The Black Woman (1970) feat Nikki Giovanni, Lena Horne & Roberta Flack

GEORGE MARTIN: A Black celebration for Women's Day and a Black church,

the shrine of the Black Madonna.

This is George Martin in Detroit for Black Journal.

YOUNG FEMALE CHILD: Ladybird. Ladybird, ladybird,

fly away home,

your house is on fire,

and wraps on the phone.

INTERVIEWER: Can I ask you one question you'll have to answer?

Recently, a white show asked you to give them 90 minutes.

Why did you turn that down?

LENA THORNE: I turned it down because in the first place,

I'd rather do it on my own show if I had one,

if we had one and I didn't feel like giving

my life to someone that I don't feel very close to.

INTERVIEWER: I want to ask you questions but what's the sisterhood, what do you all?

LENA THORNE: Well, I wouldn't be so crude as to call it a black Mafia,

but I would say no,

I would say anybody that has a feeling of clan and not KK

but relativeness and familiness is what my sisterhood means.

INTERVIEWER: Well, what?

LENA THORNE: I'm afraid that because I didn't have one of my own,

I've latched onto the one I'm entitled to.

Well, I didn't have sisters or brothers or my mom and papa and so I have you all.

INTERVIEWER: Where do you think you're going?

LENA THORNE: Well, I'm still a little numb at the moment,

from the past six months,

but I feel adventuresome.

I don't think I'm just going to stop, sit down.

I don't necessarily mean singing. I'm not a lecturer,

I'm not a writer,

I'm not a—just, I guess I'm a performer,

but I feel creative.

I feel I need to be around people.

I like it now and I don't know what I'm going to do but I'm not going to stop.

AMINA BARAKA: There are many things that we can do if we look at ourselves seriously as a nation and

not get preoccupied with the goings on of someone

else and get preoccupied with what we're doing.

They actually save resources in the black community,

we should use those resources,

and we should move around in such a way

as though we were seriously thinking about having a nation.

WOMAN 1: I agree.

AMINA BARAKA: Seriously, seriously. And not just say it because it sounds good to say it because it is hip,

because nationalism is not faddism and I think that a lot of people

are identifying with different things because it is hip to identify with certain things.

But it is hipper to understand that we are slaves and we got to be

free. And it's even hipper to work at our freedom,

national liberation for black people.

WOMAN 2: But what about the sisters who don't agree with you?

Who has to deal with them?

AMIKA BARAKA: Well, it's not about agreeing with me.

WOMAN 1: It's about doing.

WOMAN 2: [OVERLAPPING]. No, they will just say I don't agree. It is, you know, we just have...

She could say, I don't agree with you.

AMIKA BARAKER: Right.

WOMAN 2: My man won't let me do that.

I don't want to do that and what will happen to these people?

AMIKA BARAKER: I'm not going to preoccupy myself in terms of what will happen to

them because I know that more people are preoccupied with freedom,

no one wants to be a slave.

WOMAN 2: But aren't we talking about a Black nation,

I'm talking about Black people who haven't quite gotten the mind thing together,

so we have to preoccupy our minds.

AMIKA BARAKER: I think that because all Black people don't say they're nationalists and

because all Black people don't wear braids

or naturals and traditional clothes don't mean they're not nationalists now.

Now, they're nationalists,

but they just don't use the word because no one wants to be

a slave and there's no Black person on this planet who will disagree with freedom.

I don't know whether we can consider that or not.

WOMAN 1: What you're saying is then that

many people will be working on things from a different perspective,

working on the problems of freedom in different ways.

AMIKA BARAKER: Exactly.

Sure, people work at the level they can understand.

Because they don't understand certain levels,

does not mean that they're not nationalistic,

it just means they're not conscious enough to

understand certain levels of what's going on but that is your job.

If you were conscious enough to understand it,

then it is your job to make sure that those who understand,

one will understand too. And that is the job of the conscious nationalist.

Mama always says that,

if you're a nationalist and you're talking bad about someone else

and you're not doing anything to get them where you think they should be,

then it's you because if you're that hip,

then you should be hip enough to change them.

ROBERTA FLACK: Painters, why do you always paint White virgins?

Don't you know there are beautiful Black angels in heaven also?

Painters, paint beautiful Black angels.

[MUSIC] [FOREIGN LANGUAGE].

NIKKI GIOVANNI: I used to wonder who I'd be.

When I was a little girl in Indianapolis sitting on

doctor's porches with post-dawn pre-debs,

wondering would my aunt drag me to church Sunday,

I was meaningless, and I wondered if life would give me a chance to mean.

I found a new life in the withdrawal from all things not like my image.

When I was a teenager,

I used to sit on front porch steps conversing

the gym teacher's son with embryonic eyes about the essential essence of the universe,

recognizing the basic powerlessness of me. But then I went to

college where I learned that just because everything I was was unreal.

I could be real and not just real through withdrawal into

emotional crosshairs of colored bourgeois intellectual pretensions

but from involvement with things approaching reality.

I could possibly have a life.

So catatonic emotions and time-wasting sex games were

replaced with functioning commitments to logic and necessity

and the gray area was slowly darkened into a Black thing.

For a while, progress was made

along with a certain degree of happiness because I wrote

a book and found a love and organized a theater

and even gave some lectures on Black history.

And began to believe all good people could get together and win without

bloodshed. Then Hammarskjold was killed and Lumumba was killed,

and Diem was killed,

and Kennedy was killed,

and Malcolm was killed,

and Evers was killed,

and Schwerner Chaney and Goodman were killed

and Liuzzo was killed and Stokely fled the country,

and Le Roi was arrested,

and Rap was arrested and Pollard, Thompson and Cooper were killed and King was

killed and Kennedy was killed. And sometimes I wonder why I didn't become a debutante,

sitting on doctor's porches,

going to church all the time,

wondering, is my eye makeup on straight?

Or withdrawn, discoursing on the stars and the moon,

instead of a real Black person who must now feel and

inflict pain.

ROBERTA FLACK: [MUSIC] [FOREIGN].