(00:00:00) Live broadcasts of Minnesota meeting are made possible by the Twin Cities based law firm of Oppenheimer wolf and Donnelly. Good afternoon. I'm and each Kowski president and CEO of Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Minnesota. And a member of the Minnesota meeting board of directors. It's a pleasure to welcome all of you to the Minnesota meeting today. We also extend a welcome to the radio audience throughout the Upper Midwest who are hearing this program and Minnesota public radio's. Midday program broadcast of Minnesota meeting is sponsored by the up and - Oppenheimer wolf Donnelly Law Firm. Minnesota meeting as a public affairs Forum which brings National and international speakers to Minnesota members of Minnesota meeting represent this communities leaders from corporations government Academia, and the professions the next schedule speaker for Minnesota meeting as General William Westmoreland on May 12th. Minnesota meeting is pleased to present today's speaker. Dr. Benjamin hooks talking on unspoken issues of race in American society. Dr. Hooks will explore the values held by the growing minority population in the u.s. Ways in which American society can begin to address the unspoken issues of race that underlie the contradictions within our society. And his experiences among disaffected Americans. Dr. Hook's is executive director of the NAACP prior to heading this organization 11 years ago. He served for five years on the Federal Communications Commission. His career has spanned Public Service law Ministry and business. Dr. Hook's was co-founder and vice president of Minnesota Federal Savings and Loan of Memphis and a member of the Tennessee bar. He chairs the leadership conference on civil rights a coalition of more than a hundred and fifty civil and human rights organizations following his presentation questions will be addressed in the audience. Please use the cards at your table to jot down questions for discussion. Steve Young attorney with Winthrop and Weinstein former dean of the Hammond law school and Jane Mara SEC executive director of the Minnesota meeting will move among you to manage the questions and answers and now it's my pleasure to present to you. Dr. Benjamin hooks. (00:03:00) Thank you very much for that very kind and generous introduction and it is a distinct honor and pleasure to join you in the Minnesota meeting as some of you know, I have come to your state in part to join the people of Minnesota and paying tribute to two of this great States. Most distinguished adopted Sons. Hubert Humphrey and Roy Wilkins and it is fitting that we do so because these men March shoulder to shoulder for a long number of years to move American society forward. We're very happy that the Hubert Humphrey Institute of public affairs at the University of Minnesota has established a Roy Wilkins chair and center and human relations and social justice the honor of this great civil rights leader. Whom I was I would like to say blessed privilege to succeed but I've discovered that when you're walking in the footsteps of a legend is not such a blessing to succeed them. You're always measured not by what you've accomplished. But what about what you didn't do as it relates to your predecessor. It is a and I shall not address this in my address. I'm a I'm a I'm a deal with it. If a question comes up, it is one of the ironies as far as I am concerned of human history that Roy Wilkins was really never given the credit and then double AC p-- for the great role. They played in The Civil Rights struggle The Superficial nature of reporting today is of such that the unusual the bizarre the outrageous commands media attention. Most of the time they have most of the time that it is done. It has no lasting significance, but Roy Wilkins presided over the NAACP from 1955 until 1977 of Spanish 22 years. And in fact, he was acting director while Walter White took a leave of absence and 19. 54 the year of the great Brown versus Board of Education decision the decision that declared that segregation the Public School Systems. America was unconstitutional which was of course. the birth of the modern Civil Rights Movement And so I'm happy to bring greetings from the nation's largest oldest most effective most. Privileged most prestigious most cussed and discussed most hated and most loved civil rights organization in a CP that that name gets us in trouble. Sometimes we went to City Once in the mail was given us his welcome. He said I'm so glad to have the members of the NCAA and our midst today. So sometimes we do run a little name trouble but your introducer they had it all together. And of course it is fitting and proper that the names of Hubert Humphrey and Roy Wilkins should be linked. And I hope that as the Roy Wilkins chair and Senators endowed and our privilege to meet Dean shoe last night that we will be able finally to get to the truth of the movement of civil rights in this country. Let me off. Stop just for a moment and talk about the early beginnings of the NAACP because this is the 80th year of our existence. It was founded on 12 February 1909 in New York City. In 1908. That was a peculiarly. Difficult outrageous racial situation in Springfield, Illinois some 20 blacks were killed and an excessive half the black residents of Springfield were forced to flee at risk of their lives and something about the Paradox of the irony of this Race Rod occurring in 1908 first decade of the 20th century some 40 years after the end of the Civil War some 45 years after the supposed freedom of the slaves that in the birth and the home rather of Lincoln his where his tomb was located in those great strides. They Gettysburg Address the first and second inaugural addresses are enshrined in beautiful marble that in this city, that would be this race ride, cause a lot of people to come together and say who will speak with this great mass of people who are daily being Mediate beaten denied their rights and Privileges and the Constitution marked WB Dubois, one of the great intellectual leaders of the black community of all times was having a series of meetings annually over on the Canadian side of the Niagara Falls where there was a little more freedom and that were group of white people meet you in a meeting in New York City and they came together initiative call and that call became famous and was a founding Charter of the NAACP since that time for the past 80 years. Nothing has happened to enrich to further the strengthen race relations that n-double-a-cp had not either LED all been a very prominent part of and so I'm proud to be the executive director of the NAACP succeed in such gigantic figures as Roy Wilkins the late Walter White Legend in his own time who served from 1930 to 1955 the late James Weldon Johnson Port historian author lawyer right of great distinction who compose the words for that great song Lift Every voice and sing or what we sometimes call now the black national anthem who served from 1919 to 1933 and proud of that that were either two or three histories little our own histories a little vague on that two or