And they also declared that they are not from those which get that the criminal code the criminal code they are basically putting detainees in limbo where they make up the rules as they go along. Live on on book tv in depth. From noon to 3 p. M. Eastern. Its great to see all of you think you for coming. As most of you know this is the fourth year doing conversations about the freedom studies. We started this four years ago to bring new work into black history and the scholars and writers and conversation with us and to create a space to put that in the struggles of today and so tonight we will be talking about black power into political repression. Its very timely in the moment we are in and most of you whove been here before also know that every few months i like to talk about rosa parks and many of you know i wrote a biography of rosa parks and today would have been her 103rd birthday. In honor of that, me and some colleagues have built a new website called rosa parks biography to kind of challenge the way that in much of our public conversation today theres a kind of dangerous distinction being made between what is being treated as the Civil Rights Movement and the movements for Racial Justice and black lives better today into these were distinctions that were looking at the history of rosa parks through criminal justice challenge the distinctions commentators are making today so i think a real look will remind us from the justice for black women who were raped to the criminalization that we see with the montgomery bus boycotts that she served on from the wilmington ten to all of tend to all of the antiPolice Brutality work she did sitting on the tribunal after 67 and and the trite uprising and on and on. I think seeing that scope gives us a different movements movement to draw upon today and reveal and challenge the way that this comes into the present so tonight we are very lucky to have three scholars to have flown here to be with us. The first speaker is talking about his important book on the wilmington tend. Hes come from chapel hill. The second speaker is from cleveland at case western to talk about her incredible book kind of looking at black power across the 20th century into thin air it has come from the university of illinois and he will be signing after the program tonight his first book sojourning for freedom that he will be talking from the new book project which is on par via some in the u. S. But specifically he will be talking about his new work on malcolm x. Mother movies little and is precious for that from all sorts of Research Across the world so we are very, very lucky and please join me in welcoming Kenneth Cheney can come around the williams and eric mcduffie. [applause] good evening. Ive used the Schaumburg Center for all of my work at one time or another i found myself here in its always been a dream of mine to come here and talk so i can cross that off my list tonight. Thank you for inviting me. Im thrilled to be here and thanks to all of you for coming out this evening. Im going to talk about the wilmington ten tonight and ive generally found that it is something that is dimly remembered in my state North Carolina but it frequently gets confused with the 1898 race riot in wilmington which was against a black elected government in 1898. So its not that well remembered that the wilmington ten in its time and for our time was a monumental case of political repression very similar to other examples of egregious injustices such as the murder of Chicago Black panther leader by the Chicago Police with the assistance of the federal bureau of investigation and the legal frame up of angela davis and the prison rebellion. With just a bit more thought i think that i can offer several other examples but that would take up more of my time and not allow me to give to the big points i want to do. In the case of the wilmington ten, the legal system hammered black men in their teens or early 20s and a white woman in her 30s for their part in protests over desegregation of Public Schools in wilmington North Carolina. The actions of elected officials, Police Prosecutors and prosecutors and judges throughout the wilmington ten or deal was callous and corrupt even by todays standards of prosecutorial misconduct. Part of what i would like to do this evening is rehearsed the events of the wilmington ten but its also important to remember and understand that what happened also helped to define a new phase in africanamerican politics in which an increasing movement coordinated its efforts under the leadership of a vital radical left and i will spend some time outlining that as well. As it will become evident in a moment, the name is in many ways a misnomer not only did they not comes tired to do anything they also did not know one another or hang out together or share common friendships or networks together they were in the machinery operated by the authorities to suppress the expansive movement and in particular to place one person on the sidelines so while i will be talking about the wilmington ten as a corporate entity as it were because that is how the events are remembered in history, its important that we understand they were also ten individuals and i want you to know their names, theres been shapes, james mccoy, wayne moore, Martin Patrick and shepherd and joe wright, ten individuals whose lives were ruined to further the aims of the state. Now, the ned is a band that led to the wilmington ten was the boycotts of the recently desegregated schools in the first week of february, 1971 by black students subjected to mistreatment by School Officials and police that came onto the campuses and by adults that came to the school to harass black students. They also protested their exclusion from a variety of Extracurricular Activities such as cheerleading, the sports teams, student council, the Honor Society society and so on. The High School Students issued a list of demands and established a boycott headquarters at the Congregational Church that is affiliated with the United Church of christ. A local paramilitary White Supremacist Organization called the rights of white people which had broken away from the clan in New Hanover County because it believed that it was moderate heard about the boycott and boycotts and began to harass the students including driveby shootings at the church. In response, students and their supporters appealed for City Protection including a curfew but neither the mayor or the police chief was willing to oblige. They said things were under control the way that they were. When no protection was forthcoming, students and supporters defend themselves and established a perimeter and set up an armed century. Also in response to the attacks, unknown supporters of the boycotts committed arson and other Property Damage prostrate owned businesses and against the nearly previously allwhite New Hanover High School gym. It should be noted, however, thats not all was in retaliation for the attacks at least one business was burned down by its owner who tried to take advantage of the town to profit from his Fire Insurance and another at a business also have suspicious origins, the Furniture Store and several residents thought it was peculiar but while the store burned down at all the merchandise burned down the owner had conveniently taken all of his records books home with him tonight before the fire and continued to bill all of the teacher and for all the customers for their installment payments. Among the businesses that burned was mikes grocery located a couple of blocks from the Congregational Church and mikes grocery plays an Important Role in the events. When it was burning on the saturday night at the end of the first week in february, 1971, the police shot and killed an unarmed student protest leader by the name of steve mitchell. Hed gone out when he heard the fire alarms going he had gone out to check and see what was happening and help rescue people from the adjacent buildings to help people move their furniture and get out of the fire. When he poked his