- [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.

This evening we'll discuss violence in the Black American world.

Violence, one American said, "violence is as American as apple pie."

I would like to add to that, violence is life.

Life represents two opposing poles, struggling, vying with each other, positives and negatives, aggressives and passives.

The violence inherent in nature are most obvious, if you want to see how nature provides for a little daisy to grow up in the springtime, all soft and vulnerable, go and stand in a storm in a field alone at night and hear the lightning clap and the thunder roll and the rain pelt maddeningly down.

That is violence.

But today, tonight, I shall discuss violence, malicious violence, violence of of man against man.

I dedicate this program to the memory of Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, Denmark Vesey, who was born and died in the 18 hundreds and to the Denmark Veseys born in August, 1968, to Dr. DuBois, who died in exile, to the men and women who are nameless.

That is to say whose names have not come down through the centuries, but whose blood, whose agony we inherit.

In America, the settling of the country, was a long panorama of violence.

We see today, the American proud of having taken the country, the pioneers who fought the Indians and killed them, and our children early in their lives, at three or four, get guns and on Christmas, mind you, on Jesus Christ's birthday, on the birthday of the Prince of Peace.

And they get guns and celebrate how the Indians were wiped out.

Violence in America.

Dr. William Greer and Dr. Price Cobb have written a book called "Black Rage."

It's an important book.

I I would suggest all Black Americans should buy at least a copy and put it beside the other good books you must have.

They say, and this is a quote, "people bear all they can and if required, can bear even more but if they are Black in present day America, they've been asked to shoulder too much.

They have had all they can stand, they will be harried no more.

Turning from the tormentors, they are filled with rage.

The growing anger of Negroes is frightening to white America.

There is a feeling of betrayal, of undeserved attack.

White people have responded with a rage of their own as the lines become more firmly drawn.

Exchange of information is the first casualty."

Now I'm impressed by the Doctor's Cobb and Greer's book.

I'm impressed by them.

The casualty they mentioned there, the lack of information is a strange one to notice in a country where the communications media has its tendrils in every home, in every thinking, on every level.

How is there a lack of communication?

How is there a lack of understanding what has happened?

When whites say, "we don't know why the Black men in, why Watts burned as it burned."

Their houses are so neat.

The lawns are so pleasant, neat manicured palm trees and sidewalks.

There's no similarity between Watts and Harlem, say, or East St. Louis say, or Chicago, and certainly not Detroit.

But one sees that behind that facade of neat manicured lawns are the problems of economic and sociological problems that do not allow the Black man to take one step in his own, on his own path toward his own destiny, his own directed destiny.

In Watts, what occasioned the outbreak in 1965, the revolt in Watts in 1965, was not a first, there was a precedent set for Watts.

In 1919, in Chicago, there was a riot, a very important riot.

In fact, during that year, there were 26 riots.

From the Chicago Defender, August 2nd, 1919, quote, "following the Sunday afray, that the red tongues had blabbed their fill and Monday morning found the thoroughfare in the white neighborhoods throated with a sea of humans everywhere, some armed with guns, bricks, clubs, and oaths.

The presence of a Black face in their vicinity was a signal for a carnival of death.

And before any aid could reach the poor unfortunate one, his body reposed in some kindly gutter.

His brain spilled over a dirty pavement.

Some of the victims were chased, caught and dragged into alleys and lots where they were left for dead.

In all parts of the city, white mobs dragged from surface cars, Black passengers wholly ignorant of any trouble and set upon them.

An unidentified young woman and a three month old baby were found dead on the street at the intersection of 47th Street and Wentworth Avenue.

She had attempted to board a car there when the mob seized her, beat her, and slashed her body into ribbons and beat the baby's brains out against a telegraph pole.

Not satisfied with this, one rioter severed her breast and a white youngster bore it a loft on a pole triumphantly while the crowd hooted gleefully.

All the time this was happening, several policemen were in the crowd, but did not make any attempt to rescue until too late."

Violence in America, in the Black American world.

That riot was 1919.

In 1922, 1921, there was a riot in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

For the first time, I suppose, well, liquid fire was dropped on the Black American community, on Black Americans.

I would say that this was the first instance of napalm being dropped on human beings.

