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I'd like to welcome all of you to this 14th annual Lender lecture presented by the North Carolina Collection at the Dorm County Library. George Lender served as the director of the library from 1965 until 1982. One of the main things Mr Linder was hired to do

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was oversee the merging of the black and white library systems. He felt very strongly that the single system that resulted should fairly and effectively serve all citizens of Durham County no matter what race or socio-economic status and he worked hard to make sure that happened. It's

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fitting that we have Howard Fuller, a legend of the civil rights movement in Durham speaking today in honor of him. And now I'd like to welcome Anne Atwater, another legend in Durham civil rights movement who will introduce our speaker today. Thank you. Thank you. Now,

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that was mighty quick. I thought I was gonna sit down for a while but you might as well take off your shoes because it's gonna take me a good three weeks to introduce the speaker of the hour. Um But it is a pleasure for me to

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be able to stand here and privilege to stand here this afternoon to introduce our speaker for this afternoon. Uh He came to Durham as a Moses. You know, Jesus sent Moses to Pharaoh and he told Pharaoh to let my people go. And when he sent Howard

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to durn it was to get the founding fathers off of the low income black people. And he not only went to Durham, he went throughout the state of North Carolina cleaning up and fixing up everything that was broken down. He had a vision and he had

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a dream and his dream was to make sure that everybody knew that everybody was equal. It took him 17 weeks. He got together with his plan that he had and he went all over the county and he got all over the country state and got people

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out. See, I'm not talking from a paper, I'm talking about something that I know and it might my stomach a little bit because I had a birthday or two. But uh it's still, it'll come back. Uh Anyway, he put, I was in this training along with

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the rest of them. It called a community action technician training. And in 17 weeks, he trained a white number of people how to go out organized. And he taught us a lot about a uh a little bit about a lot of things so that we too

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could go out and stand up and what we believed in this man lives in Wisconsin. He is married, he has four Children. Not only is he qualified, he is certified to do the things that you would hear him talk about this afternoon and the things that

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he has done, uh, I know that you wanna hear him and you're eager to get it on to get everything rolling and I won't take up any more time. I told him he would have to introduce his wife. So I'm gonna save that good spot for

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him at this time. But I do wanna recognize one of the people, one of the persons here this afternoon that got, uh, I was speaker on the road and that was Mr George Essa, uh Mr Elsa in the North Carol Fun. And I'm happy to see

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him here this afternoon. I thought I told him, make sure Howard saw him earlier. So that af after I sat down I speak will come forth and that's none other than Howard Fuller. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very, uh, you know, the problem is, uh,

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on my way over here. Um Casey Lati, who's with me, a young man who's uh, work with me on potentially doing a book because, uh, people have written all this stuff about me and I've never written anything. So, uh, we've been thinking about actually doing a

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book. But, um, on the way over, he asked me what was I gonna speak about? And I told him I didn't, I didn't really know, because, um, the way that I really wanted to do this was, um, instead of giving a big speech or anything to

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really have like a conversation and I'm hoping that that's what we'll be able to do this afternoon. I want to start though, by, um, uh, introducing my wife, uh, Doctor Deborah mcgriff. Um, Debbie, uh, works for, uh, Edison School and, uh, she was the first, uh,

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woman superintendent of the Detroit public Schools. And, uh, she's taught me a lot about education, which we both uh work on a lot now. I mean, that's really the focus of our work, but there's a lot of people in this audience and I don't, I don't

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want to miss anybody, but there's a lot of people in this audience who um I like owe a great deal to and I, I was very glad that Anne introduced George Eser because um when George was the head of the North Carolina Fund, he had to

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cover a lot of stuff that I did. He had to look the other way. Uh He was the one who had to go talk to these people about. Well, what Howard really meant to say was uh what he was really trying to do was and he

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didn't really mean that. So, uh George and then Nathan Garrett later on at the foundation of community development and, and really Robert Faus when we got started at operation Breakthrough, uh he had to explain away a lot. And so I'm, I'm deeply appreciative of all of

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those people and all of the explaining that they had to do. One of the things I want to make very clear though is um when Anne was introducing me, she was talking about how much I taught them. And I think the reality of it is, is

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how much I was taught. And so it wasn't like I taught Ann and Ruby, uh, and Mabel Brown and Nathaniel and Louise and Mrs Rand and uh Pearly Wright and Joyce. It, it wasn't like I taught them. It, it was, it was more like what they

