds, they don’t represent our community, and violence never accomplishes anything.
Yes, we are training our boys to go to Vietnam. We think it is a good thing to send them to Vietnam, but violence never accomplishes anything at all.
Now, you have got to understand this very clearly. If you know anything about the ghetto, you know that on any given Friday or Saturday night there is more violence inside the ghetto than anyplace else in any given city. You know that we cut and butcher and shoot each other. And do you also know that in any given ghetto there is more police power, that is, in terms of numbers, there are more police per block, per square inch, than in any other area of the city? What does that mean to you? On Friday night while there are more police, there is still more violence among black people. Obviously they don’t give a damn about the violence among black people.
What it points out is the problem between property rights and human rights in this country—a problem the country is not capable of facing up to. Let one black boy throw one rock at some filthy grocery store and the whole damned National Guard comes into our ghetto. Property rights mean more than human rights and we in the ghetto do not own the property. If we get robbed, you can call the policemen till you turn white. He ain’t coming. You know it as well as I do. But just hit a grocery store, just throw a Molotov cocktail through a window and see how quick they come in. They deplore violence.
It’s all right with them when we cut each other in the street on Friday and Saturday nights. We need nonviolence in the black community, that’s where we need it. We have to learn to love and respect ourselves. That’s where it should begin. That is where it must begin. Because if we don’t love us, ain’t nobody going to love us.
The people who have power in our ghettos are the property owners and when their stores are touched they call the National Guard.
But analyze that one step further. Everybody in our ghettos knows that we are charged higher prices for rotten meat. Everybody knows that, but nobody says, We deplore the high prices they charge the Negro for rotten meat. Nobody moves to readjust the problems black people are facing in the ghetto like the slumlord. And if they try, they would find out that the people who own the property are the people who make the laws.
Property rights, that’s what the United States Constitution is based on. You should know that. You are three-fifths of a man until this very day. Property rights. People who didn’t own property could not vote when this country was first founded, not until years afterwards. So the analysis is the question of property versus propertyless people.
That’s what those rebellions are about, nothing else, nothing less. And what appalls me about the black leaders is they do not have the guts to condemn the grocery store owner. Anytime a man has been charging us all that money for fifteen years, his store should have been bombed five years ago. It should have been out of the neighborhood five years ago. And if nobody wants to do it, then you can’t blame people when they move to do it for themselves.
If you want to stop rebellion, then eradicate the cause.
It is time for you to stop running away from being black. You are college students, you should think. It is time for you to begin to understand that you, as the growing intellectuals, the black intellectuals of this country, must begin to define beauty for black people.
Beauty in this society is defined by someone with a narrow nose, thin lips, white skin. You ain’t got none of that. If your lips are thick, bite them in. Hold your nose; don’t drink coffee because it makes you black. Everybody knows black is bad. Can you begin to get the guts to develop criteria for beauty for black people? Your nose is boss, your lips are thick, you are black, and you are beautiful. Can you begin to do it so that you are not ashamed of your hair and you don’t cut it to the scalp so that naps won’t show?
Girls, are you ready? Obviously it is your responsibility to begin to define the criteria for black people concerning their beauty. You are running around with your Nadinola cream. The black campuses of this country are becoming infested with wigs and Mustangs and you are to blame for it. You are to blame for it. What is your responsibility to your fellow black brothers? Why are you here? So that you can become a social worker or so that you can kick down a door in the middle of the night to look for a pair of shoes?
Is that what you come to college for? So that you can keep the kid in the ghetto school, so that you can ride up in a big Bonneville with an AKA sign stuck on the back? Is that your responsibility? What is your responsibility to black people of Baltimore who are hungry for the knowledge you are supposed to have?
Is it so that you can just get over? Do you forget that it is their sweat that put you where you are? Do you not know that your black mothers scrubbed floors so you can get here—and the minute you get out, you turn your back on them? What is your responsibility, black students? What is it? Is it to become a teacher so you can be programmed into a ghetto school? So that you can get up and say, “It’s a shame how our children are culturally deprived” ?
What do you know about culturally deprived? What is your definition of culture? Is it not anything man-made? How the hell can I be culturally deprived? You deny my very existence, to use that term.
Do you question what they tell you at school? Or do you only accept, carry it back, get over, go out to further stymie black people in the ghetto?
