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The Negro has been here in America since 1619, a total of 344 years. He is not going anywhere else; this country is his home. He wants to do his part to help make his city, state, and nation a better place for everyone, regardless of color and race.

Slavery is not the only question which comes up in this controversy. There is a far more important one to you, and that is, what shall be done with the free negro?

I don't want to not be African. The goal is to live in a world where my race doesn't limit my access, where I can see myself represented in the highest level of society without any limitation.

Negroes must be free in order to be equal, and they must be equal in order to be free... Men cannot win freedom unless they win equality. They cannot win equality unless they win freedom.

Negroland is my name for a small region of Negro America where residents were sheltered by a certain amount of privilege and plenty. Children in Negroland were warned that few Negroes enjoyed privilege or plenty and that most whites would be glad to see them returned to indigence, deference and subservience.

North as well as South, the Negroes have emerged from slavery into a serfdom of poverty and restricted rights.

Those who tell you that the territorial question is an abstraction, that you can never colonize another territory without the African slavetrade, are both deaf and blind to the history of the last sixty years.

If the Negroes are to remain forever removed from the producing atmosphere, and the present discrimination continues, there will be nothing left for them to do.

The Negro, however, has been tested on an extensive scale.