Transcript of “Our Forgotten Neighbors”
(morning session)
A panel discussion with Ada Deer, Rev. Harold Andrew, Reginald Berry, Gary Hines,
and Ronald Sample moderated by Myles Stenshoel
Date: 1968-05-15
Identifier: SC 05.1.4.2013.01.0217
Description: The Rev. Harold Andrews, Reginald B... Show more
Transcript of “Our Forgotten Neighbors”
(morning session)
A panel discussion with Ada Deer, Rev. Harold Andrew, Reginald Berry, Gary Hines,
and Ronald Sample moderated by Myles Stenshoel
Date: 1968-05-15
Identifier: SC 05.1.4.2013.01.0217
Description: The Rev. Harold Andrews, Reginald Berry, Gary Hines, and Ronald
Sample discuss residential segregation and racism in a panel moderated by Dr. Myles
Stenshoel. Ada Deer asks a question at the end as part of the audience. The panel was
part of a day focused on speaking and listening to issues of racial injustice, known as
"One Day in May," 1968 May 15.
Duration: 01:10:39
Collection: 13 “One Day in May” sessions were recorded and have been digitized.
They are available on YouTube:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLp3IfZjFdUQJMy9uNoEADuy9KPltsIF-9
00:00:00
[Miles Stenshoel] We're going to try to get going as soon, as quickly as
possible this morning. Some of the people who are on the--on your folder,
are not here and we've been very fortunate that some others have been
able to come in at the last moment.
00:00:19
Let's start over at my left just a brief introduction here. Ronald Sample,
representing TCOIC [Twin Cities Opportunities Industrialization Center].
Ron Edwards was not able to be here, and Mr. Sample was called in, I
guess, at the very last moment, so we welcome him. Reginald Berry is
over here. He is a student at Central High School. Gary Hines, next to Mr.
Sample, a student of Central High School, and Mr. Harold Andrews in the
center here.
00:00:57
[Inaudible sounds as Stenshoel speaks with others about audio
equipment] This is the tape recorder. [Inaudible]
“Our Forgotten Neighbors” morning panel discussion (transcript), page 1
00:01:13
Mr. Andrews has a number of positions, and I was asking him for them,
and he gave him to me so thick and fast I couldn't get them all down. He's
chairman of the United Southside, he is retained by the School Board for
something else [audience laughs], he's the assistant pastor of Sabathani
Church and I think most of these people probably wear a number of hats
and I don't think we're going to spend too much time with that. Some of
their identity will come out undoubtedly in the discussion and I think the
format which we might use is to ask these people to speak as a panel to
some of these questions, to interact with each other initially for perhaps
the first half of the period that we have, and then we'll try to open it up and
make room for all sorts of comments and questions which could very well
at that time come into play.
00:02:16
The title that has been given to this particular section is that of, "Our
Forgotten Neighbors," and the lede, or the subtitle is, "The inadequacy of
Public and Community Services in the Ghettos." It seems to me that
there's hardly any rejoinder to this bleak fact that in our ghetto
communities our services are much less than adequate. Parks don't seem
to be nearly as common or as well kept up, playgrounds often are very
minimal if existing at all, swimming pools have closed, the quality of our
schools, many of these facilities are obsolescent [sic] or non-existent,
perhaps in area of social work there are problems here.
00:03:04
The problem of absenteeism, I think most of us would recognize
absenteeism of landlords, of teachers, absenteeism of social workers,
absenteeism of ministers. We all go back to our own worlds, we're not
there. Now I think maybe the best thing to do is just simply ask the people
to begin, and maybe it will begin with you Mr. Sample, just you with an
initial statement and then you can all react to each other and I'll try to stay
out of it as long as you keep this thing moving. Alright?
00:03:44
[Ronald Sample] Alright, [inaudible]. You want an initial statement from me
and I just got here? That's nice. [the audience laughs] Well I could do no
more than elaborate a little bit more on what you've already opened
discussion on. We all know that the areas which we're talking about are
greatly neglected.
00:03:55
[Myles Stenshoel] I think we're going to have a problem with that air
system. It's making an awful lot of noise. Maybe I can ask that you speak
“Our Forgotten Neighbors” morning panel discussion (transcript), page 2
a little louder and possibly it would be a good idea if you would stand for
these people.
00:04:13
[Ronald Semple] I was afraid you were going to say that. [the audience
laughs] There are great deal of problems that we have to overcome in
ghetto areas, you want to call it the ghetto area. This term ghetto, of
course, is being grossly misused, but for sake of identification we do use
the word “ghetto.” At any rate, as you have stated, parks, playgrounds,
other recreational areas do go lacking to a great degree in many of these
neighborhoods.
00:04:46
Also, there's another [Inaudible] to this whole thing that is extremely
important and perhaps we'll get into a discussion on that a little later, and
that is a problem of the welfare of people in relationship to the people in
these areas of we prefer to describe more or less as a poor neighborhood.
Certainly, we have found out in the recent months that the welfare worker
or the social worker you might call them that, have very little time or can
take very little time to do social work and this is had a great impact upon
the relationship between the people in the neighborhood and these social
workers.
00:05:23
A lot of problems to this one, and I think that everyone should become
aware of these problems and also by doing so, whatever means are
necessary I think we can start working out ways and means of correcting
this gross injustice or inadequacy in our social structure so with that I'm
going to sit down because I did not come here even prepared to
participate. I was going to sit out there with you and listen, but somebody
spotted me and I think I have on the wrong shirt this morning. [the
audience laughs] So I'm gonna let these other gentlemen here go ahead
and say what they have to say because I don't want to say anything wrong
here.
00:06:13
[Miles Stenshoel] Yep. Do you want to make a statement now? It might be
a good idea to stand so they can [inaudible].
00:06:19
[Gary Hines] The problems in the so-called “ghetto” are centered around
exploitation. In fact, if not the whole matter of the problem is exploitation.
You see, whenever there's a group of people on top, in order to stay on
top, they must exploit those below them, or else their position of
“Our Forgotten Neighbors” morning panel discussion (transcript), page 3
supremacy, you know, will no longer preside. So they must prey on those
subservient to them. In the so-called “ghetto” from which I came, in New
York, Harlem, you have to really live with it to know what you're talking
about really. I mean you can go in and look and study and do this and
that, but you don't really know until you live with it, you know, and know
what it really means to have a bottle of pop and one of these little tents
and cakes around here and that's your breakfast dinner and lunch for the
day.
00:07:21
Things like this come home you know, to who? Nobody's home, you know,
your mother's gone. She went, she took the baby to the hospital. You
know, the baby got better by a rat or something in this nature. Your
father's out, you know, playing the numbers doing this and that. All trying
to make some kind of life for his family. You see, Black people have never
really lived in this country we've only survived and it's a matter of survival
in the ghetto, survival of the fittest, and you see, this is why you can't be,
there's no such, I don't want anything about any Black men being dumb.
00:07:56
Undereducated yes, possibly, very possibly, but not dumb because you
can't be dumb and Black and survive in this country. Every Black man
alive today. [Applause] Every Black man alive today has to have some
very high degree of intelligence in order to, you know, survive in this racist
society. So you're looking to get on, what do you see? Vices of every sort,
but why? You know, you see militancy, why? You know, you see
prostitution, pimps, and all this mess, dope addiction, why? It wouldn't be
there unless it was a necessity.
00:08:37
People have to have something to grasp on, something to live with, you
know, and so with that, you know, general statement more or less about
conditions in the ghetto I guess turn it over to Mr. Andrews.
00:08:50
[Miles Stenshoel] We're gonna skip Mr. Andrews just briefly and we're
gonna jump over here to Reginald Berry.
00:09:01
[Reginald Berry] I belong to a group in Minneapolis which is known as
DECOY, Determined Ebony Council of Youth. One of our jobs is to get
Black people together. We feel that the problem for white people, like
Lillian Anthony said, was to get white people together. Our job is to get
Black people our age together. Black people, so that we can, we're the
“Our Forgotten Neighbors” morning panel discussion (transcript), page 4
ones who know and you can be an adult and think what your child needs,
but we were the ones who were getting what you think we need, so we
feel that we have a better position, because we have, we're in a position to
get it. So we feel that we have enough sense the youth of our age, Gary is
in tenth grade, I'm a senior, the youth our age to think for our own selves.
00:09:42
So DECOY, one of the things we've done was we've had Malcolm X, this
parental excuse, that was through DECOY, Determined Ebony Council of
Youth. Martin Luther King will have that off, that was through DECOY,
Determined Ebony Council of Youth, and we're working on other projects
in the neighborhood. One thing I think that we have to realize is what a
ghetto really is. I think there is a dictionary, maybe the Webster New
World Dictionary says a “ghetto” is a group of ethnic people in a certain
area, therefore all over the country we've had Polish ghettos, we've had
Italian ghettos, Swedish ghettos, Harlem, before the Black man inhabited
in Harlem.
00:10:27
Harlem was owned by the Swedes, by the Germans, by the Irish, and then
came across the Black people. They were the last immigrants, or not
immigrants but people to inhabit Harlem. First, they were in Greenwich
Village and all over. See, Black people are on the boats unloading, I mean
on the shores unloading the Irish running from the potato famine,
unloading the boats for them so that they could settle in such areas as
Harlem before they ran [Inaudible] was the Germans.
00:10:55
Another thing I think we have to realize is whatever happens in
Minneapolis is gonna affect whatever happens in this state, whatever
happens in the state's gonna affect what happens in this country, and
whatever happens in this country affects what happens in the world,
therefore, white people try to get their self together in Minneapolis still be
doing a good justified thing because they'll be helping the state, therefore,
helping the world the whites all over the world.
00:11:30
Another problem that they say in the so-called “ghetto” is what I believe is
Black Power. Black people need power, black powers to control the
politics and politicians in their communities, control the businesses in their
communities, that's what's made the black ghetto in the first place. It's like
when you, a white person, owns a store in a black district ghetto, so-called
ghetto, what happens? You take your money from what you make from
“Our Forgotten Neighbors” morning panel discussion (transcript), page 5
your little job or what you got, the Black man has got from pimping or a
woman from prostituting or whatever it means they had to survive in its
society.
00:12:05
They take it to that store, what happens? The white person doesn't live in
that community, that poor Black community. He lives out in let's say no
offense on none of you, the suburbs, so what happens? He takes his
money that you give him to the suburbs and he spends out in the suburbs.
While the suburbs is getting richer and richer, the city, the so-called ghetto
is getting poorer and poorer. Therefore that neighborhood is poorer and
poorer. Like I said, it's control the politics and the politicians. You should
get somebody politically so that they can have something to do, so you
can get what you want through politics in that community.
00:12:44
For instance, over by Central High School, the railroad, streetcar tracks
that are still there, it's been ever since the streetcars disbanded. That's
one of the things that we need removed, let's say, that I know around
Central High School. Another thing we should learn in all the schools in
Minneapolis, all over the country, the history of so-called minority. I say
we're so-called because I believe minority, the people that they say we are
minorities, I believe we are in the majority. Because like I said, whatever
happens in the city affects the state, state the country, and the country,
the world.
00:13:15
There are more Black people in the world than there are white, so I
believe that I am a majority, not a minority. We should learn the history of
Black people all over the world, the history of the Indian, the Portuguese,
not Portuguese, the Spanish who came here, and who are also
oppressed. We should learn the history of them so that we can have more
respect for them as individuals and as people.
00:13:42
[Miles Stenshoel] Mr. Andrews.
00:13:14
[Harold Andrews] Well there's so many ways of approaching such a broad
subject as you have here. However, I'm interested in a couple of things.
Everyone has been talking about this word “ghetto” and as we use it, it's
for composing a certain element of people into one geographical area, and
it has its evils and it has it's good side.
“Our Forgotten Neighbors” morning panel discussion (transcript), page 6
00:14:15
I'd like to relate to your story with my hometown which is Gary, Indiana.
Gary was founded in 1906 by Judge Elbert Gary and that city was built
around those steel mills for the purpose of having a community for the
men to live in to work in those mills. Well, we know the story of labor, we
know that even those of us who are uneducated could wield a hammer,
push a wheelbarrow or just scarf which is taking hot steel and throw it
around. This kind of work was available, so you found a lot of Black
people migrating from the South to the great North to get such jobs and as
this began to happen more and more would come. One fella come up,
say, "Well, this is pretty good, I'll send for old cousin Zeke and his eight
kids," and so he sent for Zeke.
00:15:08
Next thing you know, Black people started to just expand in that city, but
there's a peculiar thing about it. Just as they were just mentioning, they
were fused into an area of six square miles in that city and as they began
to diffuse and diffuse, they were spread out within the realms of this radius
and so what happened? We began to look around, and we realized that
out of the nine council medic districts in the city of Gary, Indiana, we were
living in six of them, but we didn't have any representation.
00:15:38
Here's a perfect example of black power. We got together and we decided
well, we've got to make the people aware of their political prowess, that
they have the power at this point, to put into office some of these people.
We're talking about political economies for as black power is concerned.
So the first year, myself and another gentleman ran for office and we
came in second to the incumbents. Then later you know what happened
we have a mayor there are now a black mayor, a black chief of police, a
black chief of the fire department, assistant chief is black, we got a black
echelon in a City Hall now, and it's what it should be.
00:16:12
Because the population there is and I quote, "Fifty-five black, thirty-five
white, and the rest is what they call undesirable." Well they must want to
be bad. I won't even mention who they are. However, this is an example of
black power, of how it can be used and how it can be turned around. The
ghetto can be used against. If the white mayor were really smart, the best
solution to his problem, which is the Black man is open occupancy
because when you put these people together they began to share
attitudes, they began to share frustrations, and it began to unite, and next
thing you know you've got explosions.
“Our Forgotten Neighbors” morning panel discussion (transcript), page 7
00:16:59
Then you say it's an awful riot, but it's not a riot, it's a rebellion it's like a
coil spring. You just push it back so far and that's as far as it's gonna go
and it's coming back the other direction, and this is what's developing and
in that, and in reference to your social agencies there's a great exploitation
there. I thought that in my hometown and fact that I was running for the
office of township trustee, but I came here and found the same thing as
just as prevalent in Minneapolis, Minnesota. People have been exploited
tremendously by such agencies. Number one, your public relief. There we
found that people who had food vouchers would pay almost fifty percent
more than a person who paid cash for food.
00:17:43
Then there are certain stores that you had to go to and these stores are
being fed on the table through the administrator and they had a thing
going. The exploitation. And then if your family is starving. Now this is
supposed to be any immediate necessity in this particular office, this is
why I mention it. You walk up you say, "Well I need for right now. My
family's hungry. We don't have rent." "Well, would you fill out this form and
bring it back next week? and you're*" starving, and this is what's going on.
It would be funny if they were not so pathetic.
00:18:08
This such a thing is prevalent. As far as the welfare is concerned, I work
for the welfare department. I find the same thing prevalent here with your
welfare department and that's this: you give one caseworker a load of
cases. Now he's got to figure out a budget for all these people. Then here
comes food stamps now, so now he's got to make out a pink form for the
food stamps, and certify the family for food stamps, and then expect to
see 271 people out of 365 days regularly, and they all have their dire
needs, their immediate needs.
00:18:42
How can one individual do this? Then the budget is so is strained, why the
guy got a degree in social work or in sociology, why go to a Hennepin
County Social Work office when you get more money if you go to the
school board and you go elsewhere and get some fancy title and a big
salary you sit around and sign papers all day, so it's this thing, number
one, I think there should be more money and this comes to your county
board. There's too much political chicanery involved and these are the
things that cause exploitation. Some of these things are not black and
white issues. They are political issues. The issues that we need to just
“Our Forgotten Neighbors” morning panel discussion (transcript), page 8
clean up the city, polish it up, go into the administration and see what is
being done.
00:19:17
We're sitting here right now, I doubt if 7% of you are aware of the things
that are going on in your, just in your the Hennepin County Welfare
Department and you look at that poor caseworker and say why in the hell
aren't you doing your job, and they're doing the best they can do under
such circumstances, but you don't start at the top of the tree [inaudible]. I
know nothing about it but I know I wouldn't start looking at the leaf to cure
it. I'd go down at the trunk, go down at the roots, and this way we need to
start our administration as far as alleviating the things involved with our
case work and with our welfare.
00:19:56
Now just on a one-to-one basis, in the community you talk about our
neighbors this word is a word that has been tossed around as much as in
the other word it's a word like I'd say "table", "chair" and that's how I feel
about it now, this is what we feel about it. When you say neighbor it's just
an inanimate object, there's no compassion anymore for neighbor. This
I'm talking about his attitude. You know, one time Christ was asked who
his neighbor was and he told a story about the Samaritans and if you're
familiar with the mosaic dispensation of how things were in that particular
area, the Samaritans and the Jews had no dealings with one another. The
Samaritans weren't Orthodoxed and they were people who were looked
down upon. But he was a Samaritan, one who was an outcast in such
society, such as a Black man who came along and helped this man who's
supposed to be more privileged than he. This is, he said, is his neighbor.
00:20:4
Now you want to know, who are our neighbors? No more are our
neighbors the people offered lip service, no more are our neighbors the
people who shake their heads with sympathy, but our neighbors are the
people who help us as we struggle on this journey, along this road, as a
man did the way [inaudible], who really give us the aid you say what kind
of aid? I don't think I'd have to duplicate what Mrs. Anthony's already said.
That's one way and this is one way to affect attitudes, now what I have
found, as far as attitudes concerned is this, from when in such a meeting
as we are now it is so easy to get anyone of you who are white to stand up
and say such adequate eloquent words about, "I believe," and "This is
what we should do," but when you're among all white company, do you
have the courage to maintain that same attitude?
“Our Forgotten Neighbors” morning panel discussion (transcript), page 9
00:21:40
I am in such a position to know that in most cases you do not. I have
talked to people who were sincere enough to tell me that when they get
into all-white company and they began to discuss these things, "I might
say well the n****** are looking for a handout," and I'm quoting something
which I'm going to tell you about a little later, and you say well, yeah that's
right, and you get right it with them. It takes courage. What am I saying?
00:22:03
Belief is not enough, belief is not sufficient. It takes faith in what you're
doing, not belief. I often demonstrate to my congregation that I could say
to all of you, and probably convince you to an extent, but I believe that this
chair will hold me, but until I execute my faith, and sit down in this chair,
you cannot say that my belief is worth a thing.
00:22:33
[Miles Stenshoel] Okay very good now we've had a number of things
approached here. I wonder if I might, well maybe we ought to go back
here to Mr. Sample. You did say that you wanted to say something more
about social work. Did you not suggest that?
00:22:48
[Ronald Sample] I said I hoped we would get into it.
0022:50
[Miles Stenshoel] Maybe it would be a good idea, I think that this is time to
ask ourselves some questions about, or for you to interact some on the
question of social work and problems that might be here. Now whether
you have any suggested solutions.
00:223:09
[Ronald Sample] Well Mr. Andrews touched upon it as well, very well. The
point of it is, is it is an attitude or practice, which we don't seem to realize
in our social structure, our social welfare structure, that actually we
criticize the people for being on welfare then penalize them for trying to
get off, and this is kind of ridiculous, not only that, our social welfare
system is based on an intentional seem to be seemingly intentionally to
break up the family. One of the most ironic things is that in order for a
mother or a family who needs the help to get for instance money that the
father cannot make enough money because of the inability to get the kind
of employment in order to be able to take care of his family.
00:23:59
The system is now structured so he has to leave home. He has to sit down
in the living room with his wife and say, "Look, I can't make enough money
“Our Forgotten Neighbors” morning panel discussion (transcript), page 10
to feed my family, you can get more on ADC [Aid for Dependent Children].
I'm going to leave home, you file for divorce and then go and get on ADC."
In other words, we actually encourage the man, the breakup of the family,
then we criticize his mother for getting on ADC. Now she's on ADC,
maybe she doesn't like to be on ADC and we found and in our experience
that generally, they do not. But if she has the intestinal fortitude to go out
and try to find a job, she has to find a job good enough to compensate for
the losses she's going to experience when she gets that job or else it's a
financial risk for her to take the job and this is what I meant by we criticize
them for being on relief and then we turn right around and penalize them
for trying to get off, so on top of that we are encouraging the break up of
the family.
00:25:09
So to me, this is a very strong part of the necessity of changing this
particular structure in our welfare system. Also Mr. Andrews pointed out
the interesting fact that we have far too many caseloads per caseworker.
These people go to college for 4 years to learn how to do social work and
they turn out to be nothing but an accountant investigator in the home, and
have no time whatsoever to counsel these people and to help them when
they need help. This is my indictment of our social structure.
00:25:44
[Harold Andrews] I mean this is not hypothetical, this is a case, a case that
I had. There was a young lady who had graduated from high school and
had been put in just such circumstances that her husband had left home.
After what she applied for AFDC [Aid to Families with Dependent Children]
upon her application she was accepted and she moved into governmental
housing also. Number one, she was a kind of person, she comes from a
fine home. She liked to live good. she bought a television. They want to
know where she got the money to get a television.
00:26:22
This is just one little minor thing. Then she had been taken a nursing
course but she had completed it, she went down and got a part-time job at
Methodist Hospital, and the money that she was making at the hospital, it
was a supplementary sort of thing, but what did a case what I have to do?
Counterbalance that to her budget what she was received from welfare.
Consequently, she said I may as well just sit home and then just make the
money I'm making no more because they're taking it off of what I'm
making on my relief, you know from my welfare. This is a thing to keep a
person on welfare, to alleviate poverty you should create a system, a
“Our Forgotten Neighbors” morning panel discussion (transcript), page 11
program within the system, in which you could have people to go to to
graduate until they are off but as it is now you must stay poor to keep the
exploiters in business you got to stay poor.
00:27:13
You guys tell me I'm not a very interesting factor and I've questioned
Congressman Fraser last week when he was here about this. The Bureau
of Labor Statistics along with your USDA statistics United States
Department of Agriculture Statistics state that they consider family of
poverty to be making $3,500. Each year, those of us who are employed,
fortunately, who do earn a living, every year we get an annual increase in
cost of living, but that has not been increased as far as the poor man's
concerns since 1959. In other words, we make more because you know
cost of living.
