Bobby and I entered into a period of intense exploration, trying to solve some of the ideological problems of the Black movement; partly, we needed to explain to our own satisfaction why no Black political organization had succeeded. The only one we thought had promised long-term success was the Organization of Afro-American Unity started by Malcolm X, but Malcolm had died too soon to pull his program together. Malcolm’s slogan had been “Freedom by any means necessary,” but nothing we saw was taking us there. We still had only a vague conception of what freedom ought to mean to Black people, except in abstract terms borrowed from politicians, and that did not help the people on the block at all. Those lofty words were meant for intellectuals and the bourgeoisie, who were already fairly comfortable.

Much of our conversation revolved around groups in the San Francisco, Oakland, and Berkeley areas. Knowing the people who belonged to them, we could evaluate both positive and negative aspects of their characters and the nature of their organizations. While we respected many of the moves these brothers had made, we felt that the negative aspects of their movements overshadowed the positive ones.

We started throwing around ideas. None of the groups were able to recruit and involve the very people they professed to represent—the poor people in the community who never went to college, probably were not even able to finish high school. Yet these were our people; they were the vast majority of the Black population in the area. Any group talking about Blacks was in fact talking about those low on the ladder in terms of well-being, self-respect, and the amount of concern the government had for them. All of us were talking, and nobody was reaching them.