Original subtitles

-[man VO] Ladies and gentlemen.

I'm very pleased to present to you...Jimmy Baldwin.

[applause and cheers]

-I'll tell you a story, if I may.

Many years ago, when I first came to London...

I was in the British Museum, naturally...

[laughter]

and one of the West Indians who worked there

struck up a conversation with me

and wanted to know where I was from.

And I told him I was from Harlem.

And that answer didn't satisfy him.

And I didn't understand what he meant.

"I was born in Harlem, I was born in Harlem Hospital,"

I said.

"I was born in New York."

None of these answers satisfied him and he said,

"Where was your mother born?"

And I said, "She was born in Maryland."

And I could see, though I didn't understand it,

that he was growing more and more disgusted with me.

He was becoming more and more impatient.

"Where was your father born?"

"My father was born in New Orleans."

"Yes," he said. "But, man, where were you born?"

[light laughter]

And I began to get it, you know?

And I said-- well, I said, "My mother was born in Maryland,

my father was born in New Orleans,

and I was born in New York."

He said, "But before that, where were you born?"

[laughter]

And I had to say, "I don't know."

I could see that he did not believe me.

I tried to explain, you know?

"There's no way for me--"

He said, "Don't you care enough to find out?"

And I tried to explain that if I were originally-- originally

from Dakar or from wherever I was in Africa,

I couldn't find out where it was because my entry into America is

a Bill of Sale.

And that stops-- you know, that stops you from going any

further.

At some point in our history, I became...

Baldwin's Nigger. That's how I got my name.

Now, you know, that really cannot be considered,

you know, my fault.

It can't be considered the fault of the cat at the British

Museum, either, that I don't-- that he doesn't know that I

can't find that out.

And I tell you that story to dramatize the nature of the

distance created-- created deliberately.

Because when I became Baldwin's Nigger;

it's also very important to point out.

I was handcuffed to another man from another tribe whose

language I did not speak.

We did not know each other.

And we could not speak to each other because if we could have

spoken to each other we might have been able to figure out

what was happening to us and if we could figure out what was

happening to us we might have been able to prevent it.

We would have had, in short, a kind of solidarity,

which is a kind of identity, which might have allowed us--

which might have made the history of slavery

very different.

The history of slavery in the North American continent,

I mean.

Well, that didn't happen and here we are.

One of the most terrible things-- well, one of the most

difficult things -- because it's some which one has and wants to

resist as he had said and also to use -- is that, in fact,

whether we like it or not, I am an American.

Now, that is not-- I'm not Lyndon Johnson.

I'm not saying that as, you know,

"I'm an American!"

I don't mean that, you know?

[laughter]

Alas, I mean something very different.

[laughter]

But I do mean that I was formed in a certain crucible.

My school really was the streets of New York City.

My frame of reference was

George Washington and John Wayne, you know?

[laughter]

But I-- you know, I was a child, you know?

I'm a child open his eyes on the world,

who usually sees; there is nothing else to use.

And you are formed by what you see.

The choices you have to make and the way you discover what it

means to be Black in New York.

I don't know how you discover what it means to be Black in

London but I know what it means how you discover that in New

York and then throughout the entire country.

And I know how as you grow older you watch in the richest city in

the world, you know, and the most-- the most famous,

the richest, freest nation in the world.

[laughter]

In the Western World.

I know how you watch, as you grow older,

literally, now this is not a figure of speech;

the corpses of your brothers and your sisters pile up around you.

And not for anything they have done.

They were too young to have done anything.

And in any case, too helpless.

But what one does realize is that...

when you try to stand up

and look the world in the face, like you had a right to be here.

When you do that, without knowing this is the result of

it, you have attacked the entire power structure of the

Western World.

If I one fine day discover...

that I have been lied to...

all the years of my life,

and my mother and my father were being lied to.

If I discover that, in fact, though I was bred and bought and

sold like a mule...

that I never really was a mule.

If I discover that I was never really happy picking all that

cotton and digging in all those mines

to make other people rich.

And if I discover that those songs the Darkies sang and sing

were not just the innocent expressions of a primitive

people but extremely subtle and difficult;

dangerous and tragic...

expressions of what it felt like to be in chains.

Then by one's presence, simply, by the attempt to walk from here

to there...

you've begun to frighten the white world.

They've always known that you were not a mule.

They have always known that no one wishes to be a slave.

They have always known that the bales of cotton in them-- in the

textile mills and entire metropolises built on Black

labor.

