Dr. Aptheker discusses DuBois

The next person who I'm pleased to introduce to you is Dr. Herb Amtrak. He is well known Marxist there Titian. And the literary executor of Dr. Dubois an editor abducted two boys on a biography which is just so I'm very pleased to introduce to you Dr. Herbert Africa. Thank you. Thank you very much. I'm very happy to have been asked to be here. It'll get louder You'd be surprised.

I'm happy to have been asked to participate in the celebration of the 30th anniversary of a radical newspaper. In the home of imperialism and racism which has fought hard for 30 years against racism against the exploitation of the worker and for socialism. This month and this year are memorable ones they mock the centennial array of W E B Dubois as birth deep in the Berkshires in New England's heart three years after Lincoln was murdered was born this brown child son of poor working people and great grandson of a veteran of the Revolutionary War. Among his papers

was a postcard a neighbor wrote him in 1878 deal really if you cut wood for me again this Saturday I'll give you twenty five cents. And there is a letter he wrote to his mother when he was all of thirteen years of age from far off HOCKFIELD Hartford Connecticut. He had visited the Capitol and put his name in the guest book and a real idea mamma. The book has the names of many famous people but I did not care and was not afraid and wrote my own name down there too. When he was all of 25 years on his birthday really far from home and burly and studying at a great university in the diary he kept for his own eyes and in which he made his deepest promises he dedicated himself to the search for truth. He swore to himself that he would carve out a name in literature and science and that come what may.

He would fight for his people. He would he wrote in this secret and sacred place. Be a man worthy of my race and my father's boys never grew old except towards the very last moments of his fabulous life when he was past sixty and had been invited back to head the sociology department at Atlanta University. He always ran up the stone steps that brought one to the campus grounds. He ran up the cross as he explained in a letter. He ran up because reaching the top one was rewarded with a view of lovely flowers. And I cannot wait to bathe my eyes in this vision. When he was 80 and away on the lecture tour he wrote his wife that to his keen regret the new engagement made it impossible for him to visit the circus that

had come to town. When he was 86 years old. I myself saw him sitting on a piano bench with a seven year old girl who now has a little boy of her own. The girl's feet did not reach the flaw and I saw the two of them singing lustily and well about all MacDonald and his farm. I remember when we were at the airport a few years ago seeing the doctor and his wife off to Guyana where he was to take charge of a projected encyclopedia off work on a dream that he had written about the 909 that a reporter asked the doctor how many volumes he projected and how long the task would take aim. Ten bottoms I think said the doctor and then he added with the barest suggestion of a smile. It will take me ten years provide him. In Georgia 70 years ago employees gave

voice to the black people's resistance against the conquest of the south by monopoly capitalism. He led the struggle against big businesses philanthropic efforts to mis educate black people and corrupt their leaders. He recognized the irresistible logic of socialism 60 years ago. He organize an agro movement in one thousand five and speaking out for his people said as Mr. and and reminded us that he would not take a job to return to a less than full manhood rights and that until these were provided to black people in the United States they would not cease assailing the ears and the contrabands of America. That said in Atlanta in 1906. It was that Niagara Movement and Dr. Dubois personally that was so vital to the launching in 1990 of the then very radical

National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. It is Dubois deploys as the man who saw land this century opened in 1900. Quote The problem of the 20th century is the problem of the color line and who ten years later added quote 1910 the cause of labor is the cause of black man. And the black man's cause is Labor's own. It was he to rule more than a generation ago saw the anti imperialist liberating potential. In a world unity of black peoples and therefore founded the Pan-African movement. The essence of his life as writer think educator and organizer as been the call for peace peace within nations and among nations for a dignified secure fraternal living together by

