CALL FOR GUNS

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31649, 8 April 1968, Page 13

CALL FOR GUNS

Carmichael Gives View

(N.Z.P.A.-Reuter—Copyright)

WASHINGTON, April 7.

The “Black Power” advocate, Stokely Carmichael, urged Negroes on Friday to arm themselves with guns and take to the streets In retaliation for the assassination of Dr Martin Luther King. Carmichael told a news conference he wanted black America to “kill off the real enemy”. “We have to retaliate for the death of our leaders,” he said.

“The execution of those debts will not be in the courtrooms. They will be in the streets of the United States of America. “When white America killed Dr King she opened the eyes of every black man in this country,” Carmichael said.

He blamed President Johnson and Senator Robert Kennedy, along with the rest of America’s white population for the death of the Nobel Peace prize winner. “Bobby Kennedy pulled that trigger as much as anyone else,” Carmichael said, charging that the senator had failed to push for the prosecution of slayers of Negro civil rights workers when he was Attorney-General. The militant “Black Power" leader declared that violence that erupted in city after city across the United States after Dr King was shot in Memphis is “just light stuff” when compared with “what will happen”. Carmichael, speaking off the cuff inside a barricaded tworoom shop in one of Washington’s Negro districts, said “What is needed now are guns and more guns—last night here those kids tried to fight guns with rocks and bottles and it just didn’t work. “We will wait, but only until we can get enough guns.”