Charles Hamilton lecture, "Black Power: a Viable Alternative," at Grinnell College, April 30, 1968
Speaker 1: The Broadcasting Service of the University of Iowa, in cooperation with the Department of English and the Afro-American Studies Program at the University, presents a series of programs on Afro-American Culture. These programs are presented as background material for the course Afro-American Literature. Today's program is an address entitled Black Power: A Viable Alternative by Charles Hamilton, Professor of Political Science at Roosevelt University. Professor Hamilton was co-author with Stokely Carmichael of Black Power: The Politics of Liberation in America. This address was delivered April 30, 1968, at Grinnell College during the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Symposium.
Speaker 2: As Americans, we seem to be peculiarly addicted to slogans and labels, not only to advertise ourselves and our products, but to memorialize the historical decades as well. And so, the periods limp or strut across the stage of our history, bearing with propriety or incongruity, as the case may be, such labels as the Gilded Age for the 1880s and '90s, the Progressive Age for the first decade of the 20th century, the Lost Generation for the 1920s, and the Beat Generation for the 1950s. All of these labels have caused historians a great deal of difficulty, even though the historians themselves have done much to perpetuate them at the same time they were trying to explain them. Surely, this most tumultuous of recent decades, the 1960s, will also bear an historical tag, and it is quite probable that its name was born at that historic moment when a young Negro militant by the name of Stokely Carmichael, crying out in anger and frustration, started a chant whose reverberations have shaken America: the chant of "Black Power."
Speaker 2: As Mr. Horton pointed out this afternoon, the subject of Black Power received very cursory treatment at the hands of the President's commission on riots, for to most White Americans, it seems as revolutionary and anarchistic a cry as did "liberty, equality, and fraternity" to the French court at Versailles. To millions of Blacks, however, it carries the promise of an end to what Ralph Ellison called "the invisibility of the American Negro" and a beginning of personal dignity and individual pride to Black Americans everywhere.
Speaker 2: But for all Americans, both Black and White, there must be an attempt to understand and to agree on the ultimate objectives of this too easily said and too easily misunderstood rallying cry for freedom. It is my privilege and pleasure to introduce to you this evening perhaps the one man in all of America best qualified to explain and to argue for the concept of Black Power. Charles V. Hamilton, professor of political science at Roosevelt University, is co-author with Stokely Carmichael of Black Power: The Politics of Liberation in America. He is also the author of two other books to be published this year, The Politics of Civil Rights and Negro Politics and Political Modernization, as well as numerous articles and reviews. In a recent article in the New York Times Sunday Magazine section, he wrote, "Black Power is aimed at organizing Black people's rage and putting new, hard questions to Whites. The responses will be crucial." Tonight, I expect Mr. Hamilton to put some new, hard questions to us. Professor Hamilton will speak on Black Power: A Viable Alternative. Professor Hamilton?
Charles Hamilto...: Thank you very much. Indeed, the Kerner Commission report indicated that Black Power was a kind of throwback to Booker T. Washington and a retreat from challenging America on the question of race. I think that this is absolutely incorrect, and I think that if I let the record show at the outset that I simply disagree with that treatment of Black Power by the Commission, then I think that will be sufficient comment at this point. What I'd like to do is to deal with this subject in three parts. First, I'd like to talk about Black Power and its relationship to two major concepts: the concept of alienation and the concept of political legitimacy. Secondly, I should like to deal with Black Power, as indeed the Kerner Commission report did not deal with it. I should like to deal with it in terms of its relationship to the process of political modernization, to show how, in a real sense, Black Power is not a retreat from, but an engagement of. I should then, thirdly, like to deal with some very specific, by way of example, programs pursued by those of us who style ourselves as Black Power advocates.
Charles Hamilto...: Now, that's my three-part approach to this subject. The first two parts are clearly not what one would expect in terms of a discussion of Black Power. It's very obvious, it's very clear, that we come to a session of this kind with a topic like Black Power, and we have certain kinds of notions what we're going to hear. Well, I can satisfy many of those notions by using the word honky three times in a row, or I can shout, "Burn, baby, burn" right now a few times, or I can give a quick 20-for-one speech, that is to say, "For every one of us, we'll get 20 of you," and I can be done with that, but at least the record will reflect that.
Charles Hamilto...: The point I want to make here is that many of us, Carmichael included, have a notion about the clear, intellectual, academic base of Black Power, and we have no intention of letting anyone relate to this subject simply because it is a glamorous, dramatic, possibly ephemeral phenomenon on the scene today. Many of us believe very clearly that the concept of Black Power has this firm, intellectual base, and it is not to be tampered with or toyed with by glamor-seeking editorial writers or the irrelevant Huntley and Brinkley types who see only the "burn, baby, burn" or the honky talk.
