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the buffalo rew rew err aereo Whoa! Canyon Label Hey, Larry. Fun batty Wasow a bow Ready, buddy Whoa, yeah Whoa, Yeah Cuello Rue e or me lately Oh, hello. My name is Maya Angelo And previous weeks I've spoken to you on a number of subjects on

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African ISMs. Positive African ISMs in black American life. Negative African ISMs in black American life. The teaching of African history. The positive aspect when, uh, teaching African history can be construed as a negative effort. We've talked about music and passage. Black music Today. Tonight I shall

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examine education the goals of black youth in the fields of education. Education is man's most amusing tool. Amusing toy. All right. Effective tool. Or it can be man's most dangerous weapon education. The the man who controls education controls the future as well as the past and

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the present. He controls life, death, life after death. He controls dreams, hopes, aspirations. Every human being is educated. There are There are I mean, if if it it simply means there are levels of education, kinds of education. Uh, no human being can be called uneducated. No

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human being is uneducated. If he learned simply how to how to across the street or possibly throw a spear that is a form of education. These are the Masai in Kenya, a tribe in Kenya, and this man is teaching his son an old way. There is

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a new way, Oh, Children, the alarming in schools. They are not like their ancient parents, and I'm sure they will become somebody's. They will become important. Men will be doctors, there will be teachers and there'll be important people in Kenya. That's why I believe Kenya is

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making a step forward. And that's what we want. In the very old days, we were told to send your Children to school. Most of the others now are saying that why? Why I don't send my child to school. Then you can see. Now they are forcing

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themselves to send their Children for an example myself. I was sent by force. He took me to school, including my brother, who is now an assistant minister for natural resources. So now you can see in our family we two people, we went in our rifles and

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all our Children. Now they are all in school. That is must not a request, Preston Wilcox, a sociologist in New York City. At the Columbia School of Social Work. A black man says that the ghetto school must be at one and the same time a teaching

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instrument, a community, uh, recreation place, as well as a kind of babysitter, a kind of guardian for the child. The ghetto child. The black child is in, uh, probably the most dangerous of of, uh, of areas because he's likely to become extinct like the dodo bird

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or the right of the the dinosaurs. The ghetto child drops out not only of school, he drops out of life off times by the time he's 89 years old, he has given it up. Martin Deutsch says. Some teachers established low expectations, anticipate failure and, true to

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the self fulfilling prophecy, find an increasing rate of failure. We must look at why the ghetto school, the ghetto school, fails the child. Why does the child then say I have no no hope? I don't want to take a chance because I'm certain I'm going to

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fail. Quite often, the teacher approaches the child with a built in failure strategy built in attempt, sometimes unknowing, I admit, but a built in acceptance of that child's lack of ability, lack of intelligence, possibly even lack of desires. When, in a recent project in New York

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and East Harlem, a group of teachers and parents, uh, set up a new approach to teaching Children. They said they had teenagers who themselves were from the ghetto, teaching a 1st and 2nd grade Children they chose. The teenage teachers chose to use Manchild in the Promised

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Land as a textbook by Claude Brown. Uh, they used the autobiography of Malcolm X and the The response they had was was fantastic because the Children said, Well, if this If Claude Brown, who obviously lived just as I lived, could make it, then so could I.

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If Malcolm X, who understood the nature of the beast of the slum of the ghetto, could make it could could reach some kind of control of his destiny, then so can I that it's important. It's not important. It's imperative that students, teachers and Children, uh, work

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towards overcoming that that, uh, that old approach to teaching not only in the textbooks themselves but in the methods of teaching. There's one approach to teaching a ghetto child that possibly works at the Martin Luther King's School. We saw teachers using a James Brown reader. Do

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you have a dang? We have a dance brown bread. We have. We like James Brown. Can you dig it as you can? I can't. We can dig it. We listen to James Brown. Music do do. Do you have a James Brown record? No. I don't know

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where I can get good at. I bought a new James Brown record. This record says Lynch. Hey, let's go outside. We can dance to James Branch. We can dance the James Brown A James Brown. Can you dig it? We all like James Brown. Sock it to

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me later. Free. Here we black is beautiful Free here we set our warriors Be free Who we Black is beautiful free here we there. What free, Free week Black is beautiful, Free Away said I would really black

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beautiful. When did you start this Martin Luther King's school? Well, really. We started Martin Luther Gang School in February, but we had a school before Martin Luther King's school, which was the Heads Valley School Committee summer school. And we did this. And even before that, we

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had a school, our freedom school. When we borrow carted to school and there we find that sixth grade kids didn't even know how to read at a third grade level, and we see that the necessity of education was greater than we expected it to have been.

