We interrupt this broadcast to bring you a shocking piece of news
just in from Memphis, Tennessee.
Today, April 4, the spiritual leader of America's Negroes, Martin Luther King,
winner of the Nobel Prize for Peace, was shot and wounded by an unknown gunman.
He is in very grave condition.
We are awaiting further information, which we will pass on to the public
as soon as we receive it.
The assassin's bullet didn'tjust kill Martin Luther King.
It killed a historical era. The war has begun.
We Negroes have embarked on the violent phase of our fight for freedom.
Today we have guns, bombs, dynamite, knives.
America will be stained red. Corpses will fill the streets.
Martin Luther King, a slave of the bourgeoisie,
a useless social element, a public servant,
an adulator, Washington's bootlicker, a traitor.
Down with the doubters and the Evangelists.
Down with the Uncle Toms.
It's our turn to get to work now, cutting throats.
No white throats were cut.
The shouts of the revolt were nothing, compared to the police sirens.
After all, who was that minister who was killed in Memphis,
that 30 million Negroes were supposed to avenge?
A hero, as Cleaver said, or a swine, an Uncle Tom, as LeroyJones said?
Tom.
Thomas.
I named him Tom. Don't you think it's cute?
Nowadays it's different, but in the old days
all house Negroes were called Tom, then Uncle Tom when they grew old.
That was how we could tell the good Negroes,
the ones who lived in homes, with their masters,
from the bad ones, who lived separately, in the cotton fields.
Even that nice Negro priest that they killed, what was his name?
They called him Uncle Tom, too, because he was good.
He didn't go around spurring those people to revolt against us.
They're not actually bad, but none of them are called Tom.
They can't keep their houses clean, and they spend all their money on cars,
which they break immediately and throw away, like old toys.
They're just like children. But that may be a good thing.
This way they're closer to God.
You should hear them singing in the family chapel I gave them.
They're extraordinary.
His land extended further than the horizon...
He had enormous herds of cattle, and a house full of slaves.
When Jesus had finished speaking, the man asked him:
"Is there anything that my slaves can hold against me?
I feed them. I clothe them. I aid them. I even gave them a temple to pray in.
So you see, my generosity is great." And Jesus said to him:
"I will tell you that it is not your generosity that is great,
but your pride.
You love your slaves because they are slaves,
and as long as they remain slaves.
But your power will melt, like fog in the sun.
Your riches will be gone.
And then your slaves will leave your land and your home,
and they will ignore you.
The worst punishment for your pride will be your loneliness."
Our house was so big. 500 slaves were hardly enough to keep it up.
Then a little Tom left a candlestick sitting next to a curtain,
and the fire burned for three days. Can you imagine?
So many things fed that fire. But this land is still mine.
This good land of the south, once white with cotton balls.
Thank you, Tom. Do you remember that movie?
What was it called? Gone...
Anyway, she took a handful of dirt and held it to her chest. Like this.
And all around her, everything was burned and ravaged by war.
And the Negroes had become bad. And she said... I can't remember.
Anyway, she said she would farm the land even without slaves.
Not cotton, of course. You'd need Negroes for that.
It's so hard, under the sun.
But there are many other good things here in the south:
Fruits, vegetables. Our vegetables are so good.
The salad, the peas.
Have you ever tasted southern peas?
...as we can see by reading the pages of the greatest American Negro poet,
LeroyJones, whose poem...
"Land, Land, Land. The Negro will not be a man until he has his own land.
Negro, look at the ground."
- Yoo-hoo, I'm ready. - "Grab a handful of dirt,
and shove your nails into the concrete. It's real and it's yours.
- You just have to want it." - On page 227, Malcolm X adds.'
"There's only one people on earth that can slit the white man's throat.
His population of slaves, the Negroes."
We will now hand the microphone over to the leader of the Black Panthers.
But that's not all. They reject integration, they practice violence,
ideological crime, reverse racism.
They indoctrinate their children in exchange for a meal.
They want to own five states, immediate freedom for all Negro criminals,
exemption from military service, and the freedom to carry machine guns.
But sometimes we're too quick to judge.
Let's take a look at these strange humans.
Their intentions are good, though at times misunderstood.
These humans practice non-violence, ideological love,
free love, the integration of the sexes,
and a perfect racial confusion with the Negroes,
together with whom they propose to build the America of the future.
