James Farmer lecture, "Black Political Action," at the University of Iowa, June 6, 1978

Darwin Turner: It is my pleasure to welcome you to the third evening lecture in the 10th annual Institute for Afro-American Culture at the University of Iowa, the fifth in succession, sponsored through a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities. I'm honored to be able to introduce our speaker of this evening. An individual whose name, most of you know so well and whose accomplishments, you know so well, that my reading of information about him becomes repetitious. For the record however, let me point out a few facts. Darwin Turner: He earned a Bachelor's degree from Wiley University, a Bachelor of Divinity degree from Howard. He has been honored by Morgan State College. His major work with the Civil Rights Movement began as early as 1942, when at the age of 22, he was founder of the Congress of Racial Equality. For two years, he served as National Chairman of that organization while also serving as Race Relations Secretary of the Fellowship of Reconciliation, a post he held until 1945. Darwin Turner: He served subsequently as organizer to the Upholsters International Union of North Americans, as a lecturer on Race and Labor. Then he became student Field Secretary of the League for Industrial Democracy. And in 1959, became Program Director of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. He left that post in 1961 to become the National Director of CORE, a position he held until 1966. And as of course, with CORE and during the Freedom Rides of 1961, that he probably became most widely known as one of the major Civil Rights leaders of the era. Darwin Turner: Overlapping his years of work with the NAACP and CORE. He also served as vice chairman of the Liberal party of New York County. He served on the National Executive Board of the American Committee on Africa. He's taught at Lincoln University in Pennsylvania, served as an Adjunct Professor at New York University. And he was Assistant Secretary for Administration at HEW 1969, 1970. Darwin Turner: He has also been sponsor of the American Negro Leadership Conference on Africa, President of the Center for Community Action Education, President of the Council on Minority Planning and Strategy. And at present, he is Executive Director of the Coalition of American Public Employees, a coalition drawn from such organizations as the NEA, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, and several others. Darwin Turner: In his spare time, he served as on the Boards of Directors of the Legal Industrial Democracy, the Friends of Earth, the National Citizens Committee on Broadcasting, Black World Foundation, and a number of other organizations. His distinguished career has brought awards from Omega PSI Phi fraternity twice, from the American Veterans Committee, the John Dewey award from the League of Industrial Democracy, and the distinguished postgraduate achievement alumni award from Howard University. Darwin Turner: Well, these are facts. I'd like to take just a couple of moments to introduce the James Farmer that I remembered beyond these facts and another James Farmer that I was introduced to about two hours before he reached Iowa City. I'm not certain that he will appreciate all of these references nor approve of them. Darwin Turner: In the early years of the sixties, when I was still living in Greensboro, North Carolina, it was a period of demonstration. And so happened that on one particular day, I felt that a march was unwise. The city was tense. The administration of the University had been put into a position in which the president had issued a public statement that any student walking in the demonstration would be expelled. That public statement, I was assured later by the president, would never be carried out. He would never be able to identify a single student. But I did not know that for several hours and found myself in a crowd waiting for the line in march to begin. Because on that particular day, if the line was going I, who was not in most of them, would have to go. Darwin Turner: All I knew about James Farmer was that he was the leader of CORE. Now, at that particular time in the early 60s, CORE was the militant organization of Black people. And if James Farmer was the leader, that meant that march was going to go on regardless. James Farmer came into Greensboro, sized up the situation very quickly, called off the march for that day, held it the next day with far less tension. And I gained an immediate respect for the perception of an individual who could quickly sense the town, the atmosphere that he'd come into. Darwin Turner: The second James Farmer that I remember, I'm something of a cynic about speakers. I like good speakers. I am impressed sometimes, rarely carried to heights of enthusiasm. I heard James Farmer speak during that period and immediately classified him as one of the most eloquent speakers I'd ever heard. And far beyond that, at that particular time, the best Black leader debater I had heard on television was Malcolm. I immediately assumed that it would be a very tight debate between the two of them for the sharpness of mind, the alertness of perception, these were evident in the presentation. Darwin Turner: The final James Farmer that I met shortly before his presence in Iowa City confirmed this. I was talking this afternoon with Blyden Jackson from North Carolina, and bragging a bit informed him that James Farmer was going to be speaking for us this evening. Blyden Jackson informed me that he had served with James Farmer for several years on a committee, knew him, and considered him one of the warmest individuals he had ever known, an individual you would want to have for a friend. Ladies and gentlemen, let me introduce then Mr. James Farmer to discuss the 1960s. James Farmer: Thank you very much, Dr. Turner and friends. I do want to thank Dr. Turner For that a splendid introduction. I wish I could carry him with me when I go on lecture tours to introduce me. Does something for my ego. And at times I need it. He was so flattering that my first inclination was to do as speakers generally do when they receive a generous and kind introduction, that's to tell the audience how undeserved those kind remarks were. But I rejected that notion because I remembered something my mother said many years ago when I was very young. She said, "Son, don't reject flattery. Don't knock it. You're not that good." So with gratitude, I appreciate it, and I enjoy hearing those words and would like to hear them more often. James Farmer: I would take exception to only one thing that my friend, Dr. Turner, said and that is that everyone here knows who I am. I see quite a number of young people here who are students and they don't know who I am, I'm sure. I know. I see your heads agreeing with me. I don't, I recall recently, oh, two, three months ago, being on a college campus in the Midwest and Black dude came up to me and said, "I saw your picture on a post today. Farmer, James Farmer. Yeah, man, I've heard of you. You used to play for the Chicago bears, didn't you?" I said, "No, for the Civil Rights Tigers." James Farmer: Now I have, I think the title of the talk has been announced as Blacks in Politics. But in talking with Dr. Turner, he assured me that that subject was picked because it seemed sufficiently broad that I could cover just about anything that I wanted to. And I'm going to accept that license in the next few minutes and cover pretty much the waterfront or attempt to. Actually, it is politics that we're talking about in the broader and, no doubt, the more significant sense. Couple of years ago, I made a speaking tour in Asia. I was asked two questions, which were two different ways of asking one question in almost every place I went. And those questions, or rather, that question was essentially a political question. They were attempting to understand the civil rights movement and the struggle specifically of Blacks in this country. The question, the first question, was this, "How does a minority survive under political democracy that is under majority rule and avoid what de Tocqueville called the tyranny of the majority?" Now, that obviously is a political question in the deeper sense. James Farmer: There were many other ways of putting that same question. One way that I recall was, "How do the powerless speak to power?" And I think that's what the movement was about in the sixties and the latter half of the fifties. And that is, I say, was another way of asking the same question. And it is essentially a political question. You must recall that in the late fifties, we had just a minimum of political clout. We had, what was it, two congressmen then? Powell and Dawson. We had 700, 750 Black elected officials. In most of the decision making policy, determining councils, we were absent. And so without planning it that way and without really having a concept of what we were attempting to do, what the movement was seeking to do was to minimize that lack of political power. To put it in another way, to find a substitute for political power that could work politically to find ways in which a minority that was powerless could speak to power and could avoid the tyranny of the majority, could minimize its being a minority numerically. James Farmer: That is in, in