Dr. John Henrik Clarke - A Great And Mighty Walk (1996)

history is a clock that people use to tell their political and cultural time of day it is also a compass that people use to find themselves on the mouth of human geography history tells of people where they have been what they have been where they are and what they are most important history tells a people for they still must go what they still must be the relationship of history to the people is the same as the relationship of a mother to her child [Music] so [Music] [Music] how do you describe a legend an african-american hero a historian an activist who for half a century has charted a singular course dedicated to the intellectual and spiritual liberation of a people though his eyes are now darkened by glaucoma he continues to enlighten the lives of thousands of men and women through the pages of his many books and in university classrooms across the country how do you describe a legend you can't really but you can meet the men and women who influenced him you can learn from him the hidden history of the african people learn from him a different way of making sense of this complex and often very confusing world and you can let dr john henry clark tell his own extraordinary story in his own soulful style [Music] hmm [Music] i was born on the [Music] shell cropper farm in union springs alabama new year's day 1915. that was a great feast day in our family and because my mother was a favorite in the family and i was late arriving she said that nothing would be killed in this family until my child was born and i didn't arrive until three and everybody was hungry the feast had not started and i wasn't exactly welcome they never quite forgave me for that holding up the feast my early schooling was in the one-room schoolhouse that we call millers hill school when we moved slightly out of the city i was chosen to go to city school officially i never finished high school in the formal sense until later years in fact i taught two generations before i took time out to get my ba my master's and my phd and i have it all now but i'm principally self-trained my university was the public librarian well well-chosen second-hand bookstores so while i grew up poor i grew up in a very rich environment culturally rich i grew up with a whole lot of love and affection a lot of lap time a lot of slap time too because i wasn't permitted to get away with too much miss evelina taylor is my fifth grade teacher and she might be the foundation teacher in my life in addition to teaching me basic good thinking and good conduct she called me into her room during her lunch hour one day and told me to stop playing the food because i was playing the fool just to get accepted and she said it is better to be right and march into hell than to follow a bunch of foods into heaven i wanted to do something to impress miss taylor and we had curry events on friday we wanted to say something unusual because i worked for white people before and after school and they had magazines they would receive them one day read them hurriedly i'll throw them away the next day so when i got current events i always had something decidedly different to say about my own people and about other people now i wanted to do something real real big so i went to a lawyer that i worked for before and after school i can still remember his name gag styder and i asked him for a book about my people in early world history he says i'm sorry john that uh you came from a people who have no history my mind would not accept that i continued to search and i opened the book called the new negro now open to an essay called the negro digs of his past and for the first time i knew that i came from a very old people that we were older than slavery older than oppression older than europe now the scramble began for more information [Music] during the disaster years of the great depression americans in huge numbers take to the rails they don't take pullman cars or day coaches they stow away on the freight riding the rails in search of the opportunity to create a better life john henry clark wrote them out of the south first briefly to chicago and then on to new york city had a dream i thought that because i'd had some success in writing local plays writing lyrics for songs for local plays and that i could go write professionally it was a dream it's a fantasy i was pursuing this fantasy 18 you can pursue all kinds of fantasies in the shadow of manhattan's towering skyscrapers lies black sprawling harlem greatest negro metropolis in the world my impressions of the harlem community in the first place it was a clean community it was an orderly community it was a safe community it was a community with its customs that we have forgotten now street speaking customs strolling customs social customs there was a time when seventh avenue now adam power boulevard was the street of choice and you did not walk down seventh avenue on saturday or sunday without a coat and a tie there was a custom of getting your lady in your lone good suit and walking down 7th avenue to show her off you would walk 15 blocks sometime when you had a dollar or so to spend you would take on the fifth avenue open bus all the way down to new york university and all the way back and she was satisfied and the whole evening you hadn't spent a dollar a lot of time didn't have one it shouldn't make ladies like that anymore there was a time there were three functioning theaters in harlem all well patronized the lafayette harlem opera house and the apollo don't old lincoln theater now a church used to be a legitimate theater while the plays downtown be brought up town with them played with the black cats [Music] and that was our broad way i got involved with the communists and the socialism other radicals and going to read literature on the russia that day and see movies about russia i was never a member of the communist or the socialist party i was active briefly in the young communist league we were looking for a way out of the condition in which we lived and they opened doors for us and gave us a platform we otherwise did not have [Music] paul roberson was the one artist who made the great sacrifice based on commitment and that commitment is that an artist supposed to use his or her art to change the society in which they live wb the boys is our greatest single intellect we produced in the whole of the western world and he's not just a black american intellect he is an american intellect equal to any w.e.b du bois paul roberson the party came closest to what those men wanted to stand for in the world was a fair deal for the working people of the world we would examine it later to our sorrow we were in an argument between not a liberator and an oppressor but two oppressors with different techniques and methodology of oppression in the final analysis russia did not want us to be free any more than in the united states and england and the imperial powers