- [Announcer] The following program, "Blacks, Blues, Black!"

is made possible by a public service grant from the Olympia Brewing Company.

(Maya singing in Yoruba) - Hello, my name is Maya Angelou.

In previous weeks, I've spoken to you on a number of subjects on Africanisms, positive Africanisms in Black American life, negative Africanisms in Black American life, the teaching of African history, the positive aspect, when teaching African history can be construed as a negative effort.

We've talked about music in passage, Black music.

Today, tonight I shall examine education, the goals of Black youth in the fields of education.

Education is man's most amusing tool, amusing toy, or effective tool, or it can be man's most dangerous weapon, education.

The man who controls education controls the future as well as the past and the present.

He controls life, death, life after death.

He controls dreams, hopes, aspirations.

Every human being is educated.

There are, I mean, it simply means that there are levels of education, kinds of education.

No human being can be called uneducated.

No human being is uneducated.

If he learns simply how to cross a street or possibly throw a spear, that is a form of education.

These are the Maasai in Kenya, a tribe in Kenya, and this man is teaching his son an old way.

There is a new way.

- [Kenyan Person] Our children, they're learning in schools.

They are not like their ancient parents.

And I'm sure they'll become somebodies.

They'll become important men.

They'll be doctors, they'll be teachers, and they'll be important people in Kenya.

That's why I believe Kenya is making a step forward, and that's what we want.

- [Kenyan] In the very old days, we were told, "Send your children to school."

Most of the elders now are saying that "Why, why I don't send my child to school?"

Then you can see now they're forcing themself to send their children.

For an example, myself, I was sent by force.

They took me to school, including my brother, who is now an assistant minister for national resources.

So now you can see in our family, we two people, we went, you know, by force.

And all our children now, they're all at school.

That is must, not a request.

- Preston Wilcox, a sociologist in New York City at the Columbia School of Social Work, a Black man, says that the ghetto school must be at one and the same time a teaching instrument, a community recreation place, as well as a kind of babysitter, a kind of guardian for the child.

The ghetto child, the Black child is in probably the most dangerous of areas because he's likely to become extinct like the dodo bird or the dinosaurs.

The ghetto child drops out not only of school, he drops out of life ofttimes.

By the time he's eight, nine years old, he has given it up.

Martin Deutsch says, "Some teachers establish low expectations, anticipate failure, and true to the self-fulfilling prophecy, find an increasing rate of failure."

We must look at why the ghetto school fails the child.

Why does the child then say, "I have no hope.

I don't want to take a chance because I'm certain I'm going to fail."

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

When in a recent project in New York, in East Harlem, a group of teachers and parents set up a new approach to teaching children, they said they had teenagers who themselves were from the ghetto teaching first and second grade children.

They chose, the teenage teachers chose to use "Manchild in the Promised Land" as a textbook, by Claude Brown.

They used "The Autobiography of Malcolm X."

And the response they had was fantastic because the children said, "Well, if this, if Claude Brown, who obviously lived just as I live, could make it, then so could I.

If Malcolm X, who understood the nature of the beast of the slum, of the ghetto could make it, could reach some kind of control of his destiny, then so can I."

It's important, it's not important, it's imperative that students, teachers, and children work toward overcoming that old approach to teaching, not only in the textbooks themselves, but in the methods of teaching.

There's one approach to teaching a ghetto child that possibly works.

At the Martin Luther King School, we saw teachers using a "James Brown Reader."

- [Child] If you can, I can.

- [Children] We can, we can dig it.

- James Brown, do you have a James Brown?

We have a James Brown record.

We can, we like James Brown records.

- [Child] Can you dig it?

- Can you dig it?

If you can, I can.

We can dig it.

We listen to James Brown music.

Do you have a James Brown record?

No, I don't.

Do you know where I can get one at?

I bought a new James Brown record.

This record says, let yourself go.

Hey, let's go outside.

We can dance to James Brown.

We can dance the James Brown like James Brown.

Can you dig it?

We all like James Brown.

Sock it to me later.

♪ Free Huey, Black is beautiful ♪ ♪ Free Huey, set our warrior free ♪ ♪ Free Huey, Black is beautiful ♪ ♪ Free Huey, set our warrior free ♪ ♪ Free Huey, Black is beautiful ♪ ♪ Free Huey, set our warrior free ♪ ♪ Free Huey, Black is beautiful ♪ - When Did you start this Martin Luther's King School?