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taught me and what they taught me about was really, um, just the, the, the, the fundamental right of people to, to be able to control their own lives and that it is really not possible for us to discuss freedom without discussing the ability of a free

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people to live with dignity and work. And I could not envision like how you could say people live with dignity and work if they were living on streets that weren't paid or houses where on a day, like the day the rain would come in or they

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were living in homes with rats. I mean, I just couldn't understand how that was like an expression of freedom. And it was interesting because I came down here to work in the poverty program and, you know, those of you who are, you know, got gray hair

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like me and stuff. Remember that way back then there was this term that they use and I know George remembers that it was called feasible involvement of the poor. And, and I was like, I actually took that seriously. I was like, oh, ok, I understand this.

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Now, what this really means is if you're gonna fight a war on poverty, then you gotta involve the people uh in that fight. And there was another part to it that really struck me too, was that if this is a war, then you can't have a

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slum lord on the board planning the war. That uh that was sort of like how could that be? And so I, I don't, all of this was just so uh clear to me, II, I couldn't understand why that would even be a question. And so once

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I got in here and I think when they hired me, um you know, I was like this, you know, I had a master's degree of social work and, you know, I came down here from the urban league and I think everybody sort of thought, you know,

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this is a nice moderate uh sensible young black man who can speak English and stuff and, you know, it looks like he can write a couple of sentences. So, hey, you'll probably be all right. We'll stick him over there and hop and uh we're gonna put

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him in charge of uh area a because uh they had divided Durham County up into area A B and C and A was hat. And the black neighborhoods, Edgemont was b the white neighborhoods where ultimately Harriet Boyd and uh Nathan worked and then there was the

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county where ultimately Charles Tillman works, that was area c so they had put me in charge of area A and um so, and, and we found the office uh right above Scarborough's funeral home, uh, on Pedigree. And, uh, and it was a pool hall right, right

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across like the alleyway, like, and that's where I first met. Why is I, uh, who was, uh, who, who taught me a whole lot too about, uh, the world. So, in any event, um, when, when, when I got started, I really didn't know anything. II, I

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don't know George and I don't know if everybody ever knows this, but I didn't know anything about community organizing. I mean, I, I have some ideas, you know, and I've read some books and I've gotten a master's degree. So presumably I was supposed to know something.

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So, um, I just thought what we needed to do was to just, uh, go door to door and start talking to people and start trying to find out like, what were their issues? What was on their minds? What did they want to change? And I, and

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I had this fundamental belief that the only way that the change could take place, uh, would be if people, uh, collectively, uh, tried to make the change, but they couldn't do it as individuals. And the other thing that I felt and I don't mean any disrespect,

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but I also felt that, uh, the people who lived in these neighborhoods where the problems were, that they needed to be able to speak for themselves, that you couldn't let the established leadership speak for them, that the only way that you could really get change was

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they had to speak for themselves. And, and I think the thing that most amazed everyone and, and I've read Christina Green's book. Uh And II, I find a very intriguing book by the way. Uh But it, it, it never occurred to me that Anne or Ruby

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or Mabel or Joyce or Louise or Nathaniel, it never occurred to me that they couldn't speak for themselves. I just, that never, that, that thought never crossed my mind. The only thing that crossed my mind was we had to figure out a way uh to be

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organized so that when people spoke, they would be heard. That was the, that was the, the, the only thing that I could see. And so we set about, you know, trying to do that. And like I said, it was AAA tremendous learning experience for me because

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um I learned so much about uh people, I learned a lot about tactics. We made up some stuff as we went along and, and some of it worked and, uh, some of it didn't I remember one of the first lessons that I, I learned was, uh,

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we call a big medium. Oh, I thought it was gonna be a big meeting because, you know, everybody tells you they're gonna come and, you know, as an organizer, you know, you go to people's door. Yeah, I'll be there, uh, Wednesday night. So, uh, one of

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the lessons I learned the first meeting we had when very few people came and we had a large room and this is something I tried to train TJ and others organizers later on is that you never ever set up a meeting in a large room. That

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what you do is get a small room and it's always better to bring in chairs than to have empty chairs. And so we practice stuff like that, you know, how to, how to set the meeting up in a small room. So it would be like, you

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know, the, there was an overflow crowd in a room that could only seat 15 people. But, uh, you know, they had to bring in chairs, they had to find it was just standard room only, you know, and nobody ever really looked at the size of the

