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Would you like to inspect the original subtitles? These are the user uploaded subtitles that are being translated: 1 00:01:25,795 --> 00:01:26,921 Mr. Baldwin, 2 00:01:27,547 --> 00:01:30,633 I'm sure you still meet the remark that: 3 00:01:31,217 --> 00:01:34,053 "What are the Negroes... why aren't they optimistic? 4 00:01:34,220 --> 00:01:36,264 Um... They say, "But it's getting so much better. 5 00:01:36,431 --> 00:01:37,557 There are negro mayors, 6 00:01:37,766 --> 00:01:39,517 there are negroes in all of sports." 7 00:01:39,684 --> 00:01:41,936 There are negroes in politics. 8 00:01:42,103 --> 00:01:44,355 They're even accorded the ultimate accolade 9 00:01:44,522 --> 00:01:46,441 of being in television commercials now. 10 00:01:48,401 --> 00:01:51,112 I'm glad you're smiling. 11 00:01:52,197 --> 00:01:55,617 Is it at once getting much better and still hopeless? 12 00:01:56,826 --> 00:01:58,495 I don't think there's much hope for it, you know, 13 00:01:58,661 --> 00:01:59,746 to tell you the truth, 14 00:01:59,913 --> 00:02:02,749 as long as people are using this peculiar language. 15 00:02:03,291 --> 00:02:06,419 It's not a question of what happens to the Negro here, 16 00:02:06,586 --> 00:02:07,921 or to the black man here, 17 00:02:08,797 --> 00:02:10,965 that's a very vivid question for me, you know, 18 00:02:11,132 --> 00:02:13,301 but the real question is what's going to happen to this country. 19 00:02:13,468 --> 00:02:14,552 I have to repeat that. 20 00:02:14,719 --> 00:02:16,971 ♪ You're damn right, I've got the blues, ♪ 21 00:02:18,014 --> 00:02:20,892 ♪ From my head down to my shoes ♪ 22 00:02:25,146 --> 00:02:27,857 ♪ You're damn right, I've got the blues, ♪ 23 00:02:28,024 --> 00:02:30,276 ♪ From my head down to my shoes ♪ 24 00:02:35,323 --> 00:02:37,242 ♪ I can't win 25 00:02:37,992 --> 00:02:40,620 ♪ 'Cause I don't have a thing to lose ♪ 26 00:02:44,958 --> 00:02:47,919 ♪ I stopped by my daughter's house ♪ 27 00:02:48,086 --> 00:02:50,421 ♪ You know I just want to use the phone ♪ 28 00:02:55,134 --> 00:02:56,761 ♪ I stopped by my daughter's house ♪ 29 00:02:57,846 --> 00:03:00,807 ♪ You know I just want to use the phone ♪ 30 00:03:22,620 --> 00:03:24,998 The summer has scarcely begun, 31 00:03:25,623 --> 00:03:28,126 and I feel already that it's almost over. 32 00:03:30,128 --> 00:03:31,963 And I will be 55. 33 00:03:32,130 --> 00:03:35,967 Yes, 55, in a month. 34 00:03:37,969 --> 00:03:40,054 I am about to undertake the journey. 35 00:03:41,097 --> 00:03:43,683 And this is a journey, to tell you the truth, 36 00:03:44,350 --> 00:03:46,936 which I always knew that I would have to make, 37 00:03:47,437 --> 00:03:49,689 but had hoped, perhaps, 38 00:03:50,315 --> 00:03:52,275 certainly had hoped, 39 00:03:52,609 --> 00:03:54,402 not to have to make so soon. 40 00:03:57,113 --> 00:03:59,240 I am saying that a journey is called that 41 00:03:59,407 --> 00:04:01,367 because you cannot know what you will discover 42 00:04:01,534 --> 00:04:02,785 on the journey, 43 00:04:03,328 --> 00:04:05,705 what you will do with what you find, 44 00:04:05,872 --> 00:04:08,666 or what you find will do to you. 45 00:04:09,959 --> 00:04:11,461 Not only have a right to be free, 46 00:04:11,628 --> 00:04:13,671 - we have a duty to be free. - Yeah. 47 00:04:13,838 --> 00:04:16,799 And so when you sit down on the bus and you sit down in the front, 48 00:04:16,966 --> 00:04:18,718 or sit down by a white person, 49 00:04:19,302 --> 00:04:22,347 you are sitting there because you have a duty to sit down, 50 00:04:22,513 --> 00:04:24,432 not merely because you have a right. 51 00:04:25,099 --> 00:04:27,518 The time of these lives and deaths, 52 00:04:27,685 --> 00:04:30,688 from a public point of view, is 1955, 53 00:04:30,855 --> 00:04:32,273 when we first heard of Martin, 54 00:04:32,440 --> 00:04:35,109 to 1968, when he was murdered. 55 00:04:38,237 --> 00:04:41,115 Medgar was murdered in the summer of 1963. 56 00:04:42,033 --> 00:04:44,911 Malcolm was murdered in 1965. 57 00:04:45,078 --> 00:04:48,790 ♪ Here, take my hand, Precious Lord ♪ 58 00:04:49,624 --> 00:04:51,209 ♪ Lead me on ♪ 59 00:04:51,542 --> 00:04:53,127 ♪ Let me stand ♪ 60 00:04:53,628 --> 00:04:55,171 ♪ I am tired ♪ 61 00:04:55,421 --> 00:04:56,923 ♪ I'm weak ♪ 62 00:04:57,256 --> 00:04:59,008 ♪ I am worn ♪ 63 00:05:01,219 --> 00:05:02,512 ♪ Through the storm ♪ 64 00:05:02,679 --> 00:05:04,055 The three men, 65 00:05:04,222 --> 00:05:08,393 Medgar, Malcolm, and Martin, were very different men. 66 00:05:10,687 --> 00:05:14,190 Consider that Martin was only 26 in 1955. 67 00:05:14,899 --> 00:05:18,277 He took on his shoulders the weight of the crimes, 68 00:05:18,528 --> 00:05:21,364 and the lies, and the hope of a nation. 69 00:05:25,326 --> 00:05:27,203 I want these three lives to bang against 70 00:05:27,370 --> 00:05:30,581 and reveal each other, as in truth, they did 71 00:05:31,457 --> 00:05:32,834 and use their dreadful journey 72 00:05:33,001 --> 00:05:34,752 as a means of instructing the people 73 00:05:34,919 --> 00:05:36,421 whom they loved so much, 74 00:05:36,838 --> 00:05:38,006 who betrayed them, 75 00:05:38,673 --> 00:05:40,758 and for whom they gave their lives. 76 00:06:00,111 --> 00:06:01,904 The moment a negro child 77 00:06:02,071 --> 00:06:03,740 walks into the school, 78 00:06:03,906 --> 00:06:07,577 every decent, self-respecting, loving parent 79 00:06:07,744 --> 00:06:11,080 should take his white child out of that broken school. 80 00:06:33,811 --> 00:06:35,480 Go back to your own school. 81 00:06:43,905 --> 00:06:47,408 God forgives murder and he forgives adultery. 82 00:06:47,867 --> 00:06:49,327 But He is very angry 83 00:06:49,494 --> 00:06:51,954 and He actually curses all who do integrate. 84 00:07:02,799 --> 00:07:05,051 That's when I saw the photograph. 85 00:07:06,135 --> 00:07:08,054 On every newspaper kiosk 86 00:07:08,221 --> 00:07:11,140 on that wide, tree-shaped boulevard in Paris, 87 00:07:11,307 --> 00:07:14,811 were photographs of 15-year-old Dorothy Counts 88 00:07:14,977 --> 00:07:17,814 being reviled and spat upon by the mob 89 00:07:17,980 --> 00:07:19,690 as she was making her way to school 90 00:07:19,857 --> 00:07:21,442 in Charlotte, North Carolina. 91 00:07:22,443 --> 00:07:24,570 There was unutterable pride, 92 00:07:24,737 --> 00:07:27,532 tension and anguish in that girl's face 93 00:07:27,698 --> 00:07:29,784 as she approached the halls of learning, 94 00:07:30,118 --> 00:07:32,245 with history jeering at her back. 95 00:07:33,996 --> 00:07:35,373 It made me furious, 96 00:07:35,998 --> 00:07:39,168 it filled me with both hatred and pity. 97 00:07:39,627 --> 00:07:41,504 And it made me ashamed. 98 00:07:42,255 --> 00:07:44,841 Some one of us should have been there with her! 99 00:07:48,636 --> 00:07:50,388 But it was on that bright afternoon 100 00:07:50,555 --> 00:07:52,890 that I knew I was leaving France. 101 00:07:54,016 --> 00:07:57,311 I could simply no longer sit around Paris, 102 00:07:57,478 --> 00:08:01,357 discussing the Algerian and the Black American problem. 103 00:08:02,316 --> 00:08:04,402 Everybody else was paying their dues, 104 00:08:04,610 --> 00:08:07,697 and it was time I went home and paid mine. 105 00:08:08,698 --> 00:08:10,950 ♪ If you was white, You'd be alright ♪ 106 00:08:11,242 --> 00:08:13,786 ♪ If you was brown, Stick around ♪ 107 00:08:14,120 --> 00:08:15,830 ♪ But as you's black ♪ 108 00:08:15,997 --> 00:08:17,165 ♪ Oh, brother ♪ 109 00:08:18,457 --> 00:08:20,710 ♪ Get back, get back, get back ♪ 110 00:08:23,713 --> 00:08:25,840 ♪ I went to an employment office ♪ 111 00:08:26,048 --> 00:08:28,301 ♪ I got a number and I got in line ♪ 112 00:08:29,510 --> 00:08:31,304 ♪ They called everybody's number ♪ 113 00:08:31,470 --> 00:08:33,848 ♪ But they never did call mine ♪ 114 00:08:34,015 --> 00:08:37,101 ♪ I said, if you was white, You'd be alright ♪ 115 00:08:37,268 --> 00:08:39,937 ♪ If you was brown, Stick around ♪ 116 00:08:40,104 --> 00:08:41,731 ♪ But as you's black ♪ 117 00:08:41,898 --> 00:08:43,191 ♪ Oh, brother... ♪ 118 00:09:04,295 --> 00:09:06,380 I had at last come home. 119 00:09:07,673 --> 00:09:10,009 If there was, in this, some illusion, 120 00:09:10,593 --> 00:09:12,178 there was also much truth. 121 00:09:13,721 --> 00:09:15,306 In the years in Paris, 122 00:09:15,681 --> 00:09:18,434 I had never been homesick for anything American. 123 00:09:18,893 --> 00:09:21,145 Neither waffles, ice cream, 124 00:09:21,312 --> 00:09:25,524 hot dogs, baseball, majorettes, movies, 125 00:09:26,442 --> 00:09:29,153 nor the Empire State Building, nor Coney Island, 126 00:09:29,320 --> 00:09:32,073 nor the Statue of Liberty, nor the Daily News, 127 00:09:32,281 --> 00:09:33,449 nor Times Square. 128 00:09:34,659 --> 00:09:36,452 All of these things had passed out of me. 129 00:09:37,245 --> 00:09:40,915 They might never have existed, and it made absolutely 130 00:09:41,082 --> 00:09:44,335 no difference to me if I never saw them again. 131 00:09:54,053 --> 00:09:58,099 But I missed my brothers and sisters, and my mother. 132 00:09:58,683 --> 00:09:59,976 They made a difference. 133 00:10:01,018 --> 00:10:04,230 I wanted to be able to see them, and to see their children. 134 00:10:05,439 --> 00:10:07,191 I hoped that they wouldn't forget me. 135 00:10:07,817 --> 00:10:11,112 I missed Harlem Sunday mornings and fried chicken, 136 00:10:11,279 --> 00:10:13,698 and biscuits, I missed the music, 137 00:10:13,990 --> 00:10:15,366 I missed the style... 138 00:10:15,574 --> 00:10:18,577 that style possessed by no other people in the world. 139 00:10:20,162 --> 00:10:22,999 I missed the way the dark face closes, 140 00:10:23,165 --> 00:10:25,876 the way dark eyes watch, and the way, 141 00:10:26,043 --> 00:10:29,714 when a dark face opens, a light seems to go everywhere. 142 00:10:30,506 --> 00:10:33,509 I missed, in short, my connections, 143 00:10:33,676 --> 00:10:38,139 missed the life which had produced me and nourished me 144 00:10:38,306 --> 00:10:39,557 and paid for me. 145 00:10:40,433 --> 00:10:45,229 Now, though I was a stranger, I was home. 146 00:10:55,573 --> 00:10:59,285 I am fascinated by the movement on and off the screen. 147 00:11:01,954 --> 00:11:03,372 I am about seven. 148 00:11:04,040 --> 00:11:06,917 I'm with my mother, or my aunt. 149 00:11:07,877 --> 00:11:11,172 The movie is Dance, Fools, Dance. 150 00:11:19,680 --> 00:11:22,725 I was aware that Joan Crawford was a white lady. 151 00:11:24,185 --> 00:11:28,272 Yet, I remember being sent to the store sometime later, 152 00:11:28,773 --> 00:11:30,858 and a colored woman who, to me, 153 00:11:31,067 --> 00:11:32,902 looked exactly like Joan Crawford, 154 00:11:33,235 --> 00:11:34,487 was buying something. 155 00:11:35,446 --> 00:11:37,156 She was incredibly beautiful. 156 00:11:37,907 --> 00:11:41,160 She looked down at me with so beautiful a smile 157 00:11:41,911 --> 00:11:43,871 that I was not even embarrassed, 158 00:11:44,789 --> 00:11:46,248 which was rare for me. 159 00:11:55,466 --> 00:11:56,926 By this time, 160 00:11:57,301 --> 00:12:00,805 I had been taken in hand by a young white schoolteacher 161 00:12:00,971 --> 00:12:03,849 named Bill Miller, a beautiful woman, 162 00:12:04,475 --> 00:12:05,893 very important to me. 163 00:12:07,603 --> 00:12:11,148 She gave me books to read and talked to me about the books, 164 00:12:11,315 --> 00:12:12,733 and about the world: 165 00:12:13,526 --> 00:12:17,196 about Ethiopia, and Italy, 166 00:12:18,114 --> 00:12:19,907 and the German Third Reich, 167 00:12:20,908 --> 00:12:23,202 and took me to see plays and films, 168 00:12:23,577 --> 00:12:25,329 to which no one else would have dreamed 169 00:12:25,496 --> 00:12:27,331 of taking a ten-year-old boy. 170 00:12:36,757 --> 00:12:38,801 It is certainly because of Bill Miller, 171 00:12:39,093 --> 00:12:42,012 who arrived in my terrifying life so soon, 172 00:12:42,805 --> 00:12:45,891 that I never really managed to hate white people. 