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IN THIS ISSUE...BLACK POWER SUPPLEMENT

OAKLAND FREEDOM SCHOOLSMISSION REDEVELOPMENT FIGHT

NOVEMBER 1966 '-2001. VOL; 2 NO. 10

INSIDE OFFICE, Arvin workers wait to meet with Di Giorgio.

UJ(,)

JAMES COTTON BLUES BAND ~.....QUICK SILVER MESSENGER SE~STOKELY CARMICHAEL & TI(~

THE GRATEFUL DEAD J'JOHNNY TALBOT & DE THANGS ~

-nJOHN HARDY, MC -nJON HENDRICKS, MC,FILLMORE AUDITORIUM

SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 203:00 PM-MIDNIGHT $2.50

the camp manager, for talking in favorof UFWOC. "You're a liar'" yelled DiGiorgio. Then he calmed down and toldChavez he would 'investigate' the firing.Later on he lost his cool again when theworkers told him they had been paid29¢ an hour on a piece rate at the ranch.Again he told them they were lying. "Itmust have been a mistake," he said.CONTINUED ON PAGE 10

dez, UFWOC organizer, who acted as in­terpreter, and Stuart Weinberg, theirlawyer.

The building was being run like astockade: the elevators were guarded.Anyone who looked like a farmworker ordemonstrator was not even allowed in theelevator. The elevator operators enjoyedplaying cop, questioning all people theydidn't recognize.

The delegation of workers was told togo into a small office right off the DiGiorgio waiting room: it was not RobertDi Giorgio's office.

After the workers' went into the officeand were joined by Robert Di Giorgioand Mr. Brotherton, Vice President incharge of Public Relations, the door wasclosed. A few minutes later. four laborofficials from the AFL-ClO came into thewaiting room: Tim Twomey, Vice-Pres­ident of the San Francisco Labor Council .and Secretary-Treasurer of the Hospital

. Workers Local #250; Rod Larson, Inter-'national Representative of the AmericanFederation of State County and MunicipalEmployees; Richard Groulx, ExecutiveAssistant Secretary ofthe Alameda CountyCentral Labor Council: and Wray Jacobs,Assistant Secretary of the Alameda Cen­tral Labor Council.

The labor men came in support of thefarm worker delegation.

The meeting behind the door went on for

an hour. "What's there to talk about solong?" asked one of the picketers,• 'There's only one question for Di Giorgioto answer _ will you agree to electionswithin two weeks?"

At noon, Brotherton and Di Giorgiocame out. The farm workers stayed in theoffice. Much of the discussion had beenabout grievances at the Arvin Ranch. DiGiorgio tried to keep the conversationoff the elctions and on specific, irrelevantgrievances. He signed a letter saying thatcertain workers who had been fired wouldbe given back their jobs.

At first smiling «nd friendly, Di Giorgioburst into anger when Luis Chavez toldhim he had been fired by Jesse Marcu;:;,

OUTSIDE DI GIORGIO OFFICE, Luis Valdez of UFWOC addresses picket line.

At 10, Thursday morning, three Arvinfarm workers: Mack Lyons, Luis Chavez(no relation to Cesar) and Arthur Kemplinwent up to the Di Giorgio office for theappointment. With them were Tony Men-

that they were being arrested, orderedthem to get in the elevators, led theminto the street, and then released them.When the workers found they had beentricked, they went back up. They wereejected again, and this time the elev­ator operators would not let them returnto the 6th floor.

A picket line of over 200 sympatheticunion members, students and supportersof the strike, marched outside the build­ing.

The Teatro Campesino sang strike songsfrom a flatbed truck parked in front ofthe building. During the demonstration a62' banner reading "01 GIORGIO - ONEMAN ONE VOTE - ARVIN WORKERSDE­MAND ELECTIONS - was lowered from theroof of the building. A building employeerushed to the roof, tore it loose and let.it fall to the street.

FARM WO'RKERS,LABOR OFFICIALS,SNCC EDITOR ARRESTED

ARVIN WORKERSWIN RIGHT TO01 GIORGIOELECTION

SAN FRANCISCO -

Workers at the Di Giorgio ranch in Arvin,California won a major victory here-the rightto an election-by picketing the rna in officesof the Di Giorgio Corporation. Di Giorgiogave in and are permitting an election to beheld, They had refused up to now.

by Terence CannonSix farm workers

from the Arvin, California ranch of the DiGiorgio Corporation, six labor officials,and the editor of THE MOVEMENT werearrested here October 20 and 21.

The workers deleg~ti(;m~ led by MackLyons from Bakersfield, had driven upfrom Kern County to meet with RobertDi Giorgio, President of the corporation.They were demanding a union-represent­ation election at the Arvin ranch.

They arrived at noon on W~dnesday

and went up to the 6th floor lobby of DiGiorgio. Lyons spoke with Di Giorgio'ssecretary. She offered to let a smalldelegation of three meet with Di Giorgiothe next morning at 10.

"We're going to wait right here," saidLyons, "until Mr. Di Giorgio meets withus. We've got all day. We left Arvin at4: thiS morning."

The 15 workers sat there in the lobby,under the lights of the TV cameras andthe stares of Di Giorgio employees. Thepolice, under Captain Charles Barker,conferred with Di Giorgio and decided topull a trick. They announced to the workers

PAGE 2 THE MOVEMENT NOVEMBER 1966

111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111. EDIT0 R I A L S 1111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111

QUESTIONS ABOOT THE BLACK POWER CONFERENCE~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~'

WHAT IS A REVOLUTIONARY NEWSPAPER1~-~~~~----

stokely Carmichael will speak onthe University of California Berkeleycampus on Black Power-Black Nation­alist organizations threaten to pic­ket the conference .. Here is StokelyCarmichael's schedule in the BayArea for his short trip to Californiathis month. 1: Meeting with communitypeople from around the Bay Are a(Black cats who know what's happen-.ing already). 2: Press conference.3: Speaks at Black Power conferenceat Stanford University (primarily whitegroup). 4: Radio interview. 5: Meetingwith staff of Haight-Ashbury project(small group of organizers). 6: Meetingwith San Francisco Friends of SNCC(primarily white group). 7: Bay AreaSNCC Council Meeting (primarily whitegroup). 8: Meeting with San FranciscoState College Black Student Union(the Black intellectuals who do nothingbut talk). 10: Finally, at the Berkeleycampus (pr imarily all white group).

Now the question I'm asking hereis when does S to k ely Carmichaelreally speak to the masses of Blackpeople in Hunter's Point, East 14thStreet in Oakland, East Palo Alto. and

Our regular readers will notice thatthe Editorial Group has a lot more namesthis month: We are trying to make 1HEMOVEMENT what it should be, and whatis needed now--an independent-thinking•'revolutionary" newspaper. .

We put the word "revolutionary" inquotes, because that word means a lot ofcjifferent things to different people--like.. Black Power:' In these notes we wouldlike to try to define what we mean by arevolutionary newspaper:

Newspapers don't create revolutionsor movements; they follow and strengthenthem. This is important; a movementnewspaper must always be responsible tothe movements with which it deals.

In long range terms we're talking aboutthe overthrow of a political system thatkeeps the vast majority. qf ~tscitizells

voiceless and powerless.. :~ Ccmtrol over tne politics in 'Arri~ricamust come from the bottom, not the top.This means that the power now concen­trated at the top must be taken away bythe people and controlled by the people.The process of taking'this power must bein the people's own terms and in their own·time, and by whatever means they decideon.TIJE CONTENTS (lNF:.ORMATION) QF.AR~YOLU;rlONARYl'lf;.WSPAPER sha]l:.

1) Be useful to people's struggles. Itshall discuss radical tactics and thereasons for using them. These tactics-!lust be practically possible.

THE MOVEMENTis published monthly by the staffof the Student Nonviolent Coor­dinating Committee of California.

EDITORIAL OFFICE:449 14th StreetSan Francisco, California 94103626-4577

EDITORIAL GROUP:Terence CannonEllie IsaksenFrank CieciorkaBobbi CieciorkaMike SharonBrooks PenneyHardy Fryejoe BlumAlex SteinMike FolsomEllen EstrinRoy DahlbergDave Wellman

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other ghettoes around the Bay .Area?And how do Black Nationalist groupshelp the masses of Black people bypicketing the Black Power Conferenceat Berkeley because it might hurt Gov­ernor Brown? And the great Blackintellectuals at San Francisco StateCollege who go around bad-mouthingwhite people and making statement~

for the masses of Black people, butare business majors in college. (Whereare they going to work when they finishcollege-in the Black community orwhite?) Why aren't these Black groupsorganizing to bring Stokely Carmichaelto speak to the Black community in­stead of now criticizing whites whoare trying to raise the issue of BlackPower in their community?

We feel that the rally should beheld on East 14th Street in Oakland orin Hunter's Point where the masses ofpeople live who are caught in the bindbetween Black Power and integratioli­ism. Another question that I find my­self raising is why should the massesof Negro people who have been askedto respond to "Black Power" and whoare now responding, be put in a box

2) Tell what really happened in a sig­nificant event. Correct the distortions ofthe national press and describe importantevents not reported by the national press.

3) Relate one local struggle to another.Overcome the Establishment's attemptto make local issues unique and to isolatethem into seeking local solutions. Thereare obViously no purely local solutions thatare radical or sufficient. Struggles cannotbe successful in Chicago or Mississippi orWatts alone.

4) Put struggles--local and national-­in a wider revolutionary context. There ismuch to be learned practically from theexperience of people in Africa, LatinAmerica and Asia. The Americangovern­ment cannot be allowed to isolate struggleinside its borders from the solutions beingwprked out by p09r. people ill ttte rest.ofthe world. On the other hand, we can'tbe romantIc about freedom 'S-trliggles~'fn

other areas of the globe. We must knowwhat is happening.THE AUDIENCE OF A REVOLUTIONARY

NEWSPAPER40% of the American people live in

poverty and deprivation--at a minimum.We must speak to all these people, as

SAN DIEGO _..: South Vietnamese Pre­mier Ky will be in San Diego on Novem­ber. 16th, his only formal appearance inthe U.S. The United Organizations to Endthe War in Viet Nam of San Diego, andthe Students for a Democratic Societyare planning the following activities:

1) On Tuesday night, November IS,before Ky's arrival, a rally featuringprominent speakers opposed to the war.(Before the rally there will be anti-warprograms on the various college cam-

by Black Power advocates, white radi­cals and Black intellectuals? .'

I feel that if the Black Power Con­ference had been held in Hunter'sPoint or East Oakland, probably theoverwhelming majority of the groupwould have been white. But. at leastMr. Stokely Carmichael would be avail­able for questioning by the masses ofBlack people who :aren't going to theUniversity of California campus forany conference. It should have beenremembered by the Stu den t s for aDemocratic Society that when the Viet­nam Day Committee held their rally itwas in West 0 a k I and-right in themiddle of the Black ghetto, but yetwhen they hold a Black Power rally,it is held far away from the peopleconcerned.

If the Black Nationalists groupspicket the conference, this will againconfuse the masses 'of Black peopleand when the masses of Black peoplebecome confused, they end up beingput down by the police forces of ourcities. Where are the intellectuals,both Black and white, when the clubsare being swung against the heads of

'well as to those who may get more of theloot from this unjust system but who seethrough it all and are discontent--thestudents, radicals and organizers.

A revolutionary newspaper must w~steno time in explaining or defending thedesires or tactics of the powerless tothose in power. We ask for no favors. Thepaper must be circulated down here amongus, not mailed to the filing cabinets ofthose in power.THE LANGUAGE OF A REVOLUTIONARY

NEWSPAPERIt does no good to speak of the "ruling

class" without demonstrating practicallywho rules and how< they rule. It is uselessto speak of "imperialism" without makingclear what imperialism means to the livesof people. When you speak of the "workingclass:: po you mean. just those whq are inunions, or those who are not? Words like

I " I I ~~.t l ." I' I '.. •

these are-usea like swear words to relievepeople from the burden of explaining them­selves.

Cut out jargon, new left or old left, 'saywhat you mean.

CONTINUED ON PAGE 3, COL. 1

puses in the area)2) On the day of Ky's viSit, November

16, a massive demonstration on CoronadoIsland at the Hotel del Coronado where Kyhas been invited to speak by the Associa­ted Press managing editors convention(otherwise known as the Managed Pressassociated editors convention),

If you want to offer help or financialaid, or for more information, contactThe San Diego Committee to End the Warin Viet Nam, P.O. Box 15193, San Diego,California.

Black people? (Somewhere scaringwhite groups, I.guess.)

We feel that it is time to start ex­plaining Black Power to the massesof people whose lives are most ef-'fected by the Black Power movementfirst and to all intellectual groups-.Black and ~hite-second. And that theBlack Power advocates and Black in­tellectuals should spend more of theirtime in the poor community trying toshow poor people how to organizepolitically and economically-so thatthey might get the Man off their necks.

We don't feel that the originatorsof "Black Power" should ask theNegro community around the Bay areato accept their program and then whenthey come out to speak, address them­selves primarily to white radicals andBlack intellectuals.

It is felt by this editorial staff thatMr. Carmichael had the responsibilityto review his schedule in Californiabefore he came out and to make surethat he was speaking to the masses ofBlack people as well as to whiteswhile on this trip to Northern California.=HARDY FRYE

Any material which appears in TheMovement may be reprinted by otherpublications, groups or individuals.Please give credit to The Movement.

ELECTIONSANDNEW POLITICS

We address this editorial to people'sgroups: welfare rights, anti-poverty, farmworkers, civil rights, student groups:

There's been a lot of talk about politicsand New Politics, about elections andvoting,

Maybe there are some favors you canget otit of the politicians of California.They don't give out m:lch, and then thereare a lot of strings attached, but nowand then they'll .giv~ q little: something:an election at DiGiorgio, some money toorganize With, that"sort 'of thing.

If a group really thinks it can get some­thi~g it needs right now from thesepoliticians, we won't criticize its decisionto vote for those politicians.

That is, until there is a real chance ofkicking the politicians out and putting insomething better: politicians we can con­trol.

The question we ask is: Is there a realchance now to kick them out and get con­trol? When people talk to us about NewPolitics, we wonder if we are strong enoughto do the things they talk about.

