Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.--- President of Black America

Martin Luther King Jr. - Acceptance Speech

Martin Luther King's Acceptance Speech, on the occasion of the award of the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo, December 10, 1964

 

Your Majesty, Your Royal Highness, Mr. President, Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen:

  I accept the Nobel Prize for Peace at a moment when 22 million Negroes of the United States of America are engaged in a creative battle to end the long night of racial injustice. I accept this award on behalf of a civil rights movement which is moving with determination and a majestic scorn for risk and danger to establish a reign of freedom and a rule of justice. I am mindful that only yesterday in Birmingham, Alabama, our children, crying out for brotherhood, were answered with fire hoses, snarling dogs and even death. I am mindful that only yesterday in Philadelphia, Mississippi, young people seeking to secure the right to vote were brutalized and murdered. And only yesterday more than 40 houses of worship in the State of Mississippi alone were bombed or burned because they offered a sanctuary to those who would not accept segregation. I am mindful that debilitating and grinding poverty afflicts my people and chains them to the lowest rung of the economic ladder.
Therefore, I must ask why this prize is awarded to a movement which is beleaguered and committed to unrelenting struggle; to a movement which has not won the very peace and brotherhood which is the essence of the Nobel Prize.

Sooner or later all the people of the world will have to discover a way to live together in peace ...

After contemplation, I conclude that this award which I receive on behalf of that movement is a profound recognition that nonviolence is the answer to the crucial political and moral question of our time - the need for man to overcome oppression and violence without resorting to violence and oppression. Civilization and violence are antithetical concepts. Negroes of the United States, following the people of India, have demonstrated that nonviolence is not sterile passivity, but a powerful moral force which makes for social transformation. Sooner or later all the people of the world will have to discover a way to live together in peace, and thereby transform this pending cosmic elegy into a creative psalm of brotherhood. If this is to be achieved, man must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression and retaliation. The foundation of such a method is love.
The tortuous road which has led from Montgomery, Alabama to Oslo bears witness to this truth. This is a road over which millions of Negroes are travelling to find a new sense of dignity. This same road has opened for all Americans a new era of progress and hope. It has led to a new Civil Rights Bill, and it will, I am convinced, be widened and lengthened into a super highway of justice as Negro and white men in increasing numbers create alliances to overcome their common problems.

I accept this award today with an abiding faith in America and an audacious faith in the future of mankind. I refuse to accept despair as the final response to the ambiguities of history. I refuse to accept the idea that the "isness" of man's present nature makes him morally incapable of reaching up for the eternal "oughtness" that forever confronts him. I refuse to accept the idea that man is mere flotsom and jetsom in the river of life, unable to influence the unfolding events which surround him. I refuse to accept the view that mankind is so tragically bound to the starless midnight of racism and war that the bright daybreak of peace and brotherhood can never become a reality.
I refuse to accept the cynical notion that nation after nation must spiral down a militaristic stairway into the hell of thermonuclear destruction. I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. This is why right temporarily defeated is stronger than evil triumphant. I believe that even amid today's mortar bursts and whining bullets, there is still hope for a brighter tomorrow. I believe that wounded justice, lying prostrate on the blood-flowing streets of our nations, can be lifted from this dust of shame to reign supreme among the children of men. I have the audacity to believe that peoples everywhere can have three meals a day for their bodies, education and culture for their minds, and dignity, equality and freedom for their spirits. I believe that what self-centered men have torn down men other-centered can build up. I still believe that one day mankind will bow before the altars of God and be crowned triumphant over war and bloodshed, and nonviolent redemptive good will proclaim the rule of the land. "And the lion and the lamb shall lie down together and every man shall sit under his own vine and fig tree and none shall be afraid." I still believe that We Shall overcome!

This faith can give us courage to face the uncertainties of the future. It will give our tired feet new strength as we continue our forward stride toward the city of freedom. When our days become dreary with low-hovering clouds and our nights become darker than a thousand midnights, we will know that we are living in the creative turmoil of a genuine civilization struggling to be born.
Today I come to Oslo as a trustee, inspired and with renewed dedication to humanity. I accept this prize on behalf of all men who love peace and brotherhood. I say I come as a trustee, for in the depths of my heart I am aware that this prize is much more than an honor to me personally.
Every time I take a flight, I am always mindful of the many people who make a successful journey possible - the known pilots and the unknown ground crew.

So you honor the dedicated pilots of our struggle who have sat at the controls as the freedom movement soared into orbit. You honor, once again, Chief Lutuli of South Africa, whose struggles with and for his people, are still met with the most brutal expression of man's inhumanity to man. You honor the ground crew without whose labor and sacrifices the jet flights to freedom could never have left the earth. Most of these people will never make the headline and their names will not appear in Who's Who. Yet when years have rolled past and when the blazing light of truth is focused on this marvellous age in which we live - men and women will know and children will be taught that we have a finer land, a better people, a more noble civilization - because these humble children of God were willing to suffer for righteousness' sake.