Charles Hamilto...: Let me deal with my first now. In terms of the relationship of Black Power to the concepts of alienation and political modernization. Professor Seymour Lipset wrote a book once entitled Political Man, and in that book, he talked about alienation. And he said, "When the institutions of a society do not coincide with the values and aspirations of particular groupings in the society, then those institutions will be considered illegitimate, and those groups will become alienated." Now, that's Lipset writing in Political Man. He followed it up a little later in the book entitled The First New Nation, where he talked about alienation as having to do with the payoff. Very simple, you see.
Charles Hamilto...: And the important point to make here is this: a society, that is to say the institutions of decision-making in a society, are legitimate or illegitimate, depending on the perception of the people relating to those institutions. So, in this instance, I'm going to say very clearly that it isn't important what White decision-makers say when they say, "We're making progress in race relations." What is important is what Black people perceive, and if it is in the life experiences of perceptions of Black people that progress is, in fact, not being made, then those institutions will be perceived as illegitimate, all the other rhetoric notwithstanding.
Charles Hamilto...: Now, we throw this word alienation around very loosely, you see. But I think it's the function of you and myself to just tighten up a little bit. Not get uptight, but tighten up the language. Now, there's another concept here that I'd like to deal with, and that's the concept of legitimacy. Professor David Apter wrote a book recently... And I'm sure in this audience, I feel very much at home citing all this literature, because your reputation is abroad in the land, and you can handle it. And I know very clearly you didn't come and expect to hear this kind of level of presentation, but I'll get to the nitty-gritty in a little bit.
Charles Hamilto...: David Apter wrote a book, a very excellent book, entitled The Politics of Modernization, wherein Dave Apter was dealing with the whole phenomena of political change, political development, essentially, in underdeveloped societies. Namely, in this case, because he is a student of Africa, African societies, Uganda or Ghana. But the important thing in that book is that Apter said very clearly that when one is speaking about political legitimacy, one must be talking about normative values first and structural arrangements secondly. And then, he went on to set out what he would conceive to be two principles of legitimacy.
Charles Hamilto...: One he called "the egalitarian libertarian principle," which is essentially associated with Western societies, societies that have already developed in a certain kind of socioeconomic and political way, societies taking much of their philosophical orientation from John Locke. Man is basically rational, capable of knowing his self-interests, and capable of reaching accommodations based on that self-interest, and so forth, and so forth. The first principle of legitimacy has something to do with the Madisonian model as he set it forth in Federalist Paper No. 10, you know, where there's a multiplication of factions, and these factions contend with each other within a certain set of rules of the game.
Charles Hamilto...: And then, there is a second principle that Apter talked about, fulfillment of potentiality. This principle is essentially associated with groups on the make, with societies moving out of colonialism into days of independence, societies which are beginning to feel their oats and are marching to modernity, if you please. And I'm going to suggest to you in no uncertain terms that for Black people massively in the ghettos, we are going to adopt a principle of legitimacy which speaks to the fulfillment of our potentiality. Black Power says in no uncertain terms that we are not going to get hung up on this myth of individualism, and we're going to proceed very clearly now around a concept of group development, group fulfillment, and this is the principle which is legitimate to us.
Charles Hamilto...: Alienation and legitimacy, then. And as I proceed, please, and as you ask your questions, keep that context in mind. Otherwise, I shall be forced to give you a C minus or something like. Now, in terms of this whole notion of alienation, for instance, an awful lot of people see Stokely Carmichael and H. Rap Brown and many of the others as now on the platform shouting "Twenty for one" and "Burn, baby, burn," but what a lot of people fail to understand is they fail to ask the question, where were Stokely Carmichael and H. Rap three, four, and five years ago? I'll tell you where they were. They were in Mississippi and Alabama doing, watch the language, very systemically-oriented things like engaging voter registration, like holding Freedom Schools. I was working with Stokely in Greenwood, Mississippi one summer, and we had the audacity to actually play a game with ourselves, a serious game of seeing how many SNCC workers could file the most petitions to the Justice Department alleging voter denials, as if those petitions accumulating one on one made a damn bit of difference to the Justice Department.
Charles Hamilto...: The point I want to make here is this: if Stokely Carmichael and H. Rap Brown are way out and alienated today, it is precisely because the society was illegitimate to them then and failed them. Now, let us be clear about that point. And those Black people played the game according to the rules. They registered their people, they formed their organizations, and they tried to get in to the regular party in Mississippi. They were rebuffed, obviously. Look what happened. And so they did... If you believe in Mr. Hobbes, you'll act rationally to defend your self-interest. So they formed their own political organization, called the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party. What else would you have them do? Some people said, "Parallel structures. Separatists. Segregation in reverse." Irrelevant language. This was Black people trying to survive.
