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Unread 01-19-2022, 05:00 AM
Jim Moonan Jim Moonan is offline
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Join Date: Aug 2016
Location: Boston, MA
Posts: 4,197
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.
Ralph, I took the liberty:


But when you have seen vicious mobs
Lynch your mothers and fathers at will and drown
your sisters and brothers at whim; when you have seen
hate-filled policemen curse, kick, brutalize, and even kill
your black brothers and sisters with impunity; when you see
the vast majority of your twenty million Negro brothers smothering
in an airtight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society; when you
suddenly find your tongue twisted and your speech stammering as you seek
to explain to your six-year-old daughter why she cannot go to the public amusement park
that has just been advertised on television, and see tears welling up in her little eyes when she
is told that Funtown is closed to colored children, and see the depressing clouds of inferiority begin to form in her little mental sky, and see her begin to distort her little personality by unconsciously developing a bitterness toward white people; when you have to concoct
an answer for a five-year-old son asking in agonizing pathos, "Daddy, why do white
people treat colored people so mean?"; when you take a cross-country drive
and find it necessary to sleep night after night in the uncomfortable corners
of your automobile because no motel will accept you; when you
are humiliated day in and day out by nagging signs
reading "white" and "colored"; when your first
name becomes "nigger" and your middle name
becomes "boy" (however old you are) and your
last name becomes "John," and when your wife
and mother are never given the respected title
"Mrs."; when you are harried by day
and haunted by night by the fact
that you are a Negro

living constantly at tiptoe stance, never knowing what to expect next, and plagued with inner fears and outer resentments; when you are forever fighting a degenerating sense of "nobodyness" then you will understand

why we find it difficult


to wait.


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