Host: It's our great pleasure today here at the Overseas Press Club to welcome a young man who has been described as the most impressive American playwright of recent years. Uh, this was the comment, uh, made recently by Time magazine. Uh, the Herald Tribune's comment was that "Here we meet a fierce and blazing talent." Before presenting LeRoi Jones, Uh, I would like to, uh, introduce those of us here at the head table. Uh, George Green of our Club Committee, uh, Joe Newman, our program director.
[clapping]

Host: Al Peterson, also of the Club Committee, and, um, Charles Patterson, a playwright, uh, who's, um, first produced work, uh, will be produced on March 1st at the St. Mark's Theater in a combined bill with the works of, uh, LeRoi Jones, uh, as a $20 a ticket benefit, uh, to create the first repertory theater in Harlem.
[clapping]

Host: LeRoi Jones needs no introduction. Uh, The Dutchman, The Toilet, The Slave, his works of poetry, uh, a volume which he has now ready for publication on the Negro intellectual, his forthright and dramatically expressed opinions about the inevitability of a Black-white clash. A clash of frightening proportions and consequences has all too dramatically been presented to the play, going and poetry reading public of America. The force with which a young man of 30 years of age, a graduate, a-a native of Newark, um, a graduate of the Beringer High School in Newark, uh, a veteran of the American Air Force, the force with which he has appeared on the American Horizon as one of the powerful new writing stars is all too well known to need further introduction. It is my pleasure to produce, to present to you, LeRoi Jones.
[clapping]

LeRoi Jones: Uh, I'm gonna read a short paper that I, um, that was written for the New York Times. It was commissioned by the New York Times by a man named Lewis Funke, who, uh, subsequently returned it. I wanna read a piece that was commissioned, um, by the New York Times, and um, subsequently returned, uh, unpublished by the New York Times. It's called The Revolutionary Theater. "The Revolutionary Theater should force change. It should be change. All their faces turned into the lights and you work on them Black nigga magic and cleanse them at having seen the ugliness.

And if the beautiful see themselves, they will love themselves. We are preaching virtue again, but by that to mean now, what seems the most constructive uses of the world? The Revolutionary Theater must expose, show up the insides of these humans. Look into Black skulls. White men will cower before this theater because it hates them because they have been trained to hate. The Revolutionary Theater must hate them for hating, for presuming, with their technology, to deny the supremacy of the spirit. They will all die because of this. The Revolutionary Theater must teach them their deaths.

It must crack their faces open to the mad cries of the poor. It must teach them about silence and the truths lodged there. It must kill any god anyone names except common sense. The Revolutionary Theater should flush the fags and murders out of Lincoln's face. It should stagger through our universe, correcting, insulting, preaching, spitting craziness, but a craziness taught to us in our most rational moments. People must be taught to trust true scientists, knowers, diggers, oddballs, and that the holiness of life is the constant possibility of widening the consciousness, and they must be incited to strike back against any agency that attempts to prevent this widening.

The Revolutionary Theater must accuse and attack anything that can be accused and attacked. It must accuse and attack because it is a theater of victims. It looks at the sky with the victims' eyes and moves the victims to look at the strength in their minds and their bodies. Clay in Dutchman, Ray in The Toilet, Walker in The Slave are all victims. In the Western sense, they could be heroes, but the Revolutionary Theater, even if it is Western, must be anti-Western. It must show horrible coming attractions of the crumbling of the West. Even as Artaud designed the conquest of Mexico, so we must design the conquest of White Eye.
And show the missionaries and wiggly Liberals dying under blasts of concrete. For sound effects, wild screams of joy from all the peoples of the world. The Revolutionary Theater must take dreams and give them a reality. It must isolate the ritual and historical cycles of reality, but it must be food for all those who need food and daring propaganda for the beauty of the human mind.
[coughing]

LeRoi Jones: But it is a political theater, a weapon to help in the slaughter of these dimwitted, fat-bellied white guys who somehow believe that the rest of the world is here for them to slobber on. This should be a theater of world spirit where the spirit can be shown to be the most competent force in the world. Force, spirit, feeling. The language will be anybody's but tightened by the poet's backbone. And even the language must show what the facts are in this consciousness epic, what's happening. We will talk about the world, and the preciseness with which we are able to summon the world will be our art.