but they wanted us under their domination i never thought the left movement communists are socialists made in a serious study of the history in the background of the african people of the world and they had a preconceived notion of us that had nothing to do with our reality and these african communal societies for each got according to his needs were not copied from europe because they existed before there was a euro in these societies based on the concept of the family and the community everyone in the society had a responsibility in these societies there was no word for jail because no one had ever gone to one no word for offerings because no one had ever thrown away any children no word for old people's home because no one had ever thrown away grandma and grandpa and while i had some admiration for the conclusion of karl marx i dare to say he was a political opportunist in the johnny come lately because he was rehashing something that was in the world before the first european war shu lived in the house that had a window [Music] during my early years in harlem in the 30s my writing consisted mainly of poetry short stories and little essays on aspects of history the harlem renaissance writers of course influenced me i knew clone mckay i knew langston hughes i knew richard wright before he had published native son i knew wallace thurman or nelly lawson jesse fossett i found the pan-africanist consciousness in langston hughes and to some degree in a cloned mckay but the rest of them were rather parochial finally i got to meet arthur schumberg arthur schomburg mentor to two generations of african american scholars the legacy of this puerto rican-born historian is the world's definitive institution of its kind harlem's schomburg center for research in black culture i went down the 135th street library and he was on the third floor and i asked very humbling as the librarian do you know anybody who would give me a letter to see arthur schonberg and she said very sharply you know impatient because she was short of help you just have to walk up three flights i walked up three flights and the author schoenberg was holding down the desk being 18 and rash i wanted to know the history of the african people of the world henceforth right now within the hour his lunch hour all of it he said sit down son what you're calling african history and negro history are the missing pages of world history then he said son go study the history of your masters go study the history of the people who enslaved you and find out why they founded a necessity to remove an entire people from the respectful commentary of the history of the world well my earliest impressions of them was a people in power who intended to stay in power and i began to wonder why they had so much and other people had so little and what everybody i knew worked harder than they who made this arrangement i studied european history and world history now when i went back to chambery with some knowledge of background of european history now he began to show me how to study african history arthur schoenberg taught me the interrelationship of african history to world history willison huggins of the old harlem history club taught me the political meaning of history and from the lectures of william leo hansberry of howard university i learned the philosophical meaning of history the most valuable lesson i've learned is that when you address a people by their right name that name must relate to land history and culture all people go back to the geography of their original origin and identifies themselves no matter where they live on the face of the earth we have overused the word black because black tells you how you look but it don't tell you who you are you can call it an italian white that don't tell you anything about him we are the only people who seem to have laws that all essential trait of geographical and historical reference around 1933 up until 1934 1935 harlem was main activity was how to make harlem a congressional district so that harlem could elect its own congressman adam powell was just began to show his weight we were fighting to get jobs on 125th street fighting to get jobs in our own neighborhood i admire adam with all of his faults he was the best person that black america has ever sent to washington he got the job done when he went to washington the first time they told mr powell that we don't accept blacks in the congressional dining room and adam smiled and said well you don't accept them well that's your custom the next day adam got the tallest and the meanest looking and the blackest of the blacks he could find and march them into the congressional dining room as his guest and got away with it but it was a period when we were reassessing our role in the whole of the western world we were tuning in to africa as much as we could and having african forums and making a serious study of african history black men wanted to go to ethiopia and fight on the side of the ethiopians but america would not give them passport and let a single one leave the country for that purpose and yet italians could get passports to go and fight with italian forces against ethiopia now later some of the same black men who couldn't get permission got permission to go fight in the abraham lincoln brigade in spain i'm a physician physician then why would you want to go in ethiopia well i feel it's my duty to give my profession and if necessary my life in the cars of ethiopia and i decile and be happy to die for the defense of entire africa including abyssinia that's fine sign right here on the dotted line see originally africans did not define themselves by continent but more by regions africa as a continent began to be defined by foreigners in north africa the romans had a province called afric the word became africa the history both known and hidden of the land where time began has been a primary focus of dr clark's scholarship throughout his long career the concept of social order the concept of an organized society came out of now valley civilization before there was any other society that has been known to man functioning any other place in the world the significance of now valid civilization is that it was that civilization that set a standard of performance untouched by the other civilizations of the world and people are reluctant to give an african credit for a creation that happened in africa they also forget that the nile valley stretches 4 000 miles into the physical body of africa that it was the world's first cultural highway for centuries eurocentric scholars had rejected the idea that the mighty egyptian empire was in fact created and maintained by black africans the concept that western civilization was the product of non-white intelligence imagination technology and spirituality was unacceptable both psychologically and politically a brilliant senegalese scholar and scientist would shake and many say toppled the very foundation of that