173 00:12:46,809 --> 00:12:48,310 Though, God knows, 174 00:12:48,477 --> 00:12:51,480 I've often wished to murder more than one or two. 175 00:12:56,694 --> 00:12:58,779 Therefore, I begin to suspect 176 00:12:59,321 --> 00:13:01,740 that white people did not act as they did 177 00:13:01,907 --> 00:13:06,036 because they were white, but for some other reason. 178 00:13:10,082 --> 00:13:14,378 I was a child of course, and therefore unsophisticated. 179 00:13:14,795 --> 00:13:18,883 I took Bill Miller as she was, or as she appeared to be to me. 180 00:13:19,592 --> 00:13:22,553 She too, anyway, was treated like a nigger, 181 00:13:22,720 --> 00:13:24,305 especially by the cops, 182 00:13:24,472 --> 00:13:26,974 and she had no love for landlords. 183 00:13:28,559 --> 00:13:30,644 ♪ Richard! Can't get him up! ♪ 184 00:13:30,811 --> 00:13:33,355 ♪ Richard! Can't get him up! ♪ 185 00:13:34,064 --> 00:13:36,901 ♪ Richard! Can't get him up! ♪ 186 00:13:37,276 --> 00:13:39,987 ♪ Lazy Richard! Can't get him up! ♪ 187 00:13:40,488 --> 00:13:41,655 ♪ Richard! ♪ 188 00:13:41,822 --> 00:13:45,242 In these days, no one resembling my father 189 00:13:45,409 --> 00:13:48,120 has yet made an appearance on the American cinema scene. 190 00:13:48,287 --> 00:13:49,788 ♪ Can't get him up! ♪ 191 00:13:49,955 --> 00:13:52,583 ♪ We'll try to get him on the phone ♪ 192 00:13:52,750 --> 00:13:55,544 ♪ I was laying down dreamin'... ♪ 193 00:13:55,711 --> 00:13:57,755 No, it's not entirely true. 194 00:13:58,422 --> 00:14:02,259 There were, for example, Stepin Fetchit and Willie Best 195 00:14:02,426 --> 00:14:06,597 and Mantan Moreland, all of whom, rightly or wrongly, 196 00:14:06,764 --> 00:14:08,057 I loathed. 197 00:14:08,641 --> 00:14:11,602 It seemed to me that they lied about the world I knew, 198 00:14:11,769 --> 00:14:12,811 and debased it, 199 00:14:12,978 --> 00:14:15,606 and certainly I did not know anybody like them, 200 00:14:15,773 --> 00:14:17,149 as far as I could tell. 201 00:14:18,275 --> 00:14:21,612 For it also possible that their comic, bug-eyed terror 202 00:14:21,779 --> 00:14:24,114 contained the truth concerning a terror 203 00:14:24,281 --> 00:14:26,534 by which I hoped never to be engulfed. 204 00:14:28,035 --> 00:14:32,540 Yet, I had no reservations at all concerning the terror 205 00:14:32,706 --> 00:14:34,667 of the Black janitor in They Won't Forget. 206 00:14:34,833 --> 00:14:36,418 Give me police! 207 00:14:37,044 --> 00:14:38,420 Give me police! 208 00:14:38,587 --> 00:14:41,715 Give me... Give me police! 209 00:14:41,966 --> 00:14:43,634 I think that it was a black actor 210 00:14:43,801 --> 00:14:46,637 named Clinton Rosemond who played this part, 211 00:14:47,555 --> 00:14:49,723 and he looked a little like my father. 212 00:14:49,890 --> 00:14:51,642 I didn't do it. I didn't do it! 213 00:14:51,809 --> 00:14:53,769 I didn't do it! I didn't do it! 214 00:14:53,936 --> 00:14:55,854 He is terrified because a young white girl 215 00:14:56,021 --> 00:14:59,149 in this small Southern town has been raped and murdered, 216 00:14:59,316 --> 00:15:01,735 and her body has been found upon the premises 217 00:15:01,902 --> 00:15:03,195 of which he is the janitor. 218 00:15:03,320 --> 00:15:05,030 Good morning, Tump. 219 00:15:06,323 --> 00:15:08,158 The role of the janitor is small, 220 00:15:09,285 --> 00:15:12,705 yet the man's face bangs in my memory until today. 221 00:15:12,913 --> 00:15:15,207 - I have done nothing. - Nobody says you have, Tom. 222 00:15:15,416 --> 00:15:16,417 But they might. 223 00:15:16,584 --> 00:15:19,962 The film's icy brutality both scared me... 224 00:15:20,129 --> 00:15:21,046 What for? 225 00:15:21,213 --> 00:15:22,631 ...and strengthened me. 226 00:15:43,694 --> 00:15:46,405 Because Uncle Tom refuses to take vengeance 227 00:15:46,614 --> 00:15:50,075 in his own hands, he was not a hero for me. 228 00:15:52,995 --> 00:15:55,664 Heroes, as far as I could see, where white, 229 00:15:55,831 --> 00:15:58,125 and not merely because of the movies, 230 00:15:58,334 --> 00:16:00,544 but because of the land in which I lived, 231 00:16:00,711 --> 00:16:03,422 of which movies were simply a reflection. 232 00:16:04,340 --> 00:16:07,551 I despised and feared those heroes 233 00:16:07,718 --> 00:16:10,554 because they did take vengeance into their own hands. 234 00:16:11,096 --> 00:16:13,223 They thought vengeance was theirs to take. 235 00:16:14,099 --> 00:16:16,644 And, yes, I understood that: 236 00:16:17,770 --> 00:16:20,522 my countrymen were my enemy. 237 00:16:32,201 --> 00:16:35,996 I suspect that all these stories are designed to reassure us 238 00:16:36,163 --> 00:16:37,748 that no crime was committed. 239 00:16:38,749 --> 00:16:41,293 We've made a legend out of a massacre. 240 00:16:45,422 --> 00:16:48,258 Leaving aside all the physical facts 241 00:16:48,425 --> 00:16:49,593 which one can quote. 242 00:16:49,760 --> 00:16:52,763 Leaving aside rape or murder. 243 00:16:52,930 --> 00:16:56,517 Leaving aside the bloody catalog of oppression, 244 00:16:56,934 --> 00:16:59,937 which we are, in one way, too familiar with already, 245 00:17:00,521 --> 00:17:02,439 what this does to the subjugated 246 00:17:02,815 --> 00:17:05,025 is to destroy his sense of reality. 247 00:17:05,776 --> 00:17:08,696 This means, in the case of an American negro, 248 00:17:09,029 --> 00:17:10,406 born in that glittering republic, 249 00:17:11,365 --> 00:17:12,950 and in the moment you are born, 250 00:17:13,492 --> 00:17:16,870 since you don't know any better, every stick and stone 251 00:17:17,037 --> 00:17:18,831 and every face is white, 252 00:17:19,623 --> 00:17:21,875 and since you have not yet seen a mirror, 253 00:17:22,042 --> 00:17:23,502 you suppose that you are too. 254 00:17:24,920 --> 00:17:28,257 It comes as a great shock around the age of five, 255 00:17:28,382 --> 00:17:29,842 or six, or seven, 256 00:17:29,967 --> 00:17:32,344 to discover that Gary Cooper killing off the Indians, 257 00:17:32,511 --> 00:17:34,638 when you were rooting for Gary Cooper, 258 00:17:35,889 --> 00:17:38,225 that the Indians were you. 259 00:17:38,434 --> 00:17:41,812 It comes as a great shock to discover the country, 260 00:17:41,979 --> 00:17:43,480 which is your birthplace, 261 00:17:43,856 --> 00:17:46,734 and to which you owe your life and your identity, 262 00:17:47,276 --> 00:17:50,028 has not, in its whole system of reality, 263 00:17:50,404 --> 00:17:52,573 evolved any place for you. 264 00:18:06,670 --> 00:18:08,839 I know how to do it, technically. 265 00:18:09,006 --> 00:18:11,467 It is a matter of research and journeys. 266 00:18:11,842 --> 00:18:15,512 And with you or without you, I will do it anyway. 267 00:18:17,181 --> 00:18:20,017 I begin in September, when I go on the road. 268 00:18:20,726 --> 00:18:23,645 "The road" means my return to the South. 269 00:18:24,354 --> 00:18:27,566 It means briefly, for example, seeing Myrlie Evers, 270 00:18:27,733 --> 00:18:28,859 and the children. 271 00:18:29,067 --> 00:18:31,528 Those children who are children no longer. 272 00:18:33,071 --> 00:18:36,784 It means going back to Atlanta, to Selma, to Birmingham. 273 00:18:39,161 --> 00:18:41,163 It means seeing Coretta Scott King, 274 00:18:41,330 --> 00:18:42,623 and Martin's children. 275 00:18:43,415 --> 00:18:44,833 I know that Martin's daughter, 276 00:18:45,000 --> 00:18:48,962 whose name I don't remember, and Malcolm's oldest daughter, 277 00:18:49,129 --> 00:18:52,007 whose name is Attalah are both in the theatre, 278 00:18:52,257 --> 00:18:53,967 and apparently are friends. 279 00:18:55,093 --> 00:18:58,472 It means seeing Betty Shabazz, Malcolm's widow, 280 00:18:58,639 --> 00:19:00,224 and the five younger children. 281 00:19:00,933 --> 00:19:03,644 It means exposing myself as one of the witnesses 282 00:19:03,811 --> 00:19:06,563 to the lives and deaths of their famous fathers. 283 00:19:07,022 --> 00:19:10,317 And it means much, much more than that. 284 00:19:10,692 --> 00:19:14,404 "A clod of witnesses," as old St. Paul once put it. 285 00:19:26,208 --> 00:19:28,919 I saw Malcolm before I met him. 286 00:19:30,295 --> 00:19:32,756 I was giving a lecture somewhere in New York. 287 00:19:33,215 --> 00:19:35,843 Malcolm was sitting in the first row of the hall, 288 00:19:36,009 --> 00:19:39,847 bending forward at such an angle that his long arms 289 00:19:40,013 --> 00:19:42,766 nearly caressed the ankles of his long legs, 290 00:19:43,016 --> 00:19:44,434 staring up at me. 291 00:19:45,686 --> 00:19:47,271 I very nearly panicked. 292 00:19:47,896 --> 00:19:51,483 I knew Malcolm only by legend, and this legend, 293 00:19:51,650 --> 00:19:53,527 since I was a Harlem street boy, 294 00:19:53,735 --> 00:19:56,572 I was sufficiently astute to distrust. 295 00:19:58,198 --> 00:20:01,577 Malcolm might be the torch that white people claim he was, 296 00:20:02,160 --> 00:20:03,537 though, in general, 297 00:20:04,079 --> 00:20:06,498 white America's evaluations of these matters 298 00:20:06,665 --> 00:20:09,334 would be laughable and even pathetic 299 00:20:10,002 --> 00:20:13,463 did not these evaluations have such wicked results. 300 00:20:14,631 --> 00:20:15,757 On the other hand, 301 00:20:15,924 --> 00:20:18,427 Malcolm had no reason to trust me either. 302 00:20:19,261 --> 00:20:21,722 And so I stumbled through my lecture, 303 00:20:22,639 --> 00:20:25,976 with Malcolm never taking his eyes from my face. 304 00:20:26,143 --> 00:20:30,272 ♪ Don't know why ♪ 305 00:20:30,772 --> 00:20:33,942 ♪ There's no sun up in the sky ♪ 306 00:20:34,109 --> 00:20:36,737 ♪ Stormy weather ♪ 307 00:20:37,279 --> 00:20:43,035 ♪ Since my man and I ain't together ♪ 308 00:20:44,620 --> 00:20:50,292 ♪ Keeps rainin' all the time ♪ 309 00:20:54,838 --> 00:20:57,424 As a member of the NAACP, 310 00:20:57,591 --> 00:21:00,719 Medgar was investigating the murder of a black man, 311 00:21:00,886 --> 00:21:02,804 which had occurred months before, 312 00:21:03,430 --> 00:21:05,390 had shown me letters from black people 313 00:21:05,557 --> 00:21:06,808 asking him to do this, 314 00:21:07,142 --> 00:21:09,144 and he had asked me to come with him. 315 00:21:09,603 --> 00:21:10,604 ♪ Raise up! ♪ 316 00:21:10,771 --> 00:21:14,232 ♪ Get yourself together, And drive that funky soul ♪ 317 00:21:14,399 --> 00:21:15,692 I was terribly frightened, 318 00:21:16,401 --> 00:21:19,488 but perhaps that fieldtrip will help us define 319 00:21:19,655 --> 00:21:22,032 what I mean by the word "witness". 320 00:21:24,451 --> 00:21:27,454 I was to discover that the line which separates a witness 321 00:21:27,621 --> 00:21:30,832 from an actor is a very thin line indeed. 322 00:21:31,541 --> 00:21:34,419 Nevertheless, the line is real. 323 00:21:36,088 --> 00:21:38,507 I was not, for example, a Black Muslim, 324 00:21:38,882 --> 00:21:41,259 in the same way, though for different reasons, 325 00:21:41,426 --> 00:21:43,428 that I never became a Black Panther. 326 00:21:44,137 --> 00:21:47,391 Because I did not believe that all white people were devils, 327 00:21:47,975 --> 00:21:51,269 and I did not want young black people to believe that. 328 00:21:52,437 --> 00:21:55,607 I was not a member of any Christian congregation because 329 00:21:55,774 --> 00:21:58,068 I knew that they had not heard 330 00:21:58,235 --> 00:22:00,112 and did not live by the commandment, 331 00:22:00,487 --> 00:22:03,031 "Love one another as I love you." 332 00:22:03,991 --> 00:22:07,327 And I was not a member of the NAACP 333 00:22:07,953 --> 00:22:09,997 because in the North, where I grew up, 334 00:22:10,580 --> 00:22:16,003 the NAACP was fatally entangled with black class distinctions, 335 00:22:16,795 --> 00:22:18,463 or illusions of the same, 336 00:22:19,214 --> 00:22:22,217 which repelled a shoe-shine boy like me. 337 00:22:25,303 --> 00:22:28,306 I did not have to deal with the criminal state of Mississippi, 338 00:22:28,473 --> 00:22:31,309 hour by hour and day by day, 339 00:22:32,019 --> 00:22:33,937 to say nothing of night after night. 340 00:22:34,771 --> 00:22:38,316 I did not have to sweat cold sweat after decisions 341 00:22:38,483 --> 00:22:40,736 involving hundreds of thousands of lives. 