Stokely Carmichael

Racism is both overt and covert. It takes two, closely related forms: individual whites acting against individual blacks, and acts by the total white community against the black community. We call these individual racism and institutional racism. The first consists of overt acts by individuals, which cause death, injury or the violent destruction of property. This type can be recorded by television cameras; it can frequently be observed in the process of commission. The second type is less overt, far more subtle, less identifiable in terms of specific individuals committing the acts. But it is no less destructive of human life. The second type originates in the operation of established and respected forces in the society, and thus receives far less public condemnation than the first type. When white terrorists bomb a black church and kill five black children, that is an act of individual racism, widely deplored by most segments of the society. But when in that same city - Birmingham, Alabama - five hundred black babies die each year because of the lack of proper food, shelter and medical facilities, and thousands more are destroyed and maimed physically, emotionally and intellectually because of conditions of poverty and discrimination in the black community, that is a function of institutional racism. When a black family moves into a home in a white neighborhood and is stoned, burned or routed out, they are victims of an overt act of individual racism which many people will condemn - at least in words. But it is institutional racism that keeps black people locked in dilapidated slum tenements, subject to the daily prey of exploitative slumlords, merchants, loan sharks and discriminatory real estate agents. The society either pretends it does not know of this latter situation, or is in fact incapable of doing anything meaningful about it.

Before a group can enter the open society, it must first close ranks.

There is a higher law than the law of government. That's the law of conscience.

We had no more courage than Harriet Tubman or Marcus Garvey had in their times. We just had a more vulnerable enemy.

The secret of life is to have no fear it's the only way to function.

The knowledge I have now is not the knowledge I had then.

We were aware of the fact that death walks hand in hand with struggle.

An organization which claims to be working for the needs of a community - as SNCC does - must work to provide that community with a position of strength from which to make its voice heard. This is the significance of black power beyond the slogan.

White liberals are always saying, "What can we do?_ I mean, they__e always coming to help black people. I thought of an analogy. If you were walking down the street and a man had a gun on another man _ let__ say both of them were white _ and you had to help somebody, whom would you help? It__ obvious to me that if I were walking down the street, and a man had a gun on another man, and I was going to help, I__ help the man who didn__ have the gun, if the man who had the fun was just pulling the gun on the other man for no apparent reason _ if he was just going to rob him or shoot him because he didn__ like him. The only way I could help is either to get a gun and shoot the man with the gun, or take the gun away from him _ join the fellow who doesn__ have a gun and both of us gang up on the man with the gun. But white liberals never do that. When the man has the gun, they walk around him and they come to the victim, and they say __et me help you,_ and what they mean is __elp you adjust to the situation with the man who has the gun on you."If indeed white liberals are going to help, their only job is to get the gun from the man and talk to him, because he is a sick man. The black man is not the sick man, it is the white man who is sick, he__ the one who picked up the gun.

Dr. King's policy was that nonviolence would achieve the gains for black people in the United States. His major assumption was that if you are nonviolent, if you suffer, your opponent will see your suffering and will be moved to change his heart. That's very good. He only made one fallacious assumption: In order for nonviolence to work, your opponent must have a conscience. The United States has none.