00:27:53
Isn't the cost of living going up for the poor people? So still, to qualify
even, not only for AFDC, you take the kids. I work with kids in the school,
to get on in the neighborhood youth court to work, your family has to make
this. A family making $4,000 is just as poor as the $3,500 and you know it,
you couldn't live on $4,000. I can't by myself, and this is what I'm saying,
the thing is so structured that the poor, they'd say this about Republicans
but I won't say this by Republicans, I just said generally, the poor get
poorer the rich get richer and this is the way the thing is set up. This is
where the structure of this thing is, and I think if there's something to be
done, if that's somewhere not just a point a finger, but some source in
which we can approach to really alleviate such a situation, and so that we
can't say that people are in poverty and they don't want to get to, you
know, we got a lot of this Calvinistic Puritanism going around too, that
those people are just destined to be that way and we are destined to be
this way, which is ridiculous, but we find it in Congress.
00:28:58
This is why you have some congressmen saying, "We don't want to pass it
more bills on poverty. We have to get to the source," and the source is
getting to your county board or getting right there in Congress, which is
pretty difficult now, let's not be ridiculous, let's look at the county board
level and get such things, alleviate, and as we say, as Reggie has said, if
we can get it done here, then it will affect the state and it will affect other
areas and perhaps it can be done all over the country, but I must also
come in. I want to commend this city, in spite of all of these things that are
“Our Forgotten Neighbors” morning panel discussion (transcript), page 12
here, I found in my traveling all over this country, Minneapolis, Minnesota
by far is the number one city as far as I'm concerned.
00:29:13
Here, I see progress moving more tremendously than anywhere in this
country, but that has no means or no reason for us to stop, but we must
continue to be, to remain on top.
00:29:50
[Miles Stenshoel] May I ask a sort of a general question here, any of you
want to say more here that's fine, but it seems to me that we often get the
impression that great numbers of people in this country have become, well
the nice word would be disenchanted with the establishment or the various
political establishments and have more or less thrown up their hands and
said what's the use of trying to work through the establishment.
00:30:16
Now. I've noticed, at least from some of the comments this morning, that
that utter hopelessness does not seem to be present here, that there may
be some possibilities. Now can we ask this general question about
whether you think that the means of meeting these problems is, via
various establishments; political, economic, and otherwise. Can we reform
them? Are they reformable? Or is the exploitation of such a sort that these
things have to be shaken, not not just shaken, but perhaps even
destroyed and other forms take their place?
00:31:01
It seems to me that there's been, let me say, sort of an optimistic
conservatism here, representative in what you have said, Mr. Andrews,
and perhaps also Mr. Sample. What do you think about this, panel
generally, I know Gary, you haven't had a chance to say anything since
you started, maybe we ought to not discriminate [audience laughs] against
the youth here either, perhaps give our high school representatives a
chance to say something.
00:31:32
[Gary Hines] Well you said a mouthful, could you put it in one question,
that I could, you know.
00:31:40
[Miles Stenshoel] Well! [the audience laughs] Gary, is there any hope, is
there any hope working through the establishments that we have, that is
the political processes. Can we sufficiently reform the political processes
or meet the problems through the political process, do you see hope here?
“Our Forgotten Neighbors” morning panel discussion (transcript), page 13
00:32:02
Oh, yes I see hope. I see who has a Black man, and when you see him as
a Black man, that's a pretty broad range because when you're in a
position of subservience and for such a long period of time, you know, 400
years to be exact, you see hope and a whole lot of things, and you have to
differentiate between that which is superficial and that, you know, which is
meaningless, so as for the, you know, going through politics, it's possible
and I do see a certain amount of hope in it, but one thing has to be done.
00:32:40
We have to start getting some black politicians, you know, up in some of
these positions because you just don't do things the way they are now,
you know, have a white man speak for Black people, come in look at the
so-called ghetto and to tell the truth aren't enough black people of
Minnesota to make up a real ghetto, but come in look, observe, you know,
in all this mess, copy down data, data whatever you want to call it, take
notes and come back and report to his little group and all of a sudden he's
an authority on Black people. Nowadays they have such thing, and I don't
use the word, but this is a terminology they use, "Negro psychologists,"
"Negro sociologists," you know, you come in you know like we're some
kind of animals you know things of this nature.
00:33:25
But as we're seeing politics as the direct means, you have to include
politics and naturally, you know my definition of black power is political,
psychological, 0 social, and economical advancement for Black people by
Black people by any means necessary. So if politics is one of the more
pleasant means than so be it. But if politics takes too long like it has been
doing you know passing bills to make people human, human rights bill
taking the country where the red man and then tells them he has to do a
certain thing before he's a citizen that's what your politics is gonna do, you
know, forget it you know give it to us [inaudible], we know how to handle
things of this nature.
00:34:09
[Reginald Berry] You got remember there was no noise made until they
had the so-called riot which we call social, economical revolutions. They
didn't pass things, people weren't congregating in rooms like this all over
the country or until after the so-called riots and then you remember as
soon as the riot happened to Detroit the first thing that this government did
was pas an anti-riot bill. That's gonna stop people from rioting. It was in
the newspaper, in the black, there's a part of the south which they call the
black belt world.
“Our Forgotten Neighbors” morning panel discussion (transcript), page 14
00:34:45
Black people are congregated in a certain area among cities, I think, and
states. Am I correct? Remember when the Civil Rights bill was being
passed in 1964, the same people who are who are trying to stop the Civil
Rights bill from being passed were the people, the white politicians, from
that area of the Black Belt. This is the way our government was set up.
They tell us that the South lost the war and look who we had running for
president, two people from the South. Two. I don't care, two which I say
are more racist; Johnson and Goldwater. You could have a person that's
Goldwater or Wallace right now who is a segregationist and he's almost in
a position where he can announce he's going to run for president.
00:35:27
This is the way this government is built up. Through politics it takes
something like a social economic revolution to bring about the freedom of
Black people in America. When I say Black people I say anything that isn't
white, because anything that isn't white has been exploited by white
people. That's why I say it has to start from the grassroots level, for me I
have to start within yourself. White people, there wouldn't be no problem
at all if white people weren't racist, that's where it all started from the first,
besides the slaves back there. Wouldn't be no problems there one for
people who we got in position as president [inaudible] sell out things like
that.
00:36:07
This isn't our country, this isn't our government. Where everything we say
is America is our country, it's our country right or wrong it should be, is our
country right or wrong, because if you learn the history of the so-called
minority people or Black people in America in the world you find out that
our country hasn't been right a whole lot of times. If it has we wouldn't be
in this predicament we are in today. This is something we have to look
within ourseves and realize is there a solution to the problem.
00:36:35
I find the solution to the problem is right here in our high school in our
colleges. I find talking to high school students and college students, there
are more not really sympathetic more speaking out for Black people for
the impression that they've had for all these years than these older adults.
What can we do, we got like I said, you get the people high schools and
college students you 0 know what the problem is because you see more
of the problem because you're getting a little bit more, like I said,
“Our Forgotten Neighbors” morning panel discussion (transcript), page 15
communication is bringing a problem to you. So what you got to do, you
got to educate.
00:37:08
You got to look around you and see the situations and you got to do
something about them that work with us work, and you know, be the
leaders of us but work with us side-by-side.
00:37:21
[Ronald Sample] I'd like to speak to this hope bit as well. Naturally, when
you have light there's hope if you feel that there is no hope the person who
feels hopeless gives up, but a person who feels that there is hope
continues the struggle now he takes his struggles as he sees it, as he
sees is necessary to take them. Twenty years ago we were trying to
communicate in that nice easy way [inaudible] almost the prayerful look,
nobody listened. What are you saying about our good old people here in
America we can't do good talk, sweet talk just doesn't get it, only anything
it guesses a girl. But when it comes to rights or it becomes to creating a
situation to eliminate injustice for justice. For some reason or another we
can't listen in America. It takes an act.
00:38:22
It takes the sledgehammer between the mule's eyes in order to get your
attention, and if it has to be the violence which seems to be your means of
communication then that's the way it is. Certainly we have tried to
communicate with you in so many ways to show you that we didn't want to
join the establishment and that many times before I had listened to many
of the Black leaders say they didn't want to change the establishment,
they only wanted to be a part of it, that they wanted to share in the fruits of
the economy. However, today we feel that perhaps it is a necessity to
change a few things, certainly any action that we take in a political action
or any other kind of an action is an action for change whether we can do it
within the structure as it has been pointed out remains a good deal in
white America's hands, in your hands.
00:39:20
It's according to how you're listening and it's according to how well we can
communicate with each other and with how you can communicate with
yourselves. Certainly if you're not understanding what it is that we're trying
to say, by word, then some kind of action has to be taken in order to get
your attention, and so we do think that there is perhaps some hope so that
this can be worked out, but we don't believe now that it can be done
entirely within the establishment. There has to be changes.
“Our Forgotten Neighbors” morning panel discussion (transcript), page 16
00:39:54
[Miles Stenshoel] Do you have any more you can add on?
00:39:56
[Harold Andrew] Well I want to say that I believe indubitably that this is
definitely an era of Renaissance and as Mr. Sample has said, we are a
nation who respond to violence. Our history tells this, the reformation of
industry, of labor and capitalism in the city, capital I meant to say, in this
country was a result of riots, those of us who can recall and it has always
been this sort of spontaneous action that has really gotten attention, but
I'm looking at even something more important. This is a element of a
different texture, one that is so foolish, you see, discrimination, I see
nothing wrong with discrimination.
00:40:51
I discriminate, but it's the thing that you base your discrimination on. Is
there certain people that I definitely will not socialize with because we
have nothing in common, there are people who I can go backwards by
myself I don't want anybody help me go backwards. I discriminate from
those type of people. I discriminate with the man who has no ambition,
what can we meet socially, but he could be black, blue, purple, or green.
It's the thing that I discriminate upon, not his colour. As I walked into us
the high school I was investigating racism, and when I walked into the
door I was discriminated against.
00:41:29
They didn't know whether I was Jewish, Protestant, Catholic, what didn't
know if I was rich or poor, a fool, or wise but they knew one thing when I
hit that door I was black and right away that attitudes began to form the
new animosities began to come as I walked into the principal's office, one
of the faculty say, "Hey, a little civil rights action, huh," tongue-in-cheek
thing, and this is where I'm saying, it's so foolish. If I had two glasses here
a white glass and a black glass and you wanted to drink and there were
holes in the white glass, and the black glasses in perfect condition, would
you refuse the one that was perfect because it was black and drink out of
the white?
00:42:12
No, it was because of what the thing could do, and this is what we we look
so foolish in it so child it's the way we base these little idiosyncrasies on,
our discriminations upon. When we look at a person because they're
black, this is the attitude that we want to discourage. Personality we know
they're people. The other thing I detest is for a white person to walk up to
“Our Forgotten Neighbors” morning panel discussion (transcript), page 17
me and say, "Man, I like colored people," because it's something I can't
stand. But let's be, if we gotta be [inaudible] let's be [inaudible], let's be
candid about the situation and let's look at it and be more realistic is what
I'm saying as far as the structures concerned, as far as the system is
concerned, there's definite reformation in the system, because at this time,
no more will it be done through legislature, no more will it be done by the
bureaucrats, but by people like us, after all, we are the government.
00:43:03
Originally we were the government, but now it's one individual who goes
and sits in a seat and talks and says things that you may not even believe
in and votes for you. We must begin to put pressures. If we really feel this
as a people that we want such a thing done that we must affect our
legislature to the extent that he cannot go and legislate acts that we do
not, that are, that we feel that we don't want to be legislated. This is why I
must start here, and I have all the faith in the world in youth I believe that
this question will be alleviated and will be brought done by you, will be
done by the youth of today this generation because I see my hope is in
this generation as Berry has said. I have very little faith in the generation
that superseded me, but we're young people, we're gonna get it done
that's all.
00:43:58
[Miles Stenshoel] Well, I want to open it up now to responses, questions,
comments, or whatever kinds of responses you think. I'd like to accept my
own invitation first [audience laughs] with a couple of specific questions.
That's something that I've got going for me by sitting up here. With respect
to this question of the political participation and leadership, Black
leadership, now let me raise a question here in the context of the Twin
Cities area.
0044:32
We have a Metropolitan Council which has no governmental powers
really, though some people hope it will have more governmental powers.
Now there might be a, it might be true, if we were to have, work toward
develop a truly metropolitan area government for Minneapolis-St. Paul and
their suburbs with some kind of a common tax base and a common
acceptance of what are really all of our problems, that then the suburbs
would feel more a part of the whole thing, that we might be able to do
something here. It might be a plus thing.
“Our Forgotten Neighbors” morning panel discussion (transcript), page 18
00:45:11
On the other hand, this would dilute Black power in terms of voting block
or in terms of something like this is. Is there any response that any of you
have to that?
00:45:23
[Reginald Berry] First of all, Minneapolis, in the south side of Minneapolis,
Black people are not congregated in one certain area. You may think
they're congregated on Fourth Avenue, but that's not true no more.
There's no certain area in Minneapolis, south side of Minneapolis there's
Black people spread out all over, one of the main issues that we feel
DECOY, feels is that the suburbs are getting paid to schools, the teachers
are getting paid more to teach out in the suburbs than they do in the city,
therefore if a teacher graduates from say Augsburg College and he's a
good teacher he's not gonna want to teach in the city because there's no
money in the city, so one of the one of the main, to get around, one of the
main issues is to get somebody you know all over the schools, the school
districts, all over the state to get the schools ran by statewide basis.
00:46:14
[Gary Hines] Once again you sort of said a mouthful, could you put it in
one specific question? [audience laughs]
00:46:19
Well, what would metropolitan government, the whole metropolitan area,
would this help or hinder from the solution of these problems?
00:46:32
They would hinder it definitely. I'll tell you why, first of all, I'd like to draw a
little synopsis between some clothes and human beings. Okay, I'll speak
up. If I go into a laundry to to get some clothes clean and I have one load
of white clothes and one load of black clothes now the object is to get both
sets of clothes clean, however, I find that if I put both sets of dirty clothes,
white and black, in the same washer, they not only do not become clean
but when I take them out of the washer I find that they have each other's
lint on them, I find that the white one is all grayed up from the black, I find
that the black one is all grayed up from the white, I find that everyone's all
linen and dotted up, and things are worse then when I put them in there.
00:47:33
However, I find that when I put the right one in the washer, get it clean and
put the black clothes in the washer and get them clean and get them all
dried up, then I can put them in the same basket together. Now what does
this say? The lint represents animosities between white and black. Now on
“Our Forgotten Neighbors” morning panel discussion (transcript), page 19
the white side, white people are still two races, you've just found that out,
you know, with the President's Advisory Commission report.
00:47:58
Black people have known it for four hundred years, [audience laughs] and
Black people, you know, seeing the fact that we know this, Black people
are too bitter. Now you just don't mix bitterness and ignorance, you see.
You have to get each, you see, that's the so-called liberal. I hate to offend
any liberals here, but to me there is no such animal really. Now, what has
to be done--so many white people find out a little bit about the situation
and all of a sudden become authorities, but we won't get into that--find out
about it and the first thing they want to do is rush into the Black community
arms open, wallets open, pockets open. “What can I do? I've been wrong
so long.” Just trying to throw this over Black people and like I said, Black
people are too bitter.
00:48:49
Nine out of ten times until you go home, [inaudible] we don't want you.
See things like this, why one it's time for the Black man to stand up on its
own two feet. We've been waiting on the white man too long, too every
time he sees a white face it represents everything he's fighting for, you
see, not so much you and your white skin, but what your white skin has
enveloped in the past you see and held over Black men, so when you
come up there with your white face, arms open, wallets open, “what can I
do?”
00:49:23
You know what you can do, go out in your own communities as the man
mentioned before, anybody can stand up with the elegance, you know, of
a Frederick Douglass or a Patrick Henry, in your case [audience laughs]
and before a group of Black people and you know spout off at the mouth
about how much they love this and how much they know this is wrong and
mess of this nature. But what about when you get out in your own
communities, you have to get out into your own communities. We've got a
lot of cleaning up to do among ourselves. You see this is a revolution.
Revolution comes from evolution which means change, you know, gradual
change, only our change is changing a little bit faster than revolutions in
the past, you see, we have to redefine our set of values, which is why
nowadays you see the natural look.
00:50:09
You know, the long kinky curly whatever you want to call it hair. You see,
we're trying to redefine our own set of values so far as beauty goes and
“Our Forgotten Neighbors” morning panel discussion (transcript), page 20
you know [inaudible] and things of this nature. The reason why we've been
straightening the hair with the various lyes, permanence, hot combs in this
nature is because ever since, say the Black woman, has been able to read
or look in a magazine you know Seventeen, or COED, or In-Co Out-Co
[audience laughs] every depiction of beauty is white and has long flowing
hair. Well like I said this is a revolution and you know things are changing.
Now we're saying that black is beautiful what we have what we're proud
and you know yours is no better than ours.
00:50:52
So as for you know people coming in, we've been exploited too long as
soon as Black people try to get together and see your white face there,
they're gonna expect the exploitation and white people have been doing it
so long they may be doing it unconsciously, so we better, like I said get in
our own washers and get our own selves right separately.
00:51:13
[Miles Stenshoel] Okay now I'm going to forego my other question
because I gotta get you in here. I want to remind you of these gentlemen's
names so that if you wish you may address your questions or comments
to particular persons. Mr. Berry, Mr. Andrews, Mr. Hines, and Mr. Sample.
Berry, Andrews, Hines, and Sample, and Don Nichols had his hand up
first. I'm going to ask for this question.
0051:36
[Donald Nichols] It seems to me that one of the things that's been
mentioned several times is this business of black heritage, and I was
wondering what would be the best way to get this black heritage known? It
seems to me that at Augsburg College we should probably have a course,
something along this line, specifically oriented toward expounding this and
I was wondering how you felt about approaching it on this level or what
level do you feel is best? No one in particular.
00:52:10
[Reginald Berry] One of the things we did was, DECOY did, when we went
before the school board [audience laughs, possibly from something that
happened in the room] we got history. True history. One of the things we
said that we wanted true history taught in all the public schools. The
problem is from K through 12 when you're coming up through grade
school the first thing when you learn how to read, you read about Dick and
Jane, you know Dick and Jane out in the suburbs [audience laughs] with a
fine pretty dog, you know everything's mellow. So you know right away
“Our Forgotten Neighbors” morning panel discussion (transcript), page 21
the black youth has nothing to relate to and the white has nothing to relate
to with the black.
00:52:49
So, what they did, what they're doing now I believe in some of the great
schools they got integrated Dick and Jane books. [audience laughs] Right,
I don't know about the suburbs. Yeah, they're still in the suburbs. [he
laughs] One of the things, another thing is like K through 12 the problem,
like say you take up grass or weed don't cut the weed off at the top and
expect the weed not to grow no more you got to get down to the root of
the problem, the root of the problem is when the youth is young, when he's
coming up. You know, it's funny when a person never, when you're young
you can play with white kids and you see no difference, but as soon as
you start going to school, then you start seeing the difference.
00:53:26
Your mother says you can't play with him no more or their mother says
they can't play with you no more, things like that. It doesn't start until you
start getting in schools, when you start getting related to all these books
so what you gotta do, history's got to be taught. One of the things we said,
yeah, was K through 12 true history taught. History of Black people,
contributions that they've made, tell you we always talked about Charles
Drew because that makes me mad every time I think about it. He was the
inventor of blood plasma, a Black man, he in 1948, he got in a car
accident out in, I believe it was Georgia. What happens, he went to a
white hospital, they wouldn't serve him, all he needed was blood plasma
the invention that he had, invention that he made and what happens on
his way en route to a black hospital, he died.
00:54:11
So what we gotta do, we got to start getting these things together while
we're down here. Your little brother, you got to start letting him know.
That's why I believe it's in us, it's in us youth, that this problem is gonna be
solved. You wanna know what history do? You can find history books as
black men anywhere. One of the greatest books is, to me is “Before the
Mayflower” by Lerone Bennett, but then you can't stop at that book. You
got to start reading on and on about the Black man. I was lucky, I got
learned and so are most Black people they taught me white history in
school.
00:54:41
I learned about Patrick Henry's great statement, "liberty or death,"
"taxation without representation is tyranny." Black people been taxed
“Our Forgotten Neighbors” morning panel discussion (transcript), page 22
without being represented since they've been here. He didn't say nothing
about that or liberty or death, that's all they're crying in the so-called
ghettos, "Liberty or death."
00:55:00
[Crosstalk as the panelists decide who will speak]
00:55:05
[Harold Andrews] This is important I would say, but we say the basis of
this society is education, and yet it's the most outmoded facility. I guess
you're aware of this. Even in reading, we have gone back to the original
form of teaching kids to read. Now it's a very vital issue here at hand. I
was looking at a test yesterday, not a test but a survey and the question
was, I just wouldn't answer because of this the question kept talking about,
'Did I think that the culturally deprived children...?' I don't believe there's
such a thing as cultural deprivation, but cultural differences and this where
education must come in to let you know, because we don't learn by white
standards, we're deprived when really white Americans deprive because
they must learn of out standards and let them know there is a dual
standard, that we do have a heritage.
00:55:52
This is the essence of education in the schools, but it must go beyond the
schools. It didn't begin all in the schools as Gary was mentioning. While
psychologically, or socio-psychologically, we could say that what is known
as the the Negro self complex or the self-hatred complex which is
devolved from this is gathered at an early age, a kid's looking at television
and he sees the start. Everything is white, the hero is always white, and
the Black man his eyes get bold and hair is kinky hair straightens out and
he runs. [another panelist says something inaudible and the audience
laughs] Right, nothing to relate to. When they look at Tarzan as a beautiful
example.
