by Jon Meacham
“Brothers and Sisters, we have been living with The Man too long. Brothers and Sisters, we have been in a bag too long. We have got to move to a position where we will be proud, be proud of our blackness. From here on in we’ve got to stick together, Brothers and Sisters, we’ve got to join together and move to a new spirit and make of our community a community of love . . . LOVE. There’s no time for shuckin’ and jivin’. We’ve got to move fast and we’ve got to come together and we’ve got . . . we’ve got to realize . . . that this country was conceived in racism and dedicated to racism. And understand that we’ve got to move . . . WE HAVE GOT TO MOVE. . . . We’ve got to build to a position so that when L.B.J. says, ‘Come heah, boy, I’m gonna send you to Veetnam,’ we will say, ‘Hell, no.’ ” (“Preach, boy, preach. . . . Tell ’em, Stokely. . . .”)
“Brothers and Sisters, a hell of a lot of us are gonna be shot and it ain’t just gonna be in South Vietnam. We’ve got to move to a position in this country where we’re not afraid to say that any man who has been selling us rotten meat for high prices should have had his store bombed fifteen years ago. We have got to move to a position where we will control our own destiny. We have got to move to a position where we will have black people represent us to achieve our needs. This country don’t run on love, Brothers, it’s run on power and we ain’t got none. Brothers and Sisters, don’t let them separate you from other black people. Don’t ever in your life apologize for your black brothers. Don’t be ashamed of your culture because if you don’t have culture, that means you don’t exist and, Brothers and Sisters, we do exist. Don’t ever, don’t ever, don’t ever be ashamed of being black because you . . . you are black, little girl with your nappy hair and your broad lips, and you are beautiful. Brothers and Sisters, I know this theatre we’re in—it used to be the Alhambra. Well I used to come here on Saturday afternoon when I was a little boy and we used to see Tarzan here and all of us would yell like crazy when Tarzan beat up our black brothers. Well, you know Tarzan is on television now and from here on in I’m rooting for that black man to beat the hell out of Tarzan. . . .”
The audience roars and is on its feet and Stokely grins and waves. The audience keeps applauding. . . .
Stokely is in the East to build up support, to meet with S.N.C.C. workers in New York, Newark, Boston and Philadelphia. He will make speeches and hold private meetings and endure just a few interviews (he turns down many of them now because of “distortions”). At twenty-five, the most charismatic figure in the Negro movement, Stokely Carmichael rushes from ghetto to ghetto with the drive of a political candidate one week before Election Day. He sleeps just a few hours a night. He eats on the run and drinks milk to keep up his energy. In Mississippi and Alabama, during those five summers of unbearable heat, of prison, of beatings, of death threats, of rifle shots fired at him through car windows, Stokely smoked three packs of cigarettes a day. He doesn’t smoke now and doesn’t drink.
His base now—and S.N.C.C.’s headquarters—is in Atlanta and his itinerary in other cities is set up by the local S.N.C.C. office, mostly by twenty- and twenty-one-year-old Negroes whom Stokely led in the South. There are, inevitably, the fund-raising parties—S.N.C.C.’s funds have dropped—but mostly just meetings and speeches.
He spends the next day in Newark, a dismal, grey city which has more Negroes than whites. The highlight of the visit is a speech that evening at the anti-poverty board on Springfield Avenue, in the heart of the ghetto, and then a cocktail party at ten-fifteen across town. The anti-poverty board is packed with an older audience than in Harlem. There are mothers with children on their laps and grandmothers with grandchildren on their bosoms; old men in overalls, janitors, civil-service workers, LeRoi Jones, high-school students, tough-looking nineteen-year-olds leaning against the green stucco walls, and several white poverty workers.
Stokely instinctively knows the audience. He stares quickly across the room and then scribbles down notes on the back of an envelope. He rises to warm applause. He smiles.
“Is it okay if ah take off mah jacket?” he says in a too-Southern drawl.