three executive directors who were white The last white executive director was James Halliday, and he had to leave the association because in this capacity as executive director, he was jumped on and beaten almost to death and did not recover for a long number of years because of his association with the NAACP. Unspoken issues of race reminded me of the theme for our convention this year and I think the theme is 80 years later the struggle continues. some few Weeks ago I was down at what I think now is a great institution called the real collagen Berea Kentucky many of you may be familiar with that institution. It was started as an integrated school with a great promise. There's a book written on the life of my grandmother that points out. She was one of the first black students at the rail and the first black teacher at that college and a 1905 law called the day law Afters author mandated, that could be no integrated schools in Kentucky. And for many years, perhaps 50 years the whole early history, but real was wiped off the books and people attended that college never knowing that at one time. It had black students in black teachers and a few years ago some historian on Earth that and they started slowly bringing that story back to life and I was invited there to receive a honorary degree not long ago, and I was reminded of the evil as that great. Coward an American fiction the shadow says who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men and on November 9th 1988 I participated in I guess you would call it a commemorative ceremony that went back 50 years to what is now known as a night of Crystal perhaps your mind will focus on the fact that it was that night that the Stormtroopers at the orders of that mad. Tarrant Hitler went absolutely mad and destroyed over a thousand Jewish synagogues kill some 30 Jewish people and sent that night 30,000 Jewish people to the concentration camps the beginning of a campaign that was in in more than six million people being destroyed. Because of the madness of one man and as we read the various rabbis who participated as they read the historical record, I was struck all over again what I refer to as an endless, unyielding infinite unfailing enduring ability of humankind to creat evil things and to do evil deeds and that's why we decided that we would take for our theme this year the struggle continues. Ladies and gentlemen, I am one of those people who happens to believe that there's been a great deal of progress made. I get quite excited when folk telling me that we're no better off than we were four years ago because if anybody says that and if they were old enough to know how things were for years ago, they should know their line then I mean it's weird. It's a lot different now I can tell you because I'm 64 years of age and I don't have to go by here. So I was born in Memphis, Tennessee where every acre was a drop of blood and every step was a tear. I was born in the city where they were no black police were no black farmer. No black no blacks in the city hall except janitors. I was born in the city where when I came to practice law in 1949. We were still using segregated restaurants and segregated restrooms, if you saw one at all. Now I go back to Memphis today and see a black man as a chief federal judge a black man superintendent of schools system black who is chief of the police department. When I look at The Marvelous progress is in the made it just it lose me how people can say that we're worse off and if we say we were solved and finally Heyman Martin King and and all of the people who fought and Roy Wilkins and Hubert Horatio Humphrey may as well not have lived. They did make a difference. They did indeed make a difference when ever go back and Mississippi sometimes in my more on the style Juke moments I go back because I am Used to conduct voter registration drives and Mississippi and who are about five cars. I left Mississippi doing a hundred twenty miles an hour that cause what cause would do that then they don't make them like that in the morning. And why was I going to Memphis as bad? As Memphis was it was an oasis in the desert? And and so that I know what it meant to live under those circumstances. I'm a personal witness and the victim of things that have happened and it bothers me on the other hand. It bothered me equally when people try to pretend that all the problems have been solved. This was the The Peculiar gift for Ronald Reagan that great president who in my judgment will at least if history tells the truth will at least rank the last among all the president's up to this point. I don't know what we're going to have after this, but I cannot think of a president who done more to ruin this country than your friend. I know you voted for him and I understand that I have I'll have something good to say about him before I leave but so when you go out to the ranch and talk to him, you said Ben did say something good about you before he left but here's a man who who by himself like little Jack Horner doubled the national debt. Of course. He had a lot of the heat from the setting the Congress but he never said a balanced budget down. He campaigned as if he were not the president they are doing all of these things and our great-great-grandchildren would pay the legacy of the lack of pre and postnatal care of the of the lack of money for educational system for housing. We confront all kinds of problems and the President Bush no matter what his intentions if saddled with the fact that the national debt is so large the payments of Interest are so large that many needed social program of never be attended to and when I think about that and then race relations, I can never think of anything positive that Ronald Reagan ever did whenever he signed the bill. It was a bill he had fault on TV and worn himself out and when we won he would finally signed it and we never Had a good ceremony. On the Carter when he was signing a bill we going to the White House and have a little he didn't serve whiskey have a little wine and and you know punching cookers. Mr. Reagan had his in the Rose Garden we walk in and he'd sign and leave and we'd be ushered out. We did how to spend five minutes that kind of embarrassing when you fought hard to get where you are and you can't even get into the White House. You got to go to the Rose Garden so you can be dismissed quickly on the other hand. I do admit I was at a dinner. Mr. Reagan just before he left the presidency and I looked at this man with amazement. He was 70 some years old and if you look at most presidents, you will see that the president's of Ages them. But his hair was black and that were less land on his face. He was jumping and bounding and and I saw Jesse Jackson a few days later suggested don't play. Mr. Reagan sheep. Now remember he's been president almost eight years. I said, he was shaking hands. I'm not sure he knew the names of folk with with whom with whom he was shaking. But he was more athletic and I was he jumped up on the podium as they know that something to this business. Of going to work at noon and getting off in one