else I've ever met) told of his occasionally traveling in the United States, North and South,
deliberately not wearing his national dress. Just recalling the indignities he had met as a black
man seemed to expose some raw nerve in this highly educated, dignified official. His eyes blazed
in his passionate anger, his hands hacked the air: "Why is the American black man so complacent
about being trampled upon? Why doesn't the American black man fight to be a human being?"
A Sudanese high official hugged me, "You champion the American black people!" An Indian
official wept in his compassion "for my brothers in your land." I reflected many, many times to
myself upon how the American Negro has been entirely brainwashed from ever seeing or thinking
of himself, as he should, as a part of the non-white peoples of the world. The American Negro has
no conception of the hundreds of millions of other non-whites' concern for him: he has no
conception of their feeling of brotherhood for and with him.
It was there in the Holy Land, and later in Africa, that I formed a conviction which I have had ever
since-that a topmost requisite for any Negro leader in America ought to be extensive traveling in
the non-white lands on this earth, and the travel should include many conferences with the
ranking men of those lands. I guarantee that any honest, open-minded Negro leader would return
home with more effective thinking about alternative avenues to solutions of the American black
man's problem. Above all, the Negro leaders would find that many non-white officials of the
highest standing, especially Africans, would tell them-privately-that they would be glad to throw
their weight behind the Negro cause, in the United Nations, and in other ways. But these officials
understandably feel that the Negro in America is so confused and divided that he doesn't himself
know what his cause is. Again, it was mainly Africans who variously expressed to me that no one
would wish to be embarrassed trying to help a brother who shows no evidence that he wants that
help-and who seems to refuse to cooperate in his own interests.
The American black "leader's" most critical problem is lack of imagination! His thinking, his
strategies, if any, are always limited, at least basically, to only that which is either advised, or
approved by the white man. And the first thing the American power structure doesn't want any
Negroes to start is thinking internationally.
I think the single worst mistake of the American black organizations, and their leaders, is that they
have failed to establish direct brotherhood lines of communication between the independent
nations of Africa and the American black people. Why, every day, the black African heads of state
should be receiving direct accounts of the latest developments in the American black man's
struggles-instead of the U.S. State Department's releases to Africans which always imply that the
American black man's struggle is being "solved."
Two American authors, best-sellers in the Holy Land, had helped to spread and intensify the
concern for the American black man. James Baldwin's books, translated, had made a
tremendous impact, as had the book Black Like Me, by John Griffin. If you're unfamiliar with
that book, it tells how the white man Griffin blackened his skin and spent two months traveling as
a Negro about America; then Griffin wrote of the experiences that he met. "A frightening
experience!" I heard exclaimed many times by people in the Holy World who had read the popular
book. But I never heard it without opening their thinking further: "Well, if it was a frightening
experience for him as nothing but a make-believe Negro for sixty days-then you think about what
real Negroes in America have gone through for four hundred years."
One honor that came to me, I had prayed for: His Eminence, Prince Faisal, invited me to a
personal audience with him.
As I entered the room, tall, handsome Prince Faisal came from behind his desk.I never will forget
the reflection I had at that instant, that here was one of the world's most important men, and yet
with his dignity one saw clearly his sincere humility. He indicated for me a chair opposite from his.
Our interpreter was the Deputy Chief of Protocol, Muhammad Abdul Azziz Maged, an Egyptian-
born Arab, who looked like a Harlem Negro.