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room. But if you picked a room this big and three people showed up, they would say, hey, that, you know, the room was empty. And so we, we learned stuff like that and we also learned that um we had to be very like focus on the

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issues that we were dealing with and we had to bring attention uh to the problems that we were trying to define because clearly over all of these years, for a variety of reasons, people had not seen these issues or seen these problems. So we had to

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figure out ways to um really make these problems become apparent. So I guess ii I just wanna say and, and I don't know that what, you know how Lynn wants me to do this, but um I'd be more than willing to answer questions about what happened

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back during that time or anything in the book or, you know, the one thing that I really try to do with my life is I really don't try to look backwards very much. In fact, when I was someone interviewed me, maybe it was you about what,

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what was it gonna be like to come down here uh and do this? And I, and I said in some ways it's gonna be very emotional for me because not only because I'm gonna see some people that I love dearly and care about, but I really

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never think very much about uh those days because I'm trying to look at what's ahead. I'm trying to look at the struggles that we have today. I'm trying to look at, you know, what, what, what are we gonna do about the fact that we got all

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of our Children who were not educated, what, what are we gonna do about all of these issues that confront them today? And for me, looking backwards is only worth, worth it to the extent that it helps me move forward. And so II I don't tend to

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be very nostalgic about it. Uh But I tend to like keep the lessons that I learned from that, you know, from the things that we did as we try to struggle on things now and, and, and, and now I'm engaged in the most controversial stuff, you

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know, like, I actually support vouchers for low income black people. I mean, I think there ought to be charter schools. I think there ought to be homeschooling. I don't understand why we ought to live in a country where only rich people will be able to decide

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what schools to send their kids to. I don't understand why we would make low income parents stay in schools that don't work so we can protect the system. I still don't understand why we protect the system as opposed to the people who the system is supposed

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to serve. So I, I, I guess I don't understand why, you know, why we wouldn't continue fighting those battles. And I see everything that I'm doing today is like an extension of everything that I did beginning May 5th at two o'clock in the afternoon when I

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first came down here. And, and the interesting thing is when I first came down here. Uh I'll tell, listen, I'll start answering your questions. Uh I come down from Chicago and, you know, I lived most of my life in the north. I came down to North

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Carolina. I turned on channel five in Raleigh and uh, uh Jesse Helms. Um, this is, this is a true story. This is like, I'm, you know, I'm coming here talking about, I'm gonna organize and stuff. I turn on channel five and, um, Jesse Helms did an

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editorial and he used to have a dude with him called, he called him Uncle Chuck. And Uncle Chub used to have on a hunting shirt and he sat by a fireplace with a doll with a hunting doll. And they did an editorial on Martin Luther King.

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This was in, in 1965 Martin Luther King was what Uncle Chub called Martin Luther King. And this was like my welcome to live North Carolina channel five at the Raleigh. And I have to tell you, uh, that one of the, one of the worst experiences I've

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had in a long time. And this just shows you sometimes what it takes if you're committed to the idea of you have no permanent friends or enemies. But what you have is permanent interests. And I can't really say I can hold totally to that because I

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was up on the hill and I was trying to get a demonstration project into National Legislation so that low income parents could, ah, have choice and because this is now quote, a conservative issue which I found find strange the, the people who were supporting it were

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the Republicans, the Republican senators. And they invited me to their, to their, uh, lunch every Wednesday or something. They had a lunch and I swear I was in the room, Jesse Hows was in the room from Thurman. And I was like, and I was trying to

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be cool and everything, you know, I was, and I was, I was trying to stay focused on Howard. You, you, you, you, you were not brought in here to jump over a table. Um, you know, to, uh, at anybody's throat. You, you, you supposed to be

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up here trying to get some votes for this program that's gonna help these low-income people that you care about. You have to block out who's in the room with you. Uh, very hard lessons, uh, uh very hard to do. But ok, so, uh, I, I wanna

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stop and really, um, you know, turn this into a conversation and like I said, I'm more than happy to answer any questions that anybody has. And I'd just like to say if you, there are mics in the aisles on either side and I have a traveling

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mic up here. So if you want to ask a question, please come to the mic or a raise your hand and I'll hand you one and state your name? Yes, thank you. Although I know my voice resonate with the room, my name is Darryl Stover. And

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uh I, I came here 10 years ago from Washington DC to work in Haya. Actually, I came here not knowing I would work at the Haya Heritage Center. Uh Now I work in Kerry. I've always lived in Ky since I came here. But uh my question

