[indistinct chattering] - I am Ossie Davis, and we're gathered this afternoon, here at the Carnegie International Center in New York city.

And this is the final program of a series concerning the history of the Negro people.

We've been to Africa, Latin America, various parts of the United States, looking for the evidence, seeking out the questions and some of the answers to see if perhaps the past could help us understand the present and the future.

And today we want to explore the future, the future of the Negro.

That's what this program is about.

And I have with me this afternoon, from very distinguished panelists, on my right, His Excellently Chief S.O Adebo, Ambassador from Nigeria to the United nations.

Mr. Olinto...

Sorry that Mr. Antonio Olinto, Writer and Critic from Brazil, Dr. John Hope Franklin, The University of Chicago Historian, Dr. John A. Davis, President of the American Society on African Culture.

Last but not least, certainly, Mr.

Basil Davidson, British Africanist Scholar and Writer.

Gentlemen, [clears throat] excuse me.

Perhaps we'd do best to open our discussion on the future of the Negro by asking a hypothetical question, does the Negro have a future?

Suppose we begin with a stranger to our shows, Chief Adebo.

- Well, this is quite a question and it would take a very long time to produce a complete answer.

I would say that any member of humanity has a future and the question is, what kind of future?

The Negro, like the Caucasian, has a future.

What that future is going to be depends, not only upon himself, but upon his fellow members of humanity.

In the United States here, a great deal has been done to create an understanding of the position of the Negro, an acceptance in most places that he's just another section of humanity like the Caucasian, that he is entitled to the normal dignity of man, entitled to equal opportunities, and so on.

- Mr.

Ambassador, I understand that the word Negro is not a word that's used in Africa, is that so?

- It is not a word that is commonly used in Africa because when you are all Negroes, you don't go about asking about Negroes and talking about Negroes.

The question arises only if when you get into a place in which you form the racial minority.

So we talk more and discuss more about the Caucasian and the future of the Caucasian... [all laughing] Than about the question of the future of the Negro, because over there, we assume that the Negro, we take it for granted that the Negro has a future and then we ask in that context, what is the future of the Caucasian?

Over here, where the Negro is the racial minority, the topical question is the future of the Negro.

And as a person working in the international sphere and believing honestly in internationalism, and I'll just ask myself, what is the future of the human race?

And I think that is where we are all going.

I hope that within a reasonably short time we won't be asking one another what is the future of that particular race but what is the future of the human race?

And I submit that it is a question that is worth asking now in view of world developments.

- Thank you.

Ambassador- - Yes.

You don't mind if I say Ossie.

- Not at all.

- We're both named Davis, and I thought calling you Mr. Davis is a confusion.

I'd like to say something about the future Negro United States, I think that Chief Adebo has said it correctly but from point of view of American Negro, for the first time I'm bearish on the subject.

- What do you mean by bearish?

- I think that, I mean, bullish but- - Ah, what do you mean by bullish?

- I think that we're doing pretty well and we're gonna do much better.

My experience in fighting race questions goes back to '33 when... And I've been doing it all my life, from organizing bi-week work movements fresh out of college through New York State Commission Against Discrimination, Mr. Roosevelt's FPPC, and Mr. Harmon's SCAD, and so on.

But at the present time, I think we've come to a place in America where all instructors, Negro structures at any rate in the society, all point in a positive fashion, and I might review a little of those.

The first place our constitutional law now is completely square on the subject.

The court has cleared our law of any distinctions on the basis of race and cleared all state laws with regard to this.

Secondly, we have in some 20 states, about 10 of which are really good on this subject, we have passed laws which provide for the administrative clearing off of discrimination.

In other words, in the United States, in at least 20 states, you can file a complaint with an administrative individual and then through the process of administrative adjudication against anybody; employer, labor union, prison, owns housing or have that matter processed and eventually enforced in the court in an equity proceeding.

One of the great drawbacks to a full status for the Negro in America was the rural power, especially in the south.

And that's gone from America and I assume will not come back, so that the dynamics of our politics is such that this course that we're on will in all probability to stay.

And so I think the future looks pretty good for the first time and I think it's even better because of the nature of the international situation, by that I mean that most of the nations of the world have some ethnic or racial problem or religious problem.

And the whole world is gonna have to face this question in various aspects.

And as it does, the future of the Negro here and everywhere, is going to be more and more assured.

- That's a very positive picture, I was just gonna call on you, Dr. Franklin, to see if perhaps Dr. Davis didn't overlook something, or perhaps he didn't touch squarely on a point that you felt is relevant to this whole situation.

Do you think it looks fine as bright as all of that?

- I can't help saying that a historian perhaps shouldn't be here at all?

[audience laughing] He does love to look back over his shoulder.

I don't believe I'm quite as bullish as John Davis.

And although I certainly would be the first to recognize all of the significant developments that he has so clearly outlined, I think that real and lasting tangible change and improvement must have some other ingredients.

I'm terribly excited about all of the legislative and judicial developments that are of a positive nature, but I'm rather depressed about some other facets or aspects of the present position of the Negro in the United States.

And it's these aspects that cause me to be a bit less bullish, if not exactly bearish- - [Ossie] Could you mention some of the aspects?

- As perhaps Davies.

