You want to shut up every Negro who has the courage to stand up and fight for the rights of his people, for the rights of workers, and I have been on many a picket line for the steelworkers too.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
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 know that if the peace movement takes its message boldly to the Negro people a powerful force can be secured in pursuit of the greatest goal of all mankind. And the same is true of labor and the great democratic sections of our population.
I can't serve just the Negro cause. I've got to serve all the people of Massachusetts.
If I allow the fact that I am a Negro to checkmate my will to do, now, I will inevitably form the habit of being defeated.
The hate and scorn showered on us Negro officers by our fellow Americans convinced me that there was no sense in my dying for a world ruled by them. I made up my mind that if I got through this war I would study law and use my time fighting for men who could not strike back.
We do not show the Negro how to overcome segregation, but we teach him how to accept it as final and just.
Sometimes black people really want to hold onto our oppression - 'This is ours! This belongs to us.' You can't just talk about equality for somebody else. Let's pass it on. Let's pass it on to somebody else. At the end of the day, it is all about inequality.
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.
I am not an enemy of the Negro. We want him here among us; he is the only laboring class we have.
I suggest that ten thousand Negroes march on Washington, D.C., the capital of the Nation, with the slogan, 'We loyal Negro American citizens demand the right to work and fight for our country.'