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Welcome to another edition of black man in America presented by your city station in cooperation with the city's commission on human rights and these programs are broadcast Tuesday afternoons at five W. N.Y.C. F.M. ninety three point nine mega cycles and Tuesday evenings at nine W N Y C eight hundred thirty kilos cycles here now to tell you more about this important series is our moderator Good evening this is Thomas H. Alan substituting for William H. both and I am here to bring you another program in the series the black man in America devoted as this title states to examining the history and life of African-Americans and the contributions they have made and are making to the material cultural and spiritual wealth of this country this includes all of living not simply the civil rights issues we see in the headlines I'm very happy to have as my guesses evening Mr Sterling talk I'm talking as executive director of the Washington D.C. Urban League and the author of the book we will be discussing the title of the book is Beyond the burning life and death of the ghetto before becoming executive director of the Washington Urban League star and talkers busy life included posts as executive director of the Akron Ohio Urban League and the captain Ohio Urban League he earned his be a degree in his M.B.A. and Social Psychology from the University of Akron he has served the United States government abroad and Japan Hong Kong Malaysia and Guatemala he's been active as a writer lecturer and consultant for government and private agencies. In Washington Mr Tucker is currently a member of the mayor has Task Force on Human Resources the steering committee of the Washington urban coalition the board of the Council of Churches and the governing committee of the urban and institute he lectures at the Washington and I fell Center and is a member of the faculty of the School of Social Work at Howard University he is now somehow found the time to write beyond the burning life and death of the ghetto which was published last week by association press and is now available at all bookstores. Just to talk I sometimes wonder after reading all of this and I wondered in the past about all of the things that you are involved in and I believe just before going on the app we remarked that you were the cotton native for the national mobilization and support of the Poor People's Campaign. I wonder how you have time to do all of the things that you're involved and still write a book well as I find it Mr Allen busy people are always busy and I guess it's like anything else he use your time for the things you think are most important and for some time I've wanted to do some writing I have written for publication before but I haven't written a book a year ago I took a tour of the Far East on a lecture tour and I was speaking six or seven times a day and then attending all the diplomatic functions that one must attend when representing the government yes but then I wrote a series of what I called Letters from abroad that were published and it was a small book as a matter of fact so when I got back the publisher said look you can write the book if you were able to write this why you were away with that kind of assignment and of course you can read a book and so I went ahead and they're not happy about it very got us talking and certainly making a real contribution to what we are confronted with today. Much has been reported must talk and said recently about the new thrust of the urban Lee I have been hearing about the news trust even before convention and New Orleans I believe was a New Orleans yes I was and I see from a press release from your publisher that you stepped down from your post as executive director of the Washington D.C. Urban League to take the national assignment as the lead director of field services for the new thrust can you tell us what the new process is all about and what your role will be well actually what we're doing is to try to take our ninety four offices and we want to what we call build the internal strength of the black ghettos we're in these cities across the country. Three that we're in great confrontation as a black and white Americans in this country and yet it isn't as productive as it might be in the league through the years has helped to build what I call a middle class black America and its programs of the past has strengthened family life and strengthen economic political and educational position the posture of the black man in America now it seems to us that what we've got to do is develop these same resources and techniques in building strength in from the bottom we have and our society what I call the concept of trickle down progress normally and mass and what has been happening is that those at the bottom of the economic and political and social and educational ladder have been neglected waiting for things to come down from the top and we're saying that what we've got to do is to build some of these benefits and from the body bottom to use some of the credits and the prestige that we've built up through the past the work we've done and build on the side of the ghetto we think we can help and polarize America we can bring middle class likes and poor blacks look closer together than they are now as I indicated we do have confrontations in America we've got to find a way to make these productive so they're not just shouting matches where they don't simply result in chaos but that these confrontations are creative and that they lead to somewhere and so what we're really doing is we're taking our ninety four offices and we're charting some deeper directions in terms of programming in the black ghettos we have some special money with which we're working my job is to pull together five regional offices our staffs and these offices to work through them in our ninety four city you mean the regional offices all of the countries in offices all over the country I mean my job is to field services is to direct the operation of our ninety four offices and the operations man of the of the National Urban League as it now as it now stands and we hope that in this next year to make some significant. Inroads into. Some of the problems of polarization the communication and planning that we now have in American cities everywhere yes I'm often concerned down talking when I hear that the Urban League and the N.W. C.P. I have done some work with and up only sheepy in the past but in particular these two organizations were primarily concerned in the past with. Supporting and aiding the middle income or middle class negro I find that this is really not so all along the Urban League has had a concern about the total black community and that has been my understanding of so I don't know much about the same is true of the N.W. C.P. you have any