Well, I'm not unaware of the fact that the general overall economic position of the Negro in the United States is not really improving.

Despite the fact that there might be some significant improvement at certain levels, in certain areas, the fact remains that with all of the remarkable economic progress that Americans are making today, the disparity between Negroes and whites, so far as special income, and that sort of thing is concerned, is getting wider, greater, instead of less.

It's not merely the necessity for improving educational opportunities, it's not merely the intervention of government at the state and federal level, it's indeed not merely be significant revision of the attitudes, let's say, of management or of the technicians, but it's something else.

And this is the other thing that causes me to be somewhat bearish, if I may say so.

And it is that we still have, in this country, unfortunately, a fantastic residue of racism, perhaps residue is not the right word because it is so large still that the application that it's residue which suggest that it's something leftover, conveys the wrong impression.

It is indeed, I think, still a part of the very fabric of this country.

- Let's take another tack.

There is a country in Latin America, South America, that has suggested that it has the solution to the Negro question.

Would you care to tell us a little bit about that, Mr. Antonio Olinto?

- Yes, if your question was decent, I feel like my answer will also be a decent.

What's the future of the Negro?

- Yes.

- And I say it, perhaps the future belongs to the mixed blood people.

- You mean by that, that a amalgamation, the mixing of the bloods?

Yes.

- Yeah.

And how?

Because now we have this business of the communication, of transport and everything.

And we have been trying for four centuries in Brazil to make this amalgamation.

We are a mixed blood country.

We have, for instance, now, 85 million people.

And all these 85 million people, we have 11 million Negroes and we have 13 million mulattoes 11 million Negroes- - Yes.

13 million Mulattoes.

Yes.

- Mulattoes.

And this is the composition of our country.

Now, to have this composition, in the last four centuries, since 1530, more or less, we stopped receiving slaves from Africa when Portuguese and Spaniards stopped making the slave trade and we received more or less 8 million slaves between 1530 and 1861, for three centuries and 30 years, 330 years, we received around 8 million slaves.

In the beginning of our independency, we had more or less one third of the population was Negro.

And now we are little by little mixing blood, making amalgamation, and trying to make them Brazilians.

A friend of mine from Nigeria, the Author Chinua Achebe went through Brazil two years ago and I showed him Rio de Janeiro [indistinct] and parts of county division, the mulattoes are majority And he told me, "But of you are destroying the Africans and Negroes."

I said, "Yes, and we're destroying whites too.

We are destroying both sides of the coin."

- Do you think this is the solution to the problem?

[audience laughing] - This is not a solution and this is the solution we have it, plus, just imagine this, [indistinct] You have here the whites, you have here the Negroes, okay.

And then the whites have this nation, the Negro have this nation.

The Negro then become richer and richer, become smarter and smarter and more and more intelligent and the professionals in their studies and so on.

And so what?

In 50 years, in 100 years, you will have two nations.

While you had your only one nation.

Because to have your only one nation with two races, it is difficult, not segregation, segregation is something but prejudice, personal prejudice is always dangerous.

Personal prejudice is like an allergy.

"I don't like the yellow color."

[murmurs] Or, "I don't like blue color," that's an allergy.

And then we have to educate people not to have prejudice.

They have to be educated, they have to be taught not to have prejudice against any color of skin.

And if we don't educate, if we don't do this, all the other measures are wonderful but they wont solve the problem.

- Mr. Olinto, is amalgamation the avoured policy of the government of Brazil?

- No, this is almost everywhere, this was a natural solution, it was not planned.

No one planned it, it happened.

But this amalgamation, this is the only asset to the problem but it is an asset that cannot be posited.

[all laughing] No government can impose this asset [indistinct] and have it as official policy.

- May I hold this for just a moment, so that our courtesy may be complete and universal.

We'll get back to this in just a moment.

Mr.

Basil Davidson.

- I found myself rather inclined to agree with John Hope Franklin, because after all, what we're talking about, I think, is not the long range eventual future of this or that section of the human race, what's gonna happen in the next 10 years.

And I, speaking as an Englishman, must say, I think we're now getting to the point of self fulfillment among the peoples of African descent, where the problem really begins to get extremely difficult, not necessarily for them, but for the rest of us.

And that makes me rather bullish, bearish, [indistinct].

[audience laughing] - [Ossie] Why are you bearish on this?

- I'm bearish for this reason, that in my country, we have now done a thing which we have never done before, and which seems to me, a most deplorable and indeed cowardly retreat from good sense, and that is we have applied immigration restrictions to those people of color, to immigrants of color.

That is to say to people from the Commonwealth who come from India or Pakistan or the West Indies and it's above all, bad for those in the West Indies, since many of them still have British colonial subjects, and we've done this out of a sense of panicky, and I think shameful retreat in the face of the [indistinct] and I think unrepresentative minority.

Now we still have got, in England, I think as a strong residue or at any rate, a residue of anti racialism, I would put it that way around, and I hope that this is gonna be strong enough to produce councils of good sense.

The fact remains that at the moment, we in my country have applied restrictions on a racial basis for the first time.

And this makes me think that the immediate future is going to be much more full of controversy, conflict and struggle than the last 10 or 15 years has been.