00:56:37
Here's a native with a g-string on [audience laughs] and he's got a spear
with the head if he did that it would fall off and he's running from a lion in a
jungle--incidentally lions don't even live in the jungle that's a plains animal
if you know a thing about Africa. But anyhow, he runs it along comes a
white man on a vine screaming out a God curdling sound, no weapon,
he's got a knife. I never see him pull it out til he gets to the water with the
alligators and he says “Ungawah.” and the lion walks away. [Laughter]
“Our Forgotten Neighbors” morning panel discussion (transcript), page 23
00:57:14
And there's a kid looking at this he's looking at this, a black kid, and he's
saying, Man, I ain't nothing. This is what he begins to think, he begins to
develop this self age of complex, so he begins to socially interact with
whites, he says, "I want to be white," because this is white but also the
white, this is what you're not looking at. The white kid is victimized too,
because as he looks at the same thing, this connotation is this that of
whiteness, that I could be an idiot but if I'm white I can make it and he's
right too, the way this thing is structured, the way our society is structured,
and then there is this unconscious development of black and white.
00:57:53
There are over 200 synonyms which depict black as ugly, a man who is
ousted from a union. He can't get a job anywhere, he's blackballed and we
know darn well black has nothing to do with not getting a job. Oh yes it
does, I'm sorry--but you see what I'm saying. “Blackmailed,” you can just
think of all kinds of words like this, this unconscious development of it, so
yes, we must start an institution and we're behind, and we're the basis, the
universities and the schools are the basis of education in society. The
basis of the structure of it and yet, we're so far behind that you got to
broaden a community like we're doing right now to find out about
blackness when it should start right here. I agree with you, and we're
doing it in a school system.
00:58:36
[Ada Deer, in the audience] I was wondering what you think about getting
the Black community and the Indian community together. I work in both
groups, and I find when I’m in one community I’m definitely, in that
community, isolated in the other Indian community, isolated in the Black
community, I’m talking about the other side. In both communities.
00:58:57
[Reginald Berry] That’s two different heritages.
00:58:58
[Ada Deer] It’s not! It’s not. My idea is one community. I mean, that’s what
I think would be ideal. [panelists speak to one another while the audience
member is speaking] But was wondering if you think at this point, using
your analogy about mixing clothes, black and white clothes, you think that
red clothes should not be in that mix too.
00:59
[Reginald Berry] See Black people have a whole lot of colors: black, red,
and yellow, and brown, so when we say “Black people” this is my
connotation, when I say black I mean anything that isn't white, because
“Our Forgotten Neighbors” morning panel discussion (transcript), page 24
that's what it is. White people are not white then you take to the extreme.
Someone may be pink as rose flowers or or so on, gray as a ghost. The
white people are not white but they relate to the extreme which is white.
Put up to a just sheet of paper and none of you are white. Black people, a
lot of Black people, are not black, but they relate to extreme which is
black. You say Indian mixed Indians and Black people together, you know,
you try to change white Indians and black? Dirty clothes, they've both
been exploited by white people. They both have a different heritage,
different backgrounds.
01:00:04
[Ada Deer] But do you think they can be brought together?
01:00:06
[Harold Andrews] We work together.
01:00:07
[Reginald Berry] We work together. We have, what's his name?
01:00:09
[Harold Andrews] Gray?
01:00:09
[Reginald Berry] Gray. [Inaudible]
01:00:12
[Harold Andrews] Harold?
01:00:13
[Reginald Berry] Yeah.
01:00:14
[Harold Andrews] We have, we work together--this is not, this is what--
01:00:17
[Ada Deer] Where is your Indian Representative today? [presumably she
is addressing Miles Stenshoel about the composition of the panel]
01:00:19
[Harold Andrews] Do you want us to live together, is that what you mean?
You say “today.”Did you invite the Indian?
01:00:24
[Miles Stenshoel] Yeah.
01:00:26
[Ada Deer] Yeah, he was invited. Now yes, yes you do live together
already on the Northside I know. But I definitely feel the barrier here--
01:00:32
[Reginald Berry] White people live on the Northside too.
“Our Forgotten Neighbors” morning panel discussion (transcript), page 25
01:00:33
[Ada Deer] Pardon?
01:00:35
[Reginald Berry] White people live on the Northside too.
01:00:35
[Ada Deer] And white people, you’re right.
01:00:36
[Unidentified panelist] And they're exploited.
01:00:38
And I definitely feel barriers there.
01:00:38
[Harold Andrews] Well alright I'll tell you this. The Indian isn't here, my
grandpa's an Indian. I'll represent him.
01:00:47
[Laughter and applause]
01:00:52
[Harold Andrews] I'll give you a little Indian history a little exploitation. How
many of you familiar with the Cherokee march in Georgia? When
Cherokees were based right in Georgia, had land given to them by the
federal government, and when they were trapped they tried to throw them
off, take them off of this land and put them on other reservation for us it
was too [inaudible]. Anyway you want in a map if you want to know the
worst land in this country, the less productive, the most desolate just all
you have to do is get you an Indian territorial map and that's where it is.
This is what they've done to this man. They put him on this land and he's
got to till it he's got to make it produce, but no they had a nice piece in
Georgia and what happened? They were forced off, but they used the
white man's structure, they used the reformation, they went along with the
bureaucrats and they went through the federal courts and went up to the
high pillar councils and they won their case.
01:01:51
They won their case. General Grant was president at this time and the
federal court said that they had a right to stay there. You know what Grant
said? The president said, "All right you gave him this, you gave him these
rights now you help them stay there," and he had his troops to take these
people on a forced march. One thousand of them died and then as they
were marching along whites would come on taking their horses, taking
their property, and no one to defend them. [Inaudible] marched them off
this land. This is what's happened to the red man. You wonder why the
red man as you depict him the vanishing American with his horse tail took
“Our Forgotten Neighbors” morning panel discussion (transcript), page 26
his head drooped. Here's a man who has more of a gripe than anybody
here. He is the only man who can say he is an American.
00:02:36
He was here before, while the Black man came a year before the white
man came in 1519, a Black man was here as an indentured servant
working this land. Next year here come the pilgrims. All right, ever since
that time this man has been given the worst bit of it. This man has been
felt that he's had a part of defeat and not until now, not until now, you see,
here's a thing, let's look at it for like it is, you said [inaudible] doesn't have
any get up and go. You ask George Custer how much get up and go he
had, but you see when he did fight, it's the same thing we've been doing it
all through history when we we rebel, you call it a riot, when the Indians
attacked the white man and that time, it was a massacre, when he
attacked us it was a victory, you see what I'm saying? So yeah it's a
history.
01:03:23
Now as far as working together, we're definitely working together. Harold
Goodsky who I want you to hear him speak, I wish he were here now. A
very impressive speaker but to heck with speaking, we got things we're
doing. No it ain't in the Tribune every day, it's not in the Star, but that's not
where it's at. We got action moving and as Barry said, when we said
“black,” we're talking about the Indian, the Puerto Rican, any other
minority group as you so call us, and if they're out here they're
represented and that's why I want to go on record right now as
representing them because we're not speaking, we say black would mean
black, red, and every other color.
01:03:56
[Inaudible question from audience]
01:04:11
[Gary Hines] [Inaudible] has told me that teachers get paid more because
there's some law that was passed while the suburbs were growing get
more, paid more for each student out in the suburbs that they teach.
01:04:27
They, recently--this is a recent raise in the school system and six to seven
hundred dollars now, which is quite a bit more, it's not the teachers, it's
just the institution itself and it that's a different, a separate system from the
the Minneapolis Public School system and this is actually the problem. In
relations to the Alsop and Pettigrew debate about schools, quality of
schools, and Pettigrew says that we should bus them. But I go along with
“Our Forgotten Neighbors” morning panel discussion (transcript), page 27
Alsop and along with, what's-his-name, well anyhow! This is what he said.
"It's not the color of the school, but the quality of it." When we say quality,
we not only mean the facilities we're far less facilitated than the [inaudible]
suburban schools you know this. I was in Edina last week, Edina High
School and it looks better than Augsburg to tell you the truth, [audience
laughs]
01:05:20
And then, I mean they've got just tremendous things at their disposal. Now
these things [inaudible] We got a few talking typewrites coming into our
system [inaudibe] over negotiate on that few things, but still, that's just
facilities. It must be quality also in the teacher. Now as fas as the
sensitivity is speaking of I assume, I think that [inaudible] going along with
the young man's question over here. Right here, you should get some
exposure to what's going on there and even in your practice teaching, why
don't you go to a ghetto school and get some exposure?
01:05:55
[Ronald Sample] I'd like to answer to your question too. I don't know
where your statistics or figures are from, but I've talked with many
teachers here and they have admitted to me that they can get paid more
in suburban schools than they can in the city schools and these are
people who ought to know they were the ones who get [inaudible]. In fact,
one lady told me she wanted to teach in Hopkins because she's gonna get
more money and have better equipment and better facilities and easier
children to teach.
01:06:20
[Inaudible response from the audience]
01:06:29
[Ronald Sample] One teacher that I knew quite well left from the suburbs
and Hopkins and she was maybe nine thousand dollars a year.
01:06:41
[Harold Andrews] There's a difference, yeah, but the top the level isn't as
high as the suburban.
01:06:44
[Miles Stenshoel] One last question, I don't know to whom to turn here is
there one last question? Okay, one last question.
01:06:53
I was just curious. It's been brought up that the welfare system is so
inequitable and so poorly constructed. In what way can we affect this
now? Should we write our congressmen or how can this be?
“Our Forgotten Neighbors” morning panel discussion (transcript), page 28
01:07:12
This is the way it is going to have to be done. As we have tried to point out
and reason why I'm very familiar with this I have just recently had
conferences with the entire staff of the Hennepin County welfare and do
almost to a person we agree about these particular handicaps: Number
one; they are tied by whatever our national policies happen to be in
welfare work. They are just workers, they have to do what they're told to
do so not we do have to work this through our legislation we have to be
aware of where the injustices lie in our welfare system and it has to go
through our legislative processes to get it corrected. These particular
problems [inaudible] is our welfare really helping these people or is it
actually really giving them to a subservient situation out of which they find
almost no means of getting out of it?
01:08:03
[Inaudible] we have a good welfare system. It will help the needy people,
but it will not be a hindrance to them helping themselves when they so
desire to do so and most of them do. I've met very few people on welfare,
and I talked to quite a few, who want to stay there. A man wants to be a
man, a woman wants to be a woman. They don't want to have to go
around feeling they have to live on handouts all their lives, but our welfare
system has put them in this bag and has allowed them no way out.
01:08:33
[Inaudible question from the audience]
01:08:48
[Harold Andrews]And young man, if you want to pursue this I want to give
you a little something else to take along. There's an element or segment in
the poverty level that is totally ignored. Welfare is designed now it's two
elements; the family who does not have a head of a household who
cannot survive and the old people, the aged. This is all they support and
as a third segment that only one federal program helps, that's food
stamps and that is where there is a head of the household and does
insufficient income they can't get a thing anywhere except relief and that's
temporary and it's very menial. This should also be included. Food stamps
is different. Some of you could get food stamps because all it's relying
upon is your income by ratio to the number of people in the household and
employed.
01:09:45
You must have a total income and then if it's less than that $35,000 then
you qualify for food stamps, for food stamps you see, but that's the only
“Our Forgotten Neighbors” morning panel discussion (transcript), page 29
program but I think it should be more flexible for that family, then a father
would have to leave the home too.
00:01:10
Well we come awfully close to the guaranteed income idea without ever
mentioning it, it seems to me. That was the other question we don't have
time for it. I want to say thank you to our visitors this morning. This was I'm
sure pointed very helpful to us even if we strayed occasionally from the
more specific topic. I want to say thank you to this group and I want to
remind you that at 11:15 we the next presentation, "Violence versus
Non-Violence," and that will be a general meeting downstairs again.
Thank you all very much.
01:10:35
[Applause]
“Our Forgotten Neighbors” morning panel discussion (transcript), page 30
Show less
Transcript of “Green Power: Economic Crisis in the Ghettos”
(afternoon session)
A Panel Discussion
Date: 1968-05-15
Identifier: SC 05.1.4.2013.01.0342
Description: Evan Anderson and Vern Bloom, of the Office of Economic Opportunity;
Gleason Glover, of the Minneapolis Urban League; Cli... Show more
Transcript of “Green Power: Economic Crisis in the Ghettos”
(afternoon session)
A Panel Discussion
Date: 1968-05-15
Identifier: SC 05.1.4.2013.01.0342
Description: Evan Anderson and Vern Bloom, of the Office of Economic Opportunity;
Gleason Glover, of the Minneapolis Urban League; Clifford Johnson of the Twin Cities
Opportunities Industrialization Center; and Harry Davis discuss economic
disenfranchisement and racism in a panel moderated by Dr. Norma Noonan. The panel was
part of a day focused on speaking and listening to issues of racial injustice, known as "One
Day in May," 1968 May 15. The panel was part of a day focused on speaking and listening to
issues of racial injustice, known as "One Day in May," 1968 May 15.
Duration: 01:05:47
Collection: 13 “One Day in May” sessions were recorded and have been digitized.
They are available on YouTube:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLp3IfZjFdUQJMy9uNoEADuy9KPltsIF-9
[The recording cuts in following introductions]
00:00:00
[Harry Davis]--the use and the force of green power. You will not be
basically equal. So what must be done in the Black Power movement is to
get into the mainstream of green power, to be able to exercise and to
appreciate the loans and the banks and the investments, to know about
the stock markets, to know how to put the squeeze on various political
figures when they are out of line, and you can do this of course with green
power. It must basically have support from people in the community and
people in business and industry. The church itself depends on green
power. As you know, the church is the largest holder, the second largest
holder, of green power. The United States government is the first, but the
church is second, so whatever point of life that we enjoy, or we participate
in, we must from some time at some time become involved, and the
reaction results the influence of the green power.
Green Power (afternoon session) (transcript), page 1
00:01:03
You, right today, are not enjoying green power as much as some of the
gentlemen on the panel are, ‘cause these are professional men. You're in
the process of learning so you don't have too much green power at the
present time, but I'm sure that in the very near future, and you get your
degrees, and go out into the world, that you'll be a part of making green
power effective. It's pretty hard to say what green power means to
everyone, and some of us I'm sure don't appreciate it too much because
it's an everyday thing, but as a Black man, I know the green power,
must--means to me that I must have it in order to play an important part in
the community. If I don't have it, then I'm not too well respected in the
leadership capacity. If I don't have green power, I can't go to the store and
pay my bills and buy food and clothing for cash.
00:01:52
If I go into the store, the man would look at me and say ‘he is the one that
does not pay his bills because he doesn't have money.’ Looking at--I'm
looked at suspiciously. So until I can go in and pay my bills, buy for cash,
then he will ask you to come back again. This way, I can gain respect to
him, and to others that I do business with. The effect of green power is
very important, very important to the Black movement, or we must get into
the mainstream of green power, therefore, we must utilize our resources,
not only in our financial wizards such as Mr. Johnson, but in our resource
wizard such as Mr. Evan Anderson.
00:02:33
Collectively, we can get into the mainstream, teach and preach about the
effectiveness of savings, of investments, of mutual funds, of many ways
that we can become, we can get the use of green power. I'm sure that you
don't want to listen to me speak all day, and these gentlemen have given
you some background on their philosophy of green power so let's get to
the point and let you ask us some questions to get a good discussion
going.
00:02:59
[Norma Noonan] Before we open it up to the floor, do any of you want to
say a word or do you want to just get your question. You're speaking.
00:03:07
[Evan Anderson] No, I'll wait on it.
Green Power (afternoon session) (transcript), page 2
00:03:07
[Norma Noonan] Okay, let's get some questions going and go from there.
Come on let's not all be shy. [Inaudible remark from a panelist] [Noonan
laughs]
00:03:20
[Audience member] Mr. Davis, I heard one of the panelists say this
morning--well, first of all let me say that I interpreted your remarks to say
that the use of money and the availability money is very important to the
solutions of that Black problem. I heard one of the families say this
morning, that if America is going to be saved, it's going to be saved by
Black America and it will be saved because Black America is not hung up
on the almighty dollar. In other words, they don't see everything in terms of
economics, you know to the extent of exploiting people, this type of thing.
00:03:56
I seem to sense some conflict between what he's saying and what you're
saying. It's hardly fair for me to try to tell you what he said [inaudible].
00:04:08
[Harry Davis] Well I can appreciate what he's saying, because I believe
that what he's trying to say is that we are not experienced in the tie-ups of
using other people for the value of a dollar or the benefit of the dollar to
us, but we must realize too, that to become effective and to get into the
power structure that we must accumulate and control a certain part of
green power this is a necessity, we have to, and until we can control and
accumulate some of this green power, then we're still going to be in the
rear, because we're going to be used for our money instead of using
others for their money.
00:04:42
You see, if we're not on the boards of banks, if we're not on the advisory
committee of banks, if we're not associated and stockholders and big
corporations, we have--we don't have too much to say of what they do
with our money, you see. And until we get on these boards, until we
become stockholders, then we can control and tell them what to do with
the money that we accumulate. We can control a certain amount of that
money. By controlling a certain amount of that money, we can become
powerful. Now, if we stay away from the banks, you see, we're not going
to be able to force banks to give us loans to finance homes and things of
that sort, and this is where the tie-up comes.
00:05:21
Many Black people do not have the opportunity, and are turned down by
banks, because they do not have good credit ratings or they have
Green Power (afternoon session) (transcript), page 3
established no credit whatsoever. So the banks will not give them money.
Now how are we going to force the banks to give them money if we don't
get into the mainstream and try to control some of that money in the bank?
So, we would have a voice in saying, ‘look you're you're not lending or
you're not encouraging Black people to come and use the facilities of this
bank, and you must do this because we are stockholders in this
corporation and we are stockholders in this bank and we want our money
used to benefit our people.’ This is only done at the present time by a
small part, a small segment of the Black community, but the more people,
the more Black people, we can get functioning on these boards and
controlling money, the better chance we will have to tell them how to use
this money.
00:06:18
You can take this from the Jewish movement. As an example, when they
went down to Miami Beach not too many years ago, they were told that
they weren't wanted. They couldn't be, they couldn't rent hotel rooms and
they couldn't go into certain restrooms, so they utilized their green power
and they bought the hotels [audience laughs] and then when they went
back and they told the man, the man said, ‘well you can't use you here,
we can't give you a room.’ They said ‘well no we can't, you don't have a
job either! Because I own this place.’ And unless we're just going to take it
by force, I'm sure that we realize that this is really necessary or possible
that we must get into the mainstream of controlling a certain model green
power.
00:06:56
[Clifford Johnson] Norma, may I respond to that as well? I see a
dichotomy in what Dr. Johnson says, but it's not the dichotomy that he
brought up, that he pointed out. The first dichotomy is the way you look at
the situation. First of all, he feels the problem as a Negro or a Black
problem, which is not the case at all. It has long since ceased to be a
Black problem, it's not a white problem. You know, it was a Black problem
as long Black people were unable to get from under the heel. Black people
are now insisting on being let from under the heel, so, therefore, it
becomes a white problem.
00:07:35
How do you deal with this new dilemma, this new situation, that you find
yourselves in? Do you permit the Black man to get a share, his fair share
of his birthright, or do you attempt to keep him under the heel and
therefore destroy the society? Now, this is precisely what the man was
Green Power (afternoon session) (transcript), page 4
talking about today, in this earlier session, that the salvation of this society
as it is, and I honestly cannot believe that it can survive as-is, but the
salvation is dependent upon the Black man.
00:08:15
Moving into the arena of the society, so far as economics are concerned,
the black man who is not accustomed to handling the dollar exploitatively
will be put in a position once he has it, to use his dollars, rather than to
exploit, to help people because having come out of a genesis in which he
recognizes the value of helping, rather than exploiting, he will, therefore,
use the dollar in a different means or manner than it has been used by the
white society. And so, therefore, we will get a total reorientation of our
society, so far as the value structure et cetera of our society is concerned,
so this is what I meant by the society not surviving as presently structured.
Because once we get an equally sharing on the part of people regardless
of what race, and you know that whites are about one-fifth of the
population of the globe, you're by far in the minority, so once we get all of
these other four-fifths of the world sharing equally in this economic state
that we're talking about, we're going to get a re-orientation.
00:09:39
And hopefully through this way society, the American society will survive,
but it is in this country, because the white man in this country is pitted
against colored people all over the world. So, once, through the process of
mobility of the Black man, demonstrating to the rest of the world that white
America knows how to live in an integrated society, and to permit its
colored people to partake in the society, then, of course, the vis-a-vis the
rest of the world, America, and the society might survive.
00:10:25
[Norma Noonan] Yeah. [presumably pointing to a member of the
audience]
00:10:28,
[Audience member] I'd like to ask the question to you, Clifford. Why does
the federal government require most of the anti-poverty organizations to
be non-profitmaking organizations, and do you think if this were different
that Black people could be able to help themselves more?
00:10:43
[Clifford Johnson] I got -- answer -- first part of your question, why? I don't
know, other than the fact that the government is a quote-unquote
‘nonprofit.’ But, I do agree with your contention here that we've got to get
out of this nonprofit bag, you know, got to get out of it. Everything that
Green Power (afternoon session) (transcript), page 5
Black people head up is nonprofit. Hell, look at the society it's
profit-oriented, we're a capitalistic society! So you got to permit that Black
man to get into some kind of operation in which he can make dollars off of
dollars, you know. Now we have, of course as I said this morning, the
most wealthy, the richest, the [inaudible] billionaires in this country are
people who produce nothing. Not one screw, not one nut, in our one bolt.
They produce nothing.
00:11:33
Their money go out and have babies, and make more money for them, so
we've got to permit Black people to get into the same bag! Where once
they can make a million, they can reinvest that million and make four or
five million, you see, and this is the bag they've got Black people wrapped
up in today or they can't make money because they don't let them have a
profit status corporations. Yes, I fully agree.
00:12:04
[Evan Anderson] On that matter of [inaudible], I happen to work for the
federal government. I, you know, studied quite a bit, but to me it's a type of
way like Mr. Pillow just spoke about. Our congressmen and congress
[inaudible] and so far and, as a gentleman here at the table, and myself,
we've come up with beautiful ideas and programs that could very easily be
incorporated into, you know, profit-making things. But you take for
example, we're limited so far. I think the type of situation is, you see
something happening, so let's go down there and be cool, you know, with
the riot starts, he comes running down and you might call it you fire
insurance policy, you might call your guilty conscience, or else you just
might call it, you know, security. But I think that, like he said, it could be a
lot of profit making things, a matter of fact, we'll always run into this
problem, whereas the federal government will give a grant to some type of
program and at the end of the year, if things didn't go to cool, or a lack of
interest is something to put in [inaudible] and a lot of times even if it's a
good program it just might not get funded.
