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

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

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

Out of abysses of illiteracy, through labyrinths of lies across wastelands of disease, we advance.

Out of dead ends of poverty, through wildernesses of superstitions, across barricades of Jim Crowism, we advance.

With the peoples of the world, we advance.

That's the last of a poem by Melvin B. Tolson, and it suggests to us that we advance, not in spite of, but because of difficulties that are inherent in our very position, in our social economic life.

In this program, I shall discuss education, how to avoid useless or in inapplicable education for the Black youth in the ghetto, for the most part, the white middle class values of punctuality, courtesy, in the classroom, neatness, good grades, are invalid for him.

He refuses, he rejects an attempt, or the offer, to push his way into a society, which rejects him at the outset.

So what we see here is a reaction to an action.

Now, for Black youth, usually those who persevere go into universities, come out with their BAs in liberal arts, and to me that's a classic waste of time.

I'm sure this is a controversial subject.

I'm sure there'll be some disagreement, but I welcome that.

A white man with a BA in liberal arts is in an untenable position, how much more a Black man?

If he knows that he does not have either the financial or character wherewithal to push through and get an MA in a specialized field, then I think it is better to remove oneself from a system, or from a school system where the education might, in fact at best, be useless, and at worst, be injurious.

There is such a thing, you know.

There are Black men and women around the country now who are breaking new grounds, who are opening new avenues in business, in learning, in coping with a capitalistic system.

We went to visit Arebesco Air and met a Mr. Ralph Bradley there, who has an air tour, air freight, air cargo, air passenger service.

We were very inspired by what we saw.

(engine sputtering) (engine revving) Hello, good morning, Ralph Bradley.

- Good morning, how are this morning?

- Fine, thank you.

We've just seen one of your planes go up.

Did you feel proud?

- We're very proud of that aircraft.

- I'm very proud too, I think most all Black Americans who see this will be very proud too.

Tell me this, Ralph, how did you set up the company, Arabesco?

- Well, originally we started out by trying to get jobs with other outfits and we found out they wouldn't hire us, so we started our own.

- Well, that sounds very simple.

You started your own, how did you start your own?

- Well, we got a group of five gentlemen together and we started, formed a corporation and we went out and we put our money together and we bought an airplane.

- [Maya] All Black men?

- All Black men.

- I'm proud of you, Reverend.

Now, how did you learn to fly?

- I started, well, originally we, group of us got together and we bought an aircraft and we decided that there's no need to have an aircraft that you can't use.

So we learned to fly it.

We hired an instructor and we all took lessons.

And out of the group that originally started, I think all but two learned to fly.

- [Maya] Well, tell me what kind of, not static, but what kind of interesting experiences do you have here at the airport or at any airport, when the people see the pilots are Black?

- First, they, it sort of stops things and they stop and stare.

They don't know what to make of it at first, and then they look for somebody else to get out that was flying it.

- Oh, I see.

- That's the first thing.

- I see, go ahead.

- Excuse me.

Other than that, the only static we've had is trying to borrow money.

They don't think that we are businessmen enough to borrow money or to loan us money on an aircraft.

- [Maya] But you are making the business work.

- Yes, we are.

- [Maya] You you have air tours and air cargo?

- We have air tours, we have cargo and passengers, we even fly sky divers.

- [Maya] Really?

- Yes, we do.

- Well, for fun, I mean they pay good money?

- They pay to jump, they pay so much per jump.

- Now don't jump with them, do you?

- I have back trouble.

And that happened to be a yellow streak about a foot wide.

- I see, no, I doubt that.

Now, tell me this, what kind of education do you have?

- I have three and a half years of college.

- Ah, what was your major?

- My major was electronics, and then prior to that I was political science and American history.

- American history?

- Yes, American history.

- You didn't find anything in there that would inspire you, would it?

- No, I didn't.

- I found more in political science than, in fact, that I loved, I loved political science.

- I see, now where can you fly?

- We're certificated now, to go anywhere in the United States, Alaska or Canada.

- Well, I'm very proud of you and so are the viewers, I'm sure.

- Well, we're very proud of our organization and a lot of the, and for our families who have helped to push us.

- [Maya] Yes, of course.

- 'Cause without them, we wouldn't be who we are.

- Of course, thank you so much, Ralph.

- Thank you very much.