You see, as far as England is concerned, the English like to pat themselves on the back, well, after all, we all like to do that, I suppose, because they think that they have been the statesman like in withdrawing without too much difficulty, I hope that the Chief Adebo will agree with this, without too much difficulty in withdrawing from a number of African countries which were previously colonies.

And this did, of course, produce somewhat of euphoria and the strong residue of anti-racialists began to feel that they, in fact were the majority.

And now comes along this very great setback, and I think it should be realized that it is a great setback, in which the government, and the labor government too, which should have known better, retreats from good sense and applies racial restrictions at the very time when we are actually short of labor.

Now this is to my way of thinking a sign that as far as my country is concerned, that we have to think about the immediate future with a good deal of anxiety.

Well- - Let me just add if I may.

Yes.

- That as far as amalgamation is concerned it or may not be a good thing and I'm certainly not going to say anything against it.

But I think that Dr. Olinto will agree that it isn't a very short range solution, it's taken quite a long time as far as I know for Brazil to reach the point where it's reached now in the statesman like policy, if I can call it statesman-like policy, it's gonna take much longer to complete it.

And as far as my country is concerned, we haven't got very far yet in that direction.

- I mean- - Of berries and bullies, let me say that I was talking about which way we were going in the future.

I was trying to indicate the forces that have been set in motion and the general direction.

I don't mean there will be trouble along the way, how can you say that with riots in New York and Washington and in Los Angeles?

- Chief Adebo?

- Well, just one or two points that I'd like to take up from the points made by my colleagues on this panel.

Now I myself don't feel that the future is going to be exceedingly rosy.

As I indicated before, I think it's going to depend not only upon the upon curing the prejudice Caucasian or his prejudice, it's also going to depend upon what we make of opportunities, what he's made of opportunities, which American Negro leaders here are securing for the Negro community.

It's going to depend upon what special measures are made to tide over a transitional phase during which you have a backlog of under privileged position.

And I'm very glad that Dr. Franklin pulled us back from a position of near complacency because the future isn't going to be easy at all.

Because when you have a problem such as this, the more victories you win, the harder it is to get over the next fence naturally.

And I do not confine myself in my thinking to the position of the American Negro.

What about the Negroes in South Africa where it is policy to discriminate against them?

How are we going to get over that one?

Now the same people, the same white people in America, for instance, who are prepared to do something about removing racism from the American scene have not shown the same anxiety to help remove racism from the South African scene.

And of course we in Africa, don't deceive ourselves into thinking that racism is a disease only in America.

We know that this thing, if you scratch further enough into any Caucasian skin, the thing is still there.

In some cases you have to scratch a lot deeper than in others but the thing is- - You think it's universally true, Chief?

- I think it is univer- I wouldn't say universally true because I have met fine fellows, Caucasian friends, United Kingdom, among Frenchman, among Americans, Brazilians and others, who seem to me to have gotten away completely from this.

But I don't think you can go in terms of countries in this because in every country, not only in Britain, in every country, where you have the white and the black working together, you get the same discrimination subtle, overt, very subtle in some cases, very overt in some other cases but nevertheless, it sometimes is there.

Take the case of Brazil- - I was hoping you'd take the case.

- Because it is a very interesting case.

And I think that they have an experiment there that is worth watching, I wouldn't say more than that.

I don't think that miscegenation, because I don't think that miscegenation is the full answer.

It is part of the answer.

No doubt, that you should give people freedom to marry whomever they like, you can't impose it, but you give them complete freedom but it's not the full answer because as was pointed out by John Davies, it is unfortunately the case that in certain parts of Brazil, the Negro and his status are easily identifiable from the white members of the community and their status, particularly their economic status.

And they have, I don't think, if they have to wait for miscegenation to solve that one, they'll have to wait a long, long time, longer than we whose brethren are at the receiving end are prepared to condone.

- Chief, I'd like to point out also that its quite common where you have this going on and then the substitute discrimination by color gradation.

I mean, you go all the way from pure white all the way through the whole thing.

- I want to say one thing about Brazil because I concede to the Brazilian that they are not race conscious, in the way that some others are race conscious but I'm still looking forward to the time when one of the senior diplomats in the United Nations would be a person of my color.

- Mr. Olinto, you seem to be the focal point of some interesting speculations.

One who said, I'd like you to treat this one in particular, and then go onto the others, he said that in scratching most, any Caucasians, if you scratch deep enough, you would have come across this residue or remnant of racism, would you say that it's true in Brazil to a more or less extent?

And if true, is amalgamation making that less true?

- First of all, I took that as a teaser...

But of course amalgamation is not the full answer but it shows the spirit.

It shows the spirit, and this is spirit is the asset.

In a country where a community is so easy to marry among races, is so easy to amalgamate, this spirit may make it easier to solve the racial problem, not only the amalgamation.

Now, do we have it a racial prejudice in Brazil?

Of course.

If we scratch we find especially in the wealthier resorts in the Copacabana Copacabana Beach.

If you go to Santos Guagua Beach, if you go where wealthy people are, and for instance, Catherine Denham went in 1951 to a very very luxurious hotel in Sao Paulo.

And she was an entrance, of course the man was arrested but we have the law, but to arrest him in this law any citizen suitable and to make the, what do we call it, and to make the accusation they may the stop suit, they stopped the suit against him.

