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.
The Making of Black Revolutionaries; A Personal
Account. 1972.
High Tide of Black Resistance and Other Political & Literary
Writings. 1994.
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Control,
Conflict, and Change
The Underlying Concepts
of the Black Manifesto
By
James Forman, Chairman, United Black Appeal
Reparations
as Tactic of Black Liberation
Or Loosening the Social Controls on
Blacks On Saturday, April 26, 1969, in Detroit,
Michigan at a Black Economic Development Conference sponsored by
the Inter-religious Foundation for Community Organization (IFCO)
we issued the Black Manifesto, which is basically divided into
three parts: (1) the preamble, a prophetic version of how we see
change and revolution inside the United States; (2) concrete
programs and demands for reparations upon the racist white,
Christian churches and Jewish synagogues; (3) programmatic ways
or tactics to achieve our objectives.
Since the issuing of the Black Manifesto many
of us have spoken throughout the United States trying to
organize support for its implementation. The following article
is written primarily for Black Dialogue, but it is fundamentally
the speech I delivered at the National Black Theatre on Sunday,
July 6, 1969. The spoken word has been adapted to a written
style in some instances. It is the intention of the author that
this article and “speech” will form a supplement to the
Black Manifesto and that a minimum of seven million copies will
be distributed in black communities throughout the United
States. The international implication of the Manifesto is
evidenced by the fact that the Political Bureau of the Republic
of Guinea has issued an editorial of support.
Inside the United States we suffer from the
most vicious, racist, capitalistic, imperialistic system known
to mankind. Whereas all of us in this room today, at this
particular gathering of the National Black Theater, may be
struggling for our liberation, there are millions of black
people who are not struggling for their liberation, who are not
totally conscious of all their oppression.
Why is this the case?
Why is it that some of us are dedicated to
giving our total lives for the liberation of black people and
others are not? The answer is fundamentally in the mass line of
the BEDC and its Black manifesto, namely, the three c’s:
control, conflict, and change.
Operating upon all of us are a whole set of
control factors, many of which we are no aware. These control
factors, however, have been drummed in our heads for centuries,
and we accept them as realities, hence the major reason we are
not all totally dedicated to liberation.
It is not enough just to say that the system
is tyrannical; that it’s racist; that it’s capitalistic;
that it’s imperialistic. Although that is a correct analysis,
what are some of the manifestations of racism, capitalism, and
imperialism that make us submit to tyranny inside this country?
This can be determined by a thorough discussion of the control
factors operating on our lives.
Any kind of liberation struggle—anywhere in
the world—seeking revolution, intending to overthrow
oppression, trying to deal with tyranny that oppresses that
particular group of people must, in fact, make this
concrete analysis of all of the control factors operating upon
that oppressed group of individuals.
Inside the United States there are
approximately thirty major control factors operating upon us. In
every city, every town, in every county, and in every state
there will be additional variations; but what we are talking
about are the major control factors, which make us submit to the
tyranny of this country.
These kinds of control factors are
responsible for our brothers fighting in Vietnam; they are
not mercenaries. We have been so indoctrinated, so
controlled by certain factors as we grow up that we begin to
fight in Vietnam for the United States government, even though
there are those of us who are opposed to fighting in Vietnam.
What are some of these control factors?
One: The Concept of Citizenship. This
is a major control factor. The entire fabric of this particular
system of government is designed to instill in us the concept
that we are citizens of the country. Every particular act of the
various institutions inside the United States tries to drum this
into our minds every day.
We know that the concept of citizenship is a
lot of bull.
We know that.
We’re hipped to that.
We were not citizens in 1789 when they said
we were three-fifths of men as written in the Constitution of
the United States.
We’re hipped to the fact that we are not
citizens today. Nevertheless, it is imperative that this
government try to consciously promote the feeling that we are
citizens of this country. It is only by promoting the concept
that we are citizens of this country that it is able to control
us and make us submit to its tyranny. Therefore, one of the
first jobs that we have to do is to work to consciously destroy
the myth that we are citizens of the United States.
Two: The educational process. The
educational process of the United States is geared not only to
make us feel that we are citizens, but also to make us conform.