conventional wisdom his name was sheikh antodiope his research was brought to the attention of the english-speaking world through the efforts of his long-time colleague and friend i was wondering why his books had never been published in the united states he said there's no publisher's interest in these books it took me seven years to interest the publisher in the books of sheikh at that deal deop's disciples refer to him as the pharaoh of the upper nile you must be strong enough and serene enough history to see the historical facts and to interpret them we can all be impassioned 4 000 years black africa had an imperialism all of western asia was under the dominant under the domination of blacks and at that time no one would ever have dreamt that the situation could be reversed this is why the study of history gives us the serenity required to appreciate the facts as they are in 1974 he would challenge the major scholars of the world on the concept of egypt not being anything other than an african state in the conference on the peopling of egypt leading scholars of the world met and debated most of them wanted to put egypt's origin outside of africa czechos and his protege people obenga placed egypt within the context of africa's totality cycantro duo was more than historical he's a scientist his paleontologist and he had proven that if he could get the pigment from some of the mummies he could prove the african origins all the rest of the conferees came just to disagree and when it was all over they had to admit these two men came prepared to prove that case at that point they began to close the door to the research of sheikh and tadio [Music] from the first dynasty to the invasion of naval that was the first golden age and from third dynasty came the great multi-genius m hotel the real father of medicine who lived 1800 years before the greek was called the father medicine when we read the biography of the greek he says i am a child of m hotel and from the 18th dynasty came the world's great social reformer and maybe one of the world's first deities up latin he thought so much of life he would not crush a flower he outlawed warfare [Music] spirituality was a part of the total life of the people before the coming of the europeans the african was very religious the step pyramid was originally built for the temple at the top where you can grow up and pray this relates not just to the glorification of a pharaoh but the spiritual outpouring of a people this is what made the civilization of the nile so great at the same time that egypt was in its 24th dynasty europe was just emerging from its pre-literate past the first show of european intelligence was a book called the artists in the iliad that's about 850 bc whereas egypt 850 bc egypt is old and tired and has gone through 24 dynasties it is on the eve of its last great dynasty that will come from the pharaohs in the south and the have just read the book of folklore just south of egypt lies another highly evolved black society the nubians their civilization thrived for some 3000 years i call the twenty-fifth dynasty the one dynasty from the south that moved up north and to tell their cousins the egyptians how to rule a nation one more time in the great show of history this was africa's last walk in the sun it was a great and mighty walk that walk had lasted ten thousand years now it's coming to an end europe is just being born the very word europe is not even being used [Music] [Music] i was drafted the army in september 1941 i can say with certainty i was probably one of the best clerics one of the worst soldiers the army ever had i couldn't shoot i didn't like the hot sun didn't like to go on those all night trips but i was a wizard of administration i made sure my men got what was due to them as soldiers and men not as black men but as soldiers and men after i returned from the army it was not so much as finding myself again as a pan-africanist but redefining myself as a pan-africanist remember we had participated in a war that we were cynical about in the first place having participated in this wall on a jim crow basis getting out of the war and there wasn't the employment that we had hoped would be there i began to think more and more about the fact that african people would have to depend on themselves pan-africanism would be perceived as a way to end african dependence on colonial masters a way to create free and independent nations a way to transfer the continent's immense riches from the hands of invaders into those of the indigenous people of the land i began to define pan-africanism as the building of an african world community the union of african people in different parts of the world the african population in india and the pacific islands the african population in the caribbean and brazil and south america and i was looking to the fact that we number a billion people on the face of the earth if you put them all together and they did one thing in unison even if it was wrong it might alter the world africa has always been and still is the world's richest continent africa has always had things other people want it but they couldn't do without and didn't want to pay for so therefore there's always been an excuse to invade africa [Music] alexander's invasion was the first purely european invasion of africa everything that had happened in egypt and in africa before 332 bc was something that no european had anything to do with now we see the beginning of european occupation and we see it as aggression not bringing civilization but destroying civilizations that it did not understand the uninvited arrival of european armies in the upper nile valley signals the beginning of the end for the highest civilization the world had known the conquerors quite literally changed the complexion of the conquered now you're beginning to get a mulatto sized population that a whole lot of people keep misinterpreting as white with each one of these invaders came the bastardization of the population based on the fact that for the sake of pleasure the foreign soldier has for the female population at a time the male population has been defeated in war the greek's rule didn't last that long before they were challenged an ambitious and well-dressed bunch of thugs across the ocean not very educated but they could fight like hell called romans begin to have ambition for the trade in the mediterranean carthage a powerful black state in north africa had imperial ambitions of its own by the 3rd century bc its forces had crossed the mediterranean and established a large province in spain the military commander of carthage had apprehensions about his roman neighbors and warned his son to keep a watchful eye hannibal's father he would point across the ocean and said there's some evil people over there we better bring the wall to them before they bring it to us hannah will never forget hannibal is only 26 when he takes charge of the army he launches an audacious