And they found out it was a poor doorman who didn't know anything about that.

So was the poor doorman who denied they said, denied it was not the doorman, it was someone in the hotel, of course.

- That's the way we do it in Accra.

[all laughing] - We have a place, Copacabana.

Copacabana is a place where the wealthy people go to do sunbathe and anything like that.

And we are changing that now.

[indistinct] Yes.

[audience laughing] We are changing that now.

And you just see the importance of any independent Africa.

Now we have 30 Negro countries in the world, they have 30 votes in United Nations, they have 30 votes in UNESCO, they have 30 votes in the World Health Organization.

So in terms of international policy, things have changed and they have changed all over the world on account of that.

In Brazil, for instance, we have the prejudice, but the prejudice that we have, it is less now.

Because for instance now, if you go to Copacabana Palace Hotel, a very well dressed Negro, they say, "He maybe an ambassador."

[audience laughing] Things begin to change.

And now that when we have discussions in symposiums or colloquies in Brazil, every African ambassador is invited because they represent something, they are the symbol of that race that was enslaved in Brazil for so many centuries.

And now not only they are trying to get better themselves in their country, Brazil, but then the sentence of the ancestors are ambassadors and presidents.

- I wanna get to a subject in a short while, which comes from a statement you made a short while ago, Chief Adebo.

But before I do that, you raised another question which brings us to our distinguished panelist from Britain, you raised the question of what's happening in South Africa.

And I think Mr. Davidson, you have been to South Africa, you've written about it, I'd like to find out from you, what is the racial situation in South Africa?

I'd like also to find whether you think the Negro, in particular in this country, can do more to help Negroes in South Africa.

And should they do more to help Negroes in South Africa?

- Well, the racial situation in South Africa is chronically bad.

It's now 14 years since I was there, that's not entirely my fault since they were good enough to deport me in 1951.

And then, needless to say, the fact they deported me is evidence I hope, the racial situation was bad in South Africa.

Since then, I think we can say that it has got year by year worse.. And the reason why it persists is simply that the white minority have sufficient force to impose their rule upon a very large non-white majority to the point where it's difficult to see how those Africans will be able, at least in the near future, to liberate themselves.

They have tried and they will continue to try, but every effort that they make is visited by the most savage bombatic sanctions and repression on the part of the minority which hold power.

Now, the reason why the minority continues to hold power is not simply, of course, that they have all the weapons or the arms or the posts importance in the state.

It's also because they have been able to count upon completely loyal support from those great nations of the West- Which nations?

- The United States...

I'll mention, don't worry.

[audience laughing] Nobody's being let off the hook at the moment.

The United States in the first place and my own country in the second.

Now, the power of the white minority in South Africa rests upon its capacity to wield, to call upon the financial and capital aid of the United States and Britain and indeed of some other countries, notably in the last five years, of Western Germany, which is perhaps the third most important country in this respect, and to some extent, to a much lesser extent, France.

So long as these two or four countries, if you'd like, you can add Belgium and a few other countries, but as long it's limited to the real culprits, and that's my country and yours, so long as those two countries are in fact, no matter what they may say in public and no matter how they may vote in the United Nations, so long as those two countries are solidly behind the South African government in all its economic manifestations of its life, so long as that is so then we betray any hopes maybe of even a minimal improvement, I don't speak even of the large scale human liberation of the Africans in South Africa.

But even a minimal improvement remains impossible so long as that is the case.

And if you asked me, can the Negroes of the United States or Afro-Americans, as I've been told, I should call them, can they do anything to help?

Yes, they can.

But this is not, of course, a racial question, this is a human question.

And the answer must be that everyone who realizes what the situation is and feels it is bad, it is hard to see how any honest person can realize what the situation is and not feel it is bad, no matter what in the famous formula their race, creed, or color maybe, then they must, of course, bring the maximum pressure to bear upon their own people.

And this is very difficult because here we get into the basic difficult questions of our time.

What is the Western economic system, the free enterprise system, the capitalist system if you like, rests upon the kind of operations which are keeping in power that's very minority which is visiting on its majority such horrible, such bombatic and indeed unspeakable sufferings.

And therefore it's not easy to see how this change will come but I am perfectly convinced it will come.

And I think that the long range answer to the big question which you, Mr. Davis, posed at the beginning, what is the future of the Negro, is really what is the future of the system in which we all others live?

Can this system adjust itself to the point where the liberation, for instance, of the Africans of South Africa, not to speak of those on African descent in the United States and elsewhere, can it adjust itself to the point where this becomes possible?

That's the question that I throw back at you.

- Well, and this is a question for you, Dr. Franklin, but let me load it a little further.

[audience laughing] - It's enough already.

- Now the Afro-American, Negro, as you might choose, is in a position at this moment when he hopes to be included in the greater society, and sometimes we will pay the price for that inclusion by keeping quiet about the nature of this particular system.

We are so happy to become members of our society that we will blink our eyes at the kind of treatment that society by its support of the oppressive government, say of South Africa, is handing out.

Now, not only would we do that sometimes, but sometimes if we feel that our society does not like that we are as open and as friendly to our African brothers as we might want to be, it is possible we are tempted even then not to be.

You can understand economic pressure, social pressure, and all of these things in operation.

