[upbeat bell melody] - [Narrator] The following program is from N.E.T, the National Educational Television network.

[gentle flute music] [men shouting and cheering] [upbeat drum music] [upbeat saxophone music] [upbeat classical music] [upbeat trumpet music] [ball falling] [train rattling] [gentle flute music] [children shouting] [whistle blowing] - [Female 1] I'm an American, and whether I like what's going on here or not, that's what I am.

And my identity is with America and its beautiful ways of life, and with its painful ways of life.

[car engine roaring] [indistinct chattering] [whistle blowing] [siren wailing] - [Female 2] I want an opportunity to develop, to express myself, to move about this country as I choose, as I see fit, I don't want a helping hand.

I feel that if I'm allowed freedom of expression, freedom of movement, I won't need any help, I can help myself.

[metal welding] - [Male 1] As a Negro, I have honestly tried to believe that I was somebody, and I've always fought during my life to keep that feeling that I did have some value.

And I say value, knowing what that words means.

And there's been many a night in my life when I went to sleep and known very deep inside me that I really wasn't worth much.

[upbeat trumpet music] - [Male 2] More and more our youngsters are beginning to not to be apologetic for their racial background, not be apologetic for their color.

And it'll be many years before this thing is completely erased, but I think we are beginning to head in that direction.

[upbeat trumpet music] [upbeat percussion music] - [Male 3] Well, I'll say like I say so many times, if you're a Negro in this nation, you are catching hell.

[upbeat trumpet music] That's a generalizism, you know, its a generalization, it's too simple.

But when you born black in this country, you got troubles.

And we haven't begun to scratch the surface.

There are just so many built in ways by which the Negro is disenfranchised.

- [Male 4] Yeah, I think any white doorman can make any Negro, no matter how educated he supposedly is, feel like trash.

Just by coming up to him and asking him what business he has in the building, if the building's a little too nice for him to be in.

I mean, no matter how stupid the white man, how stupid the Negro is maybe, and you feel self conscious about it, you can't help it.

And you feel like punching them one, that's what, and you can't go through your whole life feeling you want to punch everybody in the street.

[upbeat trumpet music] [whistle blowing] [upbeat orchestral music] [audience clapping] [gentle orchestral music] - [Male 5] Well, being a Negro, he doesn't know really what, he really doesn't have anything to lean on, he doesn't know what he really is because he's been taken away from what he should be.

And so he's forced between something and something that's not.

[gentle orchestral music] - [Female 2] Some people, the white feels that, you have a television, you have a car, you have this, you live as good, but they don't seem to realize what we do to get these things.

[gentle orchestral music] [upbeat trumpet music] [wedding bells] - [Female 3] And the day when we become Americans, all Americans, the days when we no longer speak of the Irish, the Italians, the Jewish, the Negro, et cetera.

That we only refer to ourselves as Americans.

And when that day comes, I think truly America will be a great nation, and that equality for all Americans will be reality.

[upbeat trumpet music] [punch bag being hit] [upbeat drumming] - [Male 6] There has been a real change in the self image of the Negro in the past five years.

It's a remarkable thing, it's a very encouraging sign.

It's sort of a tenuous thing, but there was a realization that the darker people of the world are going to make a more positive contribution to world culture.

They take a much more active part and voice in how things are going to be politically, socially, economic, and this has reflected in the life of the country.

There's a positive tone that things will be better, that we will be able to get better jobs, that there will be breaks in many areas.

[crowds clapping] - [Male 7] The Negro in a way though, he's in part cynical, he's seen this happen before and he sits back and asks himself, "now how long will this last?"

He has lived through too many of these developments to ever put his final hope in these things.

It's sort of an inner well of strength that makes him, having faced so much deprivation and hardship over the centuries, to be able to look at these things philosophically and say, "well we hope it's going to last, but if it doesn't "we have known hard times".

[newspaper reeling] - [Male 8] This is the real revolution that's taking place in this country today.

It is the image that the Negro has of himself today.

This is the revolution, sort of an internalized revolution.

Nevertheless, this is a revolution in the sense that this is the image that the Negro now has of himself, that he does have roots.

That his beginnings didn't begin in some [indistinguishable] plantation in Port Wentworth, Georgia, or Hangem Quick, South Carolina.

But it began centuries and centuries, even before the white man climbed out of the cave.

- [Male 9] I feel that the Negro has to learn to respect himself as being a Negro, then he can be, or get involved with what he wants to do.

Now it's necessary for him to accept himself and respect himself where the society has taught him that he is not a respected part of society, he is not a unit in this society.

The Negro painter, I feel has to be free of the yoke in order to create freely.

As long as the yoke is there, it's difficult for him to be that strongly creative.

It's always this lump in the stomach that it's difficult for him to digest this food, difficult for him to create what he wants to create.

And so there was always this little feeling that he has denied his race if he doesn't make some contribution to it.

[indistinguishable chatting] - And I'm producing Alice Childress' new play, "Wedding Band".

We are now getting started raising the money, which is why we're all here.

I think that's all and I hope you all like it very much.

- That's the only kind of love they want from us.

- It's wrong to hate.

- And it's wrong to love, too.

- [Friend] We got to be good, got to be three times as good, just to make them-- - Why, when they mistreat us, who cares?