my opinion, just what we attempted to do. Well, let me step back a little in order to discuss the late fifties and the sixties. I think we have to give a little of the background and I give the background and you must understand that I'm not being self-serving at all. If I mention "I," I don't really mean "I." Back in the early sixties, when the civil rights organizations were working together and collaborating, there was also a good deal of competition. And our public relations people would always counsel us in this way. If you did it say, "I." If the other fellow did it say "We." That was the rule of thumb that was frequently used in the sixties. So I will use that rule of thumb here. James Farmer: As you have discussed in your previous seminar sessions, the movement of the sixties actually began with the Supreme Court decision in 1954. The method of nonviolence in the American scene began much earlier than that began in the early forties when CORE was organized. And it grew out of two groups, political groups, essentially. One, a pacifist group that was opposed to war in the early days of World War II, the Fellowship of Reconciliation. And two, the democratic socialists of the Norman Thomas variety. Young people in those organizations where thrashing about seeking to find someone non-violent, or peaceful alternative to violence, in the resolution of social conflict situation. And I was a part of that ferment at the time as a very young man and began studying Gandhi, Mahatma Gandhi, his program in India as a one, which held a good deal of hope for our saying here. Though the differences between India and the situation of Blacks in the United States 1941, were much greater than the similarities, but there were some similarities. Basically, the similarity of common oppression. James Farmer: We talked with disciples of Gandhi, such as our Krishnalal Shridharani, who had been with Gandhi on his now famous March to the Sea and the salt strike in India, when he was violating the edict of the British empire and distilling water from the sea and making salt and giving it free to the people in the countryside of India. And this was against the law of the British empire. They wanted them to purchase the salt from the empire and pay the taxes to the empire. So he was imprisoned and thousands were imprisoned. More thousands were imprisoned who took their places similarly to violate the law in a deliberate act of civil disobedience. And it went on until the jails were filled. They had no place to put the people. Furthermore, they had to feed them. James Farmer: Well, we were impressed by all of this, but yet they kept coming. They kept coming. They wouldn't stop. Finally, since the law, the evil law, as Gandhi viewed it, could not be enforced by the empire. Since people refuse to accept it's power. Then the law had to either lapse into disuse or to be repealed. It was repeal. That was a victory. There were many other victories. Well, we started that and then sat down with a group of similarly minded, young people who were white and Black, most of them associated with the University of Chicago as undergraduate or graduate students, and pondered how we could adapt that technique of nonviolent direct action or including civil disobedience to the struggle against discrimination and for equal rights in this country. James Farmer: And out of those discussions grew CORE the first Congress of Racial Equality in the city of Chicago. And the next two or three years, a couple of dozen other groups were organized largely in northern cities. We did not go south. Oh, we had one small group in Nashville and one in Bartlesville, Oklahoma, which were not extremely active groups. But at each convention of this fledgling organization, we debated whether to quote, "Invade the South," unquote. Our decision, at that time, was it to have done so would've been suicide, not only for us, but what was more important to us at that time, was that we felt it would have been suicide to the Blacks who had to live there in the South long after we had gone back up North. And that they would have been massacred the reprisals, at that time in the early forties to middle forties, would have been so great that it would have been crushed and the Black communities in the South crushed too. James Farmer: I have no way of knowing whether our judgment was correct then or not. But we were sitting in 1941, 42, 43, and restaurants standing-in, in cafeteria lines, standing-in in lines at theaters, wading-in in public beaches and in public swimming pools, et cetera. In most cases, not experiencing violence as a consequence, sometimes being arrested, some instances of violence, but in most cases, just sitting there or standing there until the place closed. There was no publicity then. This you will remember those who are young and nodded their head heads earlier, this was before television. Television did not cover this. There was no television. Radio ignored it because we were considered a handful of kooks, literally. If we were lucky, there would be a small paragraph on the back page of the Chicago Tribune, or some similar paper in another city, saying that "Yesterday, at five o'clock, a half dozen nuts, and crackpots, and crazies sat-in at a restaurant until they were thrown out or jailed, whichever came first, or until the place closed," which was the third option. So it did not spread. In those days, non-violence was unknown, literally, by masses of people. James Farmer: I recall talking to people, Blacks and whites, saying, "Well, we started a nonviolent organization." They said, "What are you, some kind of a nut or something? You mean if somebody hit you, you're not going to hit him back?" And they would turn on their heels and walk away. But we never grew. In the forties and the first half of the fifties at most, we had 25 chapters. They were small and unknown. The largest had maybe 50 members. No budget. When we needed money, we'd pass a hat and take up a collection among those 50 members and so on. The movement then was trying to do a number of things. It was trying to involve the people themselves in their struggle for what we term freedom rather than merely applauding the experts and the specialists. I recall going to meetings and listening to the marvelous oratory of Thurgood Marshall and applauding of what he was doing for us. But I wasn't doing anything except applauding and maybe paying the $2 for the membership fee. James Farmer: Well, what we attempted then was to get the people themselves involved. We studied Thoreau, as well as Gandhi, when he said something like this, it's not a direct quotation, "Most of all, I must see to it that I do not lend myself to the evil, which I condemn." That was Henry David Thoreau. And it is represented precisely what we were attempting to do. This movement began to grow only when the bus boy caught of Montgomery caught the eye of the world and the conscience of all peoples. Because there, it had the inspired and courageous and charismatic leadership of Martin Luther King. In addition, there was television which covered it, which put it in everybody's living room throughout the nation. Made it headlines throughout the earth. And for the first time, it was in a major Southern city, the capital of the Confederacy. And it was a mass movement where practically all of the Blacks of Montgomery were participating in it and singing their songs as they walked until their shoes were worn out. Going to work or wherever it was, singing joyously and happily. James Farmer: Well, this obviously captured the imagination and Dr. King's spirited rhetoric just gave it wings. CORE began to grow then too. You know, some people who had received our little mimeographed leaflets that we have passed out said, "Hey, wait a minute. Most people are talking about nonviolence. Hey, maybe I've got to join them again, you know, and send them $5." We got more members, more chapter activity, and we of course applauded. [inaudible] came later in 1960. And my good brother and son, Khazan has told you about the activities of the student sit-in movement, which he hoped to start. One of the originators in Greensboro, North Carolina. And this further enlightened the nation and stirred it to a new sense of awareness. Because here, again, it was in everybody's living room that he was sitting in. It wasn't in a room during lunch time. It was in the living room. James Farmer: And furthermore, there was a new image of Blacks. Some of you who are very young, again, will have to remember that at that point, just as much as in the forties, the image that most people, most whites had of Blacks, was the Hollywood image. And the Hollywood image at that time was of the Uncle Tom or, apologies to the great actor who was trapped in syndrome, Stepin Fetchit role. "Oh, yes sir, boss, I sure is happy! Anything you say is all right with me. I's having a wonderful time!" We were scratching where we didn't itch and laughing when we weren't tickled or we were clowns or buffoons or petty criminals, dice shooters, chicken stealers. Or worse, we were harmless, good natured oafs, who one might love as he loved a pet and pat on the head like he would a puppy dog, but could not respect for he did not merit the respect. James Farmer: But what was happening with Khazan and his colleagues flew in the face of that