Transcripts For CSPAN3 Oral Histories 20140628

Figured out before other people had. I within a day or so said i can kill two words with one stone. I can go to newark, do a little bit of law school that summer im sorry, after that summer. If i did not like newark, i would go on my way. If i did like that, i would call that my home and the law degree would be applied there. As a workout, i did like newark. Thats how i came to go there. At the end of the semester and graduated. My parents wanted a formal graduation. , and went their sake home and came back up on the bus to newark. You just mentioned that was already looking past through all the work in the south to a new type of phase or movement. Respects, newark would be a place where the movement came and found an urban context. Did you explicitly understand that was your project when you came . The movement had already come north. I just did not think about it as being the movement. What i was doing in harlem, trying to build a playground in 1964, that was part of the movement. The Northern Student Movement was part of the movement. I did not see me as part of that until tom brought it home. Been formed to do the same thing. To take on what is going on in the north, because its harder, its more about class than race. That was the foundation that brought them here. These young people in the students for democratic society, they understood marxism. When you apply the analysis, they thought that racism could be overcome if we adjusted the class background to include more people in the economy of this country. Newark based on getting people to get jobs. They werecame here, supposed to be working with the clinton hill neighborhoods corporation, which was an older group. Mostly jewish. They had been in clinton hill, to the south of here, for many years since the 1950s. Fighting regressive causes. Urban renewal, making sure there was no discrimination against blacks. They were an integrated group of mostly white, jewish homeowners with some black homeowners as well. Had a workingclass basis at one time or another, but they were professionals. It was an interesting mix of people. To make a long story short, the sts sds people thought they were working with poor people, and they werent. There was a split. By the time i got here, tom hayden and the other sds people had moved to lower clinton hill, where there were fewer homeowners, practically no homeowners, and a lot of tenants. And mostly blacks. Mostly black working class and poor living in the same neighborhood. They had already organized people when i got here. They had been here a year, and had a base of several hundred people, maybe 200 people on several blocks. That they came which did notployment, that work. People did not want to talk about their employment status. People had jobs, they were just underpaying jobs. It was underemployment. It was the beginning of the era of the working poor. We did not know it at that time, but thats what it was. What was on peoples minds was Police Brutality, and landlords, and store owners catching people. Gouging people. The store owners would up the credit. It was a bait and switch in terms of the product you got. That is what they were doing, taking on those kinds of issues. How did you find your way into a role here . What commanded your attention . What captivated you . What drew you into all of this . You mean once i was here . I wanted to be an organizer. I saw that is what i could get from being here. The experience taught me to work through the valley of the shadow and keep a cool head. But i wanted to be an organizer. I understood class by this point. I had been talking about it and reading about it. I was ready for that challenge. How do you get black people organized in a context that is not purely racialized, but where you are not going to have people are terrorists per se but you had police who were doing it legally. Youre not going to have people who get thrown off a plantation, but people who didnt have enough money to make their way based on the job they did have. Where you dont have folks who say, you cant live here because the lawyer area was whole area was black, but the housing was so bad, in some cases, you would not want to keep your dog there. How do you fight that . I wanted to organize people to the newarkioned Community Union project. It said about this program. You would also work with the hutchins. Can you describe the range of organizations trying to begin this in new york . That is a great question. This was not the first by any means. There are people here who are already struggling against that same array of new enemy. That newly discovered array of forces that were keeping people down. So corps was one of the allies, there were various combinations of People Associated with core and other organizations. One was called anvill. There were some black labor unions and preachers who managed to stay out of the clutches. That was this. There were some white rabbis. A core demonstration protesting a lack of construction jobs at a school. The Barringer High School demonstration. We had a blackandwhite coalition that was liberal. I would call it liberal. Mostly liberal. On, theytudents came were the radicals because they were insistent upon a form of democracy that nobody was willing to allow. It was a form of democracy that have not taken root in this town. But they said let the people decide. The people of sncc met through all hours of the night. It was not one later. Although, it turns out, the leader was tom. Tom was the main man, he was the big man on campus. They were competing for that same position. They would not have said it, although it looked like it from the outside. Then there were the Community People who have their own set of standards to what they wanted to see done. Then there were people like terry jefferson. You did not do anything unless terry said had to be done. She was the office manager. , and sheessie smith and her husband were like mainstays for the organization. That was how we got all of that together. Bad landlords, roaches, a Little Police brutality. That was interesting. The Police Brutality situation, and this is more for my review of the written records as written by some of the organizers. A lot of the organizers felt po lice brutality was too volatile because it was too racial. There were white cops beating black heads. And you could not get away from that. This is something they really did not want to deal with because they could not control the emotion of the people who were effected, and they thought it would lead to a right, so they said let core deal with this. The poor had weekly demonstrations against Police Brutality. People were getting beat up regularly. Some people were getting killed. Newark, the to kno first day i came i was on a core demonstration against Police Brutality because of a black man that was shot by a cop. He was named hank