That the Black was not doing it out of love.

He was doing it under the whip.

The threat-- The threat of the gun and the even more desperate

and subtle threat of the Bible.

Now, then...

one is watching, according to me,

in the streets of Southeast Asia.

What must be considered...

as a final act of the white,

Christian European industrial drama.

Speaking as an American reading the news,

and looking at the pictures, the streets of Saigon resemble

nothing so much to me as the streets of Detroit.

And in both cities, precisely the same war is being waged.

That war...

may it spread to engulf the globe.

And lets speak plainly.

We know, everybody knows, no matter what the professions of

my unhappy country may be, that we are not bombing people out of

existence in the name of freedom.

If it were freedom we were concerned about,

then long, long ago we would have done something about

Johannesburg, South Africa.

If we were concerned with freedom,

boys and girls, not as I stand here,

would be perishing in the streets of Harlem.

We are concerned with power, nothing more than that.

And most unluckily for the Western World,

it's consolidated its power on the backs of people who are now

going to die rather than be used any longer.

In short, the economic arrangement of the Western World

proved to be too expensive for most of the world.

And the Western World will change these arrangements or

these arrangements will be changed for them.

This is what is beneath all the rhetoric and all those rather

shameful speeches coming from my President.

[light clapping]

This imposes on us, then, a very considerable burden.

I, for example, do have in principle at least a choice

of...

how can I put it? Of becoming a good American.

I can make a living -- [laughs] at least I could.

I'm well enough known to be an ornament.

[light laughter]

In short, I could ally myself...

on the side of what I most seriously consider to be a

criminal nation.

But if I can't do that, then I have to examine all the reasons

I can't and find it in myself to precisely the terms of my

connection with other people.

One has tried, I tried for a long time,

in my own person, in things I wrote,

in things I said.

I don't mean that I was alone but I'm using myself as an

example...

to convey to my countrymen -- white and Black--

the nature of our danger and where we were going to go if we

could not resolve the situation in our cities and in our

streets, in our houses, if brother could not deal with

brother because in American continent

they talk about the color problem,

but the truth is, that no white American is sure he's white.

[laughter]

And every American Negro, visibly is no longer an African.

And we know what happened. And we know who had the whip.

So it was not my grandmother who raped anybody.

[laughter]

Well...

if the day comes, when you realize, and you don't want

to realize it, that you cannot make yourself heard,

that the people who-- you are addressing a plea,

for them and for you and the plea is a very simple one.

It's saying, "Look at it."

Forget all the mountains of nonsense that have been written,

and everything that's been said.

Forget the Negro problem.

Don't write any voting acts.

We had that. It's called 15th Amendment.

We earned the Civil Rights of the 1964!

What you had to look at is what is happening in this country and

what is really happening is that brother has murdered brother

knowing it was his brother.

White men have lynched Negroes knowing them to be their sons!

White women have had Negroes burned knowing them to be their

lovers.

It is not a racial problem, it's a problem of whether or not

you're willing to look at your life and be responsible for it

and then begin to change it.

That great Western House I come from is one house and I'm one of

the children of that house, simply,

I'm the most despised child of that house.

And it because the American people are unable to face the

fact that I the fact I'm flesh of their flesh,

bone of their bone, created by them.

My blood, my father's blood is in that soil.

They can't face that!

And that is why the city of Detroit went up in flames!

And that is why the city of the Saigon was under martial law.

I know that in 400 years in that house,

they do not know who I am and I cannot marry their daughters or

go to their churches.

I would have to be a much more stupid man that I am to believe

they know anything at all about those people in the Asian

jungles.

According to me, they liberated me,

before they got around to Asia and it was liberation difficult

to bear.

Many didn't survive it.

It seems to me though that the great is difficulty that we

face.

It's first of all to excavate our actual history and I'm part

of the history which occurred in the Caribbean.

And you were part of the history which occurred in Harlem.

And one's got to find the terms.

One's gotta accept that and find that how to use that.

And one's got to decide, I think,

that the actual and the moral basis on which the world we know

now rests, are obsolete.

It must be changed.

And as far they are obsolete, they are wicked.

And as far they are obsolete, they are oppressive.

It is simply not conceivable that for another 500 years or

200 years or 100 years that the Blacks of South Africa,

for an example, should live and die in the mines,

being treated like animals to make other people rich.

That is simply not-- the civilization which is doing

this, by doing this, dooms itself.

It is not possible to agree with it nor it is possible to

compromise with it.