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And that's why we came up with the summer his Valleys summer school program. And one of the reason why we had to Martin Luther King School was when Mr Strong was fired from the school system. He was threatened to be fine at one time, but because

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parents protest and threatened to take the kids out, they did not find on the second time they did find, and they fired him for assembly, teaching black dignity, history and culture and pride. I see what, what difficulties particular difficulties do you run into what well, the

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main difficulty, and perhaps the only real difficulty is that most black Children are taught that they cannot learn. In other words, there's a D education, a D education of the students going on rather than an education. I've just found a new phrase that I love. It's

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called the Failure strategy, which is built into the school system, and I would suspect that's what you're trying to avoid here, right? How do you get the students to come? Well, how do you get them to stay away? It's the question to ask, because after Martin

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Luther King School, we're open from 8 30 103 and we are there some nights until seven. We do not put the kids out and they do not want to go home now. But the Children get no credit in their regular school, do they? For this summer?

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Of course. I mean, no, they don't. But it will help them to their work better and which some of these kids will not go back to public school. They will stay in our school. We do have accredited school, all right, so we may be having most

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schools than the Martin Luther King School. I hope so. It's an inspiration. Mr. Yes, this is our Our program is that we have to set up schools, community type schools where we involve parents, teachers and students to do the job that the public school is not

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doing for the child. It's a necessity, and this is what we're about and not only will the kids, but parents and teachers. For Lord, this is not a teaching process. This is a learning process because the teacher cannot teach if she is not willing to learn

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very well, said call Mhm. When James was that camp, my building, James went to camp say now. But last summer there he met lots of friends and got to know how it felt being away from home for a couple of days. His first experience with white

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people possess camp. There he had pot washers that clean the pots and so on. The power washes told my brother that he could go to mess everything. Morning. So one day, his constant Tony, um, not to go back to Mass anymore. My brother asked why, he

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said he better not catch him going back or any other boy. So the next day my brother went and his council found out. He told my brother, Why did he go back? And he slapped him across his face. Then my brother, him in his mouth, and

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two other boys help him beat him up. Then they got sent to the possible and got in trouble. Who are the ideas when she was trying to tell you the story. What? You're talking sure to be held just trying to brothers once in this case. Why

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do you think that, right. And clearly this is what you decided. That was totally supposed to make. I know that. But what reasons did she give you to make you feel that people? Her brother was a victim of prejudice? What? When, when her counselor told her

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that she couldn't go when? When his counselor told him he couldn't go back to the best and the counselor wouldn't give him a reason. Any other ideas? You didn't hear it? No salary. She said that her. I heard the first part with my brother with the

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camp and his camera. Something to him not to go back to the man math, whatever. And he went back the next day. I got in trouble. I see. Well, tell me this class. Do you need yourself? I tell you not to do something and then not

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give you any reasons. Why not to do it. Oh, but I got down to Mississippi. I got off the bus. You know, there was this whole bunch of white people standing around and they started calling me bigger and I'll let you go back home. And so

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I walked down the street to where I was going to my grandmother's house. Then they kept their following the and so they accept her and saying, Let's jump, you know? So they kept on following me and I turned around. So what? You guys followed before and

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they said, Go home, ***. They kept telling me Go home, *** All the time I kept on going home. So when I got to my grandmother's house, I told her about it and she said, You're gonna watch out for these white people around here because they

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beat you up because they don't like ***, you know? She told me certain processes today. I wasn't going to go ahead, so I went to the store. Where was a store where they got something like the color boy car? They did a but I got went

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into the store. This is bad. Asked me what you're doing here. I said to myself, You said we don't sell food. The black diggers So I looked up laughs. You know that was home to photograph of Gil I went back outside. She didn't say nothing. So

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I see the same little white boy who was calling me the day, You know, he was with his group of friends that was gonna beat me up. I went out there and start talking to him, you know? So we start fighting and did all this stuff.

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A whole bunch of white kids capable there was going to keep you up All this, So I pulled out a diamond. I was going to cover up the first time. The best with my grandmother came out there. Everybody was armed. Not just with all in the

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house and the bottom. Alright. How old were you in this half? That was just last year. Last year. So you know you would you go down, You're gonna have a good summer. You know, when you put out the subtle parts like that, you see how white

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people treat you Just because you know, if the color of your skin is just not right, because God put us off here. We're supposed to be brothers and sisters. You're supposed to learn how to live with each other. You know there are Children in school those

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were Children in school who did not know Mass about Mass. 16. The boy who was talking Alfonso was speaking out of an experience he had, and his his avenue of communication was not English certainly was not English, as it's spoken by the majority of the people

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in the United States. It's what I like to call black Annis a very good language. Any language is good if if a person is able to communicate with another person, his language, black unease is used, imitated, aped by white Americans but ridiculed at the same time.

