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KVOS Special: The Color of Black

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One of the severest problems in the South
is brutality practiced by law enforcement officers,
such as an incident that occurred
to me about a year and a half ago in Plaquemine, Louisiana.
It was there that I had been in jail
at the time of the March on Washington
and was unable to be in Washington
at that historic march.
After getting out of jail in Plaquemine, Louisiana,
I was confronted with a lynch mob, a most unusual lynch mob.
It was composed of the state law enforcement
officers, state troopers, who were riding horseback, roaming
through the streets, kicking open doors in the Negro
community, and screaming for my blood, screaming, come on out.
They tear gassed a church in which 200 or 300 people
were congregated.
I was in that church.
We were forced out of the church by tear gas
into a parsonage, the minister's home next door.
And from there, we were forced into the yard by tear gas,
and from the yard back into the parsonage
and back into the yard.
If any Negro was seen in the street
during that night in Plaquemine, Louisiana,
he was run down by state troopers, beaten with a club,
and stuck with an electric cattle prod,
told to get up and run, and run down again
and told that they would let him go if he would tell them
where I was.
We finally managed to escape into a funeral home
a half block away by crawling through tall grass.
We got to the funeral home, but there was no respite there.
The state troopers soon kicked open
the back door of that place, still screaming for my blood.
Finally, I managed to escape, but only
after using two hearses, one as a decoy and the other with me
in it.
The decoy was used to pull state troopers away
from the roadblocks that they had set up.
And it worked.
I was then put in the back of the second hearse
and sped toward New Orleans where
we held a press conference and described what had transpired
and announced that I was returning
to Plaquemine the next day.
And if the state troopers had a warrant for my arrest,
I would be there to be served with it
and to find out what the charges were.
The next day, we discovered that they had no warrant at all.
That is James Farmer, a gentleman
who should know about racial relations in the Southern
United States.
Mr. Farmer is the head of the Congress of Racial Equality
in the United States and a gentleman
who has probably been in jail because of his actions
more than any of us will ever think of being in jail.
Tonight, Channel 12 Special is going
to talk to Mr. Farmer about some of the real issues
in the fight for equality in the United States.
How many times have you been in jail, or can you tell us?
Oh, I've been in about eight or nine different jails
on four arrests.
Does this--
In Mississippi, I was placed in four different jails, including
the state penitentiary at Parchman, the maximum security
unit.
In Louisiana, I was in two different jails
and in three different jails in New York
City at the time of the opening of the World's Fair.
Now, you've been in Selma recently.
And you were there at the time of the heightened tensions.
Yes.
How does Selma differ from any other small, white community
in the South, or small community in the South?
Well, Selma has more Negroes than it has white.
This is one of the distinguishing features.
There are such towns as Selma and such counties
throughout the deep South.
But it's also a very poor town.
The industries that are there are on their last legs,
as it were, and unemployment is very great.
And one usually finds that when unemployment
is great in any area, the racial tensions tend to heighten.
We've heard considerable about outside agitators.
People-- well, Governor Wallace has talked about--
if the outside agitators would stay out, our people are happy.
The Negroes here are happy.
What about this?
Well, nothing could be further from the truth.
It may be that Governor Wallace really believes that,
that he has been conditioned to believe that Negroes
are happy or content.
But they are not happy under segregation.
And they do not need outsiders to tell them
that they are not happy.
They realize it.
All that they do with the outside persons representing
the civil rights organizations is
to use them for the specialized skills that they have.
Now, in Mississippi they tell me that the state was gravely
concerned about its public image when the Freedom Riders first
went into the state in 1961, and hired a public relations firm
to try to correct that image.
The public relations firm sent two of its brightest young men
down there.
They studied the situation and came up with a plan of action.
They would put one Negro on television
and let him tell all the American people
how happy Negroes are in Mississippi, and how
they love segregation, and how good the white people treat
them.
They sat him down in the studio and told him
that people all over the country were watching his face
and would be listening to his voice.
And he should tell them that.
He said, just a minute.
I have a question to ask.
Did you say they can hear me all over the country, in New
York, and Washington State, and California, and Chicago?
They said, yes.
He then leaned toward the microphone and said, help!