with a half hour off for lunch or something to it that so don't play them cheap. He's doing good. And if you watch mr. Regan whenever he gave that little peculiar smirk and and turned himself to the side like this and gave that most reaching and fetching smile or wapa was on his way. I mean a big one. But this is a legacy that I had to work under now when I look at it when I look back at the the Injustice has been perpetuated and I look around the world today and I see so many things the tears and Agony of Afghanistan wear mittens have been killed and wounded the run from their homes. And and why when I look at the beautiful Emerald island of Ireland where people who have the same color skin texture of hand color of eyes are fighting each other daily kill because of differences in religion. When I look at part of Africa where our work with the relief committees and with the government agencies and where people are starving and little children who are scarce. The two years old look like they're 90 belly's distended no food, no adequate nourishment and and many times it is not because there is no available food, but because of political and tribal differences rulers will not allow the food to go where it is needed and Look at South Africa where four million whites live in the lap of luxury and 27 and 26 million blacks live almost in slavery and those in power seem determined that they will never yield. And I just keep thinking about these things but I don't have to really go to Arlen and Iran Iraq where poison gas was used for the first time a large scale. I can come right here to America just two years ago at Howard Beach three young black men went into a little part of the ask for direction than just about a month ago. I passed the spot but one of those young black men lost his life being pursued by those aggressors and was hit by a car Forsyth County Georgia. We are gathered down there week after they refused to let the some arches peaceably demonstrating Forsyth county is a county but no blacks have lived almost 75 years when they were run out of that counting by the Ku Klux Klan and the forces of evil and Terror in this world and We Gather to some twenty-five or thirty thousand strong and even as we were singing the old of freedom songs of the sixties and fifties I saw on the faces of men and women many of them young. Such hatred and I had not expected to see again in my lifetime and the sign that spoke with themselves one sign that said James Earl Ray American hero. Here's a man who's accused of killing Martin King convicted in a court of law of kid and Martin King and there were people who call him an American hero another sign that loomed up that said South Africa will trade our blocks for your whites as if the people still had the power to sell us like Hogs and cattle on The Auction Block and then finally as we rounded that last curve and prepared to mount the platform the shyness struck me more forcibly than any was a big sign that said nigga go home. And as I looked at the sign tears welled up my eyes because they could not even spell nigger had one g in it if you're going to use it at least spell it, right and and when you mix up ignorance and Prejudice and bias and racial hatred, you've got to Devil's Brew. Brothers and my sisters here in the center the lustrous cities of Minnesota and st. Paul remember that the struggle continues that there are problems everywhere in our own communities heart is saddened when I see the increased 7 of dope and drugs and I sometimes fear that coke crack and cocaine will do more to destroy the black family than the Ku Klux Klan ever did murder rate is accelerating in Washington DC last year, they claim the title of homicide capital of the world and up until April 1517 young men at kill each other in a crazed war of a drugs the rise of the incidence of single family parenting feminization of poverty. I look at all of the things that we are struggling with and I reminded all over again that that is this unending unyielding infinite capacity. (00:22:23) to create evil (00:22:25) and Bring Havoc into our world the second thing that struck me as I look back at that and some of the things that happened today was the fact that when the Storm Troopers struck when they shut up the glass and the Crystal that gave birth to the name night of Crystal a crystal not in German and as they cut it off 30,000 Jewish people to the concentration camps. Germany remained silent. Nobody said anything people who had worked at the same Factory had gone to the same schools had been swimming in the same pools when they saw their fellow countrymen being dragged off. They did not open their mouths and I know you've read the statement somewhere. The only thing necessary for evil to Triumph is for good people to do nothing. They remained silent but not only did the Germans remain silent England remained silent France remain silent America remains silent the great Roman Catholic Church remained silent in the face of a monstrous evil. That was a consume 6 million in the concentration camps and mittens others and of others in the war. They remained silent did you know that a thug or two or three thoughts are coming here today and kill us all if they could take us out one by one and the rest of us said here and said nothing they could start at this table and go and take one out blow his brains out and get us one of the time while the rest of us said nothing if there's any great enduring Legacy that Martin Luther King jr. Left. It was a conviction that he could not remain silent in the face of what he perceived to be evil. And so when the Vietnam War was still popular it was Martin Luther King who ascended the pulpit at Riverside Church and spoke out in a loud voice and continued on to the day of his death against the evil of Vietnam. And finally this profit and I believe is surely his name was in Asia and Jose would profit so was Martin Luther King jr. Finally spoke to this nation. Not just the black people until the nation realize what a fallen. And what a foolish thing they were doing. Remaining silent in the face of evil is a monstrous sin all in itself and there are too many people in Minnesota and st. Paul and all over this nation who are still remaining silent. They like to pretend they are no problem that have not been answered the resolved. There are no questions to be dealt with there no issues left unresolved. And so they fight affirmative action and called a reverse discrimination. I went to the yield University Club the other night to speak and after I make my speech they had opposite in the polls and speakers that come in and those in favor and I saw what I conceived to be brilliant young mind and who said that what black folk have to do now and what they have to do no more affirmative action that we have to do is is to get in and you get an education and they gave us all the remedies and I resented the fact that my father who was a high school graduate could not be a policeman in Memphis when he graduated not because he was dumb not because he was ignorant but because he was black. Policeman that I grew up