... peace is more precious than diamonds or silver or gold.

I think Alfred Nobel would know what I mean when I say that I accept this award in the spirit of a curator of some precious heirloom which he holds in trust for its true owners - all those to whom beauty is truth and truth beauty - and in whose eyes the beauty of genuine brotherhood and peace is more precious than diamonds or silver or gold.

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RubyMae’s Collection:  Conscious  Art  Of  Black  Life.

  Dr.  Ruby Mae Chapman , a Creative Child of the Universe,  a Critical Thinker, Writer, Artist, Crafter, Life Encourager, Scholar, Researcher, and Grant Writer.  Owner of the Wisdom Store, writings include “Life Interruptions, “Ask Ruby” ,”Miss Manners”  and  “Messy Manners”.  Dr. Ruby Mae is featured in newsletters and magazines.

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Dr. Ruby Mae Chapman, Life’s Interruptions,  Co-Founder of Napolean & Ada Moton Chapman Institute, Folk Artist, Children’s Advocate, Scholar, Researcher and Writer

 

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King called for a "gigantic Marshall Plan" for the poor in 1964

King eventually realized that many white Americans had at least a psychological stake in perpetuating racism. He began to recognize that racial segregation was devised not only to oppress Black Americans but also to keep working-class whites from challenging their own oppression by letting them feel superior to blacks. "The Southern aristocracy took the world and gave the poor white man Jim Crow," King said from the Capitol steps in Montgomery, following the 1965 march from Selma. "And when his wrinkled stomach cried out for the food that his empty pockets could not provide, he ate Jim Crow, a psychological bird that told him that no matter how bad off he was, at least he was a white man, better than a Black man."
When King launched a civil rights campaign in Chicago in 1965, he was shocked by the hatred and violence expressed by working-class whites as he and his followers marched through the streets of segregated neighborhoods in Chicago and its suburbs. He saw that the problem in Chicago's ghetto was not legal segregation but "economic exploitation" -- slum housing, overpriced food, and low-wage jobs -- "because someone profits from its existence."
These experiences led King to develop a more radical outlook. King supported President Lyndon B. Johnson's declaration of the War on Poverty in 1964, but, like his friend and ally Walter Reuther, the president of the United Auto Workers, King thought that it did not go nearly far enough. As early as October 1964, he called for a "gigantic Marshall Plan" for the poor -- black and white. Two months later, accepting the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo, he observed that the United States could learn much from Scandinavian "democratic socialism." He began talking openly about the need to confront "class issues," which he described as "the gulf between the haves and the have nots."

What/Who Will Our Children Believe?

“O Lord, how long shall I cry for help, and you will not listen? Or cry to you “Violence!” and you will not save? Why do you make me see wrong-doing and look at trouble? Destruction and violence are before me; strife and contention arise. So the law becomes slack and justice never prevails. The wicked surround the righteous — therefore judgment comes forth perverted.” – Cry of the Hebrew prophet Habakkuk

 

This ancient plea strikes a deep chord in me and among many today. After the horror of the racist terrorist murders in Charleston, South Carolina many of us have been crying out with questions about all the strife and violence permeating our nation. How long until America confronts its historic love affair with guns and violence and undergoes a healing process of first truth and then reconciliation about our profound crippling birth defects of slavery, Native American genocide, and exclusion of all women and non-propertied men from America’s dream and electoral process? Only when we face the truths of our past which continue to flare up in our present can we work toward true reconciliation and wholeness as a people and begin to close the huge gap between our dream of equality and our reality of massive racial and economic inequality. How long and what will it take to make America America?

In South Africa, many people credit that nation’s formal Truth and Reconciliation Commission as a key component in the country’s transition from the brutality of apartheid to the ongoing struggle to build a fuller and freer democracy. The Commission was a court-like body set up to bear witness to, record, and in some cases grant amnesty for the violence and human rights abuses of the past—giving South Africans from all sides a formal way to acknowledge their shared history of violence, racism and injustice. At its interfaith commissioning service in February 1996, South African President Nelson Mandela said: “Ordinary South Africans are determined that the past be known, the better to ensure that it is not repeated. They seek this, not out of vengeance, but so that we can move into the future together. The choice of our nation is not whether the past should be revealed, but rather to ensure that it comes to be known in a way which promotes reconciliation and peace.”
Our nation has not gone through a similar truth process. Our “racial” wars—including slavery, genocide, lynchings and repeated unjust deaths of Black citizens at the hands of law enforcement officials and self-appointed vigilantes or racist terrorists—have been manifestations of racial beliefs among us in various incarnations. Today, a Cradle to Prison Pipeline^™ feeds our mass incarceration system. Our resegregated and still hugely unequal schools for children of color, especially if they are poor, are repeating pre-Brown v. Board of Education era practices. Our massive child and family poverty—which unjustly affects children and people of color—and indefensible massive wealth and income inequality continue two Americas of haves and have nots. And guns, guns, guns everywhere lethalize hate, terrorize inner-city children daily in dangerous neighborhoods, and darken the future of millions of children in search of America’s elusive dream. There are no safe havens from the carnage of guns which kill or injure a child or teen every 35 minutes. The recently publicized police killings of unarmed Black boys and men have opened a new chapter in exposing many old and still deeply engrained systemic problems of racism and classism in America. And the murders of nine Black churchgoers in a Charleston, South Carolina prayer meeting by a 21-year-old White man remind us that the most aberrant and violent kind of racial hatred is still alive in our gun saturated society—passing on the old poisons to new generations. While the removal of the Confederate flag and statues of Confederate war heroes symbolizing slavery and racial apartheid is a step forward, it does not confront the deeper historical national blight of slavery and the structural and cultural inequalities and racial seeds from our shared past that still permeate the tainted soil of our nation today.

