I'm A Man (1970)

God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise. And God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty. and base things of the world, and things which are despised, >> hath God chosen, yay, to bring to not things that are high. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. And going to be all right this morning. Oh yeah. Now when I was a young boy at the age of five, my mother said I was going to be [music] the greatest man alive. But now I'm a man. I pass 21. I won't believe me, honey. I have lots of fun. I'm a man. Spell him. A child in [music] that rather than me. Oh child, why [music] that means boy? The man of a full grown man. The man of a natural lover. My main child. I'm a rolling stone. My main child. I'm a hoochie coochie man. [music] Heat. Heat. [music] >> [music] [music] >> sitting on the outside. Just [music] me and my moon. You know I made the moon honey come up two hours later. What that'll mean on him. >> Oh, hello Jenny. Yeah, John. Um, I'm downtown on the green at Liits. Uh, uh, just as I was coming up, I know that five policemen outside. Uh, they're probably going to pick me up in a few minutes. Uh, what I'll probably do is go into church and pray. Uh, well, I think the cops are kind of scared. They probably won't mess with me till they figure out some strategy. If they try to stop me, I'll just kind of jiggle them with my spear and just keep on going till I get to church. I'll probably see you late tonight. We can set in things in motion to get me out of jail. Tell the kids daddy said hi and I won't be in jail long. Okay. Okay. Bye-bye. Guard 36. >> Mr. Barber. Mr. Barber. >> Now, the only thing I can tell you is this is a dangerous weapon. Can I see it, please? We'll take a walk downtown. >> Well, I don't want you to have it. >> I'll hold it until tells me it's a dangerous weapon. >> Is this is a dangerous weapon? >> You got my possession. >> All right. Well, you have I don't want you to have it. >> I'll hold it until tells me it's a dangerous weapon. >> Well, we Well, keep keep the dangerous part. >> Look, without an arrest, you don't have the right to have my property. Do you understand? >> I can hold it. >> On what ground? >> 523 car. I >> mean, what what gives you a right to take something of mine? And I can't take something of yours. Well, >> this is what I'm checking on this. Well, >> I mean, if No, the only thing I can tell you is this is a dangerous weapon. >> Is a stick dangerous? >> Could be. >> Well, why don't you hold this one? >> No, I'll I'll prefer to hold this. >> What's the point? What's the difference? Hey, my fist could be dangerous. [bell] >> What? What's it all about? >> I don't know what the hell to make out of them. What's happened? What's going on? It's pretty weird. >> When I uh walked down the street uh past Yale, you know, on agreement with the spear, some people thought I was outrageous. Some thought it was funny. Some thought I was just trying to attract attention. Some thought I was crazy. Some thought I was a nuisance. Some thought I was a danger, like the policeman, for example. But the thing was, I was controlling their responses to me. >> A man has some psychiatric uh problem, you treat it. >> What's the sense of walking around? What's the point of it? >> To cause a tension, have people look at him and notice him. >> Interesting subject matter for the camera. >> Yeah, but for God's sakes, that's a real spear walking around in public. If we walked around with a knife on the outside, we'd be pinched. >> I knew when I purchased my spear that that that white people would get upset. It was an interesting experiment. Uh I was already wanted for for this inciting the riot like I already indicated. So, um, additional arrest didn't bother me one way or the other. >> But he's probably parading around with the thing. What the hell? I don't blame the cops. >> New Haven cops are just bastards, you know. >> And they're only human beings with blood and arteries and flesh like you and me. >> The only dangerous weapons I've seen are the ones in police in possession of police. >> Police are always frightened of anything that looks unusual. >> Well, that's how cops are like to bother people. Not a real sense, Whitey had to had to move to stop me cuz since that spear was like elongated penis and the one thing the white man fears is the black man's masculinity. >> No, I think he should be allowed to carry it wherever he likes. Looks like a stick painted, right? Black and white. >> Maybe he's carrying a threatening man. It's >> not a switch blade. It's not a 5 in kind of blade that someone, you know, it's just like a walking stick. >> You'd be killed with it. Yeah, he could pick up papers with it, too, if he wanted to, I suppose. >> I mean, you know, everybody's got their bag >> arrested for it. >> Well, I don't really see anything too wrong about that. >> I mean to terrify Whitey. I don't think he can be moved by anything else but terror. I mean to use that kind of use as a weapon, the mythology that he has about the angry crazy [ __ ] if he came at you with that. >> None of them look violent to me until they either uh use a knife or a gun or something like that. >> Wouldn't have anything like that around my house. >> What about