It is geared us super patriots, geared to make us obey the
police, obey the courts and all other institutions of this false
democracy. Therefore any liberation struggle has to deal with
the educational process inside a colonized territory, inside any
situation where people are oppressed. We know this. All we have
to do is to open our eyes and look at the educational system
inside the United States.
That educational system does not teach us to
rebel against the United States, but in fact teaches us how to
conform. A classic example is how we all learn to place our
hearts and recite: “I pledge allegiance to the flag of the
United States of America and to the republic for which it
stands, one Nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and
justice for all.” For eight years in elementary school we say
it. This is a conscious inculcation, a conscious brainwashing by
the educational system.
Check the textbooks; check the history books.
When we get into high school, we notice
brothers in the Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC) saluting
and reciting once again: “I pledge allegiance to the flag of
the United States of America. . . .” By the time a brother is
eighteen, the educational system has consistently programmed him
where he wants to become a Second Lieutenant in the United
States Air Force or in the United States Army. That is why ROTC
exists in colleges—to reinforce the primary and secondary
educational system which makes us submit to this kind of
government.
Three: The mass media and the
communication system. This is fundamentally a technique of
the United States and all Western powers with their highly
industrialized communication systems. It’s no accident that
many of the so-called “Negro” newspapers in this country are
in fact owned by white capitalists. What goes into those
newspapers affects our images—not to mention the New York
Daily News and all the garbage which it is spread throughout the
United States.
The psychological control effect of the
television network in this country has never really been
estimated. We know it’s there, notwithstanding “Julia.”
It’s no accident that the “Black Heritage” program was
shown 1 9:00 o’clock in the morning. This was a deliberate
programming, in order not to get the ideas contained in “Black
Heritage” over to the masses of black people. At 9:00
o’clock in the morning we are out hustling jobs, and we
don’t have time to turn on the television.
Four: The dogma and practice of the white
Christian churches. As far as I’m concerned, this has been
one of the most consistent and effective control mechanisms
operating upon us. I happen to be old enough to remember my
mother telling me: “Well, don’t worry about the white man,
son; he’ll get his in hell. We will have everlasting life, so
don’t worry about him; these 60 or 70 years of hard times
which we face will be nothing compared to our eternity of peace
and his eternity of damnation.” As long as this kind of
psychology and ideology is spread by the Christian churches,
people will not go on to struggle for their liberation.
During the period of slavery and even today,
in most instances the practices and dogma of the Christian
churches are in fact made to order for an enslaved group of
people. Let us examine it: Here we are slaves inside the United
States, and so the man comes with the Bible and says “Blessed
are the poor, for they shall inherit the earth, or they shall
see God. Blessed are the meek for they shall see the kingdom of
God.” Here we are the poor—toiling in the fields, chopping
the cotton and the man says to us, “It is easier for a camel
to go through the eye of a needle, than it is for a rich man to
go to heaven.”
So all of these things were comforting in
many ways to our ancestors and even to some of us. Now I don’t
take the position—and this is something that we have to argue
about—that the Christian church was in fact a survival element
for black people. That’s just a hypothetical argument. We have
no way of proving it; but I do know that the ideology,
practices, and involvement with the Christian church helped to
control us and make us submit more and more to the tyranny of
this country.
Now the same thing is true today because many
people believe the racist Christian ideology, believe that there
is an eternity, believe there is life after death, that God is
all powerful and that even the sufferings on this particular
earth will be rewarded by eternity.
Five: The profit motive system and upward
mobility. The system strives to make us competitive.
Us competitive. If we are not competitive, we cannot
become good capitalists. We cannot become good people inside
this system of government, and we are programmed consciously to
try to make money, to make profits, to be upward mobile, to try
to get more and more cars, a better home; and all that’s on an
individualistic basis too.
Six: The love of life and the fear of
death. This is very real, you see, because this society with
its materialistic base makes us want to love life, makes us want
to love life consciously. We are supposed to love life and fear
death and that becomes a very significant control mechanism. It
is better to die at 19, struggling to be a human being,
struggling to be a man, struggling to be a woman than to die of
old age enduring all sorts of oppression throughout our lives.
The love of life becomes real because many
people are not willing to take chances, are not willing to risk,
are not willing to make sacrifices, are not willing to do
day-to-day work because they love life, and they fear death.