martinez. I do not know Henry Martinez at the time. I did not even associate with anything other than the fact that he was a cop. Years later, the same Henry Martinez for city council and we became friends. I had no idea that was the same man that i was in my first demonstration against my first day in newark. Probably my first hour in newark. I had no idea. He was a completely different man. I do not see how that man could have shot somebody. You know how i found out . I found out by doing some research about what was going on on that corner on that day. I have yet to talk to him about that. I probably wont. How did you judge what happened in the summer of 1967 as the rebellion that will dominate so much of how people think about this history . Prior to that point, all of this stuff Police Brutality, terrible housing,ons in underemployment, and, and, and how did you feel about your progress against the goal of starting something that would yield results . How did you feel the first 24 months you were here . When i first came to newark, i was not here for 24 months. I was here for the summer. I went to new haven to yale. So you have to give me another yardstick. In my first several weeks i realized one thing. That race was going to be a bigger issue than these kids were able to deal with. Bill and i were the two black college types on campus so to speak. We talked about it all the time. That it was becoming more and more difficult for white people to go out and organize black people. Already sncc had said i think in already therenot , was a whole lot of conversation about that. The final bill in 1966, and sncc said white people, you have got to go out among white people and organize them. Carmichael replaces louis at our very tumultuous meeting when lewis went away thinking he was president. Maybury convened the meeting and put carmichael in. That was when the whole practice of the purge began. Snccu were there at that no, i was not a part of the sncc hierarchy. I was in montgomery, a grunt. A soldier in the army of the lord. I heard about this later. It did not happen overnight. People were saying within sncc and the Northern Student Movement and other places white people can do this. Cant do this. Race is predominant. Malcolm x. People do not go along with a lot of what he said but a lot of people did. There were other nationalists raising that issue. The integrationists were losing ground. King was losing ground. He saw it himself. I cannot go out and tell people to be nonviolent in the face of the violence that they are facing. I cannot keep continuing to sell the nationalists that they are wrong and less america gives me something to work with. All of that was against it. We started in our microcosm in newark because of Police Brutality and demonstrations that were just that far from getting out of hand. People had just taken as much as they could take. Sncc then still organized this in newark with the support of tom at the second ses. You had the south ward. In the central ward, this was like a hangout for young men. That is where he spent most of his time. Eventually, i was still here. Maybe after i left in the summer. They took that separate line as a sign of black power. It was impossible to do anything in newark without adjusting the addressing the racial issue. We looked at the doubleedged sword that white organizers presented. Like the white people. They thought it was great that the white people wanted to come into the neighborhood and help. Some people did not. Newark at that time in 1965 was full of people who would just come from the south. This was the tail end of the second great migration from the south. So people were here who had the southern experience. A lot of people did not trust white people. A lot of people loved white people and wanted to be with the white people. But that same racism that inkling,hat kind of the want to be mentality also created a great deal of hostility. We were beginning to see that there was more hostility. We couldnt get people to understand that these white people over here are different. It took up too much time and energy to explain that. I found that on the block. At some point i was given my own block. I must have been doing all right. Ina tossigned me an core i work with each other and breaking over a new block in the central ward. How are we going to get a stop light . That is what the people said they wanted to do. Among them was a man named a billy. And he said i can work with you but i cannot work with her. Later he became a muslim, or he already was. I am not sure which. He knew the nation of islam line. He challenged me. It made me worried. He and i talked about it. I did not want to stop working. With the students and identity. I still believed in an integrated movement. I thought the whole class issue was the best way to deal with it. It was becoming more and more impossible. You and phil lived together . Yes. Was there any point at which, obviously the fbi these were parts of the story ultimately. Did you have any sense that there are the folks who were being watched and monitored closely . More because of phil than me. Because of bill posey connection with sncc. Phils connection with sncc. I was a grunt in mud, ray, i was a grunt here in i was a grunt in montgomery. I was a grunt here in newark. They were doing what they told me to do. Until i got my block. A little later on, i guess 1968, i looked back. There was a house unamerican activities meeting. At some point, some policeman came from newark and presented a letter from me to tom hayden. Saying yes, im going to come to newark. I did not give him that letter. I am sure tom did not give him that letter. Who the hell gave them that letter . He accused me, and it was really an accusation, of living with this Hellraiser Phil hutchens who everyone knows is a hell raiser because he was affiliated with sncc. They were all trying to blame us for the riot, for the rebellion. It was a conspiracy. That was the context. That is how this house unamerican activities convening took place. They did the damage in the 1950s and the 1960s, nobody was really paying attention to them. There were more important things to deal with. We were under surveillance at that time. Another time i went to california to see my sister who was alive at that time living in los angeles. I came back. My bag was opened. What happened to my suitcase . A few days later jimmy who was the head of the court said, i understand you went to california. I said how did you know that . Because the fbi asked me what you were doing in california. I put two and two together. They had search my bag when i came back. They wanted to see if i was bringing anything in. The third piece of evidence also in 1968, all of this is post rebellion where i become more than just a yellow sticky. I was asked to go on a trip to europe to look at new towns based on some groups they knew i was