guns? >> That's something else. >> There are certain laws and everything. >> Everybody got to go by them. You >> can't fight city hall. You know what they say. >> We going to define our own law and order. Why they made us slaves. He segregated us on the basis of love. >> When John first appeared in this court, he [clears throat] was dressed uh in African uh garb wasn't strange to me, but I think his costume was strange to the judge uh sitting on the bench. The judge is getting more and more upset. So this point he says, "Where do you think you are?" And I says, "I'm on the way to the land of freedom." which really, you know, knocks him off his rocket. He stands up with his arms gyrating by this time and says, "I mean, right now, where are you?" I tell him, "I'm on the way to the promised land. I'm striving for freedom." I'm sure he thought that John was uh what we call non-complicement, was uncapable of uh of understanding the proceedings then uh taking place. So, he ordered that John be examined by two psychiatrists. Oh, I made up my mind after the first telephone interview that he was uh in full command of his rational faculties and that there was no doubt that he knew he met the technical criteria for being mentally competent. >> I found Mr. Harbor uh initially and throughout my contact with him uh to be a uh quite already highly intelligent and certainly very very intellectual, very well read, uh very enthusiastic, very dynamic young man. >> And real since I played a game, I remember them asking me um where was I? Where where did I think I was when I stood before that judge? I told a psychiatrist, "Well, now how you want me to answer that question really, doc?" And the psychiatrist said, "What do you mean by that?" You know, like must be some deep psychological meaning to I said, "Well, you know, I'm going to answer the question the way I want to in terms of my own interest. That's what you would do, wouldn't you? What do you mean by that?" They asked me, I said, "Well, you know, where I am, where I was then and where I am now is determined by the way I want you to think about it." The theory is that when a black man or a negro, whatever you want to call him, when a guy wants to be a man, he's either got to be crazy or he's a communist or he's a a fascist. You see, and the only way you handle a a crazy man is to put him in a crazy house. The only way that you can handle a militant is to lock him up. You know, right or wrong, this is a system. This is what white people think. And so I felt black people ought to be free to go ahead and uh burn and pillage and hate whitey and do whatever they wanted to do the all-American way is rap says and the all-American way is violence of I believe I'm Prometheus here. I'm going to bring the fire on down to earth. Me and Rap and Stokeley. The fire burns in my heart whether you believe it or not. I believe you would hate to burn, wouldn't you? Barbecue. You know, I got relatives who were barbecued in Mississippi. Suppose you were barbecued, man. Like we nap people in Vietnam. It would be ugly, wouldn't it? You would be even black. Can you think of a fate more despicable? Well, I would barbecue you, man, in order to be free. >> August uh 4th and 5th, the store was burnt by uh a group of men. John Barber was supposed to have been one of them. He and four other fellas were captured in the car. One fella had as a confession and and admitting that John Barber and the four of the fellas were together when the store this store and Kenny Grill were burned. >> I went down there and watched it burn all night long. Burned for about 4 hours. While I was watching um he ran in his store to get his shotgun. He was going to shoot me on the scene. When a star first burnt and I didn't have insurance and I knew I was losing everything and I had in my mind all I wanted to do was kill. >> We'll burn down every exploitative whitey in the ghetto. We want whitey out of the ghetto. We want the right to determine our destinies which means we're going to control the black economy. Means we going to control black schools. It means we going to control the black political structure. People down here don't need people like John Barber. We don't need to make this a black ghetto area. >> If we have to burn down white America, we going to be free. Uh, and that's why I'm out here. And that's why I'm letting my little light shine. This is what I call pyro power. Black power. We mean to upset the old way. They are dying. They got to die. There's a new thing coming. It's a brilliant new thing. And it's black. And that's the thing that I'm part of. on you. It's part of the great tradition that that Gavei and Elijah Muhammad and Malcolm and Stokeley and rap represent. And we're saying black is beautiful. And like James Brown saying, we're saying I'm black and I'm proud rather than kill. I I I'd really frankly uh make love. Uh when they uh arrested me for uh the arson in connection with that store, Kenny Supermarket, Ceseri store in Hartford. My alibi for that was at the time of the burning, I had my arms around two women. One was black and one was white, and I didn't draw the racial lines on either one of them, and both of them were fine. Yeah. >> Well, I think almost all black people have had to uh revolutionize