Charles Hamilto...: They took their demands, their legitimate demands, to the convention in August of 1964, and if any of you want me to pinpoint specifically, chronologically, where masses of Black people began to fit in with Lipset's definition of alienation, I'll say it was on the broad walks of Atlantic City in August of 1964. Here, the Fannie Lou Hamers and the [Virginia] Grays, working like hell all those years in those cotton fields, came to that place at that time and presented their demands, proving in no uncertain terms that the Democratic Party in Mississippi was a racist, segregationist party, and all those White liberal allies agreeing with them, but copping out at the last minute, saying, "Well, baby, you know we just can't quite cut it, because you mess up our process." And if you really want to know when Black people began to tune out of this system on a massive scale, date it August 1964. Check out Jean Smith's article in Redbook magazine for September last year, entitled How I Learned to be Black.
Charles Hamilto...: In other words, the point I want to make here is this. This society cannot continue to toy with the values and the aspirations of a people and expect those people to continue to bestow allegiance on that society. It ain't about to happen, you see. And if, then, the demands get escalated from voter registration to Molotov cocktails, from Freedom Schools to guerrilla warfare, don't let any White American scratch his head and wonder why. It is because the system has copped out on Black people, and Black people are not going to take it anymore.
Charles Hamilto...: So, let's just stop right now asking these irrelevant kinds of questions about, "Hamilton, do you advocate violence?" Baby, I don't have to advocate it. All I've got to do is observe it, because Black people don't care what a PhD 'fessor says on a platform to a college crowd. We could be less than irrelevant. So, if I come on here and say now, "No, I do not advocate violence," you think that's going to make any difference in Chicago on the west side this summer? You see?
Charles Hamilto...: Now, Black Power says very clearly that we don't have to relate to either the expressive or instrumental acts of violence. What some of us can do is to attempt to offer this society a reasonable potential way out, and that moves me to my second point, Black Power as seen as a phenomenon in the political modernization process. I take here my context from Sam Huntington's work on modernization, and he says all societies undergoing the process of modernization are involved in three major phenomena. First is the process of centralization, the accumulation of power to the center. This is an ongoing process. We saw this with the breakup of the feudal estates and so forth. Indeed, that's what was happening, I suspect, in those 17 hot weeks in Philadelphia in the summer of 1787. The modernizing process, then, is a constant one of centralizing authority.
Charles Hamilto...: The second phenomenon of political modernization is the constant search for new values and new forms of decision-making. Any society that would opt for modernity that rests on existing values and existing structures is a dying society. So, a society must constantly be in search, re-evaluating values, re-testing, re-examining its established institutions. And third phenomenon is the constant broadening of the base of political participation. Any society that is not engaged in these three ongoing phenomena cannot call itself a society in the modernizing process.
Charles Hamilto...: Now, Black Power speaks very clearly to these three phenomena. We believe first of all that... Going back to Apter's statement on normative values first and structural arrangements secondly, we believe that Black Power says very clearly that the traditional civil rights movement has failed to do one thing in this country, basically. Not that it was wrong in its thrust, because I conceive it as definitely right in its thrust, namely, knocking over segregation laws and so forth. But the traditional civil rights movement made a mistake. It assumed that the existing value structure of the society was legitimate, and this is why Gunnar Myrdal is wrong 24 years ago when he wrote his book American Dilemma. He said that there was a dilemma between creed on the one hand and practice on the other, that there was a hangup between what Americans said and how Americans lived. That's nonsense, as Charles Silberman said in his book, Crisis in Black and White. White Americans don't go to bed nights worrying about how they treat Black people. They treat Black people precisely the way feel Black people should be treated. They go to bed nights, Silberman said, because they're worried about law and order and stability.
Charles Hamilto...: The point I want to make here is this, that we don't point to the language of the Declaration of Independence, first three paragraphs, or the 13th and 14th Amendments to decipher what America believes, you see. We check out their action. And so then, when Stokely and I write in our book, the first page of the first chapter in our book, and style this society one of institutional racism, people just sort of read over that real quickly and never come back to it, because they're waiting to see what Stokely has to say about honkies and "Burn, baby, burn." The concept we introduced of institutional racism does not get legitimized until the Kerner Commission report comes around and calls this White racism and didn't give us a footnote.
Charles Hamilto...: The point Black Power makes is this, very clearly. We will not spend our time and energy socializing Black people into the existing structures of this society, because the existing structures of this society are institutionally racist, and if that's what we want to do, then we shall have none of it. We are questioning the normative values of this society. This is a materialistic, parochial, insecure society, and the fact that she can build skyscrapers and shoot for the Moon and beat up little children in Vietnam has nothing to do with our basic humanity. This is an illegitimate society, and it has nothing whatsoever to do with our economic affluence.
