Posted by Pan-African News Wire on November 20, 1998 at 23:16:54:
Pan-African News Wire, Weekly Dispatch I, Sunday 15 November 1998
Editor's Note: The following are experts from a speech delivered by Kwame
Ture, formerly known as Stokely Carmichael, in July of 1966 in Detroit,
Michigan. In late July of 1966, Stokely Carmichael, who two months before
was elected as the chairman of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating
Committee (SNCC), and one month before introduced the concept of Black
Power to the national media in the United States during the Memphis,
Tennessee to Jackson, Mississippi "March Against Fear", visited Detroit.
He had gained national recognition as a result of his efforts during the
"March Against Fear." The march occured in response to the wounding of
James Meridith, who had set out to complete the walk on June 5, 1966 in
Memphis. During Carmichael's July 1966 visit he spoke at a series of
rallies with candidates for local political offices. On the evening of
July 30, he addressed an audience of mostly Africans at the Cobo
auditorium in downtown.
This speech was broadcast over the radio station WKNR on August 7, 1966.
The excerpts are taken from a tape recording of that broadcast.
Unfortunately, the address was edited for the usual 30 minutes time slot
for the former program known as "Project Detroit." We have been unable to
obtain the original tape recording of the entire speech. The material
that has been cut out is acknowledged through the spots known as ellipses
(...).
Text:
Carmichael-Ture: I'm going to try to speak the truth. That's very hard
to do in this country, you know. A country which was founded on racism
and lies. It's very hard to speak the truth. But we're going to try to
do that tongight.
Now, these guys--those guys over there. They're called the press. I got
up one morning and read a story. They were speaking about a cat named
Stokely Carmichael. I say he must be a ba-a-a-d nigger [laughter]. For
he's raising a whole lot of sand. I had to get up and look in the mirror
and make sure it was me [laughter]. Because all I said is that I'm, just
a poor old black boy, and I think it's time black people stop begging and
take what belongs to them [shouts and applause]. And takes what belongs
to them [continued applause].
And I said that because I learned that from America. They take what
belongs to them. And what don't belong to them, if they can't get it,
they destroy it [applause]. So I am not even trying to destroy what don't
belong to us. I'm just saying, we going to take it come hell or high
water. We going to take what belongs to us. Because it's been taken
away from us....[applause].
I'm very concerned, because you see we have a lot of Negro leaders, and I
want to make it clear that I'm no leader. I represent the Student
Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). That's the sole source of my
power, and that's Black Power. I'm no Negro leader, but I think that we
have to speak out about the war in Vietnam. We've got to talk to black
people about the war in Vietnam. This country has reduced us, black
people, to such a state that the only way our black youths can have a
decent life is to become a hired killer in the army [applause]. Don't you
know that? I'm going to speak the truth tonight. That when a man can get
up to say, "Well the best chance any Negro can have of course is to go
into the Armed Forces and, therefore, that's why there's so many of them."
Do you mean to tell me for me to have a decent life I've got to become a
hired killer and fight it out in Vietnam? Baby, it's time we stayed here
and fight it out here [shouts and applause]. That's where we going to
fight it out; that's where we going to stay [continuing applause].
You take a man, and you send him to Vietnam, a black man; and he's
fighting to give free elections to North Vietnam, that's what they tell
us, it's a lie, but that's what they tell us. And that same black man
who's fighting to give free elections to a North Vietnamese can't even
have free elections in Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, Georgia,
Tennessee, Arkansas, and Washington, D.C. [applause]. That man is nothing
but a black mercenary. A mercenary is a hired killer, and Western
civilization knows a lot about mercenaries--they invented them. They used
them in the Congo not too long ago. They using them now in Vietnam. You
send a black man to Vietnam to fight for rights, and he doesn't have any
rights in his homeland, he's a black mercenary. You send a black man to
Vietnam, and he gets shot and killed fighting for his country; and you
bring him home, and they won't bury him in his land--he's a black
mercenary [applause]. And if we going to be black mercenaries, then they
ought to pay us twenty-five thousand dollars a year and let us come home
every weekend [laughter and applause]. Since they not going to do that,
we going to have to develop in our communities enough internal strength to
tell everyone in this country that we're not going to your damn war period
[shouts and applause].
We have to start looking to Africa, brothers and sisters. We've got to
tell our African brothers that we talking about Black Power for them, too.
Black Power so they can get up and take arms and shoot the hell out of the
white folk in South Africa. That what we've got to tell them [shouts and
applause]. That what we've got to tell them [shouts and applause].
Because we going to move to tell them that once they control South Africa,
then Standard Oil's going to be reduced to our position, they going to be
begging, too. We've got to tell them to get rid of Chase Manhattan Bank
in South Africa. We've got to tell them it's time they told the
missionaries to take their bibles and go back to Europe and preach the
white man's burden there where it belongs [applause]. That's what we've
got to tell them [continued applause]. That's what we've got to tell
them.
Rudyard Kipling made a mistake. The white man's burden should have been
preached in England. He should have left us alone. They came with the
Bibles, and we had the land; they left with the land, and we got the
Bibles [applause]. Yes, we've go to tell the brothers in South Africa
that all that gold and diamonds and oil is theirs, and they've got to get
some Black Power and control it. That's what they've got to do. And
we've got to tell the black brothers in Africa that we stand one hundred
per cent behind Mr. Nkrumah; he's our man, he's our man [applause].
We've got to tell them [continued applause]. We've got to tell them.
But you've got to open your eyes and understand what's going on in this
world. And we've got to tell your African brothers that we were hep to
the World Court. We knew the United States was giving a racist country
like Austrailia two votes so they would make believe they were voting on
their side; we going to tell them we hep. We know what's happening.
Brother, it's 1966 and we been here for years and our eyes are open wide.
And we seeing you clear through, and you're nothing but a racist country,
and you've built and live upon the sweat and blood of our black skins and
we're standing up today, we're standing up [applause]. We're standing up
[continued applause].
No I'm no Negro leader, so I don't ever apologize for any black person.
And don't you ever apologize for any black person who throws a Molotov
cocktail [shouts and applause]. Don't you ever apologize [continued
applaluse]. And don't you ever call those things riots, because they are
rebellions, that's what they are [applause]. That's what they are
[continued applause]. And the truth of the matter is that they're not
organized because if they were we'd get a hell of a lot more besides
sprinklers on hydrants [shouts and applause].....
It's all right, it's all right for you to hate your brother and cut him up
on Friday night and Saturday night; but don't even hate them if they're
exploiting you, that's no good. They think they're masters of the world;
they think they God. And we've go to tell them, "Baby, you ain't God,
we've just let you play for a couple of hundred years [shouts and
applause].
And now it's time out for play. We've got to bring them to their knees.
We've got to build a power base that will be our protection. That if they
touch one black man in California while he's taking his wife to the
hospital, if they touch one black man in Mississippi while he's walking
down the highway, if they touch a group of black people riding their
horses their day off in Detroit, that we will move to disrupt this whole
damned country [applause].
And we had better understand that we going to have to go it alone. And
don't be ashamed of that brothers and sisters, because we're very
Christian. They taught us about David and Goliath [shouts and
applause]... .
When I talk about Black Power, it is presumptuous for any white man to
talk about it, because I'm talking to black people {applause]....*
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