interested in how it had worked. I was asked to go at the tail end. I got my passport. I went. In france, i ran into this young woman named jackie. Shes surprised because here was in france and here i was in france we have this great reunion at an automat. People do not know what that is but it wasis today, a Fast Food Restaurant of the day. I am buying food. We have this big reunion in the automat. Everybody is happy, happy, happy. Long story short, we got together later on that day. She started asking me questions about what was i doing in france. What was i doing on this trip . What was i doing . I am thinking that she is attracted to me. I was certainly attracted to her. We were walking down the left bank of the river. She just walked on ahead. I said jackie, why are you running so fast . I walked faster. She walked even faster. At some point, my ego said i dont need this. She walked on. Ive never seen her again. She never contacted me. I put two and two together. She was representing the man. She wanted to find out why i was there and what i was doing. She got the confirmation she needed that i was harmless. Because i really was there look at some houses. We even went to russia. So that is the kind of thing. Yes, there was presence all the time. And then later on. I was thinking about this. I got permission to look at the down in hughes papers trenton. He and i became friends after the medical school fight. I asked him if i could take a look at the files. Im thinking about writing a book. This is long before i wrote anything down. He gave me permission to look into his files, which was replete with all kinds of stuff with people that i knew that were informing on us to the police. I was amazed. That is the way it went. Let me just check. 1965 to 1966, the two academic semesters in spring. You are in new haven. Yes. Right. Summer 1966, here again. Fall of 1966 in new haven. In summer of 1967. I am back. I am presuming that it did not surprise you, but were you anticipating open conflict in the streets of new ark . It had happened other places already. Yes everybody was predicting , it. [indiscernible] as to whether was going to happen in newark at the particular time that it did. I was coming back from philadelphia from the black power conference down there. I heard it. On the turnpike. I was sleepy, but i woke up, driving my ford fairlane. I will got there i came in here to see it had been sealed off. We could get it in. We knew the streets. I came in. I think i went home that day. The next day it could have been that same night. I was in the car with three other guys. I think it was the next night. Because these people did not go to philadelphia with me. We are just riding around, looking to see what was going on. And two blocks from here, and ill remember his name in a minute, i cannot right now. It was court street. Going up the hill. I heard the sirens coming. I looked in my rearview mirror. There was a cop car bearing down on us. We were out after the curfew. They pulled me over. Four guys get out. Pistols, shotguns, up against the car, mother fucker, which of course we did. They searched us. Found nothing on us. Then they told me to open the hood. Fortunately, i had law books i had forgotten to take out. There was a tense moment there. The sergeant said these guys are law students. Let them go. But the other police they didnt want to do that. Shotgun man had that gun on all of us at the whole time, leaning up against the car. He wanted to do us. But thean, too, sergeant who was opposed to be in charge had to sit again he is a law student. And just to remind them you are going to have trouble explaining this one if you kill these guys. I think he was trying to save our guys. Lives. The others were not law students. At some point they made a decision, put the shotgun down, jumped in the car and tore off. They went wherever they were going the next time. That was the first time i looked down the wrong end of a shotgun. How did you assess what was happening . How did you think about it . How did you add it up at the time . Well, at the time, after that First Encounter with the police , i tried to stay on the cover under cover as much as i could, especially living with phil. We just left the house. We were in a basement apartment. I think they may have had the wrong address. It has us at 642 high street but it was really 624. That might be significant. Some bad policing on that part. I saw people are happy to be destroying, happy to turn the tide. I knew something was going to happen. And sure enough when the state police and the National Guard came into town, things changed. It was during the Second Period that the state police rioted. I was in charge of a group of law students. We were working in the housing project. How do we stop urban renewal . We were investigating the whole relocation process. That was eventually what we cited. To do some serious damage to that urban rural machine. We stopped doing that to go interview witnesses to the police violence. That is when i really saw what the damage had been. My law students took information i remember one. There was a bar where two young men had come in after the thing had been looted and were still looking for whatever they could find. And the state cops rolled up on them. They could not get out. One of them hid in the other one said, okay, i am here. Ie cop said basically what do have here this is from the witness i interviewed. And they basically began to systematically shoot him. They shot him 47 times. Including the top of his head after he and fallen to the floor. We took that information down and we thought somebody is going was going to do something about it. There were stories like that coming in from all over the place. After the rebellion was over, once the Legal Services project, that is where i was working, took all of this information and turned it over to the authorities. I was called before the grand jury. One of the questions whatas heres the part that i did not tell you. Baraka found out about this particular incident and sent a photographer to one of the Funeral Homes and took pictures of the corpse, which was destroyed, as you can imagine. Then he made a flyer and put it all over town. Is this what we are going to allow to happen to our young people in town . Something to that effect. So when i was called in for the grand jury, they asked me, didnt i think it was inflammatory to pass the flyer around . I said, well, first of all, i did not pass it around. Second of all, did you do get you think it isnt limitary that the guy was shot 46 times, including the top of his head . Now i am a smart alec. They did not like me but theres nothing they could do about it. They knew it was true. As time went by during the actual time of the rebellion, there became more stories like that. People were really whipped. But as it turned out, the power structure was really scared of what