In Tulsa, at that time, Black Americans had married Indians in many, many instances and had built the initial money into larger sums.

It is said that the white community wanted to oust the Blacks and so they would jump at any chance to do so.

And the day before the riot, a young white girl who had had arguments, disagreements, with a young Black boy, they worked in the same building.

He has a janitor of course, and she has a secretary.

They had an argument on that particular day.

He tried to get into the elevator.

She didn't want him in or vice versa.

And so he talked to her badly.

He called her a bunch of name and just generally talked to her badly.

She went and reported him.

Of course, the charge, he was picked up, the charge was assaulting a white woman.

Well, the red and yellow sensational papers played that up and said, "Black man, a Negro, assaulted a white lady."

And the riot ensued.

And thousands of people were homeless.

5,000 people in the Black neighborhood with their hard worked for homes, were made homeless.

The area was razed, it looked in fact very much like Watts in 1965.

Watts in 1965 was violence.

It represented a people, a race, fighting for its life.

None in the land can say to us Black men today, you send the tractors on their bloody path and create Okies for the "Grapes of Wrath."

You breed the slum that breeds a native son to dam the good earth.

Pilgrim fathers one.

The new Negro strides up on the continent in seven league boots.

The new Negro who sprang from the vigor stout loins of Nat Turner, gallows Marta for freedom, of Joseph Sinclairs, Black Moses of the Amistad mutiny, of Frederick Douglas, Oracle of the Catholic man, of Sojourner Truth, eye and ear of Lincoln's legions, of Harriet Tubman, St. Bernard of the Underground Railroad.

None in the land can say to us Black men today you duped the poor with rags to richest tales and leave the workers emptied in a pails.

You stuff the ballot box and honest men are muzzled by your demagogue din.

None in the land can say to us Black men today, you smashed stock markets with your coined blitzkriegs and make a hundred million Guinea pigs.

You counterfeit Christianity and bring contempt upon democracy.

None in the land can say to us Black men today, you prowl while citizens are fast asleep and hatch fifth column plots to blast the deep foundations of the state and leave the land of vast Sahara with a fascist brand.

None in the land can say to us Black men today, you send fire gutting tanks like swarms of flies and plump a hell with dynamite skies.

You fill machine gunned towns with rotting dead and no man's land where children beg for bread.

A poem by Melvin B. Tolson.

We went to Los Angeles, to Watts, three years later to see what happened since 1965.

What gains have been made?

What fantastic breakthroughs are there that we can rejoice about and celebrate?

We met with a Ms. Mary Jane Hewitt, who is an expert on riots.

This is a subject she deals with and is I believe, in the United States, the person most conversant on the subject of American riots.

We met with her in Sid's cafe in Los Angeles.

Is there, Ms. Hewitt, tell me, is there a relationship and how close is the relationship between the riots, the revolts of these years say, of the last four years, and the historic revolts of the 19's, 20 and 21?

- There's a relationship in that there's a malaise, but there's a distinct difference in that, I think what characterizes the revolts of the 1919 era was that it was people against people.

Whereas the more recent revolts are people against the symbols of authority and oppression and I think that's the major difference.

In the earlier period, it was Whites against Blacks for the most part.

In this period it's Blacks against the symbols of authority and oppression.

- I see, okay, against the establishment, really.

- That's it.

- Well now when, then I can determine from that, that when the Black youth burned down a piece of property, they are in fact at property rather than at personals.

- That's how I see it.

- [Maya] That's very, very interesting.

- And if you look at the statistics of the more recent revolts, the casualty list is more often than not the revolters rather than the representatives of authority.

- I know you've done work in that 1919, 1920 and 21 riot area and era, did you find there that the whole society was standing against the Blacks or that groups of people like the KKK or the White Citizens Council, which we know wasn't formed then, but the just groups were standing against Black groups?

- It was the white have nots against the Black have nots.

And I tie this to World War I, the after effects of World War I.

You know, the United States entered World War I rather late and the, in fact there's a theory that the thirst for action was not sweated in World War I on the part of the American soldiers who went abroad to participate.

And of course this also marks the great period of migration, mass migration of Blacks from rural south to urban south and north.

And so the war plants and the industries were manned in essence by the Blacks for the most part during World War I.