Art is method, and art, like any ashtray or a senator, remains in the world. Wittgenstein said ethics and a- and aesthetics are one. I believe this. So the Broadway theater is a theater of reaction whose ethics, like its aesthetics, reflects the spiritual values of this unholy society, which sends young crackers all over the world blowing off colored people's heads. In some of these flippy Southern towns, they even shoot up the immigrant's favorite son, be it Michael Schwerner or a JF Kennedy. The Revolutionary Theater is shaped by the world and moves to reshape the world using as its force, the natural force and perpetual vibrations of the mind in the world.
We are history and desire, what we are, and what any experience can make us. It is a social theater, but all theater is social theater. But we will change the drawing rooms into places where real things can be said about a real world, or into smoky rooms where the destruction of Washington can be plotted. The Revolutionary Theater must function like an incendiary pencil planted in Curtis Lemay's cap so that when the final curtain goes down, brains are splattered over the seats and the floor, and bleeding nuns must wire SOSes to Belgians with gold teeth.
Our theater will show victims so that their brothers in the audience will be better able to understand that they are the brothers of victims. And that they themselves are victims if they are blood brothers. And what we show must cause the blood to rush so that pre-revolutionary temperaments will be bathed in this blood, and it will cause their deepest souls to move, and they find themselves tensed and clenched, even ready to die at what the soul has been taught. We will scream and cry, murder, run through the streets in agony if it means some soul will be moved, moved to actual life understanding of what the world is and what it ought to be.
We are preaching virtue and feeling, and a natural sense of the self in the world. All men live in the world, and the world ought to be a place for them to live. What is called the imagination from image, magi, magic, magician, et cetera, is a practical vector from the soul. It stores all data and can be called on to solve all our "problems." The imagination is the projection of ourselves past our sense of ourselves as things. Imagination, image is all possibility because from the image, the initial circumscribed energy, any use idea is possible, and so begins that image's use in the world.

Possibility is what moves us. The popular white man's theater, like the popular white man's novel, shows tired white lives and the problems of eating white sugar, or else it herds big-caboosed blondes onto huge stages and rhinestones and makes believe they are dancing or singing. White businessmen of the world do you wanna see people really dancing and singing? All of you go up in Harlem and get yourself killed. There will be dancing and singing then, for real. In The Slave, Walker vessels, the Black revolutionary wears an armband, which is the insignia of the attacking army, a big red-lipped minstrel, grinning like crazy.
The Liberal white man's objection to the theater of the revolution, if he is hip enough, will be on aesthetic grounds. Most white Western artists do not need to be political since usually, whether they know it or not, they are in complete sympathy with the most repressive social forces in the world today. There are more junior birdmen fascists running around the West today, disguised as artists than there are disguised as fascists. But then that word, fascist, and with it, fascism has been made obsolete by the word, America and Americanism.
The American artist usually turns out to just be a super bourgeois because finally, all he has to show for his sojourn through the world is "better taste" than the bourgeois. Many times, not even that. Americans will hate the Revolutionary Theater because it will be out to destroy them and whatever they believe is real. American cops will try to close the theaters where such nakedness of the human spirit is paraded. American producers will say the revolutionary plays are filth, usually because they will treat human life as if it was actually happening.
American directors will say that the white guys in the plays are too abstract and cowardly, "Don't get me wrong, I mean aesthetically," and they will be at right. The force we want is of 20 million spooks storming America with furious cries and unstoppable weapons. We want actual explosions and actual brutality. An epic is crumbling, and we must give it the space and hugeness of its actual demise. The Revolutionary Theater, which is now peopled with victims, will soon begin to be peopled with new kinds of heroes, not the weak hamlets debating whether or not they are ready to die for what's on their minds, but men, and women, and minds digging out from under 1,000 years of "high art" and weak-faced dalliance.
We must make an art that will function as to call down the actual wrath of world spirit.

We are witch doctors and assassins, but we will open a place for the true scientists to expand our consciousness. This is a theater of assault. The play that will split the heavens for us will be called The Destruction of America. The heroes will be Crazy Horse, Denmark Vessey, Patrice Lamumba, but not history, not memory, not sad sentimental groping for warmth in our despair. These will be new men, new heroes, and their enemies, most of you who are listening to this. Thank you."
[clapping]
Host: I'll ask John Holme to take the question period.
John Holme: We start with questions from the press table. So if there are any there, would you please, uh, identify yourself and put your question? Mr. [unintelligible 00:14:00] of the Saturday Evening Post.
Speaker 4: Would Mr. Jones-
?Host: Would he what?
Speaker 4: -would-would Mr. Jones please comment on the alleged plot reported in the morning papers to blow up the Statue of Liberty and other statues, institution?

LeRoi Jones: Well, somebody-somebody told me that-that they- that people were planning to do that because the television was getting so dull and people were losing interest in America so that it was sort of done so that people would, you know, be interested in America again, sort of like a publicity stunt. I don't know.
[laughter]

Speaker 4: Do you think it was a good publicity stunt?
LeRoi Jones: Yeah, it's- it's pretty good. I mean, I know a lot of people who are gonna use it all over the world, you know, to, uh, say that somebody wanted to blow up these monuments, you know. There are a lot of better things that could be blown up, you know, than those monuments, but I think it's- it's, um, you know, it's an interesting idea, you know.
[laughter]

Speaker 4: What do you think would happen to your movement if, um, uh, all the whites were to withdraw themselves and their financial support of the cause?
Speaker 5: Follow his suggestion.
LeRoi Jones: Um, gee, what would happen? You know, first, I think that, uh, you don't have any objection to me calling Negros Black, just Black people rather than Negros?