- [Maya] And I'm going up in Arabesco.

- Very good, and anybody else that wants to go, we'll, welcome anybody.

- Oh, thank you, bye.

- Bye now, thank you.

- Isn't that an inspiring sight?

I feel like I want to just, well zap up in a plane or start a new business or something that's going to not only help me, but help my people.

I want to clarify my position now.

I don't suggest that Black students get out of school, jump out of school.

I just ask you to look at what kind of schooling the child is getting and is it going to be able to help him make a living, marry a woman, raise a family, hold his head up as a man?

This is most important.

Our people understand that, it's not a subject we have to dwell on here.

There's a statement that was made by Ronald Rusev, an associate professor at the University of Seattle.

This is his quote, "There is a noticeable departure "from objectivity and marked bias manifested "in certain modern textbooks, including the work "of modern authors.

"A most serious weakness along these lines has to do "with the observation that most "traditional school materials are written as if they are "to be used by white, middle class children only."

This circumstance is illustrated by an incident related by a negro teacher at a parent-teacher's meeting.

Her child, when he received his first reader, brought it home to his mother and said, "Mother, where am I in this book?"

He had looked at all the pictures and couldn't find a single one with which to identify.

Now we know that story.

There's also a story, a true story, that a teacher asked her class to draw a fairy, and to paint the fairy flesh color.

Well, the only Black child in the classroom painted the fairy dark brown, and the teacher was aghast.

The teacher said to the child, "But Mary, I told you, flesh color."

Now that tells us something about the kind of education that is available to our children.

If they have hopefully, a family situation where they can be reeducated, well, that's all right then.

But if the child just goes along and gets bad counseling, then he's liable to come out, either drop out of school and not know why he has dropped out, or continue and get a BA in medieval harpsichord, and what can he do with that?

Counseling is is a very, very important area of a child's education of a young person's education.

Most counselors, white counselors, however, who do counsel our children on higher education educational goals, have little or no understanding of the Black community, of the truth of that Black child's world.

I would suggest that a counselor realize there are three areas in which guidance, the functions of guidance, can be seen.

And one is in the adjustive area, one is in the distributive area, and the other is in the adoptive or adaptive area.

The area in which the counselor includes an understanding of that child's world, that child's needs, that child's lacks, that child's sacrifices, that parent, those anguishes that make the child react in the school room as he does.

It would be important, I think it would be helpful, if the counselor read the works of Lorraine Hansbury, James Baldwin, Langston Hughes, Rosa Guy, Richard Wright, certainly.

There are books that are available in every library.

And if a counselor finds herself working in a Black area, a non-Black counselor, then she should or he should avail himself of these texts, so he can get a kind of almost physical understanding of what that child's life is like.

Now, there are some men in San Francisco, a Dr. Lucas and an Everett Brandon, who have set up an organization.

They help small businessmen, Black businessmen, get a footing.

They write up their proposals, take them to the banks and try to effect loans for them, give them encouragement right down the line.

We went to PACT the other day and talked to Mr. Everett, Brandon, who is the executive director of PACT.

I was very turned on by it.

Mr. Brandon, tell me, how did PACT get started?

- Well, it all started about five years ago when I was a stockbroker, and Dr. Lucas was a dentist.

And we used to get together, Lucas was a small investor, so we used to get together all the time and talk about the whole investment area and the kinds of things that were going on in downtown San Francisco.

And Dr. Lucas became more interested and I took time off and we used to take Wednesdays off all day, and just walk around Market, Montgomery Street and go up and down buildings and see the fantastic complex of the whole financial world that you never became exposed to.

Became very excited about it and said, now why aren't more Black people in here, and why aren't there more people learning all of this tremendous information that really makes, really is the center of this whole economy and real-world, where all the decisions are being made.

What really, it's really where the community takes shape and the decisions that be made here.

So we said that we've gotta get in here in some way.

We've gotta find a way to get in.

Dr. Lucas then decided to take Wednesdays off from his practice, and we used to spend all Wednesdays just roaming up and down Montgomery Street.

We then decided then, but what we've gotta do, the way that we've gotta approach this, we gotta get, we can't do it all by ourselves, and we don't want to do it all by ourselves.

And one of the commitments that we have in PACT, is really to, to not so much as to develop things to bring down to the level of people, but bring people up to the level of what's there and what's available.