And yet, LeroyJones, today's foremost representative of Negro-ness says,
"Embracing the non-violence that young whites preach about is nothing short of
diving into the current of this failed American civilization.
America is a Sodom. America is a Gomorrah.
America is a Babylon. This is the society in which
Martin Luther King wanted the Negroes to get ready to join.
I'd rather go to hell. But the chance of becoming citizens of Gomorrah
is the best thing that whites have right now to offer the Negroes.
If you hope for the survival of this rotten society, of this corrupt order,
of this falling Rome, ready to cut your balls off with the edge of a dollar,
you'll lose. Christ and the effigy of the dollar are one and the same.
We Negroes must remember all that we are seeing now,
and in the end we must erupt like a volcano,
so we can crush, under flowing, molten lava this herd of pigs
who have transformed the world into a giant garbage can."
June 19, 1970.
LeroyJones, again: "The white man's attitude toward sex is sick.
The white man makes sex dirty. The white man is primitive,
and he has the sexual intelligence of a cave man.
The white man is afraid of the Negro because he knows he's sexually inferior.
His sexual device is out of order.
That's why liberal whites have allowed us
a certain amount of progress toward virility,
and today he's telling us, 'One day we'll let you have balls.
Until then, keep yourself cool.'
American whites are taught to be pederasts in school.
That's why their faces are weak and expressionless.
Their voices, gestures and mannerisms are those of eunuchs.
White women are stocky whores, covered in makeup.
They don't know what to do to fire up their impotent males.
White American women are the ugliest and most obscene on earth.
The famous question, 'Would you allow your daughter to marry a Negro? '
Is outdated.
Today the question is,
'Would you allow your son to marry a white woman? '
Today the roles are reversed."
The Black Panthers say, "When the people rise up
to free themselves from slavery, they must arm themselves with guns.
If we want to free ourselves of guns, we must arm ourselves with guns."
And now Cleaver:
"America is defended by sadistic and bloodthirsty masters.
The blood, the tears and suffering of the Negro
are the foundation on which America rests.
We were forced to build it. But if they force us to, we will destroy it,
and the result will be a horrific bloodbath.
We, too, are bloodthirsty."
But the Negroes are also hungry.
At least that's what it says on the banner
that leads the demonstration at Cape Kennedy
on the occasion of the first white men on the moon.
The demonstration was organized by Martin Luther King's successor,
Reverend Abernathy, who says,
"You, white man, are the cause of all our woes.
You tore us away from Africa, made us slaves,
kept us in ignorance, exploited us, got rich, and now you're going to the moon.
We can't accept that. Stop playing with your millionaire's toys,
and pay us the damages you owe us.
Where are you going, white man, with your billionaire's toy?
What are you running away from, your past?
What did you do, that was so bad?
Why do your black brothers hate you so?
It's useless to run away,
because the past is not behind us, as Abernathy believes,
but ahead, traveling toward the stars, just like Einstein said.
And the faster you run, the faster you'll get there."
GOODBYE UNCLE TOM
- Is this a bad time? - No, please, come in.
- Who are these people? - They are Europeans.
To be exact, they're Italians, Italian journalists.
They've come here to the south to conduct an inquiry, right?
In inquiry on slavery. They seem to be quite shocked.
- What is their religion? - Catholic, I think.
- You're Catholic, aren't you? - Roman Catholic Apostolic.
They shouldn't be so shocked, then.
After all, the Pope, who is usually so generous with his excommunications,
has never excommunicated a merchant of black meat.
Unless he eats it on Fridays.
- Why are they here, then? - I think they're slaves, too.
You know Catholics. They're slaves of the fascination of sin.
Or they simply want to protest. What are we going to do about it?
These Europeans, after the French Revolution, do nothing but protest.
Please, times have changed: Rousseau, Diderot, Voltaire...
This is rich, Catholics who read books written by the devil.
What would His Holiness say?
Please! These gentlemen are my guests.
And following the example of other friends of mine,
have given them free access to the entire house.
This way they'll see who the real slaves and masters are.
No, Senator, please. No chicken bones.
They're very dangerous to puppies.
I had to take two of them to the vet. It's so annoying.
Well, since each one of you is a famous person,
your frank and authoritative statements on the subject of slavery
should be very useful to these gentlemen.
I agree, and I'll be the first.
