Florida: Two for a Monologue

“Sissy Brown, we don’t need you—go home!” chanted a quarter of the 200 Jacksonville Negroes gathered at a Black Power rally in a baseball park to hear Firebrand H. Rap Brown last week. Such open hostility was surprise enough for the youthful chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, but there was even more in store. Suddenly he found himself eyeball to eyeball with Florida’s Republican Governor. Claude R. Kirk Jr., who had walked into the ballpark and up to the speaker’s area at home plate.

Said Kirk, grabbing the microphone from Brown: “Welcome to Florida.”

Brown stared blankly at the Governor.

Kirk (offering his hand to Brown): “You are welcome if you came here in faith and in spirit. We don’t want any talk about guns.”

Brown (brusquely ignoring Kirk’s hand): “Let me have the microphone. I didn’t ask you to come here.”

Kirk: “Mr. Brown, we welcome you to Florida. If you are here in good spirits, I’m glad you are here. Are you here in good spirits?”

Brown: “I’ll speak without the mike then.”

The Crowd (chanting): “We want Rap! We want Rap!”

Brown: “If we can’t hold the rally here, we’ll hold it somewhere else, man.”

Kirk (to crowd): “Quiet, quiet. May I have your attention.” The chants grow louder, drowning out Kirk.

Brown (capturing the microphone from Kirk, who retreats to the bleachers): “If this honkie wants to campaign, let him pay for it. Don’t come here and run no game on me.”

Rant & Sigh. Haranguing the crowd, Brown then advised them that “if you are gonna loot, brother, loot a gun store. Don’t be running around here looting no liquor, ’cause liquor’s just for celebrating. We ain’t got nothing to celebrate about. You better get yourselves some guns, baby.” While Brown ranted, Kirk sighed. “Nobody wants to hear me talk. It’s a shame. I can give dandy speeches at the drop of a hat.”

Though Brown repeatedly urged Negroes to arm themselves, Kirk said afterward that he had not violated a two-week-old state law that imposes a two-year prison sentence for inciting a riot. Debate, said the Governor, “is our way of life. If Mr. Castro, who is only 90 miles away, comes to Florida, I’ll debate with him.” Asked if he thought Brown also was a Communist, Kirk borrowed one of Walter Reuther’s old tag lines: “If it looks like a duck and walks like a duck, it must be a duck.” Nevertheless, the Governor thought that Brown, a dropout in his senior year at Louisiana’s Southern University Agriculture and Mechanical College, still had a lot to learn about demagoguery. “If that’s the way to start a riot,” said Kirk, “he’s not much at it.”

The way to deflate Brown Power, the Governor suggested, is not to give Rap less TV coverage—as some have suggested—but more. Said Kirk: “Give him three hours on national TV, and then forget about it.”