And so we decided then that we've gotta get Black people involved at top level positions in the financial industry, in the business community, because that's where the brain center is.

That's where things begin to formulate.

We rented an office, a room in this building, in the Balboa Building, and he brought down his card table and his chair and we put in the telephone and we opened up an office, and we called it the PACT Placement office.

And from that we started.

And we used to walk down Market Street, Montgomery Street, and we used to hand out cards saying to people, if you are interested in a job, a better job, come down and see us.

And from that PACT grew up.

- Now what did PACT stand for?

- PACT, at that time, we used to call it plan of action for challenging times.

We call a PACT now, 'cause I got to be a mouthful to say.

But starting with that, no staff, and a hundred dollars, we've since become a pretty large organization.

We are about a $500,000 budget now.

We have about a 20 staff people and we're doing things in the business area, in the placement area, and in the education area.

- Now please Brandon, can you tell me one particular, one specific case in which you helped someone?

You were telling me about the Jamaica Tours?

- Yeah, I think this is a very good example.

He just happens to be a guy that's run the whole gamut of what we started out to do.

He's a guy that we placed with one of the airlines early, three years ago.

He rose to be a supervisor at the airline company, and he was, I think, the highest Black person at the San Francisco airport.

But he then decided, after this exposure, that he, because of his talents and a good recognition, it was a good opportunity for him to recognize, that he had tremendous talents that he never knew before.

And now that he had this exposure, which we knew would happen.

And once a guy gets the exposure, once he sees and new horizon, then he begins to recognize talent that he had never had a chance to apply before.

So this guy decides, well, I'm gonna open up my own business.

I'm gonna go into a travel agency, and I'm gonna run tours to Jamaica.

So he came into us and he says, "Listen, "I want to quit my job and I want to go ahead "and start this company."

So we said, "Well, do you know what you're doing?

"You're quitting a good job "and you really haven't ran these tours before."

And he wanted, he had a very ambitious plan.

So we were able then to sit down and recognize that he was serious.

We were able to sit down with him, put together a proper package, take him over to the bank, negotiate a loan for him, and now he is about to take his first tour to Jamaican on August 25th.

- [Maya] Oh, that, that's really exciting.

I know that this will be inspiring.

Will you tell me, please, what, you say you have a three-pronged program?

- The business program is the one I'm just reflecting on, and that is to help guys to get into business.

We help them to identify the areas of business opportunities.

We help them to put their loan packages together.

We then take them to the bank, then to the small business administration and try to get them loans.

We're now in the process of developing our own bank so that we can make our loans directly from our own office.

So we're now trying to raise money and I think in the next two or three months, we should have a major loan source right within our office.

- And the second?

- And we've helped, I think, several hundred businessmen in the past two or three years.

So I think we have a very good record in that regard.

The third approach then, besides the placement, and then the business assistance, is the education program.

And this is a program that's funded by the Health, Education, and Welfare Department.

And what we do is we identify students at the high school level who probably would not qualify for college.

And once we identify them, we then try to make sure they get all the counseling assistance possible and we work with their counselor, or we help to get additional counselors from the college levels to work with these kids.

And once a kid has been so identified, we can darn-near guarantee him an entry into some college.

It might not be the college of his choice, It might not be Cal Berkeley, or it might not be San Francisco State.

- [Maya] Yeah.

- We can get him into colleges maybe like Chico State or University of the Pacific or Sacramento State.

- [Maya] Good Schools.

- Good Schools, right, right, and good opportunities.

We can not only get them into college, but we can also get them financial assistance while they're in college.

And we also get them a guaranteed tutorial services while they're, at least their first two years in school.

And that program has worked quite successfully.

We've been doing it for a year now.

We're now going into the second year of that program.

- [Maya] Now tell me, I understand that some students that you help are in fact, much older than say, high school students.

- Oh yeah, we're not limited to high school students.

And the opportunity is available.

We have the office over in Berkeley on the corner of Shattuck and Woosley, it's called the PACT Education Clearing House.

And we now have one that's operating out of the Western Center and Poverty Office on McAllister Street.

But we, of course, this is our ready target group, the high school kids.

But we're not, we have placed at San Francisco State College, a woman 38 years old, who was just starting all over again.