[LAUGHS] Well, the Negro has been subjected
to this for over 100 years.
We're now on what you call phase two of the revolution.
That's right.
Why hasn't this happened before?
What is responsible for it coming up now in the '60s?
Why has the Negro stayed down so long?
Well, I think there are a number of reasons.
One reason was the Supreme Court decision of 1954
and the school desegregation cases,
which set the legal framework for a real push
to eliminate racial discrimination.
For the first time in 1954, the US Supreme Court
said that segregation is, per se, discrimination
and is therefore unconstitutional.
Other reasons are World War II in which the Negro soldiers who
were fighting were told that they
were fighting against the master race theory of Nazism.
And inevitably, they began to ask themselves,
what about the master race theory back home?
So did their friends and relatives.
A second reason is the increasing education
of Negro youth.
As the youngsters are going to school in larger numbers
and studying the foundations of American democracy
where it says, for example, we hold these truths
to be self-evident that all men are created free and equal,
inevitably they ask themselves, well, what about me?
Don't these things mean me too?
A third reason is Africa.
As the new nations of Africa have begun to emerge,
Negroes have looked to that continent with greater pride
and have had more awareness of having come from something,
having some roots, and therefore, the ability
to go somewhere.
A national pride we have, Afro-Americans.
That's right.
Yes, many Negroes considering themselves Afro-Americans
and being proud of being black rather than ashamed
of their skin color, as had been true for a long period of time.
Do you think education is pretty much a key to Negro equality?
Education is very important indeed.
We have to define what we mean by education here.
Many people say that the whole race problem
will be solved by education.
What many of them mean then is, we should do nothing else.
We should have no action.
We should have no Selmas, no Montgomerys, and so forth
But obviously it is true that there
is a great gap between the education of Negroes
and the education of whites because
of the inferior segregated schools
to which most Negroes have gone in the South
and in Northern cities as well.
So it's now important for us to have
a massive program of remedial education
to repair the damage that has been done
to our youngsters, Negro youngsters, Puerto Rican
youngsters, Mexican-American youngsters, Indian youngsters,
white youngsters in Appalachia and other areas
who have been damaged by inferior education.
This gets down to the War on Poverty, I think, doesn't it?
It does indeed.
It's my belief that it ought to be a major part
of the anti-poverty program.
And I've taken the occasion to talk with President Johnson
several times about it.
He's expressed great interest and has
asked that we submit memoranda to him outlining
how such a program could work.
I have now sent three memoranda to the president on it.
And we are hopeful that it will be incorporated
into the anti-poverty program.
How significant is the new voting rights legislation
that is being considered?
It will be very significant indeed,
because there are several million Negroes who
are disenfranchised in the South because of their race
or their color, which means they are taxed
without representation, which means that they have little
or no voice in their political life and political destiny.
If the voter rights bill is a strong one
and is enacted into law without weakening amendments,
then it will make a great political change in the South.
What we'll find is that the politicians who are racists
will either change their views or will be replaced.
This leads to the question, will the Negro
try to replace all the white lawmakers with Negro lawmakers?
No, he will not.
I see no evidence at all, no indication whatsoever
that Negroes would vote out all whites
and vote in only Negroes.
I think they will vote out those persons who are opposed
to civil rights and equality.
They will vote in persons irrespective
of their race or their color who have the right point of view
and are in favor of equality, and democracy, and decency.
Like a lobbying group, then, you exert
pressure for those who see your philosophy.
Precisely.
Negroes are more concerned with the point
of view of the candidate than they are
with the race of a candidate.
How do you feel about the voting rights legislation?
Are you happy with it?
Will it do the job totally.
Well, it is a good legislation as it stands now,
but it needs considerable strengthening
in a number of ways.
For example, the 50% provision now says that if less than 50%
of the citizens of any state were registered last November
or voted in the election, then the federal law
becomes applicable and federal registrars are appointed.
Well, that's not adequate, because there
are some states in the South, such as Arkansas, Tennessee,
Texas, and Florida, where more than 50% of the people
were registered and did vote.
Yet there are counties in those states where Negroes
are discriminated against.
