Josie Robinson Johnson

Consulting services designed to look at educational issues regarding African-American children. I am principally interested in the education of African-American children and also the issues of human rights and social justice. Del: What is your definition of the Civil Rights Movement? Josie: When I think of the Civil Rights Movement I'm thinking of a process that has embedded the process of justice, equal opportunity, respect, and the removal of obstacles that prevent people from being the best they can be, and that it will have those elements that require some constant process. Where you are constantly marching towards the fulfillment of the (Civil Rights) Act. So it's a process that incorporates awareness, efforts, continuity, efficiency, willing to struggle in order to have the academic and spiritual fulfillment of job opportunities, and hope for children, for all children, for all people. I think we have to remember the origin of the Movement and understand that to many other groups have used the expression civil rights in order to gain their placed in society. So it is a right, is it recognized, appreciated, and respected that allows people to be their best and contribute whatever they can to provide for the families. To be respected and all the other things that I mentioned. But it is a process that continues to move. A process by which things have to keep going. Del: In your opinion would the public protest the and boycotts of the past be effective ways to make change today? Josie: I don't think so today. I think that is very important today for us all to take time to evaluate the past movements and efforts. I think we have to adjust. The issues are such that I think strategies can be designed to get some resolution to them in today`s society. We have been through it all as a people. I'm seventy-two so I have had an opportunity to be engaged in almost every method that we can imagine. We have, through marching and calling attention the wrongs, been teaching people to understand what impact denial has on their lives. I'm speaking now of the powers in the society that control the way things happen and developed. We try to educate. We've tried to demonstrate. We tried to have people understand the need for legislation. We've had them try to understand the economic impact that the denial of a people would have on them individually as well as the larger system. We've talked about the need to include it in our school materials that deal with the true history of African people and Indian people. We have tried small dialogues. We've tried diversity training. We've tried writing materials. We've tried creating positions in the academy as well as industry. And I think that what happens is that our American tradition and system learns to adapt to change and they try to figure out how to continue a system that works for our capitalist system and the way people are oriented to think about good and evil and economic benefits. So they learn to adapt to all of those changes. They learn to reconfigure laws. They learn how to redefine positions. They learn how to redirect blame. They know how to continue a system as it has always been. So strategy, in my opinion, has to be understood in the context of right now. Right here, right now. What are the issues now of facing the powers. For example if you look at the war that we have just been through. The strategy of the larger system of the powers was to create an environment where people could no discuss right or wrong of this war. The strategy is to create an attitude that keeps people from being able to think in a democratic way. And the strategy then is to make people who want to discuss it and think about these things is to create to an environment in which they can be classified as un-American, or some other kind of negative term that can be placed on thoughtful people. So strategy is absolutely critical. You have to understand the environment in which you are trying to create a process or set of strategies that will create civil rights, social justice, so the strategy is very critical and that is thinking things through and trying to figure out a method to help us stay free and opportunities for all people. Del: How would you define the relationship between the Black Arts Movement and the Civil Rights Movement? Josie: I think the Black Arts Movement brought to the larger community new language, new methods, information that they did not have. Not only did the Harlem Renaissance in the art, the visual and literary arts, but the later movement in the sixties of try to present the larger screen a different way of thinking and viewing the world. So the Black Arts Movement has been a part of who we are forever and that is trying to communicate in another form, in another medium, who we are, how we think. The diversity among us, the complexity of who we are, the skills of who we are, and the contributions that we've made. So the Black Arts Movement has been a very important part of our Civil Rights Movement you can't separate them. Del: What do you think is the most important issue African-Americans have to address today? Josie: The problem with that question is there is no one thing. We need to reclaim our children and train them well. We need to analyze the system in light of our struggle from pre-emancipation the struggle of our ancestors. We need to look at the full plate of issues that are in front of us and then try to select out of that one to or two focus point. In my view saving our children, educating our children, protecting our families. Reintroduce strength into African American families. Re- introducing, to our children, not only their intellectual abilities but their place in the human family of love and respect. I think that today it's like a ripple you can start in the middle, but the reason I think it is so difficult and complex is that everything touches everything else. So, I think if we can begin as a community to save our children and our families that might be the most important thing we can do. That will propel us forward to once again fight laws and try to make sure that the new strategies of the majority system don't prevent us from being successful. I'm not terribly optimistic about a system changing because, it keeps moving in directions there are so anti-me anyway. Del: What you think of the Civil Rights Movement today? Josie: I think it is the same struggle. It`s still trying, the march across the bridge in Selma, the march on Washington, the struggle for passage of civil rights legislation. ItŐs still the same. I think it`s important for people to connect back to your earlier question about strategy. We need to look at the conditions. What has been the fall out for our people and our movement and examine what we need to do as a people to offer opportunity and fairness, and justice for our future generation. ItŐs the same struggle my grandparents and parents were in. It`s the same because we are in a society that has a different agenda, a