It’s time for real truth and then reconciliation in America from the bottom up and top down. And it must begin with teaching truthfully American history. And while we can’t just imitate South Africa’s or Germany’s or Rwanda’s or other countries’ processes we can learn from them in designing a process that fits America’s history and context if we are to redeem our future for our children’s sake. There are thoughtful beginnings with Brown University’s examination of the slave trade’s role in its history and Trinity Church Boston’s and Trinity Church Providence’s examination of their historic engagement with slavery. Perhaps other colleges, universities, churches, denominations and other prominent institutions which benefited from slavery and the slave trade should consider following their examples to set history straight. All of us would benefit from reading Ebony and Ivy by Craig Steven Wilder and supporting efforts by the Equal Justice Initiative in Montgomery, Alabama led by Bryan Stevenson, author of Just Mercy, to put up markers indicating where slave markets existed and documenting lynchings in our not very distant past.
When the prophet Habakkuk asked “how long,” the answer he received was: “Write the vision; make it plain on tablets, so that a runner may read it. For there is still a vision for the appointed time; it speaks of the end, and does not lie. If it seems to tarry, wait for it; it will surely come, it will not delay.” America’s great 20^th century prophet, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., answered the same question in his time: “We must come to see that the end we seek is a society at peace with itself, a society that can live with its conscience. And that will be a day not of the white man, not of the black man. That will be the day of man as man. I know you are asking today, ‘How long will it take?’ Somebody’s asking, ‘How long will prejudice blind the visions of men?’…I come to say to you this afternoon, however difficult the moment, however frustrating the hour, it will not be long, because ‘truth crushed to earth will rise again.’ How long? Not long, because ‘no lie can live forever.’ How long? Not long, because ‘you shall reap what you sow’….How long? Not long, because the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”
South African Archbishop and Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Desmond Tutu, appointed by President Mandela to chair South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, is a prophetic voice in our world today. An outspoken defender of human rights and campaigner for justice for the oppressed, he is revered for his commitment to fighting poverty, racism and all forms of discrimination against any human beings, and dedication to reshaping our conversations about peace, equality and forgiveness. He sent a video message to faith and youth leaders attending the 21^st annual Children’s Defense Fund (CDF)’s Samuel DeWitt Proctor Institute for Child Advocacy Ministry in July at CDF-Haley Farm and shared what he believes is God’s dream for all human children:

 “And God says, I have a dream. I have a dream that all of my children will discover that they belong in one family—my family, the human family—a family in which there are no outsiders; all are held in the embrace of the one whose love will never let us go; the one who says that each one of us is of incredible worth, that each one of us is precious to God because each of us has their name written on the palms of God’s hands. And God says, there are no outsiders—black, white, red, yellow, short, tall, young, old, rich, poor, gay, lesbian, straight—everyone. All belong. And God says, I have only you to help me realize my dream. Help me.”

I hope America can realize God’s dream for all humankind. I believe we can realize God’s and Dr. King’s and Bishop Tutu’s dream if each of us holds ourselves accountable and refuses to give up challenging our personal and collective prejudices and special privileges. I hope all of us will do whatever is necessary to pass on to our children and grandchildren a better and more just country and world than we inherited. But to do so, we must wake up, open our eyes and ears, avoid convenient ignorance, seek the truth, speak up, stand up, and never give up fighting for justice for all. How long? Not long, if a critical remnant among us is determined to do whatever is necessary to make sure that love trumps hate and that the truth of our history is taught and discussed and enabled to help make us free.
 Marian Wright Edelman is President of the Children's Defense Fund whose Leave No Child Behind® mission is to ensure every child a Healthy Start, a Head Start, a Fair Start, a Safe Start and a Moral Start in life and successful passage to adulthood with the help of caring families and communities. For more information go to www.childrensdefense.org. 