Charles Hamilto...: We say, very clearly, that the major institution, the major movement questioning the values of this society is Black Power. Labor movement doesn't do it. The churches don't do it. You tell me any agency or institution in this society that has called into question the values of this society, and I will have to agree with you. Tell me one. It wasn't until Black Power came along and began to really say, "This far, no further. You are racists. Now, once you accept that, let's get on and see if we can't work out a rapprochement." But we must deal with the normative values first before we move to structural arrangements.
Charles Hamilto...: We believe that it will be the intervention of these legitimate Black Power groupings in number two that will link up the broadening base of participation on the one hand with the centralizing forces on the other. And if anybody believes that all this politicizing of masses of Black people, like, say, in the South, or like, say, in Chicago, that what we're doing is bringing people massively into the political process, and then to deliver them over to the Dick Daleys of Chicago, then we would be anachronisms, because the Dick Daleys of Chicago are irrelevant. And we would not be truthful to ourselves if we insisted on supporting those kinds of organizations.
Charles Hamilto...: We see, then, the centralizing process going on. We see the broadening of the base of political participation going on. Not just electorally, but there are an awful lot of little Black people running around now, shouting, "Ungawa. Black Power." That's part of the politicizing process, you see. There are an awful lot of Black people going around now wearing naturals and dashikis and going through funny handshakes. That's part of the politicizing process. And I'm not going to let anybody tell me that it's ersatz, that's it's make-do, it's make-believe, because I'm not going to let anybody tell me how a people who have been deliberately oppressed and suppressed, how they should go about getting themselves together psychologically. If we want to wear our naturals, baby, we going to wear them. And if we want to go through our funny handshakes at our little Black Caucus meetings, we going to have it, and we going to TCB.
Charles Hamilto...: I see no other viable organizations in this society that can give meaning to Black people as they come into the political process. Now, I brought one piece of information with me just as a kind of documentation. I read it on the plane today. May I have that [inaudible]? This is the Chicago Daily News. They can be so relevant at times. I was in the O'Hare airport, and I got a paper expecting to see if the White Sox had ever won a ballgame, and so forth. If you want to know my other hangup, I'll tell you about them. White Sox.
Speaker 4: Right.
Charles Hamilto...: This is called recess, you see. I have a style that permits you to step back a little bit. Just relax. You ought to dig some of my [inaudible], just cool it, now. This is an article entitled Absentee Bosses Rule West Side Ghetto, and it shows how, in 75% of the precincts and the wards in West Side Chicago, do you know who the bosses are, who the ward committee men are, who the precinct captains are? Whites. Query... It's a legal term. Query: where do they live? 1040 Lake Shore Drive. It's a very interesting article. It's an expose, something we knew all along, but now, you see, the press has started getting in on the act. That's all right. Everybody's got to do his thing.
Charles Hamilto...: And this article points out very clearly, very, very clearly, you see, that all of the political decisions are made by absentee political slumlords. Lords of the riot area. They don't even live there, and they have fictional address... These are the people Dick Daley would relate to. These are the people that he feels represent the Black communities. Well, Black Power is saying, "Let's be done with that nonsense," because as long as we continue to think that we are existing in a society where the institutions of decision-making are legitimate, then we shall continue to be deluding ourselves and turning on and frustrating further Black people. So when Mr. Daley gives his shoot-to-kill order, let it be very clear that the only thing he has done is to reinforce the thinking of many Black people that the only alternative is to shoot some whites.
Charles Hamilto...: Now, let that be clearly understood. So, let us see, then, this whole Black Power thrust as a move toward the modernizing process, and if anybody wants to point out to me some other legitimate kinds of organizations which can fill that gap, which can move in in terms of number two, the search for new values and new forms, new organizations, and new structures, if anybody wants to come up with new ones, is it George Meany's AFL-CIO? Is it the Republican Party on the West Side of Chicago? We must begin to put to ourselves some terribly, terribly hard questions, lest, I assure you, we are playing at school. Now, a lot of this can sound very contentious, and my demeanor could be one of bitterness, but let us keep in mind at all times, I'm speaking about political modernization.
Charles Hamilto...: The third point I want to make, and then I'll stop, is let us move now to some programs of Black Power. Generally and... a few of them. Everyone says Black Power is basically rhetoric, that we're long on language and short on action, because what they're really doing, you see, is focusing at the visible level. They see cats like myself come on and rap, and they see Stokely, and that's about all they see. But they don't see... and occasionally, they'll see a Dick Hatcher getting elected in Gary, Indiana. And let the record show here very clearly that Dick Hatcher is mayor of... and this is Black Power in operation, okay? That's what I'm moving into, programs.