a creative humanity. I believe that war is murder he wrote in his credo of 1004 one of the most influential essays in the history of American literature. I believe he said then that the wicked conquests are weaker and darker Nations by nations white and strong but foreshadows the death of that strength end of quote. Could you put the present exercise in Vietnam in better terms in 1968 and that of nineteen four. Increasingly Dubois saw that the good things of life based as they must be on peace so that the good things may be created shared and enjoy can be obtained only by struggle. I organize increasingly he saw that the leadership in the main role in this struggle falls and must fall if it is to be a principled one an effective one to the working class and its

allies. As he put it quote naturally out of the mass of the working people who know life and its biggest struggles will continually rise the real unselfish and clear sighted leadership and quotation. The boys insisted that imperialism is evil racism while poverty conquerable and World War are not inevitable. Leading the peace information sent to the dead monumental work in the late 40s and early 1950s dop to the boys and four associates were indicted and tried over a dozen years ago as unregistered foreign agents. Under the provisions of the McCormick act that act unlike the McCarren Act requires substantive proof of the actual guilt of the defendant personally. The government offered Dr Dubois a deal the offer is in writing I have the written text in

my papers. The government offered Dr de Boys a deal telling him that if he pleaded no defense it would let him off without a jail sentence. Steeped in white chauvinism and reflecting the ethics of imperialism the government officials did not know with whom they were dealing. Dubois told his attorney the late retold Marcantonio quote before I would enter such a plea with this damned government I would rot in jail for ever and difficult a trick up of. Suppose of course the defendants were not guilty. To think of Dr. DuBois as a foreign agent is like thinking of Thomas Jefferson and Frederick Douglass as foreign agents of which bull by the way both were accused in their days. And since as I have stated on the McCormack Act One does not have a legislative bill of attainder such as the McCarren Act. A defendant had a chance given due

process of law. Dr. Dubois and his fellow defendants were acquitted. During the period of the indictment in the trial Dr. Dubois stuck to his guns of course and as had been true all his life said exactly what he believed and what he wanted to say and said it with perfect clarity. Quote with Jaylen site he writes in his book in Battle for Peace published in 1952 Lou jail insight I hammered at the proposition that the Soviet Union did not want law while our masters did that we and a man doing peace were opposing big businesses which wanted wall and that we did this as free Americans and not as the tools of any foreign or domestic power and difficult day. It was in the midst of that struggle that Langston Hughes the late Langston Hughes I must now say one of the hundreds of distinguished negroes who as young man

had turned to Dr. Dubois for inspiration and help. To his everlasting credit. Hughes wrote a magnificent column in The Chicago Defender defender October 6 1951. Quote Two boys is more than a man. He has all that he has stood for all the things that he has stood for are what millions of people of goodwill the world around desire to a world of decency of No Nation older another nation of no color line no more colonies in almost poverty of education for all of freedom and love and friendship and peace among men and women. For as long as I can remember he was one. Dr. DuBois has been writing speaking and working for these things. He began way before I was born to put reason above passion. Tolerance about prejudice well-being about poverty wisdom above ignorance cooperation above strife a quality above Jim crawling piece above the bottom and difficult day.

What made to Boyle's monumental persistence was there and they found tast deep the past city for work. As one studies his life he is reminded of the lead of Thomas Jefferson whose range Similarly was almost incredible. Wrote his daughter quote No person will have occasion to complain of the want of time who never loses any and all of this is Jefferson to his daughter. It is wonderful how much may be done if we are always doing. The boys live as though he had made Jefferson's advice his own model. Repeatedly he set out others and told himself that there was but wrong. One reason for living to live creatively and productively and that there was but one answer to attack and criticism and that was effective work. There also was present what John Hope president of Morehouse College in Atlanta University wrote

in 1915 after the university had been compelled to fire Dr. Dubois since philanthropist set insisted that either he moderate his militancy or they would cancel that benefactions moderator's militancy. So he was fired. Said Hope quote you are able because you are honest intellectual honesty and moral coverage all your adornments be about Dubois's honesty their whole Verd other qualities that in parts of the whole there never was being depicted missed in the man and he laid some monumental battles. He never retained any kind of grudge. He was very quick to admit error as he did in particular for example for supporting United States entry into World War 1. If he failed the times in dealing with others and he was not the easiest going person in the