Now, this brings up the question of the relationship between the Afro-Americans and the Africans.

Now, obviously, all of us Afro-Americans have suffered from the historical picture and distortion of Africa that has been fed to us through the generations.

We were taught deliberately to hate, to deny, to despise our African ancestry and those people who were built unfortunate enough, we thought, to be be caught over there still.

We were taught that they would have been lucky had they come over when we did and left all the bananas and the monkeys and the torrid climate.

We are beginning to learn differently, but I'd like Dr. Franklin to talk to us a little bit about what the Afro-American or the Negro now thinks about Africa.

- Mr. Adobe said there's so much I about to say and I know that you aren't going to let me say everything and I don't really know where to start.

The first thing I want to say is that we have been able to build up still another myth, but all the myths that we have constructed over the past years, regarding the American Negroes in relationship to Africa.

I think we ought to remember and a countryman of yours and a good friend of mine helped to remind us several years ago when he published this book called "Independent Africa, the story of an Island uprising."

We ought to remember that the involvement of the American Negro in the present and future of Africa goes back to more than a century when Negroes in this country couldn't help themselves.

They were involved and interested in the development and improvement of Africa.

And sometimes the truth is that most unrefined and very undeveloped manner but still through pennies, through churches, through communications of one kind or another, through missionaries, through educational activities and so forth, American Negroes have for a century have been interested in the development of Africa and have been supporting its future and I think this ought to be a part of our record.

Now so far as the present is concerned, I think that American Negroes obviously have recognized, first of all, the remarkable thrust-forward that the emergence of these many nations Dr. Olinto mentioned has met.

I mean, the significance of it is it's unimaginable, it's so tremendous, not merely in terms of impressing the entire world, with the fact that Negroes are capable now of managing their own affairs as they were in the days that Basil Davidson talks about in his "Lost Cities of Africa" and his "Mother Africa," and other books.

But also that perhaps in terms of the American Negro's role, he will have a future similar to that the people of Africa are now having for themselves.

In other words, they recognize the important impact that the new position of Negroes in Africa can have in terms of themselves.

And it's not all together, therefore, unselfish that they wish for them the very best in every way.

I remember, Dr. Olinto, that marvelous cartoon of Headlocks not many years ago which I hope would not be true now, but he depicted a dark woman and man trying to get service and restaurant in Washington, and they were just about to be thrown out when the manager rushed up to the waiter and said, "Don't throw them out, they are American Negroes."

Now I'm sure that the solution of route 40 that John Davis was talking about the other day when we were attending a conference in Denmark and the solution of a number of American Negroes problems here at home, comes from the impact of Negroes of Africans on the our own racial situation.

American Negroes appreciate that.

And so far has the attitude of young American Negro students is concerned, I suppose that there is the usual and normal cordiality always, shall we say Mr.

Ambassador, modulated, moderated by the normal competition and indeed jealousy that might arise from the presence of someone so exotic as to take one American Negro's girlfriend away from him and I suppose that might get some jealousy but I don't think that there's any real hostility.

Now, the other point that one has to remember, I told you, don't distract me, the other one that one has to remember is that whenever American Negro and a young man or young woman from Africa or Nigeria, and whatever country you wanna mention, get together, it's not just natural that they will love each other for they come from entirely different backgrounds, different orientations, different sets of values and everything else.

They do have some affinities but it has to be cultivated and developed and it has to be worked at.

If they merely assume that because they're both black they're gonna love each other, then they're all fighting on the wrong foot.

But if they assume that they are two human beings from two wonderful backgrounds, somewhat different, that perhaps ought to get to know each other better then I think they might.

- [Ossie] Thank you, Dr. Franklin.

- Do you mind if I add just a rider there?

- Very briefly, we have one moment.

- I assure you to be very brief, but I cannot allow this speech of Dr. Franklin to go without my acknowledging the submission that he made and taking that opportunity to be highly disattribute to the contribution which American Negroes have made over the years to the development of the independence movement in Africa.

I think that they did make very stalling contribution indeed and that contribution is still proceeding on the part of American Negro leadership.

I, myself attended a conference in Washington last year which was called by American Negro leaders, not to discuss civil rights in the United States but to discuss how they can help to persuade their government to take more genuine interest in the economic development of the African Continent.

The only thing that I think we must allow, we must work on both sides, both in Africa and here, so that this interest that American Negro leaders take in Africa and that African leaders take in the colored movement everywhere, should go right to the grassroots and that this understanding of the community of interest that we share, should go right down to the rank and file of the Negroes in America and of the African people in Africa.

Thank you.

- Thank you, Chief.

- [Advertiser] We pause briefly for station identification.

This is National Educational Television.

- And now the last third of the program is devoted to questions from the audience.

You may ask questions of any of us on the platform here.

If you would just rise, state your name, make your way to the microphone, state your name, and let us have the questions.

There're microphones available all over the place and I'm sure you must have many unanswered questions about the future of the Negro in America and in the world, things that we didn't touch on or things that we touched on wrongly, perhaps.

Questions from the floor.

- My name is Mrs. Benisa.

And I should like to ask a question of Dr. Franklin.

Dr. Franklin, do you feel that the youth of today is more disposed toward this spirit of which Dr. Olinto spoke, the spirit toward integration and complete amalgamation, interracial marriage and so forth?

