America Dreaming

by Laban Carrick Hill

  CORE worker Lou Smith assessed the causes behind the Watts riot:

  * * *

  What happened was that people had sat there and watched all the concern about black people “over there.” And there wasn’t a damn soul paying one bit of attention to what was going on in Watts. So the black people in Watts just spontaneously rose up one day and said, Fuck it! We’re hungry. Our schools stink. We’re getting the shit beat out of us. We tried the integration route. It’s obvious the integration route isn’t going to work. Now we’ve got to go another way.

  * * *

  When a gang of youth spotted Martin Luther King Jr. on a visit to Watts afterward, they crowed, “We won!” King asked them how they could call death, destruction, and the alienation of white support winning. One young teen replied:

  We won because we made them pay attention to us.

  Indeed they did. A riot of such violence seemed inconceivable to those who were reaping the benefits of America’s booming economy. What white America did not understand was the overwhelming despair that people who lived in ghettos like Watts felt. The unemployment rate in Watts was 30 percent. Los Angeles is a sprawling city with inadequate public transportation; if a person could not afford a car, he could not get to a job. Forty percent of Watts residents did not own a car.

  At the same time, the housing was inadequate and horribly overpriced. Even middle-class blacks were locked into the ghetto because white communities restricted blacks. The consequences of housing stress was higher rents for worse housing in densely packed areas. To compound the problem, banks and savings and loans refused to approve mortgages in black neighborhoods on the reasoning that they were too crowded and unstable to be good investments. Without money available to invest in purchasing homes and improving the housing stock, landlords had no incentive to maintain and improve their properties. They knew they could rent them no matter how substandard. Ironically, housing segregation was worse outside of the South. With the focus always so heavily on the outrageousness of white Southern racists, these truths about Northern racism gained little attention.

  In addition to unemployment and substandard housing, the schools in these communities did not provide adequate education. As a result, two thirds of all adults in Watts lacked a high school diploma, and nearly two thirds of Watts high school students failed to graduate. With this kind of education failure widespread, it became a self-perpetuating cycle. Parents were qualified only for unskilled, low-paying jobs and were unprepared to help lift their children, through educational enrichment at home, to better opportunities.

  Unlike uneducated, unskilled immigrants who’d settled in urban areas in the first half of the twentieth century, blacks moving out of the South after World War II found a work environment that had changed dramatically. In the past, urban migrants used unskilled jobs as the first step to a better life. Now, with advancing technology, these jobs were quickly becoming in short supply and further and further out of reach.

  Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, rising expectations generated increased frustration. With the mass media, politicians, and many African-American leaders proclaiming a new era of possibility, people came to expect their situation to improve. Nineteenth-century French critic Alexis de Tocqueville wrote, “Evils which are patiently endured when they seem inevitable become intolerable when once the idea of escape from them is suggested.” Escape had been suggested. The possibility that conditions would change offered hope. The rate at which these changes were being made was slow, and inspired anger and frustration—emotions capable of igniting violence.

  That cry of “We won!” after the Watts riots defined the sense of triumph by many blacks. The fear that such violence instilled in whites was intoxicating for a people who lived their lives with a sense of powerlessness. It was one of the few opportunities to feel powerful, especially against their oppressors. It was as if these uneducated, unskilled youths had taken a page right out of Frantz Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth as they began to redefine their relationship with their oppressor. One young rioter confirms this:

  I felt invincible…. Honestly, that was how powerful I felt. I’m not too proud of what I did, looking back. But I held nothing back. I let out all my frustration with every brick, every bottle that I threw…. Many people ran around looting the stores…. My only thought about the stores was something like, “Those store owners will be furious, but who cares. They aren’t black. They don’t know what furious really is.” Then I picked up a bottle and tried to destroy a TV in the window display. I remember feeling completely relieved. I unleashed all the emotions that had built up inside, ones I didn’t know how to express.

  BLACK PANTHERS

  “The Revolution has co-ome, it’s time to pick up the gu-un. Off the pigs!”

  An intimidating group of young black men, dressed in black berets and leather jackets, marched in military formation through the streets of Oakland, California, chanting: “The Revolution has co-ome, it’s time to pick up the gu-un. Off the pigs!”

  The Black Panther Party for Self-Defense was the brainchild of two African-American activists, Bobby Seale and Huey Newton, and was formed in October 1966. Created to embody Malcolm X’s doctrine of community self-defense, the party argued that the black community needed to arm itself in order to protect it from the white racist police. They were responding not only to the riots in Watts but also to the shooting of a fifteen-year-old boy by an off-duty police lieutenant in Harlem in 1964 and the killing of a fifteen-year-old youth shot in the back by a police officer in San Francisco in 1966. Increasingly, black neighborhoods felt more threatened than protected by police.