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you knew to you uh is when we look at the legacy that you have relative to the Malcolm X Institute that you established here. And then we look at the notion of charter schools in these days and times. What similarities and what differences do you see

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relative to the challenges that our young people have in regards to education then? And now the institution that you established and the institutions that individuals seemingly are establishing now, um That's a, that's a le le let me, let me try to, let me, let me try

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to see if I can answer this in less than a half hour. Uh But uh let me try, I just got through reading a book, the scariest book I've read in a long time. I try to read a lot and it's called The World Is Flat

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by Thomas Friedman. And ee even if only 50% of what Friedman says is correct, it's absolutely clear that our young people in this country, our smartest young people in this country are in deep trouble. As it compares to the rest of the world. If our smartest

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young people are in deep trouble, what does that say for the Children and the young people who we allow to graduate without being able to read or write, who are kicked out of schools every day, who, who are getting an education that will never prepare them

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to deal with people next door, let alone the people that they're gonna have to compete with in the rest of the world. We've all heard about this whole thing about the village. It takes a whole village to educate kids. I'm tired of hearing about the village

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and I'm tired of the people who, who getting up talk about the village who ain't never been nowhere near the village, talk about what it takes to educate the kids. And so one thing is that Friedman's book does is it, it, it, it gives me a

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new African parable that relates to your question. What he says was that every morning in Africa, a gazelle gets up and a gazelle knows that if it can't run faster than the fastest lion, it's going to be killed every morning. A lion gets up knowing that

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if it can't run faster than the slowest gazelle, it's gonna start no matter what, every day when the sun comes up, they both start running. And what's happening is young people all over the world are getting up running and they're running faster than our young people

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in a world that requires speed. So to me, charter schools or any kind of school is an effort to say we have to achieve excellence. And unfortunately, the traditional system has failed and continues to fail. Far too many of our Children because I was a superintendent.

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My wife was a superintendent and I know that the needs of the adults in those systems outweigh the needs and interests of poor Children who are in those systems every day. There's no way in the world that we ought to be in a situation where in

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a city like Milwaukee where I'm from, less than 45% of the African American boys who start out in the ninth grade, finish four years later. This this, this is just, this is just outrageous. If you look at the graduation rate of young people around this country,

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it is outrageous. If you saw that thing that John Stossel did, where, where, where they, they gave this test, you know, it was this one about stupid in America. They gave this test to what was supposed to be some of our best kids in New Jersey.

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They then gave the same test to kids in Belgium. Our kids got 47%. The Belgian kids got over 70%. This young Belgian kid looks at a camera and says American kids are stupid. And so what I'm saying is to me, charter schools are, are a lover

00:25:17.869 - 00:25:39.109

to try to bring change. But a charter school isn't a good school because it's a charter because they are terrible charter schools. What a charter school gives us is an opportunity to create excellence by lifting some of the constraints. But a lot of the constraints that

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people who now are, are gravitating towards charter schools. The constraints that they have are in their mind because many of them are bringing to the charter school, the same stuff that, that you were supposed to be leaving over here. And so the charter schools are only

00:25:56.520 - 00:26:11.619

gonna be helpful if in fact, they create something different and something of excellence for our Children. So that's how I see charter schools and that's why I think they're important because they're a lover of change. But what they also are is that they're one lover for

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giving parents choice. I think a more powerful choice is if you give people opportunity scholarships where they can take those scholarships to wherever they think they can best get the best education for their Children. Charter schools. On the other hand, are a are, are one the,

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they're, they're a step removed from the traditional system even though they, they are public schools, they're just a different type of public school. And, and, and I was actually at the first national charter school conference back in 1991 there was 35 of us. Um I spoke

00:26:45.569 - 00:27:01.010

this year at the conference and there was 3500 people. So the movement has grown, but we still are a long way away from excellence that we need for our Children. Now, the way that all ties into Malcolm X is um I don't know if people really

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understand how Malcolm X got formed. Um The, the way Malcolm X Liberation University got formed was that um uh when, when uh when George had me come over to the North Carolina Fund, uh we recruited and like TJ is here. Uh We, we recruited students off

00:27:22.829 - 00:27:43.550

of college campuses around the state of North Carolina and we train them as organizers and then we placed them in communities throughout North Carolina to organize neighborhood councils like the ones that we had organized in Durham. And so what occurred was that Chuck Hopkins uh was