342 00:22:41,987 --> 00:22:44,322 I was not responsible for raising money, 343 00:22:44,948 --> 00:22:46,700 or deciding how to use it. 344 00:22:47,367 --> 00:22:49,703 I was not responsible for strategy 345 00:22:49,870 --> 00:22:51,955 controlling prayer-meetings, marches, 346 00:22:52,122 --> 00:22:54,791 petitions, voting registration drives. 347 00:22:55,500 --> 00:22:58,170 I saw the Sheriffs, the Deputies, 348 00:22:58,420 --> 00:23:01,048 the Storm Troopers, more or less in passing. 349 00:23:02,132 --> 00:23:03,925 I was never in town to stay. 350 00:23:05,177 --> 00:23:07,888 This was sometimes hard on my morale, 351 00:23:08,680 --> 00:23:11,266 but I had to accept, as time wore on, 352 00:23:12,225 --> 00:23:14,978 that part of my responsibility, as a witness, 353 00:23:15,270 --> 00:23:18,690 was to move as largely and as freely as possible. 354 00:23:19,483 --> 00:23:22,569 To write the story, and to get it out. 355 00:24:06,571 --> 00:24:08,824 We should all be concerned with but one goal, 356 00:24:08,990 --> 00:24:10,242 the eradication of crime. 357 00:24:10,992 --> 00:24:13,787 The Federal Bureau of Investigation is as close to you 358 00:24:13,954 --> 00:24:15,539 as your nearest telephone. 359 00:24:15,705 --> 00:24:17,165 It seeks to be your protector 360 00:24:17,332 --> 00:24:18,959 in all matters within its jurisdiction. 361 00:24:19,126 --> 00:24:20,252 It belongs to you. 362 00:25:18,018 --> 00:25:20,979 White people are astounded by Birmingham. 363 00:25:21,813 --> 00:25:23,190 Black people aren't. 364 00:25:25,650 --> 00:25:29,029 White people are endlessly demanding to be reassured 365 00:25:29,196 --> 00:25:31,531 that Birmingham is really on Mars. 366 00:25:35,410 --> 00:25:39,831 They don't want to believe, still less to act on the belief, 367 00:25:40,832 --> 00:25:42,709 that what is happening in Birmingham 368 00:25:43,418 --> 00:25:45,754 is happening all over the country. 369 00:25:50,258 --> 00:25:52,844 They don't want to realize that there is not one step, 370 00:25:53,011 --> 00:25:55,305 morally or actually, 371 00:25:55,764 --> 00:25:58,016 between Birmingham and Los Angeles. 372 00:26:18,119 --> 00:26:19,663 Move on, move on! 373 00:26:43,270 --> 00:26:44,896 We've invited three men, 374 00:26:45,105 --> 00:26:47,315 on the forefront of The Negro Struggle, 375 00:26:48,149 --> 00:26:49,776 to sit down and talk with us 376 00:26:49,943 --> 00:26:51,820 in front of the television camera. 377 00:26:51,987 --> 00:26:55,532 Each of these men, through his actions and his words, 378 00:26:56,157 --> 00:26:58,451 but with vastly different manner and means, 379 00:26:58,952 --> 00:27:02,289 is a spokesman for some segment of the Negro people today. 380 00:27:03,081 --> 00:27:04,958 Black people in this country have been the victims 381 00:27:05,125 --> 00:27:08,169 of violence at the hands of the white man for 400 years. 382 00:27:08,336 --> 00:27:11,423 And following the ignorant negro preachers, 383 00:27:11,589 --> 00:27:14,384 we have thought that it was Godlike to turn the other cheek 384 00:27:14,551 --> 00:27:16,052 to the brute that was brutalizing us. 385 00:27:16,219 --> 00:27:19,472 Malcolm X, one of the most articulate exponents 386 00:27:19,681 --> 00:27:21,975 of the Black Muslim philosophy, 387 00:27:22,475 --> 00:27:25,603 has said of your movement and your philosophy 388 00:27:25,770 --> 00:27:29,607 that it plays into the hands of the white oppressors, 389 00:27:29,774 --> 00:27:34,446 that they are happy to hear you talk about 390 00:27:34,738 --> 00:27:39,117 love for the oppressor, because this disarms the Negro 391 00:27:39,284 --> 00:27:43,288 and fits into the stereotype of the Negro as a meek, 392 00:27:43,955 --> 00:27:46,249 turning the other cheek sort of creature. 393 00:27:46,416 --> 00:27:50,378 Would you care to comment on Mr. X's beliefs? 394 00:27:50,587 --> 00:27:54,883 Well, I don't think of love as... 395 00:27:55,050 --> 00:27:57,844 in this context, as emotional bosh, 396 00:27:58,678 --> 00:28:01,848 but I think of love as something strong 397 00:28:02,057 --> 00:28:07,020 and that organizes itself into powerful direct action. 398 00:28:07,479 --> 00:28:10,899 This is what I've tried to teach in the struggle in the South. 399 00:28:11,066 --> 00:28:14,694 We are not engaged in a struggle 400 00:28:14,861 --> 00:28:17,113 that means we sit down and do nothing. 401 00:28:18,239 --> 00:28:20,575 There is a great deal of difference between 402 00:28:20,742 --> 00:28:24,746 non-resistance to evil and non-violent resistance. 403 00:28:24,913 --> 00:28:28,124 Martin Luther King is just a 20th century or modern Uncle Tom 404 00:28:28,291 --> 00:28:29,626 or a religious Uncle Tom, 405 00:28:29,793 --> 00:28:31,378 who is doing the same thing today 406 00:28:31,544 --> 00:28:34,047 to keep Negroes defenseless in the face of attack 407 00:28:34,214 --> 00:28:35,632 that Uncle Tom did on the plantation 408 00:28:35,799 --> 00:28:37,342 to keep those Negroes defenseless 409 00:28:37,509 --> 00:28:40,011 in the face of the attacks of the Klan in that day. 410 00:28:40,512 --> 00:28:45,934 I think, though, that we can be sure 411 00:28:46,101 --> 00:28:47,769 that the vast majority of Negroes 412 00:28:47,936 --> 00:28:50,021 who engage in the demonstrations, 413 00:28:50,188 --> 00:28:54,567 and who understand the non-violent philosophy, 414 00:28:55,026 --> 00:28:57,028 will be able to face dogs 415 00:28:57,195 --> 00:29:00,073 and all of the other brutal methods that are used 416 00:29:00,240 --> 00:29:01,908 without retaliating with violence, 417 00:29:02,075 --> 00:29:03,493 because they understand 418 00:29:03,660 --> 00:29:07,539 that one of the first principles of non-violence 419 00:29:07,872 --> 00:29:11,084 is a willingness to be the recipient of violence, 420 00:29:11,251 --> 00:29:14,796 while never inflicting violence upon another. 421 00:29:18,383 --> 00:29:20,885 As concerns Malcolm and Martin, 422 00:29:21,261 --> 00:29:23,930 I watched two men, coming from unimaginably 423 00:29:24,097 --> 00:29:27,559 different backgrounds, whose positions, originally, 424 00:29:27,725 --> 00:29:29,018 were poles apart, 425 00:29:29,185 --> 00:29:31,855 driven closer and closer together. 426 00:29:34,190 --> 00:29:37,485 By the time each died, their positions had become, 427 00:29:37,652 --> 00:29:39,946 virtually, the same position. 428 00:29:41,448 --> 00:29:42,991 It can be said, indeed, 429 00:29:43,158 --> 00:29:45,368 that Martin picked up Malcolm's burden, 430 00:29:45,743 --> 00:29:49,247 articulated the vision which Malcolm had begun to see, 431 00:29:49,414 --> 00:29:51,374 and for which he paid with his life, 432 00:29:51,833 --> 00:29:53,918 and that Malcolm was one of the people 433 00:29:54,127 --> 00:29:55,753 Martin saw on the mountain-top. 434 00:29:57,464 --> 00:29:59,799 Medgar was too young to have seen this happen, 435 00:29:59,966 --> 00:30:03,136 though he hoped for it, and would not have been surprised. 436 00:30:04,179 --> 00:30:05,930 But Medgar was murdered first. 437 00:30:08,266 --> 00:30:11,561 I was older than Medgar, Malcolm and Martin. 438 00:30:12,020 --> 00:30:15,690 I was raised to believe that the eldest was supposed to be 439 00:30:15,857 --> 00:30:18,985 a model for the younger, and was, of course, 440 00:30:19,152 --> 00:30:20,737 expected to die first. 441 00:30:22,030 --> 00:30:24,365 Not one of these three lived to be forty. 442 00:30:26,367 --> 00:30:29,579 Two, four, six eight, we don't want to integrate! 443 00:30:29,746 --> 00:30:32,707 Two, four, six eight, we don't want to integrate! 444 00:30:41,966 --> 00:30:45,762 We want King! We want King! We want King! 445 00:30:59,150 --> 00:31:01,444 We need an organization that no one downtown loves. 446 00:31:01,986 --> 00:31:04,822 We need one that's ready and willing to take action, 447 00:31:05,740 --> 00:31:08,993 any kind of action, by any means necessary. 448 00:31:12,997 --> 00:31:14,165 When Malcolm talks, 449 00:31:14,332 --> 00:31:16,042 or one of the Muslim ministers talk, 450 00:31:16,209 --> 00:31:20,129 they articulate for all the Negro people who hear them, 451 00:31:20,713 --> 00:31:25,093 who listen to them, they articulate their suffering. 452 00:31:26,219 --> 00:31:28,763 The suffering which has been in this country so long denied. 453 00:31:29,556 --> 00:31:32,600 That's Malcolm's great authority over any of his audiences. 454 00:31:32,934 --> 00:31:34,602 He corroborates their reality. 455 00:31:35,228 --> 00:31:38,189 He tells them that they really exist, you know. 456 00:31:42,944 --> 00:31:44,779 Get back. Get back! 457 00:31:46,030 --> 00:31:47,907 I am! 458 00:31:48,157 --> 00:31:49,909 I am! 459 00:32:03,881 --> 00:32:06,259 There are days, this is one of them... 460 00:32:09,053 --> 00:32:10,430 ...when you wonder... 461 00:32:12,807 --> 00:32:14,225 ...what your role is in this country 462 00:32:14,392 --> 00:32:15,935 and what your future is in it. 463 00:32:17,061 --> 00:32:18,980 How precisely are you going to reconcile... 464 00:32:21,733 --> 00:32:24,652 ...yourself to your situation here, 465 00:32:25,153 --> 00:32:28,615 and how you are going to communicate... 466 00:32:30,575 --> 00:32:34,495 ...to the vast, heedless, unthinking... 467 00:32:36,331 --> 00:32:38,666 ...cruel white majority 468 00:32:39,334 --> 00:32:40,543 that you are here. 469 00:32:41,961 --> 00:32:44,922 I'm terrified at the moral apathy, 470 00:32:45,089 --> 00:32:46,633 the death of the heart, 471 00:32:47,467 --> 00:32:49,218 which is happening in my country. 472 00:32:49,886 --> 00:32:54,432 These people have deluded themselves for so long 473 00:32:54,891 --> 00:32:56,809 that they really don't think I'm human. 474 00:32:57,810 --> 00:33:00,605 I base this on their conduct, not on what they say. 475 00:33:01,230 --> 00:33:03,941 And this means that they have become, in themselves... 476 00:33:05,652 --> 00:33:07,403 ...moral monsters. 477 00:33:43,064 --> 00:33:45,566 Most of the white Americans I've ever encountered, 478 00:33:45,733 --> 00:33:48,277 really, you know, had a Negro friend or a Negro maid 479 00:33:48,444 --> 00:33:51,364 or somebody in high school, but they never, you know, 480 00:33:51,531 --> 00:33:54,075 or rarely, after school was over or whatever, 481 00:33:54,242 --> 00:33:55,827 came to my kitchen, you know. 482 00:33:55,993 --> 00:33:59,622 We were segregated from the schoolhouse door. 483 00:33:59,789 --> 00:34:02,291 Therefore, he doesn't know, he really does not know, 484 00:34:02,458 --> 00:34:04,085 what it was like for me to leave my house, 485 00:34:04,252 --> 00:34:05,795 to leave the school and go back to Harlem. 486 00:34:05,962 --> 00:34:07,422 He doesn't know how Negroes live. 487 00:34:07,588 --> 00:34:10,216 And it comes as a great surprise to the Kennedy brothers 488 00:34:10,383 --> 00:34:11,843 and to everybody else in the country. 489 00:34:12,552 --> 00:34:14,679 I'm certain, again, you know, 490 00:34:14,846 --> 00:34:17,932 that again like most white Americans I have encountered, 491 00:34:18,099 --> 00:34:19,350 they have no... 492 00:34:19,976 --> 00:34:21,728 I'm sure they have nothing whatever against Negroes... 493 00:34:21,894 --> 00:34:23,521 That's really not the question. 494 00:34:23,730 --> 00:34:26,190 The question is really a kind of apathy and ignorance, 495 00:34:26,524 --> 00:34:28,276 which is the price we pay for segregation. 496 00:34:28,443 --> 00:34:29,610 That's what segregation means. 497 00:34:29,736 --> 00:34:31,571 You don't know what's happening on the other side of the wall, 498 00:34:31,738 --> 00:34:32,864 because you don't want to know. 499 00:34:33,030 --> 00:34:34,699 I was in some way, 500 00:34:34,866 --> 00:34:37,952 in those years, without entirely realizing it, 501 00:34:38,327 --> 00:34:41,414 the great Black Hope of the great White Father. 502 00:34:42,373 --> 00:34:46,377 I was not a racist, or so I thought. 503 00:34:47,170 --> 00:34:51,674 Malcolm was a racist, or so they thought. 504 00:34:52,675 --> 00:34:57,096 In fact, we were simply trapped in the same situation. 