I blame you for the rebellions across the country this summer. And I will blame you again when they increase this summer. It is your obligation to be back in the ghetto helping out black people who are looking, who are acting, begging, and thinking a way to solve their problems. And you are running out of the ghetto as fast as your sports cars and Mustangs can carry you.
What is your responsibility, black students of Morgan? Do you know about Du Bois? Have you read Douglass? Do you know Richard Wright? Can you quote J. A. Rogers? Do you know Claude McKay?
Can you understand, can you understand LeRoi Jones? There is a young man with me now. His name is Eldridge Cleaver. He just spent eight years in jail. He is writing some of the most profound writing that has come out in the country from black men. Do you know him? Have you read his stuff? Why haven’t you read his stuff? Is it because you are too busy trying to find out where the Kappas are partying Friday night?
Why is it that you haven’t read his stuff? Is it that you are spit-shining your shoes so that you can become a lieutenant colonel to go to Vietnam when you graduate?
Why is it that you haven’t read his stuff? Is it that you don’t want to read anything about being black because you, too, are ashamed of it and are running from it? So you want to run to your debutante ball. So you want to run to your Kappa fraternity ball and forget all else.
When the ghettos rebel you are going to be the buffer, and you are the ones who are going to be caught in the middle. The gate is swinging open. Brothers and sisters, you had better come home early this summer. You had better take what knowledge you have and use it to benefit black people in the ghetto.
You had better recognize that individualism is a luxury that black students can no longer afford. You had better begin to see yourself as a people and as a group and, therefore, you need to help to advance that group.
Can you be aggressive? Can you say that Baltimore is almost 52 per cent black, and black people should own it, run it, lock stock and barrel? Or are you afraid?
Can you not go out and organize those people to take the political power that they have been denied and by which they’ve been oppressed and exploited? Can you not help? Are you too busy trying to be a doctor and lawyer so that you can get a big car and a big house and talk about your house in the suburbs. Am I the only one out there?
Can you begin to say that James Brown is us, that he is a musical genius as much as Bach or Beethoven? Can you understand your culture? Can you make them teach it to you here in college, rather than teach you Bach and Beethoven, which is only one-sided? Why can’t you also have James Brown so that you can begin to know what culture is all about?
I want to finish with one quote—actually there are two quotes I want to finish with.
I want to read it because I don’t want to make a mistake. The quote I want to read before I close is from Bertrand Russell. You know about the war tribunal. You should. Bertrand Russell is calling the war tribunals to judge the leaders of this country for their actions in Vietnam. I have been asked to serve on it and I am greatly honored. I want to read a quote he calls “An Appeal to My Conscience.” The war in Vietnam should have interest for you not only personally, but also because it is very political for black people. When McNamara says he is going to draft 30 per cent of the black people out of the ghettos, baby, that is nothing but urban removal. You should realize you are going to be the fellows leading the charges of your black people. Do you have the guts to stand up now and say I will not follow law and order, I will follow my own conscience. That’s what they sent Eichmann to jail for, you know, because he followed law and order.
The choices are very clear. You either suffer or you inflict suffering. Either you go to the Leavenworth federal penitentiary in Kansas or you become a killer. I will choose to suffer. I will go to jail. To hell with this country.
Mr. Russell:
Just as in the case of Spain, Vietnam is a barbarous rehearsal. It is our intention that neither the bona fides nor the authenticity of this tribunal will be susceptible to challenge from those who have so much to hide.
President Johnson, Dean Rusk, Robert McNamara, Henry Cabot Lodge, General Westmoreland and their fellow criminals will be brought before a wider justice than they recognize and a more profound condemnation than they are equipped to understand.
That is a profound statement.
The last statement that I want to leave you with is by John Donne. He said the “death of any man diminishes me because I am involved in mankind.”
This generation is not involved in mankind. When we began to crawl, they sent six million people to an oven and we blinked our eyes. When we walked, they sent our uncles to Korea. And we grew up in a cold’ war. We, this generation, must save the world. We must become involved in mankind. We must not allow them the chance to kill everything and anything that gets in their way. We must not become part of the machine.
I want to read my favorite quotation to conclude.
“If I am not for myself, who will be? If I am for myself alone, who am I? If not now, when? And if not you, who?”