00:27:43.560 - 00:27:58.900

uh one of the people we trained. He was the head of the Black Student Union at Duke. They, they went and worked that summer, came back to the campus and it was at the time that the Black student movement was developing and they came back to

00:27:58.910 - 00:28:18.839

the campus and they start saying we wanna have an Afro afroamerican studies program at Duke. And of course, people say that must be crazy. You know, this is Duke Dukes. That's what this is. So um the students took over the Allen building and renamed it Malcolm

00:28:18.849 - 00:28:33.890

X. A lot of people don't remember this but they stayed in there all day. Uh I I was on my way actually to uh give a speech down at uh in Atlanta and I was speaking at Bennett and I got word that the students had taken

00:28:33.900 - 00:28:50.030

over the building. So I came back to Durham. I went inside the building. I was in there with them all day as, as, as, as they started hearing about the police and everything. Uh the, you know, the, the militancy began to, to, to wane and uh

00:28:50.130 - 00:29:05.859

we had, we had this big democratic discussion and people start talking about, you know, my mama didn't send me to Duke to uh you know, for this and that. And so we figured out a way for them to leave like this o out of the, that

00:29:05.869 - 00:29:21.040

that side door, I was showing you case, but nobody told the police that they had left. So the police stormed Allen Hall and they broke out windows and they tear gassed the building. I don't know if you all remember all this but, and then when they

00:29:21.050 - 00:29:33.270

went in there and found out we weren't in there. They was mad as, I mean, they were like, you know, in set. And so it was all of these white kids that were just standing out there, they came outside and tear gassed them, turned them into

00:29:33.280 - 00:29:52.329

militants immediately. And uh but when all of that was going on, Bertie Howard, uh Chuck Hopkins, uh Peggy, all of us went up into the um uh I was just over there today by Duke. It's, it's uh it used to be like the union and, and,

00:29:52.339 - 00:30:06.630

and the black students had like an office up in the top of that union. And, and, and we got up there after all this had gone on and made the decision that we needed to create an independent black school. And we named it Malcolm X because

00:30:06.640 - 00:30:21.089

when the students took over the building at Duke, they named it Malcolm X that day. And we, we named this University of Malcolm X Liberation University. And our first thought, the first thought was simply instead of having music, we're gonna have black music instead of having

00:30:21.099 - 00:30:38.750

history, we're gonna have black history and the students were supposed to leave Duke and come to Malcolm X. And we had a, we had a, a symbolic march actually where the students from March with, with white supporters marched off of Duke's campus to five points. We

00:30:38.760 - 00:30:57.579

came down Fayetteville Street uh from NCC and met them at five points. And it was supposed to have been this symbolic, they were stepping over from Duke to us, but it was symbolic because most of them also stepped right back after we. Uh so uh so

00:30:57.589 - 00:31:13.800

we, we, we ended up having Malcolm X start as like a part time school where the, where the students from Duke came to uh Malcolm X to study Black history after they got through studying on Duke's campus, but we kept pushing for an African American studies

00:31:13.810 - 00:31:37.349

program. And ultimately what happened was, um, mm, Malcolm X I began to learn about Pan Africanism and the, the students who, who took over Willard Strait Hall at Cornell University, Ed Whitfield and, uh, uh, uh, Eric Evans and Shaka and all of them came down from

00:31:37.359 - 00:31:50.729

Cornell because it got thrown out for, you can't sort of take over Willard Street Hall and come out with guns. It wasn't like that was a cool thing. So they all got thrown out of there. There were a bunch of uh high school students down in

00:31:50.739 - 00:32:06.599

Little Rock who had, who had rebelled, they got kicked out of high school. They came to Malcolm X. There was a group from Oshkosh that I got put out were rebelling. They came to Malcolm X. And so then we tried to actually form an independent black

00:32:06.609 - 00:32:30.609

institution and, and I could tell you more, but that's sort of now, so that the connection to these two things to me. Education is the instrument for liberation. It's about freedom and, and, and, and in this country to realize freedom, you have to have some level

00:32:30.619 - 00:32:54.300

of economic, wherewithal or freedom is a fleeting thing and what education does it gives you at least the possibility of being able to exercise some level, some level of economic independence or not independence, economic wherewithal, like you go buy stuff, you know, you sort of need