- Well, really, we started Martin Luther King School in February, but we had a school before Martin Luther King School, which was the Hayes Valley School Committee Summer School.

And we did this, and even before that, we had a school, our Freedom School, when we boycotted the school, and there, we found that sixth grade kids didn't even know how to read at a third grade level.

And we seen that the necessity of education was greater than we expected it to have been.

And that's why we came up with the Hayes Valley Summer School program.

And one of the reason why we had the Martin Luther King School was when Mr. Stroud was fired from the school system.

He was threatened to be fired at one time, but because parents protest and threaten to take their kids out, they did not fire him.

On the second time, they did fire him, and they fired him for simply teaching Black dignity, history, and culture and pride.

- [Maya] I see.

Mr. Stroud, what difficulties, particular difficulties do you run into, what?

- Well, the main difficulty, and perhaps the only real difficulty, is that most Black children are taught that they can not learn.

In other words, there's a de-education, a de-education of the students going on rather than an education.

- [Maya] I've just found a new phrase that I love.

It's called the failure strategy, which is built into the school system, and I would suspect that's what you're trying to avoid here.

- Right.

- How do you get the students to come?

- Well, how do you get 'em to stay away is the question to ask.

Because at the Martin Luther King School, we're open from 8:30 until 3:00, and we are there some nights until 7:00.

We do not put the kids out, and they do not want to go home.

- [Maya] Well, now, but the children get no credit in their regular school, do they?

For this summer course, I mean.

- No, they don't.

- So that- - But it will help them to do their work better, and which some of these kids will not go back to public school.

They will stay in our school.

We do have accredited school.

- I see.

- And we may be having more schools than the Martin Luther King School.

- I hope so.

It's an inspiration, Mr. Stroud- - Yes, this is our program is that we have to set up schools, community type schools, where we involve parents, teachers, and students to do the job that the public school is not doing for the child.

It's a necessity, and this is what we are about.

- And not only will the kids learn, but parents and teachers will learn.

This is not a teaching process.

This is a learning process, because a teacher cannot teach if she is not willing to learn.

- [Maya] Very well said.

- When James Was at Camp.

My brother James went to camp, St. Albert's last summer.

There he met lots of friends and got to know how it felt being away from home for a couple of days.

His first experience with white people was at camp.

There he had pot washers that cleaned the pots and so on.

The pot washers told my brother that he could go to Mass every morning.

So one day his counselor told him not to go back to Mass anymore.

My brother asked why.

He said he better not catch him going back or any other of the boys.

So the next day my brother went, and his counselor found out.

He told my brother, why did he go back, and he slapped him across his face.

Then my brother hit him in his mouth, and two other boys helped him beat him up.

Then they got sent to the counselor and got in trouble.

Who has any idea what she was trying to say in her story?

What was she talking about?

- She was trying to put out, she was trying to put out that her brother was a victim of prejudice going to this camp.

- [Teacher] Why do you think that?

Why do you feel that this is what she was trying to say?

- Well, that's what were supposed to write about.

- [Teacher] I know that.

(students laugh) But what reasons did she give you to make you feel that he was, her brother was a victim of prejudice?

What- - Well, when her counselor told her that she couldn't go, when his counselor told him he couldn't go back to the mess and the counselor wouldn't give him a reason.

- [Teacher] Any other ideas?

- I didn't hear what she did.

- [Teacher] You didn't hear it what she did.

- No, it sounded like she said that her, I heard the first part when her brother went to camp, and his counselor said, told him not to go back to the Mass, math, whatever it is.

And he went back the next day and got in trouble.

- I see, well, tell me, this class, do you think it's fair for a person to tell you not to do something and then not give you any reasons why not to do it?

- When I got down to Mississippi, I got off the bus, you know, and there was this whole bunch of white people standing around, you know.

They started calling me nigger and all that, you know, "Go back home," and all that.

So I walked over down the street to where I was going to my grandmother's house, you know, and they kept on following me.

And so they said, I heard 'em say, "Let's jump him," you know?

So they kept on following me, and I turned around and said, "What you guys following me for?"

And they said, "Go home, nigger" And they kept on telling me, "Go home, nigger" all the time I kept on going home.

So when I got to my grandmother's house, I told her about it, and she said, "You gotta watch out for these white people around here, 'cause they beat you up, 'cause they don't like niggers."