They don’t want to be killed; they want to live. And,
therefore, they will submit to all forms of tyranny and
oppression because they want to live; and there is only one
absolute certainty in life, and that’s death.
Once you’re dead, you’re dead; there’s
no reprieve, no redress, no heaven, no hell. You are dead, and
if you lie out on the streets, you’ll rot away. And you will
see what there is afterwards. It doesn’t matter how much
embalming fluid or what type of caskets we get, death is death!
If we, in fact, fear death and we are not willing to take
certain risks, then we will stay oppressed.
This is a problem that the Vietnamese also
face. To love life is a part of Western mythology. One is
supposed to love life despite all of the bad things inherent in
Western civilization which go on. And I maintain that the love
of life and fear of death is a key control factor. We should not
all [buy] the fear of death to operate as a control mechanism
even though we do.
Seven: The fear of ideologies which call
for revolution in the United States. This is another
mechanism which the man uses to control us. There is no mystery
why the Panthers are being attacked. There is no mystery why
brothers who espouse liberation or revolution are in jail all
over this country. The man, the government, wants to make us
fear these kinds of ideologies. There is no mystery, even as far
as the BEDC is concerned, why there is a federal grand jury
subpoenaing people in Detroit, Michigan like today, and the BEDC
is only two months old. But the federal government has seen fit
to call the grand jury hearing to subpoena people.
Now ask yourself, why? Obviously, if it were
no threat, there would be no federal grand jury . Check it out.
Look around, there are a whole lot of people who are walking
around doing one thing and saying another. But they are not
being persecuted by the government. In many ways, they don’t
pose as great a threat as do other forces and other individuals.
You can judge the effectiveness of some things by the amount of
persecution which the government puts down. If you are not a
threat, they will not bother you; they’ll just let you run
around. That’s a fact.
Eight: The police and other military
forces. Ordinarily, when we think of control, this is what
we think of as a major force; but it’s not. All of these other
factors we have talked about are important because the police
can’t be everywhere. The police cannot be all over Africa. The
military alone did not control Africa. It took the missionary,
money, indirect rule, and other aspects of colonialism. The
police and the military are one of the last control mechanisms
any government uses. Sometimes we make the mistake and just
think the police are the only control mechanism operating on us,
and if we did away with the police that would end our problems.
This is just not true.
Nine: The administration of justice, the
courts, bail, the judicial system. It’s no wonder that the
brothers who were arrested in the so-called Panther plot have a
$100,000 bail on them, or that there were various legal
entanglements in the so-called July 21, 1967, “frame-up.”
All of the administration of justice becomes a control mechanism
because, if you impose high bail, then the brothers can’t get
out on the streets. If the juries are stacked, there is no
chance for justice.
Ten: The use of police informers, spies,
rumors, and slander campaigns. In certain black communities
it is said the spy network is greater than the CIA overseas.
That’s possible and real. Look at the history of frame-ups
here in Harlem. Look at the so-called Statue of Liberty case,
where Woods, a police informer, began to set up the whole plot,
went and got the dynamite and planted the microphone in the
brother’s car; and Woods is still running around. He might be
informing on this meeting, I don’t know.
Many of the brothers who are fighting for
liberation in Rhodesia say that there are so many police
informers spying for the Ian Smith government that any time they
try to mount an attack in any particular city or countryside
that the brothers go and fail. Police informers have framed most
of the militants who have been unjustly accused of certain
so-called crimes. The case of brother Ferguson is only one
recent example. Ironically, the government is using black people
to inform on one another, and some of us fail for this treachery
for a few pieces of silver.
I assure you there is only [one way] to deal
with police informers and you know what I mean. I want to make
this very, very clear; we’re said this all over the country
and I’m saying it right here. Now you can call that hot air if
you want to, or you can call it just a lot of wolfing, but you
take your chances, because there is only one way in the world we
are going to stop these informers from standing up.
Eleven: The assassination of black
leaders. The killing of people who take frontal positions
against the injustices of this society, who fight racism,
capitalism, and imperialism and who refuse to submit to the
tyranny of this country is a mechanism that the government uses
to control the rebelling black population. In Cleveland today
Brother Ahmed Evans is facing electrocution. The government is
finding a scapegoat for the July 23, 1968, self-defense in
Cleveland.