Speaker 4: [unintelligible 00:15:23] Black.
LeRoi Jones: No. Yeah. Well, it's a- it's a better delineation, you know.
Speaker 4: It's okay.

LeRoi Jones: But anyway, what would happen? It would probably change a lot of people's minds. It would change a lot of Black people who are still skating with the idea that somehow there is a benevolent program outlined for them by the white man. Uh, like if suddenly everyone, most of the white people in America were, to be quite honest, let's say, as honest as most of the crackers are in the South, you know, uh, probably we could get something going. You know, would be, uh, be a much more honest situation, you know. Because most of the help that is extended is either from some kind of, uh, pathological guilt feelings, which are somehow never resolved, or tax, you know, deductions, or image value, or something like that. But there are very, very few white people in this country that want this system changed with the suddenness of reality. I mean, abracadabra, you know, very, very few.

Speaker 5: You made a poll.

Speaker 6: I understand from your paper that fascism and Americanism are synonymous. Uh, is that your view?
John Holme: You wanna come up the mic?
Speaker 6: Oh, I'm sorry.

LeRoi Jones: Not quite synonymous. Americanism is a little worse because it's stronger because they beat the fascists, you see? They beat the Nazis to see which people would have the final say of running the store. So the Americans finally are worse because they're stronger, and also because they are dedicated to liberty, and freedom, and justice, and equal rights, you know, which is a lie. As any person on the earth can tell you, as most of the people on the earth can tell you, it's a lie.
Speaker 7: What would you say they're dedicated to?

LeRoi Jones: Uh, luxury.
John Holme: Repeat the question. Repeat the question.
LeRoi Jones: This woman wanted to know what are Americans dedicated to. Luxury, having people do things for you. Assuming, uh,-
[clearing throat]
LeRoi Jones: -a position in the world that you don't really deserve in terms of your relationship with the world. Not working, having people do your work for you. Unreality, you know, things like that.
Speaker 7: This is from experience?

LeRoi Jones: Pardon?
Speaker 7: Your own experience?
LeRoi Jones: Yes, it's from my own experience.
Speaker 7: Being an American?
LeRoi Jones: Yes, being an American.
Speaker 7: [unintelligible 00:17:50]
LeRoi Jones: That's right. That's right. Being a Black man, it's a different thing.
?John Holme: Mr. Jones?