You know, she told me certain parts of the city I wasn't supposed to go in.

So I went to the store where it was a store where they's got something like they call a boycott.

And then when I got, went into the store, this man asked me, "What are you doing in here?"

I said, "I'm gonna buy something."

He said, "We don't sell food to Black niggers."

So I looked up and laughed, you know?

Then I went back home and told my grandmother again, and I went back outside.

She didn't say nothing.

So I seen this same little white boy who was calling me them names, you know, who was with this group of friends that was gonna beat me up.

I went out there and start talking to him, you know?

So we start fighting, and then all of a sudden a whole bunch of white kids came over there, and they was gonna beat me up and all that.

So I pulled out a knife, and I was gonna one of 'em the first time they messed with me, you know.

My grandmother came out there, and everybody was arguing.

I just went on in the house and let 'em bother me all night long.

- [Teacher] How old were you when this happened?

- That was just last year.

- [Teacher] Just last year?

- So, you know, when you go down, when you go down in the city, you know, when you go down to southern parts like that, you see how the white people treat you, just because you know, the color of your skin is just not right, you know?

'Cause God put us all here.

We're supposed to be brother and sisters.

We're supposed to learn how to live with each other, you know?

- [Teacher] Right.

- There are children in school.

Those were children in school who did not know Mass, about Mass.

16, the boy who was talking, Alfonso, was speaking out of an experience he had, and his avenue of communication was not English, certainly, was not English as it's spoken by the majority of the people in the United States.

It's what I like to call Blackinese, a very good language.

Any language is good if a person is able to communicate with another person.

His language, Blackinese, is used, imitated, aped by white Americans but ridiculed at the same time.

His language is the language that acts as a catalyst in America for the English language.

We are largely, we are the largest influence on English as it's spoken in the United States.

Now, before I go on, that school, the Martin Luther King School, which is now being held in the Benjamin Franklin School in San Francisco, is operating on a shoestring.

Welvin Stroud and Mrs. Andry pay $25 for every three weeks to their teachers.

They paid $100 to Mr. Stroud for a month's work, and he took the money and bought supplies for the students.

They need help.

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

White teachers and Black teachers, I'm sorry to say, I'm sorry to say about both of them, ofttimes approach the student intending to do good but not to become involved.

It's impossible when a student has withdrawn totally for you to do him any good if you don't get involved, not only in his academic life, in his life, in his living, in his breathing out and breathing in.

One teacher made a statement, and I'll quote her verbatim, word for word.

She said, "You go downhill in a job like this.

After a while, you get to hate the kids because of their problems.

Guidance is a joke.

All they do," meaning the teachers, "is sit in their offices and make telephone calls to truants.

Most of the teachers here are rejects from the other schools in the system, and the principal wants a quiet school.

Everybody acts suspicious if you try to do anything unusual, like taking a trip.

Most of the teachers here are first-graduation, first-generation college graduates.

Their parents are butchers and truck drivers.

They have inferiority feelings.

The only people they feel superior to are their Negro students and their own parents."

These are the people in whose hands we are putting our tomorrows, because our children represent tomorrow.

If we have one at all, it will be because those people live and are healthy.

So it's up to us to support the Martin Luther King School and all the schools where the children are being taught things that they can identify with.

If it means a kind of almost soapbox oratory, rhetoric, preaching, pamphlets, posters, cartoons, puppets, it doesn't matter as long as it is education and it is healthy education.

The system, the school system as it is presently constituted and run does not include the Black student.

Do you know, for instance, that there were, that the Black student drops out sometimes by the time he's eight years old, out of life, not only school.

He decides, "I have no win," so he drops out, and any attempt to reach him, unless it is a totally dedicated attempt, makes him withdraw further.

And finally, he goes into the street, as we all know, and breaks open somebody's shop.

What has happened?

Why, why what has happened to this child?

It's a conglomerate, it's a complexity that is operating against his very life.

When the teacher deals with the textbooks and tries to teach Black students in English, many times a teacher is perpetrating the failure strategy and doesn't even know it.

The failure strategy is built into the school course itself.

A psychology class, a failure strategy.

- And in Denmark, I recall one particular case where they, about six or eight men who had been soldiers and had their weapons, got high on these mushrooms, and they simply started down the street.

And they broke into a house, and they killed every baby, woman, child and human being they found.

And these were their fellow Danes.