And do you feel that this would be an equitable and significant step toward the solution of those types of problems which we have not been able to legislate on and cannot be legislated out of existence?

- I must say I'm not quite so hopeful about amalgamation as Dr. Olinto is, we've had it in this country for quite some time.

And indeed I would suppose off hand that our mixed population in terms of numbers will compare favorably with that of Brazil, that's my off hand guess.

One must remember that the situation was so bad or desperate or whatever you want to call it in the good State of Virginia in the 20th century that that state has redefined what a Negro was, twice.

In order to call out and more of purify the white population.

In 1910, they redefined what a Negro was and in 1,930, they also did.

And this was because we've had the enormous program of, a program, if you wanna call it, but activity.

[all laughing] But Dr. Olinto made another point that I think is very important, he said that alone won't do it.

And you got to do something in terms of developing some kind of respect of people for each other which doesn't necessarily come with amalgamation.

She mentioned the youth.

- But the youth, and that's what I want to get to; I think that the young people of today are much less inhibited, much less restricted by these and other restraining influences that our fore bearers imposed on us whether they were white or Negro, or what have you.

I think that youth today are more independent and I'm delighted that they are.

The very fact that they feel free in this area is indicative of their also being willing to look at problems independently in other areas, in other ways.

It's not that they are...

It's not that they simply are more willing to marry someone out of that race that gives me hope, it is that they regard this as irrelevant, as indeed I do.

For as long, I think as we can even talk about race as such, as long as we underscore a Negro or white or any of the other, we're gonna be having problems.

Unless we can recognize the fact that color is irrelevant in human relations of any kind, marriage and otherwise, unless we can do that, we haven't even began to go beyond the Nuremberg Laws, all of the other kinds of barriers that have characterized some of our expressions in this area.

So that our young people who simply say this is silly, I say bullied for them, not that I haven't been interested in who they marry, goodness knows, how could I be?

But I am interested in the kind of spirit that this represents which I think is moving in the right direction.

- Another question.

Yes, sir.

- My name is Keith Beard.

I am a teacher of foreign languages and so very much interested in words and their meanings.

My own feeling aside, on the matter of Mr. Davidson's introduction of the word Afro-American into the discussion, I think it is true that words represent ideas and that ideas move men.

I would like to know from any members of the panel who can enlighten us, I'm quite sure all of them can, but I'd like to ask this question, to what do you attribute the inclination to use the word Afro-American?

And do you think that there is any augury of the increasing use of such a term instead of the word Negro?

Thank you.

- Well, if I may address myself for that, I think the increasing use of the word Afro-American represents two things.

One, it is the recognition by the Negro or Afro-American population of the United States that there is a real vital tie between himself and those Africans in their mother country.

It is the re-establishment an umbilical connection that was deliberately cut off historically a long time ago.

There is also, I think, a personal or psychological reason for the use of the term Afro-American as against Negro, basically, in this country, we Negroes, Negro males in particular, are rather emasculated breed of people, we represent a crippling imposed on us by the Southern culture, to the extent that our manhood, our capacity as men to defend our families or to head families or to found families was profoundly put in question by slavery and is held in question even after slavery was over.

Our women usually went out a good route and earned livelihoods whereas we couldn't.

I think we need...

The use of the word Afro-American is a psychological confession that the term Negro is no longer satisfactory to us, it describes what we were and perhaps still are, but what we would like no longer to be, we would like to be considered men and this is one way of describing ourselves as men I think.

- Forgive, Ambassador, I was struck by what you said and I would like to ask you a question.

If the word Negro has rarely a little meaning in the United States, where else does it have any meaning?

Have you, Ambassador, ever heard of any of your fellow countrymen thinking or calling themselves Negroes?

I must say I traveled in Africa a great deal and I haven't had this.

- Yes, I don't think that if you travel through Africa you will hear Africans calling themselves Negroes.

Just as if you travel, as I have done, through great Britain, you wouldn't hear the Englishman calling himself Caucasian because he's not thinking in such terms.

- You think it was [indistinct].

- No, no, the point I wish to make is this; see, within the United States here, Afro-American can be a substitute term for the Negro, but the Negro is a term that covers more than the Afro-American.

I used the Negro to cover my Afro-American brethren, my Brazilian brethren, my brethren in Ghana, my brethren everywhere else in the world where people of color may be domiciled for the time being.

And when I went to a certain part of the United States just three months ago, I wouldn't mention it, in case people here don't share their particular point of view, and I suggested that as a means of trying to remove the misunderstanding between the African at home and the people of color abroad, we should have an Afro-Negro society.

Well, I was told that... No, I said, no, no, not offered a Negro, I said a Negro society that included everybody, and I was told, quite seriously that the term Negro was opprobrious and that they did not use that term in these parts.

And I said, "Well, it was a term that I gladly accepted for myself, but of course, if there are large sections of the Negro community who don't like it then it can only defeat my purpose if we use the term.

But in that case, you must go and help me to find a term which would cover all of us."

And I haven't had a further communication from that source.

And it may be that the great professor will be able to find me such a term, because I have been looking for it.

Afro-American is very nice if you are thinking of Americans of African ancestry.