If we don't have strong, powerful, activelocal movemen~s, how can we have astrong political movement for the wholestate of California?

Are the groups we belong to and sup­port, strong enough to enforce the de­mands we make? Is it enough just toattack Mr. Pat Brown, if we can't controlthe office of the Governor?

Let's be realistic. Are we strong enoughto use our votes to change the state ofCalifornia? We think that we're not strongenough yet. There's a lot of local or­ganiZing that has to be done before we cantalk about all getting together politically.

Is the Farm Workers Union strongenough to tell the Governor what to do?

Are the Welfare Rights groups strongenough?

Is the Berkeley campus strong enough?Are all of them together strong enough?It may be possible to use a political

campaign to organize people. Most cam­paigns get into the bag of trying to win atall costs.

Let's do a lot more working, organizingand struggling before we spend our energybuilding a state-wide political thing. Whenthe day comes that we take on the Demo­cratic Party in this state, we better betough enough to beat them, or give them arun for their money. We have a lot ofhope - hope is what keeps us going. Buthope can fool us into jumping out of ourholes and getting shot down.

As Chester Wright of Los Angeles saidabout riots, "Us niggers is going to haveour riots when we want to, not when some­one else tells us to:'

Let's apply the same philosophy topolitics. =

NOVEMBER 1966 THE MOVEMENT PAGE 3

L.B. McNamara spurns plea from father of drafted Romeo.

PEOPLE AND POWER 111 lACr .'NN'S

INVESTIGATE YOUR LOCAL CIA

AGIT-PROP POP OPERA

.A

York Times story said he had been for 15years the chief of the St. Louis CIA office,and that his principal job was the recruit­ment of personnel for the spy agency.

I had recently been reading Raul Hil­berg's The Destruction of the EuropeanJews, which details the intimate coopera­tion of Hitler's political police and theGerman industrialists in various formsof domestic and international criminality.

Shortly after the crash story appearedI read Schlesinger's Thousand Days. tlisaccount of the CIA role in the Bay ofPigs invasion is consistent with the hy­pothesis that CIA may have been acting inthe interest of U.S, banks and corpora­tions trying to reclaim what Castro tookaway from them, figuring if they suckedKen ned y into beginning that ill-fatedoperation, he'd feel compelled to finishit off with U.S. troops, and Castro wouldbe gone.

Fan t a s tic? Unbelievable?' Crackpot?Maybe.

On the other hand the skeptic mightenquire: in how many other offices of theCIA do bankers and businessmen screenpossible recruits? Why would one of themost powerful bankers in the middlewest (whose bank has ties with, inciden­tally, some of the larger internationalcorporations) be so interested in who getsrecruited to do the dirty work of the CIA?

The questions may be crackpot, but theanswers would be facts which, one sus­pects, would lead to sorrie rather startlingconclusions about how far down that roadwe've already gotten. C

(Editor's Note: Jack sent in this columnalong with a note which said in part,• 'Since you originally suggested using thiscolumn as a stimulus for research, Ithought this might get someone interestedin doing a real story on the CIA. I'm toldthey have regional offices in both SanFrancisco and LA. Who runs these offices?Is there an advisory council of fat cats?)

However, for those who feel uneasyabout trends in the U.S., and want moreevidence, an interesting line of investi­gation is suggested by recent .events.

Last month Robert.Kennedy's brother­in-law was killed in the crash of a privateplane in Idaho. Killed with him was LouisWerner, n, a St. Louis investment banker.The AP dispatch on the crash identifiedhim as an employee of the CIA. The New

was responsible for the killing and whyit was done. It is not useless to observethe changes which took place in a num­ber of policy areas when the new John­son administration took over. There isno space here for a detailed examina­tion of these policy changes, but, forexample, the change in U.S. policy towardLatin America was immediate and couldhardly have been more complete hadthe assassination been publicly acknow­ledged a coup d'etat by its perpetrators.

Several commentators have remarkedthat the assassination must have beenthe act of one demented killer becauseit was not foIl owed by a right-wing take­over. This explanation overlooks thefact that, in some policy areas, Johnson'saccession to the presidency constituteda right-wing takeover. This reality isdifficult if not impossible for most Ameri­cans to accept, so they either dismissthe matter .from their minds, or they scoffat the idea as the product of politicaldemonology. One begins to understandhow the German people could have per­mitted the excesses of the Nazi period.

It is true that the facts of the assas­sination are in dispute and, given thegreat w'~ight of respectability of thosewho support the Warren Commission andits report, it is probably inevitable thatmost people in the society will continueto take the comfortable view that all isstill well.

rnc.c.

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'0..c:0.

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haven't seen anything like this on thestreet since Berlin in the early 1930's.We had some wonderful friends who usedto do just what you are doing .•• Hitlerhad them all executed • • :'

The shows alone won't prevent anotherHitler, but they do capture a spirit ofstraight-forwardness and directness thatis the fundamental quality of the pop­operas. A student commented, •'They are alively group, exuberant - they stop alongthe street like they own that part of thestreet - they're sassy. There's enoughentertainment to make people stop. Theypack up and go and leave you with some­thing to think about .• :' c

'The evidence mounts daily that theu.s. is far along the road to fascism.If there was a point of no return inthe post-World-War-ll era, it probablywas passed On Novem'Jer 22, 1963. Threerecent books, Lane's Rush to Judgment,Epstein's Inquest and Sauvage's TheOswald Affair, pretty well nail down thefact that the members of the WarrenCommission were, at best, afraid ofwhat they would find if they looked tooclosely into the assassination of John

F. Kennedy. This conclusion is, on the.evidence of these books, a very con­servative one. It is more reasonableto suppos.e, from this evidence, that twoor more members of the Commission con­sciously conspired to exclude some facts,distort, misinterpret and misrepresentothers, and, in general, to ensure thatthe staff of the, Commission would func­tion ineffectively.

It is useless to conjecture about who

Agit-prop theatre is an old art form longout of use in this country. Lately it hasbeen put back into use by the Haight-Ash­bury Vietnam Committee, a group ofpolitical activists, some of whom re­cently have turned theatrical. Disguisedas a theatrical group, they are getting theiranti-war sentiments to more people thanthey ever reached before. Their per­formance includes lively music, a simplestory line, and a message - Stop. the WarMachine. The two current shows are called"Romeo and Pagliaccia," and "U'l Red,White and Blue': They were written by thegroup and have been performed from theback of a pickup truck in all parts of thecity. The borrowed pickup had to be re­turned but they are finding the pop-opera' sspirit serves a useful purpose at ralliesand public events, as well as on the­streets.

It takes about eight people to put on thetwo current pop-operas. The cast changesquite frequently because they are mostlyworking people and students who can'talways find time. The style of the theatreallows for fairly easy replacements sinceall of the songs, music, and dialogue areon tape, and are amplified over the move­ments of the actors. Also the populartunes, the rock and roll tempo and thecolorful presentation are easy to adapt to.

It's a unique trend in political activityand some of the activist groups seem toview it simply as show business and failto give it much support.

Following a performance, the group wasreminded of the long tradition of agit-proppoliticai activity by an enthused, middle­aged German lady who remarked, "I

Because you would knowthat. ..

thousands of those newlyenslaved

(drafted) men would nevercome back alive

to bother you with theirprotesting

marching, or rioting.Now if you were pres ident

you might do thingsdifferently,

But then again, being blackyou never have to worry aboutbecoming president !!

(A leaflet ptimed by the Philadel­

phia Fteedom Otganization)

Well, you would probably loveall

those responsible Negro lead­ers. The

so called leaders who alwaysblame rioting on the black

people who areforced to riot.

Well, you would probably tryto destroy those black powerpeople; the ones who keepsaying that

black people riotbecause they are the

last hired and the firstfired;

The ones who keep saying

that. ..

black people riotbecause they are fight­ing for their livesagainst this white racist

society.But then .. :if you ,were president

and if you were whiteand if there were riots

in your citiesand if the people rioting

were blackYou might. ..

increase the draft call inthe cities

where most of the blackpeople Iive.

If you were president

and if you were whiteand if there were riots

in your cities

and if the people riotingwere black

And of course ...

If you were president

and if you were whiteand if there were riots In

your citiesand if the people rioting were

were black

Continued from Page 2REVOLUTIONARY NEWSPAPER

HOW WE TREAT OTHER ORGANIZA­TIONSMost left-wing newspapers do two

things:1) They uncritically praise every half­

way independent or peoples' organization,except.

2) • • . every other left-Wing organiza-

tion. These they constantly knock, claim­ing that their own group is the only onethat sees things "correctlY;'

A revolutionary newspaper at this timeshould try to strengthen all independentand people's organizations by being realis­tic. If groups are weak, we should admitit and suggest ways to make them stronger.

We should CrltlCIZe constructively allgroups that challenge the status quo.

If we disapprove of the actions of apeoples' group we should try to find outwhy it happened and learn from the ex­perience, not attack it out of hand.

Being serious about revolution meansholding nothing sacred, including our­selves. C

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,SNCC CHAIRMAN TALK,S ABOUT BLACK POlNER

WHAT WE WANT

,PAGE 4 THE MOVEMENT NOVEMBER 1966

Meridith March in, Mississippi. King, McKissick and Carmichael march together. King has since repudiated Black Power.

\,

By Stokely Carmichael

-from the New York Review of Books,Sept. 22, 1966

One of the tragedies of the' struggleagainst racism is' that up to now therehas been no national, orga~ization

'which could speak to the growing mili­, tancy of young black people in the ur-

ban ghetto. There has been only a civilrights movement, whose tone of voicewas adapted to an audience of liberalwhites. It served as a sort of bufferzone between them and angry youngblacks. None of its so-called leaderscould g.o into a rioting community andbe listened to. In a sense, I blameourselves-together with the mass me­dia-for what has happened in Watts,Harlem.. Chicago, Cleveland, Omaha.Each time the people in those citiessaw Martin Luther King get slapped,they became angry; when they sawfour little black girls bombed to death,they were angrier; and when' DottUnghappened, they were steaining. We hadnothing to offer that, they could see,except to go out and be beaten again.We helped to build their frustration.

For too many years, black Americans'marched and had their heads brokenand got shot. They were saying to thecountry, "Look, you guys are supposedto be nice guys and we are only go­ing to do what, we are supposed to

\

do-why do you beat us up, why don'tyou' give us what we ask, why' don'tyou straighten yourselves out?" After,yean of this, we are at almostthe same point-because we' demonstrat­ed from a position of weakness. W~cannot be expected any longer tomarch and have our heads broken, inorder to say to whites: come on, you'renice guys., For you are not nice guys.We have found you out.

An organization which c1aitm to.peak foe the needs of a oommunity­as does the Student Nonviolent Coordi­nating COmmittee-'-D'lust speak: in theton~ of that community, not all some­body else's buffer zone. This is thesignificance of black power as a slo­gan. For once, black people are goingto. use the, words they want ,to use­oot just the words whites want to hear.And they will do this no matter howoften the press tries to stop the useof the slogan by equating it with ra­cism, or separatism:

An organization which claims, to' be:working for the needs of a commun­ity-as SNCC does-must work to, ,pro­vide that community with a positionof strength from which to make itsvoic,e beard. This is the significanceof hlack power beyond the slogan.

BLACK POWER can be clearly definedfor those who do not attach the fearsof white America to their questions

'about it. We should begin with thebasic fact that black Americans havetwo problems : they are poor and theyare black. All other problems arise

'from 'tbis two-sided reality: lack of edu-cation, the so-called apathy of blackmen. Any program to' end, racism must

'address itself to that double reality.Almost from its 'beginning, 'SNCC

sought to addresll itself to both condi·'tions with a program' aimed at win­, ning political power for impoverished

Southern blacks. We had to begin with,politics bec;luse' black Americans are

.. propertyless people in a countrywhere property is' valued above all. Webad to work for power, because this

. cOuntry does not function by' moral­ity, love, and nonviolence, but by pow­

'er.' Thus we determii:ted~-to will politicalpower, ,with the idea of moving onfrom there into activity that wouldhave economic effects. With power, the~es could nwke or participate in'making the decisions which governtheir destinies, and thus create basicchange in their day-to-day lives.

But if political power seemed to bethe key to' self-determination, it was

'also obvious that the key had beenthrown down a deep' well many yearsearlier. Disenfranchisement; maintainedby racist terror, makes it impossible

to talk about organizing for politicalpower in 1960. The right to vote hadto be won, and SNCC workers devotedtheir energies to this from 1961 to 1965.They set up voter registration 'drives in ; _the Deep South. They created pressurefoe the vote by holding rDoek eiectionsin Mississippi in 1963 and by helping toestablish the Mississippi Freedom Dem­ocratic Party (MFDP) in 1964. Tbatstruggle was eased, though not won,with the passage of' the 1965 VotiiigRights Act. SNCC workers could thetl ad- .dress themselvell to the question: '~Who

can we vote for, to have our needs met-how do we make, our, vote meaning­ful?N

SNCC had already gone to AtlanticCity for recognition of the MississippiFreedom Democratic Party by the Dem­Ocratic convention and been rejected;it had gone with. the MFDP to Washing­ton for recognition by Congr~s andbeen rejected. In Arkansas, SNce help­ed thirty Negroes to run for SchoolBoard elections; all but one were acfeat­ed, and' there was evidence oJ Jraudand intimidation sufficient to came theirdefeat. 'In Atlanta, Julian Bond' ran forthe state legislature am] was electcJ-­twice-and unseated-twice. in severalstates, black farmers ran in electi~s

'-for agricultiuil committees which makecruc:al decisions concerning land use,loans, etc. Although they won' places on

,a Dumber of _committees, they nevergained the majorities' needed to controlthem.