Charles Hamilto...: Dick Hatcher is mayor of Gary, Indiana today, and a lot of people will say, "Ah, but with 17% of the White vote. Crazy." Correct. You're right. But Dick Hatcher would not be mayor of Gary, Indiana today if he had not started out seven years ago building a base of independent Black Power in Gary. And there's another footnote to this, we can add it right here. I think that it's a commentary on the times in Gary, too, that if Dick Hatcher were white, there never would've been any question, because the White Democratic candidate always wins. Blacks had to get themselves together first in Gary, Indiana before they could even begin to talk about political power.
Charles Hamilto...: We are in the process of running candidates now across this country, independent candidates. In the 3rd Congressional district in Chicago, Gus Savage is running against the incumbent Democratic candidate, and we've done our counting. We know where the votes are, we know how to do voter registration, and we're going to win. That's very clear. Because, you see, we're through fighting symbolic races. We're through trying to get on the ballot just to raise the issue. When we sink our time, energy, and money into races now around this country, at any level, we're going to have a good chance of winning.
Charles Hamilto...: Now, a lot of people will say, "But look, man, what is one more Congressman going to mean? There are 435 or so, remember?" Or more. Now, I'm as fully aware of my Marxism as anybody else, but I know that he who would act now would not deal in the millennium question. I know here, now, very clearly that when I go back to South Side Chicago at 63rd and South Park, or 63rd and Cottage, or 43rd and Langley, and if I want to organize Black people now, I've got to organize them around what they conceive to be relevant in their lives now.
Charles Hamilto...: If you want to philosophize with me about the millennium question, about knocking over the exploitative capitalist system, crazy, man. Check me out, make an appointment, or take my seminar. But if you're going to move with me into the Black community now and attempt to organize, then you better check out your actions. You see, some of us are getting awfully sick and tired of having philosophy imposed upon us and then having that philosophy immobilize us. We will work out our own damn philosophy, and we'll do it in our time and in our way. And if anybody in here thinks that that's a Marxist cop-out, let me tell you very clearly, what I'm pushing for is a Black Power variant of Hamiltonism, the hell with Marxism.
Charles Hamilto...: Alliances? Of course we'll make alliances. Surely we'll make alliances, but as we say in chapter three of that excellent, excellent book, we will make alliances on three conditions. First of all, we will definitely not enter the kinds of alliances that we found ourselves hung up with in August of '64, like when Walter Reuther and Hubert Humphrey and the National Council of Churches and all those other cats moved out on us. All we could do was hang our heads and sing We Shall Overcome. We're not going to be involved in that sort of nonsense again. We will enter alliances with very sincere people. First, however, after we establish our own base of independent power, whereby if that partner in the alliance cops out on us, we will have power to punish him. Let us understand that. Now, "What do you mean, Hamilton?" I mean very clearly that when Ab Mikva in the 2nd Congressional district in Chicago wants our help, it will be reciprocal, and if he fails to help us in 3rd Congressional district, then we'll blow the whistle on him and pull people out of his race in the 2nd. That's the way you work alliances.
Charles Hamilto...: Secondly, let that be... Alliances? Sure, we'll enter alliances, but on a very clear terms that it's not just unilateral. Not Whites bringing their altruism to us, but it must be very clear that there is mutual self-interest involved here. We will enter alliances with those Whites who perceive that they have a self-interest which is akin to ours or where the quid pro quo can operate. Up to now, we've been coming to Whites begging, pleading, and Whites have seen it in their hearts to help us or not, and more frequently than not, we've been left in the lurch.
Charles Hamilto...: The third, yes, we'll enter alliances on the condition that it's clearly understood that these alliances are ephemeral, and here, yes, the Madisonian model does work. The factions will break up and regroup from time to time. We ain't about to become nobody's puppet, if I can use that double negative, as we are now on South Side Chicago in the Democratic Party. They've got us in their hip pockets and can deliver us every first Tuesday right on the nose. So when we form our own separate organizations, our political organizations, go ahead, let people call it separatism. It's the most healthy kind. We had better separate ourselves from some of these anachronistic and oppressive institutions if we want to get our minds together. Alliances? Sure, we'll enter alliances, so we don't have to get involved in that polemic about, "What can Whites do?" You can go infiltrate the White community, help to end racism there, develop viable groups there, and hook up with us. That's what you can do, so we can just stop that question right now.
Charles Hamilto...: I get so sick and tired with people who always... relating at the non-practical level. Right away, somebody will say, "Well, now, if you're going to do your thing, is this permanent separatism?" All that sort of... Read [Martin Dugelman's] article in Paterson Review. I guess it's the fall... the last issue, the issue before last. Some of us came back in answer to this. Read that article. Here's a very intelligent man, professor at Princeton and all. He's supposed to be into something. He got some insights, wrote an article on Black Power, copped out at the end. It's nonsense. It's really nonsense.