It's absolutely true that slavery cannot be hidden,
just like a volcano's eruption or a cancerous affliction
that erodes a man's face. I, for one, have freed my slaves,
but I did so only because they were stupid, smelly, sad and boring.
I am an aristocrat, and I believe in freedom, but not in equality.
This is my statement. Signed, John Randolph of Roanoke.
I'm John Pithiou,
and I think that slavery is the natural condition of the poor,
whether white or black.
In fact, I consider it ideal,
because it's synonymous with a full belly, a guaranteed dwelling,
medical help and security in old age, whereas for us it's a status symbol.
Furthermore, we mustn't forget, gentlemen,
that we whites make up only 20%0 of the world's population,
so if one day we gave up our power, it would be the end of us.
It will depend solely on us, and I mean solely on us,
if a meek slave or a snake in the grass gets off the slave trader's ship.
What a stench! What did you bring, a load of rotten meat?
What are you talking about? It's top choice.
They stink because they eat like pigs, then they throw up and mess themselves.
- How long was the trip? - 94 days.
Didn't they get air on the bridge?
Are you crazy, with the sea full of English ships?
The times have changed.
This is contraband merchandise.
If I get caught with one Negro on board, I'll be hung.
And I wouldn't be the first.
If they spent the entire trip down there, they must be all rotten.
No way! On this ship rule number one is hygiene.
Hygiene and cleanliness. If one of them gets really sick,
I don't wait for him to spread it to the whole load.
I throw him overboard and that's that. I deliver my merchandise in good shape.
- Are you interested or not? - How many are there?
327 between males and females. These are all males. No syphilis.
Black meat was sold either by the head or by weight.
The load was arranged in layers, and each Negro had a berth
35 by 12 inches, in which he was chained from 45 to 90 days,
depending on the wind.
This way, over the course of two centuries,
about 50 million slaves were shipped to the Americas,
30 million of which did not survive the journey.
To keep epidemics at bay, the Negroes were watered three times a day
with carbolic acid and sea water.
The load was always insured.
But since the insurance paid only if the Negro died on board,
if an epidemic broke out, the captain would rather not take chances,
and preferred to unload a whole shipment in the sea, still alive,
rather than risk unloading a ship of dying men and women.
Dysentery depreciated the merchandise, so in order to keep it from buyers,
the captain would order the sealing of"leaky holes" with a cork
sealed with tow and tar.
In November of 1812,
in a shipment of 415 slaves, the buyer contested 216,
because he realized that they had been plugged up.
The captain was Jean Lafitte, the famous pirate patriot hero
who sold slaves in Louisiana to raise money for Karl Marx in Europe.
- What's that mushy stuff? - Corn, molasses and fat.
They love it. We have to tie them up and give them a little at a time,
otherwise they'd choke.
That one doesn't seem to like it.
That one has decided to let himself starve to death. Pitiful!
Hey, we need a chisel and hammer and a funnel over here.
The remedy was quite frightening, and served as an example.
And even if it cost the master a little damage,
a Negro minus three or four teeth was always better than a dead one.
- Let's say $150 a head. - I said I'll buy them by the pound.
- The whole shipment for $2 a pound. - Seven dollars.
- Three. - Six.
- Four. - All right, but I'm losing money.
120 years later, three or four generations at the most,
and some of them have already forgotten. They are not many.
Perhaps the equivalent of a few hundred shipments of slaves.
Ambassadors, ministers, industrialists, intellectuals, artists:
All individual fortunes worth millions of dollars.
Deaf to the insults of the priests of Negro-ness, these Uncle Tom pigs
have quietly joined the system,
and followed the great American dream of success,
seen as the sporting victory over life's adversities.
For the first time, the self-made man is black, and that's saying a lot,
if we consider that among his many misfortunes this is perhaps the worst:
Well-dressed, worldly,
so well integrated as to appear lighter skinned than his fellow Negroes,
a little chubby, due to a residual hunger that subconsciously still haunts him,
he is still the same Negro who arrived on board a ship with LeroyJones,
Malcolm X, Cleaver and the Black Panthers.
Those men are either in Harlem or in prison, plotting revenge.
This man is here. He dances a waltz in a tuxedo,
and tomorrow will go to work wearing a double-breasted suit.
The self-made Negro is proud of his past misfortunes,
and the horrors of slavery are his epic.
This was the most famous slave sorting and clearing center in Louisiana.
Even Thomas Ewell wrote about it.