stereotype. How could you put those two together? People were puzzled in their living rooms. No less a personage than the conservative columnist James J. Kilpatrick, who was then editor of the Richmond News Leader, commented, "What is happening here is kind of a reversal of roles." He said, "Here are Black students sitting at a lunch counter quietly, politely, courteously, with calculus books under their arms, slide rules in their pockets, really asking politely for a cup of coffee. And they're well dressed too." That was a different era. He said, "Gad, it gives one pause." This was his editorial. James Farmer: People who saw that image were puzzled by it. It helped to change the image that people had of Blacks, because here were these students sitting there asking for a cup of coffee, please, hands on the counter. The man behind the counter comes out with a meat cleaver, "Get your hands off that counter or I'll chop them off. The hands remain there." Crowds of whites coming in, the ducktail haircut, leather jacket crew, crushing cigarette butts out against the backs of their necks. The youngsters sitting there with an awful and awesome dignity. In everyone's living room, how could the old stereotypes prevail? They could not. James Farmer: I suspect that the image which the nation developed of Blacks in the next few years, partly the student sit-in movement and partly Dr. King's marches and some of the CORE and SNCC marches and activities, too, of that period in the early sixties. But chiefly Dr. King's Birmingham, Selma, et cetera, where people saw in their living room, police dogs being released upon little children to tear their clothing, tear their flesh and fire hoses under high pressure, rolling women down the streets with their skirts flying. People said, "That Bull Connor is a beast. He's got to go." He was the chief of police in Birmingham. In fact, someone suggested that the NAACP should've given Bull Connor the Spingarn Award for the greatest contribution to civil rights of that period. They said, "He's got to go. We've got to do something. We've got to have a law that will put a stop to this nonsense." James Farmer: The image, as I started to say, of Blacks was that of the long suffering victims of oppression. We were very popular in that period. Nobody would have thought of having a cocktail party in Northern City without inviting at least one Black. They had to be there so they could show that they were really with it. Everywhere Blacks were the most popular minority in the country, probably the most popular people. By 1963, after the March on Washington, which I missed, by the way. I was supposed to speak there, but I was in jail in Louisiana at the time, couldn't get out to get to march. Right after the March, public opinion polls indicated that more than 75% of the American people wanted strong civil rights legislation with teeth in it, which could be enforced and wanted to see it enforced. This was a change. Here you see, we had cut into the opposing majority, reduced their numbers, increased our numbers. We have become an ad hoc majority then. James Farmer: How does a minority speak to power? We were forming alliances because the alliances were ready-made. People were agreeing with us. There were coalitions and alliances all over the place. It was out of such an alliance that the March on Washington came into being. Catholics, Jews, Protestants, whites, Blacks, labor, middle-class folk, all of the country, liberals, anyone who felt he had a conscience was there or wanted to be there. That was the alliance. We had no real political power in the conventional sense because we didn't have the voting power then. That was to come later. James Farmer: What we did was to use the media as a substitute for power. Here I am a step back, a pace, to the freedom rides. The freedom rides were conceived not by me, by the way, but by someone whom Khazan knows, Gordon Carey, who was a staff member, of course. He suggested the idea to me. I thought it was a great idea and that it ought to be done. We ought to do it. Our plan, the theory, was this: that if we rode through the South with whites sitting in the back of the bus and Blacks in the front, stopped at every rest stop, the Blacks go into the white waiting room and whites into the colored waiting room, as it was called then, and refused to leave when ordered to do so, accept arrest and accept violence, accept anything even death. I don't say that with any levity at all, because it was a very serious and sore point with us at that time. Then people would have to take notice and we would have a substitute for power. James Farmer: By then the Supreme Court had ruled in two separate decisions that segregation and bus travel was unconstitutional. 1946 in the Irene Morgan case where it ruled on bus seating and in 1960 in the Boynton case, where it ruled on use of bus terminal facilities. But in spite of those rulings, whenever a Black tried to ride in the front of a bus or go into the non-colored waiting room, he was jailed, beaten or both. Letters were coming across my desk almost monthly to that effect. What we hoped to do more specifically was to create a crisis situation. That was the strategy, to bring about a crisis, creative tension, call it what you will. Bring about a crisis situation so that the federal government would be compelled to act. That was the substitute for political power. If we'd had the votes or the people in power, then we could get on the phone and call them or write them a letter and hopefully get a similar reaction. But since we didn't have that, we had to use these substitutes. James Farmer: We wanted to create the kind of crisis that would be headline news, using the media, using television, using everything else. The more headlines, the better. We were called headline seekers and we were headline seekers. We were headline seekers because those headlines were most valuable. They were imminently effective. When the bus of freedom riders was burned in Anniston, Alabama, burned to the ground, this was on the front page of papers all over the world. The flaming bus of the freedom writers there. What we did was to take that picture, transpose it into the flame of the Statue of Liberty. The Statue of Liberty is holding it. That became the symbol of the freedom rides. This was used all over the country then. The world was saying, and I mean literally the world, "What is happening in the United States? What is that nonsense that makes the front seat of a bus sacred? Such an idiotic issue." James Farmer: The federal government would have to act. When we started the ride, we wrote letters to the president, the attorney general, the Department of Justice, the FBI, Trailways Corporation, and Greyhound Corporation telling them what we were going to do and when. Got no response from any of them, not even the president who was Kennedy or the attorney general, who was Bobby Kennedy, no response at all. But after that burning bus in Anniston and after we reached Montgomery and there was a mob scene because the whites rioted and Bobby then moved, he acted. He sent US marshals in. He got on the phone to Wallace and to everybody else that he could reach, to Greyhound Bus Company and everyone else, said, "You've got to do something." He sent us a wire and said, "Call it off. Call the rides off and have a cooling-off period." My reply, which as I look back upon it may have seemed a little flippant, was: "We've been cooling off for 300 years. We cool off anymore, we will be in a deep freeze." James Farmer: The attorney general, I must say, did not appreciate that kind of response. I said, "The rides will continue." And they did continue. But when we rode from Montgomery to Jackson, we had full protection. Helicopters overhead chopping away, searching the woods, sirens of police screaming up and down the highway in front of us and behind us, national guard on the bus with us, with their rifles and bayonets fixed and everything else, national guards flanking the highway for miles through every wooded area with their rifles pointed toward the woods. This kind of massive production, even Ross Barnett went on the air in Mississippi, he was governor of Mississippi at the time, went on television and spoke to the "rednecks" in the rural areas and said, "Stay out of Jackson. Stay out of the city. Don't come into town. Our segregation laws are going to be upheld. They're going to prevail. Anyone who violates our law is going to jail, but let law and order take its course. Don't come into town." He didn't want any trouble. There was the spotlight of public attention on Mississippi at that time. The strategy had worked. James Farmer: We kept riders going into Mississippi, filling up the jails. That was following Gandhi, that if you fill up the jails and keep people going in, they got no place to put them, it becomes terribly expensive to feed them. In fact, Mississippi announced that one of the nuisance taxes they had, which was an auto use tax of $5, $10, $15, or something like that, they had planned to cancel that summer, but they were going to have to continue it at least for another year because the freedom rides were costing them so much. It worked. James Farmer: Bobby then acted again. He called upon the Interstate Commerce Commission, by Bobby I mean Bobby Kennedy, Robert