I went down with him to the delta in Mississippi in 1967. Maybe I should start there and tell you what happened in a sharecropper's cabin when this distinguished in strongman called ruthless by his animes. including one who came from this state so determined to judge him. He came from the Delta he went from home to home looking. asking questions And finally, we ended up in Greenville and Mississippi outside of the town about a mile outside of the town. We went into a house. I know where seven children. And a woman who worked in one of the fancy homes. And a man who worked in the fields. And they were eating along as I had been doing for. They and their kind have been doing for Generations. He came into this house and talked with the mother and he talked with the father. He sat down on the floor and started talking with the kids. They were in all of him. And so we watched some of that all except for one child who can't seem to have no law. She looked at him Coldwell and hard. And said nothing and while the other children were anxious to please him and do what he wanted. She was not anxious to do anything except to stare. She wouldn't even say hello and as he reached out that kind of tentative way, but always seems to me such an ironic contrast with some of the descriptions usually at the hands of the intellectuals. That he received some of the characterizations that he received. This man who had had so much and lost so much and who by the middle 60s had embraced Chavez so warmly and closely and it become so interested in the problems of the poor in this country and whose picture still is in the walls. Indian homes in Chicano homes in Eskimo homes and black homes and working-class white homes No handshake from this one. childish girls 809 no recognition So he got up to leave and he went over to her and tried to say goodbye to her. And she looked at him and again said nothing. So he left and we went through while they're rounds and things to do waiting for the airplane and then he decided that he wanted to go back to that house. We are buying raging his ass cuz he had a schedule. You got back to the house. and came in talked again to the mother and said, you know, I just wanted to say good-bye again to one of your children and came up to that girl and said that the troubled him that somehow we hadn't been able to talk with her. But he didn't want to say goodbye to her again, and he wanted to shake her hand. She had held her hands back before her hands remain back. he put out his hand and he held it there and told her that he was going on leaving, Mississippi, but that he hoped that he would remember what he'd seen and hope that someday she and others all over the country like her. Would trust him maybe a little more. Hit hit home. She looked at him. Said nothing but moved her head ever so gently down. and then app and he continued with his hand held out and said so. Hold me to it. And if you think that I don't live up to my promises. Remind me. write me she said nothing. His hand was still outraged and finally said to her. I'm going to say goodbye. This is your last chance to say goodbye to me. And it's my last chance to say goodbye to you. and was that her hand came out and they said goodbye. And he walked out of the house and got into that car that fancy rented car and just as they were ready to leave she came running out and she said to him I will remember. I'll remember. And he left. kitchen B dad But that was a moment between an American. an American senator I'm a child. a white man and a black child a father of many children and a child A man who often told the children that he met what he was going through being away from his own children and what really was a moral Crusade and those last months of his life. Has this country was so shaken and as we were getting ready to receive the likes. the lights Richard Nixon into the White House I remember. The hearings on Hunger that Robert Kennedy held in 1967. When before the United States entered came evidence all over this country of the way our children so many of them lived evidence of hunger and malnutrition evidence of boys and girls not even delivered by doctors or midwives born. Will the least advantageous kind of medical circumstances? Destined to be deprived in so many ways. in this Rich powerful Nation If you leave this conference with no other statistic, you must know and you must remember. the Dish Nation which now quibbles about Neutron bombs Which has taken possession of the Moon? Which spends a hundred billion dollars a year? protecting itself from various enemies has yet to regard its infant mortality rate as an anime 50. Stand among the advanced industrial nations of the world 15 in our infant mortality rate. A statistic that tells us something about ourselves our children. Our attitudes are assumptions are values. 