head out the police shot him. They picked him up and put him in a police car in should have been a 15 minute drive to the hospital took more than two hours and he arrived dead on arrival. The next morning a white supremacist named harvey drove through police lines, got out of his vehicle and as he prepared to shoot at the church he was shot and killed by somebody who is still unknown. It was with this mans death thats been that the mayor and the police chief took action. A curfew was now established and the citys authorities were urging the governor called in the National Guard in this state highway patrol. The guard raided the boycott headquarters and its superior firepower that was imposed on the city. The boycott was suppressed but the students demands were not met. One year later in march of 1972, state and local officials still smarting from the rebellion and continuing to make someone pay for it arrested 17 persons on charges related to the burning of mikes into the murder of harvey. Ten of them were put on trial in september 1972 for conspiracy, arson and shooting at the firefighters and police responded. The prosecutor based his case on testimony that he himself had solicited and on and on a Legal Process of jury selection which he excluded practically all blacks from the jury pool based on their racing stripes to pack the jury with whites who openly expressed racist views were plainly stated that he had made up their minds that at least some of the ten were guilty or who said that in order to find him not guilty, they would need to hear the testimony of those people rather than assuming they were not guilty they would assume they were guilty until proven otherwise. In this ilLegal Process, the prosecution was ably assisted by a tribal judge Robert Martin who also hamstrung the defense attorneys. After a week of testimony the jury took only hours to convict and the judge sentenced the wilmington ten to a total of 282 years in prison and i can talk more about this process into question and answers come of this ilLegal Process the prosecutors used. So, in october of 1972, the wilmington 10 off to prison to serve earns sometimes up to 34 years, with 282 years in total and that might have been the end of the story because we know throughout the 60s and 70s there were people who were arrested, who were framed and convicted and sent to jail and nobody ever hears from them again. This was true for a group of High School Students and North Carolina for example. There was also a struggle over School Segregation and there were also students who pushed and shoved in the hallways and at one point in time there was a fire set in the boys laboratory in the trash can come it did a minimal amount of damage, but of smoke and fire nothing particularly big and this morphed into a fire bomb in the press and in the courts and the authorities arrested he was in High School Students and put them on trial told them if they pled guilty and just served their time they would get sentences of 11 years and not being able to afford attorneys and being young and scared, they gave in and they did their time and i only found out about them going through the archives at the center so this might have been the end of the story for the wilmington ten but almost immediately upon their conviction i think while they were still on trial but occurred thursday multilevel Multidimensional Movement to free them. It was built statewide at first principally through the network of the United Church of christ congregations that the private commission for Racial Justice. It means strength through the efforts of the organization for black unity. A rather prophylactic rationalization in the world which had a National Circulation of more than 10,000. Many members of the organization were headed in the direction of marxism and a good part of the leadership would end up in the communist Workers Party whose members were murdered in greensboro in november of 1979. It gained National Attention through the efforts of the National Alliance against racist and political oppression which was closely aligned with the communist party and have ties with labor unions and Public Officials across the United States and finally, there was the National Wilmington ten Defense Committee headquartered in washington, d. C. Was able to draw a variety of congressional staffers and ultimately interested Amnesty International could take up the issue and legal prisoners of conscience. Now what i want to emphasize here is that this was a Massive Movement that was international in scope. The organization for unity, the commission for Racial Justice, the National Alliance against political oppression all have welldeveloped critiques of American Society and capitalist society and the damage they did to other National Minorities they looked upon the case of the wilmington ten dot as a miscarriage of justice but as a typical way the system worked and was designed to work they worked hard to link the issue with pacing the communities of North Carolina and around the nation showing the connections between this particular instance of injustice and an educational system that failed africanamericans, Police Forces that treated the criminal Justice System built on the mass incarceration and employer class on exploiting workers were intensely by denying them the protection of the labor union and the u. S. Foreign policy that supports apartheid and colonialism in Southern Africa and they were effective trolling and thousands of people to demonstrations engaging in political edition and what used to be called consciousness in the community centers, workplaces and houses of worship around the country and bringing into the fold all manners of people including politicians and prominent Public Opinion makers they finally come for the president to become involved and the pressure eventually forced the circuit of the u. S. Court of appeals to overturn their convictions not on technicalities as many people claim that the times and continued to claim today that because of substantial prosecutorial misconduct that resulted. This was a moment in history when the politics were Strong Enough to lead a united front. Inside politicians like joy johnson, two state representatives in North Carolina they flocked to the movement as they recognized its power and because they might have been swept aside had they not. This new type of politics was ascendant until the early 1980s when for a variety of reasons it was supposed to be replaced by the Political Class that was more in tuned with the rules and regulations of the twoparty system. Thank you. [applause] today i will talk about black power, roots and expression. In 1969 the author and novelist James Baldwin talks about freedom and the United States allegedly waging war in the name of freedom and she sat in a slow clip for sure a war is being waged that but he said no matter what the profession in my country may be we are not burning people at the existence of the name of freedom. If it were freedom they were concerned about that long ago we would have done something about china spurred south africa and if we were concerned with freedom, boys and girls come as i stand here wouldnt be pitching in the streets. We are concerned with power. Nothing more than that and it has consult with either the power on the backs of people who are now willing to die rather than to use any longer. Then in the question and answer portion, he was passed a question and i will play you the cliff because a lady in the audience that future employer after someone but anyway thats just so you know whats going on. And audible conversations. [inaudible conversations] i dont see it a division between them. I dont know why everyone gets upset about black power but everyone gets upset about white power over the world, no one even questions at its not destroying women and children. But the black power because of this cover is sacred. No one has the power of the holy ghost. The term black power was mine [inaudible] and it does actually mean that. They have in their hands