00:13:04
It all the depends how they happen to feel that day, when they're voting in
Congress. But if this type of program could get funded right off the ground
or else if we had, even a small loan, you know, corporation we have that.
I'm talking about a large corporation loan. After that one year, I can't see
any way in the world where a person come up with a good, you know, a
program or an idea that will work to make money for people in the ghetto
that it couldn't take care of itself, and I agree with you 100%. I just want to
Green Power (afternoon session) (transcript), page 6
let you know that’s what Mr. Pillow meant when he said, let's start calling,
you know, if you believe in that [inaudible] congressmen and let them
know as, you know, you might even get your student body here to do it,
you know, and you might say ‘well what can we do, you know, half of us
aren't even of voting age,’ and I think there's 1,400 kids -- about students,
not kids, that go here. How many are here?
00:13:52
[Norma Noonan] 17 [hundred].
00:13:55
[Evan Anderson] Okay, well, seventeen hundred votes. They’re going to
start listening to that. That means 1,700 students, approximately, it means
that you also have double your parents at home. This is, you know, great
[inaudible] your strength. Why do you think that, you know, like if you ever
heard, it used to be when you wanted to become president, you go out to
the coal mines you go out to the factories, you shake hands and laborers.
Now where are they going? They're going to the campuses. Cause that's
where the strength is, and that's where the political view is because
they're trying to get you, because they know [inaudible] a year or two,
you're gonna be of that age. They'll be coming up for reelection, and and
that's the issue. You know, you are a power. If you believe in that, get
some people together and help us out, you know, [inaudible]. We need
your help.
00:14:32
[Unidentified panelist] I just make one quick comment. I think this is
entirely right that stop and think now who benefits? Who benefits, for
instance, from the employment of Black people, Indian people who
benefits from having them on welfare? Who gets that money? Well, it's a
guy who owns, you know, the big stores. It the small entrepreneur within
the inner-city area. It's the landlord, now who are these people? These are
all white people. They're the ones to get the money, flow of money, in
other words, you know, is out of the Black community, out of the Indian
community, and in the white community, so actually they're the ones that
benefit. And Cliff's entirely right that what we've got to do is reverse that
flow so that the white dollars begin to go to the minority communities, so
that they can begin to, in a sense, if you want to call it exploitation, okay,
but at least, you know, we've got it going one way, we have to, I think it
seems to me, reverse it.
Green Power (afternoon session) (transcript), page 7
00:15:23
One good example of that, and this is a little bit different area than we're
probably talking about here, but I think it's parallel to what would be going
on in the inner city, the Black community made more obvious. Take a look,
for instance, at an Indian Reservation. Red Lake Indian Reservation would
be a good example of this. Now there is little or no industry on the Red
Lake Indian Reservation. There are some stores, the stores are owned by
white people. There's a community next door to it called Bemidji. The
outflow of dollars from the Red Lake Indian Reservation to Bemidji is
fantastic, in fact, if they, you know, one of their cheap tools that they can
use is a boycott of Bemidji. It throws everybody into an uproar in Bemidji
because the white man isn't making his dollars anymore and that threat
was used here a year or so ago.
00:16:11
There's a regulation, you can't have liquor stores, can't sell liquor on
Indian reservations. I think, generally accepted, that Indian people like the
rest of us drink once in a while. Well where do they go to drink? Where
they spend their money? In Bemidji. So who gets rich off of them? The
white people that owned the liquor stores in Bemidji, cause they can't own
any.
00:16:29
Well, you know, maybe liquor stores is only one example, but there's a
whole, where the dollars are, you know, are being taken out of here and
they're going into the pockets of the entrepreneurs who are all white and
that has to be reversed.
00:16:42
[Clifford Johnson] Norma, if Harry doesn't want to make a comment to
that. I'd like to make one other--draw one analogy here, and that is you've
got to compare your ghettos, whether particularly your minority group
ghettos and I'm speaking of Negro and Indian now, to a underdeveloped
country to use an international terminology. They are totally dependent!
They are totally dependent. So, part of the solution for getting out of this
bag is to make that ghetto self-sustaining. Put some business in that
ghetto, profit-making business.
00:17:20
Put some industry in that ghetto. What I mean is profit-making. Put some
grocery stores in there, and all of these things must be owned and are
managed by minority group people. And here you change in part, anyway,
the ghetto psychology that has created the problem. Here also you build
respectability for anyone. Because everybody respects John D.
Green Power (afternoon session) (transcript), page 8
Rockefeller. You know, he's got the money, and we've got to do the same
kind of thing in the ghetto. Maybe not only John D. Rockefeller scale, but
the same process where we make those ghetto residents self-sustaining,
where they have dignity for themselves a great self-image and the kids
growing up in that ghetto can see symbols of success which they can't see
now. Only symbols of success in most instances is that pimp and that
prostitute.
00:18:26
[Harry Davis] I think a parallel can be drawn too of realizing that the core
city is much like the ghetto.
00:18:31
[Clifford Johnson] Right.
00:18:31
[Harry Davis] The majority of people that take money from the core city
move to Edina and St. Louis Park, spend their money there, improve their
schools, while our schools here go to pot, but they still depend on coming
here and taking our resources back away. That's just the same way as a
ghetto.
00:18:53
Now one thing that is, one movement that's being made in the very near
future of course, is the bank going in North Minneapolis. On that bank we
will have Black people running the bank, and owning a great deal, or the
majority of the shares in that bank. What will happen there, we'll put up the
shopping center with twenty or thirty different businesses, and then we’ll
train Black people in those businesses and after they learn the business
we'll sell the business to them at a small interest rate. So then the fact it's
sure there then we Black people there. It'll be Black businesses and you'll
say there would be separate businesses. They won't be integrated into the
community, but at least it'll be a starting point, so some of these
suburbanites that come into the city can buy something from the Black
people, and that they will benefit by it, because they will be there and
remaining there, not going out into the suburbs.
00:19:41
[Evan Anderson] This is the point I was going to add. Once you get those
businesses set up, then you know everybody in this room and a whole lot
of other people come in there with their dollars in their hands, you know, to
purchase what they have to offer in these stores. Same thing we do
anyplace else. Then you begin to reverse the flow of dollars and put it
where it's needed instead of taking away.
Green Power (afternoon session) (transcript), page 9
00:19:58
[Harry Davis] You know, like one of those good soul food restaurants
where you can come in and eat. [audience laughs]
00:20:00
[Evan Anderson] I might also point out you've heard examples in how it's
gonna do. It is also, if you take for example, if you take Japan in the
Second World War. Well, I mean let's face it. You know, we went in and
we wiped them out, annihilated them, dropped it, you know, that bomb,
and then we came back and we said now we have a guilty conscience
after it's over, and we came back in and rebuilt that baby up, and now, and
I hope everyone here knows [inaudible] Japan is in today. They're one of
the leading countries in the world! Financially independent because we did
what, you know, we came in and gave them that hand, you know, and this
was just federally, you know, if these small business places would just
break down, I'm just saying small business, you know, you could just take
care of itself.
00:20:40
You might get into this analogy, ‘okay now I've heard everything you had
to say, but tell me, you know, why do people who drive Cadillacs and live
in raggedy houses?’ Well, they don't home that house and they really don't
own that Cadillac. The bank owns it, but it's theirs, and they'll go out and
get it washed and get cleaned and when they break out they'll be clean
too because they own that. Now why can't you see it, you know, why
should one, you know, drive through the ghetto he lives why shouldn't he
throw a beer can out in the street? He don't care, it ain’t gonna get
cleaned up anyways until they give, you know, ready for it.
00:21:07
Take, for example, the storms last year, you know. We had little kids on
the north side, nine to ten years old, cleaning up their parks, because they
were out cleaning up everywhere else. This is just the type of thing we're
talking about, is that once you give these people pride, you know, giving
this money get their own thing going. We ain’t going to have to go, right
now, our community [and write] ‘soul, brother’ on our windows, so we don't
get burned out, we worried about that, and this will--this creates this
problem, you know, we [inaudible] gonna have it. Well then there's
something of, you know, you own, it's something you have pride in and
that young brother out there is gonna see that, said ‘well dig, man,1 Evan's
1
“Dig,” used here is a reference to expressing support or interest, as in “I dig it.”
Green Power (afternoon session) (transcript), page 10
got a motorcycle shop’ or something, you know. Well cat2 says, ‘well I'm
going to school and give me a car dealership down here.’
00:21:42
That seems like a big joke, but that's what you do. You identify with those
white people, and you said ‘I dig that.’ Now, when you give us something
to identify with, outside you, well then we'll start doing it. Cause it's just like
when you look at it, you say, oh man that colored cat, right away you
turned off and when we see that white cat, it's the same thing, but every
time, you know, that, you know, that's why we have we have so much, you
know, admiration for the Black people that do get ahead that we claim,
you know, that some were militant people that are not Uncle Tom. Now we
just love them to death and, you know, if you gave the example, where
you take a hardcore person, and like Harry said, yeah, we get a cat that
he says, ‘Harry, I'm interested in clothing business,’ you know, so he
dresses clean on time.
00:22:23
He gets this opportunity to get this shop. Can you imagine what this would
do for a young cat to say, ‘well look man, there goes, a man I used to play
pool with this man, we played football together, he’s got his own clothing
store.’ This is what inspires people to go on. It's something, you know,
they can relate and identify with. It goes through the whole things of Black
history in the schools, the whole works. We gotta have our own identity,
you know, and we can't get it from you, you know, and that's just it. You
know, a real fair shake--
00:22:50
[Harry Davis] --I think one other comment on that, it just to make the
parallel again, about going back and billing up Japan after you tore it up.
We spend billions of dollars going in fixing up Japan, and they were our
enemy, and they would have annihilated us if they had a chance. We
spend billions of dollars repairing their country, and we let some of our
country even our own capital, where the Black people were living, still,
look like it was bombed, you know. Without offering any assistance
whatsoever.
00:23:19
We're doing that right here in the city of Minneapolis, because your park
board here, if you look at the park system, the parks in the ghetto areas,
the parks where the Negro people, the Black people live, are the lowest on
the priority list. They have new buildings put on it. Twelve blocks away
2
“Cat” used here is a reference to a person.
Green Power (afternoon session) (transcript), page 11
from Nicollet Field is Powderhorn, and they needed a new building like I
need a hole in the head, but they got the new building and Nicollet Field
still has the old one and they won't get a new building for three years, you
see, and there are three times as many children using Nicollet Field as are
using Powderhorn. And if you look at Longfellow, the priority would have
even over Sumner Field in North Minneapolis.
00:23:58,
They had the same shack there at Sumner Field when I used to play at
Sumner Field when I was a child. I can't say how many years ago that
was. [Audience laughs] But it's the same building! It's the same building,
and they have made no attempt even to put any paint on it! And that's right
in the multiple dwelling unit section of town, where there are all kinds of
kids, you know--
00:24:19
[Evan Anderson] --Rats, roaches, outdoor bathrooms--
00:24:20
[Harry Davis]--everything else. See that this creates resentment and
people have no value at all what you care about what the dollar means.
Doesn't mean anything to them, because they never had it. You're talking
about examples. Well, right here in the City of Minneapolis, when I was a
kid, he's talking about something to look forward to, something to go to
college for, the only successful Black man I saw was a pimp, and the ones
that did have a college education were working in the post office.
00:24:45
[Evan Anderson] Right.
00:24:47
[Harry Davis] See? You have a lot to look forward to. Even your fathers
too. It may be possible for them to become president of the country, of a
corporation, to make millions of dollars, to go anyplace and every place
that their money can send them. But we may have the money, but there's
still places we can't go, right here in our own country, and this is what
creates resentment, and this is what has to be changed.
00:25:11
[Norma Noonan] Yeah. [presumably pointing to a member of the
audience]
00:25:12,
[Audience member] Evan said that Negro people need someone to look
up to. You know, ‘this person made it, so there's chance for me.’ I was
wondering if a Negro person who does make it or the professional, does
Green Power (afternoon session) (transcript), page 12
he stay right in the community or does he move out to the suburbia with
the rest of [people who make it or are professional]?
00:25:35,
[Evan Anderson] Let me tell you, we used to have that type of problem I
might say but, I think a lot of the brothers that moved out there, they were
off in that dream. I think a few of them are coming back. I don't know if
they'll move back, but let's take for example, we have people that made it,
you know, in a little teeny, teeny, what you could say that I made a
financially for a while. I'm not coming back to go to school and stuff. I
haven't moved out of the ghetto. Now Harry has, and I'm pretty sure that
Cliff has, but I don't know. But we're still in there, you know, we're there all
the time. You take for example a friend of our, mine, he happens to be a
professional athlete and, he's made it, you know, he doesn't have to come
back and they're coming back to help.
00:26:16
It's a cause now where like Gleason said this morning, you know, even the
cats that have made it, you know, that they haven't made it. What sense is
there in making it when you have to give up your own identity to make this.
And when I talk about identities, see, let me give you an example, you
know. You turn on the TV and I see you're John Wayne, you know, in
other words Walt Disney just ate it up. That just don’t get it. It has to be
violent. If you don't see John Wayne knocking a cat over a bar stool, it's
boring. Or, if you don't go to a show and see James Bond shoot 40 cats
off the mountain, then it's boring, you know, but you still dig this, because
you can identify with him.
00:26:47
That's a white man, see? But when I go, for sake of the identification, see,
but I tell you, one of these new movies, like I just dug to death, was this
one with Ossie Davis and Burt Lancaster. I had never seen no colored
man fight that long with a white man. [Audience laughs] No, look here, I
know people that went down--and it thrilled me to death. He didn't whoop
this colored cat, he tricked him a couple of times, and finally Ossie Davis
put the brick upside his head, man. This was great to me. Now, it wasn't a
violent thing that I dug, but this black cat [inaudible] just traded blows and
they were equal. See, and that's something that means something to me,
and I know that Ossie Davis they're coming back into the ghetto.
00:27:27
You take on your wall, for example, these pictures of Godfrey Cambridge.
Can you imagine that the schedule that they have, you know, it's just go,
Green Power (afternoon session) (transcript), page 13
go, go, and they're still helping their people. It's not the point that you have
to live on 38th and Fourth [Avenue South], or you live on Newton and
Plymouth over north, but the thing is that you keep your identity and you
help your people. When Cliff said about getting some money up and
helping the people, okay now take Harry, for example. One of the means
of us getting this bank was Harry. Okay so, you know he’s staying with his
people, he could have said ‘well, wait and I got my cousin here, and he'd
be good in his clothing store here, and mother's sister she'd be rich, but
no! We're bringing opportunity to the ghetto, and the, you know, residents
get it. You don't need fourteen years of college to get this type of thing.
That's what we're talking about.
00:28:12
See I can identify with Harry, you know, now you can't you dig this, you
know I come to your bank, I see you. Now I'm gonna go to the bank and
see me, I don't believe in banks too much, but I'll go to that one, because I
identify with them.
00:28:22,
[Audience member] It used to be that they’d say that the Negro who has
made it, kind of like the white exploitation [inaudible] the Negro has made
it also [inaudible] the lower class because, you know, they look down on
[inaudilbe] not help him--
00:28:42
--[Harry Davis] Let me think what we're trying to do what we hope to do,
what we hope to do and what we are doing. Doing right now. We're
making the Black middle class man and woman realize and recognize that
he must accept the pledge of the three T’s. And we’re going out to the
suburbia where he lives, doesn’t make a difference where he lives, cause
as long as he accepts this pledge and he will pledge to help Black people
with his time, his talent, and his ties.
00:29:14
He has to do this. He has to do this or he isn’t identified with us, so if he
doesn't spend some time with us, and give us his talent ,or shake in some
cash, he's not Black. He may be Black as coal, see, he's still not Black, so
we have no association with him. So this will bring them out of their little
parishes.
00:29:40
[Clifford Johnson] Harry, let me, let me--you can't understand the
movement of the Black individual who quote-unquote--1956 or there
before had made it away from the ghetto unless you understand what
Green Power (afternoon session) (transcript), page 14
white society did to the Blacks who lived in that ghetto, you see. Search,
for a moment your own repertoire of association of ‘Black.’ Bad, evil, it's
dirty, you know, on and on, blackball, you know the whole bit. So, it's all
evil, so there has been, there had been, until very recently schizoid
tendencies within the Black people, and Mr. Glover drew the analogy this
morning. They hated themselves!
00:30:37
Of course the moment they made it they got out of that ghetto because
this was associated with dirt, filth, evil, ugliness, on and on and on, so they
wanted to get away from that. They wanted to get away from--so they did
leave. Nobody had anything to do. They're never gonna reach back and
grab that brother and pull him up because by his residency in the ghetto,
he was identified with something dirty and evil and ugly. But coming back
to the ghetto doesn't necessarily mean that he's moving back into the
ghetto either. This is a kind of psychological identification with the Black
people who live there, though, I might have ‘made it,’ in so many words I
haven't because I can never make it as long as my brother hasn't.
00:31:29
As long as he's oppressed by the establishment. So, what has happened
here is that this racist country finally, the Black people have gotten over
this kind of schizoid tendencies and are being fused into one. We have a
Black community, I don't care where they live now. He's Black, because
he knows by virtue of that pigmentation, he could only go so far. He can
only go so far, but if, together, you become a nation you become, united,
you become strong and then you have Black power. These are some of
the things that Carmichael's3 advocating.
00:32:08
[Harry Davis] I think to clear up some of the suspicions in your mind and
what Evan was talking about, about the Black man fighting on par with this
cat in the movie, you must be realistic too. You must be realistic, you know
because you know Burt Lancaster didn't beat this guy, because there's
nobody, no white man ever beat Cassius Clay4 and he's the greatest
fighter that ever lived, you know, he's Black. Regardless of what his
philosophy is. You talk about strength and athletics. There's no way in the
world, physically, that you can say that you're superior. So you've got to
get this fiction, this out of your mind, too, when you advertise your super
3
4
A reference to Kwame Ture, then known as Stokely Carmichael.
The former name of Mohammad Ali.
Green Power (afternoon session) (transcript), page 15
cereals and stuff like that, that's gonna make you powerful like Superman
and then you put a second class athlete on there.
00:32:52,
I mean this is dreamy, you know, you're dreamy. So you've got to be
realistic. You've got to be realistic, and you've got to spend some of that
green power on that man that's making it, you know, because you'll spend
five hundred dollars just to go down and see Cassius Clay fight. Or you
see Bill Russell play basketball. Some guys run around the end on the
football team, but you wouldn't invite him into your house for dinner, you
know. So, you gotta be realistic when you're talking about power, physical
power, mental power, green power, whatever you're talking about.
00:33:22
It all is together that you're gonna have to realize that you're not superior,
that you're not superior. Regardless of what phase you're talking about.
Even if it's your green power, see, that can't buy you strength, it can't buy
you health.
00:33:40
[Evan Anderson] I think another thing, on that on the same line, is that you
give up your own myth and your old bag to a fighting but you turn that
‘good Negro,’ you know, the one that comes up is nice to you and tells you
what you want to hear. Because, like I'm saying, you know, you have to
hear it told like it is. You never be in a world of trouble if you get out here
through these so-called what you might call a typical ‘good Negro,’ and
you get involved with someone that knows what's happening. You go into
that ghetto, you will be in a world of trouble.
00:34:05
Most definitely, you know, I know so-and-so, or something. But this is the
type of thing, you know, that's what I'm talking about. Cliff said we're
getting together and that's why, you know, you talk about some people say
‘we're afraid of Black power because,’ you know, ‘you identified with
violence,’ but a lot of intelligent white people are afraid of Black power for
the main reason he said that the Black people are getting ourselves
together. Look, you had us fighting among each other somewhat long ago
now he's ‘Uncle Tom’ he's Milton.
00:34:31
He's getting himself together, we don't know about him, but now we're
saying, ‘okay you don't dig me, I may not dig you we're gonna get this
cause,’ and see in this city it's really starting to move a lot of people
because you've got people like myself on that TV talking you got people
Green Power (afternoon session) (transcript), page 16
like friend of mine and [inaudible] we got [inaudible], then we got the Harry
Davis's and the Ed Pillows and we're all talking the same talk and you
people are starting to realize one thing. That's Black Power.
00:34:58
[Harry Davis] I think we are realistic too. I know that I am becoming
realistic of what my values are. Like Cliff said, yeah I could very well
disassociate myself with Black people, but the place that I'm employed at,
when they had the riots in ‘66, the first person they ran to is to me. What
happened? Now I'm supposed to know what happened, you see, because
I'm Black. You know, I'm supposed to have been one of the fellas that
threw the brick, threw the Molotov cocktail because I'm Black. Alright, so if
they identify me with that one that threw the Molotov cocktail, then I'm with
you, you see, because I never lose that identity, because I'll never be
anything but Black, so I must associate with him.
00:35:45
So I realized too that I can't disassociate myself with him, and in order for
us to advance, I've got to reach back and hold his hand, so that, wherever
I go, I'm gonna pull him right with me. I've got to hold his hand too, so he
don't drop back down into the bind that he's been in for a long time. And
we've got to help each other, and that self-help. See because we've
waited 400 years for you to help us. You haven't helped us yet.
00:36:11
[Unidentified speaker] You suggest one other specific thing it seems to me
needs to be done. I'm talking about this profit-making kind of thing where
Black people, Indian people, can begin to make profits. You've got to
make profits.
00:36:20
If you're going to make profits, you've got to make profits off where the
money is and the money is with the white community, it's where the
money is. So that you know you go in there and you begin to help them
make a profit. Some people say, well, you know, ‘this is a hard thing to do.
I don't even dare go over where these place -- I don't dare go to North
Minneapolis, I don't dare go to South Minneapolis, I don't dare go to
Franklin Avenue,’ but I think this has, this kind of attitude has to go, in fact,
if I may just be so presumptuous that if you go in there you know with
$100 in your hand you're probably more likely to get in, go with nothing,
you know. I want to spend this money here to help this guy make a profit
on his business, you know.