LeRoi Jones: There are two Americas. There's a white America and a Black America. The Black man wants to be, first of all, a human being. Most of the people in the world want to be human beings. They wanna live out their lives the way they see fit to live out their lives. They want to expand their minds, and they wanna live in a way that will be beneficial to them and beneficial to the rest of the world. Most white people in the world, their society is set up so they must oppress most of the people in the world. And this is not some kind of emotional assertion, this is fact. These are facts.
John Holme: Yes, please.
Speaker 8: Uh, I hate to change the subject because I kind of like this subject.
LeRoi Jones: Uh-huh.
Speaker 8: But, uh, uh, I wonder if, uh, Mr. Jones sees himself, uh, or gets his greatest satisfaction primarily as an artist or as a propagandist. Which gives him the most kicks?[unintelligible 00:18:54]
John Holme: Which, uh, which gives you more satisfaction, uh, being an artist or being a propagandist?
LeRoi Jones: No, there's- there are artists or there's no difference. Uh, I said in that paper about Wittgenstein, who was a European white man who said aesthetics and ethics are one. That is, if I- if you think of me as a propagandist, then my art will be in the method, in the precision with which I can propagandize. Art is method, you know?
Speaker 8: Uh, a corollary to this question is that, uh, uh, the Marxists tried the same thing in this theater, and they had a lousy theater.
LeRoi Jones: Mm.
Speaker 8: Uh--
LeRoi Jones: You mean European Marxists?
Speaker 8: Yeah.
John Holme: Will you repeat-
LeRoi Jones: American, yeah.
John Holme: -will you repeat the point?
LeRoi Jones: Well, I'm not a Marxist at all.
Speaker 8: How--
LeRoi Jones: He said the Marxists tried the same thing in the theater and it failed.
Speaker 8: How do you keep a-a good play and revolutionary, uh, ideals compatible?
LeRoi Jones: Well, by, uh, playing--
John Holme: Do you wanna repeat that point?
LeRoi Jones: How do you keep, uh, revolutionary play and good ideals compatible?
Speaker 8: Uh, revolutionary ideals and a good play.
LeRoi Jones: Revolutionary ideals and a good play compatible, you don't think that's possible? You think that a play, by the very definition of play, has to be anti-revolution or not have anything to do with revolution? That is your own kind of social fix on what art is. Art can be anything.
Speaker 8: No, I don't think that.
LeRoi Jones: Mm-hmm.
Speaker 8: I'm wondering how you deal with the problem.
LeRoi Jones: By just trying to tell it exactly the way it is.
John Holme: I think we've come to the end of, uh, of this period. Um, I would just like to make my own, uh, remarks on this. I would prefer to think that, uh, Mr. Jones is using poetic symbols, in a great deal of what he's saying.
Speaker 8: Oh.
[laughter]
John Holme: That, uh,-
Speaker 9: Right.
Speaker 10: That's all [crosstalk]
John Holme: -that I think his aim is to shock. I think he's succeeded, uh, I think he has good reason for shocking. I think it's unfortunate that, uh, he's used, uh, the language that he has used on many occasions. Uh, I think most of us would agree, and I think there are a good number of Black as well as white Americans who would feel that, uh, uh, his, uh, technique and device may really, uh, defeat themselves, uh, however, well, he may- he may mean. Uh, I think it's also unfortunate that some of the members have, uh, been provoked into using some of the language and he himself has used. And with that we thank him and we say goodbye.
[laughter]
[clapping]
Speaker 10: [unintelligible 00:21:27]
[clapping]
[clearing throat]
LeRoi Jones: Pardon?
Speaker 10: You polled that, there's a poll that shows that.
LeRoi Jones: There's a poll that shows that?
Speaker 10: Yeah.
LeRoi Jones: No, I've made a poll in my life. I've talked to a lot of white people in my life.
Speaker 11: When you'd read this result-
LeRoi Jones: Yes.
Speaker 11: -this, the poll where you questioned them.
LeRoi Jones: Was I what?
Speaker 11: Read this poll when you questioned us. Did you have an idea in your mind as to what the question--
John Holme: Repeat the question.
LeRoi Jones: Yes, I did. I had a--
John Holme: Repeat the question [unintelligible 00:21:56]
Speaker 11: Because you're just like the white.
LeRoi Jones: I had a--
Speaker 11: You have all of the fallacies that we have.
John Holme: Sure, would you repeat the--
[clearing throat]
Speaker 11: [unintelligible 00:22:00]
LeRoi Jones: Yeah.
John Holme: Let me, uh, let me- let me just- let me just [chuckles]
LeRoi Jones: No, I am not trying, my, uh, my friend-
John Holme: [crosstalk] radio.
LeRoi Jones: -my friend--
John Holme: [unintelligible 00:22:06] on the radio.
LeRoi Jones: Which one shall I talk into?
John Holme: [unintelligible 00:22:09] the question [unintelligible 00:22:09]
LeRoi Jones: Oh, this man says that I am exactly like a white man. Now, aside from the obvious physical fallacy of that, and also perhaps a psychological fallacy in that, my friend, you are a well-fed white bourgeois. Don't you ever tell me I'm like you.
Speaker 11: [unintelligible 00:22:25] yourself, my friend.
LeRoi Jones: Don't ever tell me I'm like you.
Speaker 11: You probably make more than I do.
LeRoi Jones: Uh,-
John Holme: Could we, uh, one minute, let me--
[chuckling]
LeRoi Jones: -not by trampling the faces of the poor?
Speaker 11: Oh.
John Holme: Uh, let me just interrupt to say that, uh, we'll try to keep some order here. Because I think any questions that you have to put you can put in an orderly way. And if you don't, I'll have to ask you not to put it.
