Spike Moss

Moss: My name is Harry Gene Moss. I'm better known as Spike. I was born in 1945. Del: The interview section consist of two parts and in one part there are 5 questions regarding the Civil Rights Movement. The second part consist of words that are taken from a book that deal with victims of torture and dramatic situation in unstable countries and this book is distributed to schools to deal with the new immigrants. Del: What is your definition of the Civil Rights Movement? Moss: It was a movement at a time to allow us basic rights that come with citizenship, that comes when you're born in this country. That level of rights was denied us based on color. Del: Would the public protesting and broadcasting of the past be an effective way to make a change today? Moss: No, because they have put laws in place to change almost everything we did back then to make changes in our lives. For example,boycotting was one of the main tools we used. If you call for a boycott now you are the one that gets charged and goes to jail. The best you can do is a selective body campaign. The governor right now says that if you do protest you will get arrested and the cost of that will be passed on to you. Where in the last generation of the Civil Rights Movement that was your right as an American. BIG difference. Del: And what do you think is the most important issue African Americans have to address today? Moss: Well, nothing has changed for us. Unfortunately. I'm proud of the Civil Rights Movement, but we should have never created the Civil Rights Movement. We should of created the Human Rights Movement. We should of forced Americans to deal with us as human beings, because the fact that you allowed us to eat at a restaurant or go to a particular school and still deny us basic human rights. We've got to settle that question. And that's the most important question for us to settle: to make this country see us as human beings, men, women, and children. Del: What do you think of the Civil Rights Movement today? Moss: Well, we stopped fighting, we stopped pushing back. When we stopped they started kicking back. And they are trying to push us back into the fifties, in terms of reversing the laws and the gains that we made as a people. We got to reorganized ourselves and fight again. Del: How would you define the relationship between the Black Arts Movement and the Civil Rights Movement? Moss: Well, at that time it enhanced the Movement. It helped further our cause. Brothers that wrote songs back then, spoke to our struggle, spoke to our oppression, spoke to racism, spoke to the reason we've got to stand up and stand together. We drew pictures about our suffering and our struggles. We made poetry about our suffering and our struggles. We've gotten away from that too. Del: Now, I would like to begin with the words. Again, you could just give a comment or so on, how you feel they relate to the Civil Rights Movement or the condition of African-Americans today. The first word is control. Moss: Well, they have always been in control of our people and our community. And they are still trying to maintain the control of our destiny in this country. We have to resist that control. Del: Dehumanize Moss: They have always dehumanized us beyond the word nigger. In every way they could possibly dehumanize us and humiliate us. And that's an important thing for white America, is to degrade our humanity in every way possible, to justify their inhumane treatment of people. The first thing I do is deny you the fact that you are a human being, so that I can say I'm not doing this to a human being. I'm doing this to a nigger. That's an important issue for us. Del: Stigma Moss: They put stigmas on us all through history, as well as stereotypes, to destroy us and our humanity and our plight for freedom. Del: Traumatize Moss: I believe that the majority of black Americans are traumatized in one way or the other, which leads us to cigarettes, drugs, alcohol, real madness, real anger among ourselves. And it destroys the very fabric of our people, because there has never been a healing process for our people since, slavery. Del: Loss Moss: Loss, I believe that in the process of oppression we lost our souls, we lost our spirits, we lost our connectiveness to mother Africa and our connectivenss to one another as sisters and brothers. The loss is tremendous when you enhance or add to that over the hundred-million people we lost, during the period of slavery. Del: Identity Moss: Identity is something that the young people today don't have. And we need to connect them, we need to - teach them. We need to make them understand who they are and where they came from and what history they represent. They need that. They need that from the elderly of our community. Del: Survival Moss: Survival. I think that we have survived well even though we has suffered every step of the way. We are living proof that we're survivors, because we have survived the harshest treatment known to man, inflicted on any man on any part of this earth. We have survived. We are survivors and we will survive. Del: Inspire Moss: I am and I hope we are inspired by all the positive things we are still able to do. And I hope we continue to inspire each other to survive and do better in spite of our oppression, in spite of the regime in this country. We need to inspire each other to do well. Del: Hope Moss: Hope is a light that is flickering from time to time and it looks like it's about to go out. When we look at the ways of inhumanity to man and unfair treatment to man in terms of race hate. At some point I believe that hopelessness is a large obstacle for us to get around. It's almost like they have wiped the hope out of the life, the eyes, the heart out of our people and we have to find a way to rekindle hope. Del: Closure Moss: I don't think we will reach closure until America stops participating in race hate and apologizes truly for slavery and pays us reparations for slavery, we will never ever reach closure until those things happen.

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