Green Power (afternoon session) (transcript), page 17
00:36:54
[cross talk from the panelists who agree and laugh] somebody's gonna get
taken to the cleaners. Big deal, you know. I get taken to the cleaners all
the time by white insurance salesman, white auto mechanics, and the
whole thing, you know, so do you. So it's about time it's, you know, some
other people start to take people's opinions if that's what it takes.
00:37:16
[Inaudible question from the audience]
00:37:56
[Evan Anderson] Talking about our own stores?
00:37:57
[Clifford Johnson] No, we don't have any.
00:37:58
[Audience member continues asking question]
00:38:06
Let me give you an example. You take your little disturbance you had
here, you had some places on Plymouth [Avenue]. They ran by, they know
who to touch up, you know, Black people that own places, like I said, didn't
have ‘soul brother’ written on it, you know, you take anywhere you want to
go in the country, if they even had a good majority of Black people working
there they didn't get burned out. Those places in Watts that stood after all
that burnt, there's places in Detroit that stood after all that burned. Look
here, I’m talking about--if you understand what I'm talking identifying with
one another.
00:38:42
Now let's say that Cliff, and Vern, and Harry happen to be in the shopping
center, and I know they're the only three in there. It's me and my boys, say
‘look here man, I need some bread man. I can't get a job, and the cat next
door, Cliff got TVs, well I can sel] them TVs and sell them to nice white
people.
00:38:58
I also heard it said a while back that we weren’t there stealing Cadillacs
and Buicks. Dr. Ralph Abernathy said that we're not doing that. What are
they stealing when they riot, then I’ll get back to this. Food, clothing, TVs
where they can make some cash, things that they need, but when I go
through that shopping center, you think I'm gonna get him? I might need
him to get me out of jail. [laughter from the panelists] There's a whole
bunch of reasons I'm not gonna be, cause I identify with him. He knows
me, I know him. I'm not gonna do any harm to him. You're the one that
does harm to me.
Green Power (afternoon session) (transcript), page 18
00:39:29
You know, in other words, you know, that's the same reason saying if you
come in your house, you know, and you're mad at someone, you don't go
up and slap your mother. You might go out and slap somebody you don't
know, but you don't take, you know, this physical type of attention on
people that, you know, you care for and you identify with and, you know,
that be the same type of thing saying if I go out and get jumped by white
boys in Edina, I'm gonna come back over south and start whipping all the
colored dudes. It just don't work like that.
00:39:53
[Clifford Johnson] Just a brief addition to what Evan said. What we're
talking about here is how to eliminate, prevent the explosions you're
talking about in the ghetto. The reason we happen--now, Negroes don’t
own a damn thing in the ghetto. One or two stores, you know, and Evan
said, they passed them by and what I am, what we are saying here that if
you give those residents of the ghetto an opportunity to own these things,
whether they are in the ghetto or not, you provide hope for the young guys
today who are burning and destroying, older too, who have no hope, you
see, and once they own that out, hell there hasn't been a house in the
ghetto that's been owned by a Negro since there was a ghetto, you know,
these tenement houses are owned by rich Jews and rich white cats who
live out in suburbia.
00:40:51
This is what we're talking about we're talking about. We're talking about
putting them there so that those kids growing up will have some identity
and some hope for the future where he can go, What, if he does this and
this and this he can also achieve. These are the things that we're talking
about.
00:41:11
[Norma Noonan] I think we have one more question, yeah.
00:41:12
[Audience Member, possibly LaJune Thomas Lange (née Johnson)] Isn't it
also that they didn't own these places, but also they were being cheated in
these places too. It wasn't that just that a white person owned this store.
The white person was charging higher prices for inferior merchandise and
other things that brought out other injustices and one example that we
have at Augsburg is that we own Larson’s.5
5
Larson’s Fairway, a store at 2129 Riverside Aenue, was purchased by Augsburg in 1967 (Echo,
5/17/1967). It is now the site of the Oren Gateway Center.
Green Power (afternoon session) (transcript), page 19
00:41:35
But the Augsburg community does not support that store, but no member
of the outside community, especially the Indian community, is employed
there. Only white people are working there. It's supposed to be a
community store. So, we can start right here, breaking out this green
power problem because we're not hiring any Indians and they live all
around the area and go to the store, and we own that store, totally now.
00:42:02
[Unidentified speaker] Dr. Johnson has a question.
00:42:04
[Norma Noonan] Yeah, Glen…?
00:42:05
[Glen Johnson, speaking from the audience] Clifford, if I understand you
correctly, you’re saying that one of the solutions for the problem is to make
members of a Black community or ghetto capitalists.
00:42:15
[Clifford Johnson] This is what the society is all about, doc.
00:42:19
[Glen Johnson] I don't have much confidence in the capitalist society.
00:42:21
[Clifford Johnson] Well, nor do I but we're talking about sustaining the
society as best we can as it presently exists.
00:42:28
[Glen Johnson] You're suggesting that once they become members of
capitalist society, your soul brothers will act in an enlightened way
because of all the suffering they've--
00:42:36
[Clifford Johnson] Now, wait a minute. Your terminology is confusing me,
what's enlightened?
00:42:43
[Glen Johnson] Well you used the term, I believe or something like it. They
wouldn't exploit people after they
00:42:47
[Clifford Johnson] Humanistic is the term I used
00:42:49
[Glen Johnson] Humanistic way? Alright.
00:49:49
[Clifford Johnson] Yeah.
Green Power (afternoon session) (transcript), page 20
00:42:50
[Glen Johnson] How many generations will this continue?
00:42:54
Depends on the establishment. I say that we can make some major
strides in this direction in the next five to ten years. The establishment
willing, the establishment recalcitrant and unwilling as it is today. We don't
have any time. Time has almost run out. I say that America must take a
definitive stand and provide significant demonstrations of its willingness to
grapple with and solve this problem, otherwise we're out of time already.
00:43:39
[Evan Anderson] You know I might say Cliff too, that you know Cliff says
five to ten years. Well getting back to the aspect that I would like you to
love me, you know, I'm humanistic too, but the thing I will and must have is
your respect. And saying about ‘how soon can it be done,’ well we've just
gone over ways of helping each other, organization that Cliff is with,
TCOIC,6 we have OEO,7 we have [inaudible] programs, not only do you
have Harry involved in the vast majority of programs. If Congress wanted
to, well let me give you an example, then I'll tell you what Congress would
do.
00:44:14
They go over to Vietnam and like Mr. Pillow said, they take a person that
can't even speak English language, you know, and they take him and
within a month he's trained to do whatever they want him to do, you know.
So why couldn't Congress say okay and we face this and come down with
a blank check and say now do the job that would do away the rioting and
everything else. We can, look, we can build up our own communities.
We've got programs. I've got ideas. I'm sure that you probably have some
Doctor Johnson, that in some way, would help us.
00:44:47
You can even help yourself here at Augsburg. You don't need that federal
[inaudible] to come down and help the Indians, see but we're talking about
if we could get that or the door, the establishment. I don't want to get hung
up in a type of thing where we want you, you know, to love us so much.
That has to be a known fact, you know, because sparrows will still stay
with sparrows and crows with crows.
00:45:06
That's human nature, but the thing is it could be attacked tomorrow, it
could be attacked right now, if they've read out that blank check. Now,
6
7
Twin Cities Opportunity Industrialization Center.
Office of Economic Opportunity.
Green Power (afternoon session) (transcript), page 21
we're not talking about thirty zillion dollars or something like this, you
know, but we're talking about a rough number, one hundred million dollars,
paid over a period of ten years.
00:45:21
We could do it ourselves! But what they want to do, you know, there's
such a violent nation they're gonna tell us not to be violent, in the
meantime bomb away in Vietnam and everything else, but that's the
hang-up. They realize the problem up there, they just don't want to get in
position to spend that money. And if America, if the citizen was gonna
stand up and say, ‘now look here baby, our security's being risked, I may
not dig color people either, but I do happen to dig being, you know, a
human being. I appreciate the fact of security for my children given what
they need, you know,’ and would be done like tomorrow we could be on
the trek because we're on the trek now, we just don't have that green
power.
00:46:00
[Harry Davis] You're talking about getting rid of your animosities, you
know. The Black man did some rioting within the large cities of our
country, but see you get rid of your animosities, your successes, and
failures and so forth, you do that by tearing somebody else's country up,
you know. You go over and tear up Vietnam, go over and tear up Korea,
go over and tore up Germany, Cuba, and every place else. You tear their
countries up, you don't do anything here.
00:46:26
We don't have the green power to go up and tear up somebody else's
country. We gotta care for our own country before you realize that we
want to get rid of our animosities that you have created in us, you see, and
that we are human enough to store these animosities and want to get rid
of them. See we're not some animal, we're just like you. You get rid of
your animosities in somebody else's backyard. We can't go to somebody
else's backyard, because we don't have the green power to get there.
Maybe we'll get rid of some of our animosities, you can let us get some of
that green power. We'll get rid of it over in Germany or Cuba, someplace
else.
00:47:00
[Norma Noonan] I'm gonna let it go [inaudible]
00:47:04
[Audience member, possibly Glen Johnson] There's an essence in our
[inaudible] question I think that needs a little more development here. If I
Green Power (afternoon session) (transcript), page 22
understood it [inaudible] we’ve been sold, in part, a bill of goods--I’m not
saying it’s good or bad, true or not, but a bill of goods that the salvation of
the country is within the Black community. And this is based, in some
respects, on humanistic tendencies, that is is not a matter of a materialistic
point of view [inauduble] The questions [inaudible] is this essence within
the community, within the people? How many generations will it last? If the
Black community is within the capitalistic society, will they get away from
their history so that they also become [inaudible]. Or not?
00:48:00
[Clifford Johnson] You have been, hopefully, sold a bill of goods. I hope
you buy the whole package. Not that the Black community has any
humanistic tendencies. This was not intended. This--what was, what is, in
fact, intended is that, unlike you, unlike any other nation, except maybe
the Jewish nation, the Negroes know what deprivation means. They know
what exclusion means. They know what suffering means. Dr. Martin
Luther King's theory of turn-the-other-cheek was nothing new to Negroes!
They had been turning the cheek for 400 years! All four of them, you
know, so this is nothing new. Now what we are saying here and back up a
step.
00:48:56
Unlike the Jews, the Jewish people, of olden days of Europe and fifteen
sixteenth century, they had the economic resources with which to buy less
suffering, with which to buy certain privilege, with which to buy certain
exclusions for themselves. The Black community in America's never had
any of this. Now, the point being that because the Black community has
endured in the greatest of depths of deprivation that they will be more
inclined to be humanistic, you see. Are you with me now?
00:49:34
Not that there is any inclination in each ordination of Black people to be
humanist, not at all. This just has to do with that culture that you keep
saying we don't got.
00:49:49
[Audience member, possibly Glen Johnson] How many generations will it
last?
00:49:52
Well, that was the other point that I wanted to make. It's hard to say, it
depends. Now, the position that I take here, is that we will get as a result
of this integration, thorough total integration, of Black people into the
economic society, will get a reorientation of that total society, you see. We
Green Power (afternoon session) (transcript), page 23
can say that it took us four hundred years to get this far. Four hundred
years ago, someone had asked you that same question, you wouldn't
have been able to answer it. So we don't know. If we are successful in
reorienting the totality of the society, it might last as long as the society
remains in that particular strata or structure.
00:50:46
[Unidentified person] Can I say--
00:50:46
[Norma Noonan] No, use your hand.
00:50:46
[Audience member, possibly LaJune Thomas Lange (née Johnson)] Do
you think that the white man has, really any right to ask the Black man,
does he feel qualified to participate in a capitalistic system when the white
man started participating in the capitalistic system he was exploiting
human beings from the beginning? So I don't think he is right to ask the
Black man whether he's going to exploit in five generations because he
started out exploiting people in the beginning so --
00:51:15
[Clifford Johnson laughs]
00:51:17
[Evan Anderson] Yeah. [applauds]
00:51:21
[Unidentified panelist] I think there's, see, there's another thing going on
here, too, which I think probably people within the college/university
setting are aware of, maybe painfully aware of at times, but there's a kind
of a cultural revolution going on, I think in this country in addition to this,
and which I would see even as you know closer joining of forces the
farther goes along here. Primarily led by young people, you know, who
have had it up to here with the system as they see it. The whole system,
the college system, the capitalistic system, the unions, the business, the
whole thing, and they are saying in effect that the system, you know, is
basically sick.
00:51:58
It doesn't recognize people's basic human qualities. It doesn't allow for
these to come forth. Instead, it treats people as things rather than as
people, that type of thing, and I think joining of these forces that I don't
think we can help but see some changes in the system, whether it results
in a collapse of it as we've known it, or total revamping, I'm not prepared
to say. I think, though, that we have really only a couple of choices: either
Green Power (afternoon session) (transcript), page 24
it collapses entirely or you open it up at all levels for everybody. Open up
at all levels, and then hope that once this gets infiltrated by people who
are not hung up in this thing about manipulation all that type of thing and
treating people as things, hopefully, that they don't lose their human
qualities.
00:52:39
Now sometimes that happens, I recognize that, but hopefully by infiltrating
the kind of thing we're opening up and so that it does have some effect on
the system also.
00:52:44
[Norma Noonan] Don't you think too that it would take many many
generations to forget hundreds and thousands of years of suffering? You
don't forget suffering overnight. The Jews if you, except for the Hitler
interlude, have had it good for a long time, they haven't forgotten.
00:52:59
[Inaudible question from the audience] I’d like to ask one question of Mr.
Davis, you--ah, or Doctor Davis, correct? Doctor Davis?
00:53:06
[Harry Davis] No. [audience laughs]
00:53:06
[Audience member] You were talking about banking in the sense of, you
know, using a bank in the Black community to buy and build a shopping
center, and then selling the shops to the proprietors eventually. Now, what
are the possibilities of the Black community in Minneapolis or any other
city withdrawing their money from the white banks and filling their own
bank and controlling this bank or setting up a target bank within that area
and buying that bank? Like, well what's a fairly [inaudible] alright, the
Northwestern Bank system. Buy out a majority of Northwestern Bank and
use that money. You'd have a majority of Negro money, you'd have a
minority of white money, but you'd be able to use the full resources of that
one bank, so buy out the thing. What are the possibilities of the Negro
community using a bank system to bring up their green power potential?
00:53:58
[Harry Davis] This is exactly what we are plotting to do, you know when
you're on the bank board, you get paid for every meeting.
00:54:07
[Audience member] Yeah, a hundred dollars.
00:54:08
[Harry Davis] You know. Right some of them get more. Yes, much more.
Green Power (afternoon session) (transcript), page 25
00:54:13
Yes. So as a bank board member, you see, and if we had fifteen Black
men on the bank board every time they'd have a meeting they just turn
their money back to the stock, you just keep purchasing more and more of
that stock. The first thing you know they'd own the bank and then, of
course, they could buy out some other bank, you know, go buy out some
other business or invest--
00:54:32
[Audience member]-- or buy out the white man's ghetto
00:54:32
[Harry Daivs] -- right, or else loans money to some white people building
homes and then foreclose the mortgages, you know. [audience laughs] It's
the same thing, actually and what's good for the goose is good for the
gander if we can do this, this is where we'll improve.
00:54:49
Right, there's nothing wrong with it, you see, that's right, you see, if you
can't beat them, join them.
00:54:57
[Audience member] In my hometown, I live near the ghetto in my
hometown, I’ve associated with Negroes since I was little kid. And only in
the last five years, not five years, last ten years have I gotten any
prejudices because when I was a little kid, prejudices, you know a thing
that I didn't even know the meaning of, and then I moved to a Jewish
neighborhood, and I found out that the idea of prejudice against the Jews
was false and I found out when I, later on, in these past five years or so,
that the prejudice against the Negro neighborhood is also false, or
prejudice against any people, individuals yes, but as a group of people no.
The Jews have--oh, my track is that, through the money power of the
banks that the Jews have done and I’ll list some of the others: Krugers,
Rothschild originally were Jewish people and probably still are. [audience
laughs]
00:55:54
They have received social equality through their banks and I believe that
green power of the Black community, this green power of social equality
through the banks is what will eventually predominate over any other
power you just have done it before in history.
00:56:07
[Harry Davis] Green power controls political power too [inaudible].
Green Power (afternoon session) (transcript), page 26
00:56:1
[Evan Anderson] You're saying that also that you found out that people are
not prejudiced towards a mass of like Black people, is that what you were
saying?
00:56:20
[Audience member] No, I'm finding that the prejudice against a group of
people because of their background like a Jewish Community, Polish
community, Norwegians, Swedes, anything is false. I found out that
prejudice against a community saying that, you know, all Blacks are bad,
or all Jews are you know, money grubbers is completely false. Individuals
in each group [inaudible] bad individuals are good.
00:56:42
[Evan Anderson] I would say that suggests that instead of you moving
into your Jewish community that you move over northeast for a couple
weeks. I believe that you will be put in [inaudible] prejudice if you don't
believe that a segment of a community is prejudiced against another
community
00:56:59
[Audience member] No I found these prejudices are false, I did not find
that they are
00:57:05
[Evan Anderson]-- Well
00:57:05
[Audience member]-- I just find that they are false.
00:57:06
[cross talk among the panelists]
00:57:08
[Norma Noonan] Now listen, I'm getting all kinds of signals that we should
break up, but this is too good to break up so if you want to leave to go to
Dudley Riggs, leave. The rest of us will stay.
00:57:19,
[Audience member] I'd just like to say one thing in terms of, I've heard
[inaudible] expression that by having the oppressed have power over the
oppressor that some way or other we are going to [inaudible] humanity
and I don't think that this historically, sociologically, or psychologically true.
I think only as we deal with each other as human beings, one to another in
solving these problems will we solve them. I don't think if you whip a dog,
and then make the dog the boss, you're taking a very good risk.
Green Power (afternoon session) (transcript), page 27
00:57:56
[Clifford Johnson] I will only have to say you've heard incorrectly. This is
not been what has been said. You misheard what was said.
00:58:07
[Harry Davis] I don't think the oppressed want to take advantage of the
oppressor, they just want to have an opportunity to have the same
advantages that he has and then we're on equal terms.
00:58:14
[Audience member] Harry, I was just talking in terms of this humanity that
one is supposed to gain by being whipped and by being mistreated and it
doesn't hold much water. If you're mistreated you may learn to turn the
other cheek, but when you get a chance to punch back, you probably will.
00:58:33
[Clifford Johnson] Your statement here is quite correct in individual
instances.
00:58:39
Take the military forces during World War II, for example, hell that was
nothing more desirable than from a Black boy out of Georgia to get up in
Washington DC and catch one of his white oppresses in that camp. Beat
hell out of it, you know. But that doesn't change the fact that that Black boy
out of Georgia would still be humane toward other Black people who are
still down in Georgia suffering. This is the point.
00:59:14
[Audience member] There are white people down in Georgia suffering.
00:59:13
[Clifford Johnson] Give less than a damn, [someone in the rooms laughs]
you know, this isn't hang up. Whites, regardless to whether they're
prejudiced or not, regardless of whether they have been part of this
institution that has been oppressive, our representative by virtue of the
fact that you have a white face. You represent the establishment!
Therefore, you are an oppressor, you know, and Evan made point earlier,
you talking about blame it on your mother, and your grandmother, you
know, and your great grandmother.
00:59:42
[Inaudible response from the audience member]
00:59:48
[Unidentified panelist] Let me make a comment, and I think this is what
you know it's brought home to me by by one of the Black people on our
staff, when he and I were talking to a church group never came through.
We know what's going on now in our society, talk about the white society
Green Power (afternoon session) (transcript), page 28
for a minute. The fact that, you know, some guy can, this actually
happened, it happens all the time. Some guy, some white fellow, will be
laying out on the street, you know, just laying there, and people walk
around, you know, look at what the hell's matter with that guy laying on the
street. The very most they do is call the police.
01:00:18
That's a very most they'd do, or the incidents that are going on in New
York City that have gone, you know the whole bit. Somebody gets
murdered, they don't want to get involved. It was pointed out by this fellow
on our staff to a group of white people from this church, said, that is
inconceivable that a Black person would be laying on the sidewalk
anyplace and Black people would walk around and passing by and look at
him like that. Now, that says to me that the white community has lost
something, if they ever had.
01:00:41
I think maybe they did it on time.
01:00:43
[Audience member] Well I’ve see it on the Southside of Chicago, maybe
inconceivable--
01:00:46
[Unidentified panelist] That it's going to occur--
01:00:48
[Audience member] That it's going to occur, but I've seen it occur.
01:00:51
[Unidentified panelist] Okay, alright. But would you agree that it's less
likely to occur in the Black community, I asked these guys.
00:01:00
I don't know the Black community. I don't know every individual Black
person's relation with every other that much, but I know, I have a good
friend who's a principal in the Black high school in Chicago that it took him
three years before he could leave school after dark.
01:01:15
[Clifford Johnson] Sure because he was identified with the white
establishment, he'd become a white n*****. Sure that's right. No, but have
you ever been with the Negro riding or walking in a completely strange
Black community. One thing that you will notice, if you ever do it. Strange
Negroes walking down the street will smile or wave. Smile or wave
because they have this in common they know that they have all endured
something because of the color of their skin. This is what we're talking
Green Power (afternoon session) (transcript), page 29
about here. He's going to identify with and reach back--now today, ten
years ago it wasn't, weren't the case, but today, reach back and help that
negro.
01:02:07
[Audience member] [Inaudible] I see a contradiction in what you're saying
now. These people were not smiling and waving at this Negro principal,
maybe because he was a white n*****, but still took him three years to
perform the kinds of relationships where he could go through the territory
safely after dark.
01:02:28
[Clifford Johnson] You've missed the total genesis that has taken place in
Black America in the last ten years. There's been a whole psychological
reorientation and re-identification that has taken place in the last ten
years. Harry Davis, ten years ago, wasn't identified. Hell, he might again
stoned had he walked into some Black community, you know. This is a
fact. We are dealing with a different set of values, a different type of an
orientation in Black America today.