Kennedy, called upon the ICC to issue an order with teeth in it, which he could enforce and issue it quickly. They complied and issued an order saying that as of November 1st, all the "for colored" and "for white" signs in interstate transportation must come down and in their place must be posted signs saying "segregation according to race in the use of these facilities is unconstitutional, signed by the ICC and the Department of Justice." We notified him that we were going to send testers out then through the South to see if that ruling was being enforced on November 1st. And if it was being enforced, great, if it was not, then the freedom rides would resume. It was being enforced then. James Farmer: This was the strategy. Stay in jail when one is arrested, don't bail right out, but stay in, in order to place an additional burden upon the state. The freedom riders were staying in 40 days and 40 nights, which was the maximum we could stay in and still file an appeal under the state laws in Mississippi. We filed appeals and we won the appeals in the Supreme Court of the United States after several years of litigation. That was just one incident. There were many others in which many other groups, other than CORE were involved and were in the leadership of, which were equally significant and maybe more significant in the long run. We won lots of victories and you're aware of those victories and I don't have to recount them to you. James Farmer: We now recognize the limitations of the victories which we won. Those were the simple days of the movement. They were the simple days when everything was clear, when the issues were so clear. No pun intended, they were white and Black. When you'd sit on the front seat of a bus, if you sat there, you had won. If you were thrown off or arrested, you had lost. There were no fuzzy areas. The same thing at a lunch counter. If you got the hot dog and the coffee, you're victorious. If you didn't, you were not victories. There were no gray areas or partial victory, anything else. James Farmer: Furthermore, who of any decency could argue that those young people sitting at those counters asking for a cup of coffee should not get the coffee if they had the nickel to pay for it. I think that's what coffee cost then. Or was it a dime? Who of any decency could argue they shouldn't get it, shouldn't be served? Same with the front seat of a bus. It's separated, the good from the bad, the sheep from the goats, so to speak. Don't mean to malign either sheep or goats in that sentence. James Farmer: Now we have moved into far more complex issues. I think that's the thing which distinguishes the early sixties from the late sixties and from the seventies, by the way, is that now we have moved into arenas which are much more complex. The battlefields are of quicksand. They are not clear issues of right versus wrong, good versus bad. You might have people of goodwill on both sides of many of the issues that afflict us today. James Farmer: Let me mention just a couple of them and you are familiar with them, as familiar as I am. One is seniority rules of labor unions, seniority layoffs. You wouldn't for a long time have fought for and got and struggled to keep seniority rules so that when there has to be a layoff, then they must protect the job rights of those who have been on the job longest, means that the last hired will be the first fired. This has been a major platform of the unions. No contract worth its salt would be without that provision. Blacks look at that and you know what they say, women say the same thing too in the women's movement, and Chicanos and Puerto Ricans and Native Americans. They say, "Hey, wait a minute. If you hadn't discriminated against me all these years, by now I'd have seniority. So it is not fair for you now to penalize me for lacking the seniority which you prevented my getting. For you to do so, you are compounding the felony." But most of the unions will not yield on that issue. James Farmer: Obviously when people have worked for a long time, then there should be some reward for longevity or length of service. Obviously that is true. But at the same time, when the last hired are young, female or Black or other minorities, then obviously it works a terrible hardship on them and it is unfair. Here are rights in conflict, not right versus wrong, not good versus evil. James Farmer: Another is the question of affirmative action and quotas and numerical goals and timetables, which has divided many of the former friends of the sixties, because we'd fought against quotas so hard because quotas were used in many universities to exclude minorities. Had quotas on Blacks in many universities, professional schools and others, which would limit the number of Blacks to six or three or two or Puerto Ricans or Chicanos or Jews. We fought hard against them and we defeated those quotas in the forties and the fifties. Now in a totally different context, a different situation, where, as I think time makes ancient good uncouth, the idea of numerical goals and time tables becomes in my judgment a good one and a valid one. But obviously it could work an injustice. James Farmer: I am not now speaking to the Bakke case or the DeFunis case, any case specifically, though you know where I stand on it. I am opposed to Bakke, as I was opposed to DeFunis. I think it would be a tragedy if the court rules in Bakke's favor. But obviously it is possible for that kind of formulation of numerical goals and timetables to work a hardship upon a young person who has prepared hard for graduate school and professional school, who has burned the midnight oil when he might've been playing stick ball in the streets, who has struggled to achieve his work for what Jesse Jackson calls a quest for excellence. It may be that he would not get into a given school in a given year and would have to wait awhile or go to another school. James Farmer: Here again we have rights in conflict. I think when that happens, what you have to do is to weigh the situation in terms of the greater good for the greater number, in terms of how many people are damaged by the status quo and to what extent does that damage exist in the status quo and whether the change which is sought will bring about more good than it will wrong to individuals. Actually, I don't know of any case where a social change has been brought about on a deeply rooted social issue without some individuals being damaged, being hurt. I searched my mind and my scant knowledge of history, and I can't come up with one. I wish this were not inevitable, but it is that there will be some individual injustices, but I think the greater good in this situation is of sufficient importance that the nation ought to go in that direction now. James Farmer: But here clearly these are things which have divided the movement, which have divided the nation in a way. I would say that the image which most Americans have of Blacks has changed. If we're going to act politically, we're going to have to recognize this fact, that we no longer have the majority. We are not the majority now. We were in late '63 and in '64 and probably '65 we clearly still had the majority. We can win any issue on civil rights on the Hill, hands down, we could win going away. We could even break filibusters. But that's not the case now. We don't have a majority with us. The polls show that and will continue to show it for awhile. We don't have a majority on the Hill because to a great extent, the Hill does reflect what the people think back home, because congressmen at least have to run for election. As soon as you get elected once they have to start running again. They have their ears to the ground. James Farmer: Well, what has changed? First of all, the complexity of the issues where the interests of former allies now occasionally more frequently come into conflict. Other things have changed, too. Out of nonviolence sprang violence. Nonviolence was succeeded by violence. I'm frequently asked the question, "Why?" Let me quickly try to answer that. This isn't the only answer, but I think it's one of the answers. James Farmer: I'll answered it with a very brief summary illustration. On one occasion, I personally had to get out of town in Plaquemine, Louisiana in the back of a hearse in order to escape from a Lynch mob. This was shortly after the March on Washington, after the March, when I was not free to go to the March. Then shortly after that, they canceled all bond requirements for the 300 people who were in jail in Plaquemine, said, "You can get out on your own recognizance. That is no bond." Obviously the bond requirement, which was high and which required cash was to keep us away from the March in Washington and to keep me away. James Farmer: But right after the March in Washington, there was a lynch mob and two Black ex-Marines worked out an escape route for me, it was touch-and-go where state troopers were the mob and others who had been deputized screaming, "Come on out, Farmer! We're going to get that God-damned nigger! When we catch that nigger, we're going to kill him!" House to house in the Black community, kicking open doors, screaming, "Come on out! Farmer, we're going to get that nigger." Searching the house, ransacking it and not finding me. In their frustration, throwing tear gas bombs into the house and going onto the next