00:32:54.310 - 00:33:07.819

like, you know, a house, a car, you know, clothes, stuff like that. Without an education, you have very little chance of doing this. So, to me, the connection between what I'm doing today and what I was doing there is all based on the empowerment of the

00:33:07.829 - 00:33:45.510

people so that they can gain control over their lives. That's the connection. And I hope that was relatively like, you know. Well, I would, I'm, um, for him night James and Annie, son in law. I married their daughter. Um My question deals with where we are

00:33:45.660 - 00:34:19.999

today. Um The US government have become very oppressive against the poor when you, when you look at the war, um with Iraq and we look at how many black soldiers are fighting in this war. Then we look at the Patriot Act and the terrorism bill and

00:34:20.009 - 00:34:54.729

we see how the US government is steadily eroding the rights of black people and people in general. My question is which struggled in the sixties. It was a glory movement. I watched Kwame Toure, I watched H Rap Brown. Um that saw the, the type of courage

00:34:55.120 - 00:35:24.250

and intellect and spirit they brought to the movement. But today we look around that's a bigger enemy, but I don't see us as a people fighting on a level that we fought in the sixties. Um When I used to look at want me to Stokey Carmichael,

00:35:24.610 - 00:35:53.239

he was inspirational when I saw the Black Graph Party movement. It was inspirational but today white supremacy, racism. Um the reactionary moves by the government is still prevalent, sir. My brother, can you speak to that? Thank you. Well, you know, it's like the question is to

00:35:53.250 - 00:36:08.020

speak to that. Um Le le let me say a couple of things and, and, and, and the people who know me, know me. I'm just like, II, I always gotta just tell you the truth and I, you know, and then people have to do whatever they're

00:36:08.030 - 00:36:25.739

gonna do. Um Le le le let me start off by telling you all and, and then I hope like all of you all don't get up and, and, and leave. Uh, but when Bush ran the first time, um because of school choice because I was like

00:36:25.750 - 00:36:50.580

this single issue person, um I actually um supported his educational efforts and there was even talk about me being the Secretary of Education and let me explain to you all what happened. I was down in Texas um to meet with a group of legislators about vouchers

00:36:51.550 - 00:37:07.790

and they asked me if I would go meet with Governor Bush and I was like, no man, I ain't like his daddy. Uh which is unfair. I mean, I ain't gonna like him. Why am I gonna go meet with him? Well, it's, uh you know, it's

00:37:07.800 - 00:37:21.000

important, blah, blah, blah. So we're going, I'm supposed to meet with this man like for half hour and we actually met for an hour and a half. And when I first met George Bush, and there are a lot of people will tell you that if you

00:37:21.010 - 00:37:37.110

sit down and say you didn't know anything about his policy. This is, um, and you just sat down and talked to him. Um, he's a, he's actually a very engaging person and, and actually, at that point in time when I talk with him, we, we talk

00:37:37.120 - 00:37:54.860

only about education and he admitted that he didn't know a lot. Uh And, and what was interesting though, he actually listened because he didn't know a lot and he didn't try to pretend like he did. And in the room when I met with him was also

00:37:54.870 - 00:38:09.770

Margaret spell. And so we sat there for an hour and a half, we talked, we got up and he said, I'm gonna be the next president of the United States. I was like, yeah, you know, uh you know. Yeah. And he said, I want you to

00:38:09.780 - 00:38:29.739

come to Washington with me. And I said, uh governor, I said, man, first of all, I'm not a Republican, I'm also not a loyalist because I'm, I'm, I'm always like just a couple of words from telling anybody, you know, forget you. I mean, II I can't,

00:38:30.209 - 00:38:42.590

if you say some stuff I don't agree with, man, I, I, you know, I can't be up there talking about how wonderful you are. So I said, you really need somebody who can like, be with you. But he said, well, would you at least help me

00:38:42.600 - 00:39:01.530

develop my education frame? So I actually helped on the development of his first two speeches. They were actually pretty good. They were about education and they were focused. That was back then. Ok. And again, I'm, I'm just being very honest with you, I'm like a single,

00:39:02.439 - 00:39:20.919

I'm like this, this one issue person, you know, parental choice and I'm like making all kinds of political decisions that, that cost me friends everything on this one issue, parental choice. I mean, people call me all kinds of handkerchief heads and everything because of parental choice.