LeRoi Jones: Well, let me ask him a question.
John Holme: Go ahead and ask him.
Speaker 12: Why do you think-- What kind of job do you have, sir? This is just an honest question, and not made to get you angry.
LeRoi Jones: Uh--
Speaker 12: You don't have any job? How do you support yourself?
Speaker 11: Yeah.
John Holme: Let's- let's- let's not conduct-
LeRoi Jones: Forget it. [chuckles]
John Holme: - a- let's not- let's not conduct a cross, uh,-
Speaker 12: I just wanna know-
John Holme: -during the interview.
Speaker 12: -why he thought he was better qualified to have the job he has, than, say, some other Black man walking the street without a job? I just wanna know. Are you specially qualified? Did God make you better qualified?
John Holme: Uh, could we go on, uh, could we go on now to, uh, another question? Is there any other?
Speaker 13: Yeah.
John Holme: Yes, please.
Speaker 13: Why was your piece turned down by the New York Times?
John Holme: Why-why was your piece turned down by the New York Times? What that is--
LeRoi Jones: Ask the gentleman next to you, he knows.
John Holme: He says, ask the gentleman next to you, he can tell you.
LeRoi Jones: The same reaction, Lewis Funke probably had the same, uh, uh, reaction that this gentleman here had. He got excited and started saying, "Never mind," and things like that. Same thing, you know. Now, well--
John Holme: Another question, please. Yes, please.
Speaker 14: [unintelligible 00:23:52] and in my understanding of your paper is that fascism and Americanism are synonymous.
LeRoi Jones: No.
Speaker 14: Is that the correct--
LeRoi Jones: Americanism is a little worse.
Speaker 14: Uh,-
LeRoi Jones: Americanism is worse 'cause [unintelligible 00:24:04]--
John Holme: -just one-one sec. Let me repeat the question.
LeRoi Jones: I don't know. I don't know, that would probably be, you know, up to you to explain that. I have some ideas about it, you know. [laughter] Yeah, I have some ideas.
Speaker 14: Like what?
LeRoi Jones: Like, you know, well, like the gesture in the direction of capital G good or something like that, or, uh, expanding your consciousness in a kind of casual backhanded way, or like, availing yourself of the easiest way into what you think of as some kind of change, but not quite understanding what that change is. Or just being as you said, good-- men of goodwill. And men of goodwill would do that, go to hear the enemy. You know, it's a-
Speaker 15: That's a [crosstalk]
LeRoi Jones: -it's a kind of corny point, you know.
Speaker 15: [unintelligible 00:24:53] question is, does that apply to you? Are you a- are you a good guy in the enemy camp telling us what's going to happen to us? How do you [unintelligible 00:24:59]
LeRoi Jones: No, no. [laughter] No, this is America in the sense that where I've grown up, you know, it's always been, you say we're a minority. I've always been faced with this kind of thing, like a lot of, like, white faces who are ready to tell you what you're thinking, and why you're incorrect in your assumptions. Always, all my life, I've been faced with that, friend.
Speaker 15: Okay.
LeRoi Jones: You look like the principal in high school.
[laughter]
John Holme: Yes, please.
Speaker 16: Mr., uh, Jones, would you [unintelligible 00:25:25] what is your general feeling about Black Muslims?
John Holme: What is- what is your feelings about the Black Muslims?
Speaker 17: [unintelligible 00:25:34]
LeRoi Jones: I thought they were a religion. I'm not a religious man, um, you know. I thought they were a religious organization, you know. They-- I don't think they're any more, uh, if you're talking about racists, I don't think they're any more racist than the Methodist Church of America in that sense. I mean, the white method- or white Presbyterian, or Episcopal Church, you know. The Muslim's, uh, version of social history of America is quite correct, but I think perhaps, their solution to, uh, you know, uh, contemporary American, uh, social frictions is-is, uh, maybe unrealistic. I don't think, uh, Charlie's gonna give them any land. They would put 'em in the Grand Canyon before they gave 'em two or three states. I believe that.
Speaker 18: Canyon, well preserved.
LeRoi Jones: Pardon? Preserving it for them probably.
John Holme: Mm, mm. [laughter] I was just about to say. Any other?
Speaker 19: [crosstalk]
John Holme: Um, I-I just wanna put a question. Um, Mr. Jones, you take the, uh, what we might call the exterminationist-
LeRoi Jones: No.
John Holme: -position on this matter.
LeRoi Jones: [unintelligible 00:26:37]
John Holme: Uh, uh, well, then, uh, uh, you quoted yourself then incorrectly. Uh, but I think that's pretty much in your paper. Uh, uh, the sense of it at any rate, and if that is so, is it really your feeling that there is no, uh, possibility or you see none of-of, uh, some, uh, modus vivendi, a live and let live, uh, arrangement between the Black and the white man?
LeRoi Jones: Well, it's not just in America, you know, like, uh--
John Holme: Let's talk about America.
LeRoi Jones: Oh, but, wait, no. Wait, wait a minute, let's talk about the whole world then we'll talk about America. You will not let the people in the Congo live, you will not let the people in Vietnam live, you will not let the people in Latin America live, you know?
John Holme: Well, can we talk about America now?
