The savage repression of blacks, which can be estimated by reading the obituary columns of the nation's dailies, Fred Hampton, etc., has not failed to register on the black inmates.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
Black people don't have an accurate idea of their history, which has been either suppressed or distorted.
When it came to political power, blacks need not apply. Add to this steaming stew the growing tensions over the Vietnam War and the movement for civil rights, and you had plenty of elements to fire the imagination of a novice journalist.
Black men and women were not allowed to register to vote. My own mother, my own father, my grandfather and my uncles and aunts could not register to vote because each time they attempted to register to vote, they were told they could not pass the literacy test.
There is no longer a single common impediment to blacks emerging in this society.
Wherever you go in the history of America, there have been Black people making contributions, but their contributions have been obscured, lost, buried.
There is a genocide that is taking place among black men, in particular young black men, but it is not a genocide being perpetuated by white cops, by the Nazis, or by the Klan. Unfortunately and tragically, it is being perpetuated by other young black men.
Nobody black had learned anything from the 'Letter from the Birmingham Jail' or from the 'I Have a Dream' speech. That was a revelation of white people.
The history of blacks is complicated, fragmented, disturbing to contemplate - not a neat trail of challenges met or of felled trees blocking the path to the mountain top.
Blacks who have not succumbed to the victim culture have been, are, and will be doing quite well - all on their own, without handouts, affirmative action, and other patronizing measures.
The black masses must demand and refuse to accept nothing less than that proportionate percentage of the political spoils such as jobs, elective offices and appointments... They must reject the shameful racial tokenism that characterizes the political life of America today.