Brother Ahmed Evans is absolutely innocent,
and I am told by Sister Mae Mallory that the record indicates he
was in the house of a police officer for six hours during the
whole time of rebellion. However, since there was a strong
military apparatus developing among the brothers, the state of
Ohio and the United States government are deliberately
assassinating this brother to help control the population. All
of us who are black must join in the fight to save his life and
united with the July 23rd defense Committee which is
fighting for his survival.
But the most effective method of curbing some
of the assassinations of black leaders is to organize for
retribution. That retribution has to be deliberately planned,
well-organized and quite selective. No man can protect his life
ultimately. There is a picture to our left of Brother Malcolm
who paid the supreme price, but is no accident that he was
killed in public. His killing was designed by the CIA to
frighten the population as it did in many instances.
All those lynchings from the period of
reconstruction through today were inflicted upon black men and
women to frighten the population, to make all of us afraid to
challenge the system of government that oppresses us. The will
of a people is weakened to the degree that it is frightened by
the assassination of its leaders.
When we were working to save the life of
Brother Huey, we raised the cry that the sky is the limit if he
were sent to the electric chair. Some of us were prepared to go
down if he had been killed by the state, for only organized,
deliberate, and selective retribution will minimize the killing
of black people by the corrupt military machinery of this
government.
Political leadership must establish its price
well in advance of its assassination. It must call for the
destruction of power stations, gas outlets, police stations,
water pumps and buildings, and the selective killing of
imperialists who are choking the life of mankind around the
world. As the struggle escalates, the price must go higher and
higher; and organization for retribution and revolution must
become more deliberate, more scientific, carefully planned and
intensely selective.
Efforts must be made to organize all segments
of the population. Forms of organization and stages of struggle
cannot be skipped, for the final clash is years away and
probably will not come in our lifetime, but we must work as if
every day is the final day—taking the long-range viewpoint so
as not to become frustrated and demoralized when quick victories
are not around the corner.
Twelve: The lack of job security,
inadequate payment of wages, and consumer credit. The
ability to deny one security for his family and for himself
through the withholding of wages and the dismissal from his or
her job becomes one of the most effective control mechanisms
that this society imposes upon us. Wage payments and consumer
credit are designed to effectively control the population and
make us all toe the line of the capitalist road to destruction.
Many people do not struggle for fear of
losing their jobs and the meager security they have for their
family. Consumer credit and the installment plan of buying has
been the graveyard of many militants and potential
revolutionaries, for we are programmed to want goods and
services more than justice and liberation.
Thirteen: The practices of the
white-dominated trade unions. Trade unions in this country
are not only racists in their treatment of black workers, union
practices and officer structure, but also in terms of their
practices and attitudes toward the third world, the people of
Africa, Asia, and Latin America.
General Motors, for, Chrysler, and all the
other automotive industries are locating in South Africa, for
instance, but at the same time the racist United Automobile
Workers’ Union does not call a strike against these plants for
their treatment of black workers in South Africa, or the
miserable wages or policies of apartheid.
Black workers in many parts of this country
form sixty-five to eighty percent of the work force at the point
of production, but they do not control their unions; and the
racist white-dominated leadership has no interest in ending
their exploitation or that of black people around the world.
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Fourteen: The denial of adequate health
and medical facilities. The infant mortality rate is so high
for black infants that genocide is committed at birth. If black
children cannot grow up to be men and women, their potential for
revolutionary work is killed by the state. There is no medical
school in Harlem or many other black communities by deliberate
calculations of the racist government by the United States.
While it is true that thirty to fifty million
is us survived the atrocities of the slave trade, how many of us
died and do die through the lack of adequate medical facilities?
Clearly, inadequate medical facilities is a form of genocide.
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Fifteen: The welfare system and its
administration. This is self-explanatory.
Sixteen: Dope in our communities. When
young black men and women thirteen and fourteen years old are
addicted to heroin and never live to see sixteen, how can they
fight to liberation? It is impossible. In fact, they become
agents against liberation when they become twenty-two or
twenty-three because they are forced to rob the population in
order to get dope.