15 That in this nation. the leader of the western world these kinds of Statistics can be available about infant mortality about diets and their adequacy or lack of adequacy about distribution of Medical Services about educational facilities. Animax on at all those senses about family life Why is it that other industrial nations in Europe and have a floor and their family income? Have we reach that yet in our enlightenment? Why is it that there are children born into families and see virtually no money. Why isn't there a still children in this country who are not getting even the prescribed schooling with the state laws? the crayon necessary thousands of Migrant children still wandering around this country has their parents rather than be well-fed sheets are willing to travel thousands hundreds thousands hundreds and then thousands of X miles in order to work return for which they get none of the protections of the labor laws. Give to other workers. in Central, Florida 1965 I worked with migrant Farm Workers a hundred thousand of them. near Lake Okeechobee Bean City Belle Glade Pahokee all part of Palm Beach County we know pound Beach County the Oceanside take Route 441 West and one is in another world and not a Spell spiritually occupied world. Again, 100,000 people doing back-breaking work from sunup to sundown. as some of you now in order to get to talk with my rent one has to talk with Growers. The Growers on the migrants The Growers house them in shanties and Shacks worthy of John Steinbeck still. I'm Grapes of Wrath. inadequate sanitation no Sanitation And one visits these dwellings so-called talks to Children many of them don't even go to school many of them. Don't know what a doctor is. And then gets to know the family that employs them a prominent rawa and agribusiness, man. They had a son in 1965 who is 9 years old. He was in the fourth grade. And one day my wife was told by the wife of the grow up that she received the call from this Elementary School principal where her son attended School telling her that an incident that happened in school. Her son had spoken out and troubled his teacher. He had stated to the class in one of those oral compositions. that he thought Is that the growers in the clown? He would have a difficult time getting to heaven. I'm at the migrants would get there more easily. The teacher asked him where he got that notion. And he quoted. the Bible have not Christ said this in his sermon on the mound was this not part of Matthew was this not part of Matthew and Luke. And Mark and John. The teacher said it may be part of the Bible that the Bible is a large book and the one had to put these remarks in context. So much for education. education enables us to use words like context the child didn't quite know what contact cement. And she explained to him. that one had to read but not jump to conclusions. And in any event, God and God Alone made these decisions. The boy literal-minded repeated what he'd heard in church the teacher ended the discussion, but this was a prominent family. And some of you who are School teachers Now The prominent families. Have to be regarded warily. Tell the teacher March down to the principal who said that he would give a call. and he did The mother however, it was not outraged. She said she understood what was happening. What was happening? Was it this boy a member of One family had taken to spending time with my grandchildren and their parents that is other families who lived on his father's land and work for his father. And the mother an educated woman who is getting a doctorate and educational psychology of all Fields decided that she understood what was happening. The boy was going through something. Elmwood outgrowing we know about that bass. We know about stages. We know that people go in and out of one another Developmental. And we can count on new vicissitudes and preoccupations. and so her attitude was not one of them lime and apprehension or can even concern but a woman is to submit to phase. a rare attitude Among Us parents us who have felt that there is a tie the talleys our children delineator by Spock and Landers Anna and all the various successors who tell us about age and crises some of them writing a million words. And getting prizes and they go on and on these moments, but if you wait. Animal scents if you stop and think about it if you have faith. Something new will come around some corner. So they waited except that the waiting did not bring the desired reward we came back. And in the fifth grade the boy had committed to pay but no less the following statement in a written composition. There is blood on my hands of the groins. They are armed teacher wide-eyed. scoring for the office the principal called up the parents. And my parents came to the school for a conference. It was decided. Not the best thing to do was to find out why this boy was be wavering this issue. Until the boy was sent. to the local pediatrician local pediatrician took him on and conversations and Saturday morning. And eventually the pediatrician came up with a recommendation to this Presbyterian mother. And her Presbyterian son who have been listening to a presbyterian Minister. We've been brought over from Scotland at an exchange program of these Eager Beaver American foundations interested in comparative Calvinism the minister had been telling them what he believed had been reading to them from the Bible had been urging its imperatives upon them and apparently in the Third Kind of station with a pediatrician the boy had become quite excited as he conveyed to the doctor. the essence of the fourth chapter of Luke which some of you may know but I regret to say many of us don't know. and could stand and knowing In the fourth chapter of Luke we are told that this migrant. preacher Who had been spending so much time with the lame the Halt and the Blind and other eccentric, Outkast? disapproved exiled members of various Middle Eastern communities how to finally Wharf in the patient's to use the biblical expression of the powers and principalities who had decided That enough is enough. Or is the Chicano people of the Rio Grande Valley say Basta? And so they took him to as Luke puts at the brow of a hill. And cast him headlong down as the boy discussed this with the pediatrician. He said to him. What would they do if Christ Came Upon Us now in this County we have no Hills. The pediatrician ask him what difference it made