was happening. There was a woman named louise, i wish she was alive, so you could interview her. But she was a person who was a homeowner. And homeowner and a district leader in the central work right up the street here whose house was in the path of the proposed college of medicine and industry, which at that time was supposed to take 200 acres of land. And she was organizing homeowners against it. Interviewed when before the rebellion i could not get anybody to talk to me. The rebellion she had this twinkle in her eye everybody wanted to talk to me. So it was that kind of experience. Phil and i said weve got to do something about that. Weve got to borrow some of that energy that is now running in our favor. The tide has temporarily turned. What can we do with that image of the black man with the at brick . What can we do to turn around to turn around and make things better . Out of all that, and actually before that, can you say a word about the united brothers . The united brothers was formed i think the letter came out in december of 1967. Baraka was born and raised here. He went out to california and met ron and became very much influenced what karina was doing in los angeles with his group called us. He wanted to do Something Like that here. He had another concept in mind of electing a black man. He understood the whole concept of a black united front. Better than most of us did. He had been new york and then on been on the frontline with a lot of people who were thinking thoughts that we just were not thinking at that time. He was in a position to do that. During the rebellion, he was the badly by the cops. He had a National Reputation but not that many people knew him here except the few he grew up with. He was doing his own work with the arts. Just as we were doing our work our own little belly work, he was doing his with the arts. With a group called the spirit house movers. But when he got beaten that day, the cameras went all over him. His name became much bigger than he was. Then the black power conference came about during the last days of the rebellion anyway. Folks said well you need to , stop that. They are not going to stop it. Wright was his name. He was in charge of that. Baraka became the keynote speaker at that particular event, and from that point forward, he was the man. He was in the position to call together a lot of people. Most of whom were his friends from high school and growing up here in newark, and he included some of us who at that point had taken on a leadership position. My position was i was just a soldier in the army. Until after the rebellion when we resurrected to medical school site. We resurrected a fight that had really been lost because the community had come together in the spring of 1967 to demonstrate at city hall about this medical school proposed. There was a lawsuit. They lost the lawsuit, which was based upon an incompletion of testimony at the hearing to determine whether it should be their land should be taken. They lost that. During that time, a man named some of his people had taken the books out of the hand of the clerks. They were going to see what happened next. He became a cause and the event became a cause, and it was said that the medical school fight was one of the reasons for the rebellion. I had nothing to do with any of that. I was in the audience sometime when that happened. One or two times when it happened because i came down and saw it from new haven. I was not anywhere near the leadership of that. After the rebellion still not the together the new area plan. N. A. P. A. I have been in new haven and talk to some of my rents. I said it was too large. We started talking about an alternative plan. There was a massive footprint. Through urban clearance. 160 acres. 200. Then it was brought down to 180. I asked the planners up that yale what is the smallest footprint and you can give us . They say we can use American Medical School associates and we and standards and we can give you a 19 acre footprint. So that became the new rallying cry for the new opposition. My Little Office on the south corner of bruce street, will which was an old candy store that had no heat or high water, water we had a press , conference. In addition to that i had gotten in touch with the Legal Defense fund. They said they would handle this the case, so Jack Greenberg sent out a young man who was our lawyer. The complaint was going to be hew based on the inefficiencies of housing. The research that has been done the summer before and into 1967. Based upon that research, we knew there was a 1 available vacancy rate in newark. They were driving people out of their homes that they were in. We revised the medical school fight, and i became a leader. In december of 1967 before we even begin the negotiations , which ended up in success for the community, baraka asked me to become a part of the united brothers. This is for the purposes of pulling together the community to elect the first black man. This is how we got started. In practice, how did you swing the successful negotiation through napa on the 60 acres . For Public Housing and job creation. Is was not just napa. Epperson headed another group, and she had other people who were from the ordinary regular political persuasions. Who were involved with that with her, and i had the new breed with me in napa. Together we had a coalition. So we said, you have got to sit down and talk to us, we said to the government. We headed down to his place and all of that. We set up negotiations. Negotiations were based on the believe that they were going to let people come in and have their say, and the band would play on. We said no. We have a negotiating team. There were three from other organizations. Three from negro and puerto rican removal, and three from other organizations. They said what about everybody elselse . We have an audience of about 200. Thet said i wanted to be a part in the negotiations. We shut them up. We would not let them talk. With the support of the 200 people. Harry wheeler and i just looked them down. I cannot explain it any other way. They had no way to go. The people on the other side of the table, the new commissioner of the department of community became ourman who friend as well, ralph duncan, who was the head of the new Jersey Department of higher education, and various other people who work for them. They said ok. Over a period of months, we negotiated an agreement. We had done our research. We had our supporters from yale, of course, but we also brought in other people who were experts on affirmative action, hiring. The people on housing and health. We negotiated what we called the medical school agreement. That is where we got the urban mono will land for housing, which was done by a nonprofit headed by a housing counselor , which we set up. Which iran eventually. About a year later that happened. We wanted to have that group who was