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"No matter how dark the days," she says, "we can sing songs of hope, songs of love."

Tucker was appalled by the lyrics they cited, words she cannot bring herself to say out loud -- words, she points out, that cannot be printed in a family newspaper. To her, the issue was simple: These lyrics are unacceptable.
Tucker makes frequent admiring references to the work of Frances Cress Welsing, a D.C. psychiatrist known for anti-Jewish views. Welsing maintains that, to the extent Jews are involved in the production of gangsta rap music, they are consciously or subconsciously acting out what happened to them during the Holocaust.
Abraham Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League, has asked Tucker to dissociate herself from Welsing's theories. "She seems to have a clear view and direction in terms of what she sees as right and wrong. And yet when it comes to the issue of seeing Jews as responsible for gangsta rap, it's like a blind spot," he says. "She's not able to divorce herself from this conspiratorial, antisemitic view . . . which in the end says, Blame the Jews.' "
Tucker strongly denies any bias. Pressed to clarify, she says: "There are forces that were present in Nazi Germany where some groups were interested only in the Aryan race and would use stereotypes with which to diminish a people. The Jewish communities have been our greatest allies. What happened to them is what is happening to us.

The tall, stylish woman who orchestrated the uplifting event was C. DeLores Tucker. And during the course of the morning, the dignitaries also applauded her own crusade: to clean up "gangsta rap." The emcee, Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-D.C.), recalled that struggle. "We were astonished to hear this filthy, lowdown music, and it was about us," she said. "And we looked to the right and looked to the left, and there was silence -- until one woman said something and did something."
And when singer Anita Baker stepped forward to present a $10,000 check to begin the C. DeLores Tucker defense fund, the room erupted in jubilation.
Leaving one question: Why does this woman need a defense fund?
C. DeLores Tucker, 68, entered the fight for civil rights more than 50 years ago and never left. She is a glamorous, well-to-do master of fund-raising -- for black causes, black mayors, Democrats, anyone whose needs matched her own need to make a difference. She says she's motivated by "a passionate love affair for God and my people," but she's ready to give it up. "I wish other people could do what I'm doing so I could step back and retire," she says.
Instead she finds herself in deeper than ever. Through the National Political Congress of Black Women, an organization she co-founded more than a decade ago, Tucker has waged her latest and perhaps loudest battle -- the one against gangsta rap, the one that has made her the target of two lawsuits.

Opponents say her attack on this music shows she's out of touch with young people and far removed from inner-city concerns. Tucker almost sputters her answer: "Look at this," she says. It's a letter she received from a young Lorton inmate who traced his crimes to gangsta rap: "They made it sound so good and look so real I would drink and smoke drugs like on the video," he wrote. "The guns, money, cars, drugs . . . became reality."And there are suggestions that Tucker has an anti-Semitic tendency to blame the record industry's flaws on Jewish executives. "It's greed-driven, drug-driven and race-driven," she says. "A Jewish child would never get a contract with that garbage. A white child would never get a contract. And it all contributes to a genocidal condition."

Someone Our Children Should Read About: Neil deGrasse Tyson

Neil deGrasse Tyson; born October 5, 1958) is an American astrophysicist, cosmologist, author, and science communicator. Since 1996, he has been the Frederick P. Rose Director of the Hayden Planetarium at the Rose Center for Earth and Space in New York City. The center is part of the American Museum of Natural History, where Tyson founded the Department of Astrophysics in 1997 and has been a research associate in the department since 2003.

Black men and women between the ages of 20 and 39 account for nearly one third of all sentenced prisoners.