So it's not limited to high school students at all.

So anybody can take advantage of this program.

- Now, Mr. Brandon has just told you the thrilling story about a man who left an airline and has set up a tour, a travel operation.

And this is Mr. John Treadgill, here, this is the very man.

Now tell me, Mr. Treadgill, would you say you could have done this without the help of PACT?

- Well, I doubt that I could have gotten off to the start that I did without their help, no.

They've been able to assist me in many areas.

- [Maya] Through?

- Publicity, introductions to other individuals who might be interested in the tours, through the financial, from the financial standpoint, connections, contacts with the right people, something of which obviously I couldn't have done alone.

- [Maya] Yes, of course, of course.

- So in this area they've been most helpful.

- [Maya] Well, when they set up set about planning your whole project, that is to say helping you to make more realistic- - Adjustments?

- Adjustments, can you say at any time you felt they were being a little pushy or did they feel like brothers to you?

- No, I felt that this was a brother-type thing, if you wish, if you'll like to use that term.

They, well, big brother guidance, so to speak.

- [Maya] Yes, yes.

- I think would be the best term to use.

And this is certainly the way I accepted it.

- [Maya] Now your tour leaves here August 24th.

- August 24th, right, the first one.

It's gonna be for 10 days.

- [Maya] 10 days.

- Right, well- - It's rather, it's been planned rather thoroughly.

It's gonna include round-trip air transportation, inter-island tours, meals- - [Maya] And a little calypso.

- Right, oh yes, definitely.

- [Maya] Thank you very much.

- Thank you, bye now.

- Goodbye.

How wonderful it would be if Black Americans around the states would be inspired by those examples and set out to really include a large group of now underemployed or unemployed Black Americans in their plans.

When, a few minutes ago, when I suggested there were books that a counselor might read, I should also include that Black Americans might read.

At the end of this series, I intend to give a list, a bibliography, of books for the intermediate, advanced, semi-literate, literate, brilliant and not so brilliant reader.

We intend to make some suggestions.

But in that former group that I've just listed, I should like to include Leroy Jones.

His poetry and his plays touch the very, very core of the Black American life.

And I think it would help a counselor, especially a white counselor, in understanding what's at stake here.

What's really operating here.

Now, there are many ways to make a living.

Many that are creative, some that are just profitable, and some that are interesting.

Mr. Zack Thompson has a dance studio.

Mr. Thompson is, I'm sure, one of the most creative choreographers on the West Coast and maybe anywhere.

He has a school, a studio, and he's also a manager.

This is my friend, Zack Thompson.

- Hello.

- [Maya] Hi, Zack.

- Hi, how are you?

- Fine.

Tell us, in about 3,000 words, why did you decide to start managing as well as dancing?

- Well, I found that this was a very exciting company.

And since I know the problems of dance companies, so well, the one thing that must keep a company going is performances.

And since I know so many people and knowing that to keep this company going and to keep them inspired, keep them working, is by me managing, because they try and get them from the ground up.

- [Maya] I see.

- The pushing of the company.

- Do you have, I mean, I think you have other offers.

I mean, there have been offers from people who wanted to manage the company and your company as well and you refused.

- Right, well, some, in some cases we accepted, but they didn't wanna really push and put the work and effort into it.

And so we thought we would just combine forces and just get the company going and to hire people to work with them and so that they could someday be a great company from America.

- Wonderful, now tell me, do you draw your dancers out of your studio, out of the school?

Or how do you get them?

- Yes, we have auditions and we draw them out of the school.

And we are planning to have another company also, because we have just been established as a nonprofit corporation.

- Very good, that reminds me that a number of entertainers, Black American entertainers, singers, and so forth are incorporating.

The Ray Charles Enterprises is a case in point.

I believe the late Sam Cooke had his own management and corporation, business corporation together.

I think Lou Rawls has the same situation.

These are other businesses.

Tell me, Zack, is it possible for us to see your dance troupe?

I mean the Danny Duncan dance troupe?

- Right, yes, it's very possible.

They're gonna perform for you, Kalinda, the Duncan Company of dancers and musicians.

- Ooh gee willikers.