A LL OF THE EFFORTS were atteinptsto win black power. Then, in Alabama,the oppOrtunity came to see how blackscould be organized on an independentparty basis. An unusual Alabama lawprovides that any group of citizens cannominate candidates for county officeand, if they win 20 per cent of thevote, may be recognized as a countypolitical party. The same then applieson a state level. SNCC went to organize

-in sevenil: counties 'such as 'Lo~ndes,

where black people-wbo form 80 percent ot' tbe population and have anaverage annual income of 'S943-feltthey could accomplisb nothing withinthe framework of the' Alabama Demo­cratic Party because of 'its racism andbecause the qualifying fee for this year'select:o~s was raised from: $50 to $500ift order to prevent n1o5t Negroes frombecoming candidates. On May 3, fivenew county "freedom ,organizations"convened' and nominated candidates for,the offi<:es of sheriff, tax assessor,members of the school boards. Thesemen and women are up for election inNovember--if they live until then.Their ballot symbol is $e black pan-

lhet:: a bOld. beautiful' animal, repre­senting the strength anddigliity of blackdemands today. A man needs a blackpanther 00 his side, when be and hisfamily must 'endure-as huodredll of,Alabamians have endured--loSs of ;00,eviction, starvation" and sometimesdeath, ,for political' activity. He may alsoneed • gun and SNCC reaffirm5"~e rightof black men everywhere to defendthemselves when threatened or attacked.As fot' inithting th~ us~ of' violence, wehope' that such programs as ouni -willmake that unnecessary; but it is' not forus to tell black: communiti~ whetherthey can or cannot use any particularform of ,action to resolve their. problems.Responsihility for the use of ",iolenceby black men, whether in self defenseor initiated by them, lies with the whitecommunity.

This is the specific h;storical experi­ence from which SNCC'S call for "blackpower" emerged on the Mississippimarch last July. But the concept of"black power" is not a recent or iso­lated phenomenon: It has grown out ofthe ferment of agitation and activityby different people and organizationsin many black commun:ties over theyears. Our 'last year of work in Ala­bama added a new concrete possibility.In Lowndes county, for example, blackpower will mean that if a Negro is elect­ed sheriff, he can end police brutality.

If a black man is elected tax assessor,he can collect and cbannel funds foe thebuilding of better roads and schoolsserving black people-tbus advancingthe move from political power into tbeeconom:c' arena. In such areas asLowndes, where black men have a ma­jority, they will attempt to use it to ex­ercise control. This is what they seek:control. Where Negroes lack a majority,

,black power means proper representa­tion and sharing of control. It meansthe creation of power bases from whichblack people can work to change state­wide or nationwide patterns of oppres­sion through pressure from strength­instead of weakness. Politically, blackpower means what it has always 'meantto SNce: the coming-together of blackpeople to elect representatives and t,oforce those representatives to speak totheir needs. It does not mean merelyputting black faces into office. A maoor woman who is black and from theslums cannot be automatically expectedto speak to the needs of black people.

, Most of, the black politicians we seearound the country' today' are not whatSNCC meaos by black po\yer. The power.must be that, of a community, andemanate from there. '

SNCC today is work:!ngin both 'Northand South on programs of voter regis­tration and independent polilical or·ganiz;ng. In some places, such as Ala­bama, Los Angeles, Ne\v York, Pilila­delph-a. and New Jersey, independent'organizing under the black panthersymbol is in progress. The crealion ofa national "black' panther party" illmtcpme ,about; it will tltke time to bJild,anq ,it' is 'much, too early to 'Predict, itssuccess. We have- no' mfallible ma~ter

plan and w~ ~ake n~ ,cla~ to exclu­sive knowledge of how to end raciSm;different gro11ps will work in their owndifferent way~. SNCC cannot spell outthe full logistics of self-determinationbut it can address itself to the problemby helping black communities define

_ their needs, realize their strength, andgo into action along a variety of lineswhich they must choose for themselves.W'ltbout knowing all the ~nswers, it canaddress itself to the basic problem ofpoyerty; to' the fact that in LowndesCounty,86 white families oWn 90' percent of the land. What are' black, peo­ple in that county goiI18 to do' for jobs,where are they 'going to get money?

,There must be reallocation of land, ofmoney.

ULTIMATELY, the eeonomic tOl.lnda~, tions of this country must be shaken ifblack, people are to control. tbeirlives.

CONTINUED ON PAGE 6, COL. 2

Carmichael talks with local residentin Lowndes.County.

THE MOVEMENT PAGE 5

THE PHILOSOPHY OF BLACK NATIONALISM---------

MALCOLM X ON POWER,POLITICS & ORGANIZING

sinefrom EI Verdodero Cuento Del Tio Sam

MALCOLM ONGUERRILLA WARFARE...The dark people are wakingup. They're losing their fear ofthe white man. No place wherehe's fighting right now is hewinning. Everywhere he's fight­rng, he's fighting your and mycomplexion. And they're beat­him...

It takes heart to be a guer­rilla warrior because you're onyour own. In conventional war­fare you have tanks and a wholelot of other people with you toback you up, planes over yourhead and all that kind of stuff.But a guer!illa is on his own.All you have is a rifle, somesneakers and a bowl of rice, andthat's all you need-and a lotheart.

only they lynch you in Texas with a Texasaccent and lynch you in Mississippi witha Mississippi accent.

Ar.d these Negro leaders have the au­dacity to go and have some coffee in theWhite House with a Texan, a Southerncracker--that's all he is--and then comeout and tell you and me that he's going to

CONTINUED ON PAGE 6, COL. 1

THE BALLOT OR THE BULLET------------___No, I'm not an American. I'm one of the

22 million black people who are victimsof Americanism. One of the 22 millionb lack people who are the victims of demo­cracy, nothing but disguised hypocrisy._So I'm not standing here speaking to youa s an American patriot, or a flag saluter,or a flag waver--not I. I'm speaking as avictim of this American system. And I seeAmerica through the eyes of the victim. Idon't see any American dream; I see anAmerican nightmare.

These 22 million victims are waking up.Their eyes are coming open. They're be­ginning to see what they used only to lookat. They're beginning to politically mature.They realize that when white people areevenly divided, and black people have abloc of votes of their own, it is left upto them to determine who's going to sit inthe White House and who's going to be inthe dog house. It was the black man's votethat put the present administration inWashington, D.C., that has seen fit to passevery kind of legislation imaginable, sav­ing you until last, then filibustering on topof that.

And you and my leaders have the au­dacity to run around clapping their hands

-and talk about how much progress we'remaking. And what a good President wehave. If he wasn't good in Texas, he surecan't be good in Washington, D.C. Be­cause Texas is a lynch state. It is in thesame breath as Mississippi, no different;

oo..c:0.

c2ciIII

"';a:

a ghetto or a slum area. And where youand I are concerned, not only do we loseit when we spend it out of the community,but the white man has got the stores inthe community tied up; so that thoughwe spend it in the community at sundownthe man who runs the store takes it overacross town somewhere. He's got us in avise.

So the economic philosophy of blacknationalism means in every church, inevery civic organization, in every fra­ternal order, it's time now for our peopleto become conscious of controlling theeconomy of our community. If we own thestores, if we operate the businesses, ifwe try and establish some industry in ourown community, then we're developingto the position where we are creating em­ployment for our own kind. Once you gaincontrol of the economy of your own com­munity, then you don't have to picket andboycott and beg some cracker downtownfor a job in his business.

The social philosophy of black nation­alism only means that we have to gettogether and remove the evils, the vices,alcoholism, drug addiction, and otherevils that are destroying the moral fibreof our community. We ourselves have tolift the level of our community • . .makeour own society beautiful so that we willbe satisfied in our own social circlesand won't be running around here tryingto knock our way into a social circlewhere we're not wanted. =

The political philosophy of black na­tionalism means that the black man shouldcontrol the politics and the politicians inhis own community; no more. The blackman in the black community has to bere-educated into the science of politicsso he will know what politics is supposedto bring him in return. Don't be throwingout any ballots. A ballot is like a bullet.You don't throw your ballots till you seea target, and if that target is not withinyour reach, keep your ballot in yourpocket••.

The economic philosophy of black na­tionalism is pure and simple. It onlymeans that we should control the economyof our community. Why should whitepeople be running all the stores in ourcommunity? Why should white p e 0 piebe running the banks in our community?Why should the economy of our communitybe in the hands of the white man? Why?If a black man can't move his store intoa white community, you tell me why awhite man should move his store into ab lack community.

The philosophy of black nationalisminvolves a re-education program in theblack community in regards to economics.Our people have to be made to see thatany time you take your dollar out of yourcommunity and spend it in a communitywhere you don't live, the community whereyou live will get poorer and poorer, andthe community where you spend yourmoney will get richer and richer. Thenyou wonder why where you live is always

Malcolm X

WHAT WE HAVE TO DO-------------------------------------I for one, believe that if you give people

a thorough understanding of what it is thatconfronts them, and the basic causes thatproduce it, they'll create their own pro­gram; and when the people create a pro­gram, you get action. When these "lead­ers" create programs, you get no action.The only time you see them is when thepeople are exploding. Then the leaders areshot into the situation and told to controlthings. You can't show me a leader thathas set off an explosion. No, they comeand contain the explosion. They say, "Don'tget rough, you know, do the smart thing:'This is their role--They're just there torestrain you and me, to restrain thestruggle, to keep it in a certain groove, andnot let it get out of controL Whereas youand I don't want anybody to keep us fromgetting out of controL We want to get outof control. We want to smash anything thatgets in our way that doesn't belong there.

Listen to the last part of what I said: Ididn't just say we want to smash anythingthat gets in our way. I said we want tosmash anything that gets in our way thatdoesn't belong there. You see, I had togive you the whole thing, because whenyou read it, you'll hear we're going to

smash everybody. No, I didn't say that. Isaid we'll smash up anything that gets inour way that doesn't belong there. I meanthat. If it doesn't belong there, it's worthyto be smashed. This country practisesthat--power. This country smashes any­thing that gets in its way. It crushes any­thing that gets in its way. And since we'reAmericans, they tell us, well, we'll do itthe American way. We'll smash anythingthat gets in our way • • •

Almost every one o( the African andAsian countries that has gotten indepen­dence has devised some kind of socialis­tic system, and this is no accident. Thisis another reason why I say that you and Ihere in America--who are looking for ajob, who are looking for better housing,looking for a better education--beforeyou start trying to be incorporated orintegrated, or disintegrated into this capi­talistic system, should look over thereand find out what are the people who havegotten their freedom are adopting to pro­vide themselves with better housing andbetter- education and better food and bet­ter clothing.

None of them are adopting the capitalis­tic system because they realize they can't.

You can't operate a capitalistic systemunless you are vulturistic; you have to have

. someone else's blood to suck to be acapitalist. You show me a capitalist, I'llshow you a bloodsucker. He cannot beanything but a bloodsucker if he's goingto be a capitalist. He's got to get it fromsomewhere other than himself, and that'swhere he gets it--from somewhere orsomeone other than himself. So, when welook at _the African continent, when welook at the trouble that's going on betweenEast and West, we find that the nationsin Africa are developing socialistic sys­tems to solve their problems.

There's one thing th~t Martin LutherKing mentioned the other night at theArmory that I thought was significant. Ihope he really understood what he wassaying. He mentioned that while he was insome of _those Scandinavian countries hesaw !l0 poverty. There was no unemploy­ment, no poverty. Everyone was gettingeducation, everyone had decent housing,decent whatever they needed to exist.But why did he mention those countrieson his list as different?

This is the richest country on earth andthere's- poverty, there's bad hOUSing,

there's slums, there's inferior education.And this is the richest country on earth.Now, you know, if those countries thatarepoor can come up with a solution to theirproblems so that there's no unemploy­ment, then instead of running downtownpicketing city hall, you should stop andfind out what they do over there to solvetheir problems.

This is why the man doesn't want youand me to look beyond Harlem or beyondthe shores of America. As long as youdon't know what's happening on the out-:­side, you'll be all messed up dealing withthis man on the inside. I mean what theyuse to solve the problem is not capital­ism. What they are using to solve theproblem in Africa and Asia is not capi­talism. So what you and I should do is findout what they are using to get rid ofpoverty and all the other characteristicsof a rundown society. =

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"The Defense Department is saying nothing about them but therehave been a series of race fights in Germany between white and NegroGI's. One of the worst took place this past summer in Harvey Barracks;Kitzingen. Fifteen white GI's from the 66th Heavy Equipment Maintain­ance Company formed a vigilante group, attempted to terrorize Negrosoldiers. Negro GI's admit that civil rights demonstrations Statesiderl;!sult in unrest, suspicion, and intracompany fights overseas, reportthat at Harvey Barracks mimeographed cards bearing the KKK legendand anti-Negro propaganda have been distributed."

-St. Louis Post-Dispatch, October 2, 1966

NOVEMBER 1966

with other blacks who are oppressed,because of blackness. This is not tosay that there are' no white peoplewho see things as I do, but that it isblack people I must speak. to first.It must be the oppressed to whomSNCC addresses itself primarily, notto friends from the oppressing group.

From birth, black people are tolda set of lies about themselves. Weare told that we are lazy-yet I d~ive

thro\lgh the Delta area of Mississippiand watch black people picking cot­ton in the hot sun for fourteen hours.We are told, "If you work hard, you'llsucceed"-but if that were true, blackpeople would own this country. We areoppressed because we are black-notbecause we are ignorant, not becausewe are lazy, not because we're stupid(and got good rhythm), but becausewe're black.

I remember that when I was a boy,I used to go to see Tarzan movies onSaturday. White TarZan used to beatup the black natives. I would sitthere yelling, "Kill the beasts, kill thesavages, kill 'em!" I was saying: Killme. It was as if a Jewish boy watchedNazis taking Jews off to concentrationcamps and cheered them on. Today, Iwant the chief to beat hell out of Tar­zan and send him back to Europe. Butit takes time to become free of thelks and their shaming effect on blackminds. It takes time to reject the mostimportant lie: that black people inher­ently can't do the same things whitepeople can do, unless white peoplt; helpthem.