505 00:34:58,639 --> 00:35:00,433 Well, you tell that to my boy tonight, 506 00:35:00,600 --> 00:35:03,352 when you put him to sleep on the living room couch. 507 00:35:03,770 --> 00:35:05,188 And you tell it to him in the morning, 508 00:35:05,354 --> 00:35:06,481 when his mother goes out of here 509 00:35:06,647 --> 00:35:07,982 to take care of somebody else's kids. 510 00:35:08,149 --> 00:35:10,735 And tell it to me, when we want some curtains or some drapes 511 00:35:10,902 --> 00:35:13,321 and you sneak out of here and go work in somebody's kitchen. 512 00:35:13,488 --> 00:35:15,323 All I want is to make a future for this family. 513 00:35:15,490 --> 00:35:18,242 All I want is to be able to stand in front of my boy 514 00:35:18,451 --> 00:35:20,870 like my father never was able to do to me. 515 00:35:28,461 --> 00:35:31,380 Lorraine Hansberry would not be very much younger 516 00:35:31,547 --> 00:35:33,716 than I am now, if she were alive. 517 00:35:34,967 --> 00:35:37,386 At the time of the Bobby Kennedy meeting, 518 00:35:37,553 --> 00:35:39,430 she was thirty-three. 519 00:35:41,349 --> 00:35:45,603 That was one of the very last times I saw her on her feet, 520 00:35:46,354 --> 00:35:48,940 and she died at the age of thirty-four. 521 00:35:51,400 --> 00:35:52,985 I miss her so much. 522 00:35:55,655 --> 00:35:58,407 People forget how young everybody was. 523 00:35:59,367 --> 00:36:02,620 Bobby Kennedy, for another, quite different example, 524 00:36:03,120 --> 00:36:04,413 was thirty-eight. 525 00:36:05,832 --> 00:36:07,959 We wanted him to tell his brother, 526 00:36:08,125 --> 00:36:10,586 the president, to personally escort to school, 527 00:36:10,753 --> 00:36:14,298 on that day or the day after, a small black girl, 528 00:36:14,674 --> 00:36:17,426 already scheduled to enter Deep South School. 529 00:36:17,927 --> 00:36:19,637 "That way," we said, 530 00:36:20,263 --> 00:36:24,058 "it will be clear that whoever spits on that child 531 00:36:24,517 --> 00:36:25,768 will be spitting on the nation." 532 00:36:27,645 --> 00:36:29,313 He didn't understand this either. 533 00:36:29,981 --> 00:36:34,402 "It would be," he said, "a meaningless moral gesture." 534 00:36:36,237 --> 00:36:40,908 "We would like," said Lorraine, "from you, a moral commitment". 535 00:36:42,118 --> 00:36:43,452 He looked insulted, 536 00:36:44,036 --> 00:36:47,164 seemed to feel that he'd been wasting his time. 537 00:36:49,250 --> 00:36:52,920 Well, Lorraine sat still, watching all the while. 538 00:36:56,799 --> 00:36:58,259 She looked at Bobby Kennedy, 539 00:36:58,467 --> 00:37:01,345 who, perhaps for the first time, looked at her. 540 00:37:03,472 --> 00:37:05,308 "But I am very worried," she said, 541 00:37:05,892 --> 00:37:08,477 "about the state of the civilization 542 00:37:08,644 --> 00:37:11,397 which produced that photograph of the white cop 543 00:37:11,564 --> 00:37:14,901 standing on that Negro woman's neck in Birmingham." 544 00:37:18,070 --> 00:37:19,322 Then she smiled. 545 00:37:20,323 --> 00:37:24,160 And I am glad that she was not smiling at me. 546 00:37:26,370 --> 00:37:28,789 "Goodbye Mr. Attorney General," she said, 547 00:37:29,624 --> 00:37:32,335 and turned and walked out of the room. 548 00:37:35,671 --> 00:37:38,633 And then, we heard the thunder. 549 00:37:53,522 --> 00:37:56,525 ...He stopped at his house on the way to the airport 550 00:37:56,692 --> 00:38:00,821 so I could autograph my books for him, his wife and children. 551 00:38:02,073 --> 00:38:05,201 I remember Myrlie Evers standing outside, smiling, 552 00:38:05,409 --> 00:38:06,577 and we waved, 553 00:38:07,161 --> 00:38:10,289 and Medgar drove to the airport and put me on the plane. 554 00:38:13,334 --> 00:38:15,962 Months later, I was in Puerto Rico, 555 00:38:16,337 --> 00:38:17,588 working on my play. 556 00:38:18,923 --> 00:38:21,634 Lucien and I had spent a day or so 557 00:38:21,801 --> 00:38:23,469 wandering around the island, 558 00:38:24,220 --> 00:38:26,222 and now we were driving home. 559 00:38:32,812 --> 00:38:35,314 It was a wonderful, bright, sunny day, 560 00:38:35,815 --> 00:38:39,443 the top to the car was down, we were laughing and talking, 561 00:38:39,610 --> 00:38:41,153 and the radio was playing. 562 00:38:44,490 --> 00:38:45,908 Then the music stopped... 563 00:38:47,743 --> 00:38:49,996 ...and a voice announced that Medgar Evers 564 00:38:50,496 --> 00:38:53,457 had been shot to death in the carport of his home, 565 00:38:53,874 --> 00:38:57,628 and his wife and children had seen the big man fall. 566 00:38:57,795 --> 00:39:01,590 ♪ Medgar Evers was buried from the bullet he caught ♪ 567 00:39:03,509 --> 00:39:07,304 ♪ They lowered him down as a king ♪ 568 00:39:10,224 --> 00:39:13,310 ♪ But when the shadowy sun ♪ 569 00:39:13,477 --> 00:39:15,354 ♪ Sets on the one ♪ 570 00:39:15,521 --> 00:39:17,732 ♪ That fired the gun ♪ 571 00:39:18,232 --> 00:39:21,193 ♪ He'll see by his grave ♪ 572 00:39:21,986 --> 00:39:24,572 ♪ On the stone that remains ♪ 573 00:39:24,947 --> 00:39:27,408 ♪ Carved next to his name ♪ 574 00:39:28,075 --> 00:39:30,453 575 00:39:31,120 --> 00:39:36,542 ♪ Only a pawn in their game ♪ 576 00:39:38,836 --> 00:39:41,630 The blue sky seemed to descend like a blanket. 577 00:39:42,048 --> 00:39:45,217 And I couldn't say anything, I couldn't cry. 578 00:39:46,510 --> 00:39:48,429 I just remembered his face, 579 00:39:48,888 --> 00:39:52,058 a bright, blunt, handsome face, 580 00:39:52,641 --> 00:39:56,479 and his weariness, which he wore like his skin, 581 00:39:56,937 --> 00:40:00,691 and the way he said "ro-aad" for road. 582 00:40:03,778 --> 00:40:06,113 And his telling me how the tatters of clothes 583 00:40:06,322 --> 00:40:10,951 from a lynched body hung, flapping in the tree for days, 584 00:40:11,994 --> 00:40:15,748 and how he had to pass that tree every day. 585 00:40:19,168 --> 00:40:20,294 Medgar. 586 00:40:21,378 --> 00:40:22,671 Gone. 587 00:40:23,339 --> 00:40:25,174 ♪ Baby, please don't go ♪ 588 00:40:26,175 --> 00:40:28,052 ♪ Baby, please don't go ♪ 589 00:40:28,928 --> 00:40:31,931 ♪ Baby, please don't go Back to New Orleans ♪ 590 00:40:32,139 --> 00:40:35,101 ♪ You know I love you so Baby, please don't go ♪ 591 00:40:47,988 --> 00:40:51,242 In America, I was free only in battle, 592 00:40:51,826 --> 00:40:53,327 never free to rest, 593 00:40:54,411 --> 00:40:56,789 and he who finds no way to rest 594 00:40:57,039 --> 00:40:59,083 cannot long survive the battle. 595 00:41:12,012 --> 00:41:14,140 And the young, white revolutionary remains, 596 00:41:14,306 --> 00:41:18,144 in general, far more romantic than a black one. 597 00:41:21,605 --> 00:41:24,525 White people have managed to get through entire lifetimes 598 00:41:24,692 --> 00:41:26,193 in this euphoric state, 599 00:41:27,069 --> 00:41:29,280 but black people have not been so lucky. 600 00:41:30,406 --> 00:41:33,117 A black man who sees the world the way John Wayne, 601 00:41:33,284 --> 00:41:34,743 for example, sees it... 602 00:41:35,369 --> 00:41:37,288 would not be an eccentric patriot, 603 00:41:37,788 --> 00:41:39,582 but a raving maniac. 604 00:41:42,501 --> 00:41:46,005 The truth is that this country does not know what to do 605 00:41:46,172 --> 00:41:47,673 with its black population, 606 00:41:48,424 --> 00:41:52,094 dreaming of anything like "The Final Solution". 607 00:41:58,809 --> 00:42:00,311 The Negro has never been 608 00:42:01,061 --> 00:42:03,814 as docile as white Americans wanted to believe. 609 00:42:05,149 --> 00:42:06,275 That was a myth. 610 00:42:06,859 --> 00:42:09,069 We were not singing and dancing down the levee. 611 00:42:10,196 --> 00:42:11,280 We were trying to keep alive, 612 00:42:11,447 --> 00:42:13,490 we were trying to survive a very brutal system. 613 00:42:14,450 --> 00:42:16,452 The nigger has never been happy in his place. 614 00:42:22,291 --> 00:42:23,834 One of the most terrible things, 615 00:42:24,001 --> 00:42:25,711 is that, whether I like it or not, 616 00:42:25,878 --> 00:42:27,296 I am an American. 617 00:42:27,463 --> 00:42:31,175 My school really was the streets of New York City. 618 00:42:31,342 --> 00:42:33,636 My frame of reference was... 619 00:42:34,053 --> 00:42:36,388 George Washington and John Wayne. 620 00:42:36,555 --> 00:42:39,225 But I was a child, you know, and when a child puts his eyes 621 00:42:39,391 --> 00:42:41,018 on the world, he has to use what he sees. 622 00:42:41,185 --> 00:42:42,436 There's nothing else to use. 623 00:42:42,603 --> 00:42:44,605 And you are formed by what you see, 624 00:42:44,772 --> 00:42:46,899 the choices you have to make, and the way you discover 625 00:42:47,066 --> 00:42:48,651 what it means to be black in New York 626 00:42:48,817 --> 00:42:50,945 and then throughout the entire country. 627 00:42:54,740 --> 00:42:56,992 I know how you watch, as you grow older, 628 00:42:57,243 --> 00:42:58,911 and it's not a figure of speech, 629 00:42:59,078 --> 00:43:00,829 the corpses of your brothers and your sisters 630 00:43:01,038 --> 00:43:02,331 pile up around you. 631 00:43:02,873 --> 00:43:05,084 And not for anything they have done. 632 00:43:06,126 --> 00:43:08,045 They were too young to have done anything. 633 00:43:09,713 --> 00:43:15,469 But what one does realize is that when you try to stand up 634 00:43:16,220 --> 00:43:19,848 and look the world in the face like you had a right to be here, 635 00:43:21,725 --> 00:43:24,520 you have attacked the entire power structure 636 00:43:24,770 --> 00:43:25,980 of the western world. 637 00:43:30,401 --> 00:43:32,152 Forget "The Negro Problem". 638 00:43:33,153 --> 00:43:34,822 Don't write any voting acts. 639 00:43:35,364 --> 00:43:37,324 We had that. It's called The Fifteenth Amendment. 640 00:43:38,075 --> 00:43:40,452 During the Civil Rights Bill of 1964, 641 00:43:41,453 --> 00:43:43,747 what you have to look at is what is happening in this country, 642 00:43:43,914 --> 00:43:45,624 and what is really happening is that brother 643 00:43:45,791 --> 00:43:48,460 has murdered brother, knowing it was his brother. 644 00:43:49,628 --> 00:43:52,840 White men have lynched Negroes, knowing them to be their sons. 645 00:43:54,174 --> 00:43:55,634 White women have had Negroes burned, 646 00:43:55,801 --> 00:43:57,428 knowing them to be their lovers. 647 00:43:58,679 --> 00:44:00,723 It is not a racial problem. 648 00:44:01,598 --> 00:44:03,309 It's a problem of whether or not you're willing 649 00:44:03,475 --> 00:44:06,312 to look at your life and be responsible for it, 650 00:44:06,478 --> 00:44:08,022 and then begin to change it. 651 00:44:09,898 --> 00:44:12,443 That great western house I come from is one house, 652 00:44:12,609 --> 00:44:14,528 and I am one of the children of that house. 653 00:44:15,279 --> 00:44:18,115 Simply, I am the most despised child of that house. 654 00:44:18,782 --> 00:44:21,160 And it is because the American people are unable 655 00:44:21,785 --> 00:44:25,205 to face the fact that I am flesh of their flesh, 656 00:44:26,123 --> 00:44:30,002 bone of their bone, created by them. 657 00:44:30,419 --> 00:44:33,505 My blood, my father's blood, is in that soil. 658 00:44:44,641 --> 00:44:45,976 Good afternoon, Ma'am. 659 00:44:46,310 --> 00:44:47,770 It's raining so hard, 660 00:44:47,936 --> 00:44:50,564 I brought rubbers and coat to fetch my little girl home. 661 00:44:50,731 --> 00:44:52,524 I'm afraid you've made some mistake. 662 00:44:52,733 --> 00:44:53,942 Ain't this the 3B? 663 00:44:54,109 --> 00:44:56,320 - Yes. - Well, this is it. 664 00:44:56,487 --> 00:44:57,863 It can't be it. 665 00:44:58,030 --> 00:45:00,449 I have no little colored children in my class. 666 00:45:01,033 --> 00:45:02,993 Oh, thank you. 667 00:45:07,081 --> 00:45:08,624 There's my little girl. 668 00:45:10,000 --> 00:45:12,169 Peola, you may you home. 669 00:45:22,888 --> 00:45:25,057 Gee, I didn't know she was colored. 670 00:45:25,224 --> 00:45:26,517 Neither did I. 671 00:45:27,101 --> 00:45:29,686 I hate you, I hate you, I hate you! 672 00:45:29,895 --> 00:45:31,605 Peola! Peola! 673 00:45:43,158 --> 00:45:46,662 I know very well that my ancestors 674 00:45:46,870 --> 00:45:49,289 had no desire to come to this place. 