The speech goes well. Stokely begins by warming up the elderly women in the audience and ends with a cry to the students. The themes are the same. “You gotta understand about white power. It’s white power that brought us here in chains, it’s white power that kept us here in chains and it’s white power that wants to keep us here in chains. . . . What they’ve been able to do is make us ashamed of being black . . . ashamed. I used to come home from school and say, ‘Hey, Momma.’ And she used to say, ‘Sssshh, you know how loud we are.’ I wouldn’t go outside eating watermelon, no sir. They say we’re lazy, so we work from sunup to sundown to prove that we’re not lazy. We are tired of working for them, of being the maids of the liberal white folks who consider us part of their families. . . . My mother was a maid for a lady in Long Island and this lady wanted me to go to college and she told my mother, ‘Your boy is a bright colored boy and we want to help send him to college.’ Well, I hated that woman. She gave my mother $30 a week and all the old clothes her kids didn’t want. Well, I didn’t want her old clothes. I didn’t want her to help send me to college. I wanted my Momma.” (“Tell it, Stokely. . . .”)
“There is a system in this country that locks black people in, but lets one or two get out every year. And they all say, ‘Well, look at that one or two. He’s helping his race.’ Well, Ralph Bunche hasn’t done a damn thing for me. If he’s helping his race, then he should come home. Brothers and Sisters, there’s nothing wrong about being all white or all black. It’s only when you use one to exploit the other—and we have been exploited. You gotta understand what they do. They say, ‘Let’s integrate.’ Well integration means going to a white school because that school is good and the black school is bad. It means moving from a black neighborhood to a white neighborhood because one neighborhood, they tell you, is bad and the other is good. Well, if integration means moving to something white, moving to something good, then integration is just a cover for white supremacy. . . .
“Brothers and Sisters, we have to view ourselves as a community and not a ghetto and that’s the only way to make it. The political control of every ghetto is outside the ghetto. We want political control to be inside the ghetto. Like the workers in the Thirties, like the Irish in Boston, we demand the right to organize the way we want to organize. Black power is the demand to organize around the question of blackness. We are oppressed for only one reason: because we are black. We must organize. Brothers and Sisters, the only way they’ll stop me from organizing is if they kill me or put me in jail. And once they put me in jail I’ll organize my brothers in prison. Organize!”
The back of Stokely’s white shirt is drenched with sweat. As soon as he finishes the speech, the crowd rises and surrounds him and shakes his hand and Stokely seeks out the old ladies who cry, “My, my, my, you are somethin’ ” and gives the younger kids that special handshake reserved only for a black brother or sister—a handshake in which he clasps a hand with his right hand and places his left hand over the linked hands. (When a white man shakes his hand, the smile is guarded, the handclasp unsure, the left hand remains limp.)
Thirty minutes later the cocktail party on Porter Avenue awaits Stokely, who has stopped off in several Negro bars—not to drink, but to meet and talk with some of the customers. The party is given by a short, burly chemist and his wife in the yard in back of their twelve-room stucco house. At least forty people have paid $5 to see Stokely, with about a half-dozen S.N.C.C. workers admitted free. Weak Martinis and Whiskey Sours are ladled out and, curiously, the middle-aged white and Negro couples stand and drink together near the small swimming pool in the center of the yard. The younger white kids stand alone. The young Negroes stand beneath the Rose of Sharon, uncomfortable, hostile, waiting for Stokely.
He arrives late and in a bitter mood. In the car coming to the party Stokely has been told that David Frost, a candidate running in the upcoming Democratic Senat
orial primary on an anti-Vietnam ticket, will also speak at the party. Stokely immediately feels that his name is being used to attract people for a political candidate, a white political candidate. The money isn’t even going to S.N.C.C., as he had been told in New York, but to a local liberal group. Stokely is furious. He walks to the edge of the backyard and has a five-minute talk with Bob Fullilove, the local S.N.C.C. leader. Across the lawn, the young Negroes glower. . . . This is a real put-down, says one girl who is attending Rutgers Law School. Why the hell are they holding this in the backyard? Can’t they hold it inside as if it were a regular, formal cocktail party? These people are not my kind of people . . . I don’t like this scene, man. . . . This is bad news. . . .