Freedom is not--

Freedom is a much-- much overused word and it

may not be as real as slavery, which is a very concrete thing.

But freedom is what one's after.

And as it cannot, I suppose, be given,

then it obviously must be taken.

They are many ways to take it but before we can discover this,

we have to discover how to reunite ourselves,

in terms on which we can speak to each other,

the terms in which in fact, to put it bluntly,

we can plot against the master.

And unless, anyone misunderstand me,

I'm not really talking about color and I'm not talking about

race. I don't really believe in race.

I don't really believe in color.

But I do know what I see.

I do know

that in the very same way

that the American Negro situaion...

man, it's everybody in the country,

and now it is visible!

What happened in Detroit is the, is perfectly logical and the

lesson is plain.

What happened says, "If I can't live in this city,

you can't live in this city, either."

When a city goes-- everybody in the city is under martial law.

If I can't walk out and buy a loaf of bread,

safely, neither can the housewife that's why he's on the

range, learning how to use a pistol,

in the land of the free and the home of the brave.

[laughter]

They are confusing themselves with the Indians.

No, they're back on the wagon train.

But we all know who's in the streets of America.

We know to whom we are referring when we talk about crime in the

streets.

We know the son of the President of Pan-Am is not in the streets.

Only one person in the streets -- that's me!

And they're plotting to shoot me in the name of freedom,

dignified by law, and I'm supposed to agree.

I'm supposed to agree.

No, no. No sir.

I won't be dishonoring no more.

At last, the party's over.

The question is what shall we do?

Everyone knows that the question is in everybody's lap.

From Washington to London to Bonn.

Everybody knows it.

They are trying to figure out what to do.

We should figure out what to do.

Thank you.

[applause]

Thank you very much. Now you're suppose to

talk to me.

[laughter]

Now, I'll sit down.

-[man] Why do you call a man Negro?

Why don't you just call him a Black man?

There's no country of the Negro, do you know that?

-[James] Yes, I'm aware of that. I know that.

-[man] So why do you call a Negro not Black man?

-[James] Can I try to explain now?

-[man] Yes.

[laughter]

-[James] Listen.

It was not I -- nor any Black man in America -- who invented

the word "Negro."

It is not I who wrote that on my birth certificate.

It is not I who invented that language.

I understand the purpose of your question.

There indeed is no country called Negro.

I know that.

But you must understand, too,

that I can not change my vocabulary over night.

I may agree with you.

But we've been called-- we've been called-- and we've called

ourselves American Negros for over nearly 400 years.

Now do you suppose that because it angers you that suddenly an

entire nation is able to change its vocabulary?

In any case, I distrust the emphasis on the vocabulary,

you know?

Your generation, not mine, will call itself Black.

That's good enough for me.

That's the whole point.

My mother-- my mother's mother called herself a Nigger.

You must understand the nature of oppression.

The most subtle effect of oppression is that-- what it

does to your mind.

What it does to the way you think about yourself.

The whole cornerstone rests there.

If you understand that, then you can see,

I think, that even though my mother's mother called herself a

Nigger, she managed to raise a family and instill somehow in

her children some sense-- some dignity,

which did not depend on the word.

One had to learn how to use those terms in order to survive

and even to triumph.

-In view of the situation that is really now happening that has

gone past, how do you envision the Black man's personality,

let's say, within 50 years?

I'm asking you kind of just to, you know,

try to say what you can. Tell me about it.

-[James] In 50 years?

-In the next 50 years.

[applause]

-This a reckless question and I'll try to give a reckless

answer.

[laughter]

I don't know if this is, so, I'll tell you what I would like

and what I hope.

I think that Black people, you know?

There's a Black experience, let's put it this way.

And I'm deliberately trying to distinguish the Black experience

from the Christian-- the white Christian European experience.

It's easier the Black personality then has a

kind of vigor.

A kind of vitality.

And a kind of...

a sense of life, of something in which

that is not come from here.

But comes in from much deeper regions.

I think, the African personality is not so compartmentalized.

I think that Europeans-- the European personality in the main

and this implies a very severe judgment of Christianity.

A very severe judgement is not an indictment.

I think they are terribly worried about the flesh.

The senses.

I think they live in checks and balances which are really very

nearly pathological.

You see them in relief in America.

Because an American-- in America I precisely am the flesh,

which the Christians must mortify.

Now, according to me and what I hope for in the future, the

flesh is all you have.

If you mortify that, there's no hope for you.