The need for psychological equality isthe t.:eason why SNCC today believesthat blacks must organize in. the blackcommunity. Only black people can con­vey the revolutionary idea that hlackpeople ~rc able to do things IhclllSclvcs.Only they can help create in the Wlli­

munity an aroused and continuing hlack

everybody is really decent, we mustforget color." But color cannot be "for­gotten" until. its weight i~ recogllizedand deahh with. White America will notacknowledge that the ~ays in whichthis country sees· itself "ate contradictedby being black-and always have been.Whereas most of the 'people who settledthis country came here for freedom orfor econo~ic opportuniiy, blacks' werebrought here to be slaves. When the·Lowndes Cbunly Freedom Organization'chose the black panther as its 'symbol,itwas christened by the press "the BlackPantherParty"'-:"but the' Alabarria Dem~

ocratic Party, ~hose syn;bol is a rooster~has never been. called' the White CockParty. No one ever talked about "whitepower" because power in this countryis white. All this adds up to more thanmerely identifying a group phenomen­on by some catchy name or adjective.The furor over that black panther re­vealg the problems that white Americahas with color and sex; the furor over

. "black power" reveals how deep ra·cism runs and the great fear whichis attached to. H.

W.HITES WILL NOT SEE that I, for ex­ample, as a person oppressed becauseof my blackness, have common cause

Arkansas, Alabama, and Mississippi toachieve control by the poor of the pro­gram and its funds; it has also been'working with groups in the North, andthe struggle is no less difficult. Be­hind it all is a federal governmentwhich cares far more about winningthe war on the Vietnamese than thewar on poverty; which has put thepoverty program in the hands of self­serving politicians and bureaucratsrather than the poor themselves; whichis unwilling to curb the misuse of whitepower but quick to condemn black pow­er.

To most whites, black power seemsto mean that the Mau Mau are comingto the suburbs at night. The Mau Mauare coming, and whites must stopthem, Articles appear about plots to"get Whitey," creating an atmospherein which "law and order must be main­tained." Once again, responsibility isshifted from the oppressor to the op­pressed. Other whites chide, "Don'tforget-you're only 10 per cent of thepopulation; if you get too smart, we'llwipe you out." If they are liberals,they complain, "what lbout me?­don't you want my help any more?"These are people supposedly concernedabout black Americans, but today theythink first of themselves, of their feel­ings of rejection. Or they admonish,"you can't get anywhere without coali­tions," when there is in fact no groupat present with whom to form a coali­tion in which blacks will not be ab­sorbed and l1etrayed. Or they accuseus of "polarizing the races" by ourcalls for black unity, when th·~ truzresponsibility ·for polarization lies withwhites who will not accept their re­sponsibility as the majority po.ver f0rmaking the democratic process work.

White America will not face the()roblem of color, the reality of it. Thewell-intended say: "We're all human,

MR. JENCKS, a white reporter, per­ceived the reason why America's anti­poverty program has been a sick farcein both North and South. In the South,it is clearly racism which prevents thepoor from running their own programs;in the North, it more often seems tobe politicking and bureaucracy. But theresults are not so different: In theNorth, non-whites make up 42 per centof all families in metropolitan "povertyareas" and' only 6 per cent of families inareas classified as not poor. SNCC hasbeen working with local residents in

enough political, economic and pro­fessional strength to compete onsomewhat' equal terms, will Ne­groes believe in the possibility oftrue cooperat~on and whites acceptits nece~sity. En route to integra­tion, the Negro community needsto develop greater independellce­a chance to run its own affairs andnot cave in whenever "the man"barks . . . Or so it seems to me,and to most of the knowledgeablepeople with whom I talked inMississippi. To OEO, this judgmentmay sound like black national­ism.

SHCC officers: Stokely Carmichael, Chairman; Ruby Doris Robinson, ExecutiveSecretary; Cleveland Sellers, Program Secretary; and James Forman, formerExecutive Secretary.

Continued from Page 4

WHAT WE WANT

rThe' colonies of the United States~and

this includes the black ghettoes withinits -borders, north and south~must-be

liberated. For a century, this nation hasbeen like an octopus of exploitation, itstentacles stretching from Mississippiand Harlem to South America, theMiddle East, southern Africa, and Viet­nam; the form of exploitation variesfrom area· to area but the essentialresult has been the same,--a powerfulfew have been ma;ntained and en­riched at the expense of the poor andvoiceless colored masses. This patternmust be broken. As its grip loosenshere and there around the world, thehopes of black Americans become morerealistic.. For racism to die, a totaJlydifferent America must be born.

This is what the white society doesnot wish to face; this is why that so­ciety preters to talk about integration.But integration speaks not at all tothe problem of poverty, only to theproblem of blackness. Integration to­day means the' man who "makes it,"leaving his black brothers behind inthe ghetto as fast as his new sportscar will take him. It has no relevanceto the Harlem wino or to the cotton­picker making three dollars a day. Asa lady I know in Alabama once said,"the food that Ralph Bunche eatsdoesn't fill my stomach.". Integration, moreover, speaks to the

problem of blackness in a despicableway. As a goal, it has been based oncomplete acceptance of the fact that inorder to have a decent house or educa­tion, blacks must move into a whiteneighborhood or send their children toa white school. This reinforces, amongboth black and white, the idea that"white" is automatically better and"black" i~ by definition inferior.This is why integration is a subterfugefor the maintenance of white' 3uprema­cy. It allows the nation to focus ona handful of Southern children who getinto' white schools, at treat price, andto ignore the 94 per cent who are leftbehind in unimproved all-black schools.Such situations will not change untilblack people have power-to controltheir own school boards, in this case.Then N~groes become equal in a waythat means something, and integrationceases to be a one-way street. Then in­tegration doesn't mean draining skills'and energies from the ghetto intowhite ne~hborhoods; then it can meanwhite people moving from BeverlyHills into Watts, white people joiningthe Lowndes County Freedom Organiza­tion. Then integration becomes rele­vant.

Last April, before the furor overblack pow~r, Christopher Jencks wrotein aNew Republic article on whiteMississippi's manipulation of the anti­poverty program:

The war on poverty has beenpredicated on the notion that thereis such a thing as a communitywhich can be defined geographi­caJly and mobilized fo~ a collectiveeffort to help the poor. This theoryhas no relationship to reality in theDeep South. In every Mississippicounty there are two communities.Despite aJl the pious platitudes ofthe moderates on both sides, theset\\ 0 communities habitually seetheir interests in terms of conflictrather than cooperation. Only whenthe N~o community can muster .

MALCOLM X-"OUR GOVERNMENT?"

You've 'got field Negroes inAmerica today. I'm a field Negro.The masses are the field Negroes.When they see this man's houseon fire, you don't hear the littleNegroes talking about "our gov­ernment is in trouble." They say"The government is in trouble."Imagine a Negro: "Our govern­ment !" I even heard one say,"our astronauts!" They won'teven let him near the plant-"ourastronauts!" "Our Navy"-that'sa Negro that is out of his mind.

MALCOLM XContinued from Page 5be better for us because, since he's fromthe South, he knows how to deal with theSoutherners. What kind of logic is that?Let Eastland be President, he's from theSOllth too. He should be better able to dealwith them than Johnson.

The Democrats have got the govern­ment sewed up, and you're the one whosewed it up for them. And what have theygiven you for it? Four years in office, andjust now getting around to some civil rightslegislation. Just now, after everythingelse iS'gone, out of the way, they're goingto sit down with you and play with you allsummer long--the same old giant con gamethat they call filibuster.

All those are in cahoots together. Don'tyou ever think they're not in cahoots to­gether, for the man that is heading thecivil rights filibuster is a man fromGeorgia named Richard Russell. WhenJohnson became President, the first manhe asked for when he got back to Wash­ington, D.C. was "Dicky"--that's howtight they are. That's his boy, that's hispal, that's his buddy. But they're playingthe old con game. One of them makes be­lieve he's for you, and he's got it fixedwhere the other one is so tight against you,he never has to keep his promise.

So it's time to wake up. And when yousee them coming up with that kind ofconspiracy, let them know your eyes areopen. And let them know you got some­tling else that's wide open too. It's gotto be the ballot or the bullet. The ballotor the bullet. If you're afraid to use anexpression like that, you should get backin the cotton patch, you should get back inthe alley.

They get all the Negro vote, and. afterthey get it, the Negro gets nothing in re­turn. All they did when they got to Wash­ingtlJn was give a few big Negroes bigjobs. These big Negroes didn't need bigjobs, they already had jobs. That's camou­flage, that's trickery, that's treachery,window-dressing.

1'm not trying to knock out the Demo­crats for the Republicans, we'll get tothem in a minute. But it is true--you putthe Democrats first and the Democratsput you last.

Look at it the way it is. What alibis dothey use, since they control Congress andthe Senate? They blame the Dixiecrats.What is a Dixiecrat? ADemocrat. ADixie­crat is nothing but a Democrat in dis­guise. The Democrats never kicked theDixiecrats out of the party. The Dixie­crats bolted themselves once, but theDemocrats didn't put them out. Imagine,those lowdown Southern segregationistsput the Northern Democrats down. Butthe Northern Democrats have never putthe Dixiecrats doWn.

No, look at that thing the way it is. Theyhave got a con game going on, a politicalcon game, and you and I are in the middle.It's time for you and me to wake up andstart looking at it like it is, and trying tounderstand it like it is; and then we candeal with it like it is. C

PAGE 6

NOVEMBER 1966 THE MOVEMENT PAGE 1

Role of Whites in Black Power

TELEPHONE 863-3505

example, Irish power or Oemocraticpow­er, and besides, black power is in someways synonymous with poor-white power.

Of course, SNCC like any other group ­could conceivably become a black supre­macist group some day in the future, butthis shouldn't affect our allegiances now.It makes no sense to support groups weknow are too conservative, for fear thatthe good groups will some day be toomilitant. I am more worried about otherthings. Will SNCC Negroes in their madscramble for power forget the idyllicvision of SNCC's earlier days? Will theycontinue to work for participatory demo­cracy on the grass-roots level, or willNegro politics in the South become char­acterized by the same corruption andbossism that has ruined Negro politics inNew York and Philadelphia? These aresome of the things which only the futurecan tell. As for the present, SNCC isone of the most sense-making Negrorevolutions around,. 0

-from an article by Bruce 'Detwiler,The New Republic; Sept 17; 1966

we have the ability and power to doso: among blacks.

A S FOR WHITE AMERI~A, perhaps itcan stop crying out against "black su­premacy," "black nationalism," "racismin reverse," and begin facing reality. Thereality is that this nation, from top tobottom, is racist; that racism is notprimarily a -problema! "human rela.tions" but of an exploitation main­tained-either actively or through si.lence-by the society as a whole. Ca­mus and Sartre have asked, can a mancondemn himself? Can whites, particu.lady liberal whites, condemn lhem­selves? Can they stop blaming us, andblame their own system? Are they capa­ble of the shame which might become arevolutionary emotion?

We have found that they usually can­not condemn themselves, and so wehave done it. But the rebuilding of thissociety, 'if at all possible, is basicallythe responsibility of whites-not blacks.We won't fight to save the present so­ciety, in Vietnam or anywhere else.We are just going to work, in the waywe see fit, and on goals we define,not for civil rights but for all ourhuman rights.' 0

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I think that black people should not try and change this country;black people should not accept responsibility for this country;black people should aspire to a sense of na!ion hood.

I think these things have to be challenged,they have to be challenged in the white com.munity.

-Charlie Cobb, SNCC field secretary, at the SOS National Conference.Summer 1966.

What that means for white people is:white people have to challenge the basis of this society's existence;they have to understand that this society is built in a schizophrenic way­you set up representative democracy in one townand in the same town you dropped your first slaves who were blackand you called the elimination of a whole people,the American Indianthe "civilizing of this country;"Those things, which to me are barbaric and inhuman acts,are projected by American institutions as positive.

dubbed by alarmists anti-white. It seems'as though some people are using the cryof "black supremacy" in the civil rightsmovement as indiscriminately as the cryof communism was once \lsed in the labormovement, and if this kind of indiscrim­inate labeling continues, we could con­ceivably be in for a kind of latterdayMcCarthyism, stripping the movement ofits militant leadership, and maybe causingcertain paranoiac whites to see a blacksupremacist behind every tree. TheOemo­cratic establishment and the more con- \servative rights groups have been subject­ed to the vituperative attacks of militantsfor years; now it seems they're out tosquash the gadfly.

$uffice to say that what is happeningin SNCC should be less cause for alarmthan the unwarranted reaction it has evok­ed. White sympathizers on the picket lineshould be able to yell" Black Power" justas heartily and unself-consciously as theyused to yell "Freedom," for the concept

of black power should be no more threat­ening to them than is the concept of, for

enough to buy the good things of life.When we urge that black money gointo black pockets, we qlean the com­munal pocket. We want to see moneygo back into the community and usedto benefit it. We want t6 see the co­operative concept applied in businessand banking. We want to see 'blackghetto residents deman,p that an exploit­ing store keeper sell them, at minimalcost, a building or a shop that they will­own and improve cooperatively; theycan back their demand with a rent strike,or a boycott, and a commu~ity so uni­fied ,behind them that no one else willmove into the building or buy at thestore. The society we seek to build arponghlal:k peopk, then, is riot - a capitalistone. It is a society in which the spirit ofcommunity and humanistic love prevail.The word love is suspect; black expecta­tions of what it might produce havebeen betrayed too often. But those wereexpectations of a response from thewhite community, which failed us. Thelove we seek to encourage is within the

,black community, the only Americancommunity where men call each other"brother" when they meet. We' canbuild a community 'of Jove only where

TONY Irene Halpern

Far from writing off the Southern white,Carmichael has been giving some thoughtto organizing himl This makes more sensethan most people realize. There ar~manythousands of poor whites all over the deepSouth who are nearly as disenfranchisedas the Negro, and the types of economicand political gains that the Negro is striv­ing for are exactly the types of gainsthat could benefit the poor white too. TheNegro by himself will probably never beable to dominate Southern politics, but thepoor Negro' and the poor white togethercould constitute a formidable force, andas Carmichael says, "The real issuesare colorless." It is Carmichael's planto take the white students who have up tothis time been organiZing in the Negrocommunity, and after a thorough orienta­tion session send them into the whitecommunity, to organize a base of powerthere which will, hopefully, some day,become the white half of a black -whitecoalition.

For obvious reasons, white Southernersand Southern blacks must be organizedseparately; most blacks at this point arenot, able psychologically to work effectivelywith. whites, and whites in most casesare not willing to work directly withblacks. However, I have seen great en­thusiasm for Carmichael's method oforganizing the {'NO communities not onlyfrom Negroes iIi Mississippi but frompoor whites I have spoken to as well.