But if you are thinking of all of us, the whole Negro populations of the world, I'm in search of a word, which will come us all just as I use the term Caucasian to cover the white people.

So I think that both terms are very useful and I do not see how we can avoid some generic term which will cover the whole of the colored populations.

- Thank you.

Can we perhaps for the next question?

- My name is John Druse, I got up on impulse, but I'll ask the questions now.

I have three short questions, two to Mr. Ossie Davis and the last one to the pessimists on the panel.

The first one is if you'll find, or if we find a new name, don't just extend the agony unnecessarily?

I think, especially in America, if we...

I'll ask them first then perhaps you can answer them all at the same time.

If we find a new name for Negro, whatever it may be, isn't it just an extension of the agony?

The second question is, and again to you, if you know or would know now or would have known that your birth what you know now about life, about your life personally, and you would have the possibility of choosing your birthplace, what would your choice be?

And then to the pessimists on the panel, since there has been a great deal of progress in the last 20 years compared to the last two or 3000 years, do you think we can go back?

Do you think that any form of segregation that has been eliminated can be brought back?

These other questions.

- Well, since you directed yourself to me, while you gentlemen are thinking of your answers I'll give mine.

I recognize two things, one the necessity for some change and the concept of myself and my people in this country which leads us to search for a new designation.

I also recognize the very stubborn nature of human nature.

For instance, Sixth Avenue is still not the Avenue of Americas though it's officially changed.

So I solve the problems with myself on a very personal level.

I use the term Negro to designate those black people who came from Africa against their will, brought over by slavery and this is my definition and it works for me.

And the other part of that is, I figure that there is always the possibility that we can take this opprobrious word, this bone that has been thrown at us and thrown in our face, and with our particular genius and energy and love of life, make of it something so magnificent that they might want it back again and we won't give it to them, it'll be something our own then.

Now as to if I could go back in time and decide at which place I would like to be born; well, let's see now, I was born in a cotton [indistinct] in Cogdell, Georgia, and I imagine any other place would seem like heaven compared compared to- [audience laughing].

- [Dr. Franklin] A simple one.

[audience laughing] - That's as far as I can tell.

[all laughing] Without advice of counsel.

Now for the pessimists on the program, I practice pessimism, although I'm not definitely a pessimist, I think that there's always a possibility of retrogression in human affairs and I think that before Hitler came that the Jews had achieved a tremendous degree of integration into German society and none of them possibly would have thought that the harrow of those camps would be visited upon them or that this kind of retrogression would happen.

I do believe that men on the pressure of circumstances will revert to most barbaric cruelty and that those in the midst who are weak and defenseless will get it.

And I don't care how far up we get as a race, until we can solve this problem and change these conditions we talk about, we are always vulnerable.

Even now as they say on the streets, we had integration at the top but we have outergration at the bottom.

As faster than we can be integrated into the society, we're being computed out of it on the economic level.

So I appreciate the progress we've made in 20 years but I have my fingers crossed all along the line.

Thank you.

Any... - I don't count myself pessimist, but I would just comment that I think it's conceivable that we might get into a situation where the Negro's position is not secure in this country.

If we can do what we did to the Japanese in 1941, I think this country is capable of doing almost anything.

And then it was strictly on the basis of the people being identifiable as possible subversives despite the fact that there was no real reason for it.

Now, if the color question becomes one of extreme polarity, as some countries of the world are seeking to make it now, and if any great struggle arises that might be interpreted as a racial struggle, international racial struggle, I don't know what that might do to Negroes in the United States.

If it makes that position at all untenable or weak, then of course it would certainly indicate that the position that there had not been any fundamental acceptance of the Negro as a person or as a citizen for all these many hundreds of years.

But that's what happened to the Japanese and I cant forget that, I simply cannot get out of my mind.

- Let me ask Dr. Olinto an extension of that question, do you think that's possible a rollback even in Brazil?

- Well, I believe that every situation is reversible but if there is one situation that's reversible perhaps that's the Brazilian one.

Because we had gone too far.

We are not-for-letting society, a not-for-letting country, a not-for-letting civilization.

One source of our culture is the Greco-Roman Award with the [indistinct] in the Celtic side of the Portuguese civilization, but 50% or perhaps more, comes from Africa.

- I've heard mention of a word called neocolonialism by which I take it, it means that instead of the European countries politically dominating an African country they will merely economically own its means of production and therefore control it.

And this is not as far fetched as it sounds because there was quite a few, or say for instance, in a country like Canada, because most of Canada is owned by American capital and the Canadians feel like they are getting to be a colony of America.

Is there a real chance, in as much as the African countries are underdeveloped usually they have one crop tied to the capitalist system of production and they're bound up in that, is there a real chance that by economic manipulation, that a new form of colonialism can be imposed on the African societies which is fundamentally more crippling than that of the past?

Is it reversible?

Oh, I think that there is always a chance that you slide into a position in which your independence is a sham.

But whether you do that depends very much upon yourself.

If you have a government of rogues, a government of corrupt people, then no amount of prayer will save you from that situation.

But if you have a government of determined people who are prepared to welcome international economic cooperation, but keeping the eyes open all the time as the lawyers say, [foreign language] watching their own guns all the time it seems to me that they can develop with assistance from abroad, without sliding into a neo-colonialist position.