with all white and on Beale Street, which is spelled be ele. Most of them couldn't even spell it. You know, they just were policemen because they were white and this kind of Insidious accusation that somehow women and blacks are being given preferences this stupid idea that a full-grown black man can live on welfare the rest of his life. No big lava told her no program I Define about in here to find any program that will take care of a full-grown black or white man for the rest of his life on welfare and yet you hear those stories surface and everywhere Marnie Immortal the great German Pastor as he in retrospect contemplative. What happened in Hitler's Germany said first, they came for the Jews, but I said nothing because you see I was not a Jew And then they came for the Roman Catholics, but I didn't have to say anything because after all I was not a Roman Catholic and then they came for the trade unionist, but I kept my piece and remain silent because after all you understand I was not a trade unionist and finally they came for me and by that time there was nobody to do anything for anybody. We are seeing a Resurgence of narcissism and neo-nazism and conservatism of David Duke Grand Greg and of the Ku Klux Klan can be elected to the state representative seat in Louisiana. Just outside of the great City of New Orleans graffiti. Flags Ku Klux Klan crosses are being burned on the campuses of many of our greatest universities among the best and brightest name-calling alienation separation of people is going on and there are too many who are remaining silent. Hoping that if you remain silent somehow, it will go away in my own Community. I have this problem all of the time when many of our friends told me that I should not speak up on the issues that are peculiarly affecting the black community in the family and the use of dope and drugs and sometimes they tell me that it's a problem that we inherited did not invent, but whether we inherited it whether we invented it or whatever it is the fact remains we must deal with it. I said last night a little informal Gathering that if A white man, and I happened to be in the same boat. And for some reason he fumbles around and started to leak in his end of the boat and it begins to go down. There's no point of me sitting in my hands and see that what you've done you're going to drown because it won't be long if his in goes down mind can't be far behind and we must remember that we are in strictly bound together on this small planet Earth and we shall either Live together in harmony his brothers and sisters are perish as fool's if we try separation that brings me to my third point and that is that that must be the building of Coalition somehow. We've got to get our individual differences Reach Out across the line. One of the things that disturbs me most severely is the growing alienation between the black and Jewish communities as I move across the East particularly, there are suspicions innuendos and rumors all kinds of questions that arise I've spent, you know, I came up in the South this may seem like a funny statement. I hope it's not misinterpreted but I didn't I didn't understand until I came to New York this business of being anti-jewish anti-semitic because as far as Black Folk will concern the style that one but anybody else but white folk and all the white folk, we thought were given as hell except for a few so we didn't distinguish whether they were Italians or Germans Irish just right and it looked like white was right and black you had to get back. So, you know, we we came up in a different environment. and yet in this world the things that pull people together among or Pressman orders are many more and greater than those that should separate us and so it is with this growing Hispanic community that and the growing recognition of women as they fight for their rights and asian-americans and Native Americans and all the people who have been at sometimes the other abused and misused by the majority culture this nation we must pull together with them. And in addition to that we must pull together with those members of the white Community who wish to move this nation forward and they are and have always been those who have been in the Vanguard of happen. I used to sing the song and didn't know what it meant when I first was singing it John Brown's Body lies a motor in the grave, but the truth goes marching on and then later on I discovered that John Brown was a white man who gave his life and one of the first Insurrection than there were blacks and whites together who Bandit their small beliefs and Willing to give yes, even that lives and who can forget the great abolitionist before the Civil War who constantly raised our voices and lift it there and raised there and wrote the letters and the kinds of things that finally made this nation realized that we could not exist the half slave and half free and I say to my black brothers and sisters quite often that if you hateful because they're white and then they have a right to hate you because you're black and as I look around this room today and look at all these distinguish faces. I'm convinced that most of you may be a few exceptions. But most of you really didn't have anything to do with being here when you knew anything you already here. You didn't pick your place of birth. You didn't choose your parents. You didn't choose your race. You didn't choose your sex. And since I believe in God, there's no reason for me to keep arguing God every day about what he made of me I could but I don't I could have said my Lord you could have made me look a little bit more like Billy Dee. Tim's You could have given me the athletic ability of a Michael Jordan so I could fly through that and make a million dollars an endorsement. If you didn't want to do that for me. You could have give me the moonwalk that Michael Jackson had dealt a lot of things I could talk with a lot about but I don't I just accept it. maybe like Muhammad Ali and you know flip like a butterfly sting like a bee but since he has made me Ben Hooks the now I have decided that as it is said in the parable of talents to do the best I can with what I have and all God requires of any of us is to do the very best we can with what he has equipped us with and so today as a struggle continues and all of these incidents and we have made great progress 6,000 elected local black officials to billion dollars two hundred billion dollar gross national product thousands of doctors dentists and lawyers 303. I'm sorry and feeling three black males. We just lost one in Chicago trimmed and two black males presiding over some of the marvelous and most majestic citizen of this nation and it does make a difference a little personal note. I went back down the Mississippi not long ago and a little town Coahoma County where I've been trying to register black voters and they had hit one or two of them and scared me almost to death and I went back down there looking around the courthouse and feeling good and a loud voice said, can I help? And all of a sudden that fear of 30 years ago Hitman, I turned around I