In a nutshell then, Carmichael's overallprogram is to foster greater dignity andcohesiveness amorig Negroes through in­creased racial awareness; to develop thepoor Negro community into a unified and 'independent political force using blackorganizers; to develop the poor-whitecommunity into a parallel force usingwhite organizers; and then to form acoalition of all the poor.

It is ironic that the only major civilrights group which has given seriousthought to organizing poor whites andhelping them to obtain power has been'

together in the white community where. possible; 'it is not possible, however,

to go- into a poor Southern town, andtalk about integ'ration. 'fbor" ~hiteseverywhere are becoming more hos-'iJl~=not less~p~rtly bec~~se they seethe nation's attentio~ focussed on blackpoverty and nobody coming to them.Too many yoU'ng middle-class Ameri­

.cans, like some sort of Pepsi genera-tion, have wanted to come alive throughthe black community; they've wantedto be where the action is-and the ac­tion has been in the black community.

Black people do not want to "takeover" this country. They don't want to"get whitey"; they just want to gethim off their backs, as the saying goes.It was for example the exploitation byJewish landlords and merchants whichfirst created black resentment towardJews-not Judaism. The white man isirrelevant to blacks, except as an op­pressive: force. Blacks want to be inhis place, yes, but not in order to ter­rorize and lynch and starve him. Theywant to be in his place because thatis where a decent life·- can --be had._

Brit our vision 'is not m~rely of asociety in which all black men have

There is a vital job to be doneamong poor whites. We hope to see,eventually, a coalition between poorblacks and poor whites. That is theonly coalition which seems acceptableto us, and we see such a coalition asthe major internal instrument of changein American ,society. SNCC has triedseveral times to organize poor whites;we are trying again now, with an in­itial training program in Tennessee.It is purely academic today to talkabout bringing poor blacks and whitestogether, but the job of creating apoor-white power bloc must be attempt­ed. The main responsibility for it fallsupon whites. Black and white can work

Carmichael talks in Harlem.

consciousness thai will 'provide the ba­sis for political strength. In the past,white allies have furthered white su­premacy without the whites involve,grealizing it-or wanting it, I think.Black people must' do things for them­selves; they nius! get poverty' moneythey will control and spend themselves,they must conduct tutorial programsthemselves so that black children, can.identify with black people. This is onereason Africa has such importance: Thereality of black men ruling their ownnatives gives blacks elsewhere a sense,of possibility, of power, which they donot now, have.

This does not mean we don't welcomehelp, or friends. But we want the rightto decide whether anyone is, in fact,our friend. In the past,' black Ameri­cans have been almost the only peo­ple whom everybody and his mommacould jump up and call their friends.We have been tokens, symbols, objects-as I was in high school to manyyoung whites, who liked having "a Negrofriend." We want to decide whois our friend, and' we will not acceptsomeone who comes to us and says:"If you do X, Y, and Z, then I'll helpyou.'" We will not be told whom weshould choose as allies. We will not be

, iSOlated ,from any group or nation ex·cept by our own choice. We cannothave the oppressors telling ~he op­pressed how to rig, themselves of theoppressor.

I HAVE SAID that most liberal whitesreact, to "black power" with the ques­tion; What about me?, rather than say­ing: Tell me what you want me .to doand I'll see if I can do it. There areanswers to the right question. One of

- the most disturbing things about al­most all white supporters of the move­ment has been that they are afraidto go into their own communities­which is where the racism exists-andwork to get rid of it. They want torun from Berkeley to tell us what todo in Mississippi; let them look insteadat Berkeley. They admonish blacks tobe nonviolent; let them preach 'non­violence in the white community. Theycome to teach me Negro history; letthem go to the suburbs and op~n upfreedom schools for whites. Let themwork to stop America's racist foreignpolicy; let them press this governmentto cease supporting' the economy ofSouth Africa.

PAGE B THE MOVEMENT NOVEMBER 1966

AMERICAN PEOPLE'S' MOVEMENTS ------ VIRGINIA 1951

THE MARTINSVILLE SEVENBy William Mandel

The first mass descent of outsidersto fight a civil rights battle in a South­ern city occurred in February, 1951when 517 people from all over thecountry went to Richmond, Virginiafor one day to demonstrate for thelives of seven Martinsvil1e Negroesframed in a standard, old time "rape"case.

It was the first time in twentyyears since the Scottsboro Case thata mass death penalty had been soughtin the South. But Scottsboro came dur­a decade-long upsurge of mass move­ments in this country, with democracyexpanding, and the national moodagainst faeism abroad. Martinsvil1ecame at the very depth of the cold war.U.S. forces had just been routed at theYalu River in Korea. McCarthy wasriding high. The McCarran Act had justbeen passed. Smith Act trials were inprogress everywhere. Student activitywas nil: the U. C. loyalty oath fighthad just been lost and campuses na­tional1y. were deathly silent. In thatatmosphere, the Martinsvil1e Case waslost.

Or was it-(What follows is straight reporting.

It was written at the time, but in theatmosphere of that day, publicationwas impossible.)

It was three or four 0' clock Fridaymorning. Thirty out of town people hadremained in Richmond after the courtdemonstration on Monday. A dozen of uswere in one of the rooms the Negro YMCAhad rented to the committee as head­quarters. Those who had just come off thePrayer Vigil in front of the Capitol werehuddled around the gas heater trying towarm up. Others, for whom there was nobed space, had put chairs together, throwncoats over them, and were sleeping moreor less.

Ught shone in from the other office. Thedial clicked as James Smith, Negro clerkin a local drugstore and chairman of the'Virginia Committee, called another num­ber. He had worked at his job all day andwas due back in the pharmacy in themorning.

church, was using the phone downstairs.Mrs. Lawson, wife of a railroad shopworker, was calling from her home.

. So was Mrs. Vaughan, who ran a drivingschool, and her son, who owned a service·station. Mrs. Lawson's niece, and anotheryoung woman were phoning from Slaugh­ter's and another hotel around the corner.

The half-dozen white Richmond peoplehad long since finished calling the fewfriends who might come to the Square.A couple had gone home to tend theirbabies or catch an hour or two of sleep.Another white man, a worker with a smalltobacco farm in the hills he tended afterhours, was hauling us to and from theVigil in his truck. The others, too tired togo home or too far from home to get thereand back by six a.m., had stayed at theY.

It was a moment of pause, and per­spective. We New Yorkers were lucky.We had slept Sunday night before startingfor Richmond. The Detroit and Chi.cagopeople had left home a day earlier. Butthe four from Denver, of whom.he twoNegroes we':e middl.e·-aged and elderly,had driven three days and nights overfrozen roads In a convertible with a torntop, and had lived on candy because nonewould eat where any were barred. A fifthin their party, a white woman of 73, hadfallen and broken her hip as she stalkedin rage from a Jim Crow restaurant inKansas City. She had insisted that theothers leave her in a hospital and go on.The Negro clergyman in that group, Rev.McNeil, had frozen his foot so badly onroute that for a while we feared gangrene.

As we sat there, staring into the gasflame, someone said:

"Well, this is the story-telling hour."I said: "I know the story I'd like to

hear. Why did we come? Not in general.We all know that. But what moved us in­dividually? What was in the backgroundof each of us that brought us here and thencaused us to stay on 'although we hadexpected to be in Richmond only a singleday?"

"I'll tell you."The voice, mild, Southern, and with a

touch of a lisp, was that of James Good­man. A Negro of about thirty, tall, well­built but ~ot noticeably powerful in appear­ance, he had been one of the quietest

"When I was fifteen or ~lxteen I workedin a grocery. One time I made a mistakein an or.der. The boss, he says:

" 'Nigger, don't you know what to do?'"I said: 'Don't call me nigger, you know

my name.'"He come back: 'We kick dumb niggers

around here,' and he kicked me,"I hit him with a coke bottle, He called

the cops, and they came to take me tojail. One cop said:

" 'Who did you hit with a bottle ?'" 'Robert E. Miller,'" 'Look, nigger, when you talk to white

folks you gotta say, Sir. When I get youto the station house, I'll teach you how totalk to white men.'

"At the police station, one of themkicked me in the pants, and the otherhit me in the jaw. Then they tossed me ina cell, and said:

" 'This one is for. niggers and dogs.'".I WO'.lld have got two to five years in

reform school, but my father paid fivehundred graft and got me out.

"I kept on asking him to go North or to

Panama. But he wouldn't leave, on accountof his railroad job. I was unhappy aboutthe schools. The whites had brick schoolsand recreation grounds. The Negroes hadframe schools, and they were cold. Therewere two coal heaters in the room, andwe sat around them, instead of keepingclass the right way. There was no recrea­tion at all.

"Then the cops were very nasty, too.They would stop any Negro walking throughthe white section, and question him. lfthey didn't like what he said, he'd get abeating and six months on the rock pile.

"One time I was working as house boyfor a white family. I was about 17, butbig for my age. The man's daughter, shewas 19, she liked me. She told her father:'When I get to be 21, I'm gonna marryJim: He weat to my father and made mequit that job.

"My mother took me to Chicago. Theliving conditions, schools and recreationwer-e better than In Nashville. I wanted t.ostay, but my mother took me home toTennessee.

"At 18 I packed my case and went onmy own. During the war I was in the Navy.After basic training, I was at YorktownNavy Mine Depot, not very far from here.I was base electrician. Once there was awrong circuit in the recreation hall. Ci­vilian white workers were called in, and 'they couldn't repair it. My C.O. told them

"Then I went on liberty. The bus toRichmond was crowded. There were twoseats up. front. Another boy and I satdown. The driver refused to move thebus until we got out of the white section.We wouldn't get up. There was a riot, sohe started the bus. The fight in the bus kepton all the way from Yorktown to Williams­burg. There I wa'3 picked up and broughtinto camp, They held me for mutin}. 1asked for a general coun mart.ial. I beatthe case."

"How'rj you do thatT' I asked."Well," said Goodman. "I told them

the bus dri ver had no right to give meorderil, so how ·.~ ..,uld that be mutiny? Theyhad to agree, and they freed me."

"Then we were shipped to New Guinea,and from there to the Philippines. A coup­le of our officers were Southerners. Onewas from Mississippi. One day I was onguard duty. Afterward, I started to cutacross the white camp over to the Negrocamp. The Mississippi officer stoppedme. He said:

" 'Niggers got no right to go throughthe white camp:

"We had an argument, and it becamea fight. I was arrested. The C.O. told meI had no right to argue with an o~ficer orwith any white personnel. I was put inthe brig again, and then sent to the psy­chiatrist. He said I had battle fatigue.,"

I interrupted: "You didn't tell us aboutany battles?"

"Oh," he said. "I had been at IwoJima with the 20th Amphibians. Ioperatedan LPC boat carrying 20 men in to land.I was hit by shrapnel. I've got a plate inmy head.

"They put me in the crazy stockade. Iwas there for ten days. Then outside campand back to the States. That was in 1945.They sent me to St. Alban's for treatmentfor battle fatigue."

"They didn't know what kind of battleyou were fatigued of, did they?" I said.

"They sure didn't ... Well, anyhow,got a medical discharge in 1946.,""What did you do then?""I settled in New York. I worked at

Bethlehem Steel and Todd Shipyard as anelectrician and studies electrical engin­eering at night under the G.t Bill. Some­times I cUd longshoremen's work. So Ijoined the Longshore Club. I picketedLL.A. President Ryan's office when theytried to squeeze Negroes off the water­front. I picketed Bethleham in the 1948strike. Then I worked in the Henry Wal-

Clabon Taylor, Frank Hairston, Joe Henry Hampton and James Hairston. Booker T. Millner, Francis Grayson and J.L. Hairston.

---------THE MARTINSVILLE SEVEN--------

He had been phoning for hours."Mrs. Jones? .•. This is James

Smith • . . No, nothing's happened tome ••. No, my wife's all right •.• Yes,it is very important, or I wouldn't rouseyou out of bed. The first four Martins­ville men are going to be killed about·seven o'clock in the morning. The courtshave all refused to act. Maybe the Gover­nor will. We're asking everybody we knowto come to the Prayer Vigil at six o'clockthis morning .•• Yes, maybe our prayerswill move him. And maybe he'll thinkbetter when he sees all those people outthere .•. That's fine. Will you try tobring someone else? .•. Thanks. I'llsee you later:'

This was something we could do nothingabout. It was in the hands of the Negroesof Ric':lmond, and no outsider could phone: ..yoody at that hour. Elder Warner, un­paid preacher of a poor folks' store-front

members of the group. Early that evening,however, he and a young Jewish boy fromNew York had gotten the white managerand white woman band leader at the hugecitY.:.oWned dance hall -- it was Negronight -- to stop the music every half hourand ask the crowd to phone the Governorto stop the executions. Otherwise we .knewhim only as the man from Brooklyn whohad appointed himself guardian of the oil­can fire that kept us from freezing aswe sat with our Bible outside the StateHouse in the four-person shifts the policea llowed. By appearance and speech, he wasa workingman.

"I was born in Panama. My parentsmoved to Nashville, Tennessee when IW::lS a boy. But I waf'> old enough to re··member Panama. My father wa.s one ofthe three Negro locomotive engineers inTennessee, He .llso had a farm ..

he hali a man could fix anything that couldbe fixed, and he sent me over. One of thewhites said:

" 'Where did a nigger learn that typeof work?'

"I said: 'Oon't call me no nigger.'"We had a scrap, and I got thirty days

in the brig on bread and water,"I interrupted: "That must have made

you pretty weak.""No," he continued, "1 didn't stay

there long enough. The brig was a hut witha Cyclone steel fence around it. I pried itapart with my hands until I could get myfoot in. Then I worked it open.

"I drew suspended sentence for breakingout of the brig, and the C.O. told me tobuild a new one that prisoners couldn'tget out of so easy. He gave me a detail oftwelve men, and I built it of steel andconcrete.

lace campaign, and in the Ada Jackson andHattie Brisbane campaigns in Brooklyn."