world it was because he said fearfully high standards for himself and tended to apply the same standards to all others. Of course when seeking the secret of the boys we are in the presence of genius and biology itself so far has failed us. Certainly an aspect of his genius was the persistence the capacity for work the integrity and the fundamental love for people. But then there was that mysterious something called talent and brilliance. The boys got to the heart. The boys anticipated. He felt what was coming what was true. He thought big. He came to no hasty judgments. He took himself seriously. Some who do not fully understand his own stern standards thought too seriously. And the boys was not afraid to act even to venture recklessly as some said

from time to time. The boy's writing is characteristically clear and lyrical that exudes honesty and passion but it concentrates above all imprecision Zona Gale once described the boys as quote a great teacher of democracy to America of a democracy which we have not yet practiced nor even vision. Some 40 years ago Eugene O'Neill wrote quote ranking as Dubois does among the foremost writers of crew importance in this or any other country. One selfishly wishes sometimes as a writer himself that the boys would devote all his time to the accomplishment of that fine and moving prose which distinguishes his books. But at the same time Eugene O'Neill continued one realizes self reproachfully that with Dr. de Boys it is a cause an ideal that overcomes the personal egoism of the artist and difficult age.

The cause Well of course this is the heart of the boys and it was his devotion to it his identity with it that is the ultimate source of his greatness. For over half a century. And what a 50 years it was for over half a century. This one man appeared to Mei's the cause and it was unease the most dramatic cause in this country and era. He experienced the crucifixion himself and he never sought to use his great gifts to remove the thorns from his own head. Many times was wealth offered him many times with great positions of great distinction dangled before his eyes. I use his preeminence being sold into bootable. They actually came to him but neither the office nor the momentary reality every came near corrupting him.

The iron had entered his soul. He had seen the Lynch victims fingers displayed in a Georgia butcher shop he had seen the wreckage of his own home after the pogrom of 906. He had sent his firstborn his beloved son Parker who died. From medical neglect in Georgia who died in infancy. He sent the little body twelve hundred miles from home to be buried in a cemetery where black and white might sleep together forever among his scores of thousands of letters. Everyone kept really preserved off thousands from the worker in the shack prop of the PR on the aspiring adolescent whose heart was bleeding the tenon famo whose indignities overflowed and painfully written notes in pencil. The woman who scrubbed and dreamed the most scorned and the most despised the prisoner the beggar

the prostitute poured out their hearts to him. You are all voice they will speak for us. Every letter was read every letter was answered the copies are all preserved the answers were full serious helpful dignified the voices letters to these to the all known to watch the monstrous elite call the month sale. These letters show at least as much pains as his letters to presidents. The negro intel against senior professionals are not a slug to boys as he loved and understood them and he fought for them. There is no outstanding black creative figure of the 20th century from county Cullen to Franklin Frazier and John Hope Franklin and Jesse Fawcett from Richmond Botha to Paul Robeson who did not at some point draw inspiration and gather a direct lead from their dean and father from all of these at the same time two boys gained his strength the inspiration was mutual. They held him

up then he led the way. The boys wrote with ease but his manuscripts show that he did so with great care. Each sentence was scrutinized and many of the penciled alterations on manuscript and galley sheet. He knew exactly what he wanted to say was an artist saying it and so took infinite pains with the instrument of his craft. With his word. There is one word that sums up the boy's multifarious as well as interests and enormous as was his output that word is poet. His range and passion his vision and Durrance his kindness and iron his knowledge and charity his faith and reason his devotion to truth his urge to communicate his optimism these make his poem his books poems and make of his life one vast poling Dubois's passion was justice. Through science reason struggle organization

would come justice and in that will be peace. It was this passion that brought DuBois to socialism over 60 years ago and never did he lose this light. His learning was as extensive as any man's. His friendships extended from Einstein to Gandhi no part of this globe did he not study with his own lines. No significant political social or intellectual current movement in the United States in the past 60 years without his participation. And all this on parallel experience held him firm to the need for socialism and led him in his last period to the momentous decision of becoming a member of the Communist Party of the United States. There are great lessons here surely not least for those who think that Marxism or socialism is something meant only for white people. The founder of the modern black liberation movement and the founder of the Pan