one. James Farmer: People were being terrorized in the street and I'll cut the details and the blood and all of that and thunder. But two Black ex-Marines worked out an escape route in a hearse using one hearse as a decoy to open up roadblocks, which the troopers had set up searching each car that went out in their search for me. The decoy worked. It pulled the troopers away from that roadblock. Then the second hearse was not a decoy. It was the real McCoy. I was in that hearse in the back of the hearse. It shot through the road block, which had been vacated and sped to New Orleans. With me in that hearse were two young CORE staff members. When we got to New Orleans in dead of night, one of them said to me, "Jim, we love you dearly. And we will follow you through hell and high water. But if we have to go through a night like that again, maybe we're going to have hardware with us." James Farmer: Well, that was hard to argue with. I could understand that then, believe me. Same was true of Stokely Carmichael and Rap Brown. Do the young people here know Stokely? No, I see someone ahead. Oh, he didn't play the Chicago Bears though. And Rap Brown. Well now, you see, they used to be nonviolent devotees of Snake in the South in Alabama, and in Mississippi, both of them. Stokely Carmichael was on the freedom rides with us and dedicated himself, committed himself to the tact of nonviolence as a principal. As a discipline. We were in jail together in the cell. But Stokely and Rap's heads were broken so many times with billy clubs and the chains. We met such massive counter violence. James Farmer: Violence and response to our nonviolence, that it was more than flesh could take. Why I said, "Enough of this". That was one reason for it. For the collapse of nonviolence as the prevailing tactic of the movement. And the violence which took place in the period, the violence of the summers of 64' on a climax with the violence in the wake of Dr. King's assassination. That was one factor that changed people's minds and changing the image of Blacks. People in their living rooms now saw a different picture rather than kids sitting at the lunch counter. They saw that Molotov cocktails and the bricks and the stones and the blood and the screams and the shouts. And that was unsettling to them. James Farmer: Then there was talk of a next time, not confining efforts to the inner city, to the ghetto, but going downtown. "I'm going to the suburbs". That terrified. Then at that time, there was great publicity given to the high, enormous inordinately high crime statistics of the inner city. That too frightened people. Frightened not only whites, but Blacks, middle-class Blacks. Polls taken into Harlem and in Bed-Stuy show that, this was in the period in late 60's, showed that the number one issue of the Black middle-class was crime in the streets, safety in the streets. When the wife gets off the bus, husband complains he's got to go to the bus stop, and get her and walk her home. Not to worry about it. So people were frightened by this, but especially whites, because they had the difference of color, in addition to the other things. James Farmer: Then there was the fact that the lower middle-class in the white community felt threatened. The one who has one foot up the ladder of success tends to be terrified when there's motion from below, because he's just got that foot up there now and he worked hard to get it there. And he looked over there at anti-poverty programs, community action programs, manpower training, job training program. Who's being trained, majority Blacks? And he said, " Chicanos, Puerto Ricans, chiefly Blacks". His money! His tax money! And he's hurting. He was a part of this developing tax revolt that we hear so much about now. Big slice out of that dollar that he gives to the government goes to this and it's training those cats. And what jobs are those fellows being trained for? My job, his job, the job that he had. And furthermore, they are being given modern training with modern techniques and modern equipment and machinery. So before long, he feels they're going to bump it or try to. So he's frightened. This combined with the inherit racism, which was there and had not been approved by the ethics of the early sixties. Oh, where does he live? This lower middle-class. James Farmer: John Doe, he lives in Deerfield, Illinois, suburb of Chicago or Cicero or Cairo, Illinois, lower middle-class communities. And he bought a house. It was split level, not a very big one that cost in those days. And since it wasn't too big, maybe $30,000, but he had to scrape up $12,000 for a down payment. How many years did he have to work to save the $12,000? Because parents didn't have any money because they fought to get out of their slum or their ghetto, or his grandparents did. You had to work for years to get it and make that down payment. He is mortgaged for life, in the hock for life. He manages to meet the mortgage payments, but with great effort. He has to watch those pennies. He's got a car in the garage too, and he's got a color TV, but he's doing all right compared with his father and his grandfather. But he's uneasy. James Farmer: And then somebody tells him a Black moved down the street and the real estate man tells him, "Hey, you know what's going to happen. Your property values are going down. Your property is going to depreciate. By high march this $30,000 house, and he paid 30,000 for, well, who knows? 5,000, 10,000. How long did he have to work to save $10,000? You cut out of his equity." So he is scared. Furthermore the press isn't giving the positive things to coverage that it did in the sixties, or partly because they decided that Monaghan was right when he called for for benign neglect. James Farmer: But partly because they decided that they spread the movement and in a way they did, because they show it. I am sure that Brother Khazan would agree that when they sat in, it was on television all over the country. Other Blacks at other colleges saw it in their dormitories, in their living room. Said, "Hey man, look what our brothers are doing over there in Greensboro. Well, what's wrong with this? We've got to go and do the same thing." So they did. So the press, the whoever makes those decisions and I don't think, and I'm not sure of it, I don't think it has a smoke filled room where the moguls of the press sit down and say, "Is this what are going to do? Don't give any coverage to Blacks." I don't know how they do it. I'm not close enough to it. But apparently a decision has been made that that kind of coverage we got in the sixties is not going to be given because they'll spread it. James Farmer: They will create new leaders and they'll create new Martin Luther King's. They'll create new organizations, new cores and snicks, and they'll start more activity in the street. I'm sure that that is going into the process. So it's a different period now. We are a minority. We are viewed not as the long suffering victims of oppression as in the early sixties. But I would say as the victimizers, I think that is a more accurate description now. It's a complete turnaround in the image that we have. Well now obviously the way we function in the sixties, it's not the way in which we can effectively function now in the seventies. I don't claim to have an answer as to how best we can function. But one thing seems clear to me, and that is that more useful than demonstrations in most situations, and I don't rule out demonstrations, obviously I still participate in them on certain occasions. Certain times it seemed called for, but as the major tactic, rather than demonstration, I think we need [inaudible], that is thought to try to plan some sense of direction. James Farmer: Circles are being run around us. I'm sure you've discussed it in your seminars, that there is an erosion of the progress, partly because of the state of the economy. It is true. Partly because we were the last hired and we'll be the first fired. Also because of the backlash from the many things which I mentioned and many other things. The backlash there. But it's being cut back. Done in some ways. Nobody will say I am against Blacks. George Wallace has changed his rhetoric. He changed. I don't mean to say that the leopard changed it's stripes, but the leopard can count. He can count polls. And that's one thing politicians have in common, they can count and they share, similarly, a desire to get elected or to get reelected. James Farmer: In the wake of the freedom ride, started the massive voter education voter registration campaign. And that was more violence on people who were involved in voter registration and voter education than anything else. Because you see the brightest, the most thoughtful among the opposition. From seat of the bus, or a hot dog on a lunch counter, who cares really? They just saw it as a symbol, but they were not going to make that the do or die issue. They were intent upon making voter rights the do or die issue because they knew that if that, as numerous as we are in the South, we're registered to vote we could soon dominate. And the sheriff deputies wouldn't beat our heads anymore because they know in the very next election, they will be out of office or the people who appointed them will be out of office. George Wallace- suppose 15 years ago, someone had told you