Everything you find out you find out through your senses.

Everything that-- Everything awful that happens to you and

everything marvelous that happens to you,

happens to you in this frame.

This tenement.

This mortal envelope.

Which should be.

Instead of beating it with chains.

And hammering nails through it and hanging it on crosses.

It should be the celebration.

Your life, your body.

And if that concept comes back into the world...

it will come back only through in the Black people who've been

submerged so long.

And that will change not only the Black personality but that

will change the world.

I've seen janitors -- Black janitors -- in overalls prouder

than any English king.

With a much more real pride.

And that is what I would like to see.

Any way the change of the personality would come about in

that direction cause as-- as one begins to come out of the mines

and strike off the chains by some miracle,

what was nearly murdered in Africa is still there.

Humanity can not be destroyed.

And that's what's coming back.

-You said something earlier in one of your books.

Quite contemptuously, I thought that, um,

you thought it irrelevant to trace your roots back to the

village.

-[James] I beg your pardon?

-You said something in one of your books.

Quite contemptuously, I thought, that you thought it irrelevant

to trace your roots back to some African village.

-[James] No.

-From what you said here tonight,

have you moved away from that position?

-[James] I have a problem certain that I never said that.

[laughter]

I might have but I very much doubt it.

[laughter]

-You said you thought it unnecessary to trace your roots

back to Africa?

-[James] I think you're talking about an essay called "A

Stranger in the Village?"

I was making a comparison between the days the European's

arrived in my African village and, you know, what they thought

of me and what I thought of them.

And I was not being contemptuous at all.

At all.

I was saying, "This is what happened."

I have to look at -- this is what happened.

When they had Beethoven, Bach and all of these things and the

Christian faith and the cross and all those horses and guns

and boats.

I was perfectly happy in Africa watching the conqueror arrive.

[laughter]

It was an examination for myself of my history.

And certainly not meant to be contemptuous.

-[woman] We from the West Indies,

you may or may not total understand...

because we are-- we are British.

We are West British. I mean, we are British Colony.

-[man] [inaudible] -[woman] What?

-Quiet. -[woman] Quiet time.

[laughter]

I mean, call it British diplomacy if you wish, but we

are obviously, as far as I can see,

look at the color problem

different than into the American Negro.

[jeering]

Now that we are in England--

Now that I am in England,

I'm very glad I'm back in England because I'm more

aware of the fact I am a Negro.

In Jamaica I wasn't aware of the fact because it's very

cosmopolitan.

I mean in Jamaica, we-- I don't know if you ever been to it?

We have more a shade problem.

[overlapping chatter and applause]

Anyway the point I'm trying to get across is I never knew I was

a real Negro until I came to England.

I know it now -- that's why I'm here.

I am very honest.

I was here the other night with Mr. Gregory --

Dick, rather.

[laughter]

You can't drink water from the same glass as a man and don't

call him Dick.

[laughter]

The point I want to get across is--

The point I want to get across is...

which is better: Integration or Black Power?

-Is that a question?

-[woman] [inaudible] just explain.

[laughter]

-I don't-- In the first place I don't see there's necessarily a

division between them.

But let me-- let me take Black Power first.

-[woman] Yeah.

-And Integration later.

Black Power is a very simple phrase and I don't know

why everyone gets so upset about Black Power.

When watching the effects of white power all over the world.

[cheers and banging]

And no one even questions it.

And no one even questions the white power which is destroying

thousands men and women and children in-- in Vietnam.

That power because it is power is sacred.

-[woman] Yeah.

-No one-- No one-- No one questions it.

The power of the Bible and the Holy Ghost.

[laughter]

[banging]

The term "Black Power," you know,

strikes terror into many people's minds because it

implies precisely the over throw of the Bible and the Holy Ghost

at least they think so.

And it does actually means that.

What it means is that Black people -- this is all it

mens -- that Black people have in their own hands the control

of their own destiny.

That's all it means.

The English has a great phrase for it.

They're very proud of the phrase.

It's called a self determination of peoples.

That's all it means.

As for Integration, that is not our goal.

-[man] No? -No, at all.

That is precisely is our problem.

-It's a very simple question.

Do you think that there is any place for the white liberal in

the Black Power movement?

[loud jeering]

And when you answer this question,

could you be kind enough to give the reasons?

Because I've attended a lot of-- meetings on the subject of Black

Power at which in particular English people feel very hurt

because you get the line from said platform,

"We don't want you."