He stopped, and we knew he was finished,for he had spoken without interruptionexcept when I broke in. By this time allof us around the heater were wide awake.We looked at each other, and one manturned his palms outward and let themdrop again, as if to say: "We know whyhe's here:'

There was silence for a few moments,and then Fern Owens spoke up. Havingcome to Richmond straight from herdaughter's wedding, she must have beenin her late thirties, but looked a good dealyounger. Or rather, of indeterminate age,with little flesh on her strong face to sag

NOVEMBER 1966 THE MOVEMENT PAGE 9

Mortician's aides carrying bodies of the four electric chair victims int~ morgue at Richmond following mass execution.

or wrinkle. There was a set to her mouththat gave some hint of the person within.Her English was clear and clipped, andhard to place geographically.

"My maiden name was Pierce, and thePresident of that name, a slave-owners'stooge, was an ancestor of mine. But oth­er ancestors were Utopian Socialists inOwen's colony in indiana, and I heardsomething about that in childhood froma brother, the only radical in the family.

"My father was a sharecropper outsideOklahoma City. 1 walked to school intown through the, Negro community. Thelies about Negroes being shiftless didn'timpress me, for I sawtheir homes throughthe eyes of a cropper, and not of a whiteof hi:h~!, ~!ess.

"There would be fights. The white boyswould stone the Negro girls. That rubbedme the wrong way. One day the whiteschool was surrounded by Negro boys inretaliation. The principal told us to stayin our seats. After a while he and theprincipal of the Negro school got together,and the Negro boys were called off. Butthis incident built up my respect for them.

"When I was in sixth grade a girl inmy class had an affair with a boy. They

'were intimate. Her parents found out, andshe was terrified. To get out of it, shesaid she had been raped by a Negro. Alynch atmosphere developed. Only thefact that the truth was well,known in schoolprevented some innocent Negro from los­ing his life. I could never forget this, andthis is one reason I'm trying to save thelives of the Martinsville Seven.

, ,Later, the Negro neighborhood spreaduntil it completely surrounded the school1 had been going to. The white parentsdidn't want their children to go through

. a Negro section, and so the school wasclosed. It was not made into a Negroschool because it was considered toogood for them, and the authorities feltthat if they had one such school they wouldwant more. 1 was terribly shocked w~en

I heard that, because 1 had had my school­ing in snatches when my father didn'tneed my help, and I appreciated schoolinggreatly.

.. I heard of the ,Scottsboro Case whenit began in 1931. I was still in OklahomaCity, and I went to open air meetings ina park where they talked about it. 1believed what they said because of myown experience in school.

"The DepressIon got very bad aboutthen. ·There was much actual starvation.People were evicted and set up a Hoover­ville under a bridge, Negro and whiteintermixed. There was an almost spon­taneous organization of the unemployed,with both races together. The UnemployedCouncils played a role.

"There was no city relief, and one daythere was a march on City Hall to demandthat something be done. En route we passeda very well-stocked food store. Peopleleft the line of march and raided it. Thepolice came with clubs and tear gas.

..A Negro woman near l;rw had taken

a ham. A cop came up and said:, .. 'Put that down.'

•'She set the ham down carefully at herfeet, then seized a can from thE;l counterat which she was standing and bashed thecop over the head. He dropped in his tracks.She calmly picked up the ham and walkedhome.

'''Afterward, 'the cops set out a dragnetfor my brother, thinking him the ringlead­er although he was not. He had to hide,and it was a Negro family that offered totake him in, although it would have beenhard for them to explain a white man inthe house.

"in later years 1 married a Negro. 1don't want my husband or my son to facewhat these men ar~ facing. 1 think I can

understand how Mrs. Grayson feels."(Mrs. Grayson was the wife of the onlymarried man awaiting execution. Theyhad five children.)

jeri Wynne, Negro and 19, but on herown for two years, took up the thread.

"I was born in Cleveland. My fatherwas one of the few men to study elec­tronic engineering before the war. WhenWestern Electric had an opening in thisfield, there were only three applicants,

,and he was the only one who qualified.He didn't get the job, being Negro. Thisembittered him terribly, and he withdrewinto himself.

"My mother's story is similar. Al­though a graduate of the Cleveland Schoolof Art, she managed only now and thento get some commercial work.

"From the time 1 was four until I waseleven 1 lived with my grandfather inMobile, Alabama. He was of a. CubanCreole family, and enormously rich. He

, owned much of the city. His money cameoriginally from cigars, but he owned entire,s~reets of real estate, and a whole island.

"He had a twenty-room house, and therewere lots of ki¢> around. He knew howto handle kids. He was the stingiest manI have ever seen, but on Saturdays whenhe lined the kids up to give them ,a nickelto go to the movies, he had a way of makingeach of us feel wonderful.

"He bought a new black Packard everyyear, and the family was outraged when,after his death, his daughter bought aStudebaker instead.

"The five Creole families of Mobileand New Orleans were as aristocraticand snobbish as the Cabots and the Lodges.

"I didn't know that I was' ,a Negro. incolor, the family ran from blue-eyedblondes to my color."

In a white family, she would be takenas white, and in a Negro as Negro.

"I found out later that my family hadbeen up in arms when my mother mar­ried a dark Negro. But meanwhile 1didn't know, for we children went to aCatholic school for Creoles, where theFrench patois was spoken. Knd I hated

niggars (we proncounced it to rhymewith cigar). My parents were separated,and 1 hadn't seen my father since I wasfour.

"When 1 was nine, the whole family,with all the children, JIlade a pilgrimageto Macon', Georgia, to visit my great­grandfather' Faustina. He had a thirty­room house out of town, with Negroservants. One day, shortly after we ar­rived, we were playing near the railroadtrack that ran past one end of the place.We heard alot of noise, and a group ofmen came along, dragging a Negro. Theytook some spare ties, built a pyre, stoodone in the ground, tied him to it, drenchedhim with kerosene, and burned him ltlive.

"For some reason, I just stood there"

Great-grandfather had been watching fromthe window, for when it was over and wewent home, he gathered the whole gang ofus in the drawing-room. In the presence ofour elders, who were stunned at his des­truction of what they had worked a genera­tion to build, he said:

" 'We are all Negroes here. It couldhave happened to anyone of us.' And hetold us the family background.

"I turned and fled to my room, andstayed there for two weeks. When I cameout, I was a Negro and no longer a Catho­lic, for no God of mercy would let thingslike that burning happen in the world."

Silence. Long, long silence. Then itwasa quarter of six, and time to go to the

,Square for the mass Vigil.

1 phoned the owner of the Negro taxicompany, and asked him to radio his cabsthat we were violating the police limit tofour at the Vigil, and would they spreadthe word. He did.

Then I tested a wild experience. A whitemountaineer who made his living as apool shark had approached us one midnight

'at the 'V:igil, said he thought 'the Martins-ville Seven were guilty,but should not diebecause no white man had ever gone to thechair for rape in Virginia. He offered toarrange, through a friendly guard, tocut the power lines in the Penitentiaryjust before the executions. 1 believed him,proposed this to the head of the nationalPilgrimage to Richmond (a white BayArea attorney) as a desperate way ofaccomplishing a stay of execution, andoffered to take full responSibility for thataction, and any legal consequences. Theidea was vetoed.

The pool shark then told me that he hadbeen foreman on a jury in an exactlysimilar case a few years earlier, exceptthat it had involved seven 'white men.None had gotten more than four years.One had been acquitted as too drunk tohave gone through with the act. He wasnow an announcer at a major radio stationin town. lf I wanted any cooperation fromthe radio announcer, 1 should give thename of the one-time jury foreman.

1 phoned the sutian, knoWing this' an­nouncer to be on duty at this early morning

, hour, told him who had said 1 shouldcall, and asked him to put a straight­forward announcement of the mass vigilon the air with the earliest news. He didso.

A hundred Negroes showed up within anhour. A Negro restaurant owner gave uppis early breakfast b.usiness, closed upshop, posted on his front door the handbillour people were out distributing, madehuge jugs of coffeee and trucked themdown for free distribution to the peoplestanding outdoors with the temperatureat 15 degrees.

The first four men were executed. Theother three were scheduled for Mondaymorning. After the first executions, a

, Negro taxi driver took a Northern Negroand myself at night the 150 miles to Mar­tinsville to offer our condolences and helpto the families. Death by violence at the

'hands of government and police was notnew to them, and they were calm, at leastby the time we arrived. Mrs. Hairstonasked if there was any hope for the threeremaining boys..

On Sunday it was decided to organize,that very afternoon, a mass memorialmarch from the church services for thefour to Thomas jefferson's austere andbeautiful State Capitol building. The policewere neither asked nor notified. Ninehundred marched, 'including forty whites.Half a dozen of these were local: workingpeople and aristocrats. No middle class.Another of the Southern whites, son of atextile worker, was now going to collegeon an FBI "scholarship." This emergedlater when, he turned up as governmentwitness in the junious Scales Smith-Actcase.'

The parade was headed by two local wo­men, Negro and white, carrying a wreath.The white woman was a carpenter's wife ofabout thirty., mother of three children.Six clergy followed, one white: FatherClarence Parker, Episcopalian, Chicago,aged 60.

As the parade crossed BroadStreet, theCity's main thoroughfare, the traffic-­

, white Richmond out for a Sunday drive-­stopped to-let 'us pass. That was history.

Two days later there was an interfaithfuneral service in a ghetto church. Two

thousand people jammed the streets. Alocal white workingman known to all forhis efforts mounted a soap-box. Policearrived. The crowd would not budge. Thepolice left.

A couple of days later I was riding up­town in a New York subway train. TwoNegro Pullman porters were talking toeach other. One had just arrived on a runfrom Richmond, anq he' was telling a fa­miliar story.

Three years later came the Montgom­ery bus boycott. One ofthe top leaders wasa Pullman porter, local rank-and -file or­ganizer for their union. =. (Postscript 15 years later: I sent

this to THE MOVEMENT because, Iwant you who are under 30 to feel thestrength that comes of a personal conitinuity with the past. To you the 1930's,are ?t best a myth you believe. But1951-most of us can remember backwhen we, were three: you were all atleast that old then-it is the beginningof your own time. You are not remakingthe world alone. Jeri Wynne, Negromiddle-class by background, ,is only

.35 today. Well, James' Forman is 38.James Goodman, a working man, isn'tover 45.

There were lots of people that agewho made .the 50 miles from Selma toMontgomery, among them local Negroesof 50 and 72. They remember theSharecroppers' Union that had 12,000members in Alabama, Mississippi,.Louisiana and North Carolina in 1936.In 1946, 1000 young people attendedthe 7th convention of a group withamazingly familiar initials, SNYC(Southern Negro Youth Congress). Itsfounding convention had been in thecity of my story, Richmond, in 1937.

Continuity? I mentioned Mrs. Law­son, wife of a railway worker. She wasborn during the- Wilmington Massacreof 1898, when the Klan destroyed bymurder the last Negro-white Populistcoalition government of that time.That movement came down to her incareful oral lami ly. chronicle.)

PAGE 10 THE MOVEMENT NOVEMBER 196&

FARM WORKERS WIN RIGHT TO DI GIORGIO ELECTION continued from page 1.Di Giorgio kept repeating that he couldn't

promise an election unless the Teamstersagreed to one. Hi argument was that theTeamsters would picket the ranch and keepsupplies from being delivered. .

At the end of the meeting, Di Giorgioagreed to call Einar Mohn, Teamsterchief, and ask him if he would agree toan election. He told the workers to comeback at 2, when he would tell them whatMohn said.

At 2, Brotherton came back, but DiGiorgio was never seen again. The pick­et line outside had been called off: DiGiorgio said that he would not come toa meeting if there was picketing. The signswere laid on the sidewalk and the picket­ers and workers stood waiting for newsfrom the sixth, floor.

At 2, Brotherton appeared with Joechambers of the State Conciliation Ser­vice. Chambers said that he had calledMohn, and that Mohn had told him hehad just gotten to his office and couldn'tmake a decision that day.

The workers told Brotherton that whatthe Teamsters did was irrelevant. Theywanted Di Giorgio to agree to an election.Weinberg said, "Mohn has had two monthsto decide; he doesn't need until tomorrow."

The atmosphere was getting tense. DiGiorgio officials, UFWOC organizer FredRoss, the workers, and the labor officialswere gathered, standing, out in the lobby."Do you refuse to sign an agreement?"asked Ross.

"We have called on the Governor, whohas called in the Conciliation SerVice,"replied Brotherton. "We will agree whenthe Teamsters agree."

"You've been saying that for twomonths," said Mack Lyons.

"That's all I've got to say," said Broth­erton, and walked out of the lobby intothe Di Giorgio office, leaving the groupstanding in the lobby.

1 asked Lyons what the group was goingto do. "We're going to stay here untilhe agrees," said Lyons.

The farm labor group then moved backinto the office in which they had met withDi Giorgio and closed the door. The laborofficials tried to contact Bill Kircher"head of organizing for the AFL-CIO, butwere unsuccessful. Fred Ross went down­stairs to call Cesar Chavez and DoloresHuerta in Delano.

The group inside agreed that as far asthey were concerned, negotiations werestill going on. Their demands were' notbeing met. They had been invited intothe office and they were staying, ready

to talk if any Di Giorgio officials showedup.

Company executives did show up: theypopped in and out of the office, givinglast words and ultimatums. They were gel:­ting visibly shook. Brotherton opened thedoor and said, "We have nothing furtherto discuss. I'm asking you to leave."Trying to be sarcastic, he said, "It'sbeen a pleasure to meet you all - andgoodbye."

Then Connors, the Di Giorgio lawyer,came in.

"I've done all 1 can," he said. "We'vebeen very good to you, but you will haveto leave now."

"Thank you, Jesus," said Dick Groulx.Connors turned purple and slammed thedoor.

Then various police officers came inand said pretty much the same thing. Thepolice were reluctant to make arrests.The Di Giorgio executives were very upsetat being talked back to. They were not usedto being treated as' equals. Wher. theyfound that giving orders didn't work, theycalled the cops.

The pickets on the street learned thatDi Giorgio had broken off the meetingand started the picket line again. We couldhear the bullhorn from the 6th flooroffice. "This is more like it," said MackLyons. "That talking wasn't getting usanywhere."