I, then, suggest that we have a provision in the legislation
which would allow 20 people who have been discriminated
against in voting rights to petition
the Department of Justice.
And if the Department of Justice after investigation
finds that there is justification
for the complaint, then federal registrars should be sent in.
What about the legislation of understanding?
We hear this argument frequently that you
can pass all the laws in the world,
but it isn't going to help one man understand another,
or treat him any better, or think of him any differently?
Well, the law is a very great help, obviously.
The law cannot keep a man from hating me,
it may not make him love me, but it can keep him from lynching
me.
And that is terribly important, as far as I'm concerned.
Well, I think we need to understand
that the law does not try to legislate the evil out
of men's hearts.
What it tries to do is to control men's practices
so that whatever evil of prejudice exists within them
is not allowed to damage other people.
And this is a very important function.
Now, legally I would have a right to dislike a man.
The law couldn't touch me.
Legally I'd have a right to hate him.
I suppose I'd even have a right legally to wish him dead.
But I wouldn't have a right legally to kill him.
Then it's a function of the law to step in and say,
whatever evil is in your heart must not
be allowed to damage this man.
Do you think this eventually, over the decades, will lead
to softening of these opinions?
The--
Oh, I think it will.
I think it will very much for two specific reasons.
One reason, that most people don't want to be law offenders.
And if the law says that this is right,
then most people will tend to comply with it.
And the law in itself will convince them of its rightness.
And second, we believe that if you
can, by laws, or by direct action, or by negotiation,
eliminate this practice of segregation,
break down the barriers, that is, then at least people
can come into contact and have an opportunity
to develop friendships, to develop understanding.
In other words, while it is true that prejudice produces
segregation, it's also true that segregation
produces and perpetuates prejudice
by keeping people apart.
Have you seen any evidences of this theory
since the Civil Rights law was passed?
Well, yes.
We have found that in many areas in the South
in cities in the deep South where they had said, no, never.
We will never desegregate this restaurant, or this theater,
this lunch counter, or what have you,
after the law went into effect, they did desegregate.
And nothing has happened.
The place has not burned down.
There are no fistfights.
People who sit down have found it irrelevant
who is at a table behind them in a restaurant.
It's no longer important who sits across in the next table.
It's not important who sits there.
I was in a hotel in Savannah, Georgia,
which had been segregated before the Civil Rights Act,
was now desegregated.
There were about 50 Negroes there attending a conference.
There were no problems whatever.
How do you think the Johnson administration is doing
for the civil rights cause?
Well, I've been impressed with the Johnson administration
and particularly with President Johnson and his sincerity
and his interest in doing something
about solving this problem.
We felt that he was slow to move in the Selma crisis
and should have moved earlier, which
is the reason we built up pressure on him
and set the thing right at his doorstep.
But when he acted, he acted strongly.
He spoke out strongly.
He joined the civil rights movement.
And he has declared war on the Ku Klux Klan.
And that's been a long time coming.
Mr. Farmer, where is the Negro revolution headed?
We know that it's breaking wide open in the South.
How about the North?
Well, for a long time Northern Negroes
were much more apathetic than the Southern Negroes
and did not have the same spirit in resisting,
the reason being that conditions are relatively good.
That is, they were better than in the South.
Many Negroes who had come from the South to the North
felt that they had escaped and that
the obvious discrimination, the "for colored",
"for white" signs, and the brutality, did not exist.
After they remained in the North for a while, however,
they found that there were severe problems
of job discrimination, and housing discrimination, and de
facto school segregation, that is, school segregation based
upon residential segregation.
The civil rights revolution thus began in the South.
It began a few years ago with the sit-ins, the student
sit-ins in the South, and the Freedom Rides, and so forth.
Now, it has spread north.
You may recall that in the spring and summer of 1963
there were massive demonstrations,
not only in the South, but also in the North.
In the North there were many large picket lines
around construction sites, for example,
protesting discrimination in the building trades
and the construction industry.
Likewise, there have been school boycotts
in a number of cities in the North protesting segregation
in the schools.
Will this intensify in the coming year or in the months
ahead?
There's no question about it.
The civil rights revolution is now
across the board, North, South, East, and West.
And I think that this trend will continue
until we have been victorious.