couldn't see the man. I saw a star. I saw his pistol. I saw the billy club and I sort of blackjack because he was so much taller now. That's all I could see and I was looking at all of that. Can you imagine how good I felt and I looked a little higher and was a very tall straight ramrod stiff black man. Who said mr. Hooks are myshelf down here. Can I help you? I said, hey praise God from whom all blessings flow. It does make a difference. It it does indeed make a difference that yes. I want you to help me. I'd like to ride around and see the city said be my guest and there I was riding in the front seat of the sheriff's department not under arrest. Finally, let me say as I close with one final thought on that is that I am a minister. I deeply believe in the fact that there is a God like Martin Luther King understand that the Arc of the universe is long, but I believe that it leans toward Justice that truth trust there shall arise again alai cannot live forever and that behind a front and Providence God still has a smiling face it somehow if I had the ability today to tell you that if I could reach from pole to pole and grasp the whole of Creation with ass man. I still must be measured by my mind for the Mind as a measure of man fleecy locked and dark complexion. Do not forfeit. Nature's claims skins me difficult affections. Well in black and white the same sure as we've looked around this world of ours that is this infinite capacity for evil but there is still a God who rules above and I believe that eternally there is an answer to all of our problems right maybe hanging from the scaffold and wrong may be seated on the throne, but that scaffold sways the future in in the dim unknown standeth God within Shadows keeping watch over his own and so I've had my humiliation and difficulties I've been talked about and I've been the victim of segregation I served in an army when I took the oath of office and as a soldier had to God prisoners of war in Macon, Georgia, they were in the restaurant to eat and the black soldiers stood outside the goddamn. I've been through all of that. I've seen it I felt the pain the humiliation the stigma of segregation, but I'm glad to live in a country where within the Constitution we could finally come to this point and my optimism and faith in God compels me to believe that we can make it own through we can have that gentler Kinder Nation. We can make those thousand points of light shine. There's much we can do but we must do it together. So my brothers and sisters as I close a night this afternoon rather the struggle continues. The battle is on that many forces that would destroy us, but we banned hours of together women and men of good will recognize and admit that there has been racial sexual discrimination and Prejudice and resolve that we were wiped from the face of the Earth in one day our sons and daughters shall rise up and call our name blessed. I like that song that says Oh beautiful for spacious skies for amber waves of grain for purple mountains Majesty across the fruited plain. Then the word says America America God shed his grace on thee and I add to those words now, let us you and I go out black and white male and female, Jew and Gentile and crown that good with Sisterhood and Brotherhood from sea to shining sea. Thank (00:36:28) you. Dr. Hook's thank you very much again for your witness and for your reminder to all of us at the opportunities for our own Witnesses for our radio audience. This is a Minnesota meeting with dr. Benjamin hooks the executive director of the NAACP and we've now like to take some questions or comments from the audience for dr. Hooks. Someone has a question speak to me or Jamie Rasik over there. Yes, please your question. Welcome to Minneapolis. Mr. Hooks a number of city councils across the country on Detroit particular comes to mind have passed resolutions calling for the establishment of a educational fund or African Americans as part of pre-civil War reparations for the ancestors of African Americans. What will the n-double-a-cp what will the response to this be? And what do you think of this program? (00:37:53) You have to question? What will end up ACP response being what will my personal reaction be? First of all, let me say that the NAACP is a uniquely Democratic institution will have our annual convention July 8 through 13 at Detroit Michigan and Cobo Hall. There'll be some thirty five hundred delegates representing the 2200 maximum across this country and I'm not sure the Lord knows what they will do when they get there and I don't try to predict that because Love the fact is a democratic body and people will be here from Minneapolis and they'll have various opinions. We've already received a resolution on it my own Viewpoint. Is that as a head of the Leadership Council on civil rights? I was among leaders us fight to for reparations for the Japanese Americans who were forcibly evicted from their homes as you remember, maybe, you know, you're too young to remember but in the 1941 when the 42 period They removed Japanese-Americans two camps because they were afraid of them. They said and I led the fight for reparations. I certainly think that I read the Detroit city council is one of my adoptive homes, and I read the resolution. I think the concept is good. I think the idea is sound because they did not ask for reparations to individuals. They asked for the creation of a trust fund so that the Sons and Daughters of former slaves Granite what I'm really talking about grandson or great-grandson could have a 40 billion dollar Educational Funding. There's no question about the fact that in today's world without an education. He'll be very Bill to make it so I'm third in favor of the concept as I've seen in either three or four different concept, but the one the city council in Detroit past had to do with the establishment of an educational fun. I think 40 billion dollars. It would be used to help lift us out of this condition in which we find ourselves. And of course the other part of it of the story is that no changes in is stronger than its weakest link and whatever would help to build and buying the black community would certainly help the whole of American. Let me just add one of the statement people don't like the Rays and don't like to talk about it. But Thaddeus Stevens and others during the Civil War and right after talked about 40 acres and a mule. There's nobody able to calculate what may have been the difference in the state is of black people and how they were able to live in the bill that lives had. The four million slaves were freed been given that chance and the opportunity for Acres a mule and some seed how black people made it from slavery to this point is a mystery in the riddle of which no one has ever solved for me successfully if I did not believe in God at all. I'd have to believe that people turn loose turn loose made free no money no mule. No land no seed no, nothing not able to read and write and somehow they made it and I think the country fit the hitch of this country been very much different for the better had freed men been given the