♪ Kalinda Kalinda Kalinda ♪ ♪ Kalinda Kalinda ah ooh ah ♪ ♪ Kalinda Kalinda ah ooh ah ♪ ♪ Kalinda Kalinda ah ooh ah ♪ ♪ Kalinda ♪ ♪ Kalinda ♪ ♪ Kalinda ah ooh ah ♪ ♪ Kalinda ah ooh ah ♪ ♪ Kalinda ah ooh ah ♪ ♪ Kalinda ah ooh ah ♪ ♪ Kalinda Kalinda ah ooh ah ♪ (drummers playing) (dancers calling) ♪ Kalinda ♪ (Maya laughing) - That's exciting.

It was all I could do to keep from jumping up there and dancing two or three steps.

So I know Zack Thompson is very, very proud of that group.

I certainly am, and I know you are.

The excitement they're able to engender in a small area, I just wonder what would happen if one got a chance to see them on a large, large dance floor.

Mm, I might get up and dance then.

Then in the studio this evening, we have a group of friends and we are going to talk about business, about business education and about education.

And the five of us will talk.

And why don't you just look in?

Good evening, lady and gentlemen.

Thank you for coming into the studio.

First, this is Mr. Ralph Bradley on my right, whom you met at the Arabesco Air, and that's Mrs. Josephine Richardson, who is a lady who opened and built a tourist, a service, rather, an escort service from $7,000 a year to $80,000 a year.

Next we have Mr. Lee Deamous, who is a big wheel in the automotive industry.

A little wheel, well, little wheel that makes a big sound.

And then we have Mr. Zack Thompson, whose dancers, whose group you've just met.

Thank you again for coming into the studio.

First Ralph, explain to me, how did you get the business going?

I mean, what obstacles did you overcome?

That's really what I want to know.

- Quite a few, and one of 'em we still haven't overcome, and that's finances, as everybody has the same problem, I understand.

- [Maya] Alright.

- And our problem is nobody wants to loan a Black air service money, so we have to do this all on our own.

All our equipment has to be financed by ourself.

- Good grief, you mean you can't go to the bank and get a loan?

- Well, we've been to the bank and we've got a variety of excuses.

- They don't hold water, or dollars either?

- Well, they don't hold dollars.

- But you're persevering.

- Yes, we are.

We're gonna stay in this business, heck or high water.

- You, well, I know it'll be heck.

Now tell me, Mrs. Richardson, I know what you've done with your business, with your last business, what education do you have?

- High school.

- High school only.

- Yes.

- [Maya] And you were telling me earlier that your, your mother had a statement, she said, there's no such- - "There's no such thing as you can't, "you put can't under your foot and stomp it "to death and keep on keeping on."

- That's that's right, about right.

Now, tell me, Mr. Deamous, you were talking earlier about the disparity between the Black workers, the semi-skilled workers, would you talk about that a minute?

- Where do you want me to start?

- [Maya] Well, let's see, you were saying that in the South there was one system that was operating.

- Yes.

- [Maya] And while in the north, there's another system, but it's all the same system.

- It's the same, the disparity is this, that in the south, semi-skilled jobs are supposed to be beneath the dignity of a white man.

So he doesn't apply for those jobs.

So you see truck drivers, heavy equipment operators, and in the former years, engineers on the railroads, firemen.

In the North and in the West, where leave the well, good paying jobs, only white.

And even today you drive down the roads of California, you see the Black man in the ditch with the shovel.

Very seldom on any of the equipment, the good paying jobs.

Even your trades, same thing is true.

And yet it's legendary, the things that a Black man can do that he's picked up from observation.

- [Maya] That's true.

- With no chance to learn.

- [Maya] That's true.

No tutoring.

- Nothing.

- That's true.

Well, when a Black man has a job with a shovel or a hoe and some dirt, that is to tell him, in fact to tell him that he can't operate anything more complicated mechanical than a Jack-in-the-Box, right?

- [Lee] That's right.

- Well, we know better.

But we'll come back to that.

Tell me Zack Thompson, you want and we are hoping to have support from the Black community, is that right?

- Right.

- Right.

Will you talk about that a little bit, please?

- Well, we- - [Maya] About the social organizations and so forth.

- Right, well, we have formed the Artist Roundtable, which is the Black Cultural Center.

We use two names because it's going to be a Black cultural center, and we would like the support of as many Black people, our own people, because we find more and more each day that many of the younger children want to work and want to study with us.

