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There are still Negro elites. Many of them are obviously much richer, and perhaps a little more integrated into what remains a white power structure. But those old rituals from the social clubs, to the broadly segregated white and black schools, to an obsessive interest in ancestry, all of that does still exist. Look: we are a class-bound society.

The colored race saved to the noble women of New England and the middle States men on whom they lean today for security and safety. Many of my race, the representatives of these men on the field of battle, sleep in the countless graves of the South.

The fight still isn't people of colour versus white. It's the people versus the system built to keep us down. That's the first line of the Constitution. And the system is manmade but is made of no man. Everyone, regardless of class, creed, culture and ethnicity can fight the system and help to break it down.

Poor privileged white men. Their stranglehold on power is slowly being loosened.

In fact, the class divide in the black community is now seen by some as a permanent aspect of our existence.

It's not white versus black any more, it's haves versus have-nots. Unless the black middle-classes unite to promote the interests of the black underclass, tension between them is inevitable. What we, the black middle class have to do, is think of a strategy to avert that.

We all stand on the shoulders of our ancestors. We're in a relay race, relying on the financial and human capital of our parents and grandparents. Blacks were shackled for the early part of that relay race, and although many of the fetters have come off, whites have developed a huge lead.

Besides paid white laborers, there was everywhere a class of white servants bound without wages for a term of years, and a more miserable class of Negro slaves.

Martin Luther King fought for blacks, and democratic whites were with him.