And then the Whites and the Blacks come home after World War I where they fought to make the world safe for democracy, they find Blacks occupying positions, the Whites find Blacks occupying the positions they formerly held, moving into neighborhoods they formerly did not occupy.

And job scarcity, economic tension, economic malaise, all of these factors characterize the era.

And I think this has a lot to do, all of these factors, have a lot to do with the fact that the have not Whites set about to in essence put the Blacks back in what the whites considered to be their proper place.

- I see, now were there gains made, I mean palpable gains, tangible gains made out of those historic riots of the twenties?

- No, not really because there was no victory.

- I see.

- The difference, I think and the significant difference is that for the first time American Blacks fought back.

The earlier periods in the 1903 rebellion in Atlanta, for example, the Blacks passively accepted the attacks on the part of whites.

Whereas in the post World War I period, the Blacks, for the first time in our history, really stood on their feet and fought back against the attacks.

And as the Black people began to assert themselves as they never had before in American history, the tension built.

The most classic case was the Chicago riot, which began with a young Black boy going swimming in that forbidden era of the lake.

And as we know very often, even though there's no fine line drawn, one part of the lake was for Blacks and one part of the lake was for Whites.

And this young boy dared to cross over to the forbidden area, forbidden for Blacks.

And he was stoned by Whites as he swam.

And it looked as though he was going to drown and an effort was made to rescue him.

Then there was battling going on on the beach between Blacks and Whites as the boy was in trouble out here.

And then the police got involved in the whole conflagration.

The boy did drown, by the way.

- [Maya] He did drown.

- He did drown.

Now it was never proven whether he drowned because of a stone that may have hit him or whether he just tired, got frightened, or whether he was tired and that's still a big unknown.

However, he did drown and the Chicago riot, rebellion, revolt was the result.

And as I said earlier, the difference between the riots of 1919 and the more recent riots of the sixties is that the 1919 era was people against people, Americans against Americans, Blacks against Whites, Blacks actually fighting back against attacks by Whites.

- How would you explain the characteristic of riots following riots in a kind of chain reaction way as we've seen it, one city goes up one day and three days later 10 cities are burning.

How would you explain that?

- Well, there was a study done by a young man at Pennsylvania, university of Pennsylvania, and I've forgotten his name.

However, he did a historical study of urban rebellions and there are certain characteristics that dominate.

One is they usually take place, these rebellions take place, during the peak of the heat, the hot season.

They usually take place on weekends.

So the temperatures, the mean, in fact, he traced the mean temperature and it usually was around 86 degrees, the mean temperature, which means more often than not, it was high humidity and high temperature.

Usually on the weekends when people are idle and certainly poor people in disadvantaged communities are idle.

They're not on the golf course or on their boats.

They're sitting idly in their communities and the least thing may trigger an explosion.

Now the other characteristic in this historical tracing was that more often than not, the explosion was triggered by police authorities acting in a fashion which was viewed as oppressive and unfair on the part of the disadvantaged peoples.

So if there's any linkage, and I think this still holds true with the exception of the rebellions that followed the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, that they more often than not take place in late hot, humid summer.

(jazz band music) - [Maya] This is the new site of the Watts Cultural Center?

- [Mary Jane] Yes.

- [Maya] And it will, how far will it take, from those cars?

- [Mary Jane] The whole empty space.

- [Maya] I see, what was here before?

- [Mary Jane] Commercial buildings that were burned out during the August Rebellion in 1965, and as you can see, there's been very little rebuilding since.

- [Maya] I see that.

- [Mary Jane] The new cultural center will be built with a grant from HUD matched by the city of Los Angeles.

- [Maya] HUD, that's Housing and Urban Development.

- [Mary Jane] Yes, the Western Regional administrator of HUD, Bob Pitts, down here Thursday of last week for the dedication of the new site.

- This is the old building, the old Watts Happening Coffee House?

- Yes.

- What was it originally?

- It was a furniture warehouse owned by Matt Diamond, who's well known in these parts.

It's been condemned and the city has allowed the group, the Mafundi Institute and the Watts Happening Coffee House to stay there until the new facility is built here across the street in this empty lot.

- [Maya] I see, there was some great artwork done in here.

