Let's all join the fight for freedom

I never shall forget. One. This looking at Dr. Abernathy is topic here. His topic is less all join the fight for freedom. You remind me so much of what they tell about one of my fellows sit is sort of down in Jackson Mississippi. They don down in Jackson and in other parts of they have we have what we call the fall the what would be tantamount to some John Birch Society is why Citizens Council down there they call it just a little bit more popular than this of the society that I mention. But this this group has a lot of money that is a matter of fact most of the money in the south is tied up in this organization and they are. Went around trying to find the good negro brother in Jackson who would say before the world what they wanted him to say. Namely that Negroes in general like.

Racial segregation and people in Jackson Mississippi and particularly enjoy it. But but this. They they couldn't trust in the rest of us who can read and write so they were ran around and found a man on the street whom they felt was able to do this. He was a man who they knew had never been in school and. They knew he couldn't read and he couldn't write. And so they often ask him to come to the famous television and radio station then to set it. And they were going to have him to say to the world what he felt about the solve and what he felt about Jackson and the Cyprian Patrik. The scene is then the radio station television lights the lights are on him. And I say now look. You're on the air.

People all over the world can see you and they can hear you. And I want you to say we want you to say just precisely how you feel about Jackson Mississippi and the man ask him. Say Are there people in California who can hear me. And he says they say yes people in California can hear. He said Can people in Japan hear me. He said yes people in Japan can hear you. They see me. Yes they can see well what about in China. They can hear you're too this is an international hookup. Well what about my friends over at the Hall of New York. Can they hear him. He said Oh yes I hear you. And you want me to say just precisely what I want to say. Yeah say what just just just what you want to say. And he stood up threw his 6 feet by 6 feet and 8 inches tall and cleared his throat.

Raise his hands and said. I was. I've. Gone to. The. Doctor everything that is right. Let's all join in the fight the fight of freedom. It seems that he came here to say hell. Ladies and gentlemen Dr. Raffy Abernathy. Group. Sure. I do want to think with you this

evening and to raise some questions in your mind. Concerning a nation and its future on this topic. Let's all join in the fight for freedom. There is a fierce wind blowing in the universe today. It is blowing with hurricane force tearing down old systems sweeping away a crumbling oughta and nurturing in to be a new way which is the direction from whence it comes. We do not know where and where it is headed. We cannot tell but we do know where it started for like Daniel

Stone which was cut out of the mountain this fierce when originated in the bird on hearts and the trouble so men and women who want to be free. And this fierce wind keeps blowing and blowing for it is designed to blow down the godly kingdoms of this universe if you will live your prophetic visions to the fields of Africa. You can see the damaging results of this win if you will listen with your spiritual lives you can hear the echo of this wind blowing the rumble and cards of discontent in the fields of Asia. The wind is blowing in South America and it

even blows here in the United States of America. To many air the sound of this wind is frightening to the keepers of the status quo. The defenders of a day are there never to be revived the Confederacy. The sound of this wind is frightening. Oh they know very well that this wind is going to blow there. And the guard layer houses down. But for others of us the sound of this win is good news it makes music in the air for all over our heads. We hear freedom freedom. We want our freedom and we want it NOW not in the next generation or the next century

and not in the next decade. Aw next year our next quarter or next week. But we want our freedom and we want it now. And these cries are being heard today all over this nation and all over the world. So the struggle in which the Negro and minorities here in the United States are engaged in today is not an isolated struggle but it is the pot of A would struggle. You've heard I'm certain over and over again that this new age has produced

a a new Negro a negro. It is true that has been bitten by segregation. That has been stung by this evil system that has sought to pin a badge of in fear are it upon him to deny him his God given as well as his constitutional rights. It is true. That this evil system have imposed this false doctoring of a superior race and has sought to say to him that he is. He is nobody. In many instances he is not a person at all

but from under this yoke of oppression. The negro in the United States of America is seeking to emerge today not in any longer a begging form but demanding his constitutional and his God given rights. A friend of mine a white friend in Montgomery said to me some weeks ago before I left my grammar but Rabbi Abernathy Why don't you organize a movement and take all of the negroes back to Africa if you will organize such a movement. Then I will be the first person to. Give a $5000 contribution to the cause.