essentials of live that we would be far Advanced as a nation and certainly as black people and all of these disparities would not exist. It's a little late how many years late hundred and whatever but it's still an idea whose time is still a pregnant with possibility (00:41:01) that the hooks we have a question (00:41:02) over here. Let me just say one other thing for those who didn't quite understand the question. The question was the Detroit city council passed a bill that is After the national government government for reparations are some kind of payment for the sons and daughters our grandson of the descendant of slaves who spent two hundred years in bondage in this country and they have asked for in the form of a 40 billion dollar educational fun. I believe it was the what the ask for that would be used for the purpose of raising the educational level of black people in this nation. And you heard my answer to the question (00:41:36) Alfred babington Johnson. (00:41:38) Yes, dr. Hooks in light of the Cross indecision in the Milliken decision of the Supreme Court jurisdictions, all of the country are facing a challenge to their affirmative action and they set aside programs and first let me thank you for having sent some very helpful information to us here in Minnesota in terms of responding to that. But I think it would be very important and I hope you will address Minnesota in respect to the kinds of responses that you think are possible to that case. The argument we're hearing is that there's no place to stand. Based on the response of the Court. Well, I (00:42:16) more or less. Bidding pieces of (00:42:19) practice law now for 40 years and I read with interest the decision in the Richmond versus cross on case and the various separate concurring opinion that made up the total Mosaic that gave us a so-called majority opinion. I noticed three or four things in that case that first of all, it was a devastating blow. I sometimes think that it looked as if the Supreme Court had just landed here from Venus or Mars or Mercury and had not never heard of the history of race discrimination is country. As you know, the decision said that the decision was based upon the Richmond statute that set aside. I think it was 50% of procurement contracts through the city for minorities. They had a hearing that in that hearing it developed that minorities over a period of the last hundred years had gotten less than 1% of all the contracts let by the city it had a torture. History as a court case, but finally it was it was it was affirmed in the lower court affirmed in the Circuit Court went up to the Supreme Court and then it came back and start over again. And the second time the Circuit Court said it did not meet constitutional muster. But in Sandro Connors majority opinion, which became the opinion of the court she did point out two or three things which are those who are opposed to affirmative action over look first of all, she said that it was possible to have an affirmative action set-aside program that didn't meet constitutional muster what it must do first. However was to create the record that they had indeed been discrimination that that bothers me on the one hand that you've got to prove and Mississippi that they discriminated of Alabama or Minnesota for that matter, but that is there. And so what we have done is a try to set out the broad outlines what must be done to prove the history of racial discrimination. Secondly Justice O'Connor said then have improved it a Catholic After that program careful don't ordinance that will deal with if the effects of that and how it could be remedied would pass constitutional muster. So that is in addition to the devastating effect. That is Hope in the decision itself. And we must not let our opponents blind us to the hope. So we at the end up with ACP call a meeting in Atlanta just a few days ago and we dealt first of all with a model ordinance. We read the case very closely. We read the concurring and dissenting opinions and we drafted what we believe is a good model ordinance. And of course it has to be carefully tailored in crafted one of the things they pointed out with the Richmond case had 50% and included aleutians who had never been in Richmond and never been discriminated against it must the ordinance must deal with the affected class. Secondly, we went through a how to do it the seminar on how the city must conduct itself in order to have a hearing and we've been through this before injury cases where I know black served on juries. And we went up to the Supreme Court to various Coast AM again, trying to prove that black suit not serve on juries. They kept on making the requirements more onerous, but we know how to establish in the Bill of record. So the second part I made by put it back with the first part is established it record before in a competent hearing before the city and legislative body that they indeed has been discrimination and secondly it carefully crafted program. Now the problem is that while we're doing that there would be a group of people who are challenged every contract lip. So we have given advice very publicly that we think that this ought to occur soon the hearing and the new ordinance and when it shall have occurred that they all of the contracts then awarded be given under the new situation and not under the old and that means will not be toned with the fact that we are continuing to do something illegal and I think it should be put into effect once and for all again, it proves the difficulty that the the unhidden and The unspoken issues of race in our society and the fact that the struggle continues but we have not given up NAACP had never won an easy fight and this will not be easy, but it can be done (00:46:30) to hooks. We have a question from Mary Boyd. Education have a concern about how to help the African American child to deal with the faceless subtle racism. They are confronted with daily. (00:46:44) Well, it's difficult because it's hard to replicate experiences. Someone asked me about my own childhood and how my mother and father dealt with it and I really couldn't recall but they did deal with it and I think we may have to go back and look at our history. We didn't mean I knew I was colored negro black African-American whatever they chose to call me when I was a small boy. I knew I had to go to a segregated school. I knew when I went downtown I couldn't go to the movies. I couldn't sit down at a restaurant but the difference is it didn't it didn't kill me didn't destroy my my spirit. Maybe I'll for parents had more guts than we have. Maybe this Young Generation just not able to face any problem. I don't give a hang about all of the Hang-Ups. I think we got to fight on it. It's a matter of not giving in you know, it's too many people now just giving We're standard of the place where we've never stood before we have the first generation of blacks who do not have to deal with racism in this moreover it Farms. We have teachers who now have phds teaching another teacher who taught me ever done anything with in his high school, but they set their of