And by victorious, I mean that America lives up
to its promise and its aspirations of democracy,
and we have really an open society,
a society of friends, where what the person can do
and what he can become is not restricted
by the color of his skin.
Let me ask you, when do you foresee an end
to the revolution?
Well, it's difficult to say how long it'll take,
because there are so many factors that we do not know
and cannot judge.
We don't know how intense will be
the response of the federal government
or the American people generally.
But if I must give a wild guess, I
would say that within the next 10 or 15 years,
we should be over the hump and the basic part of the job
will be done.
Getting back to the North, we find
a lot of communities in the North, especially, that say,
we have no race problem.
Bellingham is a community that claims it has no race problem.
Well, yes.
Many communities say, we have no race problem,
when what they really mean is they have no Negroes.
If they have no Negroes or very few Negroes,
then obviously there is no problem in the sense
that there is no tension.
There is no issue raised.
But what they have found in many cases
is that when the Negro population increases
as the migration from the South to the North
goes on, that they do have a problem.
Now, before World War II there were many towns and cities,
particularly in the Northwest, that had no Negro population
and, thus, boasted that they had no race problem.
But during the war, Negroes came in
for wartime jobs and industry.
And for the first time they found
that they did have a problem, because the Negroes who came in
were segregated in living and were
discriminated against in jobs.
And they found that considerable racial tension existed.
The thought is still there, even though
the physical manifestation has not taken place.
That is right.
The thought is there, and the prejudice is there.
I think it's terribly important for all Americans
to search their own hearts and to find out to what extent
they share the prejudices that exist
in other parts of the country, what their attitudes are
toward Negroes, what image they have of Negroes,
whether when they think of Negroes they
think of an inferior people, whether they believe Negroes
are inferior, whether they think of Negroes as being clowns
or buffoons, such as we used to see very often in the movies,
the Stepin Fetchits and so on.
The image.
The image.
The stereotyped image.
Or whether we think of Negroes as happy-go-lucky contented
people who sit under the magnolia trees in the South,
and strum their guitars, and sing sweetly of the hereafter.
If these are the images, then they are wrong.
Have our schools been partly at fault in creating that image?
The textbook writers?
The schools have been very much at fault. The textbooks used
in high schools and in colleges dealing with American history
do not portray accurately the role and the contribution
of Negroes to American history and the building of America.
They present, instead, an image of Negroes
during slavery as being generally acquiescent people
who accepted their role in slavery
and made perfect slaves, ignoring the fact
that there were slave revolts led by slaves,
and that there was the Underground Railroad where
slaves ran away from home to escape North at great risk
to themselves.
Not only the textbooks used in high schools and colleges,
but also books used in elementary schools
and pre-school books used by smaller children
frequently portray Negroes as carriers of bags,
as porters, exclusively, or as janitors who sweep
and mop and scrub the floors.
And this tends to plant the idea in the minds of the young.
And they grow up then with the stereotyped image of Negroes.
Could the press be partly at fault here, the mass media?
Well, it is, I think, to a great extent.
We find still in many cities that there
are racial designations attached to crime stories.
In other words, if a crime small or large
is committed by a person who happens to be a Negro,
then he is indicated--
he is described as Jon Jones, Negro.
The same is not done with white persons who commit crimes.
We don't say Anthony Smith of English descent, or Irish,
or Scandinavian, or German, or Italian.
We just give the name.
When we began this program you were telling
about an experience in Plaquemine, Louisiana,
an experience that I think none of us had ever heard of.
And I am sure there must be thousands
of other experiences every day, every week of this type.
Is the press doing its job in this respect?
In other words, we read reports.
We see television reports where there are killings, where
there are mass demonstrations.
But what about the deprivation of rights
that are not being reported?
Well, there are, as you indicate,
many such instances of brutality, of denial
of human rights.
And they occur daily in the deep South.
They do not come to the attention of the public.
The press does not cover them unless there
has been a death or great beatings,
violence of that sort, or mass arrests.
Most of the incidents go unnoticed indeed.
Selma, for example, would not have gotten the attention which
it did get had it not been for the masses of people who
were in the street, and for the arrest of Dr. King,
and for the brutality that the state police and the sheriff's
deputies used against Negroes when
they attempted to march to Montgomery on that
first Sunday.