The Mafia is a third government inside the
United States. While the black dope pusher is part of this
control mechanism, he is still not the major source. He is a
minor agent, for the real responsibility lies with the system of
government, that allows it to come across the borders, profits
in it allows it to flourish in black communities.
Seventeen: The downgrading of our African
heritage and culture. This is a factor we are all aware of.
But to the extent we accept and uplift Western history, Western
values, Western culture, Western mythology, Western religion,
the process of control becomes very effective.
Eighteen: The lack of concrete ties with
the African continent. The importance of this as a control
mechanism can be more readily understood by comparing the
situation of the Jews in this country to Israel as a state. The
United Jewish Appeal and other forms of Jewish philanthropy
inside the United States had much to do with the financing of
militant Jewish groups and the formation of Israel.
Our own consciousness about helping African
liberation movements is not very developed, and there are few
ways in which we lend our technical skill to develop the African
continent. This in turn forces African counties to turn to their
former colonial masters and even to Israel for help. I am not
suggesting the fault is entirely ours, but we must accept our
share of the responsibility. The fault is fundamentally with
imperialism, but we must try through our own efforts to break
it.
In Tanzania, for instance, Israel built a
hotel which will be completely owned by the Tanzanian government
in a few years. Yet, once the hotel was built, it was necessary
for the Tanzanian government to send some of its citizens to
Israel to study bed making, the art of waiting tables,
cashiering and other trades associated with the running of a
hotel. Tanzania exercised its options, but these are skills
which we employ and teach every day.
SNCC (Student Nonviolent Coordinating
Committee) once tried to have a program called the Afro-American
skills Bank through which we would try to send people from the
United States to Africa for a period of two or three years, and
we got very high confirmation from African governments.
Obviously, the central Intelligence Agency [CIA] and the entire
fabric of the United States government moved to stop this
program through various means. It would have been too much of a
threat to this government for black people to go abroad, not
under the sponsorship of the United States government, but
actively carrying a line that is opposed to this form of
government.
The lack of concrete ties with the African
continent makes it possible for our continent to be exploited by
others; and it strengthens the possibilities for lies by the
United States government and dissension between Africans on the
continent and those of us overseas, including our brothers and
sisters in the West Indies. For instance, the United States
Information Agency prints a magazine called Topic which
is distributed only in Africa. In the first issue it showed Bob
Moses and Mrs. Fannie Lou Hamer winning two seats at the
democratic convention of August 1964.
This is a flagrant lie, but it was told by a
government that is engaged in coups and killings to get its
will, and the telling of a lie in Africa is not beyond its
capacity. The United States government had to explain what
happened at the Democratic convention of 1964, and it chose to
lie about the results, for the truth would have been damaging to
the its propaganda. Other issues of this magazine have showed
the Bronx High School of Science with a high percentage of
blacks. They are trying to promote the concept that integration
is an American dream which becomes a reality in that high
school. One issue stated that the average income of all blacks
in the United States is $7,000 a year.
Through the lack of concrete ties, the U.S.
government is able to program us and Africans into believing
there is no solidarity between the two of us to intensify the
propaganda that upward mobility is a virtue which all blacks in
the U.S. seek as well as the material possessions of this
country. Inside Africa, the Cultural Affairs of the U.S.
embassies have the greatest contact with the African masses; and
most, if not all, of these are “Negroes” who help to spread
rumors and false information about our condition in the U.S.
Nineteen: The domination of the African
continent by the Western powers. As long as the African
continent is dominated by Western economic interests, then we
can expect little help from it in our fight for liberation.
Nobody will stand up in the United Nations and champion the
cause of black people inside the U.S. if there is great fear of
economic retaliation by the U.S. and other Western interests. It
is no accident that it is difficult to find countries in Africa
that will assist a brother who is seeking political asylum.
There are some, but their numbers are
limited; and this relates to the precarious economic position in
which the African countries find themselves, although we must
learn to live underground inside the U.S. We ourselves must
realize that we are much to blame for these conditions for we
have not heightened our own sense of consciousness and concrete
work to help eliminate these conditions.
At the same time black CIA agents, cultural
affairs officers, other representatives of the U.S. government
do much—deliberately—to antagonize the African population
with respect to us living in the U.S.