Let's read some excerpts from the camp's rules and regulations:
"It is ordered that at Fort Bastille all African slaves be quarantined."
Page 116: "In large iron cages, slaves with mange and scabies
will be fumigated with ailanthus vapors.
The epileptics will be hung by the feet
so their blood, flowing to the head, will arrest their convulsions."
Reading from page 122: "It is mandatory for all slaves
to receive an initial bath in a mixture of water, salt, ash, and soapwort root."
Now, reading from page 130:
"The bath will be followed by a greasing with lard, palm oil and turpentine.
We remind our employees that 82%0
of imported slaves is afflicted with contagious skin diseases,
and that therefore the law forbids their trade.
Using the specially designed slides, the slaves will be gathered
for the next phase of their cleansing.
Eggs and lice that may have survived the previous treatments
will be exterminated with the total destruction of their natural habitat.
The razors must be sharpened every 200 shavings,
to avoid damage to the scalps."
Cleansed both inside and out,
the Negro was fortified before the long journey inland
with a daily ration of a half gallon of corn meal,
a pint of beans, a pound of sweet potatoes,
- a pound of fat... - Don't go overboard.
They only get a half-pound of fat. This is not an Italian restaurant.
Besides, we don't need a defense lawyer.
Look at them. All they want is to eat, to eat anything.
To eat and to fuck, that's all they want. And they want to survive.
To survive anything, beatings, syphilis, cholera, the heat, the cold.
Their strength lies in their adaptability.
Both in heaven and in hell, they fill their bellies
and spit out dozens of children.
I for one agree with those who support mandatory castration.
I don't mean to be cruel,
but if we don't cut off a few million black balls now,
you can be sure that in one or two hundred years-
Dick Gregory, the first Negro President of the United States!
What makes this candidate for the White House exceptional
is that his political program does not include cutting the throats
of all white Americans.
Perhaps this is why he wasn't very successful.
The more popular David Hillyard screamed,
"We'll kill Nixon and all the sons of bitches that are against us."
Gregory is more modest. He's content with his image on the dollar bill,
and obtaining what the signers of the Black Manifesto requested:
300 billion dollars as damages for the suffering of 3 million slaves.
In the meantime he's handing out small advances,
and promises that the rest will be delivered promptly.
The livestock cars that transported the slaves up north
covered 400 miles in three days along the left bank of the Mississippi,
all the way up to Natchez or Pittsburgh. The slave trade was very busy.
It slowed down only in the autumn,
when the trains had to stop in Baton Rouge,
and the slaves had to proceed on foot through rain-flooded swamps.
The red flag, which back then was the symbol of slavery, preceded the convoys.
A tuba, a violin and a trombone kept up the slaves' morale
when the going was rough.
Neither the slave traders nor the public, at the time,
considered this trade immoral.
They were comforted in part by the fact that among their clients
were men such as PresidentJackson and PresidentJefferson.
Among their colleagues were men such as David Mitchell, governor of Georgia,
and James Bowie, hero of the Alamo.
Come on. Move it!
Let's have some music! Make merry! Play!
Come on. Let's have some music! Be merry. Play for me!
Go free with God. Go forth, free with God.
Go on, go free with God.
Well then, $300 for the males, $200 for the females,
and $100 for the puppies. It's all there, right?
In addition to having illustrious clients,
the traders also had illustrious suppliers,
like theJesuits of Saint Inigoe in Maryland.
The Catholic Church had always ignored slavery,
but when in 1838 the Pope ordered that slaves in convents be freed,
theJesuits immediately got rid of them: They sold them.
When the convoys reached the sugarcane and cotton mills,
the traders would allow their Negroes a few days' rest, so they could present them
to their customers in good shape. The customers were few, but good.
In 1850, 4 million slaves were owned by 4,000 planters.
There were only 400 families who owned more than 10 slaves.
Eighty percent of the white population had never owned slaves.
The dream of possessing a young Negro woman tormented the lonely dreams
of poor white men, forced to long periods of abstinence in such a hot land,
where the white women were few and intractable.
Not bad, eh?
Many of these poor and restless men were...
Cut it out.
This is my buddy, Buzz.
This is my buddy, Sonny.
This is my buddy, Jake.
- So, are you coming with us? - Isn't it illegal?
What do you mean? Nothing is illegal in this fucking country.
You hear that? He wants money.