to him this story and the boys said, well, it shows that Christ said the wrong things and they punished him and then the boy using his 20th century imagine. Send it if this were done. At the North Carolina where he'd gone with his parents or the mountains during the summer. They probably put Christ in an automobile. I'm from off the hill that way and that would be the way he would. So having heard this and having pondered the pediatrician told the parents what they aren't do. What they want do was to stop taking the boy to church. He was being excited. body leaves stories and by what he was hearing in Sunday School And it's best to let him quiet down. They waited for him to quiet down the foreman. Found him still occasionally. Having to do with those children from those families. The boy was first honest and then told to stay away. And eventually he ran away. He ran away only three or four hours, but when he came home, he was now a run away. And they had him tested. They had him tested. But I told this story when I came back from the shelves to Erik H Erikson, he said oh, yes those tests imagine those tests being given to that migrant Minister 2000 years ago. And to Teresa and Saint Francis and Joan of Oz and all the people that came here in the 17th century. Thrown out by the English crown called radicals and revolutionaries. Told to shape up or ship out. imagine what those tests would have shown problems with authority difficulties an adjustment a streak of this or that well the test show that he did indeed have a problem with authority and he began treatment. He was taken in. to Palm Beach itself They're not being for reasons that I don't think we need a research study to find out although I think we're capable of financing one so much for American Research from an I am a CH. Then for some reason that were no. facilities In the western part of Palm Beach County buy plenty of them. Treating not a non migrant population or maybe a sort of Migrant population since there are people that do come to Palm Beach and leave upon occasion. in Palm Beach itself Austria this boy no longer went to the doctor. the follow up we're always being urged to have these longitudinal follow-ups. There are plenty of follow-ups in this country. that we might compile for ourselves and not all of them worth looking at have to do with people called patients. But in any event, that was a follow-up there is a follow-up available for this young man. He now is a law student and Beyond in 1976. He went to Kansas City. Urging the nomination of a candidate not to New York City, but Kansas City. Anna Kansas City Has the head of a particular group of Youth? He wanted. A man to be nominated who had his own history of involvement with the migrant Farm Workers of this country. this particular candidate I'm not in Grapes of Wrath but in another one of those Hollywood movies we're concerned with what we're called social issues in the thirties made a movie. Which you took the part of an anguished white person in California appalled by what he saw in the migrant camps. that movie done before the second world war was a farewell of sorts for this particular actor who had his own passage to go through his own stage to leave so that he would be in another stage. By the middle 1940s. This man was no longer interested in migrants. In fact, I would think they had to say I think he would be the first to say that when he was governor of California. The migrant population of California was not among his preoccupations. So here we have an intersection of to write histories. a young man Wood launched his concern with migrants in a candidate who would have lost his what does that tell us about schools and doctors and a whole climate of opinion? What need we know if we are to bring up children. Who care not only about themselves but about others we've been hearing lately about the me generation about the self-centeredness of so much of our life. Erroneous zones on my best friend. I'm okay. You're okay. Everything is okay. Why do I believe in one? What do I believe in? Parents are asked. What do you believe in? I believe in my children. That's what one hears more than anything else. Not him God. Not really in the country anymore. I'll ask but in my children. I want the best for my children when he has again and again all over this country. What is the best for your children when I asks well? I want them to get a good education. I want them to get a good job. I want them to have a better deal than I had. So many working Americans say I want to get marry thinking that I can I work hard. I'll take two jobs. I'll take three jobs to give to them and then there are those who don't have to do that who have an enormous amount and they say I'd like to get my children whatever my children need. So that they can have good wives. What do they mean by Good Guys? Well, I would like them to to have a good life. What do they mean by a good life? Well, you know enjoy themselves. Have fun relax meet the right person have a happy marriage than maybe I've had and on and on it goes. I'm worried the parents say about the kind of education my children getting other teachers the best am I taking the children to the best doctor, but I bet it getting the best care. What can I do for my kids? What can I give them? I'll give them anything. These are fragments. They are recognizable. I would think to all of you to all of us. Do we ask what can we ask all those children? Oh, no, the issue was doing for them. When doesn't want to put too much strain on children when his parents say I don't want my children to be burdened. I want opportunities for them. Show