So one can certainly not deny that under some circumstances, feelings of humanity can be lost.

And this may also happen, I think, during breakdown in combat.

But as I say, personally, I couldn't give you a story of it from having seen it myself, because although I saw number of other things, I didn't see that happen.

- [Student] Well, now, you say when they take this mushroom, they go berserk and don't have any sense or anything.

Well, why didn't they kill themselves, you know, while they're among themselves already?

That's what I mean.

- Sometimes they did fight with each other and they did kill themselves.

They generally, however, had a sort of group spirit, and they started out, and they killed whomever they came to.

Now, this caused the king of Denmark to pass a law making it the death penalty to eat this mushroom, and then the going berserk habit just disappeared from the pages of history.

- When students are given a chance to believe they have a chance, all sorts of things can happen.

Positive things can happen.

There's a difference that most educators and parents do not realize between the slow student and the fast student or the slow learner and the fast learner.

A very fine educator, Mr. Shapiro, Dr. Shapiro has done a book on teaching the underprivileged child.

I think he's addressed himself very honestly to the problem.

He says, many teachers think that when a student takes a long time to understand, then the teacher, and Dr. Shapiro says he himself has been guilty of this, the teacher then sort of ignores that student and is captured, is fancy is captured by that fast student, that student that picks up immediately.

But ofttimes what happens is that that student picks up quickly and drops it just as quickly.

That other student, that slow learner, if he can be encouraged, not falsely encouraged, because Black children can immediately discern when you are praising them honestly.

I mean, if you do something like have a large, husky boy clean the blackboard and then say, "Oh, you did that great," you know, he knows where you're at.

You know, so don't try that.

But honestly, to encourage that slow learner, you may find that you've come up after a few years with a fine brain, which has been stalked well, and that stalk, that material that goes in slowly just lays there and becomes a resource not only for that one person, but for many, many more people.

When the student feels, well, when a Black student has a white teacher, a Black teacher, a Mexican teacher, an Oriental teacher, it doesn't matter.

It only matters when the teacher either identifies or doesn't identify with that student.

When the student is speaking in his language and is constantly put down, when the student is told, as I heard in a classroom a teacher tell, a few of us were visiting a classroom of Black students, young men, and the teacher told one of the lady visitors, "I can't let Joe here take you around on a tour of the building because he may rape you."

Now, what does Joe think?

When there's no respect given the child, no matter who's teaching him, he's not going to learn.

There was a great line in "On the Waterfront."

Marlon Brando said, "They tried to push school down my throat, but I outsmarted them.

I didn't learn anything."

Now, when the child, when the students feel they are really cared for, they open up.

They warm up, and they respond.

- The Chicanos are right now organized in school.

Like, I don't know if, how many people have been aware of MAYA, Mexican American Youth Association organizations, MASC, which is Mexican American Student Confederation.

Like I was stating a while ago, it's the young people, you know, that are up in arms, are, you know, are doing things, are saying things.

The older people kind of, they don't want, they're afraid.

They're afraid to say anything because they, of what has happened in the future.

In the early '30s, they tried to strike in the valleys, you know, and what happened?

The US government deported these people back to Mexico.

A lot of the people had children that were born in this country, were US citizens.

And when these people try to get, when these children grew up, tried to get back into the country to get their rights back, the US government refused them.

So a lot of the older people are afraid to do anything because they're afraid of the police, you know?

The system is run by force, you know?

Well, you see what Oakland Police Department does, you know, Gestapo tactics.

You know, if you don't do what they say, well, you know, you're locked up or shot, you know.

The older people are afraid, you know.

I think it's not only the Mexican American.

I think it's more obvious in the Mexican community, but I think a lot of the Black community is the same way.

You know, the older people, they've been living under martial law for so long, you know, that they're afraid to say, you know, "Okay, I quit," you know, "forget it" or do like the Panthers did, you know, pick up guns and, you know, tell 'em, you know, okay, you know, "I wanna play with your, I'm gonna play your game with your rules."

The Mexican American is that way, too.

The young people, the young Mexican Americans are saying, "Okay, well, you know, I'm gonna pick up my gun if you don't start treating me like a human being," you know?

Yes, Maria, - What can we do to make the people more aware that the Chicano is here, you know?

'Cause, well, maybe they know we're here, but they, you know, like you said, we're invisible.

- [Dr. Edgren] Well, maybe we're gonna have to burn.