01:03:09
[Audience member] You mean Harry has to make his commitment
[inaudible] and has made his commitment--
01:03:11
[Clifford Johnson] Well, Harry had to make his commitment, yes!
01:03:1
[Evan Anderson] Harry understands the [inaudible] realized one thing and
no matter where you're at when the stuff comes down you can't run, you
can't hide cause you're still Black and you might have a whole legion of
white people there with you, but the first thing--you know the thing we did,
we understood this whole bag, you know, someone said this is what's
happening, but see we didn't come out and attack you right away we
attacked our own selves. We got ourselves together and we got the cats
that could hurt us now see, now I just think what Harry could do.
01:03:45
The position he's in now if he wasn't with us. We wouldn't be talking about
any banks, we couldn't get them. Well we got, we get organized and
ironed out these differences. We said ‘now look here baby. Either you get
in touch and walk with us or you're not gonna walk at all and you will be
the first one to fall,’ cause Malcolm X said the first man you have to get is
that Uncle Tom and that's the situation. That is the situation. We're gonna
make it together. Look here, you know, we're gonna make it together or
Green Power (afternoon session) (transcript), page 30
we ain't gonna make it at all. We're gonna bring everybody with us. Shit
Harry don't have to bring nobody with him.
01:04:13
Man he could sit up [inaudible] and just get filthy rich and he could run off,
and get on to St. Louis Park and have a big old castle and everything and
sooner or later we get to hear it. He's not stupid. He's realistic. You have
to be realistic and he still loves his people, that's all.
01:04:34
[Inaudible question from the audience]
01:05:41
[Evan Anderson] Just keep catching yourself.
[The recording cuts off at 01:05:44]
Green Power (afternoon session) (transcript), page 31
Show less
Transcript of “Our Forgotten Neighbors”
(afternoon session)
A panel discussion with Ada Deer, Rev. Harold Andrew, Reginald Berry, Gary Hines,
and Ronald Sample moderated by Myles Stenshoel
Date: 1968-05-15
Identifier: SC 05.1.4.2013.01.0011
Description: Ada Deer, The Rev. Harold Andrews... Show more
Transcript of “Our Forgotten Neighbors”
(afternoon session)
A panel discussion with Ada Deer, Rev. Harold Andrew, Reginald Berry, Gary Hines,
and Ronald Sample moderated by Myles Stenshoel
Date: 1968-05-15
Identifier: SC 05.1.4.2013.01.0011
Description: Ada Deer, The Rev. Harold Andrews, Reginald Berry, Gary Hines, and
Ronald Sample discuss residential segregation and racism in a panel moderated by Dr.
Myles Stenshoel. The panel was part of a day focused on speaking and listening to
issues of racial injustice, known as "One Day in May," 1968 May 15.
Duration: 00:55:20
Collection: 13 “One Day in May” sessions were recorded and have been digitized.
They are available on YouTube:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLp3IfZjFdUQJMy9uNoEADuy9KPltsIF-9
00:00:00
[The recording cuts in while Myles Stenshoel is speaking] Affairs
Department University of Minnesota. She informs me that she's got to be
at another commitment at 4 o'clock and we're going to give her there for
the first opportunity to say something today I don't know exactly what she
wants to say our general topic is listed as “Our Forgotten Neighbors,” and
has the subtitle “Inadequacy of Public and Community Services in the
ghettos.” Now, this at least is a starting point, and perhaps we can go on
from there and again I'm going to have to say told, said to me that we'll
have to speak rather loudly because there are some noises particularly at
that end of the room. We’ll let Ms. Deer spark at this time. Do you want
this…?
00:00:45
[Ada Deer] This is quite a switch for me, because usually the Indians are
last and so I have a chance to get my words in first at this time. First of all,
I'd like to commend the Augsburg College and all of you who are here,
and who’ve had a part in planning and carrying out this program. I think
this is a very exciting opportunity for you to meet people in the community,
“Our Forgotten Neighbors” afternoon panel discussion (transcript), page 1
to hear speakers of various backgrounds, and to know firsthand what
some of the problems are. I'm sorry that I'll have to leave, but I hope that I
will stimulate you to think about our forgotten Americans. This is the
phrase that President Johnson used in his State of the Union message
last year, when he talked about us. And I should say it always annoys me,
and pains me to hear this, and I keep thinking that if more of us speak up
and speak out that eventually this will change.
00:01:50
Now, in 10 minutes, I certainly can't talk to you and give you all the
information that you need on American Indians. First of all, because I do
not myself have a global knowledge of Indians. I think that when you do
hear people of minority groups, you should bear in mind what the
background is, what their frame of reference is. Because I certainly cannot
pretend to speak for all American Indians. I speak for myself, out of my
own background and experience and professional training. I myself am a
social worker, I'm interested in community in social action, and this is a
type of involvement in the community that I spend most of my time doing.
Occasionally, I do make speeches but at this point, I should say I'm a little
tired of talking about the problem, and I'm interested in talking to people
who are wanting to get involved and who can help.
00:02:51
Now we should talk, especially in terms of Indians, about the philosophy of
helping. I myself have been here in Minneapolis since 1961. I've worked in
several different agencies as the program director of Waite Neighborhood
House, a three years in the Bureau of Indian Affairs, and a year now at the
University of Minnesota. And I have many people calling me, different
times during the day, on all aspects of Indian Affairs. Once, a one young
man called me up and said ‘hello,” he says ‘’I have some clothes for the
Indians and what shall I do with them?’ So I said ‘well, I'm sorry, I'm not in
the clothes business’ and I tried to refer to another place that might be
able to handle this. This is what I call the ‘old clothes approach’ to helping.
You know, clean out your closets, and then you've done your good deed
for the day.
00:03:39
I think that, with Indians, this has been particularly true. We want to help,
and we end up doing for rather than doing with. Now, I know that we've all
heard these phrases over and over, but I'd like to challenge each of you to
think about this. What do we mean when we talk about help? In my
opinion, when we talk about help, we mean helping people help
“Our Forgotten Neighbors” afternoon panel discussion (transcript), page 2
themselves. And, all too often, with Indian people this has not occurred. I
meet many well-meaning people sitting across the table from me in
various committees who want to help, but then when you really zero in
and try to find out what they want to do, they don't really want to help at
all, they want to make their own guilt feeling so less and proceed on that
basis.
00:04:29
Now, I would like to outline briefly for you some of the problems as
suggested in the first presidential message on Indians made to Congress
by President Johnson the first week of March. This will give you a basic a
frame of reference from which to discuss. I should say that one of the big
disadvantages is that the Bureau of Indian Affairs, which is the
governmental agency in charge of administering programs for Indians, has
no research division, and so almost everything that you hear about Indians
is based on approximations and guesses. And this is very unfortunate
when you are out in the field, trying to develop programs and solutions to
some of the problems.
00:05:11
Everyone wants to know how many Indians are there in this country. Well,
according to that information they're approximately 600,000. This is
approximately the same population that was here at the time that
Columbus quotes ‘discovered’ America. [audience laughs] Then, how
many live on reservations? Approximately 400,000 live on reservations,
200,000 live in urban areas, or outside of the reservation areas. 50,000
Indian families live in unsanitary dilapidated dwellings. The unemployment
rate is nearly 40 percent, and this is more than ten times the national
average. 50% of the Indian school children, double the national average,
drop out before completing high school. Indian literacy rates are among
the lowest in the nation. Thousands of Indians who migrated into the cities
find themselves untrained for jobs and unprepared for urban life. The
average age of death of an American Indian today is 44, and for all other
Americans it is 65. 10 percent of American Indians over age 14 have had
no schooling. Nearly 60 percent have had less than an eighth grade
education, and even those Indians who are attending school are plagued
by language barriers, by isolation and remote areas, by lack of a tradition
of academic achievement.
00:06:38
I'm not going to go into all the points that I have here on my cards, but I
would like to mention a little more about health. The health level of the
“Our Forgotten Neighbors” afternoon panel discussion (transcript), page 3
American Indian is the lowest of any major population group in the United
States. The incidence of TB1 among Indians and Alaska Natives is five
times the national average. I think you can get the picture in terms of
health, education, and social conditions. On a national average the
Indians are at the bottom, and I should say that this is also true here in
Minnesota. There are approximately 21 to 24,000 Indian people here in
the state of Minnesota. Nobody knows exactly how many there are here in
the Twin Cities, but the estimates are from five to ten thousand. I could go
on talking about the problems of urban living, but I will summarize them by
saying that the Indian people are isolated in the reservation areas, are not
oriented the city life, come here with improper education, inadequate
orientation, and due to the residency barriers, have very difficult time for
the most part.
00:07:59
Now, there are many Indians that make it, but at this point we don't hear
much about them. Our press continues to feature the negative sides, and
very often does not emphasize the positive contributions. And because
Indian people are a small population group, and are, at this point,
relatively unorganized--we don't have an NAACP, we don't have an Urban
League, we don't have any of the other organizations--you don't hear
much from the Indian population. Now, I've outlined the social problems on
a national level, and, to summarize, we have some of the same problems
on the state level and in the city level, and what is being done about it?
00:08:39
We have a multitude of agencies who are now beginning to address
themselves to some aspects of the problems. I have many requests for
in-service training sessions from the teachers, social workers, and others.
We're beginning to organize Committees of Indian people concerned with
education and other matters. But this is a long haul, and much will have to
be done by everyone concerned. Now, where is this in terms of you? First
of all, attitudes. I see a sign-up there in the dormitory which says ‘white
racism must go.’ And I'd like to echo this: the attitudes that minority people
are confronted with are very difficult and they're very disheartening. This is
also particularly true of American Indians. Oftentimes, people look at me,
and others like me, and say ‘you're not an Indian.’ And, by this, they mean
I'm not weak, dependent, poor, inarticulate, backward, and out of it. If you
stand up and speak, speak out, and are a little aggressive--you know, if
1
Tuberculosis.
“Our Forgotten Neighbors” afternoon panel discussion (transcript), page 4
you're, too quiet you're too passive. You know if you're too aggressive,
you know, this isn't acceptable either.
00:09:43
And so, this is a very difficult situation for many of the minority people
ought to be in. So, the first point here is for you yourselves to become
better informed, more knowledgeable, and also to look at your own
attitudes, the attitudes of your family, the attitudes in your neighborhood.
Now, I think I've used up more than my 10 minutes, I've tried to outline
some of the problems and I hope that this will stimulate you to further
discussion. Thank you.
00:10:12
[Myles Stenshoel] Thank you, Miss Deer. The two gentlemen here to my
left are, my far left: Mister, the Reverend, Mr, how’s that? The Reverend
Mr. Harold Andrews, who holds a great many positions, more than I could
suggest, he's consultant to the Minneapolis school system, he is an
assistant pastor at Sabbatini Church, he is involved in the DECOY
organization, and many others. The gentleman to my immediate left is a
student who will be graduating this year from Central High School, Mr.
Reginald Berry, who has has been quite active in the DECOY
organization, and perhaps would like to tell you something about that.
00:11:04
This morning, at our session, we began, not with any particular address,
and we didn't really have an Indian representative--except ¼? Mr.
Andrews also claim some Indian blood, which made him a spokesman to
some degree, also for the Indian communities this morning. But we are
asking ourselves here about the particular problems that exist in our
ghettos with respect to social services and community services. And I
think it is clear--I don't think we have to be told an awful lot about the fact
that there are deficiencies about the fact that schools are often not as
adequate in these communities as they are elsewhere. That playgrounds
are less adequate, that swimming pools are probably few and far between,
and if they are available, not in good condition.
00:12:06
One of the things that that also comes up is the thing that was
emphasized by our speaker just before this discussion. Namely, the
problem of the--of social service, particularly aid to dependent children, or
aid to families with dependent children. Where we tend to break up the
community, rather than to then to strengthen the family. We break up the
“Our Forgotten Neighbors” afternoon panel discussion (transcript), page 5
family rather than strengthen it. Now I think we have some kind of an idea
here of some of the problems.
00:12:39
I'm going to ask each of these gentlemen to say whatever he wants to say
this afternoon, after which I think will open it up to a rather general
discussion, and perhaps ask ourselves some more questions about what
we can do, and more particularly that we in the Augsburg community
should be concerned with. Do you want to--
00:13:01
[Reginald Berry] Well, considering the fact that Ms. Deer is in a hurry, I
would prefer that we answered--ask some questions, if they have
questions, in regards to what she has already said, with reference to the
Indians, and the Indian Affairs, and after which then we could--
00:13:21
[Myles Stenshoel] All right that would probably be a little bit better, we'll
give her a chance then [inaudible]
00:13:29
[Audience member] They’ve got a program on CBS that [inaudible] the
forgotten American, and the point they made right at the end that’s the
basic dilemma about--that the Indians that go off of the reservation often
come back. And you have a basic dilemma in that the Indian can’t find
work on the reservation and they’re too poorly oriented to go off of the
reservation. I just wonder about your personal opinion, where you think it’s
going to end up. Is it going to be better to try and get them off, or are you
going to try and bring employment to the reservation?
00:13:59
[Ada Deer] Well I'd say it's both. It's not an either/or proposition. I think
there should be adequate minimum standards of living in all areas of our
country, for all of our people. And, for too long, in the rural areas,
especially among Indian people, among the Negro people in the Delta
country, they've been denied basic services. This of course is a function of
the appropriations and the way the services are delivered by the various
agencies. Now, in terms of Indians, I would say, due to the isolation and
the real domination by the Bureau of Indian Affairs, many Indian people
don't really have adequate choices. They don't understand; if they don't go
to school at 16, there'll be dropouts and then be condemned to a very poor
existence.
“Our Forgotten Neighbors” afternoon panel discussion (transcript), page 6
00:14:50
So, what I would like to see would be: adequate housing, adequate
schools in these areas, and then, if a person wants to leave the
reservation, they'll be adequately equipped. Now, at this point, the budget
of the Bureau of Indian Affairs is 250 million dollars. That's a lot of money.
17,000 employees for approximately 400,000 people losing out or near
reservations. Then, of course, they'll be coming to the cities, and there's a
big dilemma here because Congress has authorized money for
expenditures on the reservations, but has not really given authority to
expend for services in the cities.
00:15:25
And so, when the Indian people come into the cities, they're needing all
kinds of services. Many of the agencies say ‘Indians? Oh, well they're
taken care of by the Bureau of Indian Affairs.’ And so, here the person is
caught in this dilemma. And this is where we need to change, these
policies changed, and we need additional money for some of the
programs.
00:15:46
[Myles Stenshoel] I'd like to raise a question at this point, Ms. Deer: a few
years ago, I was sitting with the Advisory Committee from South Dakota to
the Civil Rights Commission, and we ran into some really difficult
problems out there. We were trying to come to grips with this with some of
the things that, some of the problems of the Indians in South Dakota. We
made one--discovered one thing, and that was that there were some
communities, Rapid City was the most obvious example of this. When an
Indian family, or another poor family, but it was primarily the Indian
families, when they would move to Rapid City, they would be served by
the local authorities with what was called a certificate of non-residency
which said, in effect, that the social services that we provide for people
here, are not available for you, because you are not a resident, and if you
stay here for years you're not going to become a resident for purposes of
receiving these Social Services. Is, do we have any, any such problem
say, in the state of Minnesota that you're aware of?
00:16:59
[Ada Deer] I think it would be better for you to talk to someone that was
actually involved in the welfare department. I know that there are
subtleties that exist. For example, there's a certain allowance in the
budget for lights. Some families don't have lights, then they don't get an
allowance for lights. And, so actually, in many ways there is some--well,
additional lack of money. And there is, I guess you could say actually
“Our Forgotten Neighbors” afternoon panel discussion (transcript), page 7
some types of discrimination that exists in the way the budgets are
administered. But these are very subtle things, and you have to be kind of
a detective to try to track them down. And I am not an expert in public
assistance, so I think to adequately cover this particular aspect, you really
should have someone here for public assistance.
00:17:52
[Myles Stenshoel] Well, I thought it was a...do you know of any--
00:17:54
[Harold Andrews] It’s available. There's no discrepancy at all in, you know,
as far as the Indian is concerned. You say public assistance, the AFDC
[inaudible] if they’re living in the city, they can receive it.
00:18:08
[Ada Deer] I was talking about up into some of the northern areas where
they get less money.
00:18:14
[Myles Stenshoel] Are there other questions from Ms. Deer, yes?
00:18:17
[Audience Member] The gentleman from DECOY, I think, some of the
ways they’re doing, educating the Black person to his African culture.
Correct me if I’m wrong. Are the, does the Indian, American Indian, on his
culture, does he want a kind of modern Indian image, or something, or
does he want--how do you feel about culture and the Indian, the American
Indian? Do you think they should [inaudible] do you want to relish in that,
or do you want to…?
00:19:04
[Ada Deer] I think this is a very interesting question. It gets into this whole
area of identification. And a person is designated an ‘Indian’ by the Bureau
of Indian Affairs for services if they have one fourth degree Indian blood.
Now, because a person has one fourth degree Indian blood does not
necessarily mean they're Indians. In the old days, traders got on, and
various other people got on them, so that's part of this whole definition.
Now that's a legal definition of Indian. A social definition that I find helpful
is a person is an Indian who identifies himself as an Indian and who is
identified by the community as an Indian. Now some of the Indian
communities in this country have still a great deal left of culture.
00:19:49
By this, I mean the total way of life. They speak the language, for example
the Indians in the southwest, they speak the language, you still carry on
some of the ancient religious practices, their family and kinship systems
“Our Forgotten Neighbors” afternoon panel discussion (transcript), page 8
are still in operation, and so on. Various other groups, this is not true, and
there's still a lot of interaction/interchange going on. I think lots of people
think that you know we have ‘pure’ Indian culture here, and then we have
the non-indian culture, and this is not the way it is. Here, in this area,
we've had traders and others making contact for 300 years, so we have
people who are driving cars on television, and and all these things and this
is one of the big problems.
00:20:37
Trying to help people define who they are. And, I should say, that in this
society if you're a minority person nobody lets you forget it at all. And I
think that one of the things that all of us have to do is remember that we're
human beings, together. And that we do have some similarities and that
we do have some differences. Now, with Indians much of the culture and
the history has has consciously been destroyed. There is no teaching of
Indian history in the schools, or Indian culture, and as I mentioned earlier,
at this point we don't have a strong pan-Indian movement in the country,
providing the type of leadership that SLIC, 2 and SNCC,3 and the NAACP,
in all this the host of organizations among the black community is doing.
So, it's kind of a long answer to your question but these are some of the
points involved.
00:21:25
[Reginald Berry] Another thing: you know, I think that sort of acts as a
catalytic agent to this stereotype image of the Indian, even more so than a
Black man, is that there are many people who definitely are ignorant to the
contributions of the Indian up to our modern-day society. I don't mean
historically in this country, I mean, since they have become Americanized,
or westernized to the white man's ways. And I think this goes more into
your question, as to whether or not the Indian, and teaching minority
history, are we going to consider also the contributions of the Indian, or
are there any such contributions which I know I heard it, but this is more of
a nature of interest, I would assume, as to education at the Indian, and of
everybody else in the society. So, if you could even relate, now, to some
such contributions you see, I think it would more or less...
00:22:38
[Ada Deer] Well, there are many Indian individuals that are making
contributions right now. For example, we have Ms. LaDonna Harris, who is
a Comanche Indian. She is the wife of Senator Fred Harris from
2
3
Possibly intended to mean SCLC, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.
The Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee.
“Our Forgotten Neighbors” afternoon panel discussion (transcript), page 9
Oklahoma. She has been appointed chairman of the Woman's Advisory
Committee to the OEO.4 She was the first congressional wife ever to
testify before Congress on behalf of legislation. She testified recently on
behalf of the OEO legislation. We have Mr. Robert L. Bennett, who's a
commissioner of the Bureau of Indian Affairs. We have, I'm sure you've
heard of congressman Ben Rifle from South Dakota, who not only works
for Indians, but for all people of the state. And, at this particular point, I
don't have time to go into all the other ones, but yes there are
contributions. And one of the sad points here is that, in Minnesota, we’re
in Indian country. There--we look on the map, we can see many towns
that have been named after Indian names. And if you study history from
an objective point of view, you could really dig into this and see.
00:23:43
Oh, and I want to really relate to your question about being a ‘new Indian,’
there's a book out called the ‘New Indian.’ And, I think it's rather cool book
myself, but, anyway, this is I think the challenge to to all of us. Many
people, as I mentioned earlier, have a stereotyped idea of what it means
to be an Indian. You know, you have to act a certain way. And we are in a
democratic society, and I think that the choice should be open through
each of us as individuals--what type of person we want to be. And, I feel
that there are Indians in this country who speak the language and who
carry on some of their practices, but at the same time, can have an
adequate standard of living. This is particularly true among some of the
Indians in the southwest, that live in Albuquerque and some of these other
places they take part in their tribal affairs, but still they come back.
00:24:33
Each person has to make up their mind as to what they'd like to do. Now
again, I'm expressing my opinion in my frame of reference we should
really hear other Indians. You should hear people from the Bureau of
Indian Affairs, we should hear tribal leaders, and then you'd get a full
scope of picture.
00:24:54
[Myles Stenshoel] All right, a question over here yes.
00:24:56
[Audience Member] Yes, do you believe the Bureau of Indian Affairs itself
needs a major revamp.
4
Office of Economic Opportunity.
“Our Forgotten Neighbors” afternoon panel discussion (transcript), page 10
00:25:05
[Ada Deer] Yes. [Stenshoel laughs] I worked in the Bureau for three years,
so I know.
00:25:08
[Myles Stenshoel] I think it's interesting that--I was living in South Dakota
and I was in Ben Rifles district, and it seemed to me that we in South
Dakota somehow felt that we had proved that we were doing right by the
Indian by electing Ben to Congress, and that somehow it was a sort of
therapeutic, cathartic--
00:25:28
[Ada Deer] --you did your duty, you solved the problem.
00:25:29
We did our duty, our problem was solved. It's very easy to get this feeling.
Here's a here's a man who's of some accomplishment, who’s a good
Episcopalian, and half-German--
00:25:43
[Ada Deer] --Meets the right standards.
00:25:43
Meets all the good standards and Ben Rifle was our Indian.
