Chuck McDew

Born in 1940 Academic adviser and teacher for Metro State University. Del: What is your definition of the Civil Rights Movement? Charles: The Civil Rights Movement is an attempt to make available all of the rights guaranteed to U.S. citizens under the Constitution of the United States of America. Del: In your opinion would the public protesting and boycotts of the past be an effective way to make change today? Charles: Yes, I see that as one method of many. I think so. Del: How did you participate in activism during a movement? Charles: I was one of the founders and co-chair of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), we started and planned the sit-ins. We had a very active program for voter registration of black people during the 1960's. Del: What do you think is the most important issue African Americans have to address today? Charles: The most important issue is the issue of the re-enfranchisement of black people. The re-enfranchisement of black people and increased unemployment. There is an increased underclass that just consist of blacks which has to do with jobs and employment opportunities. Del: What you think of the Civil Rights Movement today? Charles: I think it is very weak and virtually nonexistent. Del: How would you define the relationship between the black arts and the and the Civil Rights Movement? Charles: The same as I would define the Civil Rights Movement very weak and virtually nonexistent. Del: Is there a time when it was strong? Charles: Yes, In the 60's and early 70's the Black Arts Movement was strong. The writers like Baldwin, and the musicians. There was a large number of people involved in the Civil Rights Movement. Many of the things that happened in arts addressed the needs of the people: expressions through all the arts, photographic arts, paintings, and music addressed issues of civil rights in every area. Nina Simon, Miles Davis in jazz and some rock-and-roll artists also. Which I don't think happens now. Music like the hip hop stuff grew out of a movement called the Harlem Poets. And the Harlem Poets talked about civil-rights. I don't think that hip-hop music today addresses any of that. The art showed the struggle that was going on, I don't think that happens today. The writers wrote about it, the pictures showed it, the poetry expressed the dreams unfulfilled and the frustration of climbing up the ladder to equality. I don't think that is done today. There was an attempt to teach and learn in different sorts of ways. I recently read they were talking about lessons in freedom schools in the south. They spoke of the value of ebonics. And today it is dismissed and it is not a new thing it's an old issue they sanctioned it 60's and 70's and today it is dismissed like a lot of things. The attacks on civil-rights are happening in a whole lot of areas. The former coach of Nebraska State said that the problem with affirmative-action and equal opportunity is all these white Americans born on third base think they hit a triple and that everybody else has the same opportunities. There is misconception by people in America that there is not a problem anymore. That everything was addressed and that there are no problems, but that is not true. There is a huge amount of effort against affirmative action and I think this current situations has exemplified that. I was one of the party for the Friends of the Court involved in the lawsuit against the University of Michigan affirmative action program the court ruled on. What most people donÕt know is that most of the people in the Civil Rights Movement were for the government and a majority of white citizens were against it. I think that is the spirit we are dealing with today. There's a fight nationally in the government against civil rights. I think there is an attempt to turn back the clock on the gains of civil rights and I think there is a massive attack, especially by the government to restore the country to how it was back in the 40's, 50's, and 60's. Del: Control Charles: That relates to African-Americans today because of the stripping away of political rights. The right to vote. The right to choose who will be your leaders and spokesmen. I think that is being taken away. I think that is evident in Florida and other places. One of the issues I'm involved with is the taking of land from black people. There's an effort to take away land that has been owned by black people for years. The amount of land owned by black people is being reduced every day. And when you don't control your land, or your property, that is taking away your control. Plus now there is the massive building of private prisons and programs to fill those prisons with young black men. And it is happening all over the country. If you go around the country in just about every major city you see where these major prisons are being built and they are being built by private monies and been controlled by private people. And what that indicates is control. So there is greater control today then there was a few years ago and it is growing. I was driving through Alabama about three months ago and there was a panel discussion being held on the radio. And the panel members were distinguished white citizens of the state of Alabama and they had a concern with filling up the prisons with young black men, this is happening through out the south. They arrest young black men in general for non-property crimes such as truancy or curfew violation once you get them into the system you have them in the system. And these men were saying in essence they were running out of kids to arrest, but they were building more prisons. The more prisons you build the more profits you have to make. And one of the panelists said don't worry that problem will be taking care of because, the Mexican immigrants will prove to be the new cotton for the new