- [Mary Jane] Oh yes, they have poetry and jazz seminars and the Mafundi Mummers, the drama group.

It's a swinging place.

- [Maya] A swinging place.

It's going to be happening across the street.

- [Mary Jane] That's right.

It'll have filmmaking, drama, arts and crafts.

Complete cultural center.

- Marvelous, thank you.

(people chattering) - Otherwise known as relief.

- Otherwise known as relief, the Department, - Of Public and Social Services, otherwise known as Relief Aid to Dependent Children, the Blind and the Infirm and so on.

It's one of the new buildings in the area.

- Mary Jane, they used to, I mean, people who were on relief in this area used to have to go five or six or 10 miles, isn't it?

- This is a part of the results of burning cities, burning buildings.

Many new facilities are being brought into the formerly neglected community such as that Doctor's building across the street and the Concentrated Employment Project, which as you see is a joint project.

The California State Department of Employment and Economic and Youth Opportunities Agency of Los Angeles.

This is an effort to reduce the importance of the Department of Public and Social Services down the street and make people more self-sufficient by training and job placement.

In contrast to the dilapidated buildings and vacant lots outside, as the Reverend Brown said, "here's an example of community pride."

The philosophy being brain power is manpower.

(people chattering) - [Mary Jane] What's happening in Watts is represented right there.

These are indigenous organizations that grew out of the explosions, of people who were determined to assert their own pride, their own identity.

But as far as the larger society is concerned, nothing's happening.

(people chattering) - Like, I was telling him, that's the root.

And like he said, this, you know, the land, this is the revolution.

This is the problem here.

We ain't got no land, we just sitting on it.

Anytime, it just, it give us a Cadillac.

We just drive right on way, you know, still ain't got nothing, nothing solid.

They ain't got the land.

And that's what he was talking, my brother Malcolm.

I ain't up here trying to float you anything I'm just telling like it is because I ain't no actor.

I'm just a brother, that's it.

So I don't know what's all this for 'cause I ain't used to all.

- [Mary Jane] Malcolm telling us to do about it?

What's Brother Malcolm telling us to do about it on this altar?

- Get our own.

Blackness and know what Blackness is and for real, well look, it's a revolution, right?

- [Mary Jane] Nothing new about revolution.

- Ain't nothing new that's been going on.

You see it on TV every day, "Hopalong Cassidy" with the white horse and thing, you know, and Tonto, hey, you know what about Superman?

Why he gotta be flying around, you know, White.

I'll be damned.

- In the 1960s, the Black community is asserting itself.

It is determined to make its own determination.

Self-determination is the key phrase.

- I'm impressed personally by walking down the street in 1968, the same streets I could have walked down in 1958, 1948, and even 1938 with my hair natural and a piece of African cloth in my dress or wearing a piece of African cloth in those years decade, one decade ago I would've been laughed at.

I have been laughed at, I have been ridiculed and in fact denied but today, in 1968, as I walked down the street in the Black community in Watts of 68 with Ms. Hewitt, with her beautiful hair, beautiful, and with, in an African cloth from Ghana, I'm met on the street by people who say, "sister welcome, sister welcome."

And I see the psychological advance that has been made since 1965 and I'm thrilled by it.

Can you say the same?

- Yes, indeed and this is the point I'm making that the change is in the self-determination, the increasing Black pride but without some economic and political progress, I'm afraid that the Black pride will come to naught eventually.

- The psychological advance appears to be a small one.

When one sees what other desires, in fact needs, there are in Watts in 1968.

After we left Los Angeles, about three in the afternoon, that evening, Watts exploded again.

And the paper thin covering was ripped off.

And one sees that the evils, the hidden timber, that was set fire to in 1965 was still there, dry, rusting, ready to be fired again.

The positive though, that psychological advance, that ability to see one man as a brother and any man as a brother, and any woman as a sister, is going to be a very pleasing, it's going to have wonderful repercussions in the future, especially if it has the chance to bloom, to expand.

We don't want to find ourselves, in fact, in a concentration camp situation and fighting each other inside the prison.

We don't want to find that.

We went to hear Mr. Stokeley Carmichael talk at a Black Panther's rally in Oakland and this was the most important thing Mr. Carmichael said.

- We must develop an undying love for our people.