set up at the advisory committee, we wanted that whole group thrown out. It was the mayors buddies and henchmen. We had an election. I was elected to that along with other people. We had that covered. We wanted to set up a Training Program for blacks and latinos to get the construction jobs. They were going to say we do not have anybody. You are right. Because you have been discriminating against us for years. We want to train them. They said ok. We had a group of people brought together, the name of which i forget. It was a group of all of the stakeholders and the jobs. We had the unions and the Contractors Association we have , the city and the housing authority. We had people from the community. They met regularly to see what kind of compliance that was going on. That is the key thing. We had an entity we set up to make sure they do what they promised to do at that table. And all that time, the concept of the invisible brother with the brick was with us to let them know that if you mess with us now you got to pay for it later. We never said that. But that was in their minds. As time went by, it lessened and lessened. But we got as much as we cut out of it. You would contribute your efforts to the campaign. Of kenneth gibson, the first black mayor. I was his First Campaign manager. So you have been through 1967, you breached the agreement of 1968. You can tell me how you evaluate d that in terms of how encompassing your success was. It looks like you managed pretty well. Yeah, the only thing is we had to fight within the community to make sure the results really were substantive. If youre looking at land here we had 60 acres of land. All kinds of people came out of the woodwork and want to that ed that land. At that point, the white controllers were standing around watching the black folks fight each other, saying maybe better the better man win, and we hope it not williams. But we won. We establish a housing council. We decided who was going to get this. Right now there was a thousand units of housing. They do not want the newark trade association to succeed, but hundreds of young men were successful in getting the union books. Because we fought the unions, we fought the state, we fought the local folks to make sure that happened. George fontaine was involved with that. Jim walker, those are the people who handled that part. We backed them up and they backed us up when they needed it. Those are the two most exciting. They produced a whole new set of characters that had not happened before including myself to become involved with the federal program of that magnitude. 5. 6 million. And we had a joint veto. If we do not like with the city wanted, we could veto. And of course that they did not like what we wanted, they could veto. All of this came under the agreement. I do not think we have that anywhere else in the country. Elected in 1970. You were obviously very close to the mayor. What is your feeling about how you managed through the late 1960s and where you stood at that point, and how did you feel about prospects for further change and building the world you were trying to build . I was high on the result of a medical school fight we were doing, the street organizations that we had, the fact that it was not a democratic party, it was not just them alone. We have some of them with us. The real momentum for this thing came from people from our civil rights and black power groups. That had put gipson in office. I think he knew that. He said that. When i got the job, and he had promised me the job earlier and i was happy he lived up to that, i learned the potential in the job from being on the model cities neighborhood council. I learned how that particular position was what i wanted. If he won, and he won. I was in charge with planning most of the federal money that was coming into town. It was substantial. I was 26 years old at that time. I was making 26,000. That made a lot of people mad. It at least raised peoples eyebrows. There was a lot of an attempt by our part to continue what we had started in the streets just to bring it into the sweeps. We wanted to make sure we had democracy for the people in the city and they got the best of whatever was possible. That was what was in our minds. That is what we grew up on. Baraka wanted that as well. Baraka had a big heavy organization at that time. The committee of newark. It was the main group that pulled the folks together to put gipson in office, but it was a cultural nationalist group. A lot of people did not like cultural naturalist groups. We will speak slightly input on west african garb and we will also boast to be with it and legitimate. Anybody who was not doing that was not legitimate. I do not like that. I liked to wear jeans. And at that time, i thought i was as black as everybody else. So there was that conflict within the community. Its intuitive manitoba to a gipson extent because took advantage of it to a certain extent because he was not really one of us. He was kind of like there, but he was not on the front line. He came after the battle was over. As you needed somebody, for example, he needs a Vice President of the Business Industrial coordinating council, which came out of the behringer fight, and he helped get some jobs. Ok, so he was not in the vanguard, he was like in the second tier. That was his m. O. Perhaps we needed somebody like that. He was not so controversial. When he got into city hall, he because whensedly he got into city hall, he did not want people like me in or baraka in any kind of leadership position. Eventually he fired me because his people told him i could not be trusted, i was going to take his job. All i did was make him a good. Aside from the millions of dollars i raised i doubled that. ,plus i brought in with the hud called the best housing rehabilitation process in the country, called project rehab, which is another umpteen Million Dollars in mortgages. So eventually he found a reason to fire me, which was based on dit, which was dug up by a man who was running for office, and he said he had questions about the 300,000. Hud had questioned that before he had rotted out. We were in the process of it answering those questions. It was really nothing with it. What happened was we had hud guidelines one way, and other people had interpreted it the other way. Mainly be people in the gipson administration who did not want me there. You about those adventures. Man, we went to war with the congressman. I had an opportunity. He was in the first page of the starledger, advertising his claim with his reference that i had stolen the money. And a lot of my friends were you, ai told you, i told lot of my friends were saying that. I came back. I came to see the editor of the starledger. I said to mort, you have done me a disservice. Up until this point, you have not listened to what i said. So, he asked me to explain all , so i explained to him what was going