675 00:45:51,792 --> 00:45:55,671 But neither did the ancestors of the people who became white, 676 00:45:56,338 --> 00:45:59,508 and who require of my captivity a song. 677 00:46:02,177 --> 00:46:04,096 They require a song of me, 678 00:46:05,305 --> 00:46:09,643 less to celebrate my captivity than to justify their own. 679 00:46:26,660 --> 00:46:29,204 I have always been struck, in America, 680 00:46:29,371 --> 00:46:31,915 by an emotional poverty so bottomless, 681 00:46:32,082 --> 00:46:36,336 and a terror of human life, of human touch, 682 00:46:37,129 --> 00:46:41,049 so deep that virtually no American appears able to achieve 683 00:46:41,216 --> 00:46:43,260 any viable, organic connection 684 00:46:43,886 --> 00:46:47,431 between his public stance and his private life. 685 00:46:52,811 --> 00:46:56,899 This failure of the private life has always had the most 686 00:46:57,065 --> 00:47:00,903 devastating effect on American public conduct, 687 00:47:01,528 --> 00:47:03,489 and on black-white relations. 688 00:47:05,908 --> 00:47:08,952 If Americans were not so terrified 689 00:47:09,119 --> 00:47:10,579 of their private selves, 690 00:47:11,371 --> 00:47:13,457 they would never have become so dependent 691 00:47:13,624 --> 00:47:16,126 on what they call "The Negro Problem". 692 00:47:16,502 --> 00:47:18,962 They said it wasn't nice to say "nigger". 693 00:47:22,257 --> 00:47:23,175 Nigger! 694 00:47:23,342 --> 00:47:25,177 Nigger! Nigger! 695 00:47:25,886 --> 00:47:29,431 Poor little nigger kids, love the little nigger kids. 696 00:47:29,598 --> 00:47:30,933 Who loved me? 697 00:47:31,308 --> 00:47:32,643 Who loved me? 698 00:47:33,185 --> 00:47:36,104 This problem, which they invented 699 00:47:36,313 --> 00:47:38,607 in order to safeguard their purity, 700 00:47:39,399 --> 00:47:43,362 has made of them criminals and monsters, 701 00:47:43,946 --> 00:47:45,572 and it is destroying them. 702 00:47:48,033 --> 00:47:53,413 And this, not from anything Blacks may or may not be doing, 703 00:47:54,122 --> 00:47:55,582 but because of the role 704 00:47:55,749 --> 00:47:58,794 of a guilty and constricted white imagination 705 00:47:59,169 --> 00:48:00,879 has assigned to the Blacks. 706 00:48:12,599 --> 00:48:14,351 Look man, don't give me that look. 707 00:48:15,435 --> 00:48:17,271 You should have got what was coming to you 708 00:48:17,604 --> 00:48:19,606 after spitting in that guy's face. 709 00:48:21,900 --> 00:48:23,026 Why you... 710 00:48:24,653 --> 00:48:27,823 It is impossible to accept the premise of the story, 711 00:48:28,448 --> 00:48:32,202 a premise based on the profound American misunderstanding 712 00:48:32,369 --> 00:48:35,414 of the nature of the hatred between black and white. 713 00:48:35,956 --> 00:48:37,708 That time is now. 714 00:48:39,918 --> 00:48:42,462 The root of the black man's hatred is rage, 715 00:48:43,338 --> 00:48:45,382 and he does not so much hate white men 716 00:48:45,549 --> 00:48:48,051 as simply wants them out of his way, 717 00:48:49,011 --> 00:48:50,429 and more than that, 718 00:48:51,013 --> 00:48:52,472 out of his children's way. 719 00:48:55,267 --> 00:48:57,936 The root of the white man's hatred is terror. 720 00:48:58,103 --> 00:48:59,271 I'm gonna kill you. 721 00:48:59,438 --> 00:49:01,481 A bottomless and nameless terror, 722 00:49:02,065 --> 00:49:04,401 which focuses on this dread figure, 723 00:49:04,651 --> 00:49:07,904 an entity which lives only in his mind. 724 00:49:15,537 --> 00:49:16,663 Run! 725 00:49:16,830 --> 00:49:17,956 Come on! 726 00:49:18,123 --> 00:49:21,084 I can't make it, I can't make it! 727 00:49:27,341 --> 00:49:29,217 When Sidney jumps off the train, 728 00:49:29,468 --> 00:49:31,136 the white liberal people downtown 729 00:49:31,303 --> 00:49:33,055 were much relieved and joyful. 730 00:49:34,014 --> 00:49:36,725 But when black people saw him jump off the train, 731 00:49:37,225 --> 00:49:41,271 they yelled, "Get back on the train, you fool!" 732 00:49:44,691 --> 00:49:46,485 The black man jumps off the train 733 00:49:46,693 --> 00:49:48,654 in order to reassure white people, 734 00:49:49,613 --> 00:49:51,907 to make them know that they are not hated, 735 00:49:52,908 --> 00:49:54,993 that though they have made human errors, 736 00:49:55,911 --> 00:49:58,538 they done nothing for which to be hated. 737 00:50:03,001 --> 00:50:06,380 ♪ I'm Chiquita Banana And I'm here to say ♪ 738 00:50:06,546 --> 00:50:07,839 ♪ I am the top banana... ♪ 739 00:50:08,006 --> 00:50:10,133 In spite of the fabulous myths 740 00:50:10,300 --> 00:50:11,802 proliferating in this country 741 00:50:11,968 --> 00:50:14,429 concerning the sexuality of black people, 742 00:50:15,055 --> 00:50:18,558 black men are still used, in the popular culture, 743 00:50:18,892 --> 00:50:21,937 as though they had no sexual equipment at all. 744 00:50:24,231 --> 00:50:27,776 Sidney Poitier, as a black artist, and a man, 745 00:50:28,276 --> 00:50:30,737 is also up against the infantile, 746 00:50:30,904 --> 00:50:32,989 furtive sexuality of this country. 747 00:50:34,074 --> 00:50:37,285 Both he and Harry Belafonte, for example, 748 00:50:37,452 --> 00:50:40,914 are sex symbols, though no one dares admit that, 749 00:50:41,581 --> 00:50:45,961 still less to use them as any of the Hollywood he-men are used. 750 00:50:50,048 --> 00:50:53,093 Black people have been robbed of everything in this country... 751 00:50:53,260 --> 00:50:54,678 I've got something to say to you, boy. 752 00:50:54,845 --> 00:50:58,014 ...and they don't want to be robbed of their artist. 753 00:50:59,015 --> 00:51:00,851 Black people particularly disliked 754 00:51:01,017 --> 00:51:02,561 Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, 755 00:51:02,728 --> 00:51:05,647 because they felt that Sidney was, in effect, 756 00:51:05,814 --> 00:51:07,441 being used against them. 757 00:51:08,483 --> 00:51:10,360 Guess Who's Coming to Dinner may prove, 758 00:51:10,527 --> 00:51:12,946 in some bizarre way, to be a milestone, 759 00:51:13,488 --> 00:51:17,242 because it is really quite impossible to go any further 760 00:51:17,409 --> 00:51:19,035 in that particular direction. 761 00:51:19,494 --> 00:51:23,874 ♪ If you ever plan to motor West... ♪ 762 00:51:24,958 --> 00:51:28,336 The next time, the kissing will have to start. 763 00:51:35,343 --> 00:51:37,679 Well, you've got your ticket? 764 00:51:38,555 --> 00:51:39,806 Here you are. 765 00:51:42,058 --> 00:51:43,268 Thank you. 766 00:51:44,394 --> 00:51:47,105 I am aware that men do not kiss each other 767 00:51:47,272 --> 00:51:51,735 in American films, nor, for the most part, in America 768 00:51:52,611 --> 00:51:56,281 nor do the black detective and the white Sheriff kiss here. 769 00:51:59,534 --> 00:52:01,995 You take care, you hear? 770 00:52:07,459 --> 00:52:08,585 Yeah. 771 00:52:09,795 --> 00:52:11,880 But the obligatory, fade-out-kiss, 772 00:52:12,339 --> 00:52:15,550 in the classic American film, did not speak of love, 773 00:52:16,176 --> 00:52:18,094 and still less of sex. 774 00:52:19,137 --> 00:52:21,181 It spoke of reconciliation, 775 00:52:22,641 --> 00:52:25,185 of all things now becoming possible. 776 00:52:47,958 --> 00:52:50,710 I knew a blond girl in the village 777 00:52:51,169 --> 00:52:54,381 a long time ago, and eventually, 778 00:52:54,548 --> 00:52:56,758 we never walked out of the house together. 779 00:53:00,345 --> 00:53:03,098 She was far safer walking the streets alone 780 00:53:03,598 --> 00:53:05,225 than when walking with me. 781 00:53:06,434 --> 00:53:09,062 A brutal and humiliating fact 782 00:53:09,646 --> 00:53:12,232 which thoroughly destroyed whatever relationship 783 00:53:12,399 --> 00:53:15,443 this girl and I might have been able to achieve. 784 00:53:18,405 --> 00:53:20,657 This happens all the time in America, 785 00:53:21,950 --> 00:53:23,827 but Americans have yet to realize 786 00:53:23,994 --> 00:53:26,204 what a sinister fact this is, 787 00:53:26,371 --> 00:53:27,831 and what it says about them. 788 00:53:31,042 --> 00:53:33,628 When we walked out in the evening, then, 789 00:53:34,838 --> 00:53:37,424 she would leave ahead of me, alone. 790 00:53:38,550 --> 00:53:42,971 I would give about five minutes, and then I would walk out alone, 791 00:53:44,514 --> 00:53:47,893 taking another route, and meet her on the subway platform. 792 00:53:50,145 --> 00:53:52,022 We would not acknowledge each other. 793 00:53:52,689 --> 00:53:54,774 We would get into the subway car, 794 00:53:54,941 --> 00:53:58,820 sitting at opposite ends of it, and walk, separately, 795 00:53:58,987 --> 00:54:01,406 through the streets of the free and the brave, 796 00:54:02,032 --> 00:54:05,744 to wherever we were going... a friend's house, or the movies. 797 00:54:16,796 --> 00:54:18,048 All over the country, 798 00:54:18,214 --> 00:54:21,176 families such this are enjoying new prosperity. 799 00:54:21,593 --> 00:54:24,554 They have new interests, news standards of living, 800 00:54:24,721 --> 00:54:27,724 a buying power they've never enjoyed before. 801 00:54:27,891 --> 00:54:28,975 There are good prospects 802 00:54:29,142 --> 00:54:31,770 for practically all types of goods and services. 803 00:54:32,228 --> 00:54:35,273 All too often though, they are overlooked prospects. 804 00:54:35,649 --> 00:54:38,610 Since 1940, in San Francisco alone, 805 00:54:38,777 --> 00:54:42,364 the Negro market has increased by 89%. 806 00:54:43,406 --> 00:54:46,618 Here are millions of customers for what you have to sell. 807 00:54:47,285 --> 00:54:52,290 Customers with 15 billion dollars to spend 808 00:54:52,874 --> 00:54:55,210 Someone once said to me 809 00:54:55,377 --> 00:54:59,005 that the people in general cannot bear very much reality. 810 00:54:59,923 --> 00:55:02,926 He meant by this that they prefer fantasy 811 00:55:03,093 --> 00:55:06,429 to a truthful recreation of their experience. 812 00:55:07,847 --> 00:55:10,517 People have quite enough reality to bear, 813 00:55:11,017 --> 00:55:12,978 by simply getting through their lives, 814 00:55:13,353 --> 00:55:14,688 raising their children, 815 00:55:15,063 --> 00:55:17,065 dealing with the eternal conundrums 816 00:55:17,232 --> 00:55:20,276 of birth, taxes, and death. 817 00:55:21,111 --> 00:55:25,156 Negroes are continuously making progress here in this country. 818 00:55:25,323 --> 00:55:27,534 The progress in many areas is not as fast as it should be, 819 00:55:27,701 --> 00:55:28,827 but they are making progress, 820 00:55:28,994 --> 00:55:30,412 and we will continue to make progress. 821 00:55:30,578 --> 00:55:35,208 There's no reason that they, in a near and foreseeable future, 822 00:55:35,375 --> 00:55:38,169 that a Negro could also be president of the United States 823 00:55:39,546 --> 00:55:41,006 I remember, for example, 824 00:55:41,631 --> 00:55:45,093 when the ex-Attorney General, Mr. Robert Kennedy, 825 00:55:46,845 --> 00:55:50,015 said that it was conceivable 826 00:55:50,932 --> 00:55:54,185 that in 40 years in America, we might have a Negro president. 827 00:55:55,979 --> 00:55:59,899 And that sounded like a very emancipated statement, 828 00:56:00,066 --> 00:56:01,526 I suppose, to white people. 829 00:56:02,694 --> 00:56:04,112 They were not in Harlem... 830 00:56:05,447 --> 00:56:07,240 ...when this statement was first heard. 831 00:56:08,783 --> 00:56:11,036 And did not hear, and possibly will never hear, 832 00:56:11,661 --> 00:56:13,329 the laughter and the bitterness and the scorn 833 00:56:13,496 --> 00:56:15,040 with which this statement was greeted. 834 00:56:15,290 --> 00:56:17,459 From the point of view of the man in the Harlem barbershop, 835 00:56:17,625 --> 00:56:19,878 Bobby Kennedy only got here yesterday. 836 00:56:21,963 --> 00:56:24,883 And now he's already on his way to the Presidency. 837 00:56:25,550 --> 00:56:28,720 We've been here for 400 years and now he tells us 838 00:56:28,887 --> 00:56:32,474 that maybe in 40 years, if you're good, 839 00:56:33,391 --> 00:56:35,435 we may let you become president. 