Twenty: The lack of capital for the
cooperative development of black communities in this country and
Africa. This is an extremely vicious obstacle and control
mechanism. For while Africa is the richest continent on the
earth, yet it is very poor. In order to develop industrially,
capital is needed. Colonial powers granted political
independence but maintained control of most economies. There is
no mystery why Brother Nkrumah didn’t survive, for he was on
the verge of breaking the stranglehold on the Ghanaian economy
imposed by the Western powers. The lack of funds for the
cooperative development of the black community results from the
intense profit motive system under which we live and the desire
to maintain that system.
Twenty-one: The lack of organization which
seek to develop political, economic, and military forms for the
survival and revolution. Many organizations relate to only
one side of the triangle—the political, military, economic
triangle—but all organizations should seek to develop the
three simultaneously. During the period of Reconstruction, there
were many forms of political activity by black people, but the
inability to defend the black political institutions caused
their loss as well as the loss of the lives of many people. The
political ideology must seek revolution with a cooperative
economic content.
Twenty-two: The absence of a centralized
intelligence agency for the use of black people against their
white oppressors, house niggers included. This is vitally
necessary to minimize informers, to post and spread information
about good, bad, and indifferent programs in the community. This
requires a high degree of skill in running a security apparatus,
but these skills can be acquired.
Twenty-three: The lack of trained cadres
capable of organizing people to struggle for their liberation.
Explaining and promoting struggle against the control factors
operating upon us can only come through disciplined cadres
agitating for their change. In Vietnam this is called armed
propaganda units, but the form remains the same. There must be
conscious, dedicated groups of people willing to make every
sacrifice to promote conflict in order to produce change.
Twenty-four: The promotion among black
people that non-violence is the method to change our conditions
inside the U.S. At this stage of our struggle we can see how
the government is intensely trying to cling to this concept
while it plunders and kills in Vietnam.
Twenty-five: The inability to understand
that the total population, men, women, and children must be seen
as revolutionary. This is quite often difficult for some
brothers who are not in the habit of realizing the revolutionary
nature of women; but, if the Algerians had adopted this
attitude, then their revolution would not have succeeded to the
point it did; for the liberation front mobilized the total
energies of the population, women included. Algerian women were
very effective in concealing weapons and transporting messages.
Twenty-six: The Poverty Program. It
was designed to control the rising militancy of the black
population. There are some brothers and sisters within it trying
to use it against the government, but for the most part
revolutionary militancy has been curbed by the introduction of
the poverty program in certain areas.
The poverty program and other federally
funded projects are not designed to instill the habit of
cooperative ownership, but to pay off and buy more stooges. One
must wonder with all the money that the poverty program spends
why there is not one major industrial printing plant where black
people are learning the skills on industrial printing.
Twenty-seven: Psychological warfare
perpetuated by the U. S. government inside black communities.
The extent of this is not know, but we would be most unwise not
to realize that a government that has trained personnel in
psychological warfare operating around the world would not apply
some of those same techniques inside an area it considered
dangerous.
We mentioned rumors. There are those which
get passed by the population in general, and there are those
which get deliberately fostered and promoted by agencies of the
government, especially the Central Intelligence Agency and the
Federal Bureau of Investigation. Unfortunately, many people feel
they can talk to the FBI without realizing that the FBI and the
CIA play on percentage points. They will spread rumors in order
to frighten the population.
Then there is the type of psychological
warfare which tries to make us believe all the problems reside
within us and that there are no external forces causing our
oppression. Quite often this line is internalized by many of us.
Therefore, we sometimes hear that there must be absolute unity
before we can do anything, or that there are no class factors
within the black community. The government achieves desired
results if any segment of the population ignores the objective
realities of the control forces operating upon it and rather
believes that the fault is solely within it.
Twenty-eight: Compacted living conditions
and inadequate housing. Genocide.
Twenty-nine: The lack of land and the
thievery of land. Historically we have been cheated of land
in this country. We worked the land; we made others rich. Not
only was there no land redistribution after the Civil War, but
there has been a systematic attempt to deprive black people of
the little land they have owned through the years. But there is
no reason for us to assume that any land anywhere in the U.S.
does not belong to us. We have as much right to the land and
resources of this country as anyone. There are some of us in the
Black Economic Development Conference who assert the total land
mass and resources of this country must be administered under
revolutionary black leadership in order to prevent the
recurrence of racism and exploitation.