00:25:46
[Ada Deer] That's right.
00:25:47
[Myle Stenshoel] Another question here I saw, yes.
00:25:50
[Audience Member] I was wondering what organization were [inaudible] in
the city [inaudible].
00:25:58
There are a number of organizations. There's the Department of Indian
work of the Minnesota Council of Churches. There are several small
Indian organizations that are social and cultural in nature. We have a
couple sewing groups, and we have the Upper Midwest Center, we have
the Four Winds, we have a teenage group, and so on. But at this particular
point, we don't have one particular agency, such as an Indian Center, that
is fully staffed and fully financed it could really meet some of the basic
needs of the Indian people. You know, such as the Urban League does for
some of the other minorities.
00:26:33
I also wanted to say, as long as I have the floor. As far as I'm concerned, I
feel that, with the small minority population that we have in this area,
which is like, about I don’t know, 3 or 4 percent, it's just inexcusable that
“Our Forgotten Neighbors” afternoon panel discussion (transcript), page 11
there should be the extent of problems that we have here in terms of
housing, education, and discrimination. And I feel that, if we are not able
to do something about this here and now, with this small--here with this
population, in this urban area, that is going to be--you know, if we can't do
it here, what--where, who is going to do it? And this is why we need, you
know, your help. I'm sure my colleagues would have something additional
to say.
00:27:18
[Myles Stenshoel] Are you rested up sufficiently now, so we can get Ms.
Deer a break and can let you take over?
00:27:22
[Unidentified panelist] Yeah.
00:27:26
[Myles Stenshoel] All right, yeah.
00:27:32
[Reginald Berry] I am NOT a Negro. I wish not to be addressed as a
Negro. Let me shock you: I am a Black man, a proud Black man. I am an
Afro-American. I belong to an organization called DECOY: Determined
Ebony Council of Youth. ‘Determined,’ I think we all know what determined
means. ‘Ebony’ means we are Black, no white belong to our group. When
I say ‘Council,’ right, I belong to the council, but we have like a congress.
At least 500 to 700 students in the south side of Minneapolis, some north,
that belong to DECOY. ‘Youth,’ I say we are youth, we are young adults.
That's because we prove that we can think for ourselves. We feel we need
no person 60 years old, or 50 years, old to tell us what we need at our
age. We can think for ourselves.
00:28:22
I'm in the 12th grade. We feel that one of the major concerns of the
community is Black power. I've realized some of you tremble to the word
‘Black,’ since we, the community, gives the name ‘black’ as being bad,
and ‘white’ is being good. Black power is political, economic, social, and
psychological advancement for Black people in America. I'll talk about the
political and economic part, because it has it all has to relate to the
community, but this--especially politically, black people in their community
should control politicians in the community. In the politics. Economically,
we could control all the businesses in the community. We--they--Indians
were put on a reservation, we were put in a so called ghetto, which is the
same thing as so-called reservation. Put away from the rest, what made
the ghetto was an economic, something like a cycle
“Our Forgotten Neighbors” afternoon panel discussion (transcript), page 12
00:29:25
When I say ‘control the economics of community,’ I mean control the
businesses. It's like when you take your money, which you earn a little bit
from the white man ,and you go spending in his store. The white man is
not gonna live in that tore up neighborhood, so what does he do? He goes
out from his suburban, not to say suburban, in his suburban neighborhood
and spends it there. Therefore, the suburban neighborhood gets richer
and richer, and that so-called ghetto gets poorer and poorer. See, when
we talk about so-called ghetto, we got to get an understanding between all
of us in here, what a ghetto is. The dictionary says it’s a group of ethnic
people in a certain area.
00:30:02
Therefore, all over the United States, we have Polish ghettos, Italian
ghettos, Swedish ghettos, but you give us his name ghetto. Anytime you
said ‘ghetto’ at school, everybody knows what they're talking about.
They're talking about Black people. I am NOT a minority. I am a majority.
When you start calling yourself a minority, you can go so far. Minority
tends to think minority, think small. I'm not small. I said before, anything
that happens in this community at Augsburg College should have--affects
the city. Anything that affects the city affects the state. Anything that
affects the state affects the country. Anything that affects the country
affects the world.
00:30:41
Therefore, there are more Black people in the world than there are white.
Communication is too great to be just talking about a certain district, a
certain area. Because anything we do in Minneapolis well have--if we set
good examples in Minneapolis, which we are starting to do, then that's
gonna do good for the whole country. I can say I am not a minority but I
am the majority. One of the things that white people can do, and they're
the communities--I live on the south side of Minneapolis. The south side of
Minneapolis is no ghetto, so-called ghetto. Black people are spread out all
over the south side of Minneapolis. White people, after the death of Martin
Luther King, and after the so called grants which we call economic
revolutions, political and economic revolutions--
00:31:30
--first thing white people do they say ‘what can we do for you?’ That's not
the problem. It’s what can you do for yourself. If white people weren't
racists in the first place, there wouldn't be no problem. So what you do?
You don't come over and join our organizations, but you get your own
“Our Forgotten Neighbors” afternoon panel discussion (transcript), page 13
selves together. That's where the problem is. You get in your own social
gatherings and start figuring out why does the black man have a tail, it's
something you put on us. You get--like I say, Black people have the
biggest problem with getting themselves together. White people get
yourself together. Then, when white people get yourselves together, then
you can truly integrate. When one’s stronger than the other, like the
American system is based on, the one on the top is always going to be
exploiting the one on the bottom.
00:32:10
But it shouldn't be because the person is black, or a person is yellow. It
shouldn't be because he has a different culture than yours. One of the
biggest hangups that America has, if a person isn’t, culture isn't like to
theirs, they say he's ‘culturally deprived.’ They say the Black man in the
ghetto is culturally deprived. He is not. He has a culture of his own. He has
a heritage of his own. We came from Africa. One of the things you could
do to help communicate better with Black people all over the city, all over
the country, is learning the history of Black people. Learning the history of
so-called minority groups. There--then you can coincide with them, you
can get along with them, you can know something about them. Now, you
can't respect somebody who you don't know nothing about. To get to the
problem, you can't start at the top and cut it off. It's like, it's like a tree. To
kill a tree, you don't get at the top cutting them off. You get at the root of
the problem.
00:33:11
So what I'm saying is: before you can get through with the problem, you
have to know what started the problem. You gotta know back during
slave--you gotta know all the contributions that black people have made in
America. I'm not all, but there's quite a few. It's not hard to look up. I like to
say that Patrick Henry said ‘liberty or death.’ When a Black man in the
so-called ghetto says ‘liberty or death,’ he's a militant. That's another word
we get hung up on, ‘militant.’ In means ‘able,’ by a dictionary definition
‘able and willing to fight.’ President Johnson is militant, since he is sending
us to Vietnam. So what we do--Black people and white people, like, we
worry about getting our own selves together. White people get Black
people together--white people together, and Black people’ll get Black
together, like we've been doing.
00:34:00
[Reginald Berry] Well, that’s about it [laughs].
“Our Forgotten Neighbors” afternoon panel discussion (transcript), page 14
00:34:04
[Myles Stenshoel] Okay. Mr. Andrews?
00:34:06
[Harold Andrews] Well, I'm a lot like Ms. Deer. I don't know how many of
you were here this morning. I don't care to be repetitious. I didn't come out
here to be eloquent either. I speak, I don’t know how many times today, I
have to speak again tonight. There aren’t enough hours in the day for me
[a panelist coughs] he doesn’t know all of them himself. I’ve got to fill
[inaudible] if not, get out of the way and let somebody else do it. The
reason I'm doing so much is because I found that there's so many good
meeting people who says ‘let me help.’ When I go home I can't sleep at
night, wondering if they will. And when I see them on the next day, I say
‘did you take care of that?’ ‘No, I'm doing it right now.’ And I can't wait like
that. Consequently, I'm like one of these guys in a small town where he
pulls you over for speeding and takes you to court, he's a judge, and then
he takes the fine, and he gives you a haircut--he's the barber.
00:35:16
I’m doing so many things. But until enough people stop talking, start doing
things, I'd rather rust out--I'd rather wear out, that is, then rust out because
this is a very serious matter to me, and one to which I have dedicated
myself. I'm so dedicated because I have anxieties. I have fears. I've been
where you can never go, I've heard what you can never hear, and I know
what can happen if we don't do it now. And I didn't need the Kerner Report
to tell me that, matter of fact, the Kerner report is only a repetition of what
was proposed in 1919 in Chicago, Illinois. Same report. Matter of fact, it
looks like they just quoted some of it. And this is the thing that--I-I couldn't
say that, perhaps you hear the youth haven’t been aware of, but I'm sure
the adults have. This is why I have lost a lot of faith in the preceding
generation.
00:36:22
What I think I would prefer to do now is to give you a little background on
just one organization and what we're doing. And maybe then from this,
you could get some ideas of what you can do. DECOY and the United
Southside. My capacity at the time of this, of my getting involved in
this--previously I should say, to get involved--was as a social worker at
Central High School, at which time I was working on a one-to-one basis
with the students, and then something happened. The kids, after getting a
little educated about Blackness from The Way on the north side, decided
‘well, why don't we, you know, ahve one on the south side?’ This is where
it’s at!
“Our Forgotten Neighbors” afternoon panel discussion (transcript), page 15
00:37:13
So, they got together and said ‘we're gonna [have] a South Side Way. And
man, when they said that, their parents and the whole community were
aroused. And they said ‘well, wait a minute, let's have some sort of
confrontation before you do this, now. Let's have a meeting. Let's meet
and discuss this.’ And that meeting was packed. And, as I said this
morning, we are just the people who respond to violence. And this is why
they packed the house. And the minister himself got up and said ‘if I could
get half as many people here on Sunday, [Stenshoel laughs] I’d have to
call this a church.’ But instead, it's a community house, because that's
when everybody comes, when there's something, you know, controversial.
And this seemed to be quite controversial.
00:38:01
And I can remember Syl Davis himself5 standing there and saying ‘you are
here because you're uncomfortable. Because the word ‘Way’ was
mentioned. And The Way moves people.’ And, boy I couldn't deny that!
Because they were there for that purpose. And so, after a lot of dialogue,
a lot of eloquence, a lot of, you know, showing off who knows what about
what, nothing was being done. And I stood. And I asked--I faced the youth
who were organized. They were attacking the adults and the adults were
fighting back, but nothing happened and I said ‘Now, what do you want?’
And they specified some of the things they wanted. And I turned around
and looked the adults and I said ‘would you deny your own child anything
that they just asked for?’ They said ‘no!’ ‘So, let's do something!’
00:38:52
Then, as it was--and this is since quite a picture, I even see the picture
now. It was like this table. I don't even like to talk behind a table, [knocking
his hand on the table] It's a psychological disadvantage to talk behind a
table. I face one of the kids, said ‘stand up, son.’ He stood up. ‘Which
direction is right?’ He pointed to my left. I said ‘no. This is right.’
[presumably Andrews points to his right for the audience] And I looked at
the people, I said ‘now, who's right?’ They said ‘you both are.’ I said,
‘yeah, but we're pointing in different directions!’ I said ‘Let's get around on
the same side of the table.’ And what I was really trying to do was, get the
philosophy behind it, is that as I--in our communities, institutions, and what
have you it seems that we all face opposite sides of table.
5
Davis was the first director of The Way in North Minneapolis.
“Our Forgotten Neighbors” afternoon panel discussion (transcript), page 16
00:39:34
We're both right, and the community suffers, because it's always in the
center. As far as the schools in the community are concerned, the school
is looking out their window, at the family, the residences, and saying ‘that's
the community.’ And they're looking out their window at the school and
saying ‘that’s the community.’ Now it's the issue of Black and white. We're
looking out our window at you and saying ‘that's the problem.’ And you're
looking out yours, at us, when you look at you see riots and things and say
‘that's the problem.‘
00:40:07
And we both think we're right. We, when we really have to be able to come
around to the same side of the table and look at it together through the
same window, where we would be very surprised to discover that we're
both in the same community. We're both in the situation together, and it is
not a Black problem, it’s not a white problem, it is an American problem!
And when we become, come to the pond to realize this, then perhaps
there can be some pursuance. You see, as he was talking about the
effects going from state, to a national, and international level, as other
countries look at us, they look objectively. They look at America.
Particularly those who are using propaganda as a means of exploiting
other countries and influencing others to become--
00:40:56
--like communism socialism. It's easier now! We're the most--we have lost
the Cold War. And these are such things that have caused us to lose it:
when we say we are in a non-aggressive country, nation, we love the
world. And we fool enough to think that with money we can compromise.
We'll go over--and then this came straight from the horse's mouth. I talked
to a congressman he said, ‘sure we send many, many countries are not
really allies of ours. We give them money, and we'll give them this money,
what do I want in return? Well when we want to vote on an issue at the
UN, we expect them to vote.’
00:41:34
Now, if I did that right now, if I was running for office, and I gave you
money, and said ‘vote for me what would you call me?’ Particularly if I
were Black? I'd be a Black one-of-those wouldn’t I? [audience laughs] All
right! Let's stop being hypocrites! Let's look at ourselves as a family. We
are, whether we like it or not. I know, ah [he chuckles] I had a brother, we
fought every day, we--sometime nothing to fight about, we’d look at each
other and say ‘well, we ain’t had our fight today.’ [he slaps his hands]
There we go. My brother. As much as a lot of Black people hate to say so,
“Our Forgotten Neighbors” afternoon panel discussion (transcript), page 17
we're still brothers, they’ll say ‘now I didn't say we’re your distant cousins.’
They don't want to say brothers. [audience laughs] They say we’re
brothers.
00:42:18
But we must--its virtues, love, respect, integrity, whatever you call them.
You don't demand them. You earn them. No man can make any other
man, or any individual, love him, but he can earn it. But that doesn't go
one way. It goes two ways, and it comes out of sincerity. As they say in a
church, ‘that which comes from the heart, reaches a heart.” And I hope it
does. This is the thing I'm talking about. From this point, I got with the kids.
They organized, and they said ‘we're gonna have a Southside Way.’ Then,
they decide ‘well, there’s so much controversy, and we want them to know
that we have the strength among ourselves. We don't need to lean on
anybody. We're not gonna be affiliated with anybody. We're gonna change
our name. We’ll change our name to DECOY.’
00:43:03
Well, I never questioned them about that word, and it represents
‘Determined Ebony Council of Youth,’ but you know what a decoy is?
Those of who have been duck hunting. It's a false--well you know it's the
little duck that you buy at the store, and you put him out there to draw the
others, and when he draws them on then, boom! This is not the
connotation though. [audience laughs] But, still! It is in a way, even if they
were not aware of it. Right now we've got this, the South Side Way. We
had it before even The Way moved there, because the concept is in these
kids. The concept is in me. I believe it. But a concept is like..anything, this
ashtray6 was designed for one purpose: putting butts in, and putting out
ashes, and putting out cigarettes. I can take this and make a weapon in
probably, very-very, definitely to kill somebody with it.
00:43:55
And anything else, a pen, anything. It's how you use it. Even in a concept.
This is what has created, I believe, the reluctance, not only in white
people, but in Blacks who fear even the word ‘Black power.’ You hear
‘Black,’ and you hear ‘power,’ you eradicate power, you say ‘supremacy.’ I
heard a man speaking one time. A Black man. He said, we don't want
‘Black power.’ I said ‘man, how do you know you don’t want something
you never had before?’ There’s never been any Black power in this
country. It may be better than white power, but no one has ever said--no
6
Smoking was common in indoor spaces at the time, including the College Center (now Christensen
Center).
“Our Forgotten Neighbors” afternoon panel discussion (transcript), page 18
one has ever inferred, even that by having Black power that we would just
totally eradicate white power. What they're really saying is equality! And so
much so, that the National Conference on Black Power, about two weeks
ago in Washington DC, set out, and we decided we're gonna even change
the word to ‘equality.’
00:44:53
There’ll be fighting just like DECOY, you know. the same concept, but just
changing words. It's terrible how words affect people. The organization
was founded, and then we had to get adults to work. Out of sixty teachers
at that particular high school, I got forty seven to volunteer right on the
spot [snaps his fingers]. Every social agency, every institution on the south
side, we got them all together in one organization: us. The United
Southside. It was from there that we began to move, and this is how
DECOY was able to effectively get the things on the school board like the
20th for Malcolm X Day, for parental release. Like a school holiday for Dr.
Martin Luther King. Like just going to school to history books, throwing
them out.
00:45:41
We don't need black history, we don't need minority history, we need to
tell it like it is. And this is what we're gonna do: we're gonna build that
book up properly, and if we have to go back to the publisher--if we don't
buy it, he don’t print when he's got to sell. We're not gonna buy it. Then,
as a sensitivity training, we need people staffed. You want to know what
can be done? Staffed, and trained properly, to the sensitivity of the
problem of the racial issues. Not only the issues, but to the history. To be
informed. Now we only have a few resource places where we can get
such a thing. We sent three teachers from this area to Fisk University this
summer to be trained at where they have the most extensive resources in
Black history.
00:46:22
Right here in the city, DECOY’s getting another thing now. A library
equivalent two theirs, right here in our own city. A nice conference room
for U.S. to meet in. These are the things of the nature, to bill
constructively, and this can be done by Black and white, because United
Southside, by no means, is Black. We've got people like Nat Ober,
Superintendent of Secondary Schools, [inaudible] DeSantis, [inaudible],
Alderman. I could name a lot of people who are white, who sit down
together. They don't tell us what we should do. We run our show, this is
“Our Forgotten Neighbors” afternoon panel discussion (transcript), page 19
our program, we're running it, but they're definitely there to give whatever
aid they can. And this is what I feel we can do.
00:47:08
You've heard over and over again to go home and do your white
neighborhoods and educate yourselves. This is vitally important, but I by
no means am saying that you--that that is the end of it. But we must work
together. We must realize that that wheel that turned, and then built this
nation to be the nation that it is, had both black and white shoulders
pushing it. And if these two shoulders refuse to push, then the world can
no longer turn. The injustice of it is that the black shoulder was doing the
pushing, and the white shoulder was steering. But now we must push
together, because the wheel is too great for either one, a black or white
shoulder, to push alone.
00:47:49
[Myles Stenshoel] Okay, thank you very much. Now, the format this
afternoon varied rather considerably from that which went on this morning.
We've only got a few minutes left let's see if there aren't any responses or
questions that we shouldn't have here to either of these gentlemen. Yes.
00:48:03
[Audience member] Well, I’ve heard a lot of conflicting opinions about just
what role of the ghetto should be in society, now and in the future. And I
was wondering what both of your opinions might be about that.
00:48:16
[Reginald Berry] Why should there be a ghetto?
00:48:20
[Audience member] That's what I say, too, but I’ve heard people say that
there should be a ghetto. Negro people.
00:48:25
[Reginald Berry] One of the problems is: when Black people go to buy a
house in the white neighborhood, they’ve usually had to pay two times as
much as the house is worth to live out there. Over--I know a man who
came here from Mississ--no, Arkansas excuse me--he went to buy a
house in Minneapolis. Now, you know they got that open housing bill, they
always got bills, and human rights, and civil rights to make people human
and citizens. Make Black people human citizens.
00:48:48
When black people are on the docks, lowering the boats, when these
immigrants, white immigrants were coming here. But yet still they got
makes it--make them--special laws to make them citizens. One of the
“Our Forgotten Neighbors” afternoon panel discussion (transcript), page 20
things he did, he went up by a house. He had here, he didn't have--you
know, when he came here, he didn't have no car. He went over there on
Hiawatha Avenue. Firs,t he called up before he went there. They said, ‘yes
we have a house for sale.’ He went over there, he walked over there, what
happens? Soon as he gets there, I believe his Undertaker7 said, ‘oh wait a
minute, I have to call.’ he calls the owner, told her owner, he must have
told the owner he was Black.
00:49:23
Soon as he came back, he told the man the house was sold. So, naturally,
Black people are going to be put in the ghetto. Another instance a woman
down the block was gonna buy a house on 28th and Park Avenue. That's
right by my house. They had a for sale sign in the window. She went there
and they took it down and said it was sold. A week later, that for sale sign
was up. That's what's gonna make a ghetto. White people seem to want
Black people to be in a certain area. That's just like when black people
saying ten--not even ten--get behind closed doors. White person got to
know what's behind them doors.
00:47
[Harold Andrews] Well, another thing too, and we went over this this
morning.
00:50:02
[Myles Stenshoel] Different group.
00:50:02
[Harold Andrews] Oh. Well, in defining the word ghetto, it’s merely defined
as “any ethnic group in one geographical location.” So, by such a
definition, St. Louis Park is a ghetto. You see? Now, if this is the type of
ghetto you are talking about, there's no problem to a ghetto. You see, I
don't even want to live in St. Louis Park. I'm perfectly satisfied when I'm
living all by--maybe when I married, and I got a family, I'd want a home,
but I dig my apartment, you understand. But, on the other hand, I want my
ghetto to be as well off as St. Louis Park’s ghetto, you see what I'm talking
about [inaudible] equality?
00:50:45
This is that word, integration. See how you’re defining it in two different
ways. Not individually, but I have listened, and most white guys I talk to
you. And he says ‘say, man what do you think about integration?’ I know
what his next question is, but I usually politely wait to hear. And you know
what it wind up being? The Black man and the white woman. And this is
7
Berry possibly means a realtor.
“Our Forgotten Neighbors” afternoon panel discussion (transcript), page 21
his fear of integration. This is the main thing that makes the white man
afraid to integrate. He doesn't want the Black man and white woman to get
together. Now that isn't how the Black man interprets--it’s not me. That
ain’t the way I interpret integration.
00:51:27
It's gotta--I have more values. I have more more things that I'm
considering in integration. What I'm saying when I say ‘integrate:’ number
one, in regards to where I live, whether I am satisfied in the southside of
Minneapolis or anywhere else, that I have the right to that pursuit of
happiness. To go there and live there. This is integration. Or if I so desire,
and I am financially well-off, I can go out there and join that country club.
That’s integration. And, you know, when I go I might take off--when I go on
my day I might take all my Black brothers and sisters with me, see. But
still will have that privilege. This is what I mean by integration and not--and
this is another thing, it must be more than token integration, as he was
saying in Dakota they had ‘their Indian.’