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His language is the language that acts as a catalyst in America. For for the English language, we are largely We are the largest, uh, influence on on English as it's spoken in the United States. Now, before I go on, uh, that school, the Martin Luther King

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School, which is now being held in the Benjamin Franklin School in San Francisco, is operating on a shoestring well, when Stroud and Mrs Andriy pay $25 for every three weeks to their teachers, they paid $100 to Mr Stroud for a month's work, and he took the

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money and bought supplies for the students. They need help. They not only need help, they need to see duplications of their efforts around in this country because they are addressing themselves to the students where they're at if you can dig it. White teachers and black teachers.

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I I'm sorry to say I'm sorry to say about both of them. Ofttimes approached the student intending to do good but not to become involved. It's impossible when a student has withdrawn totally for you to do him any good if you don't get involved. Not only

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in his academic life in his life, in his living, in his breathing out and breathing in, one teacher made a statement, and I'll quote her verbatim word for word, she said. You go downhill in a job like this. After a while, you get to hate the

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kids because of their problems. Guidance is a joke. All they do, meaning the teachers is sit in their offices and make telephone calls to truants. Most of the teachers here are rejects from the other schools in the system, and the principal wants a quiet school. Everybody

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acts suspicious if you try to do anything unusual, like taking a trip. Most of the teachers here, our first graduation, first generation college graduates, their parents are butchers and truck drivers. They have inferiority feelings, the only people they feel superior to our their Negro students and

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their own parents. These are the people in whose hands we are putting our tomorrows because our Children represent tomorrow. If we have one at all, it will be because those people live and are healthy. So it's up to us to support the Martin Luther King's school

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and all the schools where the Children are being taught things that they can identify with. If it means a kind of almost soapbox oratory rhetoric preaching, uh, pamphlets, posters, cartoons, puppets. It doesn't matter as long as it is education. And it is healthy education that that

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that that the system, the school system as it is presently constituted and run does not include the black student. Do you know, for instance, that there were that the black student drops out sometimes by the time is eight years old out of life, not only school,

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he decides I have no win, so he drops out and any attempt to reach him unless it is a totally dedicated attempt makes him withdraw further. And finally he goes into the street, as we all know and breaks open somebody's shop. What has happened? What? Why,

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why? What has happened to this child? It's a conglomerate. It's a It's a complexity, Uh, that is operating against his very life. When the teacher ah, deals with the textbooks and tries to teach black students in English many times a teacher is perpetrating the failure strategy

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and doesn't even know it. The the failure strategy is built into the school course itself a psychology class, a failure strategy. And in Denmark, I recall one particular case where they about six or eight men who had been soldiers and had their weapons, uh, got high

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on these mushrooms and they simply started down the street and they broke into the house and they killed every baby, woman, child and human being they found. And these were their fellow Danes. So one can certainly not deny that under some circumstances, feelings of humanity can

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be lost. And this may also happen, I think, during breakdown in combat. But as I say personally, I couldn't give you a story of it from having seen it myself because although I saw them of other things, I didn't see that happen. You say they are.

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Take this mushroom they go with you don't have any sense of anything. Why didn't they kill themselves while they while they were among themselves already? Sometimes they did fight with each other, and they did kill themselves. They generally, however, had a sort of group spirit, and

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they started out and they killed whomever they came to. Now this cause the King of Denmark to pass a law making it the death penalty to eat this mushroom. And then the going berserk habit just disappeared from the pages of history. When students or give him

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a chance to believe they have a chance, all sorts of things can happen. Positive things can happen. There's a difference that most educators and parents do not realize between the slow student and the fast student or the slow learner and the fast learner. Ah, a very

00:25:56.490 - 00:26:25.130

fine educator, Mr Shapiro. Dr. Shapiro, It's done a book on teaching the underprivileged child. I think he's addressed himself very honestly to the problem, he says. Uh, many teachers think that when a student takes a long time to understand. Then the teacher and doctor Shapiro says

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he himself has been guilty of this. The teacher then sort of ignores that student and and is captured. His fancy is captured by that fast student, That student that picks up immediately but off times. What happens is that that student picks up quickly and drops it

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just as quickly. That other student, that slow learner, if he can be encouraged, not falsely encouraged because black Children can immediately discern when you are praising them honestly. Uh huh. No. I mean, if you do some something like and have a large husky boy clean the

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blackboard and then say, Oh, you did that great. You know, he knows where you're at, you know, So don't try that. But But honestly, to encourage that slow learner, you may find that you've come up after a few years with a fine brain which has been

00:27:21.510 - 00:27:48.570

stalked well, and and that stock that that material that goes in slowly just lays there and and and and becomes a resource not only for that one person, but for many, many more people. When the student feels ah well, when? When a black student, has a

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white teacher, a black teacher, a Mexican teacher and Oriental teacher. It doesn't matter. It only matters when the teacher either identifies or doesn't identify with that student when the student is speaking in his language and is constantly put down when the student is told. As I

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heard in a classroom, a teacher tell, a few of us were visiting a classroom of black students, young men and the teacher told one of the lady visitors, I can't let Joe here take you around on the tour of the building because he may rape you.

