I Am Not Your Negro Page #2

on the American cinema scene.

Can't get him up!

We'll try to get him

on the phone

I was laying down

dreamin'...

No, it's not entirely true.

There were, for example,

Stepin Fetchit and Willie Best

and Mantan Moreland,

all of whom, rightly or wrongly,

I loathed.

It seemed to me that they lied

about the world I knew,

and debased it,

and certainly I did not know

anybody like them,

as far as I could tell.

For it also possible that

their comic, bug-eyed terror

contained the truth

concerning a terror

by which I hoped

never to be engulfed.

Yet, I had no reservations

at all concerning the terror

of the Black janitor

in They Won't Forget.

Give me police!

Give me police!

Give me...

Give me police!

I think that it was

a black actor

named Clinton Rosemond

who played this part,

and he looked

a little like my father.

I didn't do it. I didn't do it!

I didn't do it! I didn't do it!

He is terrified

because a young white girl

in this small Southern town

has been raped and murdered,

and her body has been found

upon the premises

of which he is the janitor.

Good morning, Tump.

The role

of the janitor is small,

yet the man's face

bangs in my memory until today.

- I have done nothing.

- Nobody says you have, Tom.

But they might.

The film's

icy brutality both scared me...

What for?

...and strengthened me.

Because Uncle Tom

refuses to take vengeance

in his own hands,

he was not a hero for me.

Heroes, as far as I could see,

where white,

and not merely

because of the movies,

but because of the land

in which I lived,

of which movies

were simply a reflection.

I despised

and feared those heroes

because they did take vengeance

into their own hands.

They thought vengeance

was theirs to take.

And, yes, I understood that:

my countrymen were my enemy.

I suspect that all these stories

are designed to reassure us

that no crime was committed.

We've made a legend

out of a massacre.

Leaving aside

all the physical facts

which one can quote.

Leaving aside rape or murder.

Leaving aside the bloody catalog

of oppression,

which we are, in one way,

too familiar with already,

what this does

to the subjugated

is to destroy

his sense of reality.

This means, in the case

of an American negro,

born in that

glittering republic,

and in the moment you are born,

since you don't know any better,

every stick and stone

and every face is white,

and since you have not yet

seen a mirror,

you suppose that you are too.

It comes as a great shock

around the age of five,

or six, or seven,

to discover that Gary Cooper

killing off the Indians,

when you were

rooting for Gary Cooper,

that the Indians were you.

It comes as a great shock

to discover the country,

which is your birthplace,

and to which you owe

your life and your identity,

has not, in its whole system

of reality,

evolved any place for you.

I know how to do it,

technically.

It is a matter of research

and journeys.

And with you or without you,

I will do it anyway.

I begin in September,

when I go on the road.

"The road" means

my return to the South.

It means briefly, for example,

seeing Myrlie Evers,

and the children.

Those children

who are children no longer.

It means going back to Atlanta,

to Selma, to Birmingham.

It means seeing

Coretta Scott King,

and Martin's children.

I know that Martin's daughter,

whose name I don't remember,

and Malcolm's oldest daughter,

whose name is Attalah

are both in the theatre,

and apparently are friends.

It means seeing Betty Shabazz,

Malcolm's widow,

and the five younger children.

It means exposing myself

as one of the witnesses

to the lives and deaths

of their famous fathers.

And it means much,

much more than that.

"A clod of witnesses,"

as old St. Paul once put it.

I saw Malcolm before I met him.

I was giving a lecture

somewhere in New York.

Malcolm was sitting

in the first row of the hall,

bending forward at such an angle

that his long arms

nearly caressed the ankles

of his long legs,

staring up at me.

I very nearly panicked.

I knew Malcolm only by legend,

and this legend,

since I was a Harlem street boy,

I was sufficiently astute

to distrust.

Malcolm might be the torch

that white people claim he was,

though, in general,

white America's evaluations

of these matters

would be laughable

and even pathetic

did not these evaluations

have such wicked results.

On the other hand,

Malcolm had no reason

to trust me either.

And so I stumbled

through my lecture,

with Malcolm never

taking his eyes from my face.

Don't know why

There's no sun up in the sky

Stormy weather

Since my man and I

ain't together

Keeps rainin' all the time

As a member

of the NAACP,

Medgar was investigating

the murder of a black man,

which had occurred

months before,

had shown me letters

from black people

asking him to do this,

and he had asked me

to come with him.

Raise up!

Get yourself together,

And drive that funky soul

I was terribly frightened,

but perhaps that fieldtrip

will help us define

what I mean by the word

"witness".

I was to discover that the line

which separates a witness

from an actor

is a very thin line indeed.

Nevertheless, the line is real.

I was not, for example,

a Black Muslim,

in the same way,

though for different reasons,

that I never became

a Black Panther.

Because I did not believe that

all white people were devils,

and I did not want young

black people to believe that.

I was not a member of any

Christian congregation because

I knew that they had not heard

and did not live

by the commandment,

"Love one another

as I love you."

And I was not a member

of the NAACP

because in the North,

where I grew up,

the NAACP was fatally entangled

with black class distinctions,

or illusions of the same,

which repelled

a shoe-shine boy like me.

I did not have to deal with the

criminal state of Mississippi,

hour by hour and day by day,

to say nothing

of night after night.

I did not have to sweat

cold sweat after decisions

involving hundreds

of thousands of lives.

I was not responsible

for raising money,

or deciding how to use it.

I was not responsible

for strategy

controlling prayer-meetings,

marches,

petitions,

voting registration drives.

I saw the Sheriffs,

the Deputies,

the Storm Troopers,

more or less in passing.

I was never in town to stay.

This was sometimes

hard on my morale,

but I had to accept,

as time wore on,

that part of my responsibility,

as a witness,

was to move as largely

and as freely as possible.

To write the story,

and to get it out.

We should all be concerned

with but one goal,

the eradication of crime.

The Federal Bureau of

Investigation is as close to you

as your nearest telephone.

It seeks to be your protector

in all matters

within its jurisdiction.

It belongs to you.

White people

are astounded by Birmingham.

Black people aren't.

White people are endlessly

demanding to be reassured

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