military adventure leading his men and their elephants over the pyrenees mountains into france then pointing them across the alps boldly toward rome itself heavy casualties overextended supply lines and defection of allies drive hannibal off the soil of southern europe he retreats back home to carthage the romans have made a mission almost a cult out of the destruction of carthage they would meet each other in the mornings good morning roman citizen carthage must be destroyed yes of course roman citizen carthage must be destroyed rome's legions clash with hannibal near zama his troops are defeated hannibal is sent into exile his once mighty nation becomes another colony of rome and an administrative center for their empire now the roman empire internally was not very rich africa became the bread basket for the roman empire and except for africa the roman empire would not have been able to sustain itself now the roman presence in north africa is going to force into being one of the great events in human history roman taxation roman oppression would cause people to turn to new gods and question old gods to turn to a story about a god who comes forth to rescue them now they would draw from african folk law the story of the child in the manger and what am i saying later in retrospect he was referred to as jesus christ now you can argue about the coloration of christ if you want to but i can sell that very quick and we can go on to the next subject was he a roman the answer is no was he agreed the answer is still no the only european types in that part of the world at the time if he was neither roman or greek it was one of those other people and all of those other people were not european and non-white and he came from the other people during that time of roman dominance africans hold high military and administrative posts in the empire the romans and the greeks had no color prejudice comparable to the kind of prejudice we would know later on otherwise why would three africans become emperors of rome why would there be three african popes finally constantine decided to make christianity the religion of the whole of the roman empire now we're coming to the critical period when the roman domination of the church so corrupted the church the africans began some disenchantment with the roman interpretation of christianity constantine calls a council of bishops and priests at a place called nice nassian conference it is at this conference that the european created a european concept of christianity it was at this conference that they began to take the african saints out of the literature of christianity now the corruption had started the physical concept of jesus christ did not exist now how did it come into existence because the pope commissioned it to come into existence michelangelo painted the picture using one of his relatives as model and that picture one of the finest pieces of propaganda ever projected in history has changed the minds of millions of people as who's supposed to represent god whoever he or she is and i have no problem with the sheep spirituality is a way of accepting the fact that there is a spiritual force in the universe larger than all of mankind but someone had to come along and invent a word called god and someone had to say of another god and said mine is better than yours and someone had to create faith someone said i have the true faith religion is the organization of spirituality into something that became the handmaiden of conquerors nearly all religions were brought to people and imposed on people by conquerors and used as the framework to control their minds my main point here is that if you are the child of god and god is a part of you then in your imagination god's supposed to look like you and when you accept a picture of the deity assigned to you by another people you become the spiritual prisoners of that other people many africans became roman citizens just like many uh black americans today i have nothing to do with africa i'm an american i'm a citizen i'm an american there were africans way back there with that same kind of split personality silliness not knowing where their ethnic identity belonged rome's hold over its far-flung provinces weakens in north africa it faces a new and fierce challenge islam the arabs noticing the weakness of the romans in north africa began to quote the favor of the africans arabs convinced the local black populations to join in the struggle against a common oppressor they also convinced many of them to abandon their traditional beliefs and pledge their allegiance to allah the africans assumed that by supporting the arabs the arabs would get the romans literally off their back they were right the arabs did get the romans off their back but the arabs replaced the romans on their back and like most conquerors they declared war african culture in african ways of life the arab has always been a propagator and a defender of slavery they've always rationalized slavery based on islam i do not think any religion sanctions slavery and any time you use a religion to sanction slavery you misusing that religion and misusing the word of god well the christians did it and they have done it and the hebrews have done it it's not right in any case islamic armies their ranks dominated by african converts defeat the romans and push on to the continent of europe in the process they capture spain there the africans and arabs create a rich cultured and powerful empire so powerful it endures for 500 years the achievement of the alves at this time is they have driven the europeans out of the mediterranean the european now must go back into europe they have no empires no great connections outside of europe and because of this they ultimately would go into a period called the dark ages people are confused because when the european mission the dog ages the dark ages for him were not the dark ages for other people concurrent with his dark ages the african had his third golden age as europe suffers three great kingdoms are emerging in west africa mele or mali ghana and sangai these were lands of enormous wealth generated by their control of the trade routes across the sahara and the abundance of their gold mines the kingdoms were known for their benevolent governments and their great respect for learning for a while in history there was only two great universities the university of saint korea at timbuktu and the university of salamanca in spain and the african was solely in charge of the one at sanchory and partly in charge of the one at salamanca the arabs had to some degree institutionalized the practice of african slavery the europeans internationalized it in europe the wealth amassed from the slave trade makes the industrial revolution possible while laying the foundations of modern capitalism in the americas the traffic in human souls creates a vast african diaspora millions upon millions of people ripped from their homelands transported