South they will harvest them. Many Mexicans come into the country and become contracted workers to work in the cotton fields and the tobacco fields that sort of thing. So they serve a need by harvesting those sorts of crops, and they also serve the need to be harvested themselves to occupy penitentiaries that are privately owned. Del: Dehumanize Charles: I think dehumanization of people is when you put them into categories that have racial overtones. We as a people in the United States have been dehumanized for years. It makes it easier to deal with when people say you don't have human qualities. So if you refer to black people as nigger, they aren't considered people. This country has raised that to a high art form. And it started at a very early time in this country. To determine you don't have the same rights as other people. When dealing with Vietnam and other Asians they called them "gooks". It was all right to kill a "gook", because you were not killing a person. The stereotyping of other people leads to dehumanization of those people. Del: Stigmatize Charles: Stigma follows with dehumanization when you label a person the person is attributed many negative factors. As to what that person is or who that person is. So he learns to either fear or hate and despised the person based on those titles. Del: Traumatize Charles: Name calling race baiting traumatizes an individual. Del: Loss Charles: All those other things dehumanizing, stigmatizing, and other things we lose our sense of humanity. There's a song about the South Pacific that goes, "you have to be taught by the time you are six or seven to hate all the people your relatives hate". You have to be taught that at a relatively early age. If you are taught that there's a loss to your humanity when you accept that. So you see children starting out the same as one group becomes stigmatized by the time they are in the third or fourth grade because of what they have been taught about other people. There is this separation and conditioning that starts there and that last a lifetime. There was a study done in Iowa right after Martin Luther King Jr. was killed. There was a teacher of fifth graders that were all white. The teacher wanted to teach them about prejudice. She divided the classroom into two groups one had brown eyes and one had blue eyes. The blue eyed kids had all privileges. They were given better books, allowed to go first and given more praise. And she allowed the blue eyed kids to have privileges strictly because they had blue eyes. The brown eyed kids were told that they weren't as smart as the blue eyed kids. And the brown eyed kids had to listen to what the blue eyed kids told them. The brown eyed kids were given poor equipment and were not taught equally. So she did this with white kids in a small Iowa community and demonstrated how even now years after the experiment how the blue eyed children are still seen as being more confident and having more privileges than the brown eyed kids. So when you take that another step to skin color and you give a group of people what social psychologists call social disability then you cannot escape it. It is made to be seen as negative social attribute, because you are brown you are not as good as the others and that is the way it is here in the United States. Del: Identity Charles: It has to do with who you relate to and language and thought. Del: Survival Charles: When I think of survival I can think of the 400 years of struggle of black people in this country and yet we are still here. In spite of many obstacles and attempts to erase us. Del: Inspire Charles: I think of inspire and I think of the many people who have fought constantly to keep us from being eradicated as a people. One of the shows on PBS this fall is called This Far By Faith referring to an old Negro spiritual that goes, "we have come this far by faith alone", and it dealt with some of the people that have come this far by faith alone. It shows how when you have faith you keep on fighting, you have to keep struggling. We are inspired by faith alone. Del: Hope Charles: You have hope for a better tomorrow in order to live through today. Otherwise when you give up hope you got to leave here, not die, but all of my friends and myself have lived in other countries. We have all considered leaving the United States. When hope is dead it is time to leave. Just get out and go elsewhere to live and we have all done that. Del: Where did you live? Charles: I lived in Finland. When I got out of prison in Louisiana, I had been there for a long time, for registering people to vote. and a lot of that time I spent in solitaire. When I got out there was the feeling that I can't do this much longer. I wouldn't make it next time. I was in Angola the biggest penitentiary in Louisiana. Have you seen the movie Dead Man Walking? What it means is that you are scheduled to die and so you are not treated like a person you are already dead, so you are treated like Òa dead man walkingÓ. That's how most black prisoners are treated in the state penitentiary in Louisiana. And when I got out of the penitentiary in Louisiana, I just felt like I couldn't do it again. One of my students ask me why did I end up in Minnesota and it's very simple. It's because we share a border with Canada and the next time my fellow Americans go crazy I will not need a visa. I'll be able to walk out of here. So there's a sense of comfort being this close to Canada. Del: Closure Charles: I don't think I will see that in my lifetime. Closure to me suggest that there would not be the lack of civil rights that exist, that we would be accepted, and given all the rights of being American. Closure for me means there would be no more racism and to be treated as Americans. I don't think that will happened in my lifetime.

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