course, you couldn't do it now to stick in her hand. And the man that I learned they took no excuses. They didn't take the step the fact that I was hungry or ragged or black or destitute. They didn't have excuses you learn they insisted on it. They believed we could then sit on it and we learn and it was surprising how fast we learned but and I think that I think that one of the problems is we spend more time now and I know I'll be criticized this but I'll be leaving I got a round-trip ticket. We have more more professional societies more accreditation agencies more inspections more of everything professionals. Are there many articles that said in the great universities are judged by how little they teach and how many papers you write how many papers can I'm meeting teachers right in the year that have any relevance, you know, they talk about everything in the world but teaching and I think we've got to return are headed President Carter's Commission on an agenda for the nation state is an education and I say that the American public school system is failing. I don't have black kids and failing this nation. We're not learning. We don't know who Harry Truman was we don't even know who Lyndon Johnson was certainly we don't remember in about in Civil Rights era, but Martin King and we're not quite sure when he lived whether you lived in 1865 a 1965. Something is radically wrong. I'm not an educator and I'll leave it to you experts but all I say is the main thing is don't give up on the system. It has been the greatest contribution. This country has made to the world a system of Education that gives every child a right to learn and in addition to having wall-to-wall carpets and thermostat control buildings and educated teachers and dedicated janitors as Mark Hopkins put it as a pupil on one end and a teacher on the other on the log can learn and we learned in all kinds of conditions and I cannot And will not excuse people for not learning now. I will not sympathize with people. I have no excuse for dropouts. I have no sympathy at all for those who want to learn if I had my way I would forget what Martin King taught me and take my shoe and using the right place to get people to go where education is being administered. I would insist that teachers stop whining and moaning about what they're not getting in do well with what you have. There are resources available. We may not have all the the what's that weird or audio-visual thing? I don't even have I don't know what audio-visual meant when I went to school but a whole generation of black and white learned under different conditions that must be a rededication to the central proposition of teaching and learning that must be adequate money. Mr. Bush hear me today. You can't solve the problem of Education by wishing it. Well, you got to have some money and local taxpayers have got to be prepared to put the money into the system to make it work and then demand accountability from parents teachers and students from principals and superintendents and the Union's simple accountability. Any other time for (00:50:34) questions looks a question from Nancy spear. Dr. Hooks as you mentioned the Hubert Humphrey Institute at the University of Minnesota is raising funds for the Roy Wilkins chair in human relations and social justice. The university is a land-grant university and has three missions teaching and research and service or what we call Outreach if you had some advice to give to that chair holder once we hire him or her what would it be vis-à-vis carrying out those three (00:51:05) missions? Well, you know if I were younger I'd be a candidate for the seat. But how he's going to pay. I'd be a candidate for the seat of Roy Wilkins distinguished scholar of whatever you want to call it. I know it's going to be a great name and nice nice salary. And the first thing I would advise the that Roy Wilkins chair is that the whole of the chair must familiarize him or herself with what the history of civil rights has been in this country didn't In 54, it didn't start in 1955. It didn't start in 1865 It Started from the day the first leaves hit this land started before we ever got over here those who jumped the ship because they were opposed to it. Julian Bond a good and dear friend of mine is teaching a course in civil rights history at the University of Temple University in Philadelphia, and he called me to this had been you know, I was involved in all this thing, but it was surprising how much I didn't know and as we learn it the real history there Harriet Tubman in this eternal truths and Frederick Douglass is a Nat Turner's and all the people who helped to bring about a change in American Life the Abraham Lincoln and Thaddeus Stevens and others and then I think that's the part that deals with research at the deals with teaching. I don't know whether it is much teaching going on now. I just got through telling you what I thought about some professors who who brag on how little they teach and how much they research and how many papers they write that nobody reads. Don't even sure they know how to read them when they get them written and and all the everywhere I go. There's a convention going on with teachers and their reading to themselves and talking about what they've done. It remind me of civil rights workers. We get together sometimes and recite past glories and forget about present difficult as well it anyway and third I think that they ought to be an attempt to reach beyond the university itself and through forums such as this seminars with people through public radio off for that matter commercial radio and television an attempt to really educate the whole public. You know, that's another instance of security that people always talk about wealth that land grant colleges serve as a welfare institution and was first for white colleges, but they don't talk about that much in the second land-grant did find include us. Well, I think that's the mission of the Roy Wilkins chair and finally the real story of civil rights will not be written until we stop over glorifying somebody who went to Mississippi to spend one month knowing they were going to get back to Minnesota and those black folks who lived in the No little Hubble's who live in those Shacks who went down to register who had them use poison their lives threatened that who had that job taken away from them and day in and day out indigenous black people in South Carolina, Mississippi who had the guts to fortitude and the courage to fight this battle and I get sick and tired of hearing people write the history as if because some priest arrived by Ben Hooks went down in Mississippi and spent a summer and came back with I liberated Black Folk Black Folk liberated themselves with the help of our allies and not the other way around and I want the Roy Wilkins chair to tell that story with forced and power. (00:54:11) Thank you. Dr. Hook's have a question from John Harrington and officer of the st. Paul police department. There has been comments recently made by the Minneapolis Police Department that the war on drugs are bound to be some casualties and