(Don Lee 1967; Haki Madhubuti 2000)

Haki Madhubuti, formerly known as Don Lee, gave a lecture at the College on Contra Costa in San Pablo, CA. Haki Madhubuti was born Feb. 23, 1942, in Little Rock, Arkansas. He served in the U.S. Army (1960-63). He attended several colleges in Chicago and graduate school at the University of Iowa (M.F.A., 1984). He taught at various colleges and universities, in 1984 he became a faculty member at Chicago State University.

At 58-years old, he is the author of 19 books. He started his literary career in 1967 with the widely read Think Black and Black Pride (1968), and became recognized as one of the critical Black poets of the 60’s with the 1969 publication of Don’t Cry, Scream. Haki Madhubuti’s Black Men: Obsolete, Single, Dangerous? has sold in excess of a million copies. His most recent book is Groundwork: New and Selected Poems from 1966-1996.

His appearance filled the small Performance Arts theater at the school. Madhubuti attracted a more mature, educated class and a number of college students. Some courses offered extra credit work for attending. Noted Black activists and community leaders were in attendance.

We had hoped to bring the actual transcript of his lecture, but the sound system was very bad. Most of us had to strain to hear the soft-spoken Madhubuti. The following are excerpts from that speech.

"I believe we have to elect people to represent us. But we must elect the right people. Ignorance has been visited upon African American people in a number of ways....It is not unusual for ignorant people to talk about how ignorant other people are....

We are only equipped to survive, but survival is not enough. We go to malls and stores to buy products from people who don't even like us. This means that our dollars say in our community only four hours. Whites make sure that their dollars stay in their community a day. We are buying stuff and we worship ownership. But first we must take ownership of ourselves--when you don't know yourself, you have no ownership of yourself.

If all Black children were made aware of their culture and history beyond the context of slavery, they would rise above the limited frustrations of others and themselves.

Years ago, my mother told me to go to the library and check out a book for her by Richard Wright . I didn't want to go to a white librarian and ask for a black book. I didn't want to check out anything Black. Why was this so? I hated myself. I had been taught to hate myself. All of the commercials and the American institutions taught White Supremacy. That's is all they teach. Finally, I went to the library, found the book and sat down and started reading. For the first time, I was reading something that sounded like me that looked like me. I checked the book out, ran house and stayed up all night reading that book.

The Military was the same; they taught White Supremacy also. I joined the military and when going to boot camp, I read Paul Robson's Here I Stand. When I got to boot camp, a sergeant spotted the book, took it from me and said, your Negro mind is fill with this Negro stuff. He tore the pages out, gave a page to each man and said he wanted them to use it as toilet tissue. And he didn't want to see that type of Negro reading again. From that experience, I said that I would never again apologize for being Black; I said that I would never put myself in a position that people outside of my race or culture would know more about me than I know about myself; I then realized the power of ideas. And I said that if ideas were that powerful to cause the reaction I got, I was going into the idea business.

Ideas are important. The writing of ideas, the publishing of ideas, and the purveying of ideas. So at 17-years old, I got into the idea business--thinking them, writing them, and later on at publishing them. Today, the Third World Press is the oldest Black publishing company in this nation. Many of the major Black writers around today got their start from our publishing house...."

[Gibbs regrets that more excerpts of Haki Madhubuti's talk could not be shared with you.]

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