Charles Hamilto...: We get to the point in dealing with this subject that we can just over-intellectualize it. We overreact to it. All these questions on alliances, how can we work with each other, and so forth. That comes from people who never really know what action is. You work with Dick Hatcher and his campaign, and you'll see very clearly how alliances can be worked out and when they can be worked out. You go work with another group, SCLC's Operation Breadbasket in Chicago, and you'll see very clearly how Whites can work and how alliances can be formed. The point is, you ain't about to get it by simply reading some of these articles, except some of them, or many of these of books, except some.
Charles Hamilto...: What is Black Power programmatically? It's like SCLC's Operation Breadbasket, where they organize Blacks through the churches to boycott merchants and manufacturers who do not hire and promote Black people. Very clear, started by Leon Sullivan back in 1961. Blacks do have some consumer power, and they mighty sure are going to use it. And in Chicago alone, through Jesse Jackson's SCLC Operation Breadbasket, 2,000 jobs were gotten for Blacks in a 15-month period with a total annual income of $15 million. Other people are saying, "But man, that's again piddling." Well, you know, what alternative? Black people start where they are and move where they can.
Charles Hamilto...: Are you talking about CORE's burgeoning co-ops throughout the South? Many of these co-ops started on an integrated basis. One in Opelousas, Louisiana, co-ops of cabbage, sweet potato, and okra growers. 20% Whites were in this co-op two years ago. Now it's all-Black, not because the Blacks kicked them out, not because the Black farmers, and there are 300 Black farmers in this co-op... and they're surviving and really developing. Credit unions, buying clubs, and so forth. It's not all-Black because they kicked the Whites out, but because the White farmers felt so much pressure from the townspeople that they got out of it for that reason. And this is being done throughout the South. No, no, no, not millions of people, but it's starting. Now, you don't hear about this or read about these things in Huntley and Brinkley or some of your pop journals. You read about Black Power as the Mau Mau coming down the streets of Grinnell, Iowa.
Charles Hamilto...: Are you talking about other Black Power groups? Let me talk about one that's not on the drawing boards, but it's out there working. Black, professional, middle-class people. Now, you hear a lot about this, how Black professionals have opted out. To a large extent, that has been true and still is. But let me say in no uncertain terms that where I come from and where I go, I see Black professionals getting involved in the Black movement en masse. We formed a group of Black professionals in Chicago, January 20th, called a meeting. 371 Blacks came to this South Side Presbyterian church, met all day. Lawyers, three doctors, accountants, physicians, teachers, social workers, and so forth, Each dealing with his own field and talking about and drawing up ways whereby they can be relevant to the Black community and then linking up with the West Side organizations and the other grass-roots Black groups, bringing their skills to bear.
Charles Hamilto...: And the first major test of whether... the Catalyst Group is what it's called, could do anything was right after Dr. King's assassination in Chicago. 45 Black lawyers coming out of this organization that we had formed. 45 Black lawyers went down and insisted that those despicable processes that were being pursued by the Chicago judicial system be immediately ended. Chapter 13 of the Kerner Commission report spells out certain legitimate ways the judicial machinery should operate after or during an emergency period like a riot. Chicago was in the process of operating just the opposite, holding people incommunicado for days, $50,000 bonds, and so forth. These 45 Black lawyers mobilized overnight, brought pressure, got grass-roots groups behind them, and insisted that the court open up, start hearing these cases, and they insisted, even, that they hold court on Easter Sunday morning, and 300 cases were heard then. And let me tell you, these Black lawyers in Chicago didn't charge a penny.
Charles Hamilto...: That's Black Power, and that's what we're doing. You don't hear about this, because I'm going to tell you very clearly, a hell of a lot of what we do ain't about to be pulled off successfully in no press conference. If we're really going to get ourselves together and get operating and get moving, then we start to act, and that's what I'm coming here to tell you we're doing. Other organizations, the Association of Afro-American Educators. First of all, those are Negro teachers, and if you know anything about the Black middle class, you know for them to start calling themselves Afro-Americans is a revolution in itself. Growing organizations around this country, talking about what? The Coleman Report? No. The debate between Tom Pettigrew and Joe Alsop at The New Republic on ghetto education? No. Uh-uh. Let those Whites go on and hold their irrelevant discussions. They haven't been near the ghetto in 10 years anyway, and then by telescope.
Charles Hamilto...: Black teachers are meeting now, forming their own organizations, rewriting curriculums in those Black high schools and those Black elementary schools because they know what kinds of education is relevant for Black children. They teach them every day. They live in those Black communities, and we don't need any massive reports coming down from Harvard or Johns Hopkins or any other place to tell the Black Teachers' Caucus at Hyde Park High School, for instance, what's relevant in the curriculum in Hyde Park High School in Chicago, and that's what's happening. And I get pummeled with this, and these people are, in fact, the legitimate ones. They, my friends, are your number twos in the modernizing process. Let that clearly be understood.