And I have a letter from a lady and Alabama and she suggested that I would do the very same thing. And a farmer sent me a letter and made the suggestion and said that he would make a $10000 contribution to the cause because if I like organized movement and took all of the negroes back to Africa then he could make such a contribution from the sharecropper wages that he had to pay the negroes who lived on his plantation. Of course I seek to be nonviolent in all of my actions. But I did write him a letter and say to him I tell you what to do suppose you pay us the wages that you do us and all of the salaries that

you have robbed our forefathers of. And then it won't be necessary for you to pay our way anywhere we can pay our way wherever we want to go. But with the friend in Montgomery who suggested to me in person that I would organize a movement to take us back to Africa I asked him how can you go back where you never been. Africa it is true is the home of awful Fox News. I have ancestors but the United States of America is our home and this is what this new Negro in America today is saying to the evil forces in our communities to the segregationist and to the Southern

politicians who seek to indoctrinate us with the forced idea that this is not our country or that this is not our land and that this is not our home. The students who are participating in the freedom rides in the sit in demonstrations in Alabama and Mississippi and Georgia and Louisiana phrased it like this that it is time that those who would suggest that we go back to Africa know that the Englishman goes back to England until the Frenchman goes back to France until the talian go back to it and the Mexican goes back to Mexico and they give this country back to the Indians. The negro is here to stay.

Ah I am seventeen hundred then seven to six. Thomas Jefferson and our forefathers conceived a nation under God and they dedicated it to the principles that all men are created equal and endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights and that among these are Life Liberty and the pursuit of happiness. This was the dream of our founding fathers. But here we live today in the 20th century and that dream has not fully come true.

It is our responsibility to make these words a livin reality for all American citizens. It is our responsibility because the Negro is not a foreigner and outsider but he has paid the price for his citizenship. He has made a contribution to the development of this nation fall away from Boston Commons when Crispus Attucks a black man gave his precious and rare blood in an effort to bring this nation into being you can trace the co-op's hour of American wars by the shared blood that are my black. But it is for whether it was on the beach of Naaman day

or that set Sunday morning at Pearl Harbor. Black soldiers have fought and bled and died along with white soul Jews to defend our democracy. They fought and died in the trench and in the foxholes throughout the European and the Pacific theaters of operation. If they could fight on foreign battlefields to make our democracy live and to protect it in order that it might survive. Then why I came UN our fight and die if necessary right here at home to make it live and to make it available to all of its citizens. The negro first came to America in sixteen hundred nineteen. He was brought

here against his will and upon his arrival he found no freedom at all. He was not considered a person but he was considered a thing or property subject to the dictates of his own use and Paul's command that servant obey your masters became the watchword and sought to instill this into the minds and into the hearts of our people. What they did I never did believe a word of it. Unfortunately in order to survive and to get a hit and to keep himself alive under the system the Negro has had to employ deception as a weapon. And often he he had to act

like he thought the segregationists wanted him to act behave as he thought they wanted him to behave say what he thought they wanted him to say. But what they did not fully realize was that after he had behaved an act and say it. Then he went his way and believed whatever he wanted to believe and he believed that he was a child of God created in the image and the likeness of God and that he was as good as anybody else. For in this land. He made one great discovery and that was God and he came to know God as his personal friend as his Savior and he discovered that God is no respecter of persons and they do love all men just as lacking that everybody is

important in his sight and under this faith in this belief even in the cotton field of Mississippi Alabama the swamps of Louisiana and South Carolina and Georgia you can hear them singing keep inching and inching along. We'll get there by and by. I'm so glad the troubles don't last always. Soon I'll be done with the troubles of the world by and by I'm going to lay down my head and load. Beaten and bruised by a mean and cruel taskmasters often so let the auction block to the highest bidder. Down the river her husband separated from their y mothers from their children brothers from their sisters never to be reunited again in this life. They could invision a reunion in a land just beyond the river.

Forced to work all day in the fields with no shoes for their feet with his faith in God. He was able to draw on some spiritual resources to the point that he could say you've got Chus speaking of his taskmaster but you are not their own a person to have shoes for I've got shoes all of God's children got shoes and I can't wear my shoes now but but when I get to him I'm going to put on my shoes and I'm going to walk all over God's Hip hip hip. And then he would think of the experience he had had that Sunday morning in the church in which he was forced to worship in the balcony and look down upon his masters as they worship in the main sanctuary and heard them talking about God. And he would say here. What is everybody