- I don't wanna- - No, I don't think it's gonna be necessary for us to be violent.

I don't think it's necessary anymore because the Black man has already been violent for us, see.

The Black man has told the system, "If you don't treat me like a human being, I am capable of burning.

I am capable of killing," you know.

I think that they have to become aware that not only the Black man is capable of burning and killing, you know, everybody is.

Look at the Indian, you know?

The Indians, if, you know, you get them Indians up and off, you finally, you know, they've been put on concentration camps, really, you know.

This is what a reservation is, a concentration camp.

They've been slowly killing them off, because why?

If the Indian starts multiplying and starts building up his numbers, he's liable to pick up his damn gun again, you know?

So the best way to do it is get rid of that man, get rid of it.

So I think what we have to do is, as Chicanos, you know, is talk, you know, go out there and tell our people, you know.

I'm not saying go out and talk to the man, talk to the system because he isn't gonna listen.

If he listens, "Yeah, yeah," and the whole bit, and then you walk out the door and forget you, you know, that's it.

I think what we have to do is I have to talk to you.

You have to talk to me.

We have to talk to our own people, you know, tell 'em, you know, we're Chicanos.

We were here first, you know.

We're not foreigners, you know?

And what are the Spanish classes that they have in these schools?

They're Spanish that is being spoken in Spain, you know?

Now, when am I gonna get to Spain?

I don't know.

I probably never will.

(class laughs) Why don't they teach you Spanish that is spoken here, you know?

Chicano, my language, you know, because we have our own dialect.

Our dialect is even different than the dialect spoken in Mexico.

So why don't they teach the Spanish that is taught here?

Okay, now, if, you know, the Black people have to have a year of Spanish or a foreign language, you know, be bilingual to get a diploma or to go on into college, and they put 'em in a Spanish class.

Why don't they teach you to talk with me, not with a person in Spain, because when are you gonna get to Spain, you know?

This is the, I think this is what we're gonna have to do.

- Mexican American fund the educational system, you know, revenue?

- [Dr. Edgren] Absolutely not.

The educational system here teaches you all about the pilgrims, all about Custer.

They teach you that Little Big Horn was a massacre.

They teach you, oh, man, nothing but lies.

- Do you find a growing group of people as far as the Chicanos are concerned, you know, associating or identifying themselves, you know, with the Chicano movement, not necessarily, you know, associating themselves as being Mexican American, but you know, as being a Chicano, you know, a definite portion or a definite group like the Black people in the Black movement?

- Definitely, there is a lot, and there's a lot of them that are afraid to identify with because like, there's a lot of people like me that are militant, you know, that I say, you know, "I quit," you know, "forget it," you know, tell the man, you know, "Don't do a thing.

I don't want your help."

- The older Chicanos, or Mexican American, then you do, say, with the white power structure, do you find it harder getting them to follow behind you and to identify with the cause than than you do with making your demands, you know, of the white society?

- [Dr. Edgren] Definitely, the thing with, I think this is obvious in all the minorities - In your community, so you have one of these Upward Bound programs similar, do you feel that you have trouble in getting the student into college?

Like, here, we have trouble getting the Black students here.

This is a all-girl college.

Now, the whole two years, none of the Black girls have been in, only two girls, a white girl a Oriental.

And I wonder, do you have the same problem?

- [Dr. Edgren] We've only got two girls in this college, too.

Maria Seville is one, and we have another girl.

- But this is our program, and they're not, you know, accepting any girls.

- A lot of schools will not.

(chuckles) They won't do it, you know?

And they always give you, you know, like maybe they say, "Well, you haven't got the IQ," or "You haven't had the courses in high school."

Of course you haven't had the courses in the high school.

They've always put you in manual courses, in non-academic courses.

This is why you don't have the courses.

We have that same problem.

We've got the same problem.

But, you know, you have to keep, you know, hitting that door.

You gotta keep hitting that door until you force it open.

- You say you have the same problem.

Do you feel that as a Mexican American that you should have different schools?

You know, like the Chinese, they have the American, they go to the American school.

Then they go their own schools afterwards.

- [Dr. Edgren] We're in the process of getting something like this going, as we call it, liberation schools, you know, and we teach Chicano things, but I don't really think so because we're taxpayers, you know?

Why don't they change the schools to gear it to the Mexican American, gear it to the Black thing, you know, instead of just gear it to the white middle class thing?