Many of these poor white men, the Crackers, as they were called,
were serving what was called time-limited slavery,
a period of hard labor, usually of five years,
to pay off the price of the trip to America from Europe.
Another group was formed by thieves, rapists, murderers,
who had been deported to the colonies from French and English prisons.
Their hatred toward the Negroes was not just a racial issue.
Negroes were always slaves, and therefore obliged to work for free,
but also to be the scabs of the white laborers,
who had to choose between unemployment and a miserable pay.
Come on, let's go.
Thus, the hatred of the white slave toward the Negro slave
was appeased through gratuitous acts of violence,
perpetrated especially on the women, who slept alone at night
in the barn with the animals, and were therefore defenseless.
Oh, go away.
The black puppies not yet ready for work were like toys,
and as such they were given to children.
But the black puppies grew up quickly, and pretty soon they preferred
a new kind of game, that the white kids often enjoyed watching.
Let's read an excerpt from the diary of Fanny Kemble, English actress:
"From the early morning the boughs of the large tree before my window
were full of couples chirping like blackbirds in love.
I, who was English, and had just joined my American husband in Georgia,
was amazed that such a puritanical white society could allow its slaves
to indulge in such depravity in every corner of the jungle.
Another time, in the rice fields,
I came upon such a carefree, shameless band of urchins,
who were so busy with their pleasure that they didn't even notice me."
But after her marriage to the planter George Butler,
Fanny Kemble became a typical southern lady.
I, a typical southern lady?
Have you ever seen a southern lady ride a horse western style?
Now I'll show you another thing that a southern lady would never show you.
Look at all the lovebirds!
Look at them running from the sugarcane field.
The masters themselves encourage them.
Do you know what my husband says? "Go on, get busy!
The more children you have, the happier you'll make me.
Do as you please.
I get rich, and you have a good time."
In this shop, you don't pay for what you break, and I pick up the pieces.
Excuse me, ma'am, where is the church at Turner Bridge?
I don't understand. I'm German.
- Where is church? - Three miles down road.
- What's happening here, ma'am? - Very interesting.
They're cutting the Negro who broke 20 virgins at the Peterson plantation.
- Cutting what? - Cutting his balls, what else?
He's through fucking.
The pliers! The pliers!
If on the one hand the masters allowed their slaves
an almost unlimited sexual freedom,
it was also true that he would be furious if that freedom cost him money.
On every plantation there were always a number of virgins
destined for the marketplace.
Their virginity had a very definite value, and if you took it,
you were a thief.
Such thieves were publicly castrated,
and the castration took place at the very scene of the crime.
Hewlett, a Louisiana man, wrote in 1831:
"Such an exciting spectacle was a pleasant interruption
to the boredom of a Sunday afternoon.
Males, females and puppies enjoyed it from start to finish.
The more the victim screamed, the more fun they had."
The master calls for the pliers.
No, not my balls!
Shut up! Take the balls with your hands and pull.
- Quick, put the balls in the pliers. - He's pissing! He got me all wet!
Not my balls! No!
- Do you want to go in? - No, thank you.
- Listen. - Squeeze!
Did you hear that? It's done.
- What did they use for the operation? - Horse pliers.
- It's horrible to make him suffer so. - No, Negroes never suffer.
That Negroes felt physical and moral pain less that white men
was a widely held belief.
The scientific writings of that time,
first among them those by the authoritative Samuel Cartwright,
a professor at the University of Louisiana,
mention "poor motor skills, typical of monkeys and subhuman species in general."
No one suspected yet that all the folklore, the excesses,
the collective hysteria don't Negate the presence of pain.
On the contrary, they underline its intensity.
At this point I have only to remind you that God condemned to slavery
the damned line of Canaan from the time ofJoshua.
God ordered Abraham's descendants to keep slaves,
and he decreed that those slaves were to be inherited by their children.
God recognized Abraham as the master of the slaves.
And Jesus ordered
that any who dare object to or disrupt the institution of slavery
be repudiated as subversive individuals, whose behavior is...
The Protestant Church,
then even more powerful than the Catholic Church in America,
approved of and preached slavery as a divine decree.
The sermons of the most influential ministers, like this one,
by Reverend Stringfellow of Virginia, were bound and published in volumes.
The curse in the Old Testament on the black man, Canaan,
the evil son of Noah, who had castrated his father,
was falling heavily on his descendants, who were now reduced to slavery.