The arrogance of the Di Giorgio officialswas clear to everyone. As sopn as theyfound out that' the workers weren't goingto be put off, they' called the whole thingoff. They threatened to break off the con­tract negotiations at' their Delano ranch,where the UFWOC had won the elections.They tried to get the Arvip. workers to saythat they represented UFWOC, which theydidn't. They represented the Arvin farmworkers.

Finally Edward Gallagher, the managerof the building, came in with Police Cap­tain Charles Barker. Gallagher told us toget off his property or be arrested. We saidas far was we knew negotiations were stillgoing on. Barker then said we were underarrest. _

Lyons, Chavez, Kemplin, Twomey, Lar­son, Groulx and myself were then led outof the building and into a paddy wagon.The picket line was chanting" Let ThemGo I Let Them Go I" and swirled around thepolice as they brought us out.

Bail was set at $110. The charge wastrespassing. The arrests shook up thestodgy AFL-CIO state and city organiza­tions. Though a bondsman had the bail

Mack Lyons, head 9f farmworker dele­gation from Arvin.

ready at 4:30 Thursday afternoon, we werenot released until 10 P.M. We were toldthat the bail was not ready: it was anobvious attempt by police to keep us injail until the picket line was ended andthere was less chance of publicity.

Friday morning a delegation of farmworkers attended the AFL-CIO conven­tion of the Council on Political Educa­tion. Thomas Pitts, 5ecretary-Treasurerof COPE, tried to keep the farm workersout of the room. He did not succeed.When he had to introduce the two speak­ers from Arvin, he told the delegates,"I know you're in a hurry to get out, butI've promised these men 2 minutes eachto tell about their beef at tqe DiGiorgio

Corporation:' He couldn't care less, TheCO PE delegates were more enthusiastic:more than 40 of them came with the work­ers to the picket line at the Corporation,

Twomey, Larson, Groulx, and Jacobswere joined by Bert Donlin, ExecutiveBoard members of ILWU Local 10 Qn­ternational Longshoremens and Ware­housemens Union). Together with threefarm workers they tried to enter thebuilding (a little note had been pasted onthe front doors of the building Fridaymorning: "The DiGiorgio Corporation isReceiving Vis ito r s By Appointment,Only").

The delegation was not allowed intothe elevators. When ,they were orderedto leave the building (a public officebuilding), they ~efused and were arrested,

Friday .afternoon after the arrests, thepolice rushed the picket line and arrested,for no apparent reason, John Schroyer, anorganizer for UFWOC. He was hustledinto a police car anq driven away, Whenthe prowl car arrived at the jail, Shroyerdemanded to know why he was beingarrested, One of the cops wrapped hishandcuffs around his fist and struckShro­yer on the head, cutting him deeply, Hewas booked on 6 counts, including assaultand battery on a police officer, All arrestcases are still pending,

Over the weekend support for the work­ers' demands mounted, Dolores Huerta ofthe NFWA spoke before the SF CentralLabor Council. On Monday and Tuesdaylarge picket lines appeared before the Di­Giorgio office,

At 9 A.M. Tuesday, the DiGiorgio Cor­poration agreed to talk with the union, Aday-long meeting was attended by Di- .Giorgio officials, a representative of theState Conciliation Service, Mack Lyons,Dolores Huerta, Bill Kircher, head oforganizing of the AFLrCIO, and FredRoss; head of organizing for the UnitedFarm Workers Organizing Committee,

By the end of the day the Corporationhad completely given in to the union'sdemands, An agreement was signed thatcalls for:

An election on November 4A single ballotElection to be conducted by the State

Conciliation Service,Contract negotiations to begin within

45 days after the election,(BULLETIN: It looks like the Team­

sters have agreed to leave the Arvinarea and stop their raiding against thefarm workers union and their collusionwith the DiGiorgio Corporation j,

THE NITTY GRITTY i CHESTER WRIGHT

WILL L.A. COPS TRIGGER THE NEXT RIOT?

The cheapest thing in California israpidly becoming the lives of children.On Friday, October 14, an LA Policemankilled a Negro youth, 15 years old, witha single blast from a shotgun. The offi­cer was standing at an estimated dis­tance of 15 feet: the blast ripped into thechild's head, killing him instantly.

The killing occured after police chaseda car driven by a 26 year old man,J ames Lindsay. The slain youth, ElmoJerry Birkley, was in the car. Accord­ing to the LA Times, the police officersaid, "1 thought he reached for a weapon."(Could he have been tucking his shirtin/?).

c

~ot?

o

After the youth slumped dead on thefront seat, officers found a knife with a5-inch blade in his belt.

The Community Alert Patrol was with­drawn after the Watts Festival in order tocreate an atmosphere whereby meaningfuldialogue with the LAPD could occur. TI-lEPATRO L IS BACK ON THE STREETS: ThePatrol's aims are the same as after theDeadwyler killing - to prevent the Cityfrom exploding. The directors of CAP,by knowledge obtained at a bitter price,know that certain political factions wouldbenefit by another riot. It is felt that theNegro Community will not determine whe­ther it will riot or not in today's Los An­geles, rather, the Community is a CHESSPIECE, that may be moved on the "GiantChecker Board" of political expediency.

The fear generated by general rioting(White People are buying guns at a phe­nomenal rate, and are saturated with"Scare" literature and programs pushedby right-wing extremists) would insure av ictory for that faction in the coming elec­tions. Since Negro youngsters do most ofthe dying in event of a riot, CAP isdetermined to prevent the blood of Ne­groes from being used as a political tool.Our purpose is simple, we seek to allowthe Negro to SURVIVE in Los Angeles.

WE DO INTEND 'ID:a) See that Negro lives are not used

carelessly as Political Currency.

b) See that others do not put us in a'trick bag' by triggering riots (thiS wastried last July 4th).

c) Prevent our people from being need­lessly killed by police officers for non­capital-punishment crimes.

This writer, or the directors and fieldcommanders of CAP, do not condone, aidor abet lawlessness. Yet we can speakwith some authority oli the need for sur­veillance and change in police proceduresthat cause senseless killings of childrenand adults for non-capital crimc:.s.

This writer further contends thatAU'IDTHEFT IS NOT A CRIME PUNISHABLEBY DEATH. Further, that suspicion ofauto theft by police officers does not givethem license to act as JUDGE, JURY ANDEXECUTIONER of children. Negroes havetraditionally been denied the right to behuman. California's local policemen arenow denying their children the right tobe children.

The tragedy is that California and itsdecent, well-meaning solid Citizens callthis "good, vigorous law enforcement." Icall it by its real name - PSYCHOTICBEHAVIOR.

Where our so-called 'decent citizens'are concerned, it is just as inhuman to·stand on a curb and watch one man beatanother to death with a stick and not raiseyour voice in righteous wrath as it isto wield the stick yourself. This writeI:'feels that the spectator is more guilty. Theassaulter can claim temporary insanity.You, as a cool spectator, can only claimcowardly and hypocritical rationalization,

Some call us THE GREAT SOCIETY.Being a realist, I have reasons to believethat History will record us along with theNAZIS as a Sick Society.

The body of 16 year old Matthew John­son, gunned in the back by a San Fran­cisco police officer, was not cold and theensuing riot was not controlled beforeOfficer Thomas D. Nevin killed 15 yearold Elmo Jerry Birkley. We here in LosAngeles can't let Frisco outdo us - nosiree. We went them one better: recentlya young Pacoima white boy was gunnedwhen caught on a fence.

I contend that these children committedone great crime - that of being children,with a right, due to their age level - to

. PANIC. Join the Armed Forces; fellows,you will be a lot safer - and you canlegally shoot back.

At least the Community Alert Patrolwill attempt by their presence to act asa deterrent force by observing the policeprocedures. We are very much INVOLVEDand we could not cwre less whether a childis BLACK, WHITE or GREEN. A Childis a Child. It is shameful, stupid andcruel that th~ connotation "adult" doesnot elecit the same innocent ring,

(Editors Note: This is the first in aseries of columns by Chester Wright onwhat is happening in Los Angeles, Ches­ter Wright is a retired Master ChiefPetty Officer of te U,S. Navy: he hasa B.A, in Social Welfare and is attend­ing the UCU, Graduate School of Social'\Vork).

NOVEMBER 1966 THE MOVEMENT PAGE 11

RESIDENTS -FIGHT FOR CONTROL OF REDEVELOPMENT

"GET BENNY PARRISHOUT OF MODESTO"

SAN FRANCISCO - The Mission Councilon Redevelopment (MCOR) has been fight­ing hard for several months against theSan Francisco Redevelopment Agency'splan to tear up the Mission District. Itmay be successful. If it is, it will be oneof the few citizens groups in the countryto win against the self-appointed expertsof our cities who make the plans for tear­

.ing down low income housing in order to"beautify" and "improve."

MCOR is an organization made up of rep- 'resentatives from 62 community organiza­tions, ranging from Catholic Churchesand homeowners associations to the Mis­sion Tenants Union. The glue that bindsthese organizations together is not a de­tailed plan of what they all want done inthe Mission District, but one simple de­mand: that the citizens living in a com­munity have power over any demolition,redevelopment and rehabilitation in theircortl!llunity .

City Hall, the Board of Supervisors,and the redevelopment Agency have ahard time stomaching this demand. AsTerry Francois, of the Board of Super­visors said at an MCOR meeting, "Itwould be a strange thing if the FederalGovernment would spend two million dol­lars anywhere and then let a citizens'group decide they didn't want it." TheSan Francisco CHRONICLE seems tothink this is strange also. The newspaperattacked MCOR in a lead editorial. MCORwas a bunch of "idealogues," it said, forthinking that people in a community shouldhave veto power overa$2 million grant.

The $2 million grant in question is aplanning grant the Redevelopment Agencyhas applied for to make a master plan foroverhauling the area, The Bay Area's newsubway system will go right through themiddle of the Mission District. This,claims the Agency, will make redevelop­ing necessary,

MCOR publishes a newsletter called ElMachete. In a recent issue they said,"Justin Herman (Chairman of'tlie -Re­development Agency) wants to redevelop

"YOU'RE A BUNCH OF SLOBS"This lieutenant, Badge No.

1644, told THE MOVEMENTeditor at the farm worker picketline in front of the Di Giorgiooffices, "You're all a bunch ofslobs and creeps. I've had alot of experience handling slobslike you."

Later that day, he showedwhat his experience was. Pic­keter Jeanne Bailey reports thatLieutenant 1644 stepped onher foot, knocked her backwardwith his elbow and shoved her.She was not in his way. No,1644 s h 0 u I d not be runningaround armed

SUBSCRIBE

the Mission. The Council does not standagainst him for this. But what it doesstand against him for is his refusal tocooperate with the people who will beaffected by his plans. Who really knowsbest for the Mission 7 Justin Herman orthe people of the neighborhood7"

On October 5, MCOR appeared beforethe Finance Committee of the Board ofSupervisors. One hundred Council mem­bers attended the meeting. As a result,the Committee voted to delay a decisionuntil Supervisor Morrison, a noted liberal,could make a compromise proposal to theentire Mission Council.

October 14, Morrison appeared beforeseveral hundred Council membersandob­servers at the St. Charles Church in theMission.

His proposal is too long to report fullyhere. It did not give MCOR any real power•He promised that MCOR w 0 u 1 d have"liaiso;1" with the Agency, that he would"encourage written comment" by MCOR,and that MCOR "may recommend" for oragainst apy plan that came out of the, $2million study.

Joan Boardman, of the American IndianCenter, and a member of the ExecutiveCommittee of MCOR, moved that MCOR"reaffirm our position that the Super­visors not consider any plan without re­view and approval by MCOR. If prior ap­proval is not given, we oppose redevelop:ment at this time."

Dave Knotts from the Inner City Coun­cil of the Presbyterian Church, attackedMorrison's pro po sal. "Why bring ussomething weaker than what we have al­ready heard and turned down 7" he ·said."If there is going to be massive changebecause of the subway, why are you n'ltwilling to give us the strongest possibleguarantees?' '

Morrison's reply was, "I call priorapproval a veto. The motion you wouldimpose on the SuperVisors is illegal underCalifornia law. The right to approval mustlie ,in the proper governiTIent r~preserii:a­

tives."

MODES1D, CALIFORNIA - Benny Par­rish, an organizer for the CaliforniaCenter for Com m u nit y Development(CCCD), came to this San Joaquin Valleytown a year ago. He organized a groupcalled the Community Poverty Council(CPC) at a job retraining school. TheC PC demanded that the local War on Pov­erty elect Sax. of its members from thepoor. Before this the board had beenappointed by the County Supervisors; itrepresented the major business interestsof the community, notably Gallo Wine.

Then last February, Parrish organizeda Welfare Rights Organization within theC PC. Two days before the WRO held asit-in at the Welfare Department, theStanislaus County Grand Jury began aninvestigation of Parrish and the CCCD.

Last' month, two months before theGrand Jury was supposed to give itsreports, and two days before GovernorBrown arrived in Modesto on his electioncampaign, the Jury called for halting theuse of tax money to help organizationsthat "produce social and class con ­flict."

Parrish reported to THE MOVEMENT,"The Welfare Director himself admittedthat, if we hadn't had sit-ins and other'conflicts' there would be no weekly meet­ings of recipients like there are now. Theyhad their chance for years and years to dothis without conflict.

"All they mean by 'conflict' is asking'about what they did and did not do. Firstyou go in and ask for something and theysay no. Then you raise a fuss and theysay yes. Then they find out that they real­ly had to do something or else you willtake direct action to enforce the agree­ment. Then they accuse you of creating'conflict' ins tea d of 'community har­mony.' ..

Congressman Sisk (Dem. Fresno) andCongressman Hagan (Dem, Visalia) heldup CCCD funds and have cut back the tWo

, year project by six months.A civil servant who asks that his name

Knotts then pointed out that the povertyprogram in the Mission District is con­trolled IOax. by the residents of the area.

Ricardo Callejo said, "In this countrywe should have the right to make our owndecision. We don't want the veto powermisused, but we want veto power. Wethe people are the people who shoulddecide. Government too often has for­gotten that they are in the service of thepeople.