Race defines every aspect of the criminal justice system, from police targeting, to crimes charged, and rates of conviction. Over the last three decades, the explosion of the prison population in the United States paralleled the stagnation in the global economy. In the early 1970s, the United States and the G7 nations began implementing neoliberal policies, moving production from the North to the global South, pushing entire sectors of workers in the United States out of the economy. As the economic role of the working class in the United States shifted from manufacturing to staffing a rising service industry, African American workers faced staggering rates of unemployment. The mid-1970s is also the first period when the incarceration rate in the United States began to rise, doubling in the 1980s, and doubling again in the 1990s. It may surprise some people that as the number of people without jobs increases, the number of working people actually increases—they become prison laborers. Everyone inside has a job. There are currently over 70 factories in California’s 33 prisons alone. Prisoners do everything from textile work and construction, to manufacturing and service work. Prisoners make shoes, clothing, and detergent; they do dental lab work, recycling, metal production, and wood production; they operate dairies, farms, and slaughterhouses. In 1865, the 13th Amendment officially abolished slavery for all people except those convicted of a crime and opened the door for mass criminalization. Prisons were built in the South as part of the backlash to Black Reconstruction and as a mechanism to re-enslave Black workers. In the late 19th-century South, an extensive prison system was developed in the interest of maintaining the racial and economic relationship of slavery. Black Codes and Convict Leasing A system of convict leasing was developed to allow white slave plantation owners in the South to literally purchase prisoners to live on their property and work under their control. Through this system, bidders paid an average $25,000 a year to the state, in exchange for control over the lives of all of the prisoners. The system provided revenue for the state and profits for plantation owners. In 1878, Georgia leased out 1,239 prisoners, and all but 115 were African American Chain Gangs As the southern states began to phase out convict leasing, prisoners were increasingly made to work in the most brutal form of forced labor, the chain gang. The chain gangs originated as a part of a massive road development project in the 1890s. Georgia was the first state to begin using chain gangs to work male felony convicts outside of the prison walls. Chains were wrapped around the ankles of prisoners, shackling five together while they worked, ate, and slept. Following Georgia’s example, the use of chain gangs spread rapidly throughout the South. Prison Labor Exploitation in the 21st Century Just a few decades later, we are witnessing the return of all of these systems of prison labor exploitation. Private corporations are able to lease factories in prisons, as well as lease prisoners out to their factories. Private corporations are running prisons-for-profit. Government-run prison factories operate as multibillion dollar industries in every state, and throughout the federal prison system. In the most punitive and racist prison systems, we are even witnessing the return of the chain gang. Prisoner resistance and community organizing has been able to defeat some of these initiatives, but in Arizona, Maricopa County continues to operate the first women’s chain gang in the history of the United States. A history so rich it must be denied. Where do we go from here:

I too, am an American

There's evidence that just being black in the United States is often all it takes to arouse suspicion. Here are 21 examples from the last five years of some of the things black people can't do without others thinking they're up to no good. 1. Listen to loud music at a gas station. 2. Walk home from a snack run to 7-11. 3. Wear a hoodie. 4. Drive after swimming. 5. Drive in a car with a white girl. 6. Appear in public in New York City. 7. Walk on the wrong side of the street. 8. Wait for a school bus to take you to your high school basketball game. 9. Drink iced tea in a parking lot. 10. Seek help after a car accident. 11. Inspect your own property. 12. Show up at your job. 13. Talk trash after an NFL game. 14. Throw a temper tantrum in kindergarten. 15. Buy designer accessories at Barney’s. 16. Buy designer accessories at Macy’s. 17. Be a 13-year-old boy. 18. Enter your own home. 19. Botch a science experiment. 20. Be a tourist. 21. Lay face down in handcuffs.

John Lewis, "Speech at the March on Washington" August 28, 1963

JOHN LEWIS, “SPEECH AT THE MARCH ON WASHINGTON” (28 AUGUST 1963)
[1] We march today for jobs and freedom, but we have nothing to be proud of.  For hundreds and thousands of our brothers are not here.  For they are receiving starvation wages, or no wages at all.  While we stand here, there are sharecroppers in the Delta of Mississippi who are out in the fields working for less than three dollars a day, twelve hours a day.  While we stand here there are students in jail on trumped-up charges.  Our brother James Farmer, along with many others, is also in jail. We come here today with a great sense of misgiving.
[2] It is true that we support the administration’s civil rights bill.  We support it with great reservations, however.  Unless Title III is put in this bill, there is nothing to protect the young children and old women who must face police dogs and fire hoses in the South while they engage in peaceful demonstrations.  In its present form, this bill will not protect the citizens of Danville, Virginia, who must live in constant fear of a police state.  It will not protect the hundreds and thousands of people that have been arrested on trumped charges.  What about the three young men, SNCC field secretaries in Americus, Georgia, who face the death penalty for engaging in peaceful protest?
[3] As it stands now, the voting section of this bill will not help the thousands of black people who want to vote.  It will not help the citizens of Mississippi, of Alabama and Georgia, who are qualified to vote, but lack a sixth-grade education.  “One man, one vote” is the African cry.  It is ours too.  It must be ours!
[4] We must have legislation that will protect the Mississippi sharecropper who is put off of his farm because he dares to register to vote.  We need a bill that will provide for the homeless and starving people of this nation.  We need a bill that will ensure the equality of a maid who earns five dollars a week in a home of a family whose total income is $100,000 a year.  We must have a good FEPC bill.
[5] My friends, let us not forget that we are involved in a serious social revolution.  By and large, American politics is dominated by politicians who build their careers on immoral compromises and ally themselves with open forms of political, economic, and social exploitation.  There are exceptions, of course.  We salute those.  But what political leader can stand up and say, “My party is the party of principles”?  For the party of Kennedy is also the party of Eastland.  The party of Javits is also the party of Goldwater.  Where is our party?  Where is the political party that will make it unnecessary to march on Washington?
[6] Where is the political party that will make it unnecessary to march in the streets of Birmingham?  Where is the political party that will protect the citizens of Albany, Georgia?  Do you know that in Albany, Georgia, nine of our leaders have been indicted, not by the Dixiecrats, but by the federal government for peaceful protest?  But what did the federal government do when Albany’s deputy sheriff beat Attorney C.B. King and left him half-dead?  What did the federal government do when local police officials kicked and assaulted the pregnant wife of Slater King, and she lost her baby?
[7] To those who have said, “Be patient and wait,” we have long said that we cannot be patient.  We do not want our freedom gradually, but we want to be free now!  We are tired.  We are tired of being beaten by policemen.  We are tired of seeing our people locked up in jail over and over again.  And then you holler, “Be patient.”  How long can we be patient?  We want our freedom and we want it now.  We do not want to go to jail.  But we will go to jail if this is the price we must pay for love, brotherhood, and true peace.
[8] I appeal to all of you to get into this great revolution that is sweeping this nation.  Get in and stay in the streets of every city, every village and hamlet of this nation until true freedom comes, until the revolution of 1776 is complete.  We must get in this revolution and complete the revolution.  For in the Delta in Mississippi, in southwest Georgia, in the Black Belt of Alabama, in Harlem, in Chicago, Detroit, Philadelphia, and all over this nation, the black masses are on the march for jobs and freedom.
[9] They’re talking about slow down and stop.  We will not stop.  All of the forces of Eastland, Barnett, Wallace, and Thurmond will not stop this revolution.  If we do not get meaningful legislation out of this Congress, the time will come when we will not confine our marching to Washington.  We will march through the South; through the streets of Jackson, through the streets of Danville, through the streets of Cambridge, through the streets of Birmingham.  But we will march with the spirit of love and with the spirit of dignity that we have shown here today.  By the force of our demands, our determination, and our numbers, we shall splinter the segregated South into a thousand pieces and put them together in the image of God and democracy.  We must say: “Wake up America!  Wake up!”  For we cannot stop, and we will not and cannot be patient. 