Self-Determination and the Transfer of
Power
Essentially, the fight for reparations is one
of self-determination and the transfer of power. We have made
demands upon one of the major sources of capital in this
country. There are fundamentally only seven major sources of
capital in the United States: The United States government,
banks, business enterprises and corporation, foundations,
churches, and people.
We have no argument with anyone demanding
reparations from the U.S. government. We support their efforts,
and we realize that the call for reparations is not a new one.
However, the churches must be viewed as an extension of the
government. Not to understand the two-thousand-year-old
historical relation of the Christian church with the rise and
fall of governments and their complicity in our enslavement is
to miss a very important political point and the crux of our
demand for reparations.
The Christian church and Jewish synagogues
must not be seen merely as religious institutions. They are more
than that. They are more than just a control mechanism with
their ideology of servitude. The Christian churches and Jewish
synagogues must be seen as financial giants operating in a new
trinity—the church, business, and government.
It is the unveiling and unmasking of the
financial role of the church which is causing the greatest
consternation, the greatest opposition. For the church has
operated as a huge financial giant for many years in this
country, and its power grows greater every day. The catholic
church is more than a powerful second government in many
countries. It is a worldwide government with tremendous
influence. The world missionaries of all the denominations work
hard in hand with government and business.
The National Black Skills Bank.
In order to more effectively deal with the
program demands contained in the Manifesto, we are in the
process of organizing throughout the United States the talents
and skills of many black people into the National Black Skills
Bank. We are encouraging the formation of these units so that
the manifesto may be adapted and expanded upon to fit the
conditions of any given area.
We do not claim that the projected sites
listed in the Manifesto are fixed and immutable. We are asking
people around the country to adapt them to their particular area
and to help in their implementation. We are most concerned with
the use of leisure time. Many people have free time after their
job, and the use of this leisure time becomes very important. If
many people would donate six to eight hours a week fighting one
or more of the control mechanisms operating upon us, then we
would be further ahead on the road to liberation.
Resistance to Black Economic Development
Conference
In the initial stages many people thought we
were not serious. Our determination and our capacity for work
began to force more recognition of our demands. Then there was
an effort to completely circumvent us. In Harlem this took the
form of the Union Theological seminary agreeing to give
$1,000,000 for cooperative development of the community but not
to the Black Economic development Conference. Who gets the money
is yet to be decided. In addition, the Union Theological
seminary voted to give $500,000 to Harlem businessmen. This was
basically unacceptable to us for we are not out to make any more
black people capitalists, but to foster the cooperative economic
development of communities.
Along with the efforts to circumvent us came
the picking and choosing of certain “Negroes” with which to
negotiate and deal. We fought and will fight the bypassing of
our leadership. After the churches began to recognize we had
more and more popular support, then they began to trot our
certain “Negro” spokesmen and to have them to try to
discredit our efforts. This has been coupled with a massive
witch hunt by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and a federal
grand jury hearing.
Conclusion
Our demand for $500 million in reparations
from the churches was an effort to break some of the control
mechanisms operating upon us in some small way. We know that
this effort is not a total solution to our problems, but the
struggle we are making and will make around our demands will
heighten our revolutionary consciousness; and the implementation
of any one of our demands is an asset.
However, more important than that is what we
believe has been the new perception by many black people of
power, its use, and how we may achieve more “on this earth.”
We have escalated our demands to three billion dollars because
of the control the churches have on the southern “Negro”
colleges. We have sought increased funds for them from all the
denominations in order to try to make them truly black
universities.
While we do not envision a quick victory but
years of sustained struggle, we are quite confident that
conflict must be created around control mechanisms. This is not
passive action. There must be a deliberate call to action,
definite acts of defiance, concrete organizational forms, a
positive assertion of the human will to struggle for revolution,
“a will to decolonize,” by whatever means available.
We urge your support and ask you to join in
the struggle. Thank you.
Source: James Forman. Control,
Conflict, and Change: The Underlying Concepts of the Black
Manifesto. Black Workers Congress.
Pamphlet. posted 8 October 2005 |