Our slogan will become first our people then and only then, me and you as individuals.

Our people first, our people first.

We came to this country as Black men and as Africans.

It took us 400 years to become Negroes.

Understand that.

That means that the concept of a Black man is one who recognizes his cultural, his historical, and the roots of his great ancestors who were the greatest warriors on the face of this earth.

Africans, Africans, Africans.

Many of our people's mind have been whitewashed.

If a Negro comes up to you and you turn your back on him, he's got to run to the honky.

We're going to take time and patience with our people because they're ours, they're ours.

All of the Uncle Toms, we're going to sit down and we're going to talk.

And when they slap, we're gonna bow.

And when they slap, we're gonna bow and we're gonna try to bring them home.

And if they don't come home, we going off them.

That's all, that's all, that's all.

(audience cheering and clapping) We have to recognize who our major enemy is.

The major enemy is not your brother, flesh of your flesh and blood of your blood.

The major enemy is the honky and its institutions of racism.

That's the major enemy, that is the major enemy.

And whenever anybody prepares for revolutionary warfare, you concentrate on the major enemy.

We're not strong enough to fight each other and also fight him.

We will not fight each other today.

We will not fight each other.

There will be no fights in the Black community among Black people.

There will just be people who will be off.

There will be no fights, there will be no disruptions.

We are going to be united.

The three M's, the missionaries, the money and the Marines.

That is precisely the way it's moved all over the world.

It is the way it moves against us.

They have sent the missionaries in, we sent them out, they have sent the money in with the poverty program.

The Vietnamese and the Koreans are pulling the money out.

The next thing comes the Marines, comes the Marines.

And if we're talking seriously, we get prepared for the Marines.

- Shocking, isn't it, sad, painful, true.

It's awful that one is able to open a magazine, a leading journal, and see the kinds of armory that have been developed to keep the Black man in his place.

Some great minds spent thousands and thousands of hours and use millions and millions of dollars to come up with things like the mace, the other kinds of gas that absolutely makes, renders a person immobile.

The hand rifle that will go through, will shatter a brick building.

It's shocking when you think that Americans are developing machinery, death dealing machinery to cope with other Americans.

When we wouldn't have had to develop, had to create as a people, an H. Rap Brown, a Malcolm X, a Stokely Carmichael, had the situation not been what it is.

You see, if you read Machiavelli, a great book called "The Prince," it's 65 cents paperback.

The book was written in the 15th century.

Machiavelli was ousted.

He was sent into exile when he was living the, he was living in the Italian city states and he decided to create, to develop, a way of dealing with power.

That book, "The Prince," has become the foundation for western international affairs and national affairs with a statesmanship politics and power.

If you read that book, you will see that it was inevitable that our people would create, we would give out of ourselves collectively, a Stokely Carmichael, an H. Rap Brown.

We are in a desperate situation today.

Violence in the United States, violence in the Black man's life.

There's a film that was done in Cuba.

The film admittedly is propaganda.

It's high, very effective propaganda, but it doesn't lie.

♪ If those historic gentlemen came back today ♪ ♪ Jefferson, Washington and Lincoln ♪ ♪ And- Walter Cronkite puts them on channel two ♪ ♪ To find out what they were thinking ♪ ♪ I'm sure they say, thanks for quoting us so much, ♪ ♪ But we don't want to take a bow ♪ ♪ Enough with the quoting ♪ ♪ Put those words into action ♪ ♪ And we mean action now ♪ ♪ Now is the moment, now is the moment ♪ ♪ Come on we've put it off long enough ♪ ♪ Now no more waiting ♪ ♪ No hesitatin' ♪ ♪ Now, now, come on let's get some of that stuff ♪ ♪ It's there for you and me ♪ ♪ For every he and she ♪ ♪ Just wanna do what's right ♪ ♪ Constitutionally ♪ ♪ I went and took a look ♪ ♪ In my old history book ♪ ♪ It's there in black and white ♪ ♪ For all to see ♪ ♪ Now, now, now, now, now, now ♪ ♪ Everyone should love his brother ♪ ♪ People all should love each other ♪ ♪ Just don't take it literal mister ♪ ♪ No one wants to grab your sister ♪ ♪ Now is the time ♪ ♪ Now is the time ♪ ♪ Now is the moment ♪ ♪ Now is the moment ♪ ♪ Come on we've put it off long enough ♪ ♪ Now no more waiting ♪ ♪ No hesitatin' ♪ ♪ Now, now, come on let's get some of that stuff ♪ ♪ It's there for you and me ♪ ♪ For every he and she ♪ ♪ Just want what's right ♪ ♪ Constitutionally ♪ ♪ I went and took a look ♪ ♪ In my old history book ♪ ♪ It's there in black and white ♪ ♪ For all to see ♪ ♪ Now, now, now, now, now, now ♪ ♪ Now, now, now, now, now, now ♪ - Now, the violence in the Black American world is not simply the violence that we see the society projecting on the Black American, but the violence, there's a mountains of violence, between the Black American and the Black American.