- Well, they're not doing this, so they're not doing this.

- So they're not doing it.

That was taken at Mills College, the oldest, or one of the oldest ladies seminaries in California, very exclusive school.

So they're not doing it.

What, the instruction in that, as I see it, is that Black American students and teachers, parents must join courage and begin to set up schools for themselves.

I think it's very important, and it's very revolutionary.

I'm sure I'll have a lot of controversy.

There'll be a lot of controversy over that statement, as there has been over quite a few statements I've made so far and have yet to make.

Do you know that more Black American students graduate from university or college annually than the students that graduate in the whole of Great Britain annually?

It's a shocking statistic, isn't it?

What happens to them?

Where are they?

What have they learned?

What can they do?

One could easily set up a very popular questionnaire, like, where are they now for something like the, where is that person who revved up Amelia Earhart's plane last?

That's about where he is, too, the college graduate.

What happened to him is that he takes his BA in liberal arts.

Now, what on earth a person can do with a liberal arts degree?

BA, I mean, a white man can hardly get on with it.

A Black man is almost hampered by it.

Carter G. Woodson, one of our great sociologists and historians, was born in the 1800s, was one of the first men to go to Yale, Black men.

He said that it took him 15 years to get over a Yale education.

He took a liberal arts course, Greek, Latin, at that time, liberal arts courses included those subjects, probably medieval harpsichord, important subjects like that, maybe ceramics.

He roomed with a white boy from Kansas who took agriculture.

Now, Dr. Woodson's mother was washing clothes by hand to send him to school.

He said after they finished, the white boy went back to Kansas and expanded his father's farm from a 2,000-acre farm to a 20,000-acre farm, and all Dr. Woodson could do for his mother was go and stand over her shoulder at the washing board and quote Homer in Greek.

It took him 15 years to get over it.

When we see that, as Africans say, today be today, we need young men who can do law.

We need young men today.

We should start now sending certain people to school to do international law.

It may be that the time will come when we will need somebody at the International Court at the Hague to plead our case, who knows.

Who's going to look around the corner and say no?

We need doctors who are not just thinking about their practice, but research, who are working in medical research.

We need support.

We need to support these youngsters in a new way, not just to get them to identify to, with things, exiling themselves, as Ms. Beah Richard says, to things.

We went to Cal State at Hayward and heard Mr. Leo Bazile, who was the president of the Black Students Union at Merritt College.

I think that he talked more about the new math, new education, a new approach to the Negro intellectual.

I think he had some important things to say.

- It's just a simple means of survival.

You know, you know that you got to do something.

You see that things are going wrong.

It's like a frog.

You drop a whatever, you drop a rat in a bowl of water, in a little cup of water, he can't swim around or nothing.

He'll keep on treading water and keep on treading water.

Don't matter how, he won't give up.

It's just a simple fact that where there's life, there's hope.

And as long as you're living, you're going to have a little bit of hope, and you're gonna move on that.

- Brother Leo, on that same line, I mean, what does it take for a brother to realize that?

You know, because a lot of brothers, they don't realize exactly, man, what we trying to do.

- Well, the first thing they do, brother, is they defeat themselves.

First thing they say is, "I can't do it," or "We can't do nothing."

The same thing they told us at Merritt.

We went up there and we said, "We want a remedial reading program."

First thing the brothers told us, "Oh, man, you ain't, you can't get nothing."

You know, "We can't do nothing."

And that's all a part of that television thing, too, and a part of that history that shows us that we can't do nothing, 'cause we ain't, you know, we've never seen ourselves doing anything, and we get that into our mind, you see?

That subconscious thing is tearing us up.

We defeat ourselves automatically by saying we can't do it.

We just beat ourselves without even, you know, having to advance on the enemy or whatever the case might be.

Brother said, you can't, you know, they told us point blank, "You ain't getting no Black president at Merritt.

You can't do it, man.

It's impossible."

That's what a lot of 'em said, but we went in there and got our program together, and we did.

See, the thing that we gotta do is we got to wrestle that pen from the hands of the Jung.

That's the guy who knows more about us than we know about ourselves, 'cause he writes all the books about us, does all that research and everything.

We gotta do these things.

We gotta push for them research grants and everything else, man.

So we can go out and study, you know, all these things about ourselves.

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

But right now, as Black intellectuals, we got to formulate those programs, use every resource that we got.