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No. What does Joe think when the When. There's no respect given. Given the child, no matter who's teaching him, he's not going to learn. There was a great line in, uh in on the waterfront, Marlon Brando said. Uh, they tried to push school down my throat,

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but I outsmarted them. I didn't learn anything. Now, when the child when the students feel they are really cared for, they open up, they warm up and they respond. The Chick Kahlo's are right now organized in school like I don't know how many people have been

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aware of my own Mexican American Youth Association organizations. Our mosque, which is Mexican American Student Confederation. Uh huh. Like I was stating a while ago. The It's a young people, you know that are that are up in arms. Are, you know, are doing things are saying

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things the older people kind of they don't want. They're afraid. They're afraid to say anything because of what has happened in in the future in the in the early thirties, They try to strike in in the valleys, you know? And what happened? The US government deported

00:30:08.610 - 00:30:25.550

these people back to Mexico. A lot of the a lot of the people had Children that were born in this country. Uh, where u s citizens and when these people try to get when these Children grew up trying to get back into the country, uh, to

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get their rights back, the U. S. Government refused. So a lot of the older people are afraid to do anything because they're afraid of the police. You know, the system is run by force, you know. Ah, well, you you see what? What Oakland Police Department does?

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You know, uh, Gestapo tactics. If you don't do what they say, Well, you know, you're locked up or shot. You know, uh, the older people are afraid. I think it's not only the Mexican American. I think it's It's more obvious in the Mexican community, but I

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think a lot of the black community is the same way. You know, the older people. They've been living under martial law for so long, you know that. They're afraid to say, you know? Okay, I quit, you know, forget it or do like the Panthers. Did you

00:31:23.960 - 00:31:45.240

pick up guns and tell them, Okay. I want to play your with. You're gonna play your game with your rules. Um, the Mexican American is that way, too. The young people, the young Mexican Americans are are saying Okay, you know, I'm going to pick up my

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gun if you don't start treating me like a human being, you know? Yes. Maria, what can we do to make people more aware that the Chicano is here? You know, because Well, maybe they know we're here, but they, you know, like like you said, we're invisible.

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Well, maybe we're gonna have to burn. I don't No, I don't think it's going to be necessary for us to be violent. I don't think it's necessary anymore because a black man has already been violent for us. The black man has has told the system. If

00:32:21.540 - 00:32:33.810

you don't treat me like a human being, I am capable of burning. I am capable of killing. You know, I think that they have to become aware that not only the black man is capable of burning and killing. You know, everybody look at the Indian. You

00:32:33.810 - 00:32:51.190

know them Indians. If if you know, you get them Indians up. And if you finally you know, they've been put on concentration camps. Really? You know, this is what a reservation is. A concentration camp. They've been slowly killing them off. Because why, if the if the

00:32:51.190 - 00:33:05.410

Indian starts multiplying and starts building up his numbers, he's able to pick up his damn gun again, you know, So the best way to do is get rid of that man. Get rid of it. So I think I think what we have to do is, as

00:33:05.410 - 00:33:18.100

Chicano knows, you know is talk, you know, go out there and tell our people. You know, I'm not I'm not saying to go out and talk to the man talk to the system because he was Isn't gonna listen if he listens. Yeah, yeah. And the whole

00:33:18.100 - 00:33:28.600

bit. And then you walk out the door and forget you. You know, that's it. I think what we have to do is I have to talk to you. You have to talk to me. I have to talk to our own people telling, you know, we're Chicano

00:33:28.600 - 00:33:44.040

knows we were here first. You know, we're not foreigners, you know. And what are the Spanish classes that they have in the schools? They're Spanish That is being spoken in Spain, you know. Now, when am I going to get to Spain? I don't know. I probably

00:33:44.040 - 00:34:02.990

never. Why don't they? Why don't they teach you Spanish? That is spoken here. You know Chicano my language, You know, because we have our own dialect. Our dialect is even different than a dialect spoken in Mexico. So why don't they teach the Spanish that is taught