that in the early sixties, early seventies, George Wallace would be counting a Black queen at the University of Alabama. Where would you sent him? Well, Old Georgie Porgie not only did that, but he also kissed her. James Farmer: The brothers and sisters in Alabama tell me the only thing unique about that was that it was a daytime ceremony. I say that George can count and the other politician can count too. Furthermore, there're Blacks in many of the key electoral positions, not all of them. It's a smaller percentage and not nearly a percentage that corresponds with our percentage of the population. But compared as King would have put it with where we were, where we came from, where we have been, it indicated some progress. So we've gotten elected, but I would suggest to you and I trust I'm not being too cynical, that today, in spite of those votes on the Hill, we have less power than we did in the sixties and possibly even in the late fifties, because we had people, we had a person, no two people, in the late fifties who had developed clout through seniority. When you think about Adam, he had seniority. Dawson too. You may call him a conservative or a reactionary, but he wielded the power which he held as chairman of an important committee with skill and delicacy. James Farmer: Knew what he was doing, and I have known on occasions when he has gotten on the phone and chewed out a Secretary of Defense or secretary of one of the other departments and had the guy running over to his office with a reversal of roles shuffling and scratching his head. But he did it quietly and not with a headline. Adam did it more flamboyantly, but he did it. Well, while we have many more Congressmen now and we have a Senator and they're good people. Many are great people, fine people. And they have a caucus. But the real political power we do not have, nor can we mount today the substitutes for power, which we could in the sixties. Because the press is not amenable to being used in that manner. Because the coalitions have not been formed since the movement has been split. Well, how do we function now politically? James Farmer: I think that in spite of the difficulties, we've got to start forming coalitions and alliances, I think we must. For example, alliances between minorities, between Chicanos and Blacks in the western states. Can you imagine the kind of political power that would reside therein? In California, in Texas, in Arizona, in New Mexico? I recognize the difficulties, of course. Not only the language difficulties, but we're fighting for the same jobs, competing for jobs, competing for the same housing, et cetera, and competing for the same federal dollar too. And that game is being played by those who now have the power. When the city father gets this pot of money, revenue sharing, or it used to be anti-poverty funds, and he calls in the Black center Chicanos and said, "Well, we just have so much money here, just this amount. And I don't know how to divide it up. I don't have the wisdom of Solomon. So why don't you guys buy it up?" Then the war is on, you see. The battle is on. "Oh no, my share is this and my share is that. No, I want it all." "No, I want it all", and so on. And a plague on your house. The same thing as that thing is happening in New York today, between the Puerto Ricans and the Blacks, the Native Americans. This would be a coalition of some importance. The numbers would be close to 50 million combined forces strategically located. James Farmer: What you could do. Now forming other coalitions with women's groups. I view that as essential. Right now, by the way, there's some tension between women's groups and the Black movement over such things as affirmative action, not on the principle issue, but who gets what share of that quota. That battle is going on now, that struggle. We must not let those difficulties prevent us from forming the needed alliances today. There are some labor groups, I mentioned that most labor unions, will not accept changes in seniority. Some will. UAW for instance, has written into some of its contracts, as a substitute for the inverse seniority layoffs early retirement for older workers. Providing them with 95% of their salaries when retired with the company being compelled to pick up the difference between what they normally would get, what they get now. This is an incentive for voluntary retirement. James Farmer: So what you find is that rather than laying off the young guys and gals, and the minorities, and the women, you find the older workers fighting for the privilege of retirement saying, "I want to retire. Let me, me, me, me! Why'd you lay him off? Let me be laid off and enjoy the retirement at 95% of salary." Other things have been suggested too, such as work sharing. I'm sure you're familiar with that. The idea, the concept being that if a given company given plan can work only at 80% of capacity because of whatever, then rather than firing 20% of the workforce, have everyone stay on and work 80% of time. Four days instead of five days. With unemployment compensation picking up, making up the difference in that pot. And that can be done administratively. There have been discussions taking place with Ray Marshall, the Secretary of Labor on getting him to sign the necessary papers in quadruplicate and move them from inbox to outbox until something happens. Oh, I hope it does not take too long, but those discussions are going on. They seem to be moving positively now. I don't know if any alternative can be found to quotas. James Farmer: One was suggested to me, by the way, which I found intriguing though, there are flaws in it. I was discussing the DeFunis case. That was a predecessor to the Bakke case and a college student intern in one of the government departments said, "I have an idea. Let's say the University of Washington Law School had space in it's incoming class for 25 new students." James Farmer: Now this college students said, "Obviously you can't say that candidate A is better qualified than applicant B because he scored three points higher on the test because of the cultural biases and maybe he's not a test taker, but maybe candidate a B is a better speaker or better wheeler dealer. Can talk with the judge better in his chambers, can influence the jury, will work harder for his clients, and that's a part of qualification too." Said the student, still talking, "You cannot say that A is better qualified than B, but you can say that both A and B are qualified on the basis of many things." Then, suppose the University of Washington makes a policy decision to select 100 top qualified applicants considering all sorts of factors. And suppose that DeFunis were in that 100. Then they selected the 25, which they needed by a lottery, process of random selection. If DeFunis were in the 100 and not in the 25, could he claim "discrimination in reverse"? Which it isn't, it's reverse of discrimination, but could he claim that? Probably not. James Farmer: The catch to it is how you select the 100, because it's possible for a lot of bias to get in. But I think with some imagination we can come up with refinements on some of the more difficult issues. Frankly I see no alternative and I pondered. I see no alternative because when it comes to a nose count, then the questions that were asked me in Japan and elsewhere in Asia assume even greater importance. How does a minority survive when there's a nose count that determined what happens under majority rule. By the way, since we found out how to survive on the majority rule as a minority, and they asked the question about what's going to happen to the minority of whites in Rhodesia in South Africa, we can volunteer as consultants and go over there and teach them. James Farmer: But it's a problem. To get back on the track, I see no way that we can survive as a minority. We cannot do it with guns. Obviously we're outgunned. The fire power is greater and that's suicidal and stupid. We can't do it if we force a count on every issue with a polarization on the basis of race, except to those few places where we are majority, now in Bayonne and Newark, and then a few other places, quite a number of other places, but statistically, small. We then have to form alliances. We have to, in a sense, de-racialize issues. Well, that's going to be difficult for many people to accept. We know that the issues are basically, in many cases, are racial issues and that the bottom line is race and racism. But sometimes one needs to be as harmless as a dove and as wise as a serpent. Sometimes one needs to play the game of de-racializing the issue. Putting it in broader terms. For instance, many of the issues we face are questions are poverty. James Farmer: We can win alliances. For alliances much better on the issues of poverty. Again, if we make it the platform versus the white poor, because then you have a polarization. I think that de-racializing of the issues is something which we must give serious consideration to. I hope by the way that our best scholars, the Black community and elsewhere, will find time and occasion and the funds can be caught to bring this about where our best thinkers, our best minds can come together and ponder some of these questions. I have some of the questions, I don't have answers. But the answers we must get. There are persons with better, more