it's always for. knot on butt for and Lord knows if we see a child that seems to be in trouble. We then say oh that poor child. He she they are in trouble. You heard about Ruby Bridges. She match through Mom's to go to school. She was in trouble. We don't want y'all to be in trouble. That's stress. And wouldn't it be nice if they could avoid stress? I'm going to bring up my children so they don't go through these conflicts. We don't want any conflicts for a children mountain conflicts a bad. Stress is no good. Difficulties and problems are presumably avoidable in some Eminem future. If only we knew a little bit more and Psychiatry or psychology or whatever. These conflicts is Anna Freud poinsettia. Call Jean chowder for 50 years. We've been taking psychoanalytic ideas and turning them into that. She quit using an ironic phrase a final solution. This solution would be that ultimately will get rid of anxieties problems difficulties and we will bring up of course, not only non rhotic children, but wonderfully happy children not subjected to stress not go through not going through difficulties. coasting along on the road to some Nirvana This is the kind of methodology that someone like me is trying to have so that when Ruby goes into those schools. I say to myself. Oh my God, how horrible and I don't lion who I'm one talks with high school black students going into the segregated schools, and he is that they are above and insulted and corridors 1 things. This is a tragedy for these young people. I went with one of these young man to a basketball game in Atlanta in 1961. He was one of two racks that an injured integrated a high school van. He came from what we later began calling a culturally deprived and culturally disadvantaged home. There wasn't time as my mother puts it when you could just be playing old pool and maybe need a little more education. this young man when we went to the high school and we are going to see a basketball game was the first time the city of Atlanta had allowed an extracurricular activity to take place. I had been bothering him for about four or five months trying to find out how he was managing these dresses by asking all these questions. He's ridiculous questions. How are you doing? How are you getting along? How's your appetite how you sleeping questions, which we think are so clever and so interact with her picked up instantly for what they are. Tactfully probably he had no alternative but to say fine fine fine. We recently don't let people get away with that after the 10th fine. We say do I sell it? Well one waits for the change. We are collecting trouble at way to report it to some. What's the word peers? Went to the game. We came into the auditorium and we going to minute we started getting spitballs. Paper planes and a whole slew of obscenities thrown at us. So we sit there and I turn to Lawrence. I say Lawrence. I think we ought to go and sit over there and see that I didn't say that but I said over there pointing and with my eyes by fast and write on those letters e x i t and he looked around and he said no, let's stay here. He wanted to be in the front row to see the game Banner. And I said nothing in about a minute later after more of this and more of this and some pretty difficult comments that we heard. I turned room again and said worms. I think we ought to move up there. See the game from there, and he said no, I'm going to stay here. so why I said well you don't want to move up there so you can go there if you want to sit there. I'll stay here. So I thought to myself he is scared. Anda But clearly doesn't want to. Has Mike Nichols and Elaine May set in their record of the 50s all to appropriate still today doesn't want to talk about it. How can I get him to talk about it? I thought to myself. Cuz I asked the question the police arrived the police arrived and all the heckling stopped and we sat and watch the game at the end of the game. We left and we drove home and I decided that we had to have a talk. He gave me a coke. We sign around I said that was some evening. He said yeah. I said what you think about what happened? He said not much. I said Joey glad you went and he said well, we won the game. I said yeah, but what about what happened before the game? So he said what do you mean? Where can I find out what his mind is doing? all we have names for this defense mechanisms 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 What's he doing? And I remember thinking is he conscious? Going on. So I said to him I said to myself first I've got to do something. I've got to help him. I'm going to take a step here at the therapeutic staff. I said that you know Lawrence that was something we went through there the weekend before the police came, you said? Yeah, and I said we are scared. And he said not particularly. Those are the two words not particularly. And I thought to myself. Well, you see I've been missing some things that happen in these children. They're going through this kind of difficulty and it is hard for them to acknowledge and props to themselves. Nevermind to me. Just how fearsome these episodes are before. I had a chance. However to add some new word of Enlightenment to this conversation. He reported to me. Yes, he reported to me out of nowhere it seemed. a childhood memory just about the most gratifying thing. You'd think that someone like me could possibly have an entire cake. And the memory was this he said, you know when I was about six years old, I remember going with my mother to riches to see Santa Claus, which is a major department store in Atlanta. For those of you who don't know. I don't know the equivalent