If you're going to be a historian, if you're gonna take history in that class, and that teacher gets up and tell you about George Washington and all those people, whip it on him, you know, flush him out.

Let's talk about them things that you've missed just a minute ago, that you overlooked when you talked about, you know, George Washington, the father of the country, he sure was.

He fathered a whole lot of the little brown children back there in the slave quarters.

Let's talk about that.

And Thomas Jefferson talking about all men are created equal and at the same time when he was writing that down, that great piece of paper, the Declaration of Independence, the cat is being fanned by his Black slave.

Let's talk about that.

And let's talk about when white people, you know, use their little code words, and they talk about Rap Brown as being treasonous and seditious, saying all these ugly things.

You see, the people are confused.

White people are very confused.

They'll stand up and say things, you know, like, "We are so great, you know.

We have freedom of speech in this country," patting themselves on the back, "and the Russians are wrong because they won't let people say what they're doing.

They got laws against people saying certain things."

And as soon as Rap Brown gets up and says something they don't like, they say, "There ought to be law against that."

- [Student] You tell 'em!

- Which if you run it down to, you know, its, you know, end that's saying that the Russians are right, you see?

And they Rap Brown is seditious in saying all these treasonous things when he called Lyndon Baines Johnson a redneck, camel-breath, tobacco-chewing, chili-bean-eating honky.

"That's terrible.

He shouldn't say things like that about our president."

"That man," I mean, you know, like, "there ought to be a law against it."

But at the same time, your history teacher will tell you tomorrow about that great America who stood up and spoke out against King George.

And they said, "Man, you can't be doing that.

That's treason."

And old Patrick Henry stood up there and said, "Well, if this be treason, let us make the best of it."

Aren't those noble words that we, you know, are taught?

And then when our brothers and sisters go out in those streets with those bricks and Molotov cocktails and everything, when they are mad and start throwing them because they can't get justice because they feel like they're being taxed, taxation without representation, they don't put on no costumes.

Brothers pick up them bricks, go out the street, and do they thing.

Now, those people in Boston, when they felt like they were being taxed without representation, they jumped on this boat, no respect for law and order, no respect for property, dump the people's tea in the water.

And then our history teacher tells us what a great patriotic act that was.

But the cool thing about, you tell the teachers, them dudes didn't even have the courage to take the blame themselves and dressed up like Indians and try to blame it on them.

(students applauding) So when the brothers go out in the streets and everything and they start, you start dealing with this thing, they start talking about, "Well, I don't believe in all this violence and riots and going on," you tell them, "Well, man, what about that historical event on Boston Commons that day when them people got angry and mad and went out there with them bricks and rocks and started throwing it at the British militia who just happened to be what, you know, equivalent to our National Guard today?"

They was the law who was supposed to maintain the order.

And so those colonists got fed up and went out there with their bricks and rocks and threw 'em at 'em.

And the only reason they didn't throw Molotov cocktails because they didn't have no gasoline.

And the National Guard, or the British militia came out there, and the captain gave the order, and they opened fire on 'em, and they killed 'em, seven people.

One of those seven was one of our Black brothers named Crispus Attucks.

They don't tell you about that in the books.

But this is what they run on you.

But you got to, you know, you got to understand that when these brothers out there doing the same thing, you know, got to run these parallel and make that teacher deal with that.

- Would you talk about brothers and sisters getting themselves together in a Black perspective in school, learning about Black writers, et cetera, that have been missed, you know, Black heroes in the past, et cetera, et cetera.

- Okay, there's many of us, you know, are wannabe school teachers.

Now, I was invited to a class, a English class at Hoover Junior High, and the Black English teacher, she asked me to come and talk to a class.

So I went and I talked, and I asked her a few questions about, you know, different things that have been going on in the class and what, you know, she went to school down South, got a degree, teachers credential and all that stuff.

She's teaching English, but she knows nothing.

She knows absolutely nothing about Afro-American writers.

She knows Baldwin, and she heard, you know, they dealt with excerpts from "Native Son" in the class, and that's about the extent of it.

So what I mean is you got to, you know, again, here's that relationship that you use as a argument when you talk to that administration.

You say, "Look, if you can't integrate Black things into your subject matter, well, let us have separate Black courses."

Now take, for instance, in a English class, you go there, you come out of a ghetto experience.

You're down in grammar school or grade school, I mean, or junior high probably is when you read it or in high school.