disciplined minds than mine. Persons with greater knowledge who ought to in a discipline organized, coordinated manner wrestle with these issues to determine how in the present context, which is vastly different from the sixties, we can provide answers to the questions which were asked in Asia. James Farmer: Well I've talked far too long. I just want to express my appreciation to Dr. Turner for persevering in the conducting of these stimulating Institutes. I think in so doing, he is making a tremendous contribution to the ongoing thought. Not only in the Black community, but in white community and in the nation. We've got to have more of that now. And such Institute should be spread around the country. We must know where we are going. It's not enough to be proud and Black. No, that's good. We can know all there is to be known about Blackness, but then we might come out functionally illiterate when it comes to dealing with the real problems which our people face in society. Though we might know all there is to be known about all Black navels from that contemplation of it. So we've got to do some thinking now. Some thought as Ossie Davis put it in the banquet of the congressional Black caucus, about four years ago, it's not the rap, but the map. The direction. Where we go. Not the man, but the plan. What is the plan? What is the strategy? I don't have it, perhaps you can help us find. Thank you. Darwin Turner: Mr. Farmer has been kind enough to say that he will respond to questions. James Farmer: Do you think I could get away [inaudible] Darwin Turner: By all means. Enjoy. James Farmer: You, sir. Speaker 3: I was interested in your comment about the change [inaudible] I was wondering if you were tempted to respond the same way. James Farmer: Temptations, yes, but never seriously considered it. I did have some philosophical problems on certain issues involving violence, and I resolved those. I'll give just one. In Louisiana, Bogalusa, Plaquemine and a half dozen other cities where the Klan was riding rampant. By the way, people consider Mississippi in those days to have been the ultimate. Alabama, second, I tell you, Louisiana was as bad as any of them in places. Little places. New Orleans was an island of sanity comparatively, but some of those places would put Mississippi to shame. Believe me, it's true. Louisiana. James Farmer: But the Klan was very strong. Well organized and numerous. As a matter of fact, I was informed by a regional officer of the FBI in New York. He called me and said, "Mr. Farmer, when do you plan to go down to a Plaquemine, Louisiana or any place in the state?" James Farmer: I said, "Why?" He said, "Because the Klan met yesterday and decided next time you come down, you're going to be killed." I said, "How do you know that?" He said, "We infiltrated them and we had a guy there." I made a feeble attempt at humor and asked, "Well now, tell me. Where there any dissenting votes?" He didn't think that was very funny, indeed. But I did go down the next day, as a matter of fact, and there was protection this time. From the same state troopers who a little less than two years earlier had tried to kill me, because they had gotten different orders from different sources. There was a change in governor and so on. James Farmer: But at any rate, the Klan would ride down the streets in Bogalusa and Plaquemine and at least a half dozen others towns, and just shoot into the homes of Blacks who were active in the Movement and keep going. Speeding, turn around at the end of the street and come back shooting in both sides of windows into the houses of all Blacks then. James Farmer: It was an effort of intimidation. It didn't work, because we had a lot of motivation in the Movement. But what of the Blacks? Black men, who were active in Movement. They were marched with us and stuck to non-violence. They came to me and said, "Jim, we're going to organize a group, which will shoot back when the Klan shoots in our home." He said, "We're not going to attack them, because we're not murderers. But if they shoot at our homes, then they must expect to have the gunfire returned. When they call us up and say, "We're coming to get you" what we are going to say is, "Okay. But when you come be prepared to stay." James Farmer: And he said, "We're organizing the Deacons for defense and justice. And we're going to carry our guns with us, in our cars and in our homes and on our person. And if we are attacked, we're going to let them have it." He said, "Now, what are you say about it?" He said, "We'd like to have your approval." The CORE... You know we were divided up. The South, geographically, in those years, and Louisiana was CORE's turf. Mississippi was SNCC and CORE. After the Freedom Rides, they organized COFO, their coordinating umbrella. Alabama was SCLC. Georgia was SCLC and SNCC. South Carolina and North Carolina were COREs. And so on. James Farmer: Where was I? I forgot who I was talking about. Oh, the Deacons. Yeah. They said, "We'd like to have your support on this, but we're going to do it, whether you support or not." Well, I had to ponder that one. I think I might have been able to stop them. I'm not sure, but my decision was yes. I can't tell people to let the Klan shoot at their homes and beat them up and kill them without a reply in-kind. James Farmer: But I told them, "Fine. Go ahead and do that. And you'll have my silent blessings. But when you participate in a CORE project, then you must adhere to the CORE discipline. Leave your hardware at home then." And they agreed to that pact before me. I had to go through some soul searching and suffering for reason. Another time that question came up similarly, was the time when Meredith was trying to get into Ole Miss. James Farmer: The [inaudible] fund was trying to get him into Ole Miss and the hoodlums had stopped them. Stopped the Department of Justice guys and everybody at the gate the first time. I went through a couple of nights of soul searching, whether I was going to do what some others were contemplating and did. And that is to demand that troops be sent in. You see, I was a pacifist in the early days of CORE. I'm not a pacifist now. At that time, I was in a transition phase, between being a pacifist and not being a pacifist. So my decision was yes, it is of great importance. Ultimate importance that Meredith get into Ole Miss. James Farmer: And so the Army must be sent in. Troops must be sent in. See, troops are not non-violent. By their very nature. That is not nonviolence. So then with joy, I sent wires as other civil rights organization heads did, demanding that troops be sent in to see that Meredith got in and to provide him protection. That issue came up. I did not ever myself contemplate violence. There were times when I was not sure I could control myself. Once, also in Louisiana in our line, I was in the front of our line of March and marching along. There was this hoodlum standing over there. He came running out front, grabbed me by the neck, by the collar, the top of the collar, and starting yanking with one of those big Blackjacks in his hand. "Come on out of there! Come on out of there! Come on out of there!" Fine. Well now, I could have dropped him with either a left or right. We used to Box a little in college. And I was awfully tempted. James Farmer: Instead, I was debating whether it was possible for me to duck that Blackjack and to react in time if it came down. It was the kind of Blackjack which could have crushed the skull. So I almost swung in that case, but I didn't. And I'm glad I didn't, because I think that, pardon the expression, all hell would have broken loose in that picket line, then. The Deacons would have run for their guns. James Farmer: Another question. Yes, sir? Speaker 4: [inaudible] James Farmer: Is there what? Speaker 4: [inaudible] James Farmer: Nonviolence. Speaker 4: [inaudible] James Farmer: Oh, I don't think we'd get mass support for it now, I regret to say. I don't think we would. In the first place, Dr. King was of enormous importance to the Movement and his dedication to nonviolence was essential to the maintenance of nonviolence as long as it lasted, though nonviolence had died before Dr. King was killed in the movement. But yeah, it lasted as long as it did, primarily I think, because of the strength of his personality and his charisma. James Farmer: Those of you who are young, I say that not demeaningly. I envy you. I wish I were young. You don't remember what King could do to an audience. A mass audience. A mass meeting in a church. I've seen those meetings and it was just miraculous. James Farmer: I think that if Martin had said, "Get up. Go out. Jump in the ocean." I really think. ,And the songs helped a lot too. And those youngsters sang. You'd see, children literally singing, "Before I'd be a slave, I'd be buried in my grave and go home to my Lord and be free." And they meant it. They really meant it. When those children got up out of those seats in that mass meeting and walked down on the street, they could have walked through a stone wall. You know, nothing would have stopped them. James Farmer: They were then invincible. They were unstoppable. We don't have that now. So I don't think we could maintain the discipline. I think as soon as significant, violent reprisals began, then violence would spring forward. That's why I am