"Eyes on the Prize": "Ain't Gonna Shuffle No More" Quiz

Answer: Muhammed Ali

Clay won a gold medal in the Rome Olympics. He then won 19 straight professional fights before challenging Sonny Liston for the Heavyweight Title. The fight was nearly canceled when the promoter found out Clay was a Muslim, but because he was such an underdog, the promoter thought people would pay to see him knocked out, but Clay "shook up the world" and knocked Liston out in the sixth round. Immediately following the fight, Cassius Clay changed his name to Muhammed (worthy of much praise) Ali (most kind).

Answer: Malcolm X

Malcolm X was under suspension by Ellijah Mohammed for saying the death of Kennedy was a case of the "chickens coming home to roost", but he took the time to mentor Ali and guide him through his name change, but when Malcolm left the Black Muslims, Ali stayed with his church.

Answer: He didn't step forward

Ali asked for "Conscientious Objector" status when he received his draft notification due to the fact that he was a Black Muslim and the war was not sanctioned by Ellijah Muhammed. That status was refused. He spoke openly about blacks fighting for the freedom to vote in Louisville (his home town) and the Viet Cong fighting for freedom in their country. His most famous speech being,
"Why should they ask me to put on a uniform and go ten thousand miles from home and drop bombs and bullets on brown people in Vietnam while so-called Negro people in Louisville are treated like dogs and denied simple human rights? No, I am not going ten thousand miles from home to help murder and burn another poor nation simply to continue the domination of white slave masters of the darker people the world over. This is the day when such evils must come to an end. I have been warned that to take such a stand would put my prestige in jeopardy and could cause me to lose millions of dollars which should accrue to me as the champion. But I have said it once and I will say it again. The real enemy of my people is right here. I will not disgrace my religion, my people or myself by becoming a tool to enslave those who are fighting for their own justice, freedom and equality. If I thought the war was going to bring freedom and equality to twenty-two million of my people, they wouldn't have to draft me, I'd join tomorrow. But I either have to obey the laws of the land or the laws of Allah. I have nothing to lose by standing up for my beliefs. So I'll go to jail. We've been in jail for four hundred years."
-speech quoted from www.facinghistory.org in the "Ain't Gonna Shuffle No More" download of the "Eyes on the Prize" section
While at the induction center, stepping forward signified joining the U.S. Military. Ali refused to step forward. Black America understood.

Answer: He was sentenced to five years in prison

In 1967, The New York Boxing Commission stripped Ali of his title, and he was sentenced to 5 years in prison, but he appealed the sentenced and was released on bond. For three of Ali's most productive years, he could not fight, but in 1970, the Supreme Court overturned his conviction. In 1974, he beat George Foreman in Kinshasa, Zaire to regain his title.

Answer: Jackie Robinson

Robinson believed that Ali's refusal to serve hurt the morale of the troops and failed to show an appreciation of the wealth and status that American had given to him. Jim Brown and Bill Russell stood up in support of him.

Answer: The Black Harvard

Howard was a black university designed to compete in every way with Harvard University. It taught its students to assimilate into every aspect of white culture instead of finding their own identity. The curriculum mirrored that of many white universities and as a result ignored black history and culture.

Answer: They could see her afro

Gregory was competing for homecoming queen, but she believed in black identity and civil rights and unlike the other candidates wore an afro to show that she was a descendant of African people. Because of the Civil Rights Movement, the climate of the country was changing and African Identity was very important.

When the lights when down for the crowning ceremony the lights went on in the back of the stage the audience could see Robin's afro. The crowd went wild and began to chant, "Umgawa, Black Power." They marched into the streets of Washington, DC, and the black student movement at Howard was born.

Answer: The University President and the Dean of Students

1200 students took over the administrative offices of Howard U. They demanded changes in the cirriculum. The demanded a multicultural curriculum, they demanded teachers and administrators who believed in a multicultural curriculum. They demanded an active student role in the curriculum.

They demanded that Howard be recognized as a black university. They staged a sit in that lasted five days, and over time, all of their demands were met.

Answer: Gary, IN

The convention took place in Gary, IN, a city governed by a black mayor named Richard Hatcher. All of the civil rights groups from each state were represented with the notable exception of the NAACP, who believed that the delegates were separating themselves from the country.