840 00:56:37,187 --> 00:56:41,941 ♪ It was a dream, Just a dream I had on my mind ♪ 841 00:56:46,488 --> 00:56:51,993 ♪ It was a dream, Just a dream I had on my mind ♪ 842 00:56:56,122 --> 00:56:58,291 ♪ And when I woke up, baby ♪ 843 00:56:58,583 --> 00:57:01,377 ♪ Not a thing could I find ♪ 844 00:57:05,840 --> 00:57:09,928 ♪ I dreamed I was an angel And had a good time ♪ 845 00:57:10,595 --> 00:57:14,516 ♪ I dreamed I was satisfying And nothin' to worry my mind ♪ 846 00:57:14,682 --> 00:57:16,559 ♪ But it was a dream ♪ 847 00:57:17,936 --> 00:57:20,855 ♪ Just a dream I had on my mind ♪ 848 00:57:31,699 --> 00:57:33,284 Let me put it this way, 849 00:57:34,327 --> 00:57:36,663 that from a very literal point of view, 850 00:57:38,081 --> 00:57:40,083 the harbors and the ports 851 00:57:40,333 --> 00:57:43,753 and the railroads of the country, 852 00:57:46,506 --> 00:57:47,674 the economy, 853 00:57:48,508 --> 00:57:52,303 especially in the southern states, 854 00:57:52,554 --> 00:57:56,141 could not conceivably be what it has become 855 00:57:56,683 --> 00:57:58,518 if they had not had, 856 00:57:58,685 --> 00:58:01,271 and do not still have, indeed, and for so long, 857 00:58:01,479 --> 00:58:03,064 so many generations, 858 00:58:03,231 --> 00:58:04,315 cheap labor. 859 00:58:49,152 --> 00:58:51,613 It is a terrible thing 860 00:58:51,779 --> 00:58:53,656 for an entire people 861 00:58:53,823 --> 00:58:58,077 to surrender to the notion that one ninth of its population 862 00:58:58,244 --> 00:58:59,495 is beneath them. 863 00:59:00,163 --> 00:59:02,957 And until that moment, until the moment comes, 864 00:59:03,875 --> 00:59:06,044 when we, the Americans, 865 00:59:06,252 --> 00:59:10,506 we, the American people, are able to accept the fact 866 00:59:10,673 --> 00:59:12,258 that I have to accept, for example, 867 00:59:12,425 --> 00:59:14,594 that my ancestors are both white and black. 868 00:59:15,678 --> 00:59:19,098 That on that continent we are trying to forge a new identity 869 00:59:19,265 --> 00:59:20,850 for which we need each other, 870 00:59:21,768 --> 00:59:24,896 and that I am not a ward of America. 871 00:59:25,271 --> 00:59:27,815 I am not an object of missionary charity, 872 00:59:28,733 --> 00:59:31,611 I am one of the people who built the country. 873 00:59:32,946 --> 00:59:34,322 Until this moment, 874 00:59:34,739 --> 00:59:37,367 there is scarcely any hope for the American Dream, 875 00:59:38,534 --> 00:59:41,579 because people who are denied participation in it, 876 00:59:43,289 --> 00:59:45,083 by their very presence... 877 00:59:46,417 --> 00:59:47,627 ...will wreck it. 878 00:59:48,419 --> 00:59:51,214 And if that happens, it is a very grave moment for the West. 879 00:59:51,381 --> 00:59:53,675 Thank you. 880 01:00:37,302 --> 01:00:39,012 We're here in the studio today 881 01:00:39,178 --> 01:00:41,931 with seven men who have two things in common: 882 01:00:42,932 --> 01:00:45,810 they are entertainers and artists; 883 01:00:45,977 --> 01:00:47,729 and they've all come to Washington. 884 01:00:47,895 --> 01:00:50,064 They are seven out of some two hundred thousand 885 01:00:50,231 --> 01:00:52,900 American citizens who came to the capital 886 01:00:53,109 --> 01:00:55,820 to march for freedom and for jobs. 887 01:00:56,237 --> 01:01:01,034 Will this tremendous outburst now lead to a course of action, 888 01:01:01,200 --> 01:01:02,368 Mr. Belafonte? 889 01:01:02,535 --> 01:01:05,997 The now that is being spoken about is the fact that 890 01:01:06,164 --> 01:01:07,999 in a hundred years, finally, 891 01:01:08,708 --> 01:01:11,461 through whatever the causes have been in history, 892 01:01:11,627 --> 01:01:14,505 and most of them have been because of oppression, 893 01:01:14,714 --> 01:01:18,843 the Negro people have strongly and fully 894 01:01:19,010 --> 01:01:20,553 taken the bit in their teeth, 895 01:01:20,720 --> 01:01:23,097 they're asking absolutely no quarter from anyone. 896 01:01:23,264 --> 01:01:25,641 But I do say that the bulk of the interpretation 897 01:01:25,808 --> 01:01:27,393 of whether this thing is going to end 898 01:01:27,560 --> 01:01:29,270 successfully and joyously, 899 01:01:29,437 --> 01:01:31,064 or is going to end disastrously, 900 01:01:31,230 --> 01:01:34,192 lays very heavily with the white community, 901 01:01:34,359 --> 01:01:36,402 it lays very heavily with the profiteers, 902 01:01:36,569 --> 01:01:39,280 it lays very heavily with the vested interests. 903 01:01:39,447 --> 01:01:42,533 It lays very heavily with a great middle stream 904 01:01:42,825 --> 01:01:44,077 in this country, 905 01:01:44,243 --> 01:01:47,455 of people who have refused to commit themselves, 906 01:01:47,622 --> 01:01:49,624 or even have the slightest knowledge 907 01:01:49,791 --> 01:01:51,876 that these things have been going on. 908 01:02:03,471 --> 01:02:06,974 I am speaking as a member of a certain democracy 909 01:02:07,141 --> 01:02:09,811 in a very complex country, 910 01:02:10,353 --> 01:02:13,564 which insists on being very narrow-minded. 911 01:02:15,525 --> 01:02:19,112 Simplicity is taken to be a great American virtue, 912 01:02:19,404 --> 01:02:21,030 along with sincerity. 913 01:02:22,490 --> 01:02:23,449 I am sorry. 914 01:02:23,616 --> 01:02:24,826 I am deeply sorry. 915 01:02:25,368 --> 01:02:26,411 And I am sorry. 916 01:02:26,577 --> 01:02:27,995 I'm deeply sorry about that. 917 01:02:28,162 --> 01:02:29,747 They are no excuses. 918 01:02:29,914 --> 01:02:31,165 I am solely... 919 01:02:31,332 --> 01:02:32,750 We have made plenty of mistakes. 920 01:02:32,917 --> 01:02:34,460 For that, I apologize. 921 01:02:34,877 --> 01:02:36,421 I am very sorry. 922 01:02:36,671 --> 01:02:39,590 I'm sorry I did this to you, but you gotta get used to it. 923 01:02:39,757 --> 01:02:41,551 It's one of those little problems in life. 924 01:02:41,717 --> 01:02:42,718 I take full responsibility. 925 01:02:42,885 --> 01:02:44,679 I'm here today to again apologize. 926 01:02:44,846 --> 01:02:46,848 I'll just apologize for that to her. 927 01:02:47,014 --> 01:02:49,725 For any mistakes I've made, I take full responsibility. 928 01:02:50,560 --> 01:02:52,478 It's an honor to serve the city of Ferguson 929 01:02:52,645 --> 01:02:54,105 and the people who live there. 930 01:02:59,068 --> 01:03:00,653 One of the results of this 931 01:03:01,112 --> 01:03:04,449 is that immaturity is taken to be a virtue too. 932 01:03:05,366 --> 01:03:08,828 So that someone like that, let's say John Wayne, 933 01:03:08,995 --> 01:03:10,913 who spent most of his time on screen 934 01:03:11,080 --> 01:03:12,331 admonishing Indians, 935 01:03:12,915 --> 01:03:16,002 was in no necessity to grow up. 936 01:03:25,761 --> 01:03:29,265 We were free and we decided to treat ourselves 937 01:03:29,432 --> 01:03:31,517 to a really fancy, friendly dinner. 938 01:03:36,272 --> 01:03:39,275 The head waiter came and said there was a phone call for me, 939 01:03:39,984 --> 01:03:42,195 and my sister Gloria rose to take it. 940 01:03:46,532 --> 01:03:48,993 She was very strange when she came back. 941 01:03:50,286 --> 01:03:51,662 She didn't say anything, 942 01:03:52,538 --> 01:03:55,249 and I began to be afraid to ask her anything. 943 01:03:58,211 --> 01:04:02,381 Then, nibbling at something she obviously wasn't tasting, 944 01:04:02,548 --> 01:04:06,260 she said, "Well, I've got to tell you 945 01:04:06,427 --> 01:04:08,596 because the press is on its way over here. 946 01:04:09,805 --> 01:04:11,849 They have just killed Malcolm." 947 01:04:52,181 --> 01:04:54,642 There is nothing in the evidence 948 01:04:54,892 --> 01:04:58,271 offered by the book of the American republic, 949 01:05:00,815 --> 01:05:04,694 which allows me really to argue with the cat who says to me, 950 01:05:07,280 --> 01:05:08,990 "They needed us to pick the cotton, 951 01:05:09,824 --> 01:05:11,534 and now they don't need us anymore. 952 01:05:12,577 --> 01:05:14,870 Now they don't need us, they're gonna kill us all off, 953 01:05:15,705 --> 01:05:17,373 just like they did the Indians". 954 01:05:19,083 --> 01:05:21,335 And I can't say it's a Christian nation. 955 01:05:22,003 --> 01:05:23,462 though your brothers will never do that to you, 956 01:05:23,629 --> 01:05:25,381 because the record is too long and too bloody. 957 01:05:25,548 --> 01:05:26,757 That's all we have done. 958 01:05:29,051 --> 01:05:35,141 All your buried corpses now begin to speak. 959 01:05:37,184 --> 01:05:39,604 I say violence is necessary. 960 01:05:40,438 --> 01:05:42,481 Violence is a part of America's culture. 961 01:05:42,648 --> 01:05:44,734 It is as American as cherry pie. 962 01:05:44,900 --> 01:05:46,402 Black power, Brothers. 963 01:06:11,010 --> 01:06:12,386 If we were white, 964 01:06:13,721 --> 01:06:16,515 if we were Irish, if we were Jewish, 965 01:06:16,682 --> 01:06:20,227 if we were Poles, if we had, in fact, 966 01:06:20,394 --> 01:06:22,855 in your mind, a frame of reference, 967 01:06:23,481 --> 01:06:24,774 our heroes would be your heroes too. 968 01:06:24,940 --> 01:06:26,859 Nat Turner would be a hero for you instead of a threat. 969 01:06:27,026 --> 01:06:29,320 Malcolm X might still be alive. 970 01:06:30,780 --> 01:06:33,115 Everyone is very proud of brave little Israel, 971 01:06:33,491 --> 01:06:36,535 a state against which I have nothing, I don't want to be misinterpreted, 972 01:06:36,702 --> 01:06:38,120 I'm not an anti-Semite. 973 01:06:38,371 --> 01:06:40,247 But, you know, when the Israelis pick up guns, 974 01:06:40,414 --> 01:06:42,458 or the Poles, or the Irish, 975 01:06:42,625 --> 01:06:45,503 or any white man in the world says, 976 01:06:45,670 --> 01:06:47,630 "Give me liberty, or give me death", 977 01:06:48,506 --> 01:06:50,132 the entire white world applauds. 978 01:06:50,633 --> 01:06:53,469 When a black man says exactly the same thing, 979 01:06:54,595 --> 01:06:55,971 word for word, 980 01:06:57,098 --> 01:06:59,975 he is judged a criminal and treated like one 981 01:07:00,142 --> 01:07:01,852 and everything possible is done 982 01:07:02,019 --> 01:07:03,604 to make an example of this bad nigger, 983 01:07:03,771 --> 01:07:05,731 so there won't be any more like him. 984 01:07:07,316 --> 01:07:09,485 Look out across this land we love, 985 01:07:10,111 --> 01:07:14,448 look about you whatever you are, this unending scenic beauty, 986 01:07:14,865 --> 01:07:16,033 and there's freedom, 987 01:07:16,492 --> 01:07:18,536 it's an inherent American right 988 01:07:18,703 --> 01:07:21,914 meaning many different things to every single citizen. 989 01:07:22,540 --> 01:07:25,459 It's a leisurely afternoon of golf along a pleasant course. 990 01:07:26,419 --> 01:07:29,714 It's an amusement park, a rollercoaster ride. 991 01:07:31,298 --> 01:07:32,967 A day at the county fair. 992 01:07:37,847 --> 01:07:39,223 A day of excitement, 993 01:07:39,557 --> 01:07:43,352 unrestricted travel across all our 50 states, 994 01:07:43,686 --> 01:07:46,272 unlimited enjoyment of all these jewels 995 01:07:46,439 --> 01:07:48,023 in the continent's crown. 996 01:07:49,358 --> 01:07:51,819 For all of us, there's all of America, 997 01:07:51,986 --> 01:07:56,657 in all of its scenic beauty, all of its heritage of history, 998 01:07:57,283 --> 01:07:59,326 all of its limitless opportunity... 999 01:08:00,619 --> 01:08:04,832 We've dropped too many bombs on Vietnam now. 1000 01:08:06,500 --> 01:08:10,087 Let us save our national honor! 1001 01:08:10,588 --> 01:08:12,256 Stop the bombing, 1002 01:08:12,465 --> 01:08:13,924 and stop the war! 1003 01:08:20,598 --> 01:08:23,601 What I am trying to say to this country, 1004 01:08:23,893 --> 01:08:25,019 to us, 1005 01:08:25,478 --> 01:08:27,646 is that we must know this. 1006 01:08:28,773 --> 01:08:30,775 We must realize this, 1007 01:08:32,151 --> 01:08:34,487 that no other country in the world 1008 01:08:34,653 --> 01:08:38,532 have been so fat and so sleek, and so safe, 1009 01:08:38,699 --> 01:08:42,244 and so happy, and so irresponsible, 1010 01:08:43,287 --> 01:08:44,497 and so dead. 1011 01:08:44,872 --> 01:08:48,584 No other country can afford to dream of a Plymouth and a wife 1012 01:08:48,876 --> 01:08:50,711 and a house with a fence, 1013 01:08:51,212 --> 01:08:53,506 and the children growing up safely 1014 01:08:53,672 --> 01:08:56,509 to go to college and to become executives, 1015 01:08:56,675 --> 01:08:57,760 and then to marry, 1016 01:08:58,010 --> 01:09:00,554 and have the Plymouth and the house 1017 01:09:00,721 --> 01:09:02,014 and so forth. 