Could you give me the benefit of your thoughts on this?

-I suppose "liberal" refers to political tradition coming

out of the North of Europe, you know,

in finding his roots, you know, whatever it's base is in England

and in America.

But to my ear as a Black man, a white liberal is immediately

suspect because it is indistinguishable and one's got

to face this.

You might as well say a white missionary because that's the

association.

And it is also alas very often -- not always --

but very, very often the role and the effect but deeper than

that and more important than that there's also this...

that from a historical point of view, no matter how miserable my

situation is...

from a historical point of view at this hour of the world's

history, I'm advantage over you because I'm compelled --

I'm speaking about myself as a Black man not as a...

I'm compelled to doubt my history, to examine it.

I'm compelled to try to create it.

I'm trying to excavate my history from all the rubble that

has buried it for so many hundred of years.

That means I have to question everything.

Where as the white liberals have precisely opposite position of

being in the main unwilling,

as well as unable,

to examine the forces

which have brought him to where he is,

which have created him, in fact...

to-- to make which must be very difficult.

To know the quite of part from whatever his own attitude,

aspirations, morality; whatever they may be.

His is never the less, well he now likes it.

The power of the people-- he is part of the people who in this

very hour are jailing some Black boy in Mississippi for this very

hour are whipping some Black African slave.

You know who-- this very hour are perpetrating those

tremendous enormities against a [inaudible] of people who look

like me.

And furthermore, that...

his-- I hate to use this word but in the

sense that innocence-- that innocence can be, in crucial

moments, a very grave danger.

It can menace much, much more than the white liberal can

imagine.

You see...

you can't, after all--

My brother's got to say, you know--

my family -- let's put it that way --

have forged, out of our own experience,

ways of talking to each other.

Ways of, you know, in making deals with each other like that

because we-- it's the same way it happen to us,

you know?

I ain't got to explain thing to brother, David, you know?

We just look at each other.

Not even look at each other and we both know, you know?

We both know.

Now, you can't, in some moments, you don't have the time to

explain to somebody else, you know?

That's how we got the spiritual called "Steal Away."

It's not about stealing away Jesus.

[laughter]

It's a time table, you know?

Somebody-- Somebody's splitting, you know?

You know what to do because he's leaving.

He's stealing away.

You can't always explain that.

And, at last, we got to face this...

got to face this...

that in many, many, many Black Power meetings,

you know, some of the most eminent liberals turned out to

be working for the CIA.

[laughter]

Now, it's true, too, on the other hand

that many-- you know, many Black people were also working for the

CIA, but you -- in this context --

you the white liberal in this context suffer from your color

exactly as I suffer from my color in another and more brutal

context.

And must got to face that.

And when you face it, one can deal with it and then it doesn't

matter.

But I don't think it serves any purpose to get one feelings

hurt.

Because it's not the matter of my liberation, for example.

It's also the matter of yours.

And if you're working, we're working together it's not

because we are going to do something for the poor Black

people because we're going to do something for each other.

To save this really rather frightening world.

-What was the question about the cheered up for the average

American Negro to it's Christianity?

My impression is one worship in a [inaudible] twice a week and

sing beautiful songs.

-[James] The vote of the American Negro population is a

very complicated question to answer.

I know I can't do it justice tonight.

The bulk of the American Negro population is Christian or, at

least, it thinks it is.

Now, you have to--

When one begins to examine it, you discover that there are some

very crucial differences between white Christianity and Black

Christianity.

Even at some celebrated churchs [inaudible] church.

And this is partly because -- to minimize it,

to understate it --

the church is operated in the life of the American Negro,

who was once the Black African slave,

as his only-- his only forum.

His-- His only place where he was relatively free.

And is also the place in which he was able to act out,

to sing out, to dance out his pride and his terrors and his

desire for revenge.

All those sermons are bloodthirsty.

Their not talking about devils and Samson and Delilah;

any of those things.

They're talking about the master.

In a song which says-- it's supposed to be about Samson.

The master always thought it was about Samson only now he thinks

it's about something else.

Man says, the slave says, "If I had my way--

If I had my way

I'd tear this building down."

That sounds like a very happy and innocent church song.

It's lethal.

[laughter]

[laughing] And the American Black Christian is becoming more

and more aware of what of the real content of his

Christianity, which is not the content of the Church of

England.

It has been one of the incidents of our salvation.

One of the techniques of our salvation.

And now we know it.

So whether one is a Christian at that point,

I don't know.