How many of you read "Catcher in the Rye" by J.D.

Salinger?

Okay, this is talking about a young white boy come from a middle class white family in New York City going to prep school and this type of background, and you supposed to sit down and read this and write a composition on it or a paper.

Now, the thing is that you cannot deal with that.

You cannot feel the emotions that that white boy felt at different points in that book enough to put it down on paper and express it in a coherent manner so that the professor, you know, will dig it and put that grade on it, because this is the type of things they're giving you, Hemingway, Shakespeare and all these people who you don't relate to.

Now, if the English classes could put like "Native Son" in there, for instance, and when he gives you the book list to read and say, "Well, you pick the book that you wanna do your title paper on," you pick "Native Son," why?

Because you'll be able to write a beautiful paper, see, because you understand what Bigger Thomas felt when that white girl slipped in that car, you know, and he was chauffeur and how he tensed up.

You know, we've all had that feeling, you know, when you get on the bus and everything, just the fact that the white person sits down next to you, they automatically tense up and tense you up, you dig it?

See, you can write that, you can write about that.

You can explain that because you got that feeling, like James Brown says, you see?

You can put it down.

All you need, all you need to put it down are the basic English tools, which they are supposed to teach you, which have nothing to do with Black or white, you know?

A sentence is a sentence one way or the other.

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

- Any other educated person.

Do you know that in 1950, out of every 100 students, 2% of the Black students completed their first, their undergraduate work.

In 1960, 3% completed.

In 1965, there were 14,053 BA students, that is to say, students who got their BAs from Black colleges.

Do you know that there are 113 Black schools, Black schools in the United States, some of the best schools, Howard at Washington, in Washington, DC, Fisk in Tennessee.

Of course, Tuskegee is an important school for many reasons.

Historically, it's important.

Hampton is an important school.

Wilberforce is an important school.

They are many.

They have done a wonderful job, not as much as they could do, and I hope not as much as they will do.

But there's one thing I've noticed, having grown up until my teens in a small town in the South, I know that at least we read Black poets and Black novelists.

We learned to sing the Negro national anthem, which was a poem written by James Weldon Johnson with beautiful lyrics.

Just for the Black students or Black young people who've grown up in the North, I'll try to sing a bit of it, it says: ♪ Lift every voice and sing ♪ ♪ Till earth and heaven ring ♪ ♪ Ring with the harmony of liberty ♪ ♪ Let the resounding rise ♪ ♪ High as the listening skies ♪ ♪ Let it resound loud as a roaring sea ♪ ♪ Sing a song full of the hope ♪ ♪ That the dark past has taught us ♪ ♪ Sing a song full of the faith ♪ ♪ That the present has brought us ♪ ♪ Facing a rising sun ♪ ♪ Of a new day begun ♪ ♪ Let us march on till victory is won ♪ Now, in Stamps, Arkansas, in my little town, it's a little smaller than this studio, we sang that in every morning right after the, we sang "O Say, Can You See," and I was very surprised when I got to California at 13 and found that everybody didn't sing the Negro national anthem.

That's one of the positive aspects of the Black schooling and Southern Black particularly.

When Black students are disrespected, there is a, well, it will definitely show in their work, in their hopes, in their aspirations.

Dr. Kenneth B. Clark said, "One may assume that if a child is not treated with the respect which is due him as a human being, and if those who are charged with the responsibility of teaching him believe that he cannot learn, then his motivation and ability to learn becomes impaired.

That's very clear."

Countee Cullen, in a poem called "Incident" says: Once riding in old Baltimore, heart-filled, head-filled with glee, I saw a Baltimorean keep looking straight at me.

Now, I was eight and very small, and he was no whit bigger, and so I smiled, but he poked out his tongue and called me, "Nigger."

I saw the whole of Baltimore from May until December.

Of all the things that happened there, that's all that I remember.

Now, that poem catches the truth of a child, the truth of children, the truth of youth.

If we are intending to go forward into a tomorrow, then we have got to support, back up, sustain, and direct our young people in fields of education that will be relevant to their lives, not be BAs, not degrees in medieval harpsichord or ceramics.

It's very important that they deal with today.

Thank you very much.

(Maya singing in Yoruba) (Maya continues singing in Yoruba) - [Announcer] The proceeding program, "Blacks, Blues, Black!"

was made possible by a public service grant from the Olympia Brewing Company.