So my answer is that it is possible, it can happen and it will happen, unless we have dedicated governments who are prepared to work for the advancement of the standard of living of their community as a whole.

- Thank you.

Now let's get to the next question.

- My name is Carol Lazarus.

Now I ask the question of Dr. Franklin or any of the other gentlemen on the panel that want to respond to it.

The question is a short one, maybe not a terribly easy one to answer, what might people, good-intention people, do in their own communities to attempt to assure a better future for the Negro in that community than was true in his past, Dr. Franklin?

- When I was teaching at Brooklyn College, one of my colleagues who had spent his holiday, spring holiday in Florida came rushing into my office.

He was a member of another department and he said, " I've just comes from the South.

I'm so distressed.

I'm so upset.

I'm so...

I don't know what to do and I've come to you for help."

I said, "What do you want me to do?"

[audience laughing] He said, "I want you to tell me what I can do to help improve the situation of the Negro.

It's because I've now seen, I've seen it in its rawest, truest, crudest form, and I must do something."

And I took him to the window of my office and I pointed to the apartment building in Flatbush.

And I said, "You got your work cut out, try to get a Negro in that apartment building."

What I'm trying to suggest really is that we do have, in every community that I know anything about in this country, a vast array of problems that run the gamut from employment to housing, to education and to just plain human relations and that there's work for each and every person.

Now, one has first of all, to have some commitment, and I'm sure that you asking only about people who do, then one has secondly to ask himself, what is it that he can do?

And I don't believe anyone can answer that question for you.

We've been having a great time this summer in Chicago, and some of us have been lying down in the streets and some of us have been standing on the sidewalk and others have been marching and others have been ringing doorbells and others have been holding meetings and speaking, and others have been working with little children and so forth.

We have, all of us, I think, some talent and we have to ask ourselves what it is we can do.

First we have to see the problem, as I think you do, you see it in your own community and not in Ocala, Florida or somewhere, see it right in your own community and probably in your own block.

And secondly to be certain that you have a commitment to try to do something.

And thirdly ask, what are your talents?

They may be writing, they may be speaking.

They may be marching.

They may be lying out in the streets, whatever they are, to improve the lot of mankind, that's to simply where you ought to be.

And that's about all I can say.

I cannot be specific without knowing specifically what one's tablets and temperament are.

Some people just cannot lie out on the streets, I happen to be one, but I can start on the sidewalk and well, maybe you can too, that's all I have.

- Are there any other questions from our audience?

Which is quite a lively one, I must say.

Any other questions?

Any other unsolved problems we can dispose of for you?

Charlie Griffin.

- My name is Charles Griffin, I would address my question to Mr. Davidson.

I wonder if the major powers of the world realize the menace of racism as it's exemplified by apartheid in South Africa?

- Well, if they don't realize it, they must be extremely hard of hearing because it's not for lack of telling them.

I would think that they do realize it but my answer would be on slightly different lines.

And that is this, and this has been mentioned, I think that you mentioned it at the beginning, that the reason why I would be counted perhaps on this platform as a pessimist it's not simply that complacency hasn't really gotten much place here, but also because the fact of the matter is, none of these really basic problems on world terms are at the present moment being solved.

The fact is that the poor nations are getting poorer and most of them happen to be colored and the rich nations are getting richer and most of them happen to be Caucasian or whatever it may be.

And until these basic problems are solved, it's extremely hard to see how the more limited ones are going to be solved.

For instance, in the case of Africa, the Africans have liberated themselves with great vigor and courage and success in the last 10 or 15 years.

The fact remains that their economic situation in the world has been gradually getting worse and worse during that very same period visa via the rich nations if only because the terms of trade, the scissors between the price of exports and the price of their imports has gone heavily against them, I think I'm right in this.

Ever since about 1953 or four and subject to correction, it seems to me very likely that the sum of all the aid that is being given to all these so-called undeveloped countries is much less in terms of gain for them than the loss, which they have suffered through these adverse terms of trade.

And that is one particular case where it seems to me that the world had better to address itself to without any loss of time.

Because unless that, until that process of impoverishment and enrichment is modified and indeed reversed, altered, got over, overcome, we shan't get very far.

- Ladies and gentlemen, and distinguished members of the panel, it seems that our time is about up.

I'd like to take these last few minutes to thank these gentlemen who took time out to come and be with us this afternoon.

Dr. John A. Davis, American Society on Africa, Dr. Antonio Olinto, Critic and Writer from Brazil, Chief S.O.

Adebo, Nigerian Ambassador to the United Nations, Dr. John Hope Franklin, Historian from University of Chicago, Mr.

Basil Davidson, a British Africanist who came all the way over to join our discussion.

Obviously, we couldn't begin to cover all of this particular problem.

On the other hand, it is the problem of mankind that we deal with, we will never cover it all, we merely try and throw enough light on the problem to enable those of us who do want to be of help to find a little more reason or a little more method by which they can achieve their objective.

I think that man has a great future.

And if I am a pessimist, it's a short term pessimism.

I am up to the theater, and one of the greatest art forms is the tragic art by which the protagonist dies, but in his dying, he learns quite a lot.

[audience laughing] With that, I'd like to bid you all good night.

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