talking about here mainland. It is true that you have developed an Octa of talking about it. But but everybody who talks about heaven isn't going that here. When I get there I'm going to put on my shoes and I'm gonna walk all over God's heaven. And with this faith he moved on through the dark days of slavery. Then in eighteen hundred and fifty seven on the Supreme Court of the United States of America issued the famous Dred Scott decision that broke the hearts. Of the negro. Simply because this Supreme Court Evonne nation. I said in essence that the negro have no rights whatsoever that a white man can be made to respect he hath

not the right to protect his family. Not the right to protect himself. He had not the right to protect his wife his children he have no rights whatsoever that the white man can be made to respect. This was the famous Dred Scott decision. But it was not long just five years after the after this decision that Abraham Lincoln the sixteenth president of the United States of America signed the Emancipation Proclamation and set free the negro in the United States of America. I made him a free citizen and for the first time the negro was able to just stand up. And he could say with that eloquent poet Felisa

lops and black complection cannot forfeit nature's claim. Skin may differ but affection dwells in black and white the same. And why are so tall to reach the pole to grasp the ocean at a span. I must be measured by my soul. For the mind is the standard of the man. But even with the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation the negro did not gain total freedom here in the United States of America. He only gained a sort of what I like to call physical freedom. And whenever an individual's mind is in slaved even though his body may be free he cannot get very far because the man controls the party. Benjamin Mays president of Morehouse College said some time ago

when we were forced to riot in the back of the buses in Atlanta Georgia said it is true that. As a negro when I ride the buses in Atlanta I have to take a seat. In the rear of the bus even though my body is taken to the back of the bus for our seat my mind always takes a seat up front. And I will not be very long before my mind and my body will meet. The mind control of the body and not the body the mind. This is what Jesus meant when he said a long time ago as a man thinketh in his heart so is he. So to continue with the system the keepers of the status quo the segregationist

and certainly the people who make up the ruling classes in the southern states have sought to enslave our mind. Yes and in 19 in eighteen hundred and ninety six the Supreme Court rendered another decision. Known as the presser vs. Ferguson decision and in this decision the servant states were given the legal right to practice a doctoring of separate but equal and under this theory and under this doctrine the South has sought to exploit and to take advantage of my people under this false doctrine. They have always majored in the separate and they have done nothing about the equal of the Negro school has always been a shack across the railroad track. Many of you can

not appreciate what I am saying because you have not lived under such a system. But it is been a shack across the railroad track while the white school has been love the building on the boulevard which are a bridge and a beautiful scenery. And in Minn. in negro communities there been no schoolhouses at all except for Negro churches without in a blackboard laboratory. Libraries are even desks. But just the bitches in appeal and the pulpit that serve for churches on Sunday. Would accommodate these people who had come in quest for for truth and for knowledge. There was one justice however all who did not agree with this opinion so he wrote a dissenting opinion and said

in essence there can be no such are doctoring as separate but equal facilities. And 50 years later are the opinion of the minority became the unanimous decision. OB The Supreme Court of the United States of America for a nineteen hundred fifty four. The Supreme Court issued the school desegregation decision that did away with the old false doctrine of separate but equal facilities and this gave legal validity for the new sense of dignity that the negro had acquired of himself here in this country. And soon after this decision in Montgomery Alabama you had the bus protests where 50000 negroes the

whole community of people are sacrificed tired feet for rested souls and came from the buses and said that they would not any longer suffer the injustices on these buses and go to the back doors and take seats in the rear of the buses. But they would walk the streets until the sag and walls of segregation on these buses crumbled to dust and the movement spread to Tallahassee Florida and from there to Birmingham Alabama to Atlanta to New Orleans and all over the South. And ever since then in every major community in the south you have had a movement or an organization where the negroes are standing up for their rights. And the movement has now spread to the city it was off from the city into the wady and from the wading into the needy aliens and

from the nearly into the freedom rocks. And may I say and predict that there will continue to be from wanting him to or not buy in until we can walk in all over the United States of America and take our place as first class citizens. This is our right and we intend to fight fought on to achieve it. Thank you. I. Thank you. Thank you. Now it has been fortunate for the nation that during these crucial moments in the life. OF THE COUNTRY OF THE NATION.

