Full Text of the Excerpt

LARRY THOMAS:

Do you think it had any effect at all on the attitudes of black people in Wilmington?

KOJO NANTAMBU:

Yeah, an effect on the total community. It had a demonstrable effect on the black community, especially in terms of political activity ...

LARRY THOMAS:

Positive effect?

KOJO NANTAMBU:

No, man, negative effect. The effect was totally negative and purely psychological more so than physical, but naturally the psychological affects the physical because one is synonymous with the other. After that, we lost total support of the parish because ...

LARRY THOMAS:

Do you think the elder population was with y'all, behind y'all?

KOJO NANTAMBU:

They were behind us a hundred percent in the beginning, when the white folks started it; while the children were protesting, they were behind us one hundred percent. That was one time that I saw the community totally behind us. And they stayed behind us until that damn Golden Frinks came here. Up until that time, we were still organizing. We still were trying to get the students together. This is where we really got our church together. We were still having regular meetings at a few of the churches. Central Baptist was one of the churches that let us have them in. But all the other churches closed their doors, man.

LARRY THOMAS:

When was this?

KOJO NANTAMBU:

Between February and April, May, '71 ... We still tried to get together and we had the parish with us then. We tried to get together and have some ...

LARRY THOMAS:

After this had dropped off?

KOJO NANTAMBU:

We weren't going to let it die, man. We weren't going to let the movement die. We wanted things to stay active and we had a lot of the parish still with us. But we would never get a place to meet. Every time we tried to get a church, they closed the door. If we got a church, about the time we got there and got the meeting going, we'd get put out. Reverend Vaughan even put us out of his church. He'd got shot because ...

LARRY THOMAS:

the cause. [Laughter].