THE AMERICAN NEGRO IS DEAD

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP75-00149R000500140001-4
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 15, 2016
• Document Release Date: April 1, 2004
• Sequence Number: 1
• Publication Date: November 1, 1967
• Content Type: MAGAZINE

ESQUIRE
Approved For RelSX94A?1"t)8 : CIA-RDP75-00149R00050
.. , and risen as a black man of the world, soul brother to non-whites everywhere,
Don't look now, honky, but some of his best friends are Vietcong
.by William Worthy
0
I,.
"If the dragon of China [would] cooperate with the sacred cow of
India, the Sphinx of Egypt with the peacock of Burma, the white
elephant of Siam with the hydra of Vietnam; MO., tiger of the Philip- _
pines with the banteng of Indonesia-and if the black panther of
Stokely Carmichael would cooperate with all of them-international
imperialism and colonialism will certainly be annihilated."
-President Sukarno, 1927, as amended
by Black Power advocates in 1967
ne warm night a year ago last July, two F.B.I. agents ap-
proached Edward A. Oquendo on a Brooklyn street and asked him
to get into their car "for a talk." Oquendo, a twenty-one-year-old
Negro who had refused to take a physical examination for the
draft, tells the story, "I refused and said that if we had any talking
to do we could do it right there. I.spoke in a manner which caused .!.
thn neighboro to gnther," Ourreundod by a doun briotlin,g Nunn,
'
the agents hastily left. When they finally arrested Oquendo, it was
early in the morning before anybody was on the street, and this
time there were four agents, two cars and handcuffs.
Since that time, the United States government has tried to take
Oquendo to trial seven times, but it has not succeeded. On each
scheduled date he has appeared in the courtroom with an ever-
larger coterie of friends and neighbors, dressed in African tribal
robes and breathing defiance. Oquendo's trial, like the trials of
other Negro draft refusers who can rally this kind of community
support, has been postponed repeatedly on government motion.
"Afro-American resistance to the draft is widespread," says
Oquendo, who is a member of Youth Against War and Fascism.
"If you go down to the Pitkin Avenue draft board in Brownsville,
{ the heart of the Black ghetto in Brooklyn, you will see sheet upon
sheet of names, mounting into the hundreds, marked 'delinquent."'
The situation he describes is not unique. Local Draft Board 16,
I which covers a part of Harlem, recently had
a list of six hsuch cases, most of them Negro, a few Puerto Rican. It is doubtful that many of them will ever be inducted or prosecuted, and without
exception the "delinquents" have'th
e blessing of the surrounding
community.
Throughout the Summer of 1966 an organization called "Black
Women Enraged" picketed a Harlem recruiting station, openly urg-
ing Negroes not to serve. About the same time, in Detroit, a very
religious "Sister, Louise," together with some of her hymn-singing
.friends, swooped down on an Army induction station early one '
morning, snatched her son out of the line of draftees, and took him
home in a taxi. From that day to this, the most,powerful govern-
ment in the world has acted as if the incident never took .
place.
11 these anti-draft cases are subtle manifestations of the com-.
plex new force called Black Power. The white populace identifies !
it somewhat fearfully with the violence of Detroit, Newark, Mil- I
Approved For Release 2004/04/08: CIA-RDP75-00149R00050014000'1_t ad