in chains to a distant hostile world the european came into africa as a guest and was treated as a guest the africans are unsuspected political naive some of them still are because he had nothing against the europeans and he had never enslaved any europeans he just assumed automatically no european would enslave him he had never dealt with anyone who would enslave the host and the wife who cooked the meal and lie about it around 1442 the first slaves will be taken out of west africa spain and portugal goes to the pope the leading arbitrator of that day the one person in europe with the greatest authority the pope would say to spain and portugal you take the east and you take the west and you too good catholic nations stop fighting among yourselves and then the profound statement before departure you are both authorized to reduce to servitude all infidel people the slave trade now had been sanctioned europeans have been told they need not feel guilty of it because you're doing this to an infidel who is outside of god's grace england went into the slave trade with a vengeance led by captain hawkins and the good ship jesus the ship was called the good ship jesus the coat of arms on the ship with two africans bound back to back with their arms tied so they saw no contradiction and being in the slave trade and being christians at the same time we cannot deal with this enough because we're still suffering from this inside of the mind of a lot of people in this world into the millions we are outside of humanity outside of the grace of god that's a terrible feeling as you walk the earth because what has been taken away is your essential humanity your human beingness when they take away your human beingness they take away your nation-ness early in the 19th century the concept of slavery began to yield to the concept of colonialism a more sophisticated form of slavery slavery as a system became unwieldily and besides there's a point where it was saturated everybody who wanted a slave had one who could afford one the european nations of size that did not have any portion of africa began to grumble at the berlin conference 1884 and 1885 the european powers of substance who did not have in a part of africa now were given some parts africans did not fall at the feet of the european invaders they fought fiercely bravely and continually anti-colonial wars started up down the coast of west africa and parts of inner africa in the congo it was arm resistant the zulu walls lasted from the 1650s when the boys arrived to the last zulu war was 1906. in ghana the ashanti walls lasted from early in the 18th century to the last the shanty wall led by a woman yeah a santiwa in 1900 for a while it looked as though the europeans would not be able to hold on to the continent more manpower and more ruthless treatment brought it mainly under their control by 1884 1885 and afterwards there's no there was no dispute about who was in charge of africa just who was in charge of what part of it we have been hung up with a myth the myth of the conqueror and the invader as the bringer of civilization no people ever brought civilization to another people at no time and at no place in history one of the most protracted lies we ever listened to civilization is the art of being civil the word civil means being peaceful and there's nothing peaceful about aggression only the slave can abolish slavery if someone is on your back you have to bend a little to balance them on your back now the best move if you want to get them off of your back is to stand straight up [Music] there's something about an island a body of water it creates a special kind of dreamer because they did not know where they came from in africa they dreamed of the whole of it bring it all together in one piece the seeds of pan-africanism planted in the united states during slavery years later flourish in the fertile soil of the british west indies trinidad produced the three greatest pan-africanists eight sylvester williams clr james and george padmore in trinidad they found found the pan-african league each sylvester williams would eventually call it pan-african he would call a conference in london in 1900 a few scattered africans a few people from the caribbean they'll be the boys from the united states they did not ask for the independence of african states then they asked for preparation give us the kind of education that will prepare us for eventual independence they were reasonable but they weren't listened to and yet the conference made some kind of impression after the first congress dubois would be the leading light from the second through fourth but the most meaningful the one the dubois called in paris as a result of this congress duke boys came to center stage as the leader in theoretician of pan-africanism pan-africanism wasn't exactly new because black americans were practicing it long before someone gave it a name the african settlement movement the movement that settled liberia was in pharma pan-african movement the so-called negro convention movement was a discussion of how you bring the african world together that whole 19th century was pan-african thought prince hall his development of the black masonic order that he called the african lodge the search for a place in africa for settlement by martin delaney and robert campbell 1829 david walker's appeal to the colored people of the world was basically a pan-african appeal all of this before we come down to the end of the 19th century the ultimate pan-africanist of course for the jamaican marcus carvey citizens of africa i greet you in the name of the universal nuclear improvement association and african communities league of the world you may ask what organization is that it is for me to inform you that the universal liberal improvement association is an organization that seeks to unite into one solid body the 400 million of the world it was soon after the end of world war one the secretary of war had told the black american soldiers that their lot would not be appreciably changed by much of the fact that they fought in the wall there had been an investigation it was discovered that many of the nurses wouldn't treat black soldiers in the hospital wouldn't even touch them some of them died as a result so you have these grievances pent up in the veteran coming home all of this came to a head in 1919 when the riots all over the united states that's color red summer marcus garland could point out look they don't want you here let's go back home let's go to alpha go back to africa let's not only go back to africa let's go back and have our own ships not a whole lot of people who otherwise would not listen not willing to listen we hear the cry of plans for a freshman of championing for the government of our allies for the irish of japan for the japanese we are the universal leader of the raising the price of africa for the africans those at home and those abroad he began to dream the great dream