comment. Well that's I know you've heard it before yes and I understand why people and that is the only magic that is and that this thrust of ours is a new thrust I know this is what we've been talking about I don't believe it's necessarily new though is that well I think in answer to both of those I can understand why people make this observation they do because they think in terms of where boards have been constituted the source of money etc The fact that we have work to get jobs. The more visible jobs have been those front jobs and these have been for people training primarily the general public is not aware of the fact of the work we did with with domestics back through the years the work we did to get people in all kinds of jobs just whatever job opportunities were back in the in the thirty's and the early forty's work with them and organize labor back through the years to get black people and organize you get in the union from Labor didn't want them and so all these problems that we to do relief work back in the days in the Depression days you know and you know yeah and social case work and all these things but these things are then forgotten to get by the new generation of young people who did know about them and try and I believe it's so it's kind of not knowing is made as and and today in the eyes of some Anything that's owned is no good ending its own is not useful and I think that's the way it is and they don't understand that there is a there's the experience of it which is viable when that experience is brought up to date and I actually what we're really trying to do is to continue the kind of relevance for the future that we've had for the past my there are new dimensions or a new. Focus is there a new kinds of aspects of the problems with which must be dealt with and now we're trying to retool the same as General Motors or Bell telephone or any modern government would do to orient itself to the new challenges new problems they present themselves were not functioning like the same machinery that functioned yesterday even though it was useful. Then so it's not new in the sense that we're starting off in new directions we're deepening our relationships we're we're focusing our priorities in the area where the problem is deep us and concerned we're mobilizing our resources in a major aspect of the problem area utilizing more efficiently whatever we have to deal with this particular problem and in that way Musa one advantage we may have over some of the poverty programs here is that while we seek the maximum participation of the poor and I think the language of the legislation maximum feasible participation we are also seeking the math maximum participation of the of the non-poor in the problems around the pour and our relationships with the poor and the non poor are such that we can bring these two groups together and build a new dynamic force that is not separate but one working together oh yeah that has to mean I'm not it seems to us that this is the case and so this will be the major thrust it a new thrust in the sense that the focus is pretty well sharpened and the directions are being defined so that we can function in the most efficient way yes and I really commission both invited you to come on a day so we could talk about you know but beyond the burning life and death of the ghetto. Can your book be considered a blueprint for the new thrash Let's talk about your book a little bit just what you would like to tell us about your book well in some ways I think so and Chapter five of the book I talk about things that I believe can be done now I said that affected black power for the Ghetto it is we've got to give some. Responsibility for decision making to those who live in the ghettos of America by saying that the ghettos are much like occupied territory made the people who make the profits there don't live there who run the public facilities don't live there. Who make the decisions therefore don't live there and so the people who live there are satellite captives and if we are in our country for instance that we have fifty thousand troops in South Korea but I'm sure the South Koreans didn't feel there was some bandage advantage in our troops being that it wanted to get out if they didn't South Vietnamese didn't feel there was some advantage in our being there they want to get out now and have a voice and yes that's right and so the people of the ghetto are saying in effect that look we don't like the way things are being running round so get out without have a hand it myself I don't believe that we can turn all of our institutions completely over into the hands of any single second of the population since a total population is involved but certainly neither can we justify not there not having a voice in the seasons which are made which affect them and therefore I'd say that if we are to save our cities if we keep them from going up and spoke smoking with it eliminate the kind of turmoil that is now out there and I said he's everywhere we've got to give people a stake in where they are so simple as that and then I outlined try to outlined some of the things I think can be done which are a part of the new thrust ideas which we are passing along to our fellows in the field and I offices so we can I say in the long run however and the book that we've got a limb eliminate our ghettoes But this is not short range now we've got to as we planned this long range elimination which eventually must come we can move towards levels of change which I think can be reduced attention improve the quality of life a concept that I hold and that is a concept of the book and a new through this that what we've got to seek in America is not really equal opportunity but equal results equal opportunity that came to America today like people in America. Would simply in effect say that. From this point on things will be equal that would mean the Get wouldn't get whiter it would necessarily close and if we're going to close the gap there must be more than equal opportunity if we're going to get equal results and I say that before we can bury the past the past must die and the past is very much a part of the present and that's why we have to be aware of the path of idea of the problems of the present to bring solution to the future and so the whole concept under which I write the book and which the new thrust operates with that thing in terms of program of equal results this means more than equal share of the tax dollar and the ghetto schools if you're going to give the same kind of education to the ghetto child it means more than equal opportunity at training if you want to raise a level of training of the black man to that which has been available to white man it means the black man doesn't take his place in line behind those already lined up to take his place in line in terms of the three