Then we have had leaders in the Negro community who have taught me nonviolence. And because of that teaching because of the respect that all. The negroes hold for their leaders. Martin Luther King and Fred Shuttlesworth want to walk up and others who engage in the struggle. Our people have remained nonviolent. I remember several years ago I went to Washington with Martin Luther King to talk with Vice President Nixon. Concerning this problem at that time Mr. Nixon was quite popular. With his with his goodwill tours. And of course he made several trips

across the world in Africa and sought to make friends with the African children. And you know the baby is in his arms and gone down South America and it garden. Exeunt rocks tossed at him. So we went up to talk with him concerning making a goodwill tour of the South. We wanted him to come down to Alabama and Mississippi and to Georgia and we wanted to assure him that it is that it isn't so bad to get bombed out in the south and it might be good for the whole cause that the vice president would get bombed out. Remember when Mr. Seigenthaler got beat up on streets among them Alabama federal marshals came in and because they

came in the Freedom Riders from then on were protected and they could move on down in the Mississippi. But in a way we said to Mr. Nixon. We want you to come down south and use your influence to get President Eisenhower. To come south of and make a speech. Now Mr. Nixon had not been solved but the president President came south all the time. President Eisenhower was always down south who has come to play golf on a segregated golf course to go quail hunting. And we wanted him to come south for the purpose of really making the speech. To take a stand in order to defund the white lipped grooves of the South would be able to coax someone to say that we're doing it because the

president of the United States has called upon us. To do it. The point that I'm. Seeking to make here is the fact that I sought to impress upon his mind that the Negro has remained nonviolent in this struggle not because he is afraid. Because he is not afraid he is not afraid of the power of the white man red obviously but so far as that matters he has remained nonviolent in the struggle. Simpler because the leaders have preached nonviolence and he believes in is Lisa for the Negro has been taught just as other. Citizen any other person. You remember when you were

quite young 5 and 6 years of age when you got ready to go to school in the morning. Your mother. Fixed your luncheon. Condi had washed her face and got you ready for school. Patted you on the head and sent you for them said Now you be a good boy today and not to bother anybody. But if they hit you then you better hit them back. This is the part of. Weston training and teaching and this is been a part of the negro's background also. We've been told the very same things but it just so happened that somewhere along the way. Ah leaders have discovered that an awful i na I'm not to fought tooth will eventually lead him up with a blind society and a toothless generation.

I think. Al and I had somewhere along the way we must put in the end to this vicious cycle someone must be willing to take it. And during this new era in which we have come the Negro has turned to nonviolence. In spite of the injustices that been inflicted upon him by all the southern states. We have had to go to J. I myself have been to jail. I believe about five times and next Tuesday I will have to go to jail again I am afraid for I will have to stand trial in all been a judge simply because we sought to to lead a group of three

hundred and fifty persons who have been burdened down. What do you hope of segregation and discrimination. All of their lives and parents for 100 years under the doctrine of separate but equal and fore fathers for two hundred and fifty years under the yoke of slavery. Simply because we sought to go down to the city hall where we are not given an opportunity to work. But just to hold a prime number steps and because of that we were arrested and locked up in jail and we went to jail seven hundred strong and filled up every jail house in all Bennett and in South Georgia. And we were ready to fill up every jail house in this in the state of Georgia and overflow in Alabama. These southern states are their sisterly and they'll help each other out. And we wanted to give them an opportunity

to do so. And we were ready to do it. Chief Pritchard has now seen fit to call these cases to trial. He made a pledge it is our understanding that if we would call off the demonstrations these cases would be drop. But now that the negroes have seen fit to boycott the buses and to boycott the downtown areas I'm told that grievances that these cases have been called the trial plan and they say they want Martin Luther King and Ralph Abernathy to go on trial first for the chief says he want to deal with the outside agitators. We're willing to go to jail again. We have been bombed out. My home has been bombed and my church has been dynamited my wife and my daughter was almost killed in my home. Three million dollars in libel

soup's more than I will ever make in my life. Police brutality and all types of injustices have been heaped upon us. But we sought not to turn to violence because we know number one that violence is impractical for the Negro. And number two we know that violence is Marlena wrong because violence never solves predominate there. It is a problem. It only creates greater problems temporarily. I. We may have some temporary victory is we may win a battle here in Bam through violence but in the final analysis violence only bring about greater problems more problems than it solves.