The Baptists said, "Flog them."
The Presbyterians, "Deny them rights."
The Methodists, "Chain them up."
While Bishop Polk, the same one who later became a Confederate general,
beat all records as a slaveholder.
Slavery is thus a divine institution, ordered and sanctioned by God.
Therefore, with all the authority granted my by the church,
I, Reverend Stringfellow of the State of Virginia,
order you to honor slavery
and not to question it on the basis of false moral grounds.
Instead of false moral grounds, Reverend Stringfellow would have done better
talking about false economic grounds.
For example, it was false to think that a slave's labor was free
simply because he wasn't paid.
Let's consider the eternal problem of domestic servants.
When a master thought he could solve it
by filling his huge house with droves of Negroes dressed to the nines,
he was solving a very different problem...
the problem of his prestige in the eyes of his family and his guests.
Please, come in. But I'm warning you, I can't give you much of my time.
As you can see, this isn't a house, it's a madhouse.
- The luggage. - What luggage? Oh, yes!
Mr. Thackeray's luggage.
Haven't I told you a million times to get it and bring it downstairs?
Go on, don't waste anymore time.
My God, they're useless! Hurry up!
I'll have to leave you to your own devices. Take a look around.
- I'll see you later. - Where do the sheets go, ma'am?
Come on. Let's hurry it up!
This looks nice.
Always cleaning, cleaning. My fingers are hurting, ma'am.
Even at night I dream that I'm still cleaning.
Black slave's always cleaning.
And you keep telling me I have to clean even better.
Where do we put the sheets, ma'am?
"Where do we put the sheets, ma'am?" Put them on the bed, you idiots!
The real mistress of the house, though, was the Mammy.
The house was her kingdom. The children were her subjects.
She reigned upstairs, over the children of both masters and slaves alike,
in absolute promiscuity, because black or white,
all babies have the same color pee.
She was almost always fat, thanks to her privileges in the kitchen.
She was always mean and arrogant, and mistreated everyone, black or white.
All this thanks to the immunity she enjoyed in the domestic setting.
When, for instance, a white man...
- Whom does this one belong to? - Throw him over there.
When I'm done with your pup, I'll latch him onto my tit.
Be careful, he's got the runs, he's messing everywhere.
- I'm freezing, do I have to bathe? - Get in there and wash up good.
Hey you, pump the water, faster!
- Don't let them play with my dress. - Get back in there!
Take that dress off. Give me that, face powder is $5 an ounce!
It's not meant for dirty Negroes like you. Now get out of here!
- Enough Mammy, I'm clean. - Let me take a look.
You don't like the water, eh? You're worse than a Negro.
Not so hard, you're hurting me.
You know those Italian photographers that are here?
Mammy, I want them to take my portrait in the pink dress.
Is it cut too low?
Get out of here! You whites are such bastards.
Scoundrels! You're all scoundrels! And you, get the fuck away!
The Negro little boy flew right up into the sky
And you, will you stop plucking those feathers!
Drinking water! Drinking water!
Thief! Let me see! Where is the chicken?
Give me your hat.
Look here! Thief!
- Cake with cherries. - Wait!
I keep putting the cherries on, and I never run out of cherries.
These are onions, not carrots! Can't you smell them?
The Negro little boy flew right up into the sky
The almonds, I can't crush them. I'm going to use a plate.
This is not a kitchen! It's a huge latrine!
Dirty Negro woman, she's putting her hands in the mayonnaise.
I'm a clean Negro, and I crack eggs with my glove on.
The Negro little boy flew right up into the sky
Get down from there!
The Negro little boy flew right up into the sky
Pigs! You're worse than pigs!
Pigs are much better.
And all this just to seat two people at the dinner table!
This is the first image of a historical carousel called "Pilgrimage",
which is celebrated every year in the spring.
At this time, the old south takes a trip down memory lane.
For the sake of the carousel, everything comes out of storage:
From the old granny in a wheelchair to the few neighborhood Negroes,
who for $12 an hour agree to pose as slaves.
The slaveholders bravely revisit their sins of yore, like this one,
the first of the day.
They had a slave bring them their coffee in bed. Incredible.
The 19th century feels very far away, halfway up the ladder of time.
How was it? It depends if you're looking from the bottom or the top.
From the bottom, we discover under old drapes
a modern and hypocritical reality.