African movement decided the opposite to be true. Perhaps this is worth thinking about. Doctor the boys in life exemplified the organic relationship between the struggles for equality and democracy peace and social ills. And he believed that the last socialism and compasses and embraces the first three what Dubois sought is an end of man's conflict with man the beginning of human history. That's what he sought to use Marx's words in this sense he sought peace and he felt and taught that peace and justice are won and that the name in the 20th century is socialism. We noted that the boys credo in 1949 is war is murder. In the final chapter of the last volume of this great trilogy the Black Flame one thousand sixty one a chapter entitled Death and

telling of the passing Emanuel man Saat through whom of course Dr. Dubois speaks in that novel. It is man sought who says quote This is 1961. One thing I know today more than ever general war is utterly evil and completely indefensible in terms of human morals decency all civilization nothing on earth is so completely useless so inexcusably vile such one no longer brings victory to either side it is playing in and deliberate murder of human beings the complete destruction of the of the earth's treasures down with war. Never again war war is the bottomless depth to which human beings have fallen in this twentieth century of the miscall Prince of Peace and quotation. It is a hallmark of the decay of the American social order and the depravity of its ruling class. The doctor Dubois was labeled on the McCarren Act. They feel awful criminal an assassin a traitor and a block full

of democracy. One man's criminal is another saint Langston Hughes in the essay already mentioned having in mind the government's effort to send the boys to jail wrote somebody in Greece long ago gave SOCRATES The hemlock to drink. Somebody had erected a cross and somebody drove nails into the hands of Christ. Somebody spat upon the garments of Christ. Nobody remembers their name any peep Thompson's monumental life of another revolutionary William Morris the author writes of Maurice as quote beckoning with us beckoning us forward to the measureless bounty of life and Thompson concludes with this fine line. He is one of those men whom history will never overtake. There are very few such one most certainly as William Edward by God to us.

He was a phenomenon like Jefferson like Douglass like Marx like the Lenin phenomenon rather slight strikingly handsome always impeccably dressed erect carriage had very high clear voice eyes about the smile quiet polite gallant towards women especially tenderly children slow to anger but a fierce fighter compassionate and no holding a grudge is often self-critical. He enjoyed life. He loved the theatre and music painting flowers good wine good food. He cherished friends and he positively glowed when Dilla spirit to talk. He was above prejudices but glory to his passions Elise. There were three in particular. Truth justice and his people working with say.

About there are so much to do but the boys not all work he was laughed at too beautiful to be with. His humor was delicious. I never saw it malicious. He never made fun of people. Never. But the main thing was work. Should I mention his labors are incredible like the output of Shakespeare of Beethoven his poems his place his books his magazines the horizon the moon the crisis the brownie book filing out his newspaper columns his thousands of lectures in every city of the United States. A black man going by a horse and wagon's walk and saw Alabama in Texas in 1910 1920 not knowing where the toilet was where to go to sleep. The way to get a sandwich going back. Back. Back. Back. Has thousands of lectures and his scores of thousands of letters to the prisoner in Georgia. Do not despair to the teacher in Alabama. The children need you

to the adolescent girl in Mississippi. Prepare yourself. You will be useful. Aspiring poet in Ohio you show much promise but remember writing poetry is hard work. Still one of your poems will appear in an early issue. What work you put into the crisis is poetry contests and drama contests and the college graduate numbers in the beautiful baby issues. Can you imagine the courage of an additive that has a beautiful baby issue and has dissed tell five thousand mothers that their baby didn't win. But of course all this was the show Black Beauty. Black pride and black loveliness. What it meant living and working enjoyed the fight for the full equality in the manhood the addle tulip of Negro people 60 years ago