on. He said, bring me down with your i brought him an article. That stated what our responses had already been to the audit. And he ran that on wednesday. All of this other stuff was saturday and sunday. The following i got front page. Wednesday, then, some of my friends came back and said, now we are seeing what you are saying. Yeah, yeah, yeah, you were not so bad after all. But gibson didnt like that. So i was gaining more and more support. I was on television, i was on this guys show. I forget the guys name, but it was the equivalent of an Jerry Springer type show where he comes on in vilifies people. He thoughtng what were hard questions and i was is giving him back the right answer. He said at the end, you know, mr. Williams, there are good guys and theyre bad guys. And i have decided and there was this pause that you are a good guy. Y , yay. Ence ya, he comes and shakes my hand. Im standing there smiling. My father is grinning. So, the whole thing turned around. So, gibson at one point called me. I said at that point in the newspaper, i said he was setting me up as a scapegoat, but he had to respond to like him sees that ok, im going to called aaring, so he hearing. This was before the tv experience as i think. He called his hearing and he had his guys come out and say i was wrong. I had my own notes that that i was right. Congressman a u. S. Into a tie in a public forum, you are doing pretty good, but one thing was very clear, you asked me what i noticed my comptroller was not there with me. He had been told by malicious people dont show up. Because they thought i need him to get the information. Hello . I am a lawyer. I had been wrestling with this thing. I knew this stuff inside and outside. Everything he threw at me, i threw right back at him, even with nobody there on my side. None of my staff showed up. My director, my Deputy Director did not show up, nobody showed up. I was there by myself. After the television series, gibson calls me up and says i want you to resign. I said why . He said, because of the audit. I said by this time, i know you dont want me, but i want time to answer and respond and get this thing out of the way and then i will leave. I had planned on leaving anyway. I do not want to be there anymore. He said, no, you cannot do that. I will give you 30 days to make up your mind. So during that 30 days i , collected all of the documents that i had, that i knew that i needed. Because i thought somebody else will going to come after me with an indictment, which they never did and i will tell you why in a minute. So he called me at the end of the 30 days and fired me. There was one more incident in their because i was going to have a rally, and i spent the 400 people, 500 people to come minnish outn of town. They said any of my people who showed up would get fired. I told my people to get the word out. But they showed up anyway. Not my top people. They have 400 people. Someone who are gotten baraka out and had gotten a lot of other people up because of his excellent presentation. He said why is the mayor here and why is he trying to get rid of williams . He got rid of me. So, i went on to set up my law practice. But about a year later, maybe a few months later, i am on my way to washington for some reason, i get off the old shuttle, and there is this little man who comes up to me and start saying, mr. Williams, you dont know me but i was one of the auditors. When you were the director of the model citizens program. So i immediately stiffened. This guy says that she was a little guy he says the prosecutor came to me and asked me, was anything there to invite dict this man on. And i told him in no Uncertain Terms there is nothing there. He turned around, walked back into the crowd and ive never seen him since then. True story. So, that is what happened to me with this great new city experience. I was not able to apply all of the skills that i wanted to. I was able to do something. Some things. Baraka had a similar express with some housing he was trying to build. That is a whole different story. I will let him tell his story. And the mayor left him up with that, and as a result, he lost all of the programs that he was trying to do, including building that housing. Culturalind of put the naturalism aside and became a marxist, and that i am a communist now. He made that abrupt turn and a lot of people could not go with him. So, now he is still just as famous as he was as a writer. And as a playwright and as a poet, but after that point, he was out of the mainstream. And with gibson with his nonpossessive politics was able to reign supreme. Yeah. As we sort of look to the years beyond the early 1970s, i would really like to have you touch on a couple of things. Elected to the National Bar Association president. The youngest person ever elected to the role. To have you sort of frame your mayoral race in 1982. If you could talk about those two things. Ok. Well i went into practicing law. Hall, where icity just couldnt practice law. How are you going to keep them down on the farm after theyve seen paris, you know . I ran into a friend named o. T. Wells. I had met him at harvard when i was speaking there. He was president elect of the National Bar Association. He convinced me that i should play a prominent part in the National Bar Association. I believe i had gone to one meeting before that. He invited me to be his guest. So i became a part of it. He appointed me as the assistant regional director, which was really something he just dreamed up. It was not in the constitution. To make a long story short, because of some foul up in los angeles the following summer, his convention couldnt be there , and he had no one to staff his convention. , i want you tous plan my convention. It will be in San Francisco. Go do it. So, i started calling people all over the country. My dime, my time. Lawyers that he had given me the names or other people had, and i put together a Great Convention. If i must say so myself, which he also did. And i met a lot of people along the way. So, that was my organizational basis, if you will, so by the time i came to his convention which was in San Francisco in 1973. There were other issues that had to be dealt with. There were a lot of Young Lawyers, especially women lawyers who were dissatisfied , with the way the bar was going at that time. And we who had been in the movement, which was steeped in the tradition of democracy. There is this kind of arraignment. The National Bar Association was kind oflike an imperial arrangement. You were the president , you were the man. You did what you damn well pleased. So we elected two things happen at that time. We elected a new treasure. A lawyer from florida. I became elected to the board at that particular time. That was the first two things. We also revised, along with some we revise the Young Lawyers division. It had been started once, and it had died down. We