This is a result of the slavery, of slavery's heritage.

The White man made it very clear that he was of value and the Black man was of no value.

If a Black man killed a White man, he was immediately summarily killed in the most horrible way and he knew that.

If he killed a Black man, he would at best, at worst, get off with maybe two years.

And at best he might be clapped on the shoulder and approved.

I mean his actions approved of.

The frustration that is a part and parcel, a real element in the Black man's life makes him thrash out at something and obviously he hits that one nearest him.

These past three weeks I've spent the weekend sitting in my car near the hospitals that are close to our, that operate, are located in the Black ghettos.

And every Saturday night and Friday night and sometimes Sunday morning, the sirens and their ambulances and the police and families bringing men who've been cut for a quarter, shot for a dime.

One wife was cut on Friday night by her husband because she didn't have his dinner ready when he came home.

Cut seriously.

Ms. Rosa Guy has written a book called "Bird at my Window" and in that book she deals with the peasant in the urban situation.

She shows us almost tediously what happens to a dream deferred.

What happens whether it rots or dries up like a raisin in the sun or whether it explodes - What you ever done for me Mama, bring me into the world?

- You asked that, when your father left me a poor sick woman, helpless with three children to take care of.

If I ain't never done nothing for you, how come you grow?

You think you was born grown?

- I ain't forgotten a thing mama.

Matter of fact, after tonight, there ain't nothing I can ever forget.

I ain't forgetting me and Faith being locked away like we ain't even had a mother while you kept Willie.

- What you talk about boy> Wasn't it better you go somewhere where you could eat than stay home and starve to death?

Listen here, the minute I see my way clear, ain't you come out?

- And school, I guess you did a hell of a lot to see me go through school too huh?

- I ain't saying I didn't make some mistakes Wade.

I reckon I should have done more to keep you in school.

I realize that too late.

But don't think it did my heart any good to see you bumming around on the street.

But them wasn't the things that made you no killer.

- Mistakes, that's what you call em'.

- Ain't a person going through this life got a right to have some?

All I wanted was to see my children grow up to be law abiding decent citizens, to get married and have a family.

Under the eyes of law And God, there ain't nothing wrong with that.

What more can poor folks do?

What more can poor folks expect?

- Honesty, yeah, mama, honesty.

You ain't honest Mama and Willie Earl ain't honest.

You're sitting there talking and talking but you scared Mama, you scared and you ain't honest enough to show it.

And you know why you scared Mama?

You scared because you figure I'm gonna kill you 'cause you ain't ever been honest in your life.

You scared because you know when you pray to God you keep your eyes closed tight so you won't see that you're doing the devil's bidding.

You never admitted in your life that we were so heavy around your neck that your tits were dragging the ground while it was your head up in the clouds where you figure your soul should be.

You couldn't get rid of the load fast enough.

That's why Willie Earl ain't gone through school.

And if it wasn't for me, Faith wouldn't have made it either.

Well you ain't even known if Little Willie was smart or dumb in school you rushed him out so fast.

He was the oldest so you got to him first.

- Willie Earl was always a right smart child.

- You mean he was a dishonest bastard.

He took one look into your eyes and got tricks about fooling your butt.

Oh, but you understood him.

It was the kind of smartness you understood.

Oh, Faith and I was something else.

You couldn't dig us.

If all three of us had gotten penny ante jobs and thrown a few pennies your way while we stuck the rest in our back pockets, you would've been telling yourself and the rest of the world a lie that you raised us successful.