LeRoi Jones: The majority of the people in the world are Chinese, number one, you know, and-and you say the world opinion is against the atom- the Chinese having an atomic bomb when the Chinese are, you know, one out of every four people is Chinese. What do you-- What kind of reasoning is that? The Americans go in and bomb North Vietnam and-and-and-and give you some story about retaliation when they're not even supposed to be there. And one of your own Congressmen or senators, what's his name from, uh, Wayne Morris, says repeatedly that if you continue with this war, that the white man will be hated throughout the world for 200, 300 years, things like that. This is coming from Wayne Morris, not from what you think of as some kind of emotionally, uh, emotional assertion by some young Black writers. This came from Wayne Morris, who said that.
John Holme: Can we talk about America now?
LeRoi Jones: Wait a minute, let me talk about the Congo.
Speaker 20: Yeah.
LeRoi Jones: And then you drop people out of the heavens, and kill these people, and throw 'em in rivers and chop off their heads, and then bring back that old story about nuns. Who would rape a nun? Now, wait a minute, that's really absurd. [laughter] And to try to claim a humanitarian, you know, humanitarian point of view behind that., that's taxes anybody's, you know, uh, uh, reasoning. America you want? Okay? No, the only thing, it's getting worse in America rather than better. The more tokens, the more, uh, tokens that you try to extend to some Black man setting up a kind of special cadre, or a kind of gulf of middle-class Negros to protect the, uh, the power structure from say, the rage of the poor Negro, the worse the situation gets.
People think about Martin Luther King, et cetera, and the- and the sit-ins as being the most, uh, uh, articulate, uh, uh, articulate, uh, demonstration of, uh, uh, a Negro descent, when you don't understand that Martin Luther King and those college students represent middle-class Negro aspirations. And the most-most Negros in the United States are neither middle-class nor are they college students. And-and the great majority of Black men in this country, in this society are not being dealt with even in that way. They're being dealt with, uh, uh, more, more-
[clearing throat]
LeRoi Jones: -harshly, you know, and there is no real, uh, kind of choice for them because you force it on them every day. If you go in Harlem, you go in Harlem, walk down 125th Street and you see like 100 cops standing on that corner, and you tell me what kind of context that is for a-a rational discussion about ways to end depression. You tell me that, you know.
John Holme: Do you- do you think that, uh, most of this mass of Negroes, uh, whom you've just referred, feel the way you do about, uh, Martin Luther King?
LeRoi Jones: Martin Luther King? Well, I, you know, the only thing I said about Martin Luther King is he doesn't, you know, reflect the wishes of, uh, the majority of Negroes. And I think that the, you know, I think the average B-, uh, Black man on the street would tell you pretty much that, you know. 'Cause he knows-
John Holme: Mm-hmm.
LeRoi Jones: -if he goes to jail, he can't be calling up from a cell, and he can't be talking to Lyndon Johnson, and he can't be getting out the next day. You know, they realize that, you know.
Speaker 21: I think that does [unintelligible 00:30:37]
Speaker 22: [unintelligible 00:30:37]
John Holme: Uh, there's just, uh, the gentleman in the back who hasn't put a question yet. Yes, Willy?
Willy: Uh, Mr. Jones, it seems to me that your message to the white man who thinks of himself as a man of goodwill is, stop kidding yourself, you're really no better than a Ku Kluxer. Is that an unfair statement of your attitude, or do you have a different message for the white man here [crosstalk]?
LeRoi Jones: No, that's- that's- that's a fair, you know, paraphrase of it.
John Holme: The paraphrase was, uh, that, uh, the white man is no better than a Ku Kluxer. And Mr. Jones agreed that that, uh, pretty well described his view.
LeRoi Jones: Worse, actually. Worse.
John Holme: Uh, actually, he thinks the white man is even worse. Yes?
Speaker 24: Uh, Mr. Jones, I'd like to-- If you were a societal counselor, and, uh, Mr. Charlie came to you and said, "How can I save my neck?" what would you tell him?
John Holme: If you were a society counselor, [chuckles] and someone came to you, ask you, "How do I save my neck?" what would you tell them?
LeRoi Jones: I would say, "Give me all your money and get out of the country." [laughter] That's what I'd tell them.
John Holme: Here's a chance, come right up here now.
[laughter]
Adele Nathan: I asked about--
John Holme: Uh, just one minute, you haven't been recognized. Uh, I have someone behind who hasn't put a question. You're next, Adele.
Speaker 26: Well, I'm a guest here. I wanted to know can I ask--
John Holme: Nothing wrong with that. Yes, go ahead.
Speaker 26: I'd like to ask Mr. Jonnes, among white men, do you distinguish between a fascist and an anti-fascist?
John Holme: Among white men do you distinguish between a fascist and an anti-fascist?
LeRoi Jones: Well, I'll tell you. Now, the anti-fascists beat the fascists in the Second World War, correct? Is that right? Now, for instance, in the Philippines, the Americans organized or took over a Filipino Liberation Front called, say, the Hawks, to organize them as an anti-fascist guerrilla group. Now, the minute this fascist, the Japanese were beaten, then the anti-fascists reestablished the same kind of colonial policies in the Philippines, that the Japanese would have put in anyway. The same kind. In fact, it's worse because the Filipinos are much less interested in having a white man tell them what to do than having a Japanese telling them what to do. Much less.
