Speech challenging the American character, 1984

a coat and tie to work.

We have an equally long and honorable tradition of struggle, and if yesterday's marches have faded from the headlines and our memories, they still send forth the message that we move further fastest when we move together.

And we have a long history of cooperation - between us and among us, of house slave helping field slave of field slave helping house slave to poison the master, of doctors taking chickens for payment when money was scarce and need was great, of neighbor guarding neighbor's house and children, of teacher visiting parent to make sure [illegible] scholarship sits on a strong foundation at home.

Time weakens these traditions, as it does with any people.

Yet they must be constantly reinforced, at home and at play, in church and on the job.

An early attempt at eliminating illiteracy in the South developed a slogan that was their method - "Each one Teach one" until all could read.

Perhaps today our slogan and method should be Each one Reach one.

Each one reach one until all are registered and voting.

Each one reach one until all are functioning citizens of our block, our city, our country and our world.

Each one reach one on the job, so will the strong helps the weak and support the faltering.

Each one reach one until small support systems become larger ones.

Each one reach one, until your problem is mine, until ours is truly ours.

Our common problems dwarth our individual ones, but each is a matter of education and training, of individual and group effort, of pulling together.

Let me note just a few

There is a great deal we can do for ourselves.

We can redouble our support for organizations like [illegible] the NAACP and those other groups that guard our liberties and protect our rights.

If you aren't a member and supporter, you are part of the problem, not a contributor to the solution.

We can more actively monitor the education ^schools our children [illegible] ^attend, making sure the end of their education isn't the beginning of a lifetime of unemployment.

We can realize our full political potential, registering, educating and voting every citizen in our community. Those who stay at home on election day are as useless as wings on a frog, and just as ugly too.

We can say to those who want to represent us, in City Hall or in the White House, that if they want us to vote for them they'd better be ready to vote for us.

We can spend our money with people who will spend it back on us - why buy a hamburger from a company that won't ^{will only} hire us to cook it or a house from a company that won't hire us to sell it or build it.

And we can realize that we live in a interdependent world. We can't be free while Blacks in Johannesburg can't vote. [illegible sentence]. Our young men deserve a better future than fighting jungle wars in Nicaragua. We can't squander our national treasury on mutually assured destruction and Buck Rogers weapons while Americans are homeless and unemployed.