to organize at the turn of the century and in Atlanta scientific conferences on race and black people to which figures of national international renowned Kane. He did that he organized not once but regularly for 18 years to organize a movement saying no to Carnegie and Morgan in the trust us teaching machine and to do it 60 years ago in his own scholarship. Some of which Mr. Herndon mentioned is Harvard historical studies number one. His first pioneering what we now call urban sociology. In other words that Philadelphia Negro League 89 is 21. Other books black reconstruction is one hundred and mention a turning point in historiography world HISTORIA. To organize a movement say no to Carnegie Morgan and Tuskegee to do it 60 years ago.

The whole pilgrimages at Hopper's ferry to wanna John Brough in nineteen hundred and five black and white together and take off your shoes and walk barefoot to the mater's place John Brown in 95 black and white together and pledge on dying support of the cause of the old man. That might not be easy to do in 1968 and might be worth doing. Each time he spoke in public his preparations were endless. His remarks meticulously written down how. Not typical was this estimate of a speech delivered in the summer 911 universe racer's Khan was in London I take it from the contemporary out in the Manchester Guardian quote The speaker was Dr Dubois He spoke with astonishing mastery lucidity and perfection of phrase the man who was spontaneous yet every sentence was in place. The address was

so simple that an intelligent child could have followed the argument. Yet it handle so closely the fundamental issue that no specialist who heard it would refuse his tribute of admiration as a piece of exposition as an example of oratory exactly suited to its purpose. It was by far the finest thing the Congress produced and the astonishing industry of the boys arose from this consuming passion as I had said a passion for justice. He wanted dignity on earth his own perfect dignity was a reflection I believe of this deep craving. He wanted civilized discourse. He wanted human living his own sensitivity was that of genius. And he lived a black man in the United States a black sensitive man in the United States a poet. Oh the irony if you wish to crucify somebody make him black and make him a poet and put him in America.

And in him this file this resistance to the frontrunner but disciplined disciplined never without his wits his shop humor is emotional stability his calm gentleman scholar the fighter poet and black a student writes from Cornell University Cornell in New York. On behalf of his whole class in one thousand twenty six The class is confronted with a question no one not even the professors surely answer. Cornell nine thousand twenty six. Dear Dr. Dubois Would you please tell us whether or not it is true that negroes are not able to cry. A Christian minister from St. Louis in 1910 sends attitude to boys a book and urges that he read it and review it. It's written by the Minister himself and it is in title The mystery solved. The negro a beast an ethnographic expedition starts out from Denver Colorado in

1927 and this is the problem of the expedition. Quote all the inhabitants of Central Africa human beings all beasts. These are special things that come to the boys in terms of his particular position or reputation but then there are ordinary events. Of course you are not permitted in the orchestra. You may not eat here hastening home to Atlanta from Alabama 906 to find his home in university a shambles his wife and Tara and his little girl wanting to know what did all those men want. And Dubois tells us that he didn't like to hurt anything that he didn't even like to fish but he got himself a shotgun and he loaded it full and he stood on the porch. And he tells us that if any of the mob would come back he would have spread their guts across the grass so quick they want to know what hit them.