From above, on the other hand,
we enjoy a stale view of ancient, innocent customs,
such as chaste girls bathing with their nightgowns on.
Right next door, we find a walnut stool used to flog slaves.
It looks more like an antique than an instrument of torture.
Next to the music box we see the blond Eveline,
sitting on Uncle Tom's lap on a rainy evening.
In the dusky sitting room, the old grandfather clock keeps time.
It makes us feel almost sorry that General Sherman is at the gates.
Sherman arrived with 30,000 Union troops.
Today, there are 100,000 northerners.
A mere hundred years have passed
since the General swept like a fury down from the north
and tore down these candid temples to slavery, and already the south
seems to have bounced back to the original splendor of its dark age.
The pretentious Neoclassical style of its large houses
shines again over the green parks as it did in those opulent times,
which were rife with slaves, cotton, tobacco,
and the coffers of the south were full of Confederate dollars.
Today the old houses of the south are national museums,
and their owners are responsible for their upkeep.
The woman of the house is usually in charge of protecting the furniture
and the antique rugs.
Stop! You can't come in with high-heeled shoes.
After a long, grim winter without northerners in the house,
the old south relives in the spring its economic boom.
The north today buys cotton at $10 per hundred kilograms.
The south sells its high-quality, slave-grade cotton at $1 per ball.
Nixon devalues the dollar by 7%0.
The south revalues its old Confederate dollar by 107%0, exchanging it equally.
The boom goes on.
Someone found an old column in the cellar and sliced it up.
Today, the old white south can be bought by the slice.
$10 a slice, and the Negro, posing as a slave, keeps half of the proceeds.
New York, Fifth Avenue. It's Easter.
A religious extremist waves a flag and a Bible.
He yells something to do with Negroes, but no one can understand him.
On the most bourgeois street in the world,
they celebrate Easter with the spring parade,
and spring is the most bourgeois of the seasons.
Up here, far from the rotting crowd below,
a chosen few have found an altar close enough to the sky,
even though it's been sullied by the arrival of the police.
"We're here," they say, "to declare our contrition over the sins of the world."
"Naked?" The police ask.
"We're not naked, we're undressed."
Satisfied, they kiss. Today the police no longer trust the penal code.
A crime looks like a crime.
Then, it turns out that it's an ideological crime,
and they look like idiots.
Might as well drop the whole thing.
Today, being white, as well as being shameful, is also a grave sin.
One of the many ways to atone is to cover smear paint on one's body.
Each smear is a sin, and each sin has its color.
Red for wars, massacres and the like,
yellow for gold and riches and all the evils associated with wealth.
Black for racism, Nazism, fascism and lots of other -isms.
The evil one, meaning the devil, is white.
The devil's first victim,
according to these penitents who are ashamed of their white bottoms,
is the Negro, who seems here to feel slightly out of place.
"Abracadabra, I'm going to exorcise you."
For centuries the white devil kept the Negro in hell.
He forced him to squirm on the ground like a worm.
He imprisoned him, flogged him, tortured him.
Then he dragged him in chains through his American ordeal.
He chose him over Barabbas.
He betrayed him likeJudas. He crucified him in Vietnam.
But today it's Easter, and the Negro is reborn
and ascends to the sky, to take his place at his father's side,
because the Negro is the son of God, because God is black.
In fact in Detroit, in the Catholic Church of the Sacred Heart,
Jesus has been painted black. Is it antiracism or reverse racism?
Once upon a time they said, "When God was white,
the Negro was not a man,
because God, who had made man in his image, was not black."
That must mean that today, since God is black, we'll say this,
"God made man in his image,
and since God is no longer white, the white man is no longer a man."
The Negro community has flocked to this church where all the saints,
and even the Virgin Mary are all black.
We can't help but think back
to the famous black Manifesto written in August, 1969, and still extant,
in which the Negroes claimed that the Church owed them
300 billion dollars in damages for what they'd been put through.
The Lord's Prayer says: "Forgive us our debts,
as we forgive our debtors."
So now who will pay, if the father who forgives trespasses is no longer white,
nor is anyone in his family?
They had only just begun to hear about it,
but already that white God, who promised a heaven with no slaves
and no masters, fascinated them.
He seemed to be one of them.
He was humiliated, flogged, crucified.
And for his whole life he had eaten out of the same plate as the poor.
Get another plate, son.