in looking at the initiative started by drugs are Bennett and Washington DC and the War on Drugs. There also seems to be a somewhat hidden agenda that there are casualties among our civil rights that may have to be given up to combat this evil. What is your opinion on those initiatives? (00:54:43) Well, I don't I won't deal with Bennett because that would take more time I have but let me deal with the whole issue of the Civil Rights civil liberties fight and I do have some problem there frankly. One of the professor of constitutional law at Stanford said the no matter what you call what you call Coon picking in a nigga in his name that there must be no sense from the free speech and yet he adds unless it leads to clear and present danger and I wonder if he's saying the Black Folk. That people are free to call us anything. They want to call us at any time. They want to call us publishing that newspapers on the freedom of speech and only way we can stop it. Is it started raining so much. He'll that it becomes, you know danger of a Warfare. It's a stupid kind of thing to me secondly on the other hand. I have I have agreed that I live in the public housing project for many years. I agree with the concept. We've got to clear dope dealers out of public housing projects and it must not take a year to do it. I think we've passed so many laws. We forget that most of the people in public housing project are decent people who want to Aspire move forward. I don't think we ought to let a few thieves take over thirdly as it comes to public school system. If you saw that picture lean on me, the o'clock and New Jersey, I don't think you can solve the American educational Problem by almond every High School principal the baseball bat. First of all, someone would know how to swing it if they needed to do it at no. I think it's a sort of a selfish definition on the other hand. I think they were kids are carrying. Still involved in the school and they're confiscating them. The Board of Education ought to have sense enough to realize 90% of the kids can be educated and the 10% who can't as your clock move them. There's nothing wrong with that in the first instance, except you can't put him on the street. If you put all the kids in New York will raise hell on the street you'd have 200,000 Roman every day, but the school system all that spend the money to have alternative systems wall-to-wall carpeting a condition thermostats three teachers every room plus a police officer and the parent or go to jail at the kids miss school. That's and I believe we've got to go to some old-fashioned remedies that would make education work, but don't let those who want to learn be contaminated and messed up by those who don't want to learn most of the teachers have a burnout don't have it with 90% of that class. They could teach them. They're no worse or better than the class. I came along with but the Scoundrels and the thieves and the Ruffians and the robes and the drug Peddlers get into that classroom and the teacher came with it themselves. I'm so they spent all day dealing with one kid who's obstreperous an unruly and the other 30 get unnoticed. So I believe that Is all right to have a detected machine in the school that you have to pass through before you can go in because if I were teaching of our student, I'd have no more problem with that and I do going through the Minneapolis Airport and I noticed none of these great civil Libertarians have raised and how about passing through the airport detective because they have to ride on an airplane. So they get strangely quiet when it comes to bum on airplane, but when it comes to us, they start raising hell there are many problems. We have to solve there's got to be some drastic Solutions. I don't think we can solve the drug problem by turning our Urban commuters into into hostile Battleground with the military police occupying at the same time. I got to have to be there has to be enough police power to deter those who would destroy our communities. (00:58:03) Thank you. Dr. Hook's our last question from David Bennett superintendent of schools. And st. Paul (00:58:08) reportedly the NAACP opposes the appointment of William Lucas to the Justice Department Civil Rights enforcement division, would you like Comment on that. Yes, very briefly is not supposedly we do and my statement reads just like this that I have it right down there before me that I can recite it by heart. I've done it 52 times in the last few days. There are many Post in the in the in the Bush Administration which we think what do you Lucas is eminently qualified to fill we have asked the president through his aides departments the bush to some of those polls. He's been four years at Wayne County Executive, which is a major responsibility for 12 or more years the Sheriff Deputy undersheriff FBI agent, but the fact is that the president has sought fit to pawn him to position of Assistant Attorney General for civil rights the most sensitive spot in government for as far as Bernard is concerned the government's Chief litigator in civil rights cases a man who not practice law one day in his life who so far as I know has never been in the courtroom. I love bill because he's a good friend of mine. But if you're my brother and sit in my lap today, I could not support the appointment of a man to be the chief. The gator and the Civil Rights division in the rapidly evolving and changing crazy civil rights World a man who has never won dented life practice any kind of law. It's just it's ludicrous to me and Bill Lucas is to find a person that have been subjected this kind of treatment. I think he's the wrong man in the wrong place. But that many other jobs he could have feel very well. I would have preferred to see him the drugs. I'll other than Bennett and have a cabinet position them in other places. You could feel I'm not trying to talk about any character defect. I don't know of anything like I'm simply saying that to step a man into a position where he must appear before local courts and district courts and circuit courts and the Supreme Court as the chief litigator of the federal government who never practiced civil rights law one day in his life does not appear to be right. I don't know how vigorously will oppose it. I have not decided how far we're going. But we want to make our position known that if when you deal with these questions you all to deal with them in a little bit different way. Thank you, very I've enjoyed being thank you very much doctor (01:00:18) hook. Benjamin hooks executive director of the NAACP speaking live at Minnesota meeting live broadcasts of Minnesota meeting are made possible by the Twin Cities based law firm of Oppenheimer wolf and Donnelly. It's about a minute now past one o'clock a brief reminder that live coverage of that Minnesota public radio's coverage of issues related to health care made possible in part through a grant from 3M makers of Post-it brand notes. I knew it was on that page somewhere. That's midday for today. This is Bob Potter. It's about a minute past one o'clock. This is ksjn 1330 Minneapolis-Saint Paul.