  More and more activists were influenced by Frantz Fanon, whose works analyzed the destructive nature of colonial systems and provided an intellectual basis for revolutionary movements overseas. What dawned on these African-American readers was just how similar their circumstances were to colonies in Africa. Urban African-American communities were governed by a white power structure, where often the only whites that black people encountered were aggressive and hostile police.

  The Black Panthers’ initial mission was to monitor the police and defend themselves by carrying guns, which under California law was legal if the weapons were unconcealed. They drafted a ten-point program, modeled after the Declaration of Independence, to explain their party’s platform.

  * * *

  THE TEN-POINT PLAN

  1. WE WANT FREEDOM. WE WANT POWER TO DETERMINE THE DESTINY OF OUR BLACK AND OPPRESSED COMMUNITIES.

  We believe that Black and oppressed people will not be free until we are able to determine our destinies in our own communities ourselves, by fully controlling all the institutions which exist in our communities.

  2. WE WANT FULL EMPLOYMENT FOR OUR PEOPLE.

  We believe that the federal government is responsible and obligated to give every person employment or a guaranteed income. We believe that if the American businessmen will not give full employment, then the technology and means of production should be taken from the businessmen and placed in the community so that the people of the community can organize and employ all of its people and give a high standard of living.

  3. WE WANT AN END TO THE ROBBERY BY THE CAPITALISTS OF OUR BLACK AND OPPRESSED COMMUNITIES.

  We believe that this racist government has robbed us and now we are demanding the overdue debt of forty acres and two mules. Forty acres and two mules were promised 100 years ago as restitution for slave labor and the mass murder of Black people. We will accept the payment in currency which will be distributed to our many communities. The American racist has taken part in the slaughter of our fifty million Black people. Therefore, we feel this is a modest demand that we make.

  4. WE WANT DECENT HOUSING, FIT FOR THE SHELTER OF HUMAN BEINGS.

  We believe that if the landlords will not give decent housing to our Black and oppressed communities, then housing and the land should be made into cooperatives so that the people in our communities, with government
aid, can build and make decent housing for the people.

  5. WE WANT DECENT EDUCATION FOR OUR PEOPLE THAT EXPOSES THE TRUE NATURE OF THIS DECADENT AMERICAN SOCIETY. WE WANT EDUCATION THAT TEACHES US OUR TRUE HISTORY AND OUR ROLE IN THE PRESENT-DAY SOCIETY.

  We believe in an educational system that will give to our people a knowledge of the self. If you do not have knowledge of yourself and your position in the society and in the world, then you will have little chance to know anything else.

  6. WE WANT COMPLETELY FREE HEALTH CARE FOR ALL BLACK AND OPPRESSED PEOPLE.

  We believe that the government must provide, free of charge, for the people, health facilities which will not only treat our illnesses, most of which have come about as a result of our oppression, but which will also develop preventive medical programs to guarantee our future survival. We believe that mass health education and research programs must be developed to give all Black and oppressed people access to advanced scientific and medical information, so we may provide ourselves with proper medical attention and care.

  7. WE WANT AN IMMEDIATE END TO POLICE BRUTALITY AND MURDER OF BLACK PEOPLE, OTHER PEOPLE OF COLOR, ALL OPPRESSED PEOPLE INSIDE THE UNITED STATES.

  We believe that the racist and fascist government of the United States uses its domestic enforcement agencies to carry out its program of oppression against Black people, other people of color and poor people inside the United States. We believe it is our right, therefore, to defend ourselves against such armed forces and that all Black and oppressed people should be armed for self-defense of our homes and communities against these fascist police forces.

  8. WE WANT AN IMMEDIATE END TO ALL WARS OF AGGRESSION.

  We believe that the various conflicts which exist around the world stem directly from the aggressive desire of the United States ruling circle and government to force its domination upon the oppressed people of the world. We believe that if the United States government or its lackeys do not cease these aggressive wars it is the right of the people to defend themselves by any means necessary against their aggressors.

  9. WE WANT FREEDOM FOR ALL BLACK AND OPPRESSED PEOPLE NOW HELD IN U.S. FEDERAL, STATE, COUNTY, CITY AND MILITARY PRISONS AND JAILS. WE WANT TRIALS BY A JURY OF PEERS FOR ALL PERSONS CHARGED WITH SO-CALLED CRIMES UNDER THE LAWS OF THIS COUNTRY.