Happpy Birthday-Mrs. Ida B. Wells

CHAPTER VI. SELF HELP Of the many inhuman outrages of this present year, the only case where the proposed lynching did not occur, was where the men armed themselves in Jacksonville, Fla., and Paducah, Ky., and prevented it. The only times an Afro-American who was assaulted got away has been when he had a gun and used it in self-defense.
The lesson this teaches and which every Afro American should ponder well, is that a Winchester rifle should have a place of honor in every black home, and it should be used for that protection which the law refuses to give. When the white man who is always the aggressor knows he runs as great a risk of biting the dust every time his Afro-American victim does, he will have greater respect for Afro-American life. The more the Afro-American yields and cringes and begs, the more he has to do so, the more he is insulted, outraged and lynched.
Ida B. Wells
Southern Horrors. Lynch Law in All Its Phases, 1892
…It is with no pleasure I have dipped my hands in the corruption here exposed. Somebody must show that the Afro-American race is more sinned against than sinning, and it seems to have fallen upon me to do so. The awful death-roll that Judge Lynch is calling every week is appalling, not only because of the lives it takes, the rank cruelty and outrage to the victims, but because of the prejudice it fosters and the stain it places against the good name of a weak race.
The Afro-American is not a bestial race. If this work can contribute in any way toward proving this, and at the same time arouse the conscience of the American people to a demand for justice to every citizen, and punishment by law for the lawless, I shall feel I have done my race a service. Other considerations are of minor importance.
New York City, Oct. 26, 1892. IDA B. WELLS.
HON. FRED. DOUGLASS'S LETTER
Dear Miss Wells:
Let me give you thanks for your faithful paper on the lynch abomination now generally practiced against colored people in the South. There has been no word equal to it in convincing power. I have spoken, but my word is feeble in comparison. You give us what you know and testify from actual knowledge. You have dealt with the facts with cool, painstaking fidelity and left those naked and uncontradicted facts to speak for themselves.
Brave woman! you have done your people and mine a service which can neither be weighed nor measured. If American conscience were only half alive, if the American church and clergy were only half christianized, if American moral sensibility were not hardened by persistent infliction of outrage and crime against colored people, a scream of horror, shame and indignation would rise to Heaven wherever your pamphlet shall be read.
But alas! even crime has power to reproduce itself and create conditions favorable to its own existence. It sometimes seems we are deserted by earth and Heaven--yet we must still think, speak and work, and trust in the power of a merciful God for final deliverance.
Very truly and gratefully yours,
FREDERICK DOUGLASS.
Cedar Hill, Anacostia, D.C., Oct. 25, 1892.