When we mistreat each other, who cares?

Why have we gotta be so good for them?

- Damn you, Julia Augustine, you hard headed thing, 'cause they'll kill us if we not.

- They doing it anyway.

Last night I woke up thinking all of my people that's been lynched.

I dreamed that all the dead black men gathered together in spirit at the foot of my bed, standing in the corners of my room, quietly waiting for something.

I've always been afraid of dead people, but I know they can't do any harm.

I wish they could fight back.

Oh, that awful silence.

The lynched dead men gathered in spirit at the foot of my bed.

I got up from my troubled sleep, who's there?

Only the shadows flickering on my wall.

Oh, Lula.

But what these white people have done to us, all they want in return is to be loved with a greenly love.

If you're not greenly, god save you.

[children shouting] [indistinguishable shouting] - [Male 10] Sport.

Sport is a good thing for all children.

'Cause they learn how to cooperate with others and be a good loser.

You don't have to be a winner all the time, be a good loser, too.

One of the best things in the world is to be a good loser.

In life, a Negro is a loser when he was born.

I figure you have to take the bittersweet and being a loser.

You know what that is, and then you got to go forward to see what the sweetness is.

- [Coach] Go!

[crowd cheering] - [Female 4] Every child should be made to feel proud of himself, for himself, from the beginning, from the start.

You are great, your horizon is limitless, you know, your mind is a wonderful thing, you can do anything in the world.

This is the heritage that a child needs.

- [Male 11] Our students in high school and elementary grades can read through a history book and never realize that the Negro has played any part.

This is the terrible actual distortion of the history of the country.

When we really study carefully the history of the United States, we find that the Negro has been part of every phase of our development.

He came over with Columbus, the pilot on Columbus' ship was a Negro.

This is such an elementary fact, but something which would help the Negro child in his image, as it is done for every other ethnic group which has made up the history of the country.

But it's as an integral part, not as a special, or a chosen people, but as an integral part, and when he was given an opportunity he made a positive, productive contribution to the history of the country.

Every place.

[upbeat drumming] - We have, in the last 100 years, been investigating the customs of the white people.

None of it really fits us, then it's only natural that we have to look back into our own traditions.

We find that after 300 years of being trained as Europeans or as Western people, after we got our freedom, what should naturally have happened?

When you free a man who has had all of his traditions and customs taken away from him, what is a natural thing to happen?

The natural thing is to restore to him everything that he had before.

Not one thing do we have to show.

Not one institution do we have to show for all the millions of dollars that have been spent in the 100 years since 1695.

We don't have one African institution in this country, except this ramshackled Europa temple.

[upbeat traditional African music] Shango, god of lightning and thunder.

Shango is the god of the great blaze and the loud mouths.

His colors are red and white.

[upbeat drumming] If the [indistinguishable] is the father of the gods, then Shango is the king of the gods.

Shango is a hard ruler, [crowd shouting] he's a loud ruler.

[crowd shouting] Shango creates problems on himself!

[crowd shouting] [indistinguishable shouting and drumming] [gentle choir music] - [Female 6] I don't say that we as American Negroes do not have an African heritage, but that's so clouded for us.

Meaning us as Negroes, at least clouded to me.

I don't know what boat my great, great, great grandfather came over on.

I don't know what section of Africa he came out of, I don't know what tribal language he had.

I don't even know what plantation he first hit.

So it's difficult for me to really trace back my ancestry that far.

And I believe that with the American Negro, we have been striving not so much to retain or to hold on to the glories of the past because we knew of no glories, but to achieve and strive for glories of the future.

[uplifting choir singing] [gentle blues music] ♪ Whatever your problems may be ♪ ♪ Just a little jump with me ♪ ♪ He'll fix it for you ♪ ♪ Just like he did for me ♪ ♪ Just a little jump with me ♪ ♪ Just say please Lord ♪ ♪ And I know he'll make it all right ♪ ♪ He'll make it alright ♪ - There you heard that that very nice group, the Dixie Hummingbirds out of Philadelphia.

You know, so many of us are living in the kind of places where we aren't happy.

We're paying a lot of rent, children have nowhere to play, and there are all kinds of dangers.

Now, wouldn't it be ever so much better if you were living in the suburbs of Queens, some of the nicer communities.

And if I told you that you could get a place for as little as $785 now on a GI mortgage, or even 10% down on a conventional mortgage, I bet you jump at it, wouldn't you?

Make your move toward living the way you want to, to live in your own home in the suburbs.

Good idea?

Good idea.

[upbeat choir music] ♪ Bye bye ♪ ♪ Bye bye, Lord ♪ ♪ Bye bye ♪ ♪ Bye bye, Lord ♪ [upbeat choir music] [children shouting] [gentle flute music] - [Male 12] As a Negro, I don't think I want anything more than any other human being would want.

I wanna have dignity, I wanna be useful, I wanna function.

Let me have some authority.

- [Female 6] We all want to live decently, you know?

But I feel I just can't make that.

I don't know, I just can't make that.

And I've tried and I've been knocked around, pushed around, and talked around all my life.

[melancholic flute music] But I have seen progress, I feel there is some progress.

[upbeat orchestral music] [gentle flute music] [upbeat bell melody] - [Narrator] This is N.E.T, the National Educational Television network.