hundred years. Deprivation prove that provision so that when the line really forms that he has the same opportunity of being at the same goal as others in the line and I think these are the kind of new concepts we operate on that we have to operate and not equal opportunity but equal results Yeah and present a universe audience of saving on you I don't have to introduce you but and presentation. I indicated you know work and several senators you had vast experience and in the ghetto What is your view and you've been expressing some of us all running your view of the Get Out to Dan how do you define the situation. Well I think people don't really understand you know what it's like their. Life is very different and I do discuss this some in the book that. It's a place that is very confining that it's stifling. The map in crowded living conditions is a matter of day to day life it's a matter of generations of living. It's a place where there must be a total preoccupation with just holding life the lands together it is. Yet a place where youngsters in the early years will never be concerned about growing up and experiencing a looking forward to the adventure of life already concerning the problems of adulthood you know bread and butter and meat and potatoes it's a place where where their stance becomes a part of the normal smell it's a place where young people don't have an opportunity to court and have normal relationships are normal conditions it's a place where the marriage normal marital joys must be must be engaged in quietly and hurriedly It's a place where privacy is absent It's a place which is. Is always that accommodated with noise and when the noise grows silent why you think something is wrong and life becomes ominous I mean it's a place where when a youngster goes to school often looking forward to this great opportunity and experience of education who when the youngster walks into the classroom the teacher in effect on the whole system often in effect says by its behavior you are from the black ghetto and therefore you are ignorant and therefore you don't have the same capacity for learning it's a place where often a diploma from a high school is a passport to nowhere this is the ghetto as I know it in America today it's a very. Good summary of your knowledge of AI ghetto talk I don't want to draw you into any political discussion but I surprise eventual election here faced with. An election on November fair and we hear so much today about law and order I believe most of the candidates are using a sense of campaign and. Working in the ghetto How do you think the get on is reacting to this crime on well I think that. That law and order to the to the ghetto not only to the ghetto RESIDENT two I think many like people in America. Is really a call for you know let's keep them down let's keep the lid on let's keep the clamps down on black people and the reason why people react this way is because the most white people in America especially police all black people still look alike and so that's what it means that there's no it's not an objective consideration of issues I think like people in the ghetto and outside of the ghetto are willing for they be black consideration real I mean object of consideration of this issue but there really isn't because it's a code phrase even when people say it we don't mean it as such this is the implications of it even when justice is added you think even even today because the this is something which does not relate to the total problem it relates to the problem the black man in Washington D.C.. There was a killing by a policeman last week of a young man in his early twenty's the issue was jaywalking Actually it was no suspicion of any kind of thing at all and someone asked the question What was the last time a white policeman killed a white man in Washington. When was the last time well no one could know the last time it happens in Washington however right people killing black people I guess it has happened about five or six times in the last three or four months to our knowledge we've been big issues and so there is a different kind of relationship now no one can tell me that white people don't commit crimes but when we talk about crimes in America we talk about crimes of black people that's what the issue today is not crime in America we talk about immorality in America we talk about the immorality of black people in America. So we really don't deal with the issues most of the anti social issues most of the anti-social behavior most of the social disorganization of our society relates not to the social to total society as it is discuss it relates only to black Americans and all that is negative therefore in these discussions and these kind of patients. You know are heaped upon the head of the black man felt most deeply by the black man in the ghetto and I add the while facet to a shift in this year's environment and we keep getting away from the buck to some degree we've been getting away from about. But I gather that you regard the death of Dr King as a turning point just mention but why well I was with Dr King up until about three hours before his assassination I'd been with him for some you and Mary lunch I was and members of the time just left to come to New York as a matter of fact to make a speech I sang and had been with a man I've been close to the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. Since its inception Yeah and so I knew the power of Dr King and the importance of his leadership to America and I recall talking to the Republican breakfast club of the House of Representatives just before the people people's campaign began and I saw there among those men present that morning and might have been very well been exam Kane's had they been Democrats who were present. But the general reaction was we don't want to support the poor people's campaign because we don't want these people coming here in effect pressuring us yet I said to them lobbyist paid highly are here every day pressuring you and people are coming to express themselves in peaceful demonstration and yet you don't want them to come and I said if you check the leadership of a man like Dr King What kind of leadership can you accept if America will not follow this leadership and eventually this kind of leadership will simply go off and and write books and teach in universities and lecture for fancy fees because of America won't respond then the public that the leadership structure of America fails to respond in the general public won't respond or accept this kind of leadership anymore and rising up in the place of men such as these will be others whose programs will be far less acceptable and whose problems created will be much greater but when Dr King died then I knew that a special kind of leadership that we had in America that was only projected by him was