hearing that Macy's Gimbels if there are such things that but anyways In Atlanta, even when schools without always segregated and long before December day, she took place in the 1960s. They had always been an integrated line before Santa Claus Flannery O'Connor some good Southern Storage. How could take that into a wonderful thing about it? But there was Santa Claus made with these children. He remembered trying to gain access to him. black and white well-to-do and poor And it's a student-run he with his mother. The mother had come to Atlanta with her husband from South Carolina. Only a few years earlier Porsche cropping family. She had memories of being in a town in South Carolina where if a white man or woman walking down the street you get out of there way. You don't stand there or walk right by them you make way for them. This boy inadvertently stepped on the toes of a white girl. And she got upset and started crying and her mother got upset and this boy's mother took him in mediately home. No Santa Claus and gave him the beating of his wife. That's American Family Life not too far away from our own time. Gave him the beating of his wife how else do we enforce political and social and economic realities except through the family. The means by which these laws become realities for children. She beat him up. I'm told him you don't do that. You will get lynched if you continue behaving this way. Well, we don't do that without you owe them black or white now, but there are other things we tell our children. Maybe we tell them that has they stopped paying too much attention to Luke 4 or whatever. That may have to wait and they have to grow up and they have to be practical how many times have I said? That's my son's be practical. What do I mean when I'm saying that I mean that I'm scared? I'm scared by how much they have seen and how Dangerous, this is I who supposedly pedo and Lightnings and children and want them to see more see more of what? We'll come to that in one minute. Let me just finish the thing in that room at home. and that tenement house He stopped he told me that and then suddenly it came to me. Not particularly. He had no elucidation. No clarification. No therapeutic Technique No interpretation. He was ready to go on to another subject but suddenly in a moment. What should we call it a Venus site? I suddenly thought to myself. Yes this gentle tactful. Well trained therapist. Had gotten a message across to me. Had told me that he meant each of those two words when it said not particularly. Had told me. that pain that he known all his life. Made that particular incident in that high school gymnasium not a particular incident that it was part of a life that he had been brought up in a family. with a racial background that an economic background in a social background have a certain time at what I had considered a terrible stress had for him then an opportunity that he knew pain. and he knew suffering and he always would and then mine's view of what stress is was stress for me and had to be qualified as such and that one person stress might well be another person's opportunity was he not leading his race into a new moment for itself. What is this? Not something that had significance to him. Was this not as he later called it for me sweet pain now, where is the sweet pain category in my psychiatric knowledge Well, we have words we have words we call some of these things creative and sublimations and whatever but I'm not so sure that we're equipped. We who studies pathology. I'm not so sure that we're equipped to understand the daily triumphs the daily struggles. The daily maneuvers of mind and heart and soul of ordinary people as they try to live their lives. We who know so much about those who slip and fall. This boy was not about to slip and fall. He wasn't even about to move back to an exit sign. That was my privilege. That was my stress one for the evenin to protect. I was in out of complete prepared for that moment. If one wants to be ironic one could say I was culturally disadvantaged and culturally deprived at that particular moment in my life. And the life of that young man was a companion of mine as we together watch the basketball game and maybe even more Grand Prix in the wife of the city of Atlanta as it was struggling with a historical moment. I was culturally disadvantaged and deprived and psychologically inadequate to this particular moment. Well, no one's going to call me that and get away with it, but we can always get away with a lot with him. And they're the issue of power comes out who owns the words. Who owns the judgements who owns the language who called? Whom what? Who calls whom watch? And who knows very little about what and yet continues. With the names the words the categories. What do we know about the Redemptive moments in the lives of many families? What do we know about the ways that many American families make do? under terrific gods What might that knowledge do to help us as we think about our own hassles? Anna Freud mentions repeated way of course that no matter how we apply psychoanalysis no matter which particular aspect of it. We grabbed hold off and look upon as a solution to all problems. We are doing because built into life is trouble anxiety and conflict. But as this field of psychoanalysis has become adapted to American utopianism. and a Time SuperAmerica naivete we have all kinds of manifestations of quite another attitude. People convinced that if they sit in Marathon sessions driving one another half crazy with self-consciousness. But if I pay $500 to go to work and his cohorts. but if they read XYZ book Does a