The meeting then got hung up on thelegality que s t ion. Catholic MonsignorMurr<!y argued against the Boardman mo­don, saying that they ought to have aruling by the At tor n e y General on thelegality of the veto power, Others at themeeting, including Assemblyman WillieBrown, felt that the legality of the motionwas not for this group to decide. "I thinkthe courts should decide," said Brown,Brown and Assemblyman John Burton

, fully supported the demands of MCOR. OneMCOR organizer, however, felt that Bur.,.ton was shakey on the iegality questionand wondered whether he would work forlegislation supporting such veto power,

The Boardman motion in favor of vetopower' waS voted' in, 44 in favor: 10against. Most of the vote's 'against camefrom Catholic clergy, follOWing Msgr.Murray's lead.

The following Monday, the full Board ofSupervisors met at City Hall. Over 100MCOR members packed the room. TheSupervisors agreed to postpone their de­cision on the grant three weeks, becauseone of the Supervisors was absent.

One of the problems MCOR faces is the, same as the Temporary Alliance of Local

Organizations (TALO) in Watts. There areso many organizations, with differentpolitical and social views, in the coalitionthat they .may find it hard agreeing onanything except veto power, The mostconservative groups, the Catholic Churchand the Spanish-Speaking Council, maydrop out when stronger action is neces­s-ary. The right-wing homeowners aremostly organizing separately from MCOR,

be withheld, told the MOVEMENT that thetwo Congressmen pressured McFall (Dem,Modesto) to threaten the CCCD with fundstoppage if Benny Parrish wasn't takenout of Stanislaus County before the Novem­ber election. In October an OEO inves­tigator 'came to the CCCD training centerin Morgan Hill and told the group thatthey had better get Parrish out of thecountry.

Parrish has been told by sources in­side the Welfare Department that theState Attorney General is going to inves­tigate the county's local OEO Board (con­trolled by Parrish's CPO).

WHO IS BEHIND THESE ATTACKS ONORGANIZERS OF THE POOR 7

"The great fear in Modesto is thatBenny is going to organize farm workers,especially after Chavez's Pilgrimage wentthrough:' said the anonymous civil ser­vant. "What they do is send down a fewDemocrats and liberals into South Mo­desto at election time to get out the poorvote. This is another reason I think theyare afraid of Benny."

The business community in Modestofears an organized movement of poorpeople. The two major forces are GalloWine, and a businessman and. landownernamed Beard, who owns the biggest' in­dustrial park in the county,

The civil servant says, "They fear aspill-over from the electronics industryof the Bay Area, because it would forcethe wages up in the country. Gallo, Beardand a few other landowners control thekind of industry that can move into thecounty."

"Such spill-over would also force theHigh Schools to offer a real vocationalprogram. Now they give little vocationaltraining for students who can't afford togo to college:' This helps to keep thewages down by keeping high school grad­uates unskilled.

Parrish organized the CPC in the NewHope School, a job r.etraining a!=luJt edu-

,~ d"':' 1<;,(...'!.

"The test for this will come when- weorganize the Action Committee," saysDave Knotts. "Then some oftheorganiza­tions may drop out."

It seems to be a general rule of re­development that it always ends up re­ducing the supply of low cost housing,pushing poor and working-class peopleout of their homes and community, andmaking a lot of money for builders andcontrllctors.

This "minority and poor, people's re­moval" system may be stopped in theMission District. If it is, it will be thepower of the citizens groups that broughtit to an end. I:)

PORTRAIT OF CHETired of those Hollywood Heroes? Geta bigger than life-size (22 x 28) pic­ture of Che Guevara. Only $1.50

Special to new or old subscribers­You can buy the Che portrait for only$1. Write to .THE .MOVEMENT PRESS,449 14th Street, 'San Francisco, Callf.

cation school. He started here becausemany poor white adults attend the school< .

"I tried to set up a student council sep­arate from the administration. It flop­ped. They got a little more money thanthey would have gotten if they stayedon welfare. They didn't want to jeopardizetheir position:'

The school 'retrained' the people to beservice station attendants, orderlies,nurses aides - jobs which paid no morethan the unskilled work they did before,

"In the beginning there were hardlyany Mexican-Americans in the school. Wefelt there should be more, since the pro­gram was supposed to retrain agricultur­al workers.

"We got Washington to send out an in­vestigator. As a result, the white minoritycounselor was replaced by a Mexican ­American counselor. The employment de­partment which assigns people to theschool was ordered to send more Mexican­Americans to the school. Now over Sax.of the students are Mexican-American:'

CHALLENGE 1D TIiE POVERTY BOARDThe CPC submitted two proposals to the

Poverty Program Board (which they nowcontrol). One was for a day - care cen-

. ter -which they got. The other was for acommunity service center and a com­munity worker for South Modesto andCeres. This was at first rejected. TheC PC appealed directly to the regional OEOoffice. Meanwhile, they got more seats onthe Board and reopened the question. Itwas passed. The county administration istrying to have it overruled.

"The group here feels," Parrish says,"that if we don't get the community cen­ter - community worker proposal, thenwe'll probably try to tear down the wholelocal poverty board. That doesn't meanthere won't be any poverty programshere. It just means you don't have to havean agency screening them." CPC wouldthen negotiate directly with the regionalJEO. I:)

PAGE 12 THE MOVEMENT NOVEMBER 1966

NOTES fROM CHICAGO 111111111111111111111111111.111 11111111111 11 MICHAEL JAMES·

MOVEMENTS IN CHICAGO"Chicago is big, around four million

people. A lot of this num':>er are poor;there are large concentrations of poorwhites, Puerto Ricans, Mexicans and es­pecially, Negroes who make up 25% of thecity's population. Organizing goes on inmany neighborhoods where these groupsare concentrated.

JOIN Community Union (see THEMOVEMENT, Oct. 1966) works inaneigh­borhood of about 60,000 poor, largelysouthern, whites. Activity centers aroundthe building of a steward system that mayeventually evolve into a working freedomprecinct captain structure. JOIN's newestefforts deal with urban renewal in an at­tempt to involve new people and create analternative to the plan imposed by the citywhich could remove poor people from the

DON'T BUY Perelll·Mlnetti products I

neighborhood entirely.The summer saw a major confrontation

between the Puerto Rican community andthe police. The "riots," the first by Puer­to" Ricans in the country, were important,suggesting that the Spanish speaking, likeNegroes, are coming to be dissatisfied withthe oppressing problems of polie bru­tality, poor housing and high prices. TheSpanish Action Committee, the city, Span­ish language papers and so-called com­munity leaders attempted to isolate theoutbreak, refusing to make connectionsbetween the. problems of poor Puerto Ri­cans and those experienced by both poorwhites and blacks.

Dissatisfied with the existing leader­ship (many of whom are destined to gainpower and influence as the Daley-machine

WINES:......­[In"eel..,...­....­GNaiCo,..F.I.

begins to re~ognize and attempt accommo­dation of the Spanish community), a smallgroup of Puerto Ricans and Mexicansformed the Latin American Defense Or­ganizati~n. LAOO holds to a movementorinted community organizing perspectiveand understands well the problems theyface and the need to build an organizationof poor people who can speak and act forthemselves. Although subjected to a Span­ish press black-out, legal harassment ofkey organizers stemming from the "riot,"and attempts by the Industrial Union De­partment of AFL-CIO to change both thename and direction, LADO has grown.Its first action, a boycott of National TeaStores for failing to hire Spanish speakingcheckers, made LAOO's name known inthe community and forced National tonegotiate. In addition to the boycott, theorganization is organizing welfare recip­ients and building a tenant's union.

King's SCLC has dominated action in theb lack community and the citywide move­ment as a whole. SCLC embarked on aprogram of marches into all white work­ing and lower-middle class neighborhoodsover the issue of open occupancy; it washoped the tactic would create a crisis inhousing that liberals could not disagreeWith, as well as pressure for fed€:ralhousing legislation. The marches failedto involve poor black people, and endedwhen liberal church and labor groups,both local and national, brought extremepressure on King to halt the marches.

The marches did halt, about the sametime that federal civil rights legislationwas shelved, and ended in an agreementbetween King and Daley that brought Kingnothing but a claimed moral victory, apromised investigation of problems byvarious city agencies, and a promise fromthe city that public housing would not ex­ceed eight stories (higher than that fought

"WE HAVE NOGOVEf\NMENT"

I feel that the federal gov­ernment have proven that itdon't care about poor people.Everything that we have askedfor through these years has beenhanded down on paper. It's nev­er been a reality. We the poorpeople of Mississippi is tired.We're tired of it so we're goingto build for ourselves, becausewe don't have a government thatrepresents us.

-Mrs. Unita Blackwell,Feb. I, 1966, after Negroes hadoccupied the Greenville AirForce Base.

for by the Citizen's Housing Committeefor eight years).

SCLC has failed to produce tangiblereSUlts, has perhaps unintentionally in­hibited the development of militant andradical leadership and movement in thelarge black ghettos, and failed to con­front, maybe even catered to, the Daleymachine, enemy of the City'S poor. WhatSCLC has done is give birth to severalsmall groups working to build tenant'sunions. The hope for a strong movementis Chicago rests with these and otherindependent organizations around the city.That hope is the building of organizationsof poor people around the issues of hous­ing, welfare and police brutality that canwork independently to control their ownneighborhoods, and come together on city­wide issues in the long term struggle ofoverthrowing the powerful Daley-businessmachine that runs the city and helps runAmerica. =

INSIDE AN OAKLAND BOYCOT.T FREEDOM SCHOOLBy Dave WellmanSPECIAL TO THE MOVEMENT

OAKLAND - "The Ad Hoc Committeeshould have Set up a 'Junior Ad Hoc Com­mittee' made up of all high school studentsin Oakland and let us organize and run theboycott."

"Yeah'" shouted Freedom Schoolers inresponse to this remark by one member ofa West Oakland Freedom School.

The long awaited three-day boycott plan­ned by the Ad Hoc Committee for QualityEducation was going on and the young menand WOIIlln were attending F r e e d 0 mSchools.

"Classes" beg a n Wednesday. The"teachers" told the young people thatFreedom Schools would be what theywa;tted them to be.

"We're !.Ie,~ because we want to be,not because we have to be. We'll talkabout things you're interested in andsome of you can even be teachers if youwant," said one teacher. As the day woreon, however, it seemed that the teachershad certain things THEY wanted to talkabout.

Discussions were on topics like BlackPower, Employment Opportunities in Oak­land, Negro History, Oakland Schools,Police Brutality, and The War in Viet­nam. There was' lively talk -" somedominated by teachers and others bystudents and teachers alike. Negro His­tory and the War in Vietnam, aboutwhich the students knew little, rapidlybecame lectures, and the youngsters be­came restless. Education was still notan exciting experience. The content of the

class room was different, but the formwas too much like Oakland public schoolsystem.

When the talk was about topics thestudents were close to, more peopletalked. The discussions were loud, in­tense and free-wheeling.

"Let me tell you about McClymondsHigh Schooll" shouted one toung lady."They've got this referral system, youunderstand. But when you get down there,you find that this damn teacher has'written you up' ten times and nevertold you. So you find out you got a 'rec­ord' and bam' You're out on your ass.Don't even have a chance to explain. Andbaby, to get back in, you've got to bringthe folks. Only my folks work. And myold man ain't about to take off work toget me back in school. So what are yougoing to do?"

"The food at the school ain't. fit toeat. And they've got the nErve to chargeyou 45 or 50 cents for itl Now, I've

. got the coins to pay for it cause myold man is working, but what about catsthat can't afford it?"

Another freedom schooler added:"Man, do you know they got cops on

that campus?""I want to talk about those Oakland

cops," announced some~ne."You know you can't even walk down

the street without haVing one of thosecats stop you for something. Especial­ly at night: I don't care what you'redoing, they're going to stop you. Theystop you, man, and then have to getnasty. 'Where you going, punk?' Man, I

ain't no punk; why do they have to treatyou' that way?"

"Yeah," chimed in someone else,"•'and they take and toss you inside the car

if" you ask why you being stopped. Takeyou down to Juvie Hall for 'question­ing'. You know, they took me down onceand didn't even tell myoid lady for aday."

"Beat the shit out of you I bet," addedanother young man.

Each discussion snagged on the ques­tion of what you do about it... Burn downthe schools," said one man glibly; "Blowup the police station," said another."Naw," was the general response, "thatwon't do nothing but make things worse."The teachers had little to offer.

"Why not organi7.e against them?" sug­gested one.

"Why bother?" was one answer.• 'They've got all the power. Besides, ittakes too long:'

The teachers, unprepared for this, triedto talk about more comfortable things.They talked about the" Power Structure,"the war, the war on poverty, and so on.But students kept getting back to the basicproblems. Their needs were different fromthe teachers.

The boycott was another issue."Who organized the boycott?" the stu­

dents wanted to know; "Why weren't we inon the planning?"

"You know," a young lady said, ''If wewere asked to organize this thing we couldhave lots more people here. I know lots ofpeople I could have convinced to come:'

"I think we could have run it much bet-

,ter' ," said another.. These remarks are important. The boy­cott was considered effective; almost one­third of the flatland students stayed homeduring the three days. The FreedomSchools were attended by young peoplewhose parents were actively in favor ofthe boycott and by kids looking for alegitimate excuse to cut. The majoritywere not organized into Freedom SchoolS.Ad Hoc gave the students no way theycould present their demands directly tothe school board.KICKED OFF THE CkMPUS

Many Freedom Schoolers thought theycould have run the boycott better than AdHoc. The Friday trip to the Universityof California seemed to prove this. Plan­ned for noon, it was suddenly-changed to9:30. The Graduate Student "hosts" wereput off-guard; their program was to be­gin at 12. There was nothing to do u~til

noon.At 11:30 the University authorities de­

manded that the Freedom Schoolers leaveimmediately and locked the doors to thebuilding where seminars were to havetaken place.

This display of "white power" by theUniversity caused confusion and a qUickretreat home without an explanation to theyoung boycotters. Tired, frustrated andconfused, they returned to Oakland.

While some were annoyed, all seemedto be wiser about the politics of Oaklandand of boycotting.

"Next time there's a boycott, we'regoing to run it," announced a young manas we qounced home in an old truck. =

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