CHAPTER I. THE OFFENSE
Wednesday evening May 24th, 1892, the city of Memphis was filled with excitement. Editorials in the daily papers of that date caused a meeting to be held in the Cotton Exchange Building; a committee was sent for the editors of the "Free Speech" an Afro-American journal published in that city, and the only reason the open threats of lynching that were made were not carried out was because they could not be found. The cause of all this commotion was the following editorial published in the "Free Speech" May 21st, 1892, the Saturday previous.
"Eight negroes lynched since last issue of the 'Free Speech' one at Little Rock, Ark., last Saturday morning where the citizens broke (?)[A] into the penitentiary and got their man; three near Anniston, Ala., one near New Orleans; and three at Clarksville, Ga., the last three for killing a white man, and five on the same old racket—the new alarm about raping white women. The same programme of hanging, then shooting bullets into the lifeless bodies was carried out to the letter.
Nobody in this section of the country believes the old thread bare lie that Negro men rape white women. If Southern white men are not careful, they will over-reach themselves and public sentiment will have a reaction; a conclusion will then be reached which will be very damaging to the moral reputation of their women."
…
The editorial in question was prompted by the many inhuman and fiendish lynchings of Afro-Americans which have recently taken place and was meant as a warning. Eight lynched in one week and five of them charged with rape! The thinking public will not easily believe freedom and education more brutalizing than slavery, and the world knows that the crime of rape was unknown during four years of civil war, when the white women of the South were at the mercy of the race, which is all at once charged with being a bestial one.
Since my business has been destroyed and I am an exile from home because of that editorial, the issue has been forced, and as the writer of it I feel that the race and the public generally should have a statement of the facts as they exist. They will serve at the same time as a defense for the Afro-Americans Sampsons who suffer themselves to be betrayed by white Delilahs….
CHAPTER III. THE NEW CRY
…One by one the Southern States have legally (?) disfranchised the Afro-American, and since the repeal of the Civil Rights Bill nearly every Southern State has passed separate car laws with a penalty against their infringement. The race regardless of advancement is penned into filthy, stifling partitions cut off from smoking cars. All this while, although the political cause has been removed, the butcheries of black men at Barnwell, S.C., Carrolton, Miss., Waycross, Ga., and Memphis, Tenn., have gone on; also the flaying alive of a man in Kentucky, the burning of one in Arkansas, the hanging of a fifteen year old girl in Louisiana, a woman in Jackson, Tenn., and one in Hollendale, Miss., until the dark and bloody record of the South shows 728 Afro-Americans lynched during the past 8 years. Not 50 of these were for political causes; the rest were for all manner of accusations from that of rape of white women, to the case of the boy Will Lewis who was hanged at Tullahoma, Tenn., last year for being drunk and "sassy" to white folks.
These statistics compiled by the Chicago "Tribune" were given the first of this year (1892). Since then, not less than one hundred and fifty have been known to have met violent death at the hands of cruel bloodthirsty mobs during the past nine months.
To palliate this record (which grows worse as the Afro-American becomes intelligent) and excuse some of the most heinous crimes that ever stained the history of a country, the South is shielding itself behind the plausible screen of defending the honor of its women. This, too, in the face of the fact that only one-third of the 728 victims to mobs have been charged with rape, to say nothing of those of that one-third who were innocent of the charge. A white correspondent of the Baltimore Sun declares that the Afro-American who was lynched in Chestertown, Md., in May for assault on a white girl was innocent; that the deed was done by a white man who had since disappeared. The girl herself maintained that her assailant was a white man. When that poor Afro-American was murdered, the whites excused their refusal of a trial on the ground that they wished to spare the white girl the mortification of having to testify in court.
This cry has had its effect. It has closed the heart, stifled the conscience, warped the judgment and hushed the voice of press and pulpit on the subject of lynch law throughout this "land of liberty." Men who stand high in the esteem of the public for christian character, for moral and physical courage, for devotion to the principles of equal and exact justice to all, and for great sagacity, stand as cowards who fear to open their mouths before this great outrage. They do not see that by their tacit encouragement, their silent acquiescence, the black shadow of lawlessness in the form of lynch law is spreading its wings over the whole country.
Men who, like Governor Tillman, start the ball of lynch law rolling for a certain crime, are powerless to stop it when drunken or criminal white toughs feel like hanging an Afro-American on any pretext.
Even to the better class of Afro-Americans the crime of rape is so revolting they have too often taken the white man's word and given lynch law neither the investigation nor condemnation it deserved.
They forget that a concession of the right to lynch a man for a certain crime, not only concedes the right to lynch any person for any crime, but (so frequently is the cry of rape now raised) it is in a fair way to stamp us a race of rapists and desperadoes. They have gone on hoping and believing that general education and financial strength would solve the difficulty, and are devoting their energies to the accumulation of both….