Stokely and Fullilove end their talk and Stokely walks beneath the Rose of Sharon with the woman who accompanied him to the party, a six-foot-tall, very cool, very black-skinned woman with piled-high Nefertiti hair. She wears a tight white dress and is, she knows and Stokely knows and the entire party knows, the most stunning woman there. Stokely sips a Coke and the girl glowers at the crowd, which tries very hard to be casual, and not stare at her. A white man walks over, smiling, gripping his Martini.
“I just want to tell you, Mr. Carmichael, I saw you on TV and I really agreed with you on, uh, Vietnam and—”
Stokely cuts him off. “Thank you.” Stokely gives him the white man’s handshake.
“Attention, attention,” cries the hostess, a short chubby woman in a knit dress. “Our guests are all here and our program is beginning.”
The young Negroes appear startled. “What program?” Stokely frowns.
“I just want to say a few words,” the woman goes on. “We have always been an integrated community. . . .” The Negroes begin shifting uncomfortably. “And we’ve never cared at all here about money or status, whatever that means.”
“Shit,” says Stokely in a loud whisper. “She don’t know about status? Look at that swimming pool.”
As soon as Frost begins speaking, Stokely leaves the backyard and walks toward the front of the house with his date. He leans against an elm, his left hand gentle on the young woman’s shoulder. They chat in a whisper. A Negro girl, slightly drunk, and a white man come out of the house and Stokely glares at the girl. She walks over. “I like what you said about being proud of our blackness,” she says.
“That means everyone,” says Stokely in an angry whisper.
“Let’s get out of here,” says Stokely’s date.
The girl looks at the white man and says, “Be proud of my blackness, my black womanness.” She starts laughing and they walk away to a car.
Stokely watches them drive off.
“Let’s leave,” says Stokely’s date.
They return to the backyard and within minutes Stokely—who had been scheduled to speak—and most of the young Negroes are gone; the whites and middle-aged Negroes are left alone.
Stokely is scheduled to take an eight o’clock flight the next morning to Glens Falls, New York, and then be driven to Benson, Vermont, for a speech at a camp—he’s not quite sure what type of camp or who will be there. At two minutes after eight Stokely’s cab pulls up to the Mohawk Airlines terminal at LaGuardia Airport and Stokely leaps out and runs toward the ticket desk.
“I’m sorry,” the ticket agent behind the desk says with a smile. “The flight just left.”
“Oh no, oh no, oh no.” Stokely pounds his fist on the desk.
“There is a flight leaving from Kennedy at eight-forty-five with a stop-off at Albany. And there’s another at ten-thirty.” The ticket agent smiles again.
Stokely walks away and shakes his head. “I took a cab from the Bronx [his mother’s house]. It should have taken twenty minutes to get here. I kept saying, ‘Use the bridge, use the bridge, man.’ But that son of a bitch kept saying that Bruckner Boulevard was faster. Faster! It took an hour. Oh . . . oh that son of a bitch.”
Stokely wears dark glasses, a black shirt with small-flowered print, dungarees and black shoes. He hails a cab for Kennedy Airport and once the cab starts Stokely lifts up the glasses and rubs his eyes—he had gone to bed at five that morning.
“They always do that in Atlanta,” he says. “They always give us a hard time with flights down there.”
He shakes his head again. The cab glides out of LaGuardia toward the Van Wyck Expressway. The traffic toward Manhattan is heavy; toward Kennedy Airport there are few cars. When Stokely is in New York, he generally spends the night in his mother’s South Bronx home (the only Negro family on the block). He had not seen her on this trip, though, since she is working as a maid on a maritime line.
“She’s a hard worker and a sharp gal,” says Stokely, staring at the cars crawling toward New York. He turns. “She knew, she knows, that if you want to make it you got to hustle, and she hustled from the word go. She took no shit from no one. I got that from my mother. She used to tell me, ‘You take nothing from no one, no matter who they are.’ She knows the realities of life and she demanded, made sure, that I knew them too.”