00:34:02.990 - 00:34:21.650

here? Okay. Now, if you know, the black people have to have a year of Spanish or a foreign language, you know, be bilingual. Two to get a diploma or to go on into college and they put them in a Spanish class. Why don't they teach you

00:34:21.660 - 00:34:41.230

to talk with me? Not with a person in Spain. Because when are you going to get to Spain? You know, this is I think this is what we're going to have to do. You can find the education system. Absolutely not. The educational system here teaches you

00:34:41.240 - 00:35:04.060

all about the pilgrims. All about Custer. They teach you that? A little big horn was a massacre. They teach you? Oh, man, nothing but lies. Do you find a growing? A growing group of people are as far as the Chicanos are concerned, you know, associating or

00:35:04.060 - 00:35:16.590

identify themselves. You know, with the Chicano movement, Not necessarily, you know, associate themselves being Mexican American, but, you know, as being a Chicano, you know, a definite, uh, portion of definitely groups like the black people in the black. Definitely. There is a lot, and there's a

00:35:16.590 - 00:35:29.910

lot of them are afraid to identify with because, like, there's a lot of people like me that are militant, you know that I say, you know, I quit, You know, forget it. You know, tell the man you know, I don't do a thing. I don't want

00:35:29.910 - 00:35:45.550

your help. The over Chicano, Mexican American. Then you do say with the white power. So you find it harder getting them, uh, to, uh, to follow behind you and to identify with the calls. And then you do with making your demands. You know, the white society.

00:35:45.650 - 00:36:03.540

Definitely the thing with I think this is obviously all minorities in your community. You say you have one of these underground programs. Similar. Do you feel that you have trouble and getting the student in the college like here? We have trouble getting the black students here.

00:36:03.550 - 00:36:16.140

This this is all girl college and all the whole two years, none of the black girls have been in only two girls. A white girl in R e m. Yeah, I wonder, Do you have the same problem? We've only got two girls in this college to

00:36:16.240 - 00:36:32.760

Maria Sevilla's one and we have another girl. But this is our program and they're not accepting any. A lot of schools will not. They won't do it, you know, they always give you, like maybe they say Well, if you haven't got the or you haven't you

00:36:32.760 - 00:36:48.480

haven't had the courses in high school. Of course, you haven't had the course in the high school. They've always put you in manual courses in non academic courses. This is why you don't have the courses. We have that same problem. We've got the same problem. But

00:36:48.490 - 00:37:02.180

you have to keep hitting that door. You gotta keep hearing that door until you force it open the same problem. Do you feel that as a Mexican American that you should have different schools? You know, like the Chinese, they have America to go to the American

00:37:02.180 - 00:37:19.020

school. Then they go their own schools afterwards. Uh, we're in the process of getting something like this, going as we call liberation school. And we teach Chicano things, but I don't I don't really I don't really think so. Because we're taxpayers, you know? Why don't they

00:37:19.020 - 00:37:39.000

change the schools to gear to the to the Mexican American geared to the black thing, you know, instead of just geared to the white middle class thing? Yes. So they're not doing this. So they're not doing it. That was taken at Mills College. The oldest are

00:37:39.000 - 00:38:08.650

one of the oldest ladies seminaries in California. Very exclusive school so they're not doing it. What? The instruction in that, as I see it, is that black American students and teachers parents must join courage and begin to set up schools for themselves. I think it's very

00:38:08.650 - 00:38:27.410

important, and it's very revolutionary. I'm sure I'll have a lot of of, uh, controversy. There will be a lot of controversy over that statement, as there has been over quite a few statements I have made so far and have yet to make. Do you know that

00:38:27.410 - 00:38:54.420

more black American students graduate from university are college annually than the students that graduate in the whole of Great Britain annually? It's a shocking statistic, isn't it? What happens to them? Where are they? What have they learned? What can they do? One could easily set up

00:38:54.420 - 00:39:23.240

a very popular questionnaire like Where are they now or something like that? Where is that? A person who revved up Amelia Earhart's plane last. That's about where he is to the college graduate. What happened to him is that he takes he takes his B A in

00:39:23.240 - 00:39:45.870

liberal arts. Now what on earth a person can do with a liberal arts degree? B. A. I mean a white man can hardly get on with it. A black man is almost hampered by it. Carter G. Woodson, one of our great sociologists and historians I was

00:39:45.870 - 00:40:06.550

born in the 18 hundreds, was one of the first men to go to Yale. Black Man. He said that it took him 15 years to get over a Yale education. He took a liberal arts course, Greek Latin. At that time, liberal arts courses included those subjects,

00:40:06.560 - 00:40:32.270

probably medieval harpsichord. Important subjects like that, maybe ceramics, uh, he roomed with a white boy from Kansas who took agriculture. Now, Doctor Woodson's mother was washing clothes by hand to send him to school, he said. After they finished, the white boy went back to Kansas and

00:40:32.270 - 00:40:50.030

expanded his father's farm from a 2000 acre farm to a 20,000 acre farm. And all doctor Woodson could do for his mother was go and stand over her shoulder at the washing board and quote homer in Greek. It took him 15 years to get over it.

