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Kenneth ClarkKenneth Clark
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Session:         Page of 763

Clark:

In Houston there was a black police chief who was taken from Atlanta to Houston, and I don't know whether he's still there or not.

Q:

Would you feel that this is a sign of hope or has it just not gone far enough yet?

Clark:

I don't know.

Q:

From an overall standpoint, I mean the police chief becomes a role model of course, does he not?

Clark:

Yes, but he's also part of a political operation. I don't know that any police chief, including [ ] Ward, can operate in isolation. I really don't. But that's certainly some improvement, and advances--it's a breakthrough on sort of an ethnic monopoly. A few decades ago the police chiefs were largely Irish, with exceptions of course.

Q:

I'd like to do just a single shot follow up question on Malcolm X based on a viewpoint that I've heard expressed, since you already discussed Malcolm X. So this is understood, I want to say something about my own observations again. That is, I do know in an early period Malcolm X was not considered societally serious by such persons as C. Roy Wilkins who told me once that black Muslims were just some sort of a mystical cloak, religious cult, or something.

Clark:

Unless the media blow them up.





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