00:52:06
And the first thing that struck my mind was token integration. In my
investigation of this high school over here, when I walked in a principal
had three students, then ‘I want you to talk with these, Mr. Andrews.’ They
were Black. Now they can tell you like, just what's going on. Well, I looked
at that one, check the guy’s IQs [inaudible] you've got one of these big
IQs, his brother’s set a record over there that nobody can match, you
might have heard about his brother, who Mr. [inaudible] his brother over
on University, and he’s tremendous, you know. When he graduates from
high school, he was equivalent to, what was it there, Reggie, on his--not
IBM but, computers, the guy's a mathematical genius.
00:52:48
Now if you’re Black, and you're coming out of school and you’re not like
that, no token. And then, I've been here I've been in just a year, and since
I've been here I can, oh I have so many tremendous privileges. I had a
problem one time, financial, I walked up to a gentleman, a white man, say
‘man, I got a problem. I need $400 right [inaudible]’ ‘Sure, Harold.’ Wrote
me a check, beautiful, for Harold Andrews. But until a Black boy, whether
his name Harold Andrews, Joe Blow, anybody, can get the same type of
treatment, we have no equality.
00:53:22
You talk about integration and the ghetto is the same way. Until anybody
can walk out there, and get a house, you see, in that ghetto or any other
“Our Forgotten Neighbors” afternoon panel discussion (transcript), page 22
ghetto, then it’s so. And then as--it’s definitely it's nothing wrong with
ethnic groups being clannish, they always have been. Except the Black
man. You see, when you get the Polish American Society and I've seen
them, all--Italian American, Spanish American, they go down and have a
good time, they do the Polka. When we get together, here comes the
press. ‘What's going on here?’ ‘What are you doing?’ ‘A bunch of Black
people are together. They’re going to riot.’ We can, right now, if everybody
Black will get together, and we say ‘it’s nice today, let's walk.’ If we walk
down the street, I guarantee you either a State Trooper or other local
police will be there, and cruise around trying to see what's happened. You
can turn around do the same thing, and not a thing would be said.
Equality? No. Integration? No. You see what I'm saying, in answer to your
question.
00:54:18
[Myles Stenshoel] Our thanks to Mister Andrews and to Mr. Barry. We’re
grateful these two gentlemen were with us twice today. That's--I know
that's over and above the call of duty. We're grateful to all of the resource
persons today and of course to Ms. Deer who had to leave for that other
appointment. I have been asked to make another announcement: it has to
do with Dudley Riggs’ Brave New Workshop that will be a half-hour,
especially written drama for our “One Day in May,” and it's going to be at
4:30 in Melby Hall and there is no charge, which is certainly an
extraordinarily good bit of news. So, at 4:30, you are all invited to be there
then the evening session with Milt Williams8 will be held in the College
Center lobby at 6:30. Again, our thanks to you and our thanks for panel
members
00:55:18
[Applause]
8
The former name of Mahmoud El-Kati.
“Our Forgotten Neighbors” afternoon panel discussion (transcript), page 23
Show less
May Kamsheh 0:01
Today is December 7 2019, and my name is May Kamsheh. This is for the
Muslims in Minnesota project for Augsburg University. I'm talking to
one of the Muslim citizens in the state of Minnesota. Her name is
Manal Hashw.
Manal Hashw 0:19
Good evening, Manal. How are you today?... Show more
May Kamsheh 0:01
Today is December 7 2019, and my name is May Kamsheh. This is for the
Muslims in Minnesota project for Augsburg University. I'm talking to
one of the Muslim citizens in the state of Minnesota. Her name is
Manal Hashw.
Manal Hashw 0:19
Good evening, Manal. How are you today?
Good evening, May. I'm good. Thank you.
May Kamsheh 0:25
Would you introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about you.
Manal Hashw 0:30
My name is Manal Hashw. I am a..um..my background is an Egyptian
originally, and I have three kids. Married for 29 years. And I live in
Eden Prairie Minnesota.
May Kamsheh 0:53
Okay, when and where were you born in what town did you grow up in?
Manal Hashw 0:58
I was born in Egypt. And I grew up in Egypt, went to college. And I
came to United States like 1990.
May Kamsheh 1:10
You went to college in Egypt?
Manal Hashw
Yes.
1:12
May Kamsheh 1:14
What college was it?
Manal Hashw 1:16
I went to the engineering school. And I graduated 1989.
May Kamsheh 1:24
Oh, nice. So you came after you graduated college?
Manal Hashw 1:28
Yeah, I met my husband and we came together.
May Kamsheh 1:33
So you got married and then came?
Manal Hashw
Yeah.
1:36
May Kamsheh 1:36
Nice. Um, so before you came here, what was your childhood like in
Egypt?
Manal Hashw 1:43
Egypt it was good. We were like middle class family. My dad died when
I was like 11 and my mom raised me and my brother and sisters. I
finished my college degree and that was decent and good childhood.
May Kamsheh 2:10
That's good. Did you have any like early memories you remember from
it?
Manal Hashw 2:16
Yeah, I have memories about because I was from Alexandria, Egypt and
Alexandria is on the Mediterranean. And all my memories is about the
beach and walking in a beach and you know, and I go with my friends
swim and all these memories still was me.
May Kamsheh 2:41
That's fun. So, who are your parents? Or what were your parents like?
Manal Hashw 2:49
My, as I said, my dad died when I was 11. He was a major in the army
in Egypt and he died when I was 11. My mom was a school teacher and
then school principal and they were like working middle class.
May Kamsheh 3:16
Okay. So do you have any brothers or sisters?
Manal Hashw 3:20
I have one brother and two sisters.
May Kamsheh 3:26
What what were they like?
Manal Hashw 3:31
My two sisters still living back in Egypt now. My brother lives here
in Minnesota. They're very good. I'm the oldest..
May Kamsheh 3:41
Okay, so they're younger?
Manal Hashw 3:43
..they are younger than me and we are connecting, you know, I always
visit my brother here in Minnesota. I go to Egypt once in a while to
see my sisters, come back. So we're good.
May Kamsheh 4:00
That's good. So you said you graduated in Egypt and your career path
was engineering? So when you came here did you work in that field
still?
Manal Hashw 4:12
Yes. When I came here, I, I took some classes in computer science
besides my engineering degree, and I worked as a software engineer for
like three years. And then I my kids, you know, my third, my third
daughter came and it becomes very hard to work with three kids in this
field. So I decided to stay home and you know take care of the kids.
May Kamsheh 4:51
So that you go to like the University of Minnesota?
Manal Hashw
For what?
4:54
May Kamsheh 4:55
For the classes.
Manal Hashw 4:56
No, I went to a Technical College.
May Kamsheh
Oh okay.
4:58
Manal Hashw 4:58
For the for the software classes, I just needed to add some more
information to what I have and know about the system. So and, you
know, learn English very well as I can. And after this I was hired at
Gelco Information Network. It's a company in Eden Prairie, and I
worked there for like, three or maybe four years. Yeah.
May Kamsheh 5:32
Did you like it there?
Manal Hashw 5:34
Yeah, I did. I like it so much. But as a programmer, it's, you know,
you can't keep track of time. And when you have three kids, it's
impossible to you know, to manage both. So I just decided to stay home
andtake care of the kids.
May Kamsheh 5:56
Did you get have your kids here in Minnesota?
Manal Hashw 5:59
Oh, yeah. They're all born here in Minnesota.
May Kamsheh 6:09
So how was that when you first came here? Did you first you came to
Minnesota was the only state you've lived in?
Manal Hashw 6:16
Yes, yes. However I visited everywhere in United States. But yeah,
when I came I came here. First I didn't know how much cold [laughs] my
husband didn't give me an idea about how much cold is it. So I came in
September. So September was okay and that's going to be cold as
September but October, November, snow start to come Decemeber and I
said, Oh my gosh, what I put myself into? [laughs] Because the weather
there in Alexandria, Egypt is like San Diego, California Yeah, it's
like, hot and you know, nice and, and we never wear jackets or boots
or hats or and I started to learn you know how to deal with the
weather, you know?
May Kamsheh 7:16
So you got used to it?
Manal Hashw 7:18
No [laughs] I'm still working on it! [laughs more]
May Kamsheh 7:24
Same! So when you came here did you know a lot of English or did you
learn more here?
Manal Hashw 7:33
I learned more here because in Egypt we didn't we didn't have a lot of
you know we know English but as like the British way.
May Kamsheh
Oh yeah..
7:44
Manal Hashw 7:45
So it was a problem in the beginning with the English and also we
didn't have enough so I was in the beginning like afraid to talk to
anybody like listening and understanding I don't want to speak because
I don't want people to make fun of me. But it came by the time in, you
know?
May Kamsheh 8:07
Yeah, that's good.
Manal Hashw 8:08
I am still learning. [laughs]
May Kamsheh 8:10
So your college was in English in you classes in Egypt?
Manal Hashw
Half half.
8:15
May Kamsheh
8:16
Oh okay.
Manal Hashw 8:16
So and also is still the scientific terms, you know, and it's totally
different than the conversation. And it's different than when you have
somebody say a joke, and you don't understand what's behind this joke
or what, what does that mean or so it took time because it's not just
the language it's the culture too. You know?
May Kamsheh 8:39
Okay, yeah. So into the next set of questions, how was being a Muslim
in Minnesota when you first came when you first came here like?
Manal Hashw 8:52
It didn't really matter at all because I didn't feel any different you
know? We came here people were nice we're good, you know? I asked
about if there is a mosque here in Minnesota and I knew that that
Islamic Center in Fridley so you we were going there and events and
see people and sometimes pray but actually we never have a problem you
know as Muslims here.
May Kamsheh 9:27
Was the community small when you came here at first?
Manal Hashw 9:32
Yeah actually it's it's yeah expanded now. It was small. We have like
some friends around I didn't know everybody but I was busy with the
kids and work and but I I think it was smaller then we're talking
about 29 years ago. It's a long time.
May Kamsheh 9:55
Yeah. Okay, so You said you had kids, how many kids you have again?
Manal Hashw 10:03
I have three kids. And I got my first in 1991, then my second 1993,
and my third is 1997.
May Kamsheh 10:19
Do your kids live here?
Manal Hashw 10:21
Yeah. My first son. Yeah. He's he's married now. And he lives in
Plymouth. And my second son, he graduated from the U of M engineering
school. Yeah. And my daughter she graduated from the engineering
school U of M too. And they both working. So, and my oldest graduate
from Carson, not Carson. St. Thomas University. Yeah, with a business
degree and he works at Medtronic.
May Kamsheh 11:01
So they are all engineers?
Manal Hashw 11:03
No, two engineers and one business.
May Kamsheh
Oh, okay.
11:05
Manal Hashw
Yeah.
11:05
May Kamsheh 11:08
That's nice.
Manal Hashw 11:09
Yeah. [laughs] I'm glad I was able to, you know, direct them
May Kamsheh
Yeah.
11:16
Manal Hashw 11:16
And lead them to, to achieve their goals.
May Kamsheh 11:20
Was your husband engineer too?
Manal Hashw 11:21
Yeah, he is. He's a manager at Medtronic. And he's a mechanical
engineer.
May Kamsheh 11:31
Okay, so how is handling a job and kids like? You said it was hard?
Manal Hashw 11:37
It was very hard for me because I, I wanted to because I have the
Egyptian culture. And I'm here in US and I wanted to get the two good
things from what I can say that I wanted to get the best from the two
cultures.
May Kamsheh
Yeah.
11:59
Manal Hashw 12:00
So to do that you have to guide your kids and you have to be around
and watch them and talk to them and follow school and and to do that
with three kids it's it's hard when you work full time. So I you know,
I after like four years I quit and I decided to stay home for a few
years until they grow up and then I go back.
May Kamsheh 12:29
Did you go back to engineering?
Manal Hashw 12:32
No, it ends up i when i was raising the kid they were very young. I
wanted them to learn the language and religion. So I decided to and
the Islamic Center was in Fridley, we live in Eden Prairie, it's far
away. And I don't want to drive on every day there and so I am was
thinking why we don't have a small Sunday school or charter school or
anything here in Eden Prairie. So here when I started the Sunday
school
May Kamsheh 13:15
Okay, that follows me into my next question is; When did you start the
opening of the Sunday school, Al-Manar?
Manal Hashw 13:22
I am, it was very easy. [laughs] We weren't we weren't really looking
for a school. I was just wanted to have my kids learn language, the
Arabic language and the culture, the culture. And I was talking to my
friends, and they said just start the project and we'll support you.
So I went to the Eden Prairie district, and I talked to them about
what I want to do and if they can give me a space to rent, and have
the kids come every Sunday to learn language and culture um and they
agree to do that and I they given me the CMS school, Central Middle
School in Eden Prairie, to use for three hours every Sunday. And when
I got the permission, I started to recruit teachers and assistants and
you know, and then we build the school and we have, we had like around
200 students in this school, learning language culture. We had also
like 15 teachers. So I started I became busy with the school and I
forgot about engineering so [laughs] and I schools started in 2001 and
stayed for 12 years. I've been the principal of this school for 12
years. And it was a volunteer work. I was just working with teachers,
ordering books, helping kids, to create curriculum to help them learn.
And we worked for 12 years at the school.
May Kamsheh 15:34
So were there any challenges that you faced running the school? Like
not enough kids like signed up or you didn't have?
Manal Hashw 15:45
No, actually when we started we had a lot of people come to enroll
their kids in the school, because it was the only one in the South
West. And everybody Well, want to have, you know, the school close to
their house. So we have a lot of people come and sign up and the
challenge was sometimes, you know, to satisfy everybody and there is
different ideas and different agendas and but we I tried from the
beginning to use the school only for education and have the kids come
to learn. I didn't want to make it as a community center or a place
for people to come and sit and do activities, no, it just was just a
school and that's what I wanted and so the challenge is how to
convince parents you know, that this place only for school. And um but
I was able to do that from the beginning, and it's, it was a very
successful project.
May Kamsheh 17:06
Was it kids from all ages?
Manal Hashw 17:08
Yes. All Ages, and we had also adult classes too. And we had many
nationalities, Americans, Indians, Europeans, they all wanted to learn
the Arabic language, and the culture and some of about the religion
history so we will be doing that all ages.
May Kamsheh 17:37
Nice. So did you teach a class as well?
Manal Hashw 17:41
I did. Yeah. In the beginning, I was teaching because we were in a
process to try to find the right teachers took time to do that. So I
was teaching myself and then when we found enough teachers, I was only
doing the principal job and work mostly in managing, recruiting, doing
activities for the kids, plays on the stage, and music sometimes,
order the books you know? Principal work.
May Kamsheh 18:20
Did you like being a principal?
Manal Hashw 18:22
Yes, I, I think my engineering background helped me a lot to work on
this because having a project like this and interact with people, you
have to be organized, you have to put priorities, you have to have
your brain set a certain way to deal with everybody. And yeah, I it
was it was fun.
May Kamsheh 18:50
That's good. So why did it end up closing?
Manal Hashw 18:53
Because after 12 years, I'm tired. [laughs]. I got you know, I I, my
kids grown, you know, went to college, I was happy about how much they
know about Arabic language and culture and religion. And I wanted to
do something else, another project, you know? Which is I'm doing right
now trying, you know, tutoring kids math and science. I wanted to do
something different. So I asked people, if somebody want to take over
and do what I'm doing, but I guess we couldn't find somebody who put
all the time I was putting and energy. So we end up like we said,
we're gonna take a break. And it's been now three years. It's closed,
and nobody want to go and take the responsibility again.
May Kamsheh 19:53
I'm sure someone will hopefully.
Manal Hashw 19:55
Yeah hopefully. I think what happened now is because there is a lot of
schools right now in the Twin Cities. So people are divided in
different schools. And everybody went to school that close to their
house. So and settled, you know, so so I think we did a good job. And
we're proud of this school and what offered to the community, the
Egyptian and the Arab community, and just give a chance to other
people to shine and do other projects.
May Kamsheh 20:35
So it was overall successful you think?
Manal Hashw 20:38
Yes, it was. You know, I, you know, it's enough for me that this was
the first Sunday school in Minnesota that I created to help the Arab
community you know, with language and so I'm so proud of this project
and from this school, a lot of schools, you know, came and start. So,
yeah, I'm satisfied about working on this school.
May Kamsheh 21:11
Yeah, you should be really proud. That's really cool. You did that.
Manal Hashw
Thank you.
21:15
May Kamsheh 21:16
So you mentioned your other project you're working on?
Manal Hashw 21:20
It wasn't a project, it was because I love teaching. So I was I went
to the district, Eden Prairie school district, and I worked as a
paraprofessional there at the high school. And I was also a study
skills class teacher, because I was hired to teach students how to
study. I believe that if the kids know how to study and how to
organize themselves and how to beat the test they it's it's really
important to give them the this technical, you know, tools to use.
They will be great, you know in math and science. So I worked two
years at Eden Prairie high schools and then program canceled for money
or whatever. So I went back home again and I decided to do private
tutoring.
Okay, what age was that?
The high school school. That was high school. That was, yeah. 18 and
19.
May Kamsheh 22:37
So now you do private tutoring?
Manal Hashw 22:39
I do. It's not like a business but like, my friends if their kids need
help. One of my neighbors need help. So it's just like.
May Kamsheh 22:51
Oh okay, that's nice. So you mentioned the do you go to one specific
mosque here around here is there a mosque close to you?
Manal Hashw 23:07
There is the mosque on Shady Oak Road Masjid..I forgot the name. Um
just we go you know in Eid and I don't go like often. I don't go like
every Friday and no but I go to events when we have our holidays. I go
there. If the community having an event, so yeah, a good one in Eden
Prairie.
May Kamsheh 23:46
Okay. Have you ever faced any difficulties being a Muslim here?
Manal Hashw 23:55
After see after 9/11, we had we were confused and everybody was
confused and we didn't know what happened. So it's it's the we had
some difficulty for people to understand that what happened is has
nothing to do with Islam. And I tried my best to explain to my
neighbors, my friends, my because I have a lot of American friends and
I have my neighbors and I can meet you know, I volunteer in schools. I
work with kids in schools and everything so I have we had to explain
that this people are have you know, they're not they have nothing to
do with Islam. And that was all political all all. whatever they're
doing, violence for, for for an agenda in their head but this is has
nothing to do with the religion itself. And I think by the time people
understand now that you know, a lot of Muslim people here in US are
successful and part of the community that gets born there here, they
become their country. So, but that was the time that we had difficulty
but after this and before, everything is good.
May Kamsheh 25:29
That's good. Have you ever given speeches about Islam to a large crowd
or group of people?
Manal Hashw 25:40
Um no, I didn't speak to a large crowd. However, I spoke to my
neighbors like group of three or four, to explain what Islam is, and
what's Muslim do, what's the difference between the religion of Islam,
Christianity, and Judaism, and so it was usually a group of 2, 3, 4 to
talk to them about Islam, but I never like talk to a big crowd before.
May Kamsheh 26:14
Okay, and these people you talk to were they supportive?
Manal Hashw
26:18
Yeah, because people the problem is some people listen to the media
only or they never read about the history of Islam. They listen to the
media or some they see some videos on YouTube or you know, and create
an idea in their head about Muslims. And some people not, some people
know, you know, they read, they ask questions, they figured out. But I
always you know, have to talk to those people who are confused and
they don't know, you know, who's Muslims? What they're doing here,
especially with having some violence and trouble, sometimes related or
associated with the Muslims or the Islam. So I had to explain to them
that we have like 1 billion Muslims in the world. So if some group of
Muslims are did something bad or have a certain thinking or that
doesn't mean that all Muslims are the same and give them examples and
talk to them but the history it's good for people to know. You know,
so they don't judge you. They don't judge you based on media or bad
information.
May Kamsheh 28:01
Yes, that's good. I agree. So how is being a Muslim in Minnesota now
different than it was when you first got here?
Manal Hashw 28:11
I think the new generation now are more knowledgeable about Islam and
about other religions and about accepting the others. And I think that
the gap that the big difference between when I come there was no
internet, no tools to find information about religions. So people were
confused about it. But now, I think the new generation everybody knows
about Muslims and Muslim history and so I think it's better now.
May Kamsheh 28:56
Okay, so how do you see the future of Islam Minnesota as in will it
keep growing you think?
Manal Hashw 29:04
Yeah, I think the community is getting together, they are more
connected they support each other. If in in their bad time or if
somebody needs help or for kids you know if things happen to the
parents or for any problem in the community, I think Muslims community
now help each other. Yeah, I can see and I noticed that there is a big
community now, it's more than before.
May Kamsheh 29:51
So you see the Muslim community future being expanded?
Manal Hashw 29:56
Yeah, it's expanding now. Because the third generation now is more
open and more connected with the with each other and with the
Americans, and so it's you can't miss it. I mean, it's there and it's
getting bigger.
May Kamsheh
30:22
Okay. Are you happy that you came here to the United States?
Manal Hashw 30:27
Yes, I am. Of course I am happy this is a land of opportunity. And we
came here in and we decided to be part of the country and become
Muslim Americans. And I think we, we did great, we are successful. We
have our kids are successful, they have good jobs. We are part of the
community. We volunteer, we help, we lived here, I think I lived here
more than I lived in my native country. So I'm so happy. I love people
here, I love the culture, I love being part of, of this country.
May Kamsheh 31:19
So it was a good decision overall?
Manal Hashw 31:21
Of course, I am Egyptian American, and I'm American citizen. And I
value my country here and I value Egypt too. And I think it's a good
decision. I'm, I'm happy to take this decision.
May Kamsheh 31:38
Is there anything else you'd like to say as your final words?
Manal Hashw 31:43
No, I'm so happy that there is about this project. I mean, people will
maybe get some idea about Muslim in, in America, and I think you
covered all the points. You did a great job.
May Kamsheh 32:00
Okay, thank you for your time and I really appreciate it.
Manal Hashw 32:04
You're welcome and good luck with your project. And thank you very
much.
May Kamsheh 32:09
Thank you. Hope to see you again soon.
Manal Hashw 32:11
Yep. Thank you.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
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