But no, I made it a different kind of way and I poured it out to you like my soul.

And you had to close your eyes because suddenly you found my life to be your conscience.

All you had to do was to be honest, mama.

You let Willie Earl leave school because of those few pennies he threw your way and you kept me out so I could make your life better.

Yet all the while you knelt on your stiff sick knees with your eyes closed, covering your mind with prayers, but everything boomerang because I was honest and you never had no use for honesty.

So you said I was no good and that gave you the best reason to rob me of my life.

- Rob you of your life, boy, I gave you your life, and all you wanna do is just make me suffer.

- But Willie Earl made you happy huh?

- We ain't never had no big house, but it was a clean one.

You ain't never left it hungry and you was always proper and clean and many is the day, the very pennies you're talking about, your brother brought in, they filled your stomach.

- Oh, I ain't seen it that way mama.

- Ain't nothing in my life I ever wanted for you children but good.

I ain't never had a word, not a thought, not a prayer in my life that wasn't for you.

And I ain't never had no happiness.

- You was too poor to have happiness.

- Maybe too poor but I had dreams.

- You ain't never had a dream mama.

You only had a thought.

To have a dream mama, you have to have an image and the only image you ever had was of a man pinned to a cross and you would've pinned us all there too for your salvation.

Oh, that's where you sinned, mama.

- But if I have sin, God knows I paid for it through you.

When I walked in that funeral parlor and had to look at that man's head that you done bashed in and you don't think I suffer.

- Oh well anyway, after today you don't have to worry about suffering.

- Now how you mean that?

- I mean, mama, that you and your misbegotten children will quit the scene before the rain stops falling.

There'll only be one, the beholden, to see the morning, to justify big Willie's life.

- You talk like you ain't got good sense boy.

- I got good sense mama.

That rain I walked through tonight cleared my brain of a lot of things that was clouding it.

Oh, and I swear to God, mama, I ain't never had better sense.

The sun comes up in the morning, mama, it's gonna shine on a little more honest world because big Willies misbegotten breed will be dead.

- You done going to clean outta your mind?

- It's you and me and Willie Earl mama.

First you, then I'm going to whatever hospital little Willie's in, then after, me.

There won't be nobody left for the funeral.

- Wait, wait, what in the world are you doing?

My God Wade what are you doing?

- Faith please talk to your brother.

He done gonna clean out his mind.

Talk to him.

- Wade, you know you don't have no business being here and sulking with it that, look at the clothes you got all over the place.

- Faith, I know, I know Faith.

- What got into you Wade?

Breaking down doors and everything.

I know it must have been you that broke down the door downstairs.

- Yes, but it's because I found out Faith.

You wouldn't tell me but I found out how Willie Earl and Mama screwed us up.

Oh yeah, Faith, I know, I know now.

- You been talking like that ever since they've been here.

I tell you he didn't gone clean out his mind.

- No, no Faith.

I found out why I went after Willie Earl that night.

- What are you talking about Wade?

What's mama got to do with that?

- She was in it with him.

- No, I swear way Wade.

Mama never knew anything about it.

- Aww, she did Faith, she did.

- I never told her Wade, I swear I didn't.

- Oh yeah, but she knew it.

- No way, you know how Willie Earl is always tight and close to the chest.

- She's the one that caused it Faith.

She was the one that caused him to be dishonest.

She robbed me of my life.

You knew it.

That's why you never liked her.

- What are you talking about Wade.

I love mama, I never worshiped her like you did.

Oh, accepted her fault, but I love her.

- Oh, but she did me in Faith.

You remember how they took my money when I was in the army?

She and Willie Earl?

- No Wade, it was me.

I'm the one who never sent to tell you that mama was sick so you could know where your money was going.

I didn't send to tell you 'cause I knew how you'd worry to no end about her, of all her children, I know you love her best.

Wade, what are you blaming her for?

What are you blaming us for?

- I ain't blaming you for nothing Faith.

You are the best part of us.

The one who must survive.

You know I wouldn't hurt you.

It's them.

She and Willie Earl that robbed me.

It's them that got no business living on account they ain't honest.

- They honest enough Wade, but they poor.

God knows you got no right condemning people because they poor and sick and miserable.