And so this is why we formed this organization, so we can get qualified teachers for them who are Black and to have a place for these young kids and for the teenagers to work and study, and to find out what they want to do, and having an organization to be able to turn to.

So this is why we have formed the organization.

- Tell me what kinds of dance do you teach at the studio?

- Well, at the studio we teach all forms of dance, modern, jazz, primitive African, Haitian, but in the- - [Maya] Ballet?

- Ballet also.

But in the cultural center there will not only be dance, but it'll be drama, music, everything, sculpture.

- Is it possible, I mean, would you suggest, say to any viewer who's watching, Black dancer, who may be trying to think of how he's going to get into a business.

Is it possible to get backing from the Black community?

- Yes, I think there is- - [Maya] I don't mean just support, I don't mean just people, hiring the Danny Duncan Dance Troupe, or the Zack Thompson Dance Troupe.

I mean backing, say a person who could go to Mr. Bradley, Mrs. Richardson and Mr. Deamous, and say, "We need $5,000, and can you get it together "for us, we want to open a studio."

What's the chances of that, what do you think?

- I think now we have very good chances because there are so many successful Black businesses.

And if they would see our plan and see that we have it all down on paper and it's all legal, and it's not one of these organizations, again, that is just going to, this is why we formed the organization, too, because so much money has been given by so many kinds of people for this kind of project, and the money just always disappears.

And I see it every day in youth programs that I'm teaching in.

- [Maya] Yes.

Whether, the kids need it so badly and so I really feel that we will get the support of our own people.

- Well you see what we have to do, and I think this is so, certainly for Ralph, and for any project you might have in mind, for Mr. Bradley rather, and any project you might have in mind is Mrs. Richardson, our people do not have a history of being angels.

This is important to know.

We have simply never had enough money to talk about speculating with our money.

The money was so necessary for the bills, just this month, that people just have not been able to, I mean, there's no precedent set.

So one of the things we should talk about, even now, is how to encourage the Black community, who maybe do have five or 6,000 or $10,000 in the bank, that's just really accruing four or 5% interest how to talk with them and encourage them to risk maybe a thousand on, and get back 10% interest.

You see, this is very important.

This is again, that same unity that I'm personally striving for at any cost.

- Well, one thing, if they would support, just support the different businesses that our different people have, and utilize them.

And they can have a lot of, they can benefit by it also.

Like with us, we're certificated to go anywhere in the United States, Alaska, Canada, and we can take up to eight people in one aircraft, four in the other, plus their baggage and six in the other.

And we're operating these and they're ready to go at all times.

And we have 24-hour service, and this is all we're giving is a service.

And we would love to see our people, especially our youth, get interested in this, because this is a field that is opening up fast for our youth.

Like in our business, we as adults, may not really see it, get to a point where it's gonna be a million dollar business, but our children, it will help them.

They will, this is a business that we are really setting up for the future and it's for our children.

And we feel that whatever we do will help other children.

Just like in the picture that we saw there, we have children, we take on different trips with us.

In other words, if we go without a full load, rather than go empty, and we have the room, we would like to take underprivileged children, or children couldn't afford to make these different trips, so they can see that there is something else for them.

And all this costs money, but one day, somebody's gonna come along and loan this money for our equipment.

- I'm sure of that, I'm very certain of it.

I think that we mustn't, just because we are ourselves Black, and because we so understand the position and the condition, the situation of the Blacks, at no time was must we let ourselves off the hook.

I really think this is important.

I think that we should then not go to the white businessman.

No people in the world have furnished so many people PhDs and million dollars as the Black people, so why don't we do our best to encourage that Black community.

Mr. Deamous?

- There is a key element here that you're missing.

- [Maya] All right.

- I think.

- [Maya] Okay.

- Why the Black businessman can't compete because he can't get the money.

Now you cannot divorce their economy with everything else.

The ability to get money to operate, to compete, to buy on a volume basis, or to buy the equipment, to compete with a white man, you got to go to the white man.

Now, and the banks, and the white man's banks.

It's a Black man's money, if he has any.

And the white man lends the money and gets interest.

But the Black man try to get something to make some money.

So he got you sewed in.

- Okay, but tell me this, Mr. Deamous.

why do we have to compete with him?

Mind you, what I'm trying to get to here is, is a unity at all costs, at any cost, no matter what it costs us.