00:40:51.510 - 00:41:15.430

When when we see that as Africans say today be today, we need young men, he can do law, we need young men. Today we should start now, sending certain people to school to do international law. It may be that the time will come when we will

00:41:15.430 - 00:41:38.890

need somebody at the international court at The Hague to plead our case. Who knows who's going to look around the corner and say No? We need doctors who are not just thinking about their practice but research who are working in medicine. Medical research. We need support.

00:41:38.890 - 00:42:04.990

We need to support these youngsters, uh, in in a a new way, not just to get them to identify two with things exiling themselves as Miss B. Richard says two things. We went to Cal State at Hayward and heard Mr Leo Basile, who was the president

00:42:05.000 - 00:42:34.930

of the Black Students Union at Merritt College. I I think that he talked more about the new math, new education, a new approach to the Negro intellectual. I think he had some important things to say. This is a simple means of survival. You got you know

00:42:34.930 - 00:42:49.170

that you got to do something, you see that things are going wrong. It's like a frog. You drive whatever you drop a rat in a bowl of water in a little cup of while he can't swim around or nothing. He'll keep on treading water and keep

00:42:49.170 - 00:43:02.730

on treading water, no matter how they won't give up. It's just a simple factors where there's life, there's hope as long as you live and you're going to have a little bit of hope and you're gonna move on that on that same line, I mean, what

00:43:02.730 - 00:43:15.340

does it take for a brother to realize that? Because La brothers, they don't realize exactly man what we're trying to do? Well, the first thing they do, but he didn't speak themselves the first thing that says I can't do it, but we can't do nothing. The

00:43:15.350 - 00:43:25.670

same thing they told us is married. We went up there and we said, We want a remedial reading program. The first thing the brother told us, Oh, man, you know you can't get nothing. You know we can't do nothing. And that's all upon that television thing,

00:43:25.670 - 00:43:37.800

too, and a part of that history that shows us that we can't do nothing, because we you know, we've never seen ourselves doing anything and we get that into our mind. You see, that subconscious thing is tell us that we defeat ourselves automatically by saying we

00:43:37.800 - 00:43:49.830

can't do it, We just beat ourselves without even, you know, having to advance on the enemy or whatever the case might be, Brother said. You can, you know, if they told us Point blank. You ain't getting no black president of merit. You can't do it, man.

00:43:49.830 - 00:44:04.550

It's impossible. That's what a lot of them saying. But we went in there and got our program together, and we did see the thing that we got to do is we got the rest of the pen from the hands of juice. That's the guy who knows

00:44:04.550 - 00:44:17.940

more about us than we know about because he writes all the books about all that research and everything. We got to do anything. We gotta push for the research grants and everything else so we can go out and study. You know, all these things about ourselves,

00:44:17.940 - 00:44:30.300

and then Monday, when we get ourselves down like they got themselves down and then we can sit back and get a research grant and you know, and sit back and study the relationship with the hubcap to the automobile industry and all those little beautiful things, you

00:44:30.300 - 00:44:46.160

know, but right now it's black intellectuals. We got to formulate those programs, use every resource that we got. If you're going to be a historian, if you're gonna take history in that class, when the teacher gets up and tell you about George Washington, all those people

00:44:46.170 - 00:45:03.380

whip it on him. You don't flush them out. Let's talk about the things that you've missed just a minute ago that you overlooked when you talk about you know, George Washington, the father of the country. And he sure was. He followed a whole lot of little

00:45:03.380 - 00:45:19.720

brown Children back there in the land quarters. Talk about that. Thomas Jefferson talking about All men are created equal at the same time when he writing that down that great piece of paper, The Declaration of Independence. The cat is being fanned by his black slave. Let's

00:45:19.720 - 00:45:35.990

talk about that and let's talk about when when white people, you know, use their little cold words, and they talk about rap brown being treasonous and seditious, saying all these ugly things. You see, the people are confused. When people are very confused, they'll stand up and

00:45:35.990 - 00:45:52.280

say things you don't like. We are so great You know, we have freedom of speech in this country, patting themselves on the back and the Russians are wrong because they won't let people say what they're doing. They got laws against people saying certain things, and as