  We believe that the many Black and poor oppressed people now held in United States prisons and jails have not received fair and impartial trials under a racist and fascist judicial system and should be free from incarceration. We believe in the ultimate elimination of all wretched, inhuman penal institutions, because the masses of men and women imprisoned inside the United States or by the United States military are the victims of oppressive conditions which are the real cause of their imprisonment. We believe that when persons are brought to trial they must be guaranteed, by the United States, juries of their peers, attorneys of their choice and freedom from imprisonment while awaiting trial.

  10. WE WANT LAND, BREAD, HOUSING, EDUCATION, CLOTHING, JUSTICE, PEACE AND PEOPLE’S COMMUNITY CONTROL OF MODERN TECHNOLOGY.

  When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bonds which have connected them with another, and to assume, among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

  We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed; that, whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute a new government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and, accordingly, all experience hath shown that mankind are most disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But, when a long train of abuses and usurpation, pursuing invariably the same object, evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security.

  * * *

  At its height, the Black Panther Party had chapters in twenty-five cities including New York, Los Angeles, Detroit, Oakland, Des Moines, and Jersey City.

  Regardless of the eloquence or reasonableness of most of these claims, the Black Panthers took such an intimidating approach to black justice that they were quickly villainized in the white media. The FBI director J. Edgar Hoover described the Panthers as “hoodlum-type revolutionaries.” Even though the Panthers provided many social services in black communities, including free breakfast programs, welfare counseling, free medical clinics and other social services in several cities, their insistence on heated rhetoric (“offing the pigs”), carrying guns, and donning military attire overshadowed any good they were doing.

  A confrontation between the Panthers and the police was inevitable. In October 1967, Panther leader Huey Newton went to jail for killing a police officer. In April of the following year, thirteen Panthers ambushed an Oakland police car, hitting it with 157 shots and badly wounding the officer. By 1970, the Panthers had killed eleven police officers. With each confrontation, the Panthers drew more recruits. Many of these recruits, however, were ex-convicts who had a beef against the police and delighted in being at war with America. As time passed, the Panthers seemed to devolve into a criminal organization. The party platform became a front to rip off and terrorize their own black neighbors.

  BLACK IS BEAUTIFUL

  We want “poems that kill.”

  Assassin poems, Poems that shoot guns. Poems that wrestle cops into alleys and take their weapons leaving them dead….

  We want a black poem. And a Black World.

  Let the world be a Black Poem And Let All Black People Speak This Poem Silently

  or LOUD

  —“Black Art,” Imamu Amiri Baraka (LeRoi Jones)

  With this poem, Baraka, who at the time still called himself LeRoi Jones, was inspired by the same sense of frustration that many young black Americans were feeling. Like other black radicals, he resented the real gap between what the law said was their rights and what rights they could actually demand. Because of this discrepancy, he and many other African-American artists and intellectuals set out to create a new role for themselves that was perhaps more political than aesthetic. They wanted their art to change American society and called their group the Black Arts Movement. In order to do this, they felt they had to transform African-American culture from one of subjugation to one of pride and celebration. In his manifesto for the movement, Baraka wrote:

  State/meant

  The Black Artist’s role in America is to aid in the destruction of America as he knows it. His role is to report and reflect so precisely the nature of the society, and of himself in that society, that other men will be moved by the exactness of his rendering and, if they are black men, grow strong through this moving, having seen their own strength, and weakness; and if they are white men, tremble, curse, and go mad, because they will be drenched with the filth of their evil.

  The Black Artist must draw out of his soul the correct image of the world. He must use this image to band his brothers and sisters together in common understanding of the nature of the world (and the nature of America) and the nature of the human soul.

  The Black Artist must demonstrate sweet life, how it differs from the deathly grip of the White Eyes. The Black Artist must teach the White Eyes their deaths, and teach the black man how to bring th
ese deaths about.

  Imamu Amiri Baraka

  We are unfair, and unfair.

  We are black magicians, black arts we make in black labs of the heart.

  The fair are fair, and deathly white.

  The day will not save them and we own the night.

  BLACK IS BEAUTIFUL

  “If we had not had a Black Arts Movement in the sixties we certainly wouldn’t have had national Black literary figures like Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Alice Walker, or Toni Morrison, because much more so than the Harlem Renaissance, in which Black artists were always on the leash of white patrons and publishing houses, the Black Arts Movement did it for itself. What you had was Black people going out nationally, in mass, saying that we are an independent Black people and this is what we produce.”

  —Robert Chrisman, founder with Nathan Hare of Black Scholar in 1969

  BLACK ARTS ORGANIZATIONS

  New York City – BARTS

  Detroit – Black Arts Midwest, Concept East

  New Orleans – BLKARTSOUTH, Free Southern Theatre

  Miami – Theatre of Afro Arts

  Houston – Sudan Arts Southwest

  San Francisco – Black Arts West