1018 01:09:02,598 --> 01:09:05,684 A great many people do not live this way, 1019 01:09:06,352 --> 01:09:07,937 and cannot imagine it, 1020 01:09:08,187 --> 01:09:11,440 and do not know that when we talk about "democracy", 1021 01:09:11,607 --> 01:09:12,983 this is what we mean. 1022 01:09:29,416 --> 01:09:31,752 The industry is compelled, 1023 01:09:31,919 --> 01:09:33,337 given the way it is built, 1024 01:09:33,546 --> 01:09:35,381 to present to the American people 1025 01:09:35,548 --> 01:09:38,467 a self-perpetuating fantasy of American life. 1026 01:09:39,635 --> 01:09:42,930 Their concept of entertainment is difficult to distinguish 1027 01:09:43,097 --> 01:09:44,932 from the use of narcotics. 1028 01:09:45,099 --> 01:09:47,893 What worries you about them having black partners? 1029 01:09:48,060 --> 01:09:50,229 Do you think people are gonna look down on them, 1030 01:09:50,437 --> 01:09:52,648 - or judge them? - Yes, I think people look down. 1031 01:10:00,739 --> 01:10:03,492 To watch the TV screen for any length of time 1032 01:10:03,659 --> 01:10:06,412 is to learn some really frightening things 1033 01:10:06,620 --> 01:10:09,123 about the American sense of reality. 1034 01:10:09,999 --> 01:10:13,294 We are cruelly trapped between what we would like to be 1035 01:10:13,460 --> 01:10:15,379 and what we actually are. 1036 01:10:15,546 --> 01:10:19,049 And we cannot possibly become what we would like to be until 1037 01:10:19,216 --> 01:10:23,846 we are willing to ask ourselves just why the lives we lead 1038 01:10:24,013 --> 01:10:26,473 on this continent are mainly so empty, 1039 01:10:26,640 --> 01:10:28,726 so tame, and so ugly. 1040 01:10:30,561 --> 01:10:33,856 These images are designed not to trouble, 1041 01:10:34,315 --> 01:10:35,608 but to reassure. 1042 01:10:36,150 --> 01:10:39,737 They also weaken our ability to deal with the world as it is, 1043 01:10:40,905 --> 01:10:43,240 ourselves as we are. 1044 01:10:46,869 --> 01:10:49,496 I would like to add someone to our group here, 1045 01:10:49,747 --> 01:10:51,248 Professor Paul Weiss, 1046 01:10:51,415 --> 01:10:53,000 the sterling professor of philosophy at Yale. 1047 01:11:05,888 --> 01:11:07,598 Were you able to listen to the show backstage? 1048 01:11:07,765 --> 01:11:09,016 I heard a good deal of it, 1049 01:11:09,183 --> 01:11:11,101 but then I was behind the whatsitmajig. 1050 01:11:11,268 --> 01:11:13,312 - Yes. - So I heard only some of it. 1051 01:11:13,479 --> 01:11:15,356 Did you hear anything that you disagreed with? 1052 01:11:15,522 --> 01:11:17,441 I disagreed with a great deal of it, 1053 01:11:17,608 --> 01:11:20,402 and of course, there's a good deal I agree with. 1054 01:11:20,694 --> 01:11:25,157 But I think he's overlooking one very important matter, 1055 01:11:25,324 --> 01:11:26,408 I think. 1056 01:11:26,659 --> 01:11:29,620 Each one of us, I think, is terribly alone. 1057 01:11:29,828 --> 01:11:32,414 He lives his own individual life. 1058 01:11:32,581 --> 01:11:35,709 He has all kind of obstacles, the way of religion or color 1059 01:11:35,876 --> 01:11:38,671 or size or shape or lack of ability, 1060 01:11:38,921 --> 01:11:40,881 and the problem is to become a man. 1061 01:11:41,048 --> 01:11:43,425 But what I was discussing was not that problem, really. 1062 01:11:43,592 --> 01:11:45,886 I was discussing the difficulties, the obstacles, 1063 01:11:46,095 --> 01:11:48,472 the very real danger of death 1064 01:11:48,681 --> 01:11:51,266 thrown up by the society when a Negro, when a black man, 1065 01:11:51,433 --> 01:11:52,726 attempts to become a man. 1066 01:11:52,893 --> 01:11:55,688 All this emphasis upon black man and white, 1067 01:11:55,854 --> 01:11:59,316 does emphasize something which is here, 1068 01:11:59,483 --> 01:12:02,194 but it emphasizes, or perhaps exaggerates it, 1069 01:12:02,361 --> 01:12:05,906 and therefore makes us put people together in groups 1070 01:12:06,073 --> 01:12:07,533 which they ought not to be in. 1071 01:12:07,700 --> 01:12:10,119 I have more in common with a black scholar 1072 01:12:10,285 --> 01:12:12,871 than I have with a white man who is against scholarship. 1073 01:12:13,163 --> 01:12:15,624 And you have more in common with a white author 1074 01:12:15,791 --> 01:12:18,002 than you have with someone who is against all literature. 1075 01:12:18,168 --> 01:12:20,629 So why must we always concentrate on color, 1076 01:12:20,796 --> 01:12:22,006 or religion, or this? 1077 01:12:22,172 --> 01:12:24,049 There are other ways of connecting men. 1078 01:12:24,216 --> 01:12:25,384 I'll tell you this. 1079 01:12:25,592 --> 01:12:28,053 When I left this country in 1948, 1080 01:12:28,220 --> 01:12:29,847 I left this country for one reason only, 1081 01:12:30,014 --> 01:12:31,557 one reason... I didn't care where I went. 1082 01:12:31,724 --> 01:12:34,143 I might've gone to Hong Kong, I might have gone to Timbuktu. 1083 01:12:34,309 --> 01:12:36,186 I ended up in Paris, on the streets of Paris, 1084 01:12:36,353 --> 01:12:38,272 with 40 dollars in my pocket and the theory 1085 01:12:38,439 --> 01:12:40,858 that nothing worse could happen to me there 1086 01:12:41,025 --> 01:12:42,651 than had already happened to me here. 1087 01:12:42,860 --> 01:12:45,070 You talk about making it as a writer by yourself, 1088 01:12:45,237 --> 01:12:47,156 you have to be able then to turn up all the antennae 1089 01:12:47,322 --> 01:12:48,490 by which you live, 1090 01:12:48,657 --> 01:12:50,284 because once you turn your back on this society, 1091 01:12:50,451 --> 01:12:51,785 you may die. 1092 01:12:52,578 --> 01:12:53,954 You may die. 1093 01:12:54,121 --> 01:12:55,914 And it's very hard to sit at a typewriter, 1094 01:12:56,081 --> 01:12:57,207 and concentrate on that, 1095 01:12:57,374 --> 01:12:59,293 if you are afraid of the world around you. 1096 01:12:59,585 --> 01:13:01,962 The years I lived in Paris did one thing for me: 1097 01:13:02,504 --> 01:13:04,923 they released me from that particular social terror, 1098 01:13:05,090 --> 01:13:07,509 which was not the paranoia of my own mind, 1099 01:13:07,676 --> 01:13:10,512 but a real social danger visible in the face of every cop, 1100 01:13:10,679 --> 01:13:13,807 every boss, everybody. 1101 01:13:18,187 --> 01:13:20,981 I don't know what most white people in this country feel. 1102 01:13:21,148 --> 01:13:22,816 But I can only include what they feel 1103 01:13:22,983 --> 01:13:24,568 from that state of their institutions. 1104 01:13:24,818 --> 01:13:27,112 I don't know if white Christians hate Negroes or not, 1105 01:13:27,279 --> 01:13:29,364 but I know we have a Christian church which is white 1106 01:13:29,531 --> 01:13:31,200 and a Christian church which is black. 1107 01:13:31,366 --> 01:13:32,826 I know, as Malcolm X once put it, 1108 01:13:32,993 --> 01:13:34,828 the most segregated hour in American life 1109 01:13:34,995 --> 01:13:36,330 is high noon on Sunday. 1110 01:13:36,497 --> 01:13:38,499 That says a great deal for me about a Christian nation. 1111 01:13:38,665 --> 01:13:41,210 It means I can't afford to trust most white Christians 1112 01:13:41,376 --> 01:13:43,504 and I certainly cannot trust the Christian church. 1113 01:13:43,670 --> 01:13:46,173 I don't know whether the labor unions and their bosses 1114 01:13:46,340 --> 01:13:48,342 really hate me. That doesn't matter, 1115 01:13:48,509 --> 01:13:49,968 but I know I'm not in their unions. 1116 01:13:50,135 --> 01:13:51,386 I don't know if the Real Estate Lobby 1117 01:13:51,553 --> 01:13:52,930 has anything against black people, 1118 01:13:53,097 --> 01:13:55,849 but I know the Real Estate Lobby is keeping me in the ghetto. 1119 01:13:56,016 --> 01:13:58,852 I don't know if the board of education hates black people, 1120 01:13:59,019 --> 01:14:01,355 but I know the textbooks they give my children to read, 1121 01:14:01,522 --> 01:14:03,232 and the schools that we have to go to. 1122 01:14:03,398 --> 01:14:04,942 Now, this is the evidence. 1123 01:14:05,150 --> 01:14:06,902 You want me to make an act of faith, 1124 01:14:07,236 --> 01:14:09,655 risking myself, my wife, my woman, 1125 01:14:09,822 --> 01:14:11,156 my sister, my children, 1126 01:14:11,323 --> 01:14:14,284 on some idealism which you assure me 1127 01:14:14,451 --> 01:14:16,495 exists in America, which I have never seen. 1128 01:14:16,662 --> 01:14:18,080 Hold on a second. 1129 01:14:23,585 --> 01:14:25,671 All of the Western nations 1130 01:14:26,088 --> 01:14:27,756 have been caught in a lie, 1131 01:14:28,882 --> 01:14:31,343 the lie of their pretended humanism. 1132 01:14:32,928 --> 01:14:37,182 This means that their history has no moral justification, 1133 01:14:37,975 --> 01:14:40,936 and that the West has no moral authority. 1134 01:14:47,109 --> 01:14:48,694 "Vile as I am," 1135 01:14:49,278 --> 01:14:52,531 states one of the characters in Dostoevsky's The Idiot, 1136 01:14:53,157 --> 01:14:56,952 "I don't believe in the wagons that bring bread to humanity. 1137 01:14:57,828 --> 01:15:00,956 For the wagons that bring bread to humanity, 1138 01:15:01,290 --> 01:15:04,918 may coldly exclude a considerable part of humanity 1139 01:15:05,085 --> 01:15:06,920 from enjoying what is brought." 1140 01:15:10,007 --> 01:15:12,801 For a very long time, America prospered. 1141 01:15:13,135 --> 01:15:16,722 This prosperity cost millions of people their lives. 1142 01:15:17,431 --> 01:15:21,810 Now, not even the people who are the most spectacular recipients 1143 01:15:21,977 --> 01:15:24,271 of the benefits of this prosperity 1144 01:15:24,813 --> 01:15:27,357 are able to endure these benefits. 1145 01:15:28,025 --> 01:15:31,195 They can neither understand them nor do without them. 1146 01:15:32,279 --> 01:15:36,825 Above all, they cannot imagine the price paid by their victims, 1147 01:15:36,992 --> 01:15:39,536 or subjects, for this way of life, 1148 01:15:40,078 --> 01:15:42,623 and so they cannot afford to know why 1149 01:15:42,789 --> 01:15:44,249 the victims are revolting. 1150 01:15:49,004 --> 01:15:50,297 Down! 1151 01:15:50,923 --> 01:15:53,508 - On the ground! - Get on the ground, now! 1152 01:15:56,970 --> 01:15:57,930 Damn, man! 1153 01:16:02,100 --> 01:16:04,102 This is the formula 1154 01:16:04,436 --> 01:16:07,231 for a nation or a kingdom decline. 1155 01:16:09,316 --> 01:16:12,444 For no kingdom can maintain itself by force alone. 1156 01:16:13,278 --> 01:16:17,783 Force does not work the way its advocates think in fact it does. 1157 01:16:20,494 --> 01:16:21,912 It does not, for example, 1158 01:16:22,079 --> 01:16:25,249 reveal to the victim the strength of the adversary. 1159 01:16:31,380 --> 01:16:34,716 On the contrary, it reveals the weakness, 1160 01:16:35,050 --> 01:16:37,636 even the panic of the adversary. 1161 01:16:40,138 --> 01:16:43,850 And this revelation invests the victim with passion. 1162 01:16:55,696 --> 01:16:57,614 There is a day in Palm Springs 1163 01:16:57,781 --> 01:17:01,576 that I will remember forever, a bright day. 1164 01:17:03,495 --> 01:17:06,415 I was based in Hollywood, working on the screen version 1165 01:17:06,581 --> 01:17:08,625 of the autobiography of Malcolm X. 1166 01:17:10,002 --> 01:17:12,170 This was a difficult assignment, 1167 01:17:13,171 --> 01:17:15,424 since I had known Malcolm, after all, 1168 01:17:16,300 --> 01:17:18,010 crossed swords with him, 1169 01:17:19,011 --> 01:17:20,178 worked with him, 1170 01:17:20,887 --> 01:17:23,056 and held him in that great esteem 1171 01:17:23,223 --> 01:17:25,600 which is not easily distinguishable, 1172 01:17:25,767 --> 01:17:27,269 if it is distinguishable, 1173 01:17:27,894 --> 01:17:28,979 from love. 1174 01:17:31,732 --> 01:17:33,567 Billy Dee Williams had come to town 1175 01:17:33,734 --> 01:17:35,319 and he was staying at the house. 