Arizona Western College - El Matador Yearbook (Yuma, AZ)

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2,4 .. ' ,val-'-1-rrn.7r --'., TiWW . I A 1 , . , ,, mfy in ' of the Nixon, ling in 3 hun- 5 to do lllilllde l from lI'l play fin get lIl the that if IO, he 2. How tn has? : price is the n love :ll you talian. Look Lramp. len he :came so he le had ,d now tlly in uently 5 fears zars. I did to gfy for ut his artha? ? And f do it t work ith us, mt tO, worry ng six gOt to rllfltfyfa ts it 15 ,Y that lt die. s. The Ountry :ide at White create jrhivk 1.1 ., 1 s L v I 0 I J I 5 1. J.- Diek Gregory lecture February 23, 1972

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,g,1,ggm....::::.2i::: '2x 'ft -...U ' ' 'u. '1'!,:p. ........,. ., , yv ,, .. El Matador: Throughout your lecture yOU Spoke In generalities and you were vague at times. Why do yOU use so many generalities? Gregory: Like what? n El Matador: For instance, the numbers you cited. You kept using the statistic 98 per cent this, 98 per cent that quite a bit. Where do you get your figures? Gregory: You mean 98 per cent of everybody Wh0 drinks alcohol in America started out drinking milk? El Matador: Yes. Where do you get the 98 per cent statistic from? Your alcohol-milk parallel is used quite a bit, you know. 166 Gregory: I said 99 per cent. Documented evidence. That was in Newsweek -magazine. Anybody can get that. Let me say that in this interview, I hope the things that you didn't read don't have to make mine vague generalities. El Matador: No, sir, except that your repeated refer- ' ences to these statistics made us wonder where you had obtained your information. Gregory: It was 78 percent of all the drivers that get killed from drunken driving: if you listened to my speech, it was 98 once, 99 once, 78 once. Third highest cause of death in this country comes from sclerosis of the liver. The first highest cause comes from cancer, second comes from heart trouble. These are facts anybody can get, if you expose yourselfto them. El Matador: Do you think that the black man will ever become socially equal to the white man? Gregory: Definitely. El Matador: Why do you say so? Gregory: It,s heading that way now because we are -not going to permit anything else other than that. He could keep me unsocially equal here as long as I per- mitted it. Once I stop permitting it, it is over. El Matador: The white man has a role to play in this because he is part of the total population. What role -'does the white man exactly have in getting the black man to be equal to the white man? Does he have a role or is .it just the black acting alone? Gregory: He has a role as he wants it, but we've no- 'ticed that he wrote the Constitution, not us. And it seems like we are the ones that have to implement it. Itis just like if you depend on me to feed you to the extent that you get to believing that if I don't feedyou, you can't eat. And then one day when you decide that if I don't feed you, you gonna go on out there and get your own food, then I realize that I ain't got nothing to do with con- trolling if you gonna starve to death or not. The only -way I can control that is when I can make you believe that your livelihood and 'everything depends on me. -'And once you decide that it don't, itis a different ball game. And if for some reason I change my attitude to- ward you, once I realize if you don't have to depend on me for survival. And that's what seems to be happening in this country today. But when we rally behind our blackness, there is more integration in this country in the last six months under Dick Nixon than in any of the Democratic Administrations not because of Dick Nixon, but in spite of Dick Nixon. And what's happening in this country today is because of my attitude. For a hun- dred years we have been depending on white folks to do it. Because when I flex my muscles, it's when his attitude changes. His white police never stopped them from lynching me. And so consequently, the whites can play 5 terrific role in this country. You know, they can get it over night. Not just for us but for everybody in the country who hasn't got this Cequalityj. El Matador: The white man is obviously afraid that if he lets you have the freedom that you're entitled to, he 'will not be in the same position that he was before. I-Iow do you overcome this apparent fear the white man has? Gregory: That's the way Nature works. El Matador: Yes, but how do you overcome it? Gregory: You don't.That's a condition and the price he has to pay for that condition. You see, this is the only white man in the history of man that fell in love with his skin. Every white man in the world will tell you I'm an Irishman, I'm an Englishman, I'm an Italian. But in this country, the cat say he a white man. Look where he came from, he wasn't nothing but a tramp. He wasnit nothing but a jailbird, a criminal when he came here. Kicked him out of all of Europe and he came here to settle. He had nothing going for him so he reached back and got us. And the only reason he had his head together was because he had a nigger. And now when he ain't got no more niggers, man he really in trouble. That's what his thing is. And so consequently what is happening now is we can't worry about his fears anymore. Because I see how he acted with his fears. I see what he did to the lunch counter, I see what he did to the buses, and so what is happening in this country for a hundred years we've been busy worrying about his attitude. Why and how is this going to affect Martha? Instead of wondering about how do it affect me? And that's the way it's going from here on end. How do it affect me? If it had been different when I tried to work with him hand in hand: if he could have dealt with us, come on brother let's talk about it. He don't want to, so now I got to worry about my thing. I got to worry about them black folks in the ghettos, that's dying six years younger than white folks in this country. I got to worry about the infant mortality rate in this country, which is twice as high in the black communities as it is in the white community. For every one white baby that dies in childbirth, therels two black babies that die. I can't even worry about his fwhite manj fears. The highest suicide rate of any race of people in this country is the Indian. The Indians start committing suicide at SIX years old. That's what I'm worried about, not white man's fears. I'm worried about the conditions that create .these monsters. And so. consequently, you know, I think ': :1:.' f1gf,11arWZ.T f'g-W:.::,-yr-5'-L-L fp-ya-7'-1-9 , , ,V . . , Q 7 Q :fw-'--'..-.txztzixx23'-'ll-i7l!r:rl7::::!iEif5?2'iell1.2'.ar1:-:ly-like-:La.4z:..tir..--.grew.....f:..: -.:...:'g:- .. .i ., , I .