and rescue the mind of millions of black americans from depression and self-doubt by 1923 he was in some difficulty with the boats and some of the people he had hired run the boats turbo mismanagement and betrayal he collected millions of dollars from black americans to buy these boats and these boats were old and not as seawood as he thought they were garvey moved over large territory maybe too fast and yet he built the largest movement in black america before our sense that needed to be a reassessment of marcus garvey and his long-reaching effects he called attention to what slavery and colonialism had taken away they took away a concept essential to all the people in the world they took away the concept of state management and state maintenance once you are taken from the geography of your origin and forced to live in a state designed by others you're still the slave to the man who's astute enough to control a container called the state the cannons of world war ii were barely cold when africans met in manchester england they were prepared to claim that container called the state for themselves the pan-african congress of 1945 now you have the one thing you did not have in the rest of them you have caribbean scholars african-american scholars not a whole lot and africans themselves are now participating we're not talking about africa out of the presence of africa now you're talking about africans with the africans on the scene one african being the co-convener of the conference farming crew out of that fifth pan-african congress came the mentality the basic planning to rule and to take over nation the others were saying give us the education at the fifth pan-african congress they said we got the education we got the manpower we want to rule now the people of ghana resisted british rule from the very beginning in march of 1957 they become the first africans to win their freedom kwame nkrumah was ready to rule when i knew in kruma in the harlem history club days my impression of him not as a future head of state but as an african who's going to go back and make a major contribution to his nation and he was a committed african [Music] i went to africa 1958 because i've been promising myself i was going to get to africa next year that that promise of myself went on for about five years before i actually got there when i got there all i had is return ticket i told in africa who had read one of my stores in an african magazine and wrote and got my address i said i was coming to ghana get me a place in a hotel for a few days and he didn't even go to hotel he didn't try he took me to the slums of accra and i lived right there with him finally a check that was do me from america did not arrive when it did arrive it bounced there i was and one day kuma had gone someplace he's coming home from a visit of state a whole lot of people along the highway hailing his return and so i was along with the rest of him it was just just like another african melted into the crowd and he spotted me and he stopped the rolls royce and the motorcycle drivers pulled that gun thought that someone's about to hurt the president you know his motorcade stopped and he came out and said what hell you do in my country i just laughed you said you a long way from holla he looked right i said where do you live i said in in jamestown james times is the slums of a crowd still is he shook his head said you sure must love africa but he headed back to his car and he turned back to me he said you know what i'm gonna do for you i told him i didn't have any job in my second balance i didn't even know how i go get home i'm gonna put your harlem behind to work and he gave me a job working on his newspaper the evening news [Music] the significance of god independence at that time is that it gave spirit to the whole of the african world it was a major impact on black america because it came at the time that the civil rights movement was reaching a crescendo at great height his first vision of pan-africanism was the physical unification of africa and he said that gun and freedom won't mean anything until the rest of africa is free so the spirit of ghanaian independence would create a light of hope in the rest of africa this is where farming crewmen was trying to build this is what the intelligence services of the united states england and france had to destroy to keep the example of ghana from emerging [Music] what went wrong was our misin understanding of what a state consists of in the responsibility that goes into holding one together and our dependence on our colonial masses more than we anticipated we who had longed so much for power we wanted power power when we got close enough to touch it we realized we hadn't even decided what we're going to do with it once we get it i want to take this opportunity to welcome again to the united states which he knows so well the first citizen of ghana president improvement i was in the anti-poverty program in harlem and when kruma came and spoke at the united nations i got the picture and showed it to them and i got the speech the first thing i showed them i said look there's a black man head of a nation speaking to the world he got caught snappy hair he didn't apologize for it here i am african and black and bold and powerful and head of a nation and i got something to say to you and this is what i got to say the passive resistance of gandhin we should understand this was a strategy i regard myself as a soldier through a soldier of peace i received the inspiration uh to carry on in the non-violent tradition from jesus of nazareth and the operational technique from mahatma gandhi the passive resistance of the civil rights movement was sold as a way of life a strategy is never a way of life a strategy is something you use the same as you use and orange when the juice is gone you throw it in the garbage can mahatma gandhi was an east indian nationalist but a very skillful politician and he always had a violent alternative waiting in the wing just in case his non-violence didn't work today marks the beginning of a determined organize mobilized campaigns to get the right to vote all over this state i think dr martin luther king was the spiritual leader of the black movement of the civil rights movement and probably one of the finest theologians that we produced in recent years he was a dreamer and yet he was a committed man to struggle and he made great sacrifice within that struggle i had some strong disagreements with him i never thought that we should be locked into the concept of non-violence as a way of life i was perfectly willing to use it as a strategy i think we should be slowing criticizing martin luther king he was brave enough to put his life online for what he believed we are still here talking that's proof enough of his bravery over [Music] ours [Music] i think the match in washington was just that it wasn't a march on washington it was a much in washington i don't know of any