different method of arriving to civil rights and justice and equal opportunity. So, I think the Movement today needs to examine the state of affairs, what new or old methods do we need to employ to bring closure to the our historical struggle. Del: Control The word control, when you associate that with the Civil Rights Movement, I think of it as: we were workers in the Movement trying to be in control of the issues that were being discussed and up for consideration. During that period there was a need to be sure that as we moved in this effort to get civil rights and justice for us as a people that we were in control of our agenda. Del: Dehumanize Josie: Dehumanization is a word and an action. When you deny people their place, their culture, their importance in the development of a system, you dehumanize them. And when you dehumanize people you can then control them. And so the effort to create for our young people and for all involved in the struggle was to try and maintain our humanity. That is to stay connected to the issues that are important to us. Our respect for our ancestors and our history. A respect for the struggle and the context. And to make sure our young people did not feel this dehumanization process, but to reinforce who they are, and what they are about in order to put their humanity in its proper place. Del: Stigma Stigma is a word that is important in our American socialization process. African-Americans have been stigmatized from the beginning. When you look at the memorabilia that floats around in antique stores and in collections that exist across the world, painting us in less than human terms and depicting the worse that one can find in the human experience. It creates an image that is translated into a stigma of who the people are and what they represent. Del: Traumatize Josie: When I think of being traumatized I think about the effort that we made in trying to position ourselves in a movement that needed to be addressed and continued. You get rather traumatized when you realize that everything you do there is a negative counter punch to it that finds its way in a society that has already been trained to think of us in a particular way. So, in the struggle you get rather traumatized, in your work, and I'm thinking of a condition that almost makes it impossible to move forward, you are just in a state of trauma, and you are unable to put all the effort together that needs to be assembled and you are stymied in efforts to address the goals, missions, and strategy's that are out lined in the struggle for civil rights. Del: Loss Josie: Well, I think that the effort is not to lose. Today in my judgment, in today's society and in 2003 what I see is that we have lost some of the understanding of the struggle. That our children have been so convinced that they don't come from a culture of education and a sense of freedom and justice. That we've lost some of the goals that we had it in the Civil Rights Movement. The fact that our children are in environments that don't know them or respect them, know their families, know their histories. Our children are losing their sense of history, their struggle, their place. And I think I worry more about that today than many other things. Because, once you lose the issues that were presented and the rationale for the struggle and the understanding of who you are and where you fit in the larger scheme of things. Where you have come from and what your contributions have been. When you lose that it is as if you have to start all over again and each generation has to start a new. I worry a lot about that loss that I feel that we are experiencing now. Del: Identity Josie: Identity is so critical it means seeing yourself and your reflection in those things that you value. And our children in our society need to be able to identify with the strength, and character, and quality that we are as a people. I think that sometimes with the mass media with the emphasis that is placed on the popular culture, and the value that the masses place on things that are so contrary to our struggle. I think identity becomes a real concern for us as a people. It is helping our children go beyond the image they see on TV and in mass media and identify with their quality, their character, their value as human beings with a soul, and love, and concern for quality of life. So identity is very, very important and we need to try and maintain. This society reflects almost the exact opposite of what our values are. Identity becomes a real hard to focus for us and our children. Del: Survival Josie: That word is one that I think our people, African American, and native American people, and other people of color have had to use, that quality of survival. Surviving in a society. By surviving I mean continuing to hold on to those things that are important to you. The need to hold onto those things. And to survive in spite of what is being forced on you, painted for you. Survival is something that we've had to do as a people. We had to build the coping skills for survival in a world that does not respect us. And I think that as a people we probably have survived longer than most species would given the environment in which we have been exposed. So survival is a real coping quality that we have and need to help our children understand and appreciate. Del: Inspire Josie: We get inspired by signs of movement and success and or anything that we feel is reflected in a system and if we can identify as ours or as a result of something we have done. I as an elder am inspired when I see my children succeed my ethnic and ancestral children succeed. When I see them hold on to the values of their ancestors and move in directions that are life preserving. In an environment where they can be the best that they can be I am inspired. Del: Hope Josie: I think that`s something that we just don't seem to give up on. Hope. We are constantly hoping the that the next generation, the next effort, the next laws, the next program, the next athlete, the next program, the next education reform, the next group of people, will eventually see who we are and build that into the environment of expectations and fairness. And that our kids, our people would get there. So we remain hopeful that eventually who we are, not all as the big muscle people, but the brains, and the heart and the caring will find it`s place in the society. This society needs to have who we are, really are, in order for this society to survive. So I`m constantly hopeful that day will come. Del: Closure Josie: Well, I don't know that there will ever be closure. That's a part of that hope. You hope that someday there will be closure to this struggle. But as I have observed that as we attempt to approach an influence and change a system the old struggles get reworked, reconfigured, recovered, and resurface. So, I don't know that we will ever have closure on the issues that are so critical to us as a people and to our movement.

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