revived that. That was our vehicle. I drew upon the knowledge from people around the country. That i had been calling them at some of them were young, some were not young, to make that organization very viable. To make the long story short the , Young Lawyers became a Campaign Enterprise for young and aspiring lawyers who want to ed to see some change come about. To make the bar more interested in issues than just conspicuous consumption. Among some very prominent black attorneys. As it had become. So the next year in chicago i , ran for the fourth Vice President. Then the next year somewhere i ran for a third Vice President and then second Vice President , and it is time for me to run for president elect. Nobody ever ran against me because i had the Young Lawyers as the basis. Plus, the women lawyers, because i believe the women lawyers in the 90s of before was formed, and it was like a complete overlap. The women who were in the women who were in the Womens Division were also in the Young Lawyers division, so we always had a coalition and we were able to go into each of the large delegations and offer tradeoffs. You support our candidates, we will support yours. That way i parlayed my way up to the current president elect. In florida, in 1978, i became the youngest person ever elected to the National Bar Association. Because i was only 34 years old, and immediately, we begin to do things. On a collective basis. The most important thing is to introduce to the National Bar Association this whole concept independencem, the of selling africa. They had never done that before. Sncc was friend from very influential in this. Next move. We knew the racist and southern s in Southern Rhodesia would try to prop as the next god coming. For african independence, but they really werent going to give them independence. The constitution really v power for the whites, and everybody knew that. But we were lawyers and we knew how to say it. So my International Affairs committee dissected that, they head of the naacp Legal Defense fund was the head of that committee. Whose name i cannot think of. This is terrible going into historical records. Teddy shaw . No, teddy shaw was gone. Elaine jones. Teddy shaw, and now this guy, john it will come to me in a minute. Sorry, john. So, the committee otherwise, it was a legally, scholarly document. We knew we had something, but it was going to be another document. I called my friends from sncc, and i asked can we get this before the United Nations . The organization of african unity. We were able to go to the United Nations, the organization heard what we had to say. There was a rush for copies. Not only did the oau accept it, but it was adopted by the general counsel of the United Nations as an official document of the United Nations on the question of independence for zimbabwe. It was translated into seven languages and sent all around the world. A friend of mine from ghana, lead article in the ghana times black lawyers, champions, african rights, Something Like that. It was like my Movement Days was ere coming true. Here we were involved with african independence with african americans, and there was a great deal of unity between the africans who were in the United Nations and eventually the ones in washington who were diplomats of a higher level as everybody saw that paper. I went to jamaica, another one of the United Nations committees , and everybody wanted a copy. I got invited to cuba. Because of that paper, which i eventually did a year later. Lawyers idea to bring and doctors and nurses and pharmacists not pharmacists dentists to zimbabwe. That got shot down because the zimbabwean ambassador they were very grateful for what we had done. He didnt call me back in time for me to get this grant that i had set up. He said mr. Williams, this thing will die in less we get the zimbabwe government to agree. And he did not get to me in time. He did not see the importance of it. The good part was that i was able to parlay this paper on the behalf of the nba. Into a position where black lawyers could help in the independence of zimbabwe. Here is a crowning achievement, my people in the white house got the document to jimmy carter. And got him to hold onto sanctions because of the document. That is what we were told. That was probably the most significant aspect of what i did when i was president. That Movement Connection was there because we were able to organize the people. Also, we were able to give our focus or eyes on the prize. That was over in 1979. Had a Great Convention in los angeles. For my keynote speaker, i had Louis Farrakhan who mesmerized the people. There was a hush when i walked down the aisle with him to bring him into the first session. I had met him and new haven when i was up there. He was a muslim minister in in charge of the mosque there. That is another story. But he wowed them. He spoke for about an hour and everybody gave him it must have been about 10 Standing Ovations when he got finished, he had everyone in the palm of his hand. The next year went to cuba. The following year i went to harvard i called my friend from state here in new jersey, if you remember from the medical school fight. He was the dean of education school. He said i got something for you, i am tired, i need something to do. He got me in the institute of politics at the john f. Kennedy school at harvard for a semester. So, i was beginning to believe that i belonged there. Until the miami riots occurred. I wrote an article for the new york times. I wrote an oped piece. That kind of brought me back to earth. I said, ive got to use all of these skills and powers to go back. What can i do . Gibson had been there for then going on 12 years. Very little had changed. He had not used the power in the streets to match that power suite,e had anin the which he had to force any kind of real change. For example, raising taxes, the state was not giving enough money. Kind of like it is right now. Here he was, saying i will take whatever the states will allow. Taking money from the fed. We were in the age of reaganomics. So, the power of the people was divorced from the power of the institutions that we had created. Bad english, but you get the point. I wanted to correct that. I wanted to create another movement to get me in there so that i could make sure that the independent organizations that had been killed by gibson should could be revived and we could get the kind of power that we needed to back up the folks that have been elected. Obviously, i didnt win. I did not have the money he had. There were other people running, too. I do not have anywhere near money that was necessary. People told me that i should have run for council first. City council. But i thought the time was now, and once i got involved in that whole process and i thought we needed to do to raise money, i realized that was not me. I couldnt do that. You have to be all things