Free Angela and All Political Prisoners Page #2

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We have to talk about being radical.

And radical means, etymologically,

you know, to get things at their root.

It's very interesting. The white people

have been called radicals for a long time.

And black people have been called

militants, you know?

As if black people can't be radicals, too.

But if we don't fight now,

we'll never be able to put into practice

that slogan

which, I think, crystallizes

what we've been talking about,

and that is all the power to the people.

I was invited to apply

for this position at UCLA.

They needed someone

who was trained in continental philosophy

and who could teach Marxism.

I decided to accept the job.

There had been an article

written by a man who had joined

the Communist Party,

but, actually, he was an FBI agent.

And then after that,

a well-known reactionary reporter

in Northern California

wrote a scathing article about me.

And that's when all hell broke loose.

Yesterday was the first day

of the fall term at UCLA,

and philosophy professor, Angela Davis,

was on her way to teach her first class

amid controversy,

for Miss Davis admitted that she is

a member of the Communist Party.

And the regents who run the university

decided, because of that,

she should not be allowed to teach.

For UCLA, it has

become the crisis of the year.

I had known Angela as a child.

I went down there,

and I hadn't seen her in years,

as we went different ways.

And I went down there

and I asked her, you know,

if I could be of help and so forth.

Her first lecture drew 2,000 students

and was on the philosophy

of Frederick Douglass.

What was your reaction to the lecture?

I think she is a superb lecturer.

You can learn so much.

As I infer from just what she said today,

it was terrific.

Well, I think she's trying to overthrow

our system of government,

and she admits that.

And while I think it is bad to limit

freedom of speech of any group,

because it limits democracy,

I think it is better

to have a limited democracy

that will last for a long, long time,

than complete democracy,

complete freedom,

that lasts only for a brief period.

If I were able to deliver that coherent,

that beautiful

and that intellectual a lecture

on my first time,

to how many thousands of people

there were in that place,

I'd feel like a superstar.

The woman is an admitted member

of the Communist Party.

She also, in her letter to Chancellor Young,

indicated that she felt

that the only way we could bring about

the social change that's necessary today

is through violence and militancy.

I don't think we need that on campus,

and so I'm for getting rid of her.

The regents seem intent

on meting out punishments

which concur with the fascist tendencies

of the times.

The sole reason they give

for their intention to fire me

is my membership in the Communist Party.

I became chancellor of UCLA in 1968.

The main issue at stake was,

I'll use a catchphrase, "academic freedom."

I think that was my main concern,

that while it was appropriate

to make sure that a person was not

misusing or abusing

his or her appointment

as a member of the faculty,

that a person's political views

should not be of concern

with regard to his or her appointment.

But my own personal opinion,

and that's all it can be,

I have no evidence otherwise,

my own personal opinion is

that this entire incident,

starting with the hiring of Miss Davis,

was a deliberate provocation.

It's probably true,

Reagan believed that she was dangerous.

That she would use her bully-pulpit

in the faculty

to indoctrinate students, to try to

win students over to communism,

to try to engage in activities

which would be harmful to the university.

Part of the policy of Governor Reagan

was really to do everything possible

to repress the radical political movement

as they saw it developing.

The Anti-War Movement,

Students for a Democratic Society,

the emergence of the Black Panther Party.

And Angela becomes a symbol of all

of those movements at the same time.

There was no precedent in my life

for this kind of public exposure.

And then, of course,

there were all of the threats.

You know, I was told to go back to Africa,

then I was told to go back to Russia.

And often times, I received

letters saying that

I was gonna be dead by sundown.

And so, my life completely changed.

I bought my first gun

because I really feared that

I might be in a situation where

either the police, or agents

or other people would take my life.

What they're doing to her

is an exaggerated form

of what happens every day

to black people in this country.

And they're saying

to those communities through her

that, you know, people have to

straighten up and fly right

and be good n*ggers, you know?

I think the first thing we have to do

is certainly make sure that we do have

some unity in the black community,

so that when a sister like that stands up,

that they don't wipe her out as one person,

that they have to wipe out

more than one person.

Being a revolutionary,

some of it was just being young

and being romantic and...

I don't know that we had a real idea

of, you know,

how bloody a revolution could really be.

I was involved

in hundreds of peace marches,

and, I mean, peace marches

against the war in Vietnam

that ended up with the

police beating people up

and tear gassing people.

Malcolm X gets assassinated,

you might expect that 'cause he was

talking about the ballot or the bullet.

But Martin Luther King, Robert Kennedy.

There was the beginnings of, on both sides,

a sense that this isn't gonna

be settled at the ballot box or in debates.

This is gonna be war.

Los Angeles, four and a half years

after the rebellion in Watts,

300 Los Angeles policemen

are involved in a raging

gun battle for nearly five hours.

They are assaulting an office

of the Black Panther Party,

the most powerful militant

black organization in the country.

It is apparent that the undeclared war

between the police and the Panthers

has reached alarming proportions.

Party members at 30 chapters

across the country

have stockpiled arsenals of

automatic weapons, shotguns, pistols

and homemade bombs.

Vice President Agnew

has called the Panthers,

"A completely irresponsible,

anarchistic group of criminals."

FBI director Hoover has called them,

"The greatest danger to the internal

security of the country."

Did you know that this was gonna happen?

How was I to know the police were going

to break into the Panther office

at 4:
30 in the morning?

They obviously didn't broadcast it.

How did you hear about it?

We got a call from someone who was inside,

who said that the police had come

and had attacked their office.

And what do you plan to do?

Do you plan to act as an intermediary

or in any capacity like that?

- I'll do anything I can.

- Thank you.

It was as if we were living in a state of war.

In a state of siege.

For us, during that period, the

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