1176 01:17:36,028 --> 01:17:38,655 I very much wanted Billy Dee for the role of Malcolm. 1177 01:17:41,992 --> 01:17:43,702 The phone had been brought out to the pool, 1178 01:17:43,869 --> 01:17:45,162 and now it rang. 1179 01:17:46,288 --> 01:17:47,539 And I picked up. 1180 01:17:48,999 --> 01:17:50,625 The record player was still playing. 1181 01:17:54,838 --> 01:17:58,884 "He's not dead yet, but it's a head wound." 1182 01:18:02,220 --> 01:18:05,098 I have some very sad news for all of you, 1183 01:18:05,682 --> 01:18:09,603 and I think sad news for all our fellow citizens 1184 01:18:10,729 --> 01:18:13,774 and people who love peace all over the world. 1185 01:18:14,649 --> 01:18:17,235 And that is that Martin Luther King 1186 01:18:17,611 --> 01:18:18,904 was shot and was killed tonight. 1187 01:18:27,204 --> 01:18:29,790 I hardly remember the rest of the evening at all. 1188 01:18:31,875 --> 01:18:33,543 I remember weeping, briefly, 1189 01:18:34,044 --> 01:18:37,214 more in helpless rage than in sorrow, 1190 01:18:38,131 --> 01:18:40,175 and Billy trying to comfort me. 1191 01:18:41,843 --> 01:18:44,346 But I really don't remember that evening at all. 1192 01:18:45,764 --> 01:18:50,268 ♪ Mother dear, May I go downtown ♪ 1193 01:18:50,435 --> 01:18:54,314 ♪ Instead of out to play, ♪ 1194 01:18:54,940 --> 01:18:59,861 ♪ And march the streets of Birmingham ♪ 1195 01:19:00,028 --> 01:19:03,740 ♪ In a Freedom March today? ♪ 1196 01:19:05,492 --> 01:19:09,704 ♪ But Mother, I won't be alone ♪ 1197 01:19:10,163 --> 01:19:14,668 ♪ Other children will go with me, ♪ 1198 01:19:15,210 --> 01:19:20,090 ♪ And march the streets of Birmingham ♪ 1199 01:19:20,507 --> 01:19:23,927 ♪ To make my country free ♪ 1200 01:19:26,847 --> 01:19:28,515 The church was packed. 1201 01:19:29,182 --> 01:19:32,018 In the pew before me sat Marlon Brando, 1202 01:19:32,519 --> 01:19:34,438 Sammy Davis, Eartha Kitt. 1203 01:19:35,188 --> 01:19:36,690 Sidney Poitier nearby. 1204 01:19:38,108 --> 01:19:41,278 I saw Harry Belafonte sitting next to Coretta King. 1205 01:19:43,321 --> 01:19:44,823 I have a childhood hand over thing 1206 01:19:44,990 --> 01:19:46,616 about not weeping in public. 1207 01:19:47,033 --> 01:19:51,663 And I was concentrating on holding myself together. 1208 01:19:52,956 --> 01:19:55,125 I did not want to weep for Martin. 1209 01:19:56,293 --> 01:19:57,836 Tears seemed futile. 1210 01:19:58,962 --> 01:20:01,965 But I may also have been afraid, 1211 01:20:02,549 --> 01:20:04,968 and I could not have been the only one, 1212 01:20:05,469 --> 01:20:10,474 that if I began to weep, I would not be able to stop. 1213 01:20:12,642 --> 01:20:14,936 I started to cry, and I stumbled. 1214 01:20:16,271 --> 01:20:17,689 Sammy grabbed my arm. 1215 01:20:21,610 --> 01:20:24,279 The story of the Negro in America 1216 01:20:24,571 --> 01:20:26,740 is the story of America. 1217 01:20:27,824 --> 01:20:29,826 It is not a pretty story. 1218 01:20:33,038 --> 01:20:34,289 What can we do? 1219 01:20:37,000 --> 01:20:38,835 Well, I am tired. 1220 01:20:39,503 --> 01:20:41,296 I don't know how it will come about, 1221 01:20:42,631 --> 01:20:44,799 I know that no matter how it comes about, 1222 01:20:44,966 --> 01:20:47,219 it will be bloody, it will be hard. 1223 01:20:48,887 --> 01:20:51,515 I still believe that we can do with this country 1224 01:20:51,681 --> 01:20:54,100 something that has not been done before. 1225 01:20:55,143 --> 01:20:58,230 We are misled here because we think of numbers. 1226 01:20:59,814 --> 01:21:02,817 You don't need numbers, you need passion. 1227 01:21:03,818 --> 01:21:06,029 And this is proven by the history of the world. 1228 01:21:07,948 --> 01:21:10,033 The tragedy is that most of the people 1229 01:21:10,200 --> 01:21:12,953 who say they care about it do not care. 1230 01:21:13,245 --> 01:21:16,623 What they care about is their safety and their profits. 1231 01:21:17,415 --> 01:21:19,793 ♪ When I was laying in jail ♪ 1232 01:21:20,001 --> 01:21:24,506 ♪ With my back turned to the wall ♪ 1233 01:21:30,554 --> 01:21:32,389 ♪ When I was laying in jail ♪ 1234 01:21:32,556 --> 01:21:36,893 ♪ With my back turned to the wall ♪ 1235 01:21:42,023 --> 01:21:44,442 ♪ I just laid down and dreamed I could... ♪ 1236 01:21:46,444 --> 01:21:47,946 The American way of life 1237 01:21:48,113 --> 01:21:50,323 has failed to make people happier, 1238 01:21:50,532 --> 01:21:51,992 or make them better. 1239 01:21:52,701 --> 01:21:56,288 We do not want to admit this, and we do not admit it. 1240 01:21:57,289 --> 01:21:58,665 We persist in believing 1241 01:21:58,832 --> 01:22:01,209 that the empty and criminal among our children 1242 01:22:01,376 --> 01:22:05,213 are the result of some miscalculation in the formula 1243 01:22:05,380 --> 01:22:06,756 that can be corrected. 1244 01:22:07,299 --> 01:22:09,968 That the bottomless and aimless hostility 1245 01:22:10,135 --> 01:22:13,179 which makes our cities among the most dangerous in the world 1246 01:22:13,680 --> 01:22:17,392 is created and felt by a handful of aberrants, 1247 01:22:18,310 --> 01:22:21,354 that the lack, yawning everywhere in this country, 1248 01:22:21,521 --> 01:22:24,983 of passionate conviction, of personal authority, 1249 01:22:25,150 --> 01:22:29,070 proves only our rather appealing tendency to be gregarious 1250 01:22:29,237 --> 01:22:30,363 and democratic. 1251 01:22:32,115 --> 01:22:34,576 To look around the United States today, 1252 01:22:35,243 --> 01:22:37,954 is enough to make prophets and angels weep. 1253 01:22:39,414 --> 01:22:41,374 This is not the land of the free. 1254 01:22:41,750 --> 01:22:45,045 It is only very unwillingly and sporadically... 1255 01:22:46,254 --> 01:22:47,756 ...the home of the brave. 1256 01:23:03,605 --> 01:23:06,900 I sometimes feel it to be an absolute miracle 1257 01:23:07,609 --> 01:23:11,237 that the entire black population of the United States of America 1258 01:23:11,404 --> 01:23:14,908 has not long ago succumbed to raging paranoia. 1259 01:23:16,076 --> 01:23:17,744 People finally say to you, 1260 01:23:17,911 --> 01:23:20,497 in an attempt to dismiss the social reality, 1261 01:23:21,748 --> 01:23:23,375 "But you're so bitter!" 1262 01:23:29,506 --> 01:23:33,343 Well, I may or may not be bitter, 1263 01:23:33,968 --> 01:23:38,515 but if I were, I would have good reasons for it. 1264 01:23:39,099 --> 01:23:43,269 Chief among them that American blindness, or cowardice, 1265 01:23:43,436 --> 01:23:47,148 which allow us to pretend that life presents no reasons 1266 01:23:47,315 --> 01:23:48,400 for being bitter. 1267 01:24:13,383 --> 01:24:16,678 In this country, for a dangerously long time, 1268 01:24:17,554 --> 01:24:19,764 there have been two levels of experience. 1269 01:24:20,890 --> 01:24:22,559 One, to put it cruelly, 1270 01:24:22,726 --> 01:24:26,813 can be summed up in the images of Gary Cooper and Doris Day, 1271 01:24:26,980 --> 01:24:29,566 two of the most grotesque appeals to innocence 1272 01:24:29,733 --> 01:24:31,401 the world has ever seen. 1273 01:24:32,152 --> 01:24:36,197 And the other, subterranean, indispensable, 1274 01:24:36,781 --> 01:24:39,701 and denied, can be summed up, let us say, 1275 01:24:40,160 --> 01:24:43,371 in the tone and in the face of Ray Charles. 1276 01:24:43,663 --> 01:24:45,999 ♪ Hey mama, Don't you treat me wrong ♪ 1277 01:24:46,166 --> 01:24:48,626 ♪ Come and love your daddy All night long ♪ 1278 01:24:52,380 --> 01:24:55,592 ♪ I know it's all right now Hey, hey ♪ 1279 01:24:58,845 --> 01:25:00,764 ♪ When you see me in misery ♪ 1280 01:25:01,598 --> 01:25:03,349 ♪ Come on baby, see about me ♪ 1281 01:25:03,516 --> 01:25:06,352 There has never been any genuine confrontation 1282 01:25:06,519 --> 01:25:08,730 between these two levels of experience. 1283 01:25:11,900 --> 01:25:15,570 ♪ Should I be bad ♪ 1284 01:25:16,738 --> 01:25:18,615 ♪ Or nice? ♪ 1285 01:25:21,159 --> 01:25:24,287 ♪ Should I surrender? ♪ 1286 01:25:25,872 --> 01:25:30,502 ♪ His pleading words so tenderly ♪ 1287 01:25:32,128 --> 01:25:36,174 ♪ Entreat me ♪ 1288 01:25:37,550 --> 01:25:42,180 ♪ Is this the night that love ♪ 1289 01:25:42,847 --> 01:25:47,644 ♪ Finally defeats me? ♪ 1290 01:25:47,852 --> 01:25:52,649 You cannot lynch me and keep me in ghettos 1291 01:25:53,566 --> 01:25:56,569 without becoming something monstrous yourselves. 1292 01:25:58,154 --> 01:26:02,116 And furthermore, you give me a terrifying advantage. 1293 01:26:03,243 --> 01:26:04,828 You never had to look at me. 1294 01:26:06,454 --> 01:26:07,831 I had to look at you. 1295 01:26:09,332 --> 01:26:13,461 I know more about you than you know about me. 1296 01:26:15,046 --> 01:26:17,966 Not everything that is faced can be changed, 1297 01:26:19,551 --> 01:26:23,471 but nothing can be changed until it is faced. 1298 01:26:32,272 --> 01:26:33,898 History is not the past. 1299 01:26:35,149 --> 01:26:36,484 It is the present. 1300 01:26:37,694 --> 01:26:39,654 We carry our history with us. 1301 01:26:40,738 --> 01:26:43,157 We are our history. 1302 01:26:44,868 --> 01:26:48,997 If we pretend otherwise, we literally are criminals. 1303 01:26:53,334 --> 01:26:54,836 I attest to this. 1304 01:26:56,129 --> 01:26:58,256 The world is not white. 1305 01:26:59,757 --> 01:27:01,634 It never was white, 1306 01:27:02,844 --> 01:27:04,637 cannot be white. 1307 01:27:05,889 --> 01:27:08,892 White is a metaphor for power, 1308 01:27:10,894 --> 01:27:15,231 and that is simply a way of describing Chase Manhattan Bank. 1309 01:28:05,073 --> 01:28:06,824 I can't be a pessimist, 1310 01:28:08,326 --> 01:28:09,619 because I'm alive. 1311 01:28:10,954 --> 01:28:13,748 To be a pessimist means you have agreed that human life 1312 01:28:13,915 --> 01:28:17,669 is an academic matter, so I'm forced to be an optimist. 1313 01:28:17,835 --> 01:28:19,671 I am forced to believe that we can survive 1314 01:28:19,837 --> 01:28:21,339 whatever we must survive. 1315 01:28:22,548 --> 01:28:23,549 But... 1316 01:28:27,887 --> 01:28:29,347 ...the Negro in this country... 1317 01:28:32,558 --> 01:28:34,352 ...the future of the Negro in this country... 1318 01:28:36,187 --> 01:28:38,022 ...is precisely as bright 1319 01:28:38,189 --> 01:28:40,191 or as dark as the future of the country. 1320 01:28:42,193 --> 01:28:45,405 It is entirely up to the American people 1321 01:28:46,239 --> 01:28:47,448 and not representatives. 1322 01:28:47,615 --> 01:28:49,867 It is entirely up to the American people 1323 01:28:51,035 --> 01:28:55,748 whether or not they are going to face and deal with 1324 01:28:55,915 --> 01:28:58,918 and embrace the stranger they have maligned so long. 1325 01:28:59,502 --> 01:29:02,088 What white people have to do is try to find out, 1326 01:29:02,255 --> 01:29:05,216 in their own hearts, why it was necessary 1327 01:29:05,383 --> 01:29:07,051 to have a "nigger" in the first place, 1328 01:29:07,427 --> 01:29:09,721 because I'm not a nigger, I'm a man. 1329 01:29:10,346 --> 01:29:12,807 But if you think I'm a nigger, it means you need him. 1330 01:29:13,099 --> 01:29:14,517 The question you've got to ask yourself, 1331 01:29:14,684 --> 01:29:17,270 the white population of this country has got to ask itself, 1332 01:29:17,687 --> 01:29:19,731 North and South, because it's one country, 1333 01:29:19,897 --> 01:29:21,065 and for the Negro, 1334 01:29:21,232 --> 01:29:22,984 there is no difference between the North and the South... 1335 01:29:23,151 --> 01:29:26,654 it's just a difference in the way they castrate you, 1336 01:29:27,321 --> 01:29:31,868 but the fact of the castration is the American fact. 1337 01:29:33,036 --> 01:29:36,122 If I'm not the nigger here and you invented him, 1338 01:29:36,289 --> 01:29:37,707 you the white people invented him, 1339 01:29:38,458 --> 01:29:40,001 then you've got to find out why. 1340 01:29:42,253 --> 01:29:43,671 And the future of the country depends on that, 1341 01:29:43,838 --> 01:29:45,840 whether or not it's able to ask that question. 111263

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