Which Way USA? - Adam Clayton Powell

[Music] [Music] congressman adam clayton powell is one of the nation's most sought after speakers behind the dramatic rhetoric which attracts the crowds is a 35-year performance as a civil rights activist congressman powell has personally desegregated restaurants and theaters throughout the nation's capital just by being there [Music] that power is merely an attempt of equality of dignity and equality of character and equality of recognition by non-blacks of our negritude black power means the saving grace of our united states the united states no longer is an isolated nation we're living in a world in which the united states and all of anglo-saxon society is in a definite minority the boats of the black and brown people in the united nations could turn the united states foreign program upside down in one day you're in a minority the soul brothers and the soul sisters they're in the majority baby we're in the majority and we want you to get in with us before it's too late before it's too late united states of america is being judged by one unknown isolated black man or black woman who is senselessly beat to death on the streets of the united states this is not a great society this is a sick society wherever i've gone i've had leaders all over the world say how can you meaning the united states expect us to follow you into creating a free world when back in the united states you are clubbing black men and women to death and shooting them down how can you expect us to do that congressman powell was born in 1908 yet he finds no generation gap in the struggle for black freedom we're black and black is not the color of your skin black is the way you think in other words there are a lot of you out there who can think black and still be white that was taught to us a long time ago by a black jamaican when i was 10 years old named marcus garvey you call yourselves white so we won't be called black it means that we're not anti-white but we're pro-black it means we do not believe in violence but we do not believe in total non-violence as my black panthers in harlem who meet in my church by the way each week say we are not aggressors but we are defenders it means we have black dignity lack integrity and we want black equality and we want it now now [Applause] [Music] [Music] now [Music] you