00:39:22.179 - 00:39:37.709

So over the, the last 67 years, I, I'm gonna be very clear. I I've not tried to battle on any of the other significant issues that face our country. I've been totally focused on what are we gonna do about the education of Children? I'm not saying

00:39:37.719 - 00:39:51.889

that's the right thing to do. I'm just saying that's what I've been doing now since I've been doing that. Uh There did come a point though where I had to like, say, hey man, I ain't for no war. This stuff you're talking about on affirmative action.

00:39:51.919 - 00:40:06.129

Hey man, I'm not with that. There's a whole lot of stuff I'm not with. So don't ask me to come nowhere to do nothing because all I can say is I support what you're saying about education, Rob Page and I are very close friends just so,

00:40:06.139 - 00:40:24.679

you know, um and, and, and I really believe that Secretary Page really cared deeply about Children, wanted to do something, but there's a limit to what you're able to do when you were elected, you were appointed by the person who was elected. Now, what all of

00:40:24.689 - 00:40:40.699

that leads me to say is that the interesting thing about living in America is that we can have a discussion about how terrible the government is. And you actually can also walk out today after having said that. And so the qu the question for me always

00:40:40.709 - 00:40:58.709

is given the the type of democracy that we have. How do we best use that democracy in the interests of the people? And it's clear that this democracy is not perfect, but I've never seen any form of political economic arrangement that's perfect. And so for me,

00:40:58.719 - 00:41:24.340

at this point in my life, I see the democracy as our best way to try to make change. Now, having said that I'm very cautious about castigating young people today for not doing what we did. The reason is I think that Franz Fon in record of

00:41:24.350 - 00:41:44.350

the earth said that every generation out of relative obscurity must discover its mission and either fulfill it or betray it. And so I believe every generation has to find its mission and it doesn't mean that you have to pursue that mission in the same way that

00:41:44.360 - 00:42:00.379

we might have pursued our mission 25 years ago because I know a lot of young people who are doing phenomenal things today, they're just doing it differently and, and, and they've got a different view about how to approach change and, and, and, and I believe as

00:42:00.389 - 00:42:18.280

long as there's oppression, there's gonna be resistance. The, the issue is what is the nature of the resistance and what, what are the, what are the instruments that people are using today versus what we used back then? And so I, I, I, I really see people

00:42:18.290 - 00:42:38.939

rising up in various ways against some of the things that you're talking about. But I think they take a different form than what Kwame Toure did or rap Brown did or I did. And I think they're supposed to let me make one last point. Um You

00:42:38.949 - 00:42:49.739

know, like I don't think I was a part of the civil rights movement just so you all know, that's the one big disagreement I have with the book. I don't think the work that we were doing was a part of the civil rights movement. I actually

00:42:49.750 - 00:43:02.959

think the civil rights movement as a movement was over with the march on Washington and, and, and I really think whatever it was we were doing, it was something else. And, but, but I think what happens in this country is many white people and black people

00:43:02.969 - 00:43:17.689

too, in order for any movement to have validity, it has to be tied to the civil rights movement because that's the movement that finally, people have said was credible. But they didn't say that when the movement was actually happening. So I think if you really look

00:43:17.699 - 00:43:29.979

at what we were doing, we were like more on the tail end of the Black Power movement with the development of the women's movement, the student movement. And so I a and the poor people's movement because if you actually look at King, when King died, I

00:43:29.989 - 00:43:43.850

think King was moving away from quote, the traditional civil rights movement and the poor people's March. And all of that was recognized in the class realities of the oppression that people face. And so it was cool that we had and it was very crucial that we

00:43:43.860 - 00:43:56.429

had that huge demonstration down at Howard Johnson's. But at the end of the day, what happened was once it got integrated, a whole lot of people couldn't go there because they didn't have no money to go to the Howard Johnsons. And so we were getting ready

00:43:56.439 - 00:44:13.560

to enter into the next element of the struggle, which was the struggle for economic capacity to realize the freedoms that had been gained by tearing down the Color Bar. So, I mean, I've, that's what I find and I ducked some of the stuff you asked me.

00:44:15.610 - 00:44:32.090

Yeah. And, and I'll be glad to talk to you more about it because I know we're gonna get together So bye. My name is Julia and um, I'm not a Durham native, so I don't go back here all that long. Um The question I had um,

00:44:32.100 - 00:44:42.979

is about the issue you spoke about earlier, which was housing. Um, and I'm gonna get to that, but I just want to make a brief comment first, the Belgium and United States Children issue.