And in that way I may be sounding like an isolationist.

It's not my intention.

I am concerned with starting at home.

I'm not really concerned at this point in my own thinking, with the white man, I really am not.

I understand that he is there and that he has worked to get there.

We are here and we have suffered to get here.

That's the difference.

But now that we are here, if we don't think in fact, of competing, if we think rather of supporting, of supporting, of getting ourselves closer and closer and closer and leave him, Ghanaian say, "Left him small," leave him a little while, and let's just work inside our community.

Now, I know that in volume, certainly the Black businessman simply cannot afford to come up to you and say, Mrs. Richardson, for your project, I see myself clear to let you have 35,000.

We just don't have that many Black men, and to get the contact, I mean Black men with that kind of money to speculate.

But it is possible to get 10 or 20 Black people with $500 a piece, you see?

I'm very much impressed by Father Divine, by Prophet Jones, by Daddy Grace.

These men took dimes, dimes and built million, multimillion dollar empires and did some good for the community.

I don't know how many of you remember Father Divine's restaurants were the most popular places and the cheapest and the cleanest.

One could go into a Father Divine restaurant, say, "Peace sister, it's wonderful," and sit down to a seven-course meal for 35 cents, is that right?

- Yes, that's right.

- This was not only in California, this was in New York, in Oakland, California.

I mean small cities as well as large cities.

And this man then, he taught a kind of self-respect- - [Panelist] Yes.

- He also furnished food and housing.

So it is possible, it is possible to think large, but in a small context, you know?

- Well, I'd just like to say that we were not successful because it was our idea or desire to compete, we started out with this business, of course, my husband started it first, more or less as a hobby.

And we saw the potential, at least I saw it, I think, and became very, very interested in seeing the business expand.

I don't think he realized just how possible it was.

And on my desire to see the business grow, I encouraged him to leave the job that he had, which was a special delivery messenger, at the post office, and I felt the only way that you're going to be able to make this business grow and mean something to the community and yourself is by getting away from the small job that keeps you tied in and put all your interests into this little hobby that you have.

So with the desire of creating a service that would be available to the common people as well as to the rest of the people, then we just geared it right into a successful direction.

- A successful business.

That's, I think that's, that's the key.

There are many problems facing us, as we all know these days.

I thank you first, Zack Thompson, - [Zack] Thank you.

- Not only for bringing the Danny Duncan Troope, but also for being on the program.

I thank you Lee Deamous- - Thank you for having me.

I thank you very much Josephine Richardson.

And I thank you Ralph Bradley.

- It's my pleasure or our pleasure.

- Our pleasure, mine certainly.

I think that it would behoove the Black community to have as many of these little sit down and talk fests with each other as there's time, as time affords them.

I encourage it personally.

I know that just in sitting here in the studio talking with these four people, I've learned something.

I wonder could, is it possible for us to go back to the dance group and have them just zing us right out?

- [Zack] Yes, they are all set to perform for you a Merengue, this time.

- Oh, a Merengue.

- [Zack] Yes.

- Wonderful, thank you.

♪ Merengue Merengue Merengue oh-la-la-la ♪ ♪ Merengue Merengue Merengue oh-la-la-la ♪ ♪ Merengue Merengue Merengue oh-la-la-la ♪ ♪ Merengue Merengue Merengue oh-la-la-la ♪ (drummers beating) (dancers calling) - Now that's fun.

That's a nice way, I would imagine that's a nice way to make a living.

Mr. Frank Marshall Davis wrote a poem that says Giles, it's called Giles Johnson, PhD.

"Giles Johnson had four college degrees, "knew the why for of this and the where for of that, "could orate in Latin or cuss in Greek, "and having learned such things, he died of starvation, "because he wouldn't teach, "and he couldn't porter, pity, pity."

How to avoid an in inapplicable or useless education is a serious matter that we should be giving concentrated attention to.

How to encourage our young people to follow lines that they are interested in and break new ground, open new avenues, go all the way out there, the stars, beyond the stars.

Anything the mind can think, let's encourage our youngsters to do, to think those things.

Remember that having an education and not being able to apply it, is the same as having no education at all, or maybe worse.

Thank you.

(singing in foreign language) - [Announcer] The proceeding program, "Blacks, Blues, Black!"

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