Would the revolution be as effective
or the civil rights movement be as effective
as it is had you not received the press coverage you
have received, however?
Obviously, it would not.
I think that television particularly has been helpful.
The student sit-ins in the South in 1960, for example,
would not have spread, in all probability,
as they did had it not been for the television coverage
which they received.
Many youngsters in other parts of the South
saw on the television screen what their co-partners were
doing in other parts of the South, and asked themselves,
why shouldn't we do the same?
Then they hit the streets and began demonstrating.
So television helped it to spread.
And it has helped people all over the country
to realize the depth of the problem
and the intensity of the feeling.
And thus, their consciences have been stirred,
and their intellects alivened.
Tell us a little bit about CORE, Mr. Farmer, direct action,
nonviolence, something that--
what makes you willing to put your life on the line?
Well, CORE is an organization dedicated
to non-violent direct action.
It was founded in 1942.
And I am proud to say I was one of the founders of it
many years ago.
And it's an interracial organization,
national in scope, which uses techniques such as those that
were developed by Gandhi in India
as the Indians fought for an end to colonialism
and for self-determination.
Now, it is our conviction that if a person is opposed
to an evil, such as racial segregation or discrimination,
he has a responsibility to try to withdraw himself
from participation in that evil and to try
to bring the evil to an end.
This means, in other words, that he has a responsibility
to place his body between the evil practice
and the perpetrators of the evil,
and thus, try to stop the practice of the evil.
Now, all of us are afraid, of course.
We would be lying if we said that when we go to Selma, when
we go to Montgomery, when we face a lynch mob,
we are not frightened.
We are frightened.
But there is a determination which
outweighs that fear, a determination
to do something against the problem that completely
submerges the fear.
What does a cattle prod feel like?
Well, it gives you quite a shock.
It's an instrument about so long that is battery operated
and transistorized.
And when it touches the skin, it gives you quite a shock.
It is used to move cattle, normally.
Balky cattle are stuck with it, and they will move.
Now, when a human being is stuck with it,
he gets an equal shock.
And he will move too.
It is not dangerous in the sense that it won't kill you
unless you have a bad heart.

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KVOS Channel 12 Films

Details

Title: KVOS Special: The Color of Black
Description: Civil Rights leader and activist James Farmer is interviewed for the entire episode. Farmer, founding member and head of the Congress of Racial Equality, or CORE, discusses a wide range of issues related to the Civil Rights movement, including segregation, desegregation, racial discrimination, the protest movement, nonviolent protest, the freedom riders, the marches on Selma and Montgomery, President Lyndon Johnson, and Alabama Governor George Wallace. He contrasts the movements in the north with those in the south. At the beginning of the interview, Farmer relates a powerful story of his own recent escape from a violent lynch mob of Louisiana State Troopers and police in Plaquemine, Louisiana. Users are advised that this resource contains content that may be triggering and harmful, and language and terms that are outdated and offensive.
Date issued: 1965-04-15
Type of resource: Moving image
Contributor: KVOS-TV (Television station : Bellingham, Wash.) (broadcaster)
Farmer, James, 1920-1999
Genre: television programs
interviews
Media type: video/mp4
Form: 16mm film
Related to: KVOS Channel 12 Film
Related item link: http://archiveswest.orbiscascade.org/ark:/80444/xv75590
Physical location: WaBeCP
Western Washington University
Repository: Center for Pacific Northwest Studies
Access conditions: http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/
This subject is in copyright (subject to U.S. and international copyright laws) and is displayed for educational purposes. For more information about rights or obtaining copies of this resource, please contact the Center for Pacific Northwest Studies, Western Libraries Heritage Resources, Western Washington University, Bellingham, WA 98225-9103, USA (360-650-7534; heritage.resources@wwu.edu) and refer to the collection name and identifier. Any materials cited must be attributed to the KVOS Channel 12 Films, Center for Pacific Northwest Studies, Western Libraries Heritage Resources, Western Washington University.
Identifier (local): kvos_special_28_01_s39
Identifier (mabel PID): wwu:31406

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