CHAPTER IV. THE MALICIOUS AND UNTRUTHFUL WHITE PRESS
On March 9th, 1882, there were lynched in this same city [Memphis] three of the best specimens of young since-the-war Afro-American manhood. They were peaceful, law-abiding citizens and energetic business men.
They believed the problem was to be solved by eschewing politics and putting money in the purse. They owned a flourishing grocery business in a thickly populated suburb of Memphis, and a white man named Barrett had one on the opposite corner. After a personal difficulty which Barrett sought by going into the "People's Grocery" drawing a pistol and was thrashed by Calvin McDowell, he (Barrett) threatened to "clean them out." These men were a mile beyond the city limits and police protection; hearing that Barrett's crowd was coming to attack them Saturday night, they mustered forces and prepared to defend themselves against the attack.
When Barrett came he led a posse of officers, twelve in number, who afterward claimed to be hunting a man for whom they had a warrant. That twelve men in citizen's clothes should think it necessary to go in the night to hunt one man who had never before been arrested, or made any record as a criminal has never been explained. When they entered the back door the young men thought the threatened attack was on, and fired into them. Three of the officers were wounded, and when the defending party found it was officers of the law upon whom they had fired, they ceased and got away.
Thirty-one men were arrested and thrown in jail as "conspirators," although they all declared more than once they did not know they were firing on officers. Excitement was at fever heat until the morning papers, two days after, announced that the wounded deputy sheriffs were out of danger. This hindered rather than helped the plans of the whites. There was no law on the statute books which would execute an Afro-American for wounding a white man, but the "unwritten law" did. Three of these men, the president, the manager and clerk of the grocery--"the leaders of the conspiracy"--were secretly taken from jail and lynched in a shockingly brutal manner. "The Negroes are getting too independent," they say, "we must teach them a lesson."
What lesson? The lesson of subordination. "Kill the leaders and it will cow the Negro who dares to shoot a white man, even in self defense."
Although the race was wild over the outrage, the mockery of law and justice which alarmed men and locked them up in jails where they could be easily and safely reached by the mob--the Afro-American ministers, newspapers and leaders counselled obedience to the law which did not protect them.
Their counsel was heeded and not a hand was uplifted to resent the outrage; following the advice of the "Free Speech," people left the city in great numbers.

CHAPTER V. THE SOUTH'S POSITION
…Public sentiment has had a slight "reaction" though not sufficient to stop the crusade of lawlessness and lynching. The spirit of christianity of the great M. E. Church was aroused to the frequent and revolting crimes against a weak people, enough to pass strong and condemnatory resolutions at its General Conference in Omaha last May. The spirit of justice of the grand old party asserted itself sufficiently to secure a denunciation of the wrongs, and a feeble declaration of the belief in human rights in the Republican platform at Minneapolis, June 7th. Some of the great dailies and weeklies have swung into line declaring that lynch law must go. The President of the United States [Benjamin Harrison] issued a proclamation that it be not tolerated in the territories over which he has jurisdiction. Governor Northern and Chief Justice Bleckley of Georgia have proclaimed against it. The citizens of Chattanooga, Tenn., have set a worthy example in that they not only condemn lynch law, but her public men demanded a trial for Weems, the accused rapist, and guarded him while the trial was in progress. The trial only lasted ten minutes, and Weems chose to plead guilty and accept twenty-one years sentence, than invite the certain death which awaited him outside that cordon of police if he had told the truth and shown the letters he had from the white woman in the case.
Col. A. S. Colyar, of Nashville, Tenn., is so overcome with the horrible state of affairs that he addressed the following earnest letter to the Nashville "American." "Nothing since I have been a reading man has so impressed me with the decay of manhood among the people of Tenn[e]ssee as the dastardly submission to the mob reign. We have reached the unprecedented low level; the awful criminal depravity of substituting the mob for the court and jury, of giving up the jail keys to the mob whenever they are demanded. We do it in the largest cities and in the country towns; we do it in midday; we do it after full, not to say formal, notice, and so thoroughly and generally is it acquiesced in that the murderers have discarded the formula of masks. They go into the town where everybody knows them, sometimes under the gaze of the governor, in the presence of the courts, in the presence of the sheriff and his deputies, in the presence of the entire police force, take out the prisoner, take his life, often with fiendish glee, and often with acts of cruelty and barbarism which impress the reader with a degeneracy rapidly approaching savage life. That the State is disgraced but faintly expresses the humiliation which has settled upon the once proud people of Tennessee. The State, in its majesty, through its organized life, for which the people pay liberally, makes but one record, but one note, and that a criminal falsehood, 'was hung by persons to the jury unknown.' The murder at Shelbyville is only a verification of what every intelligent man knew would come, because with a mob a rumor is as good as a proof."
These efforts brought forth apologies and a short halt, but the lynching mania was raged again through the past three months with unabated fury.
The strong arm of the law must be brought to bear upon lynchers in severe punishment, but this cannot and will not be done unless a healthy public sentiment demands and sustains such action.
The men and women in the South who disapprove of lynching and remain silent on the perpetration of such outrages, are particeps criminis [Latin for criminal participants], accomplices, accessories before and after the fact, equally guilty with the actual law-breakers who would not persist if they did not know that neither the law nor militia would be employed against them.