00:45:52.280 - 00:46:07.670

soon as that Brown gets up and says something they don't like to say, they ought to be a law against that which, if you run it down to, you know, it's, you know, in that saying that the Russians are right, you see. And they ran brown

00:46:07.670 - 00:46:26.200

and seditious and saying all the trees of the thing when he called Linden Van Jones a redneck camel breath, Yeah, come back with you and Chili Bean eating hunky. That's terrible. He shouldn't say things like that about our president, that man. I mean, you don't like

00:46:26.680 - 00:46:45.390

there oughta be a law against it, but at the same time, your history teacher will tell you tomorrow about that Great America who stood up and spoke out against King George and they said, Man, you can't be doing that. That's that's treason. An old Patrick Henry

00:46:45.390 - 00:47:00.250

stood up there and say, Well, if this be treason, let us make the best of it those those noble words that we, you know, our talk. And then when our brothers and sisters go out in the streets with bricks and Molotov cocktail and everything when they

00:47:00.260 - 00:47:17.390

are mad and start throwing them because they can't get justice because they feel like they're being taxed taxation without representation. They don't put on no costumes, but pick up the brakes, go out on the street and do their thing. Now People in Boston, when they feel

00:47:17.390 - 00:47:37.300

like they were being taxed without representation, they jump on this boat. No respect for law and order. No respect for property. Dump people t in the water. And in our history, teacher tells what a great pray try to act that was But the cold thing about

00:47:37.300 - 00:47:56.020

you tell the teacher them dudes didn't even have the courage to take the blame themselves dressed up like Indians. Try to blame it on them. So when the brothers go out in the streets and everything and they start, you start dealing with this thing, they start

00:47:56.020 - 00:48:06.760

talking about what? I don't believe in all this violence and riots and going on you tell me what? What about that historical event on Boston Commons that day. Well, then people got angry and mad and went out there with them bricks and rocks and started throwing

00:48:06.760 - 00:48:23.030

it at the British militia who just happened to be what you know, equivalent to our National Guard. Today they were the law who was supposed to maintain the order. And so those colleges got fed up and went out there with bricks and rocks and threw them

00:48:23.030 - 00:48:41.510

at home. And only reason they don't throw Molotov cocktails. They had no gasoline. And the National Guard British militia came out there, and the captain gave the order. They open found and they killed him. Seven people, one of those seven with one of our black brothers,

00:48:41.510 - 00:48:57.020

and Chris was at They don't tell you about that in the books, but this is what they run on you. But you got You know, they have to understand that when these brothers out there doing the same thing, you got to run these parallel and make

00:48:57.030 - 00:49:16.120

that teacher deal with that. Would you talk about brothers and sisters getting themselves together in a black perspective in school? Uh, learning about black writers, et cetera, that have been missed. Black heroes in the past seven. Okay, there's many of us. Uh, you know, we want

00:49:16.120 - 00:49:32.250

to be schoolteachers now. I was invited to a class English class at Hoover Junior High and the black English teacher. She asked me to come and talk to her class. So I went and I talked. And I ask you a few questions about, you know, different

00:49:32.250 - 00:49:46.790

things have been going on in the class. And what, you know, she was she? She went to school down south, got a degree, creatures, credential and all that stuff. She's teaching English, but she knows nothing. She knows absolutely nothing about Afro American writers. She knows Baldwin.

00:49:47.470 - 00:50:02.410

And she heard, you know, they dealt with excerpts from my native son in the class, and that's about the extent of it. So what? I mean, you got you know, again, here's that relationship that you used as an argument. When you talk to that administration, you

00:50:02.410 - 00:50:16.900

say, Look, if you can't integrate black things into your subject matter, will let us have several black courses. Now, take, for instance, in English class. You go there, you come out of the ghetto, experience you down in grammar school in grade school. I mean, junior high

00:50:16.900 - 00:50:29.830

probably is when you read it or in the high school. How many of you read Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger. Okay, this is talking about a young white water come from a middle class white family in New York City Going to prep school

00:50:29.830 - 00:50:43.240

in this type of background, and you're supposed to sit down and read this and write a composition on it or a paper. Now, the thing is, is that you cannot deal with that. You cannot feel the emotions that that white boy fell at different points in

00:50:43.240 - 00:50:54.710

that book, enough to put it down on paper and express it in a coherent manner so that the professor, you know will dig it and put that grade on it. Because this is the type of thing to give you, Hemingway and Shakespeare and all these people

00:50:54.710 - 00:51:07.040

who you don't relate to. Now, if the English classes could put like, native son in there, for instance, and when he gives you the booklets to read and say, Well, you picked the book that you want to do your title paper on you pick native son.