- Oh, who you going to blame God?

- Well, if you must blame somebody, blame him.

He's the one that decides where you're gonna be born and how you're going to live.

- Then he gotta take the blame for how they must die.

- Wade, listen to me.

All people make mistakes.

I don't care how rich or how great they are.

Ain't a natural living the way we forced to.

We had to make a few.

Poor people don't have a chance because in doing what they think is right, they have to sometimes go against instinct to save themselves and their children.

Wade, oh God.

- Is it saving them when you make them into nothing, liter for the garbage collectors, bulk for the city prisons, killers for a kick?

Ain't you gonna give them blame for that?

- They got blame Wade.

Their whole life is one big blame.

They got the blame for where they were born and they suffer for where they have to work.

They have off limits signs hung in, hung on them for the clothes they have to wear.

Never mind the color of their skins, they pay every day the penalty of having to live there without ever seeing the part they play in their crime.

They do penance in their ugly houses and in their ugly streets.

Wade, you never expected any soap sculpture of yours to turn to gold so why you expect us to be so much better than the things that made us, that shaped us, that formed our thinking?

Why must we be super people?

Supermen and giants?

You gotta blame the God's way.

There ain't no innocent God.

- No, no, they don't go free Faith.

They just don't go free.

- Listen to me Wade.

There's a lot of folks that don't remember how smart you used to be.

I remember whatever, what, whatever so little I did with my life I owe to you.

There were a lot of things you wanted to be and probably could have been too, but you never had the chance.

All you gotta, oh wow.

That don't have to be dead weight not, oh.

What else a kid working with me, oh man is over for and he just went back to college.

All you have to do is stop drinking and get yourself together and brush up on some of your studies.

You can start again.

I know you can Wade.

I'll help you.

I swear to God I'll help you if it takes every single day of my life.

- I did what I wanted to do Faith, once in my life, and I know it's that feeling that makes life worth living.

- How's that Wade?

- It's doing what you have to do and feeling free with the world around and in you.

It's when you don't go against instinct.

It's when you can feel free like a bird and you can sort of spread your wings and just take off.

- I reckon that's a strange feeling huh Wade?

Because we beast, we ain't birds.

- He lost the sense of Faith's words as mama made her dash for the door.

Shaking off Faith's hand, he jumped quickly in front of mama, grabbed her arm as she reached the door, thrusting the knife downward in one powerful plunge into her chest but her body did not move.

It was another form which had pushed itself between them that slid quietly to the floor.

He found himself looking down into Faith's eyes as her startled gaze changed into meaninglessness.

Her mouth opened gasping for air.

He pulled the knife out knowing it was too late.

He stared up at mama searching for sympathy, for understanding.

The sympathy she must feel for his mistake.

It didn't make sense to him, but the hypocritical mouth above him opened and screams tore through it as though all her insides were gushing up through the opening.

Wade reached for her blindly.

Now here Ms.

Guy shows us in a capsule, in one book, what happens to a dream deferred.

Mr. Langston Hughes says, does it rot in the sun or does it explode?

In this case, it explodes.

In many Black American worlds, in the texture of the life is so full of terror.

It's always on the panic brink.

On the brink of absolute chaos.

That is a truth, a violence in Black American living.

Ms. Margaret Walker has a poem called "Now" and we'll close with that poem.

Time to wipe away the slime from inner rooms of thinking and covert skin of suffering, indignities and dirt and helpless degradation.

From furtive allegations to back doors and dark alleys and balconies.

Of waiting in the cleaning rooms with their closets and privy's marked for colored only.

And the drinking soda fountains, tasting dismal and disgusting with a dry and dusty flavor, of deep humiliation.

Hearing vulgars shout to mothers, hey you nigga, girl, girly, auntie, aunt, and granny.

My old mammy was a wonder and I loved those dear old darkies who were good and servile Negros with their kerchief heads and faces in their soft and menial places.

Feeling blood and hate co-mingled in a savage supplication full of rights and ceremonies, further separate, unequal.

Reinforced by mobs who mass with a priest of cult and clan, dressed and robed in purist white, marking kleagle with a klux and a fiery burning cross.

Time to wipe away the slime.

Time to end this bloody crime.

I 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.