always a little bit uneasy when now I participate in marches in a tense situation. Because all somebody has to do is to use some violence against us and we won't be able to control the troops. At least, I don't think so. Another question? Yes, ma'am. Speaker 5: It's been said that something is lost because we don't a single leader as we had in the time of Martin Luther King. James Farmer: Yes. Speaker 5: Do you think there's a danger in this day and time of having a single leader- James Farmer: Nope. Speaker 5: ... You don't think so? James Farmer: I don't think so. I am- Speaker 5: [inaudible] a void there. James Farmer: A void? You can have a void, but... Well, in the first, we haven't had a single leader of Blacks in an awfully long time. I guess, to some extent in Booker Washington's days, but he was soon challenged by Dubois. And since then we haven't had a single leader. It was assumed that Martin was the leader, but there was an awful lot of disagreement on that at the time. There was conflict, if you remember. And there were others who were leaders of different segments of the movement and the young people of SNCC did not share the common adulation of Dr. King. They called him the Lord, which was sort of derisive at the time. And so, in modern times, we certainly have not had one leader. As far as the media was concerned, and the nation at large, Dr. King, was the leader and all else centered around him. James Farmer: I think that was very useful at the time, because what we needed at that time was to be able to translate the aspirations of the Movement, as Black people, into terms which, as King put it, would appeal to the conscience of the nation. James Farmer: There are many other ways of putting that, but that's a good way to put it, too. To appeal to the conscience of the nation. What he was able to do as nobody else at the time was able to do is to put it in the terms of the Judeo Christian tradition, in which people believed. If they didn't live it, at least they believed it and they'd fight you before they'd admit that they didn't believe it. James Farmer: And he'd put it in the context of the documents of the founding of the Republic. The Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. Well, that touched something in people's psyche. This is what they believed. And so he was able to do it. What he was able to do and to a greater extent than anybody else at that time, was to turn the spotlight of public attention upon those issues. James Farmer: One charismatic person can do that. That's not what's needed right now. The issue is too compact. You can turn all the spotlights you want on it, but still the issue has not been defined. The issues then defined themselves, but now they do not. Now we need the thinkers. That's why I so admire our scholars. And they're numerous. All over the country. But somehow we've got to get them together and mobilize that enormous talent. That knowledge. We need now, thought. James Farmer: We also need a proliferation of leadership when you ask, "Who is the Black leader?" And I must say, our friends in the white community have a tendency to do that. "Who is the Black leader in this community or that community or elsewhere?" When they asked me that question, I say, "In what field?" We have leaders in all kinds of fields now. All kinds of disciplines. And we have them in politics. We have them in social work. We have them in education. We have them in psychology. We have them in just about any field that you can imagine. James Farmer: We also have leaders in what used to be called civil rights, say the successor to civil rights or human rights now. We have different kinds of constituencies. The liberal. Or the moderates. Or the centrists. And we have the left, militant left, but non-Marxist. And we have the militant Marxist left and so on. We even have those right of center. And so when you ask, who is the leader, you have to say of what constituency now, too. You have to ask so many questions about it. So there are many, many leaders, and I think that's as it should be. That's as it needs to be now. But I must say that we do need to have a little working together. A little more than we have now. James Farmer: We didn't always agree in the early sixties. Though Dr. King, Wilkins, Whitney Young and Jim Forman or John Lewis, whichever was SNCC at the given time there, and I would meet at least monthly in New York and we would hash out problems. We'd divide up turf, and we would share our differences of opinion on tactics and strategy. And that was important. That broke down about 19... Oh, shortly after the March on Washington. And they haven't come together sentence. I think it's necessary for even groups that disagree to be able to work together now on the issues on which they agree. James Farmer: That's why when I spoke of new alliances, I'm not ready to get rid of the old alliances. An alliance like the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, for instance, which is a conglomeration... It's essentially continuation of the kind of a coalition that put together the March on Washington, where it has liberals, labor, minority organizations of various kinds, church organizations, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Now there are issues on which they disagree. James Farmer: For example, they disagree on Bakke. They divide. So what they are wise enough to do is to say, "Okay, this is one of those issues on which we can not have a policy position." Because when you operate in a coalition, that's what you have to do. You have to have a kind of consensus rule. And if you cannot get consensus on an issue, then you cannot take a position on that issue. But then you find the other issues of importance to you on which you do have a consensus. And then you take a position on that. So in the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, they say, "Well we can't agree on this issue, so we're not taking any position on it. We'd split the organization. But we will take position on this issue, that issue, that issue, and the other issue." And that's the way I think coalitions must work. Yes, sir. Speaker 6: [inaudible]. James Farmer: The Pan-African Movement. Well, I'm certainly in favor of organizing, consolidating the African diaspora. That is, those whose roots have been in Africa and who have scattered around the world. I think it's necessary for us to do that now. Let me go back a little bit on that one too, when Black power was first shouted by Stokely. He didn't create it, of course. Malcolm had been talking similar things for some years before that. And others too, even before Malcolm. I was one of those who applauded it, because I felt that it was very important for us to learn what our roots are and develop some identity, cultural identity, to step back and look at ourselves and to get over the old self rejection and self hate, which we'd been a part of it. James Farmer: And here are the young people, my young friends, may not remember the days when Blacks hated themselves so much. You know, when it was common to hear a Black man whose skin is Black and whose hair was kinky, referring to kinky hair as bad hair and straight hair as good hair. You've heard that, I'm sure. Anyone who is over 30 has heard it. Probably younger. You haven't heard that? Bad hair and good hair? Huh? Speaker 7: In our city, they still do it. James Farmer: They still do it? Well, they didn't do it for a while. They didn't do it for a while, but we got over it. And what's happening now, I think, is that the pendulum is swinging back and the pride didn't go deep enough. It went skin deep and became a kind of fad. I was standing, walking down the street in U Street, around 14th, in Washington, DC. In the ghetto. And there were two young guy leaning against a wall talking. And despite the mild profanity... I won't quote them, exactly... One of them said to the other, "Man, a nigger ain't shit." These are two Black cats. You know, I thought I had heard the last that in the 60s, and I didn't think I'd hear it again. I'd hoped. Yeah. I must've thought it, but it's back now. It's back. So you see, I thought that was important in the 60s for us to develop a pride and identity. James Farmer: You know how we've been conditioned. Those of us who are older, much more than those of you who are younger. And those who are older than we were conditioned more than we. My father, for example. He was a brilliant scholar. I admired him. I didn't deserve to carry his briefcase. He could read, write, speak fluently in many languages, including Hebrew, Greek, Aramaic, and Latin, not to mention that European languages. And he was the first Black in the state of Texas to hold an earned PhD degree. And he came down from Boston University to Texas. His PhD was in 1917 and his degree was real. Not like mine. Mine's strictly phony. I got honorary degrees. I didn't get mine summa cum laude, magna cum laude, or cum laude. I got it, thank the Lordy. James Farmer: Just a second, I'll be right back to you. His was genuine, you see. Yet this brilliant old scholar, the classical scholar, if he wanted to relax, he wouldn't go to a movie. He never saw a movie in his life. It was a waste of his time. He'd climb up on the stepladder in his private library at home and pull down a book in [inaudible] language on the top shelf.