gone and that America had needed to really get itself together to find some common ground for moving ahead and so we are in a very critical period here oh yes with the divisiveness across America within the black community and across the white community across all political lines within political lines all kinds of new alliances and and what comes out of this I think will be extremely important whether we move ahead in the years merely had or whether or not we're going to move back with you can't stand still I mean in a society that's viable there's always motion and either we're going to move ahead or we're not and horizons as they appear today don't look especially promising and somehow out of all of this has got to come to some kind of new leadership and some new directions and then the book I try to point out what I think I've various kinds of leadership I think the day is probably pass. Yes where there will be a single Negro spokesman or a black spokesman for the Negro population they has past when there's a single spokesman for labor anymore and religion and government even political parties anymore you look at them and there's not really a single spokesman for any of them and neither would I be true in the black community but their various responsibilities are different segments of our society have and I try to point out what I think some of them are yes just recently I was on a walking tour with commission a bow and New York City here and we were encouraging voter registration Yeah and of cost way too in the ghetto community as I recall very vividly speaking to a young man on a corner handing him Terry Allen asking me if he would register to vote your point about leadership. Really struck me when he said well there's no point in voting because we've they've killed our leaders and he refined to Robert Kennedy and and Dr King you know he's We are in a very serious period. You've touched upon this already the fact that the get out on the black ghetto is unique. The comparison is so often made with. Emigrant groups that. Yes they have pull themselves up by their bootstraps Why don't you. Is this a phantom power well indeed it isn't the average immigrant coming here from Europe in two generations can be fully assimilated does it really take two generations want to talk that's why I missed that's a not once once a language is learn and the customs of served and the skills required why they can move into the mainstream of American life and isn't it also quite cell that many of the persons who come in and much from Europe. Already have jobs. Waiting for me as a sick land they are quite free to move right to the suburbs immediately no open housing and the job market is open I'm not entering fall you know but you're actually correct and Al Capone can move into a neighborhood that a black man can't oh and so many people think the answer to the problems of jobs and housing improved education and these are great obstacles and very handy and great handicaps but even today the real issue is color in America because we dealt with the question of color we wouldn't have the problems of jobs housing and education on a racial basis and no single black man you see has been fully assimilated into the mainstream of American life except that he's crossed the color line no matter how educated or how wealthy a black man he is in America today there are still neighborhoods where he can't live oh yeah there are still quota systems and universities and other places. And that issue is color and so America will not permit him to assimilate America has permitted the black man because of education and ability a greater upward mobility but it still he still kind of on a string. And tied to that string are all other black people and so the problem is real and therefore is problem is very different is problem of assimilation he's ready and willing and a great many have or many have far more capabilities and many people have been assimilated but society has not yet given the signal yes I see that our time is almost up Mr talk and frankly we haven't talked nearly enough about your book Beyond the burning life and death of the ghetto The book is already out as that So yes it is it's so she can press is the publisher. I'm hoping that understood the negro book of the Month Club located here in New York is playing to have it as its book of the month for November. And I try to outline again what I think can be done what is really practical things I think and practical to be done now I try to point out the various responsibilities that people have I try to analyze in a very objective way but yet very clearly the way the ghetto is the special problems faced by people in them how it's perpetuated what I think some of the solutions are and the directions I think we must take. Time is almost up but could you just briefly succinctly tell me your view of black power. I believe that we need it like power to me means the mobilization of resources of it like community to deal with problems facing that community which builds a more firm and more solid community for everybody where people because of the color of their skin because that color is an issue bind themselves together share their resources develop a common voice a common point of view utilizing this brand coupled with whatever other strands there are available not separatism as they go but working together facing life as it is moving towards that kind of society which ultimately where ultimately color will make no difference. Let's talk I just very briefly can you give us your program prescription for laminating the ghetto than any panacea and anything ever come up with you indeed not if we could find a way to forget about color we could but we can do now I think we can be centralized government we can be centralized industry we can build new kinds of communities and put them together the way we think where we said we're going to the country together and beginning I think doing this is what we're really after and I think there are ways in which this can be done not short range and that without difficulty let's deal very possible I say that our time is up thank you darling talking for being with us on a black man in America beyond the burning life and death of the ghetto and despite its hard hitting tell it like it has approach is basically a helpful book and is well worth your reading pick up a copy at the nearest bookstore this is Tom Allen saying good evening for commission of both we welcome your comments on these programs send your cards and letters to black man in America W. N.Y.C. New York one hundred and join us again next Tuesday afternoon at five on the U N Y C F.M. or next Tuesday evening at nine over W. N.Y.C. black man in America is a feature presentation of your city station broadcast in cooperation with the New York City Commission on Human Rights.