pedal psychological language every other moment to one another? but somehow it will be a happy life. What kind of a life are we in danger of seeing at the hands of this malignancy self-consciousness? And one asks, what is the measure of a Nation? What is taking those two sisters from Iowa for instance? And has that and other kinds of advice being peddled everyday in American newspapers. with an incredible kind of almost religious response from the rest of us not to mention the books and how to bring up your child. And how to say what when and then if the book is revised. a whole generation of suddenly left stranded what is come to us? And we have lost such confidence in ourselves. That were afraid afraid maybe even to say no to a child. Afraid to demand of our children as well as give it to them. Afraid to say that we not only have to understand our children, but we have to ask of them. And require of them and point in directions insist upon things. with them I try to understand my children. I hear at times from others and finds I want to know what's happening. Maybe there are moments not to know maybe gone for been there even moments. Yes to get very annoyed outraged. And say I will have no more of this. Maybe even sometimes a teacher to guide for bed. In a classroom can say shut up. Shut up. I want silence. I want obedience and I'll stand for nothing less. Is that a Blasphemous thing for someone of my old to be coming up with a conference like this? Are we going to war? the notion of understanding our families and children to become such Louise lose all sense. Ava moral judgment of ethical insistence and all sense of the needs that we as parents as well as children have I would say it for authority. for discipline as well as a faction. You don't need me to come here and tell you the children require understanding. Not here in this room. Van has become a commonplace the experts abound in a society that has glass put upper middle class and well-educated echelons is so significantly lost faith in God lost faith, really and in all kinds of social and political values. What we have left is an enormous faith in experts and they are capacity to solve problems for us in family life. And is Christopher lasch. Haven in a heartless World these experts at times. I part of the problem. These experts to whom we have given so much of our frustrated religious faith. Unable to believe in God just trust for about America's future. We turn into family life and call upon those who write books about children and have degrees that qualify them as Authorities on children turn to them as Messiahs. And turns why cells and I various groups. As on the road to some kind of Salvation as we study children and learn about them and as we do family studies and learn about their quote interactions unquote. It was a time when one could just get along. as we do this Let us hope that we can separate Knowledge from wisdom that we can be reminded occasionally, but we upon of Elijah history. And let us ask ourselves about what we crave Beyond. The next interpretation of the next segment of behavior We crave something larger to believe in than ourselves. We have ended up with ourselves cuz we use we've rejected so much. That others have believed in as incredible. Surround new Amazon new Hawthorne New walk a person is wonderful novels today knows that we hunger after Something to Believe In Line to that. I saw the family is part of it in some of us a while. I don't believe only myself I believe in the family, but that is not quite enough. because that is still man and woman person-centered and I think we want to know what to believe in. What values to help hold? And yes what values to fight for maybe even God forbid sacrifice for? Has any Authority in family life and childlike begun to tell us the maybe what we need is some sacrifice. some giving up as well as getting Some Devotion to causes that causes. Yes, even a little bit of pain. Oh, no, we kind of have pain. We got to get rid of pain. Don't you go to the doctor to get rid of pain? Who is going to recommend paying well people have said to me are you saying and you talk about the nobility of children leading their race into schools? Are you saying that I should send my children through those mom and go through that kind of ghetto experience. Well needless to say I am not recommending that but there are other ways that we can confront. In our time and in our places where we live some of the same issues as those children went through in the South and that other children still going through that is how one fights one's way towards certain goals. and by golly that's something that family life what to do about figuring out how parents and children both cannot work Can struggle can extend themselves not only in order to get Rewards? The gratify the mind but in order to achieve certain very concrete and Rio. purposes outside of ourselves I guess I am where I began. With a man like Robert Kennedy rich and Powerful given so much. Trudging across this country worrying about a little girl hair a man in California there who leads migrants worrying about people that he need not have worried about worrying about people that he could have conned. With a wave that so many of our politicians, as an extension of themselves that moment. have a Sacrifice and ultimately became a life-giving moment is something that we are to think about now is dr. King's death is 10 years. Is his death is and as we trying to figure out in this country by golly what we're going to do. as Citizens to make it a better country. A country that we can respect without simply resorting to rhetoric.