Charles Hamilto...: Black social workers are forming, working with welfare unions. Now, look, I could come on here and turn you on and try to make you believe that this is happening en masse, and that as soon as you get outside of Grinnell and move into a major, urban area, you're going to be bombarded with this new Black modernity. No, no, cool it, now. Not really. But it's starting. It's beginning. And that's why I can be so optimistic, because I see for the first time Black people with skills and Black people hooking up, the haves hooking up with the have-nots. I don't know where that fits in that other kind of philosophical orientation, but I see it happening. Call it petty bourgeoisie, call it anything you like, but I see it happening, and I know the kinds of demands they're making. Black control of the institutions of their community, like IS 201. Some of us absurd enough to come up with some vast, gross, new kinds of plans for education in the Black community. I wrote about it. You can check it out.
Charles Hamilto...: But fundamental to all of this is we don't want to talk just as Moynihan talks or as a lot of other people talk. We don't want to talk just in terms of an equitable distribution of goods and services. "Those people are rioting, give them more jobs. Those people are rioting, give them more houses. Those people are rioting, give them better schools." No, no, no, no, no, no. That's not just what we're talking about, because if you think only in terms of "give them, give them, give them," then you are perpetuating a welfare mentality, and Black people should know anything, "He who giveth can also taketh away." So we are saying very clearly as we go about the business of developing these organizations and getting them off the ground in the Black community, don't you just talk in terms of an equitable distribution of goods and services. Until this society is legitimately prepared to talk in terms of an equitable distribution of decision-making power, then this society is playing at school. That's what we're pushing for, and that's what we're going to get.
Charles Hamilto...: It's not like Governor Otto Kerner, back to him. Different commission, though. A later one. You know about the Kerner Commission report on civil disorders. Last week, Governor Otto Kerner appointed in the state of Illinois a commission on urban area government, calling for a study by this 54-member commission, "to see how to restructure the government in the state so that the government can be more responsive to the needs of the people." 54-member commission, two Black people on it. One is Ed Berry of the Chicago Urban League, and the other is an associate dean at Northwestern University. Not one legitimate representative, elective or otherwise, of the Black ghettos. So apparently, Governor Kerner didn't learn a thing.
Charles Hamilto...: So, we are saying to that man and to other decision-makers like him, if you think your commission can do anything legitimate about finding out what you want to find out and then subsequently about implementing them without legitimately involving and consulting and including Black people at the relevant levels, then you are mistaken. Now, this is what we're talking about. We've got to stop this nonsense whereby decisions can legitimately be made over the heads and without the consent of Black people.
Charles Hamilto...: Finally, there is the cultural emphasis of Black Power, which is a most crucial one, and again, you see, it goes back to what I conceive to be the major innovative thrust of Black Power, where I distinguish it from the traditional civil rights groups. Black Power talks in terms of "Black is beautiful," and in a sense, I tell my eight-year-old she is beautiful because she is Black. Black Power is clearly aware and agrees with Stanley Elkins when he talks about the development of a Sambo personality and how slavery did that.
Charles Hamilto...: We are aware of Bruno Bettelheim's studies on the effects of the concentration camps on Jews, some Jews, where both of these men talk about in their studies, and I'm sure some of you have read about this, what happens to the psyche and the mentality of an oppressed person in a highly rigid and closed society where the guard, the master, stands between him and death. He develops a Sambo personality, a childlike personality, as Bruno Bettelheim pointed out and described some of the Jews developed in these concentration camps. They began to mimic, act like, walk like, look like, the SS guards. And we know enough about Black people in this country to know that a hell of a lot of them have tried to be, still try to be, like Whites. We know that.
Charles Hamilto...: We know that for ever so long, as Killian and Grigg point out in their book Racial Crisis in America, and it still means it, integration means adopting to the White man's standards. Integration means trying to act like Whites. We're saying, "No, no, this far and no further. If that's what integration means, that day is done, and that deed is denounced." We're saying very clearly that we are Black people, and we are proud, and we are self-confident, and people like myself, who have... how many degrees? I've got a bachelor's, check it out. Law degree, MA, and a PhD. I went that route. I did everything right, and now, I stand up here talking like this. I must be some kind of freak, because I should've been socialized into the mainstream. I could not go home nights and face my little eight-year-old daughter if I began to spew a lot of that nonsense I learned getting my PhD. Now, I'm not coming on anti-intellectual. I'll say this to your 'fessors. I'm not being anti-intellectual. I'm just saying, let's begin to redefine the legitimacy of intellectualism. Let's just rush to relevancy in no uncertain terms.