It doesn't matter since one knows how to use what one's

history is.

-[man] Excuse me.

We're going to stop questioning for the time being and we are

going to have a few words from Dick Gregory.

[applause]

-I really haven't got...

too much to say but I'm very glad that I

was able to be here tonight for my brother James and...

you're a very groovy speaker, man.

[laughter]

'Cause you got in show business and I guess I have to go home

and write me another book.

[laughter]

I-- I have enjoyed very well...

listening and watching and

Jim made a very important point that when you create an action a

writer have to watch and then come up and write on the action.

And I think this is very important when we read

works of a social writer like this...

I observed you the audience here

tonight which is been very interesting.

For instance, the fellow who's gone now

who questioned why we in America call ourselves Negros and not

Blacks.

And well, here in this country you refer yourself

as "Coloreds."

[laughter]

And so I think we got to understand that all of us is put

in the same trick, you know?

In America, they charge me more money for automobile insurance

and they will never admit that in the Negro neighborhood they

have poor lighting on the streets and bad streets and

small streets and overcrowded conditions.

So I have more cars per acre than white folks have.

So naturally I got more accidents per acre than white

folks have.

But in here as me and my brother was discussing today they charge

you more for license because they say you a bad driver and

then turn around and 60 percent of the bus drivers is Black.

[laughter and applause]

And so how you can never understand how he gets by with

some of his stuff...

[laughter]

we can't understand how here he gets by.

In closing, let me say this...

in vaguely asking the gentlemen's question

here about white liberalism...

we are getting to the part now where we are getting kind of

sassy and kind of belligerent and, you know,

it's just like a game.

Life is a game, you know?

You'd play baseball when you was a kid and you'd say,

"Okay, let me hit a couple."

[laughter]

And, you know, like Black folks that have gone to wars in what I

call "white man's armies."

Without Black folks being at the top issue line.

In America, there is no Black people in the Pentagon and they

send us to battle.

And we have gone for years without questioning where he was

sending me or why I was going.

And now we're saying, "Okay, white folks,

it's your turn."

You know, I'm going to be the General and you're going to be

the private.

[laughter]

This is the way you going to march.

When you get through marching over there you're going to come

back here; I might pay you and I might not.

[laughter]

So what we really trying to say is Black-- we say we don't want

no white liberals -- that's right --

because, you see, the word "white liberal" is an

unconscious racist statement because nobody's ever admit it

that we got Black liberals who's far more worse than

white liberals ever been.

[laughter]

[applause]

And we also say we don't want them...

in the movement.

You see, a Black Liberal in America is the cult doctor

because when we demonstrate, they say,

"We shouldn't."

But after we finish, he becomes the first public health

commissioner.

[laughter]

And so we say in that can you come with us and cease being

white-- see, we need bodies,

and we need cats that think Black regardless of how white

you are.

Because, you see, I have run across Negros who's much

lighter and act more whiter than you.

And so I have to take their word for them if I can't take

their attitude.

And when I was in show business and people asked me,

"What percentage of white folks do you think is laughing at your

humor because they are guilty?"

And my answer to them was, "I can not look at a cat and just

because he's light and look white,

assume that he's white.

Because he might not be a white cat and be laughing without a

damn thing to be guilty of."

[laughter]

[applause]

And so what we are really saying is that Black Power and we don't

white folks in the movement.

You see, white is not a color -- it's a attitude.

Black is not a color -- it's a attitude.

[applause]

So the whitest, white cat with, you know--

Father Groppi proved this in Milwaukee.

The most strongest Black Nationalist that's ever lived in

modern times was not in Africa or not Malcolm X was a white cat

in America named John Brown.

Because John Brown caught some wrong doing white folks and told

his son who was also white to kill them for what they have

done to my brother.

And his son said, "I can't do it, Daddy."

And he said, "If you don't kill them, I will kill you!"

Now, I don't know a Black cat yet, man, that's ready to wipe

out his family because of somebody [inaudible] me.

[applause]

And so this whole thing we talking about have nothing to do

with color at all, man.

It has something to do with an attitude.

But now we shifting color.

You see, in China if you to a funeral dressed in a black

outfit, you'd probably be stoned.

Because in China white represents death.

[laughter]

As hip as I am in the Civil Rights movement -- and as many

things that I know from a laymen's stand point -- I've had

a very brilliant education tonight listening to you, and

I want to thank you.

-[James] Thank you.

[applause]

♪"I Shall Be Released" by The Heptones♪