Answer: The number of black politicians elected increased dramatically in the 1970s

After the death of Martin Luther King and Malcolm X, a new black agenda was necessary. The one that was argued for in the convention is as follows:
"INTRODUCTION
The Black Agenda is addressed primarily to Black people in America. It rises naturally out of the bloody decades and centuries of our people's struggle on these shores. It flows from the most recent surging of our own cultural and political consciousness. It is our attempt to define some of the essential changes which must take place in this land as we and our children move to self-determination and true independence. The Black Agenda assumes that no truly basic change for our benefit takes place in Black or white America unless we Black people organize to initiate that change. It assumes that we must have some essential agreement on overall goals, even though we may differ on many specific strategies. Therefore, this is an initial statement of goals and directions for our own generation, some first definitions of crucial issues around which Black people must organize and move in 1972 and beyond. Anyone who claims to be serious about the survival and liberation of Black people must be serious about the implementation of the Black Agenda.
WHAT TIME IS IT?
We come to Gary in an hour of great crisis and tremendous promise for Black America. While the white nation hovers on the brink of chaos, while its politicians offer no hope of real change, we stand on the edge of history and are faced with an amazing and frightening choice: We may choose in 1972 to slip back into the decadent white politics of American life, or we may press forward, moving relentlessly from Gary to the creation of our own Black life. The choice is large, but the time is very short. Let there be no mistake. We come to Gary in a time of unrelieved crisis for our people. From every rural community in Alabama to the high-rise compounds of Chicago, we bring to this Convention the agonies of the masses of our people. From the sprawling Black
cities of Watts and Nairobi in the West to the decay of Harlem and Roxbury in the East, the testimony we bear is the same. We are the witnesses to social disaster. Our cities are crime-haunted dying grounds. Huge sectors of our youth-and countless others-face permanent unemployment. Those of us who work find our paychecks able to purchase less and less. Neither the courts nor the prisons contribute to anything resembling justice or reformation. The schools are unable-or unwilling-to educate our children for the real world of our struggles. Meanwhile, the officially approved epidemic of drugs threatens to wipe out the minds and strength of our best young warriors. Economic,
cultural, and spiritual depression stalk Black America, and the price for survival often appears to be more than we are able to pay. On every side, in every area of our lives, the American institutions in which we have placed our trust are unable to cope with the crises they have created by their single-minded dedication to profits for some and white supremacy above all.
THE POLITICS OF SOCIAL TRANSFORMATION
So we come to Gary confronted with a choice. But it is not the old convention question of which candidate shall we support, the pointless question of who is to preside over a decaying and unsalvageable system. No, if we come to Gary out of the realities of the Black communities of this land, then the only real choice for us is whether or not we will live by the truth we know, whether we will move to organize independently, move to struggle for fundamental transformation, for the creation of new directions, towards a concern for the life and the meaning of Man. Social transformation or social destruction, those are our only real choices. If we have come to Gary on behalf of our people in America, in the rest of this hemisphere, and in the Homeland-if we have come for our own best ambitions-then a new Black Politics must come to birth. If we are serious, the Black Politics of Gary must accept
major responsibility for creating both the atmosphere and the program for fundamental, far-ranging change in America. Such responsibility is ours because it is our people who are most deeply hurt and ravaged by the present systems of society. That responsibility for leading the change is ours because we live in a society where few other men really believe in the responsibility of a truly humane society for anyone anywhere.
WE ARE THE VANGUARD
[...] We come to Gary and are faced with a challenge. The challenge is to transform ourselves
from favor-seeking vassals and loud-talking, "militant" pawns, and to take up the role that the organized masses of our people have attempted to play ever since we came to these shores: That of harbingers of true justice and humanity, leaders in the struggle for liberation [...].
TOWARDS A BLACK AGENDA
So when we turn to a Black Agenda for the seventies, we move in the truth of history, in the reality of the moment. We move recognizing that no one else is going to represent our interests but ourselves. The society we seek cannot come unless Black people organize to advance its coming. We lift up a Black Agenda recognizing that white America moves towards the abyss created by its own racist arrogance, misplaced priorities, rampant materialism, and ethical
bankruptcy. Therefore, we are certain that the Agenda we now press for in Gary is not only for the future of Black humanity, but is probably the only way the rest of America can save itself from the harvest of its criminal past.
So, Brothers and Sisters of our developing Black nation, we now stand at Gary as people whose time has come. From every corner of Black America, from all liberation movements of the Third World, from the graves of our fathers and the coming world of our children, we are faced with a challenge and a call: Though the moment is perilous we must not despair. We must seize the time, for the time is ours. We begin here and now in Gary. We begin with an independent Black political movement, an independent Black Political Agenda, an independent Black spirit. Nothing less will do. We must build for our people. We must build for our world. We stand on the edge of history.
We cannot turn back."
-agenda published on www.facinghistory.org in the "Ain't Gonna Shuffle No More" download of the "Eyes on the Prize" section
After the convention, the number of blacks in elected office jumped from 2264 to more than 5000 within ten years.