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DENNIS HAMILTON: Human rights activist Dick Gregory was in Fargo-Moorhead to speak to students on the Concordia and North Dakota State University campuses. At a press conference, Gregory commented on the Indian plight and the effects of the Wounded Knee trial on the Indian future.

DICK GREGORY: When you got something as critical as the Indian problem in this country today, if you have to sacrifice them, the conscience level that is beginning to wake up. You see, the Indians is actually fighting to survive. And what happens, the highest form of tuberculosis of any minority group on this planet happens with the Indians. The number one suicide rate in America happens with the Indians, and they start committing suicide at seven years old.

But like none of this started coming out until that whole Indian Movement started moving and started moving and started moving. So I would say just the fact of what they dramatize, the conscience level that they have shocked, we would like to see them get a fair trial. You know, I would like to see the government talk to the mafia syndicate hoodlums as vicious as they talk to the Indians at Wounded knee, you know.

But I think it brought out a lot and regardless to what had happened, all of them been wiped out up there. I think it was a beautiful thing what they did. And I think a lot will come out. This will probably be the biggest trial that will go on as far as Indians concerned, as far as publicity is concerned, as far as people watching. And so I would say I would hope that they could get, they will come closer today, getting a fair trial.

You see, when you go back and look and see what all that started over, of some White cat that just made an Indian pull his clothes off and danced and then killed him. They've been doing this for years. But now they know they can't do it anymore.

And so now for the first time, you know, when I went up to Wounded Knee, it was very interesting to be with Indians that had the same feeling driving along the highway that we used to have in Mississippi when we'd go down for the movement, that you don't stop till you get to your destination. You don't stop to go to the filling station, you don't stop to do anything, you know. And we tend not to know that this happened to anybody else than to ourselves. And many Whites never even realized it happened, period. And so I would say I think a lot is going to come out of it.

DENNIS HAMILTON: Gregory was also asked if the cooling off that has occurred on college campuses over the past few years was a sign of complacency toward human rights.

DICK GREGORY: No. I think we went through an era in this country where we saw something that we had never witnessed before. If you go back to early America when they first ironed out the United States Constitution in Philadelphia, hell, it was shooting at one another in the room. I don't think every political convention you have to be shooting and carrying on and that.

I think the first time something happens, a lot of people get excited. And a lot of people were attracted to the human rights movement because of what was going on. It's the only thing they ever knew. And most folks don't realize that this can just last for a few minutes.

For instance, we integrate the schools. And all the hell was raised because of the violence. But the people that's going through the problem are those Black kids that's in those schools that's been run by White with racist attitude for 300 years. The movement's over. We can't demonstrate in front of the school no more for what we was demonstrating for because they've integrated.

But what about that Black child that has to go through there and deal with that racist teacher. What about these five-year-old kids we putting in these schools, man, that these teachers is walking up, pulling on their ears. And that's the second line of battle. You have to deal with it. That second thrust, you almost have to waste, man, to open up that door.

And so I would say if we would go back and look and see what the rumbling was on the college campuses, they were rumbling for Dow Chemical, not to recruit, which they're not. They were rumbling for the CIA not to recruit, which they're not. They were protesting against the war in Vietnam and ROTC. If you would go back and get a list of all the things that they were demonstrating for, many of them have been corrected or aimed into another direction.

One, we have more college campuses across this country that have young people on the board of directors. We have colleges that had never thought of having coed dormitory, had never thought of even having women on the campus. You have women that's heading positions on college campuses. That never happened before. You have a lot of leading so-called universities that just don't get involved with Pentagon contracts. They're not doing germ warfare.

And so if you look, this is what they was really dealing with. And I would say many of those have been relieved. And I would say this is why you would see such a low key, and I think this is the way it's supposed to be. You cannot keep up that momentum 24 hours a day. It is only good to shock the conscience.

DENNIS HAMILTON: That was author, lecturer, and. human rights activist, Dick Gregory. He spoke in Fargo-Moorhead. And this is Dennis Hamilton in Moorhead.