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....:g-g,,g- L :'sQtz'4sLffsQf3S5z5ggb,f' 55.133-F' Ufrv?f'?EfH+Tif? if' ? 555 . -v Q, v . 4 Q. if-4.i'. I' -. ua Lf: .Linn 1 , L P ' ' 'Lil 334' ,L ' 1 .. ' noun 4 ' 4 Y I 'I? 'f. 0 Jfuia ' ' ' ' L' ' It's like black folks in the south. One day we looked around and say man, 10,000 black folks turn the corner and the cats cut two dogs loose on us and we run. Come tomorrow we not going to run. That dog ain't gonna eat but about two folks after 10 people, his jaws get tired. Sheriff cut them two dogs loose, man, when we didn't run, you should have seen them dogs run back and jump on the sheriff's lap. But the fear of getting bitten is in your head. And the fear of jails, there's not each jails to put people in, once we start getting not scared of jail. They show you a jail, they show you jail movies all your life. See cats in dungeons, cats getting beat. You know that's to plant their thing, and once that thing don't work, there is trouble. They don't know how to act. Washington, D.C. white kids really lay something over the police. There ain't never hit nobody with a billy club. And when they get ready to draw the billy club back, there's a white kid stick his head under so he can get his lick. Ain't never had that happen to him. He canlt get that billy club back fast enough before the cat stuck his head under there. Cause when they pull his billy club up and shoot tear gas man, they use to running. The Democratic Convention, they got through shooting this tear gas and when they ran out of tear gas, there was still a wave of kids coming at lem. Tell 'em about the whole world looking. They couldn't comprehend that, at all. And so I would say definitely there is a tremendous change in attitude that you can see. El Matador: All this you talk about is for the better? Gregory: Yes. Definitely. El Matador:You say there will be a problem when all these kids get their heads together. The problem will be. . . Gregory: Throughout the system. El Matador: How do you define the black revolution? Gregory: First let me tell you what revolution is. Revo- lution is controlled by Nature, not by man. Revolution is nothing but an extension of evolution. Evolution which is the gradual naturalistic change after long periods of time, leading to revolution, which is quick change. That's what is happening in the black community today. The evolution leading to revolution. It's like the woman who gets pregnant, the first nine months is evolution, and when the water bag breaks, it's revolution. And when that happens ain't nobody holding it. You find a woman nine months pregnant and get all the National Guards- men on the face of this earth and keep her legs crossed and keep the baby in her. It's the forces of Nature that man can't deal with that at all. El Matador: Is the black revolution going to be a vio- lent one, or is it going to be a vocal one? Gregory:Well, that depends. Like the woman having the baby. If she can have it right, it'll be a peaceful one, but if the National Guard crosses her legs, it'll be a vio- lent one. But Nature don't deal in terms of that. She deals in terms of situations and whichever one you deal with, she comes out. It's quite natural to be violent white lfolks, but put a nigger in the Army and they teach them how to throw hand grenades and go all over the world shooting folks. And then they ask if Ilm gonna misuse you, I ain't gonna teach you to use the bazooka. And if I do, I got to be out of my mind. All them niggers gonna go over there to Vietnam, throwing dynamite that's why they are shooting up all them white lieutenants over there. There ain't a man that stupid, cat go all the way to Vietnam and guaranteed a better form of life than his own mama got in America. You don't think he ainlt gonna come back into the same thing? All black leaders that's been sitting around talking about non-violence, we couldn't tell them black folks not to go to war cause if they didn't go, they we was communists and put them niggers in jail. So they went and learned how to kill good. Now, how can you turn it on and it off? Very Hard, very difficult to do. Very difficult for me to take you hunting and teach you how to shoot a bear and a deer and when I come home and attack you mommie, your wife, your loved ones, tell me you ain't gonna shoot me? I'm the one who taught you how to shoot. And if I'm stupid enough to know I,m gonna misue you, your wife, your family and your momma, and don't have enough wisdom not to teach you how to shoot, then there's something wrong with me. I El Matador: Do you think Shirley Chisholmfwill become the first black President? Gregory: Shirley ain't running for President. Have you heard her before the press? Shels running across the country to take a coalition into the Democratic Con- vention and be able to manipulate them votes. That's what she's running for. She says it 24 hours a day. She wants to get in the position to be able to say we want a black vice president, we want to put an Indian head of the public of interior. You see what happens in this country is black folks vote 98 per cent Democrat. Now we ainlt never voted no other way but that since the Depression. So when the Democrats get their little bag of tricks together they don't even have to come to us. And what she is saying is she wants to go into that con- vention saying you ain't got them Qvotesj this time. Now you gotta pass me to get to them if you want them. What's your defense budget? 55 million dollars. We want 20 per cent of that for the black community. That's what she talking about. Which means more than talking about the Presidency. Cause what she's saying is that shels going to that convention and negotiate for the oppressed people of this country. Which is very very here. Cause she donlt have no influence on the Republi- can Party because she's a Democrat. She not gonna be at the Republican Convention, she gonna be at the Democratic Convention. And she'll walk up and sayl got X amount of delegates that I will deliver to you. Now you tell me what you gonna give me? And with that, that's very important. El Matador: Thank you, Mr. Gregory. Gregory: Thank you. more fears. fears ing ir? see St go to- he ill tator. that. that J El the lJ Gr El your wast Gr that': El of yo Gr want UY Y trial had on ii 'tappl causl you knov the I can'1 ferer not 1 know ftele And El lectt G E. you G E attit pret G E you G It's lool talk ting Whc The