Speaker 26: Today, we're told today there are no anti-fascists in America.
LeRoi Jones: Oh, there're probably all kinds of anti-fascist, but I'm saying fascism has been made obsolete by America. That's what I said before. Fascism, there's no fascism. It's Americanism. America is the blight on the world. The cancer on the world is America.
Speaker 26: You still don't answer my question.
LeRoi Jones: All right. Ask it.
Speaker 26: You say America is fascist?
LeRoi Jones: No, I said America made fascisit- fascist and fascism obsolete. America and America-- Americanism is the word, not fascism. Americanism made fascism obsolete.
Speaker 26: All right, [crosstalk]
LeRoi Jones: Anti-Americanism is much better.
Speaker 26: [unintelligible 00:33:48] Other than that, are there any anti-fascists in America? And by Americans, [unintelligible 00:33:56] Maybe I'm [unintelligible 00:33:58].
LeRoi Jones: Oh, groovy. Great.
Speaker 26: All right?
LeRoi Jones: Beautiful.
Speaker 26: See? There are some.
LeRoi Jones: Beautiful.
Speaker 26: There are some.
John Holme: Yes, please. Go ahead. Do you want to put your question?
Speaker 27: I have a question. If what Mr. Jones dreams of comes to pass, do we become the colony?
LeRoi Jones: What do I dream of?
John Holme: Do we be- do we become the what?
Speaker 27: The Blacks defeat the whites, will the whites be colonized?
John Holme: If the Blacks defeat the whites, will the whites then become colonized, I suppose, by the Blacks?
LeRoi Jones: Whose interested? Whose interested?
[chuckling]
LeRoi Jones: I mean, really, that's a kind of, you know, that's a kind of adolescent question. You mean, you think that people who have been subjected all their lives for 300 years have been subjected to fools who can ask naive questions like that, do you think that we don't know enough?
Speaker 27: No, I don't.
LeRoi Jones: All right. Okay. Do you think somehow you are better equipped to run the world, you lady?
Speaker 27: No, no.
LeRoi Jones: All right.
Speaker 27: Neither is [crosstalk].
LeRoi Jones: All right. But I know my mother is better equipped even to tell about the world than you are.
Speaker 27: Oh, okay, okay.
Speaker 28: [laughs] [unintelligible 00:34:54]
Speaker 27: [unintelligible 00:34:56]?
Speaker 29: Yes, yes.
Speaker 27: [unintelligible 00:34:58]
John Holme: Yes, please, go ahead.
Speaker 30: I would like to ask Mr. Jones how he feels toward the middle-class Black man, the Black man who, in white parlance, perhaps hasn't made-- Who went to college, who has a good job, who lives in the midst of a semi-integrated community or even a white community. How does he feel toward him?
John Holme: Uh, Mr. Jones, how do you feel toward the middle-class Black man?
LeRoi Jones: Well, I wish you first would replete- repeat that that lady's answer to me. She said, "Go to hell," on, uh, over there.
Speaker 27: Yeah, [crosstalk]
LeRoi Jones: I wanted her to hear that.
Speaker 31: And I think you owe her an apology.
LeRoi Jones: But, uh,-
John Holme: That's enough, please.
Speaker 27: Yeah.
LeRoi Jones: -uh, this, uh, gentleman here said something about--
John Holme: You're- you're not obliged to [unintelligible 00:35:39]-
LeRoi Jones: What did I hear? Middle-class, Black man.
John Holme: -nor-nor to remain.
[chuckling]
Speaker 27: [unintelligible 00:35:43]
[chuckling]
John Holme: Well, I'm not asking. I'm leaving it to you-
Speaker 27: It don't even matter.
John Holme: -to de-- I'm asking to you to decide.
LeRoi Jones: See what happens when you integrate these luncheons, lady?
John Holme: Go ahead.
[laughter]
Speaker 27: That's why I'm requesting [unintelligible 00:35:57]
LeRoi Jones: Well, you said about the middle-class Black man. Well, they're, most of them are traitors in a sense, you know? Uh, they are the class that the white man really tries to present as his version of utopia, as his tiny version of utopia.
[coughing]
LeRoi Jones: A handful of Black people who somehow identify with the white man, who somehow think of themselves as white men. Um, who somehow think of themselves as separated from their brothers and sisters, and most of them are traitors. Uh--
Speaker 30: Do they know that they are traitors? Do you think they do? [crosstalk]
LeRoi Jones: Well, I'd say the sickest ones are about almost like the white man because if they really knew the extent of horror that they have put on the world, they would have no other choice but to murder themselves. If they really could, if you really could believe you are evil, if you really could understand that there are people all over the world who think of you, no matter whether you're sitting on a beach, you know, wiggling your toes, or watching television, or patting some colored girl on the head,-
Speaker 30: Right.
LeRoi Jones: -that there are people all over the world who think of you as evil. If you could really accept that, and it really sear into your brain, you might have to knock yourself off. And the same way with these Black middle-class people, they might have to do the same thing, you know.
John Holme: Adele Nathan.
Adele: I wanna ask an adolescent question. [laughs]
[coughing]
Adele: It's very complimentary because I know adolescents. [laughter] Uh, I wanna know if Mr. Jones considers this as an example of what he's talking about, the fact that not a single Black, though I must say most-most of 'em aren't very Black, member of the Overseas Press Club did not come to hear him.