Charles Hamilto...: Little story, then I'll quit. Went through law school. Never occurred to me at that law school, Loyola, Chicago, that I was learning anything relevant to me as a Black man and a future Black lawyer in the ghettos. No landlord and tenancy, no rights of the indigent. They loaded me up with future interests, estates, property, trust law, and now, many of these law schools are trying to rush to relevancy by developing urban studies centers, a euphemism for the Black thing. I went to get an MA and a PhD at the University of Chicago. Never occurred to me that those people were writing stuff relevant to what was happening in the Black ghetto where I was living in Woodlawn. Never occurred to me.
Charles Hamilto...: And when I went on to write my PhD dissertation, my advisor, who is still there and chairman of the department today, said, "Well, Hamilton, what are you going to write about?" I said, "Well, baby, you know I gots to do something about my people." First of all, I shouldn't have been talking like that, because I'd gone far enough to know that... how to speak correctly. So he said, "Well, what do you have in mind?" So I said, "Well, you know, I'd like to do something on Southern federal judges and the right of Black people to vote." He says, "Well, that's okay. Fine. You can get a lot of good data from the Justice Department." But he says, "Hamilton, I wish someday you would rise above that." This man's there now, White liberal friend of mine. "And become more universal. I'm looking for the day when you will write something on, for instance, the British parliamentary system."
Charles Hamilto...: See, that man was willing to let me write about my people, but never considering that that was really relevant. He didn't understand, and doesn't understand today, the subtle racist implications of that comment, and I doubt if there's a Black person in this room, who's lived in this country more than a week and a half, who hasn't been presented with some sort of insult of that nature. That if you are Black, that the thing you want to be is an individual and not a Black person. Let me say here very clearly for the record, I'm not a political scientist who happens to be Black, I am a Black political scientist. I'm not a college professor who happens to be a Negro. I am a Black college professor, who's chairman of his department, incidentally.
Charles Hamilto...: The final point I want to make, then, and I'm thinking that it's just about 45 minutes, Black Power says very clearly that we are no longer in the business of turning out middle-class Black Sambos. We've got ourselves a thing to do, and if my demeanor, and if my language, is somewhat slightly askew, let me tell you very clearly, that's Black Power too, because we come to do our thing. And let me tell you, finally, where I come from, 46th and South Park, we got a saying that goes, "Everything going to be all right."
Speaker 5: [inaudible] Congressman last night say that November 1968 will be the key year in presidential elections. How would you assess the possible or more probable candidates running now?
Charles Hamilto...: The question dealt with the comment last night by the Congressman that November '68 was a key year, and the question is, how would I assess the candidates in regard to, let's say, what I've been talking about, Black Power and so forth? Well, I think that it's very clear who the... I think that, well, Nixon is out of it, but that was easy to say. I'll tell you very frankly, I think that on the issue of civil rights, race relations, and so forth, in terms of... I don't see substantial difference, and I can't really make any comments beyond this one. I don't see substantial differences between McCarthy and Humphrey. Kennedy has made many more statements recently. Humphrey has an excellent record in the past. Kennedy has made many more perceptive statements recently. I'm a little worried about Kennedy's heavy emphasis on government and business partnership in the ghettos.
Charles Hamilto...: But some of us have decided, even though we style ourselves professors, not to make any public statements or endorsements one way or the other that might... We have an inflated notion of ourselves... that might influence somebody. We don't want Black people too influenced right now. We're going to hang back and play it cool. But I just don't know other than that. I'm very disappointed with... and this is just a personal disappointment. I am very disappointed with the coy way McCarthy played it in Wisconsin on race.
Charles Hamilto...: Now, here's a man who's supposed to be a principled man, and I know intimately and personally that some of us tried very hard to get him to make his position known on civil rights during the Wisconsin thing, but no, no, it was politically unwise, and I understood this. I understood it. But I just point that out for those McCarthyites who are so caught up with this man as a moralist, as a principled man. He is a Senator who knows how to get elected, so just check out all that talk about him being a man of principle. He's just as much an opportunist as all four of the others running, or five, or something now, with Rockefeller. I just want to be candid about it. I just don't want us backing anybody for the wrong kinds of reasons, that's all.
Speaker 1: You have been listening to an address entitled Black Power: A Viable Alternative, by Charles Hamilton, Professor of Political Science at Roosevelt University. Professor Hamilton was co-author with Stokely Carmichael of the book Black Power: The Politics of Liberation in America. His address was delivered April 30, 1968, at Grinnell College during the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Symposium. This series of programs on Afro-American Culture is presented by the Broadcasting Service of the University of Iowa in cooperation with the Department of English and the Afro-American Studies Program at the University as background material for the course Afro-American Literature. This has been a recorded presentation of the Broadcasting Service of the University of Iowa.