to all people. I was not that. I was for the people, and i knew what that took, and i was interested in empowering people. I was interested in people becoming a part of the process just as i always had been. I realize that was not the vehicle that was put out for me because i would never be able to raise that kind of money. That answers your question. Sure. Let me ask to kind of wrap up. You do very interesting and forward looking work here at the abbott institute. Can you describe that, to the struggles you can envision maybe to the young people here today . I was the town attorney because i had a good friend. She became mayor and she asked me to be counsel for the city council and she was president of the council. It is a town next over from newark, a town of about 50,000, mostly black. Became mayor, i helped her in her election she asked me , to be the town attorney. So once she decided not to run again i decided i was going to newarkmething here in once again. There was a program called the abbott program, which was always in trouble, right from the onset. In 1981, a group called Educational Center filed a suit saying that you have to match the money, the state of new jersey you have to match the , money that the suburbans are suburban schools are getting. You have to match the money theyre getting and put that in the urban schools. I dont know if that came out right because it is getting late in the day. Im going to try it again. It was based on a state constitution, which was very efficient in its language, so the constitutional claim was upheld by seven white men over the age of 50 with a whole lot of money. They saw it. They said we have to have in the city the same amount of money that they spend in the suburbs, not just the average amount, but the higher suburbs. That is what you need to have real School Reform. And they prescribed a School Reform program, which had a supplemental program. You have to pay more. State of new jersey. No governor since that time has agreed to that in total. Democrats, republicans. So i said it is time to get the parents involved. Long story short, i went to some foundations and i said we are going to build this organization. Based upon our ability to teach people how to become involved. We will not have an organization, but we are going to teach people how to get organized. I had been able to bring all of my skills and all of my memories and all of my abilities to help people strategize to do different things, whether it is on a Little School basis or to help stage and abbott program, or whether it is now helping young people to become involved in the process. I said, we have got older in people involved as parents. Lets get the ultimate beneficiaries in here. Because when i was that age, i was thinking about the coming a becoming a member of sncc. No thoughts are going on regularly in young people today. There have been spontaneous outbursts. There have been people who want to mobilize to do different things. Im not saying nobody is conscious, because they are, but the whole concept of organization has been lost and it was lost when we put all of our eggs in the basket of electing black politicians and those black politicians turned around and destroyed the organizations. Over,e that brought them so there is a whole brandnew group of people out here who do not know anything about sncc and snapcore and ncup and how we got over and how we because that is my job. Im teaching a whole new generation what we did and everything i have been talking to you about. I am very excited by both of those groups. The parents getting organized. Not just because we are doing it. Parents are organizing all the time. I would we are trying to do is to help those parents who are so areined to get involved, we teaching them that there is a certain way you use information. There is a certain way that you can position yourself, a certain set of strategies you can use to make your presence more profitable in terms of the gold you have. With the young people, we are saying to them you have a voice , and your voice is there to be heard. If you learn the skills of the media, your voice can be emphasized. Is first part of that difficult. A lot of young people are so beat down they think they dont have a voice. But, we introduced that whole concept. Once you open the door with them, they walk through. Now, we have a lot of young advocates here who know how to speak, they know how to interview, they know how to use cameras, not quite as expensive as that one they know how to put , projects together, we havent taught them how to edit. Hopefully we will do that this summer. It is a Summer Program on an intense basis, five days, four days a week in the spring and in the fall, it is todays a week after school, and they introduced a lot of documents. A lot of people have paid attention to. Short Public Service announcements. To a longer documentary. We have some young people who have graduated and now come back here and help us as interns. We have some young people who have graduated and i meet them in the store. And they say because of that program, i went to college, im doing some advocacy things in college. So we planted a seed that is being watered every day by the events of the time. I know there is even more history much more history that , we could discuss but today you have been so remarkably generous. It has been a real pleasure. It has been an honor and privilege. Thank you for such a substantive contribution to the series. Well i hope everybody runs , out and reads my book when it is published. It is called unfinished agenda, and hopefully, it will be published by the smithsonian. Lets hope so. We look forward to it. All right. Thank you very much. [captions Copyright National cable satellite corp. 2014] [captioning performed by national captioning institute] you are watching American History tv. 48 hours of programming on history every weekend on cspan3. Follow us on twitter cspanhistory. Author Daniel Schulman on the koch brothers. This lawsuit that played out between the koch brothers, charles and david on one side, phil and frederick, and other shareholders of Coke Industries on the other. This, and its in a boardroom showdown that charles is a supporting. Theuple of other shareholders were trying to expand the size of the board. This would have ended up deposing charles as chairman and it wouldve taken a greater role in the direction of the company. The in result is bill is tossed out because the company. By his brothers. By his brothers, and there is a really dramatic moment in the book where the board has to sit down and decide bills fate. Authors of Wichita Daniel shulman sunday night at q a. On cspan Patty Limerick is a professor of history at Colorado University of boulder and the incoming president of the organization of american historians. What is your job here . My job as president helps me catch up with my childhood