their thinking in terms of the militant uh way our men are going now. Um I think it has its dangers. It certainly takes him away from the family more than I would like. It puts an extra duty on me as the wife and the mother to try to fill this gap. Uh but I think it's a necessary position that he has to take uh for his own psychological stability. >> I think some kooky white person might think he could get some masculinity in disposing of me or or or some white cop. I I think it's highly likely that that I will provoke Whitey into the necessity to dispense with me. >> I have received so many threatening phone calls. They'll use quite abusive language. Uh we're going to burn the house down while you tell him we're going to get him. We know how he comes home. We know the route he takes. What you know, black America is producing for the first now time now is a group of assertive black males who who mean to bring about freedom for the race. Uh over the years, black women have had not only to support the family but to be the dominant influence uh in the face of men who who were compromised and beaten and brutalized. Now I live for my sons and I will die for my sons. The thing that I want to leave uh is a legacy of manhood. I expect to die poor and black and hated by most white people and misunderstood by a lot of blacks. But if my children understand me, my wife understand me. I think that I will have contributed my part to black freedom. What I want my sons to be is not like me, but I want them to be free so that they can go ahead and do whatever they want to do. If one of them wants to be a black nationalist, he can do that. If one wants to be an assimilationist, he can do that. I want to give them the opportunity to become whatever they want to become, to become firemen, to become ministers, to become doctors or lawyers or even for that matter president. >> But I really don't really want to be president because there's nothing wrong. Yes, I really do want to be president. Stop the war, do everything, stop it, right? Stop everything. But I changed my mind. I would really want to be a fire me. >> Sometimes you get killed before you can even be president. >> Kevin was on both sides. No, they didn't want that. Either he was on their side or the color people's side. Now he was on both sides. So [clears throat] they killed my um candy. I don't care. I'm going to get killed. I'm not going to try to get peace in the world. The only reason I want to be a fireman is because is because I can save people's life. Oh yeah. Well, a lot of people think daddy sets fires. You think daddy sets fire? >> No. >> Daddy was in jail a little while, a couple days up in Harford about some fires. You remember that? >> But you didn't do it. >> I've been uh arrested over 20 times. I've never had a conviction. I expect to uh be convicted though for a long time. Spend some time in jail or or to be killed and of course doing what I want to do about my life. >> Martin Luther King. and he saved the color people. Now he they had to get they got Martin Luther King first because he was the king of the color people. >> Every breath in me, every word that comes out of me, every movement of my body and every thought that I think is directed around beautiful things like freedom and blackness and power. >> The issue is you, John Barber. It's a real political thing, but that's why we've got to fight it. We've got to fight hard. You always have to fight white people. That's a strange thing in this society. >> Fight them and fight always. And >> that's what we're going to do today, right? We're going to pick the jury and we're going to ask all those good white folks whether or not they have any prejudices against you. And they're going to sit up there and lie to me, aren't they? >> They're going to say they never heard of John Papa. [laughter] >> Now, here's the thing. Hell, man. about. But no matter what they do, I mean, whether they find me guilty and put me in jail, we still going to have to do our thing. >> Sure. >> So, it means, you know, probably more burnings and more riots unless finally white society can get on down with it and deal with the fact that we intend to be free and we going to do whatever it takes to be free. We're not for law and order anyway. We for change, revolutionary change, black people being able to be free. They expect me to to stay in my place, be nice about it, even submit myself to their judge and jury and then possible jail. The man took my property, the white man. See? Right. >> And I ought to do the same thing to him that they do to black people. When black people take their property in shops and things, they shoot him. We're on the green right now. When I first walked across this green with my spare uh last April, right after Martin King got killed. >> The Whiteies felt challenged. >> We're at the courthouse yet, John. get on down here to see what we can do. >> G. Here it goes. [music] [music] [music] >> [music] >> sitting on the outside just me [music] and my mate. You know I made the moon honey come up two hours [music] later. Was that a man? I sp him. A child in that reb [music] [music] that means boy [music] man I'm a for grown man [music] a man I'm a natural lovers. I'm a man. I'm a rolling stone. I'm a man. I'm a huge