William Lamar Strickland

## Background

William Lamar Strickland, Ph. D. was born in 1937 in Boston, Massachusetts. He worked as a professor of political science and Afro-American Studies at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, and is now the Director of the Du Bois Papers Collection.

In the oral history report, he talked about growing up in Boston, Massachusetts. He attended Boston Latin High School for four years and then Harvard University, and served as a Marine. He recalls his friendship with Malcolm X, as well as joining the Northern Student Movement, and his work with Vincent Harding and was a founding member of the Institute of the Black World.

## Friendship with Malcom X

Malcom X and William became friends after he spoke at Harvard where William was attending at the time. However, William met Malcom earlier than that through a cousin who was good friends with Malcom, and would visit their Aunt and Uncle's house periodically.

William said he died because "he represented more of the truth of this country is willing to face" (Strickland). He believed that what Malcom believed in - the refusal to capitulate, and black freedom - is so threatening that the only way to stop it is to be attacked to the grave, and even beyond.

On the day of Malcom's death, the *New York Times* printed the following editorial: "The life and death of Malcom X provides a discordant but typical theme for the times in which we live. He was a case history, as well as an extraordinary and twisted man turning his true gifts to evil purposes." After reading this, William asked the question: what was his evil purpose? The answer he gave was this: Malcom wanted to be free. He explains that they called Malcom an extremist and fanatic, but never called him a liar. William thought that Malcom was closer to the truth than anyone in the American Black Nationalist Movement could admit. "His murder has left a hole in the movement which may never be filled. Partly because he was outsize but partly too, because we are not" (Strickland). William's and Malcom's relationship was very close, and William not only saw Malcom as a Hero or a Role model, but as a friend.

## Work in the Northern Student Movement

William in the interview recalls his time with the Northern Student Movement. He was the NSM's executive director in 1963 and replaced Peter J. Countryman, who helpped assemble the NSM in the fall of 1961 from “existing networks of the Student Christian Movement of New England.” The mission of the NSM was to "support the work of the SNCC and to "challenge discrimmination in the North".

William also recalls the original NSM having good relationships with the SDS (Students for a Democratic Society). They had a joint conference in '63, and they went into community organizing in the same way they did. The group asked them jokingly: "What are you guys doing, trying to copy our shit?"

He then talked about some parting of ways within the group. It was the first radical division of labor in the movement, in the NSM, years before SNCC. There was an instance when SDS people and Courtland (Cox) of SNCC told him that what the NSM had done was not appropriate, because they were supposed to be one big happy family. But William had discovered going up to Harlem one day, that the white girls were with the guys there. They were hanging out and were singing and drinking, at Peter Buttenwieser's, a major force in America's involvement in Vietnam, and was very rich. William says that they were exposing the guys to a life they could never have.

After that incident, the NSM remained interracial. He told them "No more white girls in the ghetto," in '64, but they still had white males working. A major question William had that he couldn't figure out however was this: "Why do white people come, I mean, to join the struggle? And what's their idea of struggle" (Strickland)? This is because he didn't think white people could understand and the extent of what other white people were capable of. He had to separate the wheat from the chaf, in terms of white supporters, who were real. People who may have meant well they didn't-or as James Bevel once said: "We had high hopes, but we didn't know what we were up against" (Bevel).

## Written Works

* Malcolm X: Make it Plain *(1994)*
	+ This book is a Tie-in to the PBS "American Experience" documentary. This book shows Malcolm X's "rise to fame, his world travels, and his life within the Nation of Islam through the words of family members, friends, and colleagues." Malcolm X, silenced so suddenly almost three decades ago, speaks to more people today than ever before. Drawing on hundreds of sources, the PBS "American Experience" documentary of his life, Malcolm X: Make It Plain, explores his many-faceted character - political philosopher and visionary, husband and father, dynamic orator and hero - and the many forces that made him. In this book, rare photographs and personal memories come together to tell the story of Malcolm's youth on the streets of Boston and New York, his world travels, his life within the Nation of Islam, his assassination in 1965. This highlights the African-American urban experience mirrored by Malcolm, and how we are still living through the history he helped shape.

* FRANTZ FANON: HIS LIFE AND WORK. *International Tribute to Frantz Fanon (1979)*
	+ This presentation is a review of the life and work of Frantz Fanon prepared and published by the United Nations Centre Against Apartheid, Department of Political and Security Council Affairs.

* W. E. B. Du Bois: The Prime Minister of the State We Never Had. *Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture (2011)*

* Black Intellectuals and the American Social Scene. *The Black World (1975)*
	+ This essay is an examination of Black Intellectuals in the post-Civil Rights Movement era and asks what has happened to the black perspective in this new political period.

## Resources

* https://www.loc.gov/item/2015669154/
* https://www.jstor.org/stable/24348896?seq=1#metadata\_info\_tab\_contents
* https://works.bepress.com/bill\_strickland/
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northern\_Student\_Movement
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Students\_for\_a\_Democratic\_Society