Todd Brewster & Peter Jennings Read Online Free PDF Page A

growing up in Harlem, Malcolm X was there all the time, so I knew all about him and the Nation of Islam. Malcolm X presented a clearer, more direct political analysis, stripped of sentimentality, that saw the reality of the enemy we were fighting.Since Malcolm X aimed his message directly at African Americans, he could touch us more deeply, while Martin Luther King’s message also had to speak to white society. King would say, “What we need is morality,” while Malcolm would say, “What we need is power.” To Malcolm, nonviolence just meant that you’re giving your cheek left and right to a man who has no conscience. He thought we needed an eye for an eye.
    Malcolm X’s assassination had a profound effect on us. After his assassination in 1965, those of us who really understood him made a conscious decision to pick up Malcolm’s points and to build on them. We wanted to keep his philosophy alive. We decided to go into Lowndes County, Alabama, to use the vote as a means to organize the people. There was not one single black registered to vote there in 1965, yet 80 percent of the population in the county was black.
    For three months before the arrival of election day, white terrorists sent out word that if any Africans went to vote, they’d be left there for dead. In order to encourage Africans to get out and vote, we let them know that young brothers and sisters were coming, armed, from the big cities to help out. I remember the Justice Department sent somebody to see me who said, “You know,your people are bringing in guns. What are you gonna do?” I said, “We’re gonna vote.” He said, “The whites are very upset about this.” We had already decided that we would not fire the first shot, so I said, “You tell them they’ve got the first shot, but we’re voting.” When election day came, the people turned out to vote and not one shot was fired. For the first time, black citizens of Lowndes County felt they had exercised their political rights. They began to understand the power of politics.
    Like much of America, Robert Kennedy, the former attorney general and now a U.S. senator, was changing his views on many different issues: the ongoing war in Vietnam, civil rights, the growing unrest among the country’s young people. More and more people looked to him to challenge President Johnson to become the Democratic candidate in the 1968 presidential election. Many people were dissatisfied with the way Johnson had led the country since JFK’s death. Eugene McCarthy, a senator from Minnesota who was against the war, was running for the Democratic Party’s nomination, and in March of 1968 Bobby Kennedy also entered the race. Johnson, with so much of his own party against him, decided not to run again. Excitement was high; many Americans thought their troublesmight be over if they could get another Kennedy into the White House.
    But in 1968 it sometimes seemed as if every hope was destined to end in tragedy. In April Martin Luther King Jr. appeared in Memphis, Tennessee, in support of striking sanitation workers. There, on April 4, America’s greatest prophet of nonviolence was shot and killed. When the news broke, violence erupted all over the country, with riots, arson, and gunfire. Though the deep anguish at King’s death was heartfelt, the violence that followed was a sad tribute to a man who had dedicated his life to peaceful change.
    Robert Kennedy was boarding a plane for a campaign stop in Indianapolis when he heard that King had been shot. He was scheduled to speak at a rally in Indianapolis’s black ghetto, but when he arrived the chief of police told Kennedy the city could not guarantee his safety. Kennedy ignored the warning and went anyway. The crowd waiting for him did not know King had been killed. They gasped when Kennedy told them. Then he appealed to their best instincts. “You can be filled with bitterness,