sweeping achievements that came out of it [Music] it was a great ceremony i'd be hard-pressed to identify the substance i happen to think we've gotten enough mileage out of marching it was a great ceremony it was a great rehearsal for a show we did not put on the road for a time we had the attention of the world between the civil rights movement the caribbean federation movement and the african independence movement we had the attention of the world and there were people though they hated our guts they were willing to make concessions to us based on the fact that we were ready to handle power we made too many speeches and didn't do the necessary work the unglamorous off camera work that would have made it possible that was our great mistake ceremony that lacked substance and that was a voice loud and clear and analytical we were fighting to keep from hearing that voice it was the voice of big bad malcolm x who had both the national and the international message one of the reasons that it is bad for us to continue to just refer to ourselves as so-called negro that's negative when we say so-called negro that's pointing out what we aren't but it isn't telling us what we are we are african and we happen to be in america we're not americans we are people who formerly were africans who were kidnapped and brought to america i met him first in 1958 i knew him from that period until his death and sometimes saw him on a daily basis i would punish information on history and background information i never told malcolm x what to do and i don't remember anybody else who told him what to do either they have studied the tactics and the strategy and the methods of all of the uh african nations who have emerged and won their independence and they've seen that the africans didn't get it by sitting in they didn't get it by wading in they didn't get it by singing we shall overcome they got it through nationalism i first met malcolm at the world's trade show building looked me up and down and said i bet you're a swine eater i'll admit that i had paid some joyful visits to polk chops and other parts of the pig and i said that you know malcolm if it wasn't for the pig you and i wouldn't be here arguing about the pig because some of us would be gone we would have starved to death many times when malcolm x was prefacing his speeches with the [Music] words the honorable elijah muhammad teaches us malcolm x was teaching malcolm x lessons over and beyond anything the honorable elijah muhammad ever thought about you say we are on the road now to a better world because the white man promised integration this is a disgrace mr mohammed's analysis is that until the image of the black man in the mind of the black man has been changed you will always have delinquency parental as well as juvenile so his entire approach is not so much to change the attitude of the white man toward the black man but to change the attitude of the black man about himself the arabs and certain powerful groups within islam really wanted malcolm on their side it was a serious attempt to persuade malcolm to turn on elijah muhammad and establish a second islamic group based on what they consider to be orthodox islam they offered him three and a half million he turned it down and we walking down the street uh towed his car and this man had turned down three and a half million dollars and whacked me on the shoulder says swine eater let me buy you a cup of coffee he was more loyal to elijah muhammad than elijah muhammad eventually was to him elijah muhammad was getting old and feeble and there was suspicion that malcolm x would be the logical successor there were those within the nation who didn't want malcolm x as the logical successor because malcolm x could have done some serious house cleaning he was an honest man and there was some thieves in the house i think his development as a pan-africanist came a little later in his life in the final analysis he was as good of pan-africanist as anything else we have to have the type of understanding of africa and the type of understanding of our people here in order to build a bridge a contact a line of communication between the two and once the lines of communication have been established and our african brothers can can can stretch forth their hands and reach us and we can stretch forth our hands and reach them why there's nothing that this blue eyed man in this country will be able to do to you and me successfully from that day onward malcolm x had laid down a threat to the colonial powers of the world it is nationalism that's bringing freedom to oppress people all over the world it is it was nationalism that brought freedom to the algerians it was nationalism that brought freedom to the nigerians and to the ghanaians [Music] i do not think malcolm x's murder was a local american thing i think it was a larger thing than that i do not think the spare khan had anything directly to do with the murder but i do think farrakhan is guilty of creating the attitude and the atmosphere that led to the murder [Music] without farrakhan malcolm x i think still would have been assassinated [Music] we were friends from the day we met until until his death [Music] when i got the word of his death i was in connecticut and growing up to make speech in connecticut and i was at a jewish home and someone announced that he died and then someone added dismissing the whole thing that after all he was anti-semitic i know the man well enough to know that he really didn't hate anybody he hated certain things people did he wasn't a hater at all and they spoke as though they had the right to tell us who should and should not be um be our hero i went into that bathroom and was after dinner and just cried like a child for 15 minutes and i came out partly composed and [Music] made the speech that night i was asked to make and came on home and began to try to deal with the reality of the situation because to me malcolm x was not gone and he's still not going in my imagination the whole year after his death i almost got the feeling that we were having our usual conversation i was always in it what can i do and finally i got the feeling that he had said do your best work i was a good teacher before that i was a better teacher and a better human being after that because i knew that being a good classroom teacher was my best work we have to move to a position where we can feel strength and unity amongst each other from watch to harm where we won't ever be and the afraid thing we have to do is to build a power base so strong in this country that will bring them to their knees every time they mess with us individuals do not create rebellions conditioned to do until they begin to address themselves to those conditions rebellions will continue and they will escalate and to fight our liberation by any means necessary it was the beginning of the black power movement was also the black and beautiful movement moving into second gear i would like