Speaker 31: Yeah.
Adele: How does he feel about that? It's only the white members. Oh, there is, there are two, uh, gentlemen right over there by--
John Holme: How-how do you feel that not a single, uh, Black member of the Overseas Press Club has come to hear you but only the white members?
LeRoi Jones: Well? How many of them are there first?
Adele: 11.
LeRoi Jones: Okay.
Adele: I never count them. I'm color-blind. I hate--
LeRoi Jones: Really? That's too bad. [laughter] That's too bad. [laughter] I don't know. I don't know wha- anything about them, why they didn't come. I can't say.
Adele: Don't you equate them with, uh, you know, they're- they've got to make do.
LeRoi Jones: You think so?
Adele: Basically.
LeRoi Jones: Mm-hmm. You mean they- because they have to walk around, uh, uh, like associating with you, and like secretly hating themselves and hating their Blackness, that they still haven't made?
Adele: I don't know as well. I'm asking you.
LeRoi Jones: Well, no, I was just asking you my way, you know.
Adele: All right. Oh, that was a-a question you put to me?
LeRoi Jones: Yeah.
Adele: I don't know. [bell chimes]
LeRoi Jones: Mm. You color blind, that's right.
[laughter]
John Holme: Uh, yes, please.
Speaker 32: I would like to ask Mr. Jones if he considers every successful Negro of the day, and writer, and businessman are members of the so-called middle class, and they should hate themselves because they are, uh, attaining that terrible thing called success?
John Holme: Do you consider every successful Negro businessman, a writer, author, uh, a member of the middle class, and therefore, should suffer the kind of fate that you would condemn them to?
LeRoi Jones: No, what are-- You putting it a little different way. No, what I said is usually, a Black man who has made his way into the mainstream of American society is somehow a traitor and somehow hates himself, maybe down in the core of his psyche for having become estranged from the majority of his brothers. Now, when there is a Black man who has made it somehow and continues to say this, say, eg, Paul Robeson, you know, for instance, uh, they have ways of taking care of 'em. Just like they'll have ways of taking care of me. I mean, it's not, uh, you know-- I know what's happened, you know, I've seen- I've seen what's happened to these people. Either you gonna come in and be, uh, you know, Sammy Davis Jr. or something, or they're going to take care of you one way or another.
Speaker 32: Who's going to take care?
LeRoi Jones: Uh, you or--
[chuckling]
LeRoi Jones: Because you lend your support. Look, no-now you-you tell me this. Now, do you-- What do you think of the Congo? I mean, you tell me about the Congo, or what do you think about-- You're talking about that they blow up those statues and all that crap, and, uh, you know, the Statue of Liberty. The Statue of Liberty should be melted down and sold, and the money given to raise buildings uptown. But nobody's, you know-- What is the big stink made about those four little girls that were shot and killed in Birmingham? Uh, they made more stink about Schwerner and Goodman because they were white, and they had sacrificed themselves as white martyrs for the Black cause, than they made for those four kids, or Medgar Evers, or Emmett Till, or even my grandfather.
I mean, [chuckles] there are a lot of Black people dying every day under- in the more of this society that go unnoticed. But these two white boys go down there and get themselves knocked off, and right away, it's a great thing, you know. I mean, no disrespect intended, of course.
John Holme: Mm-hmm.
LeRoi Jones: Yeah.
John Holme: In other words, you don't- you don't see the problem, I mean, you don't have that problem.
LeRoi Jones: What problem?
John Holme: A-a problem of a difference between the, uh, making a political point and-and producing what you-
LeRoi Jones: No, no.
John Holme: -you'd consider to be art or play?
LeRoi Jones: No. If you described a life of a average Black man in America, you have made a political point. You're not rolling logs. All you have to do is describe it with some amount of precision, and you've made a political point. There's no great, uh, bringing the- bringing the propaganda from outside the world or anything like that. No. It exists the-the context that this- that this-this situation exists in is sufficient to provide a political paraphrase of it, you know, or a socio-economic paraphrase of it, if you like, you know. You're not-- I'm not rolling logs, the thing is there, the situation is there.
All you have to do is write it exactly as it is, and then people accuse you of being this or that. But they don't accuse themselves of living in a society where this thing goes on, you see? And if you are trying to reflect exactly, and with a great deal of precision, the life of the world as it's going on, as you see it, then that's sufficient.
[coughing]
John Holme: Yes, please.
Speaker 33: Um-ho-how do you react or explain this phenomenon of, uh, white people who, uh, certainly see themselves as men of goodwill, or coming to hear you pay money to hear you tell them how miserable they are and how doomed they are? Does this have any effect or reaction on you?
John Holme: How do you explain this phenomenon of white people, uh, who even come here to pay to hear you, uh, speak about eliminating them?
Speaker 33: Yeah.
[00:43:08] [END OF AUDIO]

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