He tells us something else that's delightful the shotgun went off about two days later by mistake and it beat up some bound volumes of the Congressional Record. The sons of the American Revolution quote writing to the boys we regret to say is why your grand great grandfather did fight in the revolutionary army we cannot enroll you as a member. Since you are unable to supply the marriage certificate binding him and your great grandmother. We are very sorry. That. This fire attempted to boil as it did not consume him. Whence came the strength so tempered it came from the mass. Don't forget that I said very important. It didn't come from heaven. It came from the mass. The innumerable incorruptible and the resistible mass. The boys was not a

mass man. He did not like meetings. He did not seek leadership. He did not want power. I do not say these things as complements and do not conceive of them as complementary I tell you them as facts. Some even describe the boys as arrogant. The voyage is not arrogant he was in fact shy. But Dubois was believed the boys was followed. The boys was encouraged and it was by the masses among his own people. It was not only the intel against CEO took pride in him the professionals who admired him it was also the croppers and tenants and workers who knew that he was honest he was strong and he was on their side. They wrote him thousands of times and told him so. So did the young people black young people strong as the boys was. Had he not had that I doubt that even he could have made it could have withstood the pressure held off the dogs overcome the despair lived through

the indignities but with them he could and he did. The boys also had the vision not only. The American black or the American white to be understanding some day and joining some day especially the working masses among the whites. Do boys always was a Union man. The crisis carried the union but even when the typographical Union was lily white. Dubois very early was attracted to socialism circlet as my evidence shows at least by 19:4 Dubois was a friend of the Bolshevik revolution from its birth and publicly announced this repeatedly at least as early as 1919. Dubois had very serious differences with the Communist Party and it with him but he never permitted himself to become a red beta. Never though he was invited to do so many many many times.

The boy studied Marx with great care about forty five years ago. The boy's gay one of the earliest graduate seminars on marks in any university was at Atlanta University was entitled Col marks in the American Negro. That's all the thirty five years ago. The boys had something of the image of the young Richard Wright who signed when he was young. I am black and I have seen black hands raised in fists the revolt side by side with white fists of white workers and some day and it is only this which sustains me. Some day there shall be millions and millions of them on some red day in a burst of fists on a new horizon. The boy saw thirty five years ago. So that the battle for civil rights was but one element and they start only in the whole struggle for the liberation of black people. The boys insisted that economic questions jobs prices food housing training constituted the nub of the question. It was because of this in

fact that he was forced to leave the end of the ACP in the 1930s and some of just begun to catch up with this in the late 1960s. His poet soul and genius his mind soul the 60 years ago the coming rebellion of the especially oppressed of the earth the coming together of the dock peoples the death of colonialism in the vision upon Africa never did he see Pan Africa or an exclusionary sense on the contrary. The boys always insisted that it was part of the general social and class phenomenon of the destruction of imperialism and the victory of socialists and racism colonialism imperialism in the structure of monopoly capitalism the boys saw the heart of the war danger. One of the central features of his work in his writing as I have said was the struggle against law and he die as Laz meshes states in the conviction that the peace would be won in combining all these visions and working so effectively for the realisation DuBois is the pioneer on the merits.

And as I've said nothing can erase the fact the doctor the boy is in the last years and with the McCarren Act on the books and prosecution under it having begun announced his decision to join the Communist Party he saw it. As embodying the best and the radical and liberating traditions of this country and the best in the gullet arrogant and militant traditions of all humanity. He saw all sorts of errors and all sorts of crimes he knew it was a human institution but in his enormous experience and learning it was for him the best and last in this sense. And as a direct continuation of a logical culmination his own life joining that party symbolized his convictions as a luckless truth and what was necessary convictions based upon a life marked by such study such creativity and such universal experiences as to make Dr. Dubois of the American of the 20th

century as Frederick Douglass had been the American of the 90. Many of the glories and shames of the United States but certainly the needier of the United States. Was the arrest of the handcuffing in the fingerprinting of the Dr.. Trial and of Dr. Dubois for being a foreign agent and finally a scholar abroad laboring on the colossal project of an encyclopedia Afrikaner making him a man without a passport and telling him he was not welcome in his own country. Then and only then did he turn to the citizenship of Gaza there did he die and there he lies buried thousands of miles from the green of the Berkshires and the graves of his children and 50 yards from the shore whence his ancestors centuries ago we carried in shackles to make rich the new world and America's pariah was and is Africa's glory. The ending of racism the eradication of that stench will begin the ration of the shame of