Now in the midst of this ever time and in Matilda's letzte in Mississippi Matt Pocock is taken from a jail house and his body dumped in Lousiana river every time and often mean Lucy is denied admission to an Alabama University. Every time our home was bombed in Birmingham and Fred shuttles with Hazza go to jail simply because he sought to you know great the buses in Birmingham Alabama. This becomes their headline I see in the newspapers in Moscow Russia and throughout the communist would. So much so on the nations of the world are saying today to America put up. Shut up we can't see see or hear what you say about liberty and justice for all for seeing how you practice Jim Crow ism and inequality for soem So I mentioned today in one of the

most heated nations in the world. In spite of our wealth and power in spite of our hold in the Brit basket in spite of our foreign aid they still do not love us because they have discovered that men cannot live by bread alone. It takes something else for an individual to know the true home some life. So our prestige is being being jeopardized and unless you are in our in this generation rise up in inject a new dimension of love of soul force of nonviolence and power into the veins of our civilization. This civilization is going to become trash and ruin only junk piles of time and eternity.

As did the preceding civilizations fall out of one blood God created all nations to dwell upon the face of this. If our nation had spent the last three years as much time and energy towards solving the race problem and control than in our space as we have sought to project Mr. Green into outer space then we would have solved the race problem in our nation today. Al I think my time is about up. It's in my watch and I told my bae you know about my watch. It's 10 minutes after warning. And that's that's the time that I got up by this morning and that's the time that

I have been made living by and I would have a chance to stay here long enough to get adjusted to the California time. So I've been on my feet a long time. But as I come to a close I want you to take a look with me. At the nation at the nation look at the United States of America and what we have done in the technological world and the scientific world and see how we are lagging in the area of human relationships. I got on a plane this morning in Atlanta Georgia and for I was right up four hours later I had traveled more than 2000 miles and I was situated in Los Angeles California all within for a matter of four Wow. I had some time ago had an invitation during the.

Height of our struggle in Montgomery to make a speech in New York. And I got an afternoon flight and really need one flight from Montgomery and changed in Atlanta got a nonstop flight and landed at our awhile and was met by the president of the labor union and who took me to a downtown labor union hall and I made a speech and at the close of my speech he drove me back to the airport and I took a midnight coach flight back to Montgomery and I arrived just as the paper boy I was throwing the morning paper and the speech that I made in New York from the basis of the headlines in the Montgomery Advertiser that morning. And as I said at the breakfast table eating breakfast my next door neighbor came over and she said Why Mrs. I have a knack I don't know what these

people will do next. They have told every kind of conceivable law on Martin Luther King and not him started lying on your husband. And my wife said well what is this Mrs. Oliver. And she said well don't you see in this paper they have here that Reverend Abernathy said something last night in New York City and I know Reverend Abernathy didn't say it because he's here right. And I said to Ms Olive I'm sorry to disappoint you but I said it last night in New York City. This is the type of world in which we live here with so many scientific and technological discoveries yet we lag in the area of human relations there are those who believe that you can judge the quality of a man's soul on the basis of the color of his skin.

The texture obvious had the type of church he worships in its previous condition of servitude. And they pin the badge is the stereotypes upon us and we're not to build us to rise above their level in this society and in this America in this nation. Did you ever stop to think about it that the most segregated school of the week if not the public school in Mississippi. But is the Sunday school in the Church of the Living God. Something is wrong with the society. If our nation is to survive then all of us will have to get into the struggle and fight for freedom. I own safety and security is a wrapped up in this in the

safety and security of the people of Indonesia of the people of Africa and all of the peoples of the world for no man is an island entire of itself. But if a man is a piece of the continent a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea then Europe is the less one man's death diminishes me for I am a part of mankind. So send not an ass for whom the bell tolls for the bell tolls for thee. You will not be free until I am free. And none of us will be free until all of us are free and it is a true fact. We are all going to be free together as American citizens. Are we going to perish separately if we will be this society. The Society of the redeemed of the beloved community that we will control

in a space within ourselves and put our total resources at the command of the right forces that had worked in the communities. Then it will not be necessary for us to be in the race with Russia to be the first to live on the moon because we will have learned how to live here on Earth. And then the prophecy of Isaiah will become a reality. Havre Valley will be dissolved hills and the mountains will be made low. The crooked straight and the rough places plain and all flesh will see it together not black flesh but all flesh not white flesh but all flesh not brown flesh but all flesh not yellow flesh but

off flesh will see it together across the mouth of the Lord has spoken it. And then Mr Cham and not only in this room but throughout this nation men and women will stand up in the north. In the West in the East and in the south and say not out of traditions. Not because you ask us to say but we will say from the depths of aha it's I pledge of allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to this republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and with justice for all. OK.