He smiles. “My old man was just the opposite.” Stokely shakes his head and sighs. “He believed genuinely in the great American dream. And because he believed in it he was just squashed. Squashed! He worked himself to death in this country and he died the same way he started: poor and black.”
“We came here in ’52 from Port-of-Spain. That was a place that was mostly black. It was run by black people and everyone—the cops, the teachers, the civil servants—was black. We came here thinking that this was the promised land. Ha. We went up to the Bronx—I was eleven years old—and I saw this big apartment house we were going to and I said, ‘Wow, Daddy, you own that whole thing?’ And then eight of us climbed up to a three-room apartment.
“My old man . . .” Stokely takes off his glasses . . . “my old man would Tom. He was such a good old Joe, but he would Tom. And he was a very religious cat too—he was head deacon of the church and he was so honest, so very, very honest. He never realized people lied or cheated or were bad. He couldn’t conceive of it. He just prayed and worked. Man, did he work. He worked as a cabdriver at night and went to school to study electricity and during the day he worked as a carpenter. He just thought that if you worked hard and prayed hard this country would take care of you. Well, I remember he tried to get into the carpenter’s union—and this is a very racist thing. And the only way for him to get into the union was to bribe the business representative. Well, he would have none of that. So one day when my father is out, my mother calls up the business representative and tells him to come to the house and she gives him $50 and a bottle of perfume and my father gets into the union. And when my father comes home and finds out that he’s in the union he says, ‘You see. You work hard and pray hard and this country takes care.’ And my mother and I . . . laughed. Wow. My old man was like the Man with the Hoe. He just felt that there were millions to be made in this country and he died at forty-two—just a poor black man.”
The cab pulls up at the Eastern Airlines terminal in Kennedy Airport. Stokely walks in and within seconds a porter walks up and smiles broadly. “I usually hang out with the porters at the airports,” he says, walking quickly through the terminal. “A lot of times I don’t have money and they just pass the hat. They’re good people. In Memphis last week they bought me a steak dinner.”
He walks to Gate 2 where a Mohawk flight is taking off at eight-forty-five. He waits ten minutes on standby but the flight is filled. He trudges back to the ticket desk and makes a reservation for the ten-thirty flight and then phones S.N.C.C. to tell them to notify the camp. By now Stokely is hungry and he walks into the cocktail lounge and restaurant in the heart of the terminal. The alcoholics, the hangers-on, the bored travelers, the women catching the nine o’clock flight to Mexico City line the bar, sipping Bloody Marys and beer and Scotch, straight. A waiter hustles over and says, no, the restaurant is not open at this hour, but there’s another restaurant at the end of the corridor. A woman at the bar, bl
onde, tall, tanned, in her late forties, carrying a large white pillbox, turns and stares through dark glasses at Stokely—this hulking, dungareed figure in dark glasses too. Their eyes meet. The woman smiles, just slightly, and Stokely stares at her for a moment and then turns away and walks out.
“Man, this place says something. You can get a drink at nine o’clock, but you can’t get food.”
At a table in the restaurant Stokely calls the waitress “M’am” and orders orange juice, bacon and eggs, English muffins and two glasses of milk.
“I used to drink,” he says with a smile. “I used to like wine. I used to know a hell of a lot of guys who drank wine all day.”
The waitress brings his orange juice and he sips it. “In Harlem I used to know a lot of guys like that. I used to know a lot of guys who were addicts and they were some beautiful cats. I’m not kidding. They had this ability, this profound ability to understand life.”
While Stokely’s father struggled and his mother worked as a maid to help support the family—Stokely has four sisters—he often spent days and weeks with his aunts on Lenox Avenue and 142nd Street in Harlem. “I like Harlem,” says Stokely. “It’s a very exciting place. It represents life, real life. On one block you have a church and right next door is a bar and they’re both packed. On Saturday night people are always in constant motion. You get all of life’s contradictions right there in one community: all the wild violence and all the love can be found in Harlem. You get the smells of human sweat and all sorts of bright colors and bright clothes and people in motion. You get preachers on one side of a street and nationalists on the other.”