00:51:07.050 - 00:51:17.690

Why because you'll be able to write a beautiful paper. See, because you understand what bigger Thomas felt when that white girl slipped in that car. You know, he would show for how you tend stuff. You know, we've all had that feeling, You know, when you get

00:51:17.690 - 00:51:29.380

on the bus and everything just the fact that the one person sits down next to your day automatically. 10 something tent you up. You dig it. See, you can write that you can write about that. You can explain that because you've got that feeling like James

00:51:29.380 - 00:51:42.990

Brown says, You see, you can put it down all you need, all you need to put it down on the basic English tools which they are supposed to teach you, which have nothing to do with black and white. You know, a sentence is a sentence one

00:51:42.990 - 00:51:57.960

way or the other. So then, if you have the basic tools such as the now and the verbs, adjectives and all that kind of stuff, you don't need anything else but that subject matter that you can deal with and relate to and put it down just

00:51:57.960 - 00:52:36.130

like any other educated person. Any other educated person Do you know that in 1950 out of every 100 students, 2% of the black students completed their first Their undergraduate work in 1960 3% completed 1965. There were 14,000 53 B A students. That is to say, uh,

00:52:36.140 - 00:53:00.530

students who got their B A s from black colleges. Do you know that there are 113 black schools? Uh, black schools in the United States? Some of the best schools. Howard at Washington in Washington, D. C. Fisk in Tennessee. Uh, of course, Tuskegee is an important

00:53:00.530 - 00:53:26.280

school for many reasons. Historically, it's important. Uh, Hampton is an important school. Wilberforce is an important school. There are many. They have. They have done a wonderful job, not not not as much as they could do. And I hope not as much as they will do.

00:53:26.350 - 00:53:48.570

But there's one thing I've noticed having grown up until my teens in a small town in the South. I know that at least we read black poets and black novelists. We learned to sing the Negro National Anthem, which was a poem written by James Weldon Johnson

00:53:50.350 - 00:54:21.130

with beautiful lyrics just for The black students are black young people who've grown up in the North. I'll try to sing a bit of it. It says. Lift every voice and sing till earth and heaven ring ring with the harmonium e all liberty Let that resounding

00:54:21.160 - 00:54:55.670

rise high as a list mean skies let it resound loud as the roaring sea sing a song full of the hope that the dark past has taught us Sing a song full of the faith that the present has brought us Facing a rising sun of a

00:54:55.670 - 00:55:20.280

new day be done let us march on until victory is won. Okay, now in stamps Arkansas in my little town it's a little smaller than this studio, at least saying that in every morning right after the, uh, we sang, Oh, say, can you see? And I

00:55:20.280 - 00:55:45.670

was very surprised when I got to California at 13 and found that everybody didn't sing the Negro National anthem. That's one of the one of the positive, uh, aspects of the black schooling and Southern Black School in particularly, um, when when black students are disrespected, the

00:55:46.240 - 00:56:10.660

there is a well, it will definitely show in their work in there in their hopes in their aspirations, Dr. Kenneth B. Clark said. 1 may assume that if a child is not treated with the respect which is due him as a human being, and if those

00:56:10.660 - 00:56:40.420

who are charged with the responsibility of teaching him believe that he cannot learn, then his motivation and ability to learn becomes impaired. That's very clear. Countee Cullen, in a poem called Incident, says, once riding in old Baltimore, heart filled head filled with glee, I saw a

00:56:40.420 - 00:57:02.700

Baltimorean keep looking straight at me now. I was eight and very small, and he was no whit bigger. And so I smiled. But he poked out his tongue and called me ***. I saw the whole of Baltimore from May until December. Of all the things that

00:57:02.700 - 00:57:29.360

happened there, that's all that I remember now that poem catches the truth of a child, the truth of Children, the truth of youth. If we are intending to go forward into a tomorrow, then we have got to support back up, sustain and direct our young people

00:57:29.370 - 00:58:00.530

in fields of education that will be relevant to their lives. Not be a s, not degrees in, uh, medieval harpsichord. or ceramics. It's very important that they deal with today. Thank you very much. A baffle, rew rew err aereo Oh, no, Kanye! Any LeBeau Larry Fun

00:58:00.530 - 00:59:01.140

batty Wasow a bow Ready, buddy? Whoa! Yeah! Whoa! Larue e or me? Les Oh, Room e or me late? Oh, yeah, before Yeah, before their Oh, they mean ceramic bowl. Oh, he or me lately? Me? Oh, room the bathroom. Barueri Rio! Well, what can union label

00:59:01.620 - 00:59:07.040

a Larry fucking batty? What's our heba ready?