to think that when the afro wearing the african clothes was a move toward africa to some extent it was a form of african consciousness an african awakening as a result of it african people were stimulated throughout the world what followed the stimulation [Music] what institutions came out of it what of lasting value came out of it i do not think the africans the caribbeans or the black americans have studied with any degree of depth and seriousness the rise of modern japan they went into a wall and they lost they sustained two atomic bombs [Music] they had that country occupied now the people that defeated them are now begging them for commercial space what did they do that we have forgotten how to do they did some serious astute planning not loud mouthing not boasting they did not get on the radio or any platform and call anybody any names but they did what they had to do [Music] if we're carrying out a well-designed program for liberation if it's written out any literate person can contribute and share leadership so if the leader dies while you're on page 13 move to page 14 and continue the struggle bear the man continue the plan i think every person that calls themselves a leader a preacher a policy maker of any kind should ask and answer the question in his own lifetime how will my people stay on this earth how will they be educated how will they be schooled how will they be housed and how will they be defended the answer to these questions will create the concept of enduring nationhood because it creates the concept of enduring responsibility good morning [Music] my dear brothers black men strong black men upright black men silver black men together black men unity black men freedom black men justice black men welcome to the million man march one million black men make their way to the nation's capital they are answering minister louis farrakhan's call for unity redemption and atonement it's the largest demonstration in american history marching is a strategy and i think we have gotten enough out of the strategy i think the march is a waste of shoe leather gas and energy [Music] i have some serious problems with any kind of march for our liberation that leaves out one half of the mentality of our people the women i don't buy the rationale that the women need to stay home and take care of the children you know i find that if they have no honorable place in your liberation your liberation is not worth the fight because you can't build no family struggle you can't have no continuum you can't even continue your name without that connection long live the spirit of the million man march long live the spirit of the million man march i'm saying there's more to revolution than throwing your fists in the air there's more to progress than marching i want to say my brothers this is a very pregnant moment pregnant with the possibility of tremendous change in our status in america and in the world we're doing showbiz liberation and that's not liberation whether you like it or not god brought the idea through me and he didn't bring it through me because my heart was dark with hatred and anti-semitism he didn't bring it through me because my heart was dark and i'm filled with hatred for white people and for the human family of the planet if my heart was that dark how is the message so bright the message so clear the response so magnificent this march will do more to watch farrakhan's ego and to project him into the forefront of leadership than anything else and once he's in the forefront of leadership where will he lead us alone god is great straight to islam yet he will not make a principled statement on the enslavement of africans in mauritania and in the sudan there's all kinds of documentation all kinds of proof if i have to be a dissenting voice in this then i'm very pleased that i've got enough integrity to be a dissenting voice and not to care what the chips fall many perceive the african-american family as an endangered species to dr clark the family is the soul the spirit and the cornerstone of the nation if the family dies so does the nation making a whole new way of life out of the artificiality of imitating our oppressor was also in trouble with the family and we grew up in communities where every child was a child of the whole community and could be disciplined and rewarded by anyone in the community now we brought into someone else's sociology don't touch that child don't you dare spank my child confirmedly your mother left you alone said if they misbehave you can spank them we don't have that kind of relationship one to the other anymore after emancipation we made a monumental effort to find broken bits and pieces of our families my own grandmother spent three years running around virginia trying to find her first husband who had been sold to a slave breeding farm in virginia but the major thing was we were trying to put families together and to have family connections our new mission liberation is to put strong families together again because the family is not only the embryo the beginning of all that we can call civilization but at the beginning of all anyone can call a civilization because this is the essential network that leads to nation [Music] there's some common sense things we can still be doing our communities are miniature nations we have to control them control the real estate in those communities control the education in those communities you cannot write the history of this nation as though it's only a white nation it's a multicultural nation i'm saying whatever the solution is either we are in charge of our own destiny or we are not in charge on that point we got to be clear you're either free or you're a slave [Music] i want people to remember me as a creative classroom teacher i'm self-educated i've read more books and most men see in a lifetime fortunately i still remember the better potions of most of them but i haven't seen the last of my life or the last of my energy so i decided if you lose your eyesight increase your insight use what you got and keep on doing the things that give your life meaning and give your life definition i like for them to remember that i have been consistent i took certain principle stands my late teenage now at the age of 80 i have not discarded these principal stands my great overpowering love affair has been the liberation and the maintenance of african people and to restore them to a status that they lost in the world i think faith has not spared african people for an ideal purpose and we were put on this earth and we have endured a hollow cause 10 times worse than the one in europe then faith has a mission for us [Music] we gave the world express humanity [Music] maybe we have the capacity to give the world its next humanity [Music] know [Music] you [Music] hey [Music] do [Music] you

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Length: 94min 47sec (5687 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 05 2021