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African-American History
The Quotable King
In celebration of Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s birthday, THE BLACK
COLLEGIAN Magazine offers you a gift--a sample of the wisdom left to us
by one of the greatest African-American philosophers of our time. His legacy
is prophetic: If we use it correctly, his dream of universal peace and
justice will come true.
African-American Students and the Civil Rights
Movement
The Negro today...is college-bred, Ivy League-clad, youthful, articulate,
and resolute. He has the imagination and drive of the young, tamed by discipline
and commitment.... The young Negro is not in revolt...he is carrying forward
a revolutionary destiny of a whole people consciously and deliberately....
Indeed, the answer to the quest for a more mature, educated American,
to compete successfully with the young people of other lands, may be present
in this new movement.
African-American Leadership
The white establishment is skilled in flattering and cultivating emerging
leaders.... This kind of Negro leader acquires the white man's contempt
for the ordinary Negro. He is often more at home with the middle-class
white than he is among his own. His language changes, his location changes,
his income changes, and ultimately he changes from the representative of
the Negro to the white man into the white man's representative to the Negro.
The tragedy is that too often he does not recognize what has happened to
him....
The urgency of the hour calls for leaders of wise judgment and sound
integrity--leaders not in love with money, but in love with justice; leaders
not in love with publicity, but in love with humanity; leaders who can
subject their particular egos to the greatness of the cause....
Self-Esteem
The tendency to ignore the Negro's contribution to American life and
to strip him of his personhood is as old as the earliest history books
and as contemporary as the morning's newspaper. To upset this cultural
homicide, the Negro must rise up with an affirmation of his own Olympian
manhood.
Psychological freedom, a firm sense of self-esteem, is the most powerful
weapon against the long night of physical slavery. No Lincolnian emancipation
proclamation or Johnsonian civil rights bill can totally bring this kind
of freedom....
Where Do We Go From Here?
Our nettlesome task is to discover how to organize our strength into
compelling power....
One point should be a plan to improve our own economic lot. Through
the establishment of credit unions, savings and loan associations, and
cooperative enterprises, the Negro can greatly improve his economic status....
The constructive program ahead must include a campaign to get Negroes
to register and vote.... Apathy among Negroes is also a factor.... In the
past, apathy was a moral failure. Today, is a form of moral and politic
suicide....
Economic Power
Now the other thing we'll ha to do is this: Always anchor our external
direct action with the power of economic withdrawal. We are a poor people,
individually... collectively we're richer than, all the nations in the
world, with the exception of nine...We have an annual income of more than
thirty billion dollars a year...That's power right there, if we know how
to pool it..We've got to strength Black institutions....
Morality
For modern man, absolute right and absolute wrong is a matter of what
the majority is doing... Right and wrong are relative to the likes and
dislikes and the customs of a particular community.... Racism
Race prejudice is based on groundless fears, suspicions, misunderstandings
....
Peace
The conquerors of old who came killing in pursuit of peace...were akin
in seeking a peaceful world order...read Mein Kampf closely enough, you
will discover that Hitler contended that everything he did in Germany was
for peace. Every time we drop bombs in North Vietnam, President Johnson
talks eloquently about peace... We must pursue peaceful ends through peaceful
means.
Brotherhood
All life is interrelated. We are caught in an inescapable network of
mutuality; tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly,
affects all indirectly... If we are to realize the American dream we must
cultivate this world perspective....
We Shall Overcome
And as we struggle to make racial and economic justice a reality, let
us maintain faith in the future... We will confront difficulties and frustrating
moments in the struggle...but we shall overcome....
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