Dubois's hound. Then with the racism extirpated cities and states will vie with each other here in the United States in naming their loveliest parks and the most magnificent school for Dubois. Difficult with a hot break from setbacks the arrogance of the dominant classes the sheer cruelty monopoly the unconcernedly whole people was crucified. At times the pain was so great that it squeezed out from his great heart as after the 906 Atlanta slaughter and his great poem The litany at Atlanta he wrote with up north as greed and south as blood within the coward and without the liar with their old god wither to death. But the times of doubt were rare in the world with God and His whole magnificent life as a life is a him not to dot but to confidence. Let it never be forgotten too when one speaks of the boys he is speaking of an agitator and a

fighter. As to agitation he wrote in the first volume of the crisis back in 1910 that certain friends had orders that perhaps the educational method was harmful rather than helpful not so declared to boys school 1910. Such honest critics mistake the function of agitation a toothpick is agitation is a to thank a good thing. No is it therefore useless. No it is supremely useful for it tells the body of decay and death. Without it the body would suffer unknowingly It would think all is well when a low danger lurks. You boys always held to the belief in human progress and insisted that its inevitability was not independent but rather was dependent upon man's activities and basic to human progress he held was the radical The disturb of the agitator or the organizer. These are the ones he wrote in the crisis in 1914 who

seemed the disinherited I'm quoting seem to disinherit in the dam can never sit still and silent on the contrary. These are the men and women who go down in the blood and dust of battle. They say ugly things to an ugly world. They spear a lukewarm fence straddler is out of their mouths like God at all they cry aloud and spare not they shout from the housetops and they make this world so damned uncomfortable with its nasty burden of the evil that it tries to get good and does get just a little bit better at it. The core of the men you know marched in Washington the day after he died Aug. 27 1963 you heard his name called and knew that he had carried the banner as at their head for over half a century. I thought of Margaret Walker's great poem for my people. Was that poet out of Birmingham had published in 1937. And a second generation cried just like that a second generation full of

courage issue forth that a people loving freedom come to grill that a beautyful of healing and of a strength a final plan should be the pulse in our spirits in our blood. Let the martial songs be written let the dirty Jews disappear let a race of men and women now rise and take control. That generation is here. Its time is not this is true everywhere in the world. It's true in the United States and it is true now and that this is the generation hones mortal human Woodburn God to boys and to any other single human being that has ever lived. Top of the die writes his widow after only a few hours of illness without pain after the sun had set in the dock instead gathered about six in the evening

washed by the hands of sleep by the beautiful hands of SLI death leaned out as his eyes grew dim and his face I know is not strange not grim but oh it was beautiful to him hushed by the hands of sleep by the beautiful hands of sleep. In the doctor's typical way he had written his last message some years before and preparation for the final rest. Her a deliberate very pad. It was dated June 26 1957 it was given to the keeping of his wife the distinguished writer surely Graham Dubois. This is what he said. It is much more difficult in theory than actually to say the last goodbye to one's loved ones and friends and all familiar things of this life. I am going to take a long deep and endlessly. This is not punishment but a privilege to which I look forward for some years. I have loved my work I've loved my people in my place but always I have been uplifted by the thought that what I have done well will live long and justify my

life. What I have done Iolo never finished can now be handed on to others for endless days to be finished. Perhaps better than I could have done anyway. Peace peace will be my applause. One thing alone I charge as you really believe in life always human beings will live and progress will lead them progress to greater broader and full life. The only possible death is to lose belief in this truth simply because the great end comes so slowly because time is long goodbye. I have a friend who died in Georgia in 1915 breaking his heart in the fight against oppression. The boys then wrote quote all the long years the voices of little black children shall make his silence sweet. Surely So it is with the doctor. Well now the doctor is silent though you're silent we hear him

almost seek the good life here and will forever. The beacon but the door on rises us. We thank you. Dear camera Dubois thank you.