Speech challenging the American character, 1984

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There is ^ample opportunity available for us all. There are a host of organizations devoted to making King's dream come true. Each of them badly needs volunteers and contributions. There are candidates who need help to win and office holders who ought to be defeated. There are schoolchildren who need special help and a host of others who cry out for assistance.

^{NAACP - KKK}

There is a world waiting out there for us to win. The year James Earl Ray shot down Martin Luther King on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel in Mempis, the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders reported that we were two societies inAmerica, black and white, drifting further and further apart.

The last four years have widened the gap between those who have and those who don't and hastened the necessity for agressive political action against those who want to destroy the dream and replace it with their nightmare.

[illegible]

There is no utopia. There are no detailed blueprints, because our politics must focus on the real issues -- power, wealth, and human needs -- if we are to move toward a more humane society.

To look backward to an imaginary ^ancient golden age is to surrender our futures to private greed, to increasing concentrations of wealth and power, to the continuing economic crisis which the un-

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checked race for profit submits us all.

Holding on to victories won only twenty short years ago requires that no method or means ought to be discounted.

Even one less valued now - appeals to conscience, justice and fair play - ought be employed; a people in extreme cannot affort to turn their back on any possible weapon which may produce the motive for doing right.

Doing right, after all, is what this life is all about.

[illegible]

He said then:

"I believe in God who made of one blood all nations that dwell on earth. I believe that all men, black and brown, and white are brothers, varying, through time and opportunity in form and gift and feature, but differing in no essential particular, and alike in soul and in the possibility of infinite development .

Especially do I believe in the Negro race; in the beauty of its genius. The sw-etness of its soul, and its strength in that meekness which shall inherit this turbulent earth.

I believe in pride of race and lineage itself; in pride of self so deep as to scorn injustice to other selves; in pride of lineage so great as to despise no man's father; in pride of race so chivalrous as neither to offer bastardy to the weak no beg wedlock of the strong; knowing that men may be brothers in Christ, even though they

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be not brothers-in-law.

I believe in service -- humble, reverent service, from the blacken [illegible] for work is heaven. Idleness hell, and wages is the "well done" of the master who summoned all them that labor and are heavy laden, making no disctinction between the blacks sweating cotton hands of Georgia and the first families of Virginia, since all distinction not based on deed is devilish and not divine.

I believe in the devil and his angels, who wantonly work to narrow the opportunity of struggling human beings, especially if they be black; who spit in the faces of the fallen, strike them that cannot strike agian, believe the worst and work to prove it, hating the image which their maker stamped on a brother's soul.

I believe in the prince of pleace. I believe that war is murder. I believe that armies and navies are at bottom the tinsel and braggacto of opression and wrong; and I believe that the wicked conduct of weaker and darker nations by nations white and stronger but foreshadows the death of that strength.

I believe in liberty for all men; the space to stretch their arms and their souls; the right to breathe and the right to vote, the freedom to choose their friends; enjoy the sunshine and ride on the railroads, uncursed by color; thinking, dreaming, working as they will in a kingdom of God and love.

I believe in the training of children Black even as white;

-17- -17the leading out of the little souls into the green pastures and beside the still waters, not for self or peace, but for life lit by some large vision of beauty and goodness and truth, lest we forget, and the sons of the fathers, like esau, for mere meat barter, their birthright in a mighty nation.

Finally I believe in patience -- patience with the weakness of the weak and the strength of the strong, the prejudice of the ignorant and the ignorance of the blind; - patience with the tardy triumph of joy and the mad chastening of the sorrow -- patience with God."*

______________________ *W.E.B. DuBois, the Independent (N.Y.) October 6, 1904.

is there an old, multi-balconied movie theatre in downtown Nashville, as old as 40 years? If so, what is its name?