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Governor John Patterson’s * freedom to beat me up. Now it is time to create new standards. It is impossible to take seriously a country which will allow a hillbilly to overturn the government of the United States, at the very same time that this very government puts in jail people who take the Fifth Amendment. And really, it is scarcely a question whether Carl Braden, † for example, or John Patterson more menaces the future of this democracy.
    I don’t know how it will come about, but I know that no matter how it comes about, it will be bloody; it will be hard. I still believe that we can do with this country something that has not been done. We are misled here because we think of numbers. You don’t need numbers; you need passion. And this is proven by the history of the world.
    The tragedy of this country now is that most of the people who say they care about it do not care. What they care about is their safety and their profits. What they care about is not rocking the boat. What they care about is the continuation of white supremacy, so that white liberals whoare with you in principle will move out when you move in. Now when this is challenged, bitter tears come to their eyes, and they say to you, “You sound as if you think white people don’t have any decency.” Well, this is much too simple. That is not the question. The question here is how long can Americans believe that the rest of the world, including me, will take the will for the deed. If the country means what it says, why is the question which ends every argument “Would you let your sister marry him?” Why would I want to marry her?
    I’m trying to suggest that in this long and terrifying history, something has happened to the country far worse than what has happened to the Negroes. People are always consoling me by pointing out that if one thinks of this country as an enormous hall, well, everybody got here, and they had to stand in line, and you know that by and by, standing in line, I’ll get to the banquet table too. Well, of course, I got here first, and I helped to cook the food. But leaving that question aside, it has not occurred to anyone yet that the people at the table are starving to death.
    People talk about what we can do to aid Africa, and this is, again, a kind of new paternalism. I don’t know what we can do to aid Africa or Latin America or Asia. But I do know what this source can do for us. They will survive with our help or without it. They are really our opportunity. We have been smothered, and really, let’s not talk about the public life which mirrors it, but only consider, consider the private life. Consider what is happening in those streets today to our young. To all our young. How is it that this country can only produce so demoralized a generation? And this generation is imitating its elders. They are doing what they have seen their elders do. And what their elders have been doing since they have been on earth is taking nothing seriously. Now there are some things which must be taken seriously. The nation that doesn’t take them seriously, the person who doesn’t take them seriously, can only perish.
    Now I’m here too. I am an American too. I would like to see this peculiar dialogue ended. I really would like to see Governor John Patterson, or the governor of Mississippi, told what to do and put in jail if he doesn’t do it. There is a great captive Negro population here, which is well publicized but not well known. And what is not publicized, and what is not known at all, is that there is a great captive white population here too. No one has pointed out yet with any force that if I am not a man here, you are not a man here. You cannot lynch me and keep me in ghettos without becoming something monstrous yourselves. And furthermore, you give me a terrifying advantage.
    You give me this advantage: that whereas you have never had to look at me, because you’ve sealed me away along with sin and hell and death and all