(Draft) Speech about the upcoming presidential election, in [New Orleans, Louisiana?], 1972 October 5 (Doc 1 of 4)

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bringing ^{peace and} prosperity to Black people at home.

It vanished when busing stopped being transportation and began to be integration, and when a politics based on fear and hatred of Black people took over the White House.

We helped, too. We helped by artificially and arbitrarily dividing ourselves into integrationists and nationalists, ^{into reformers and revolutionaries} into middle class and poor, as though there was more than one way to catch hell for being Black in America.

We are now ^politically where we were twelve years ago. ^{Insert #1} Changes were made in the decade of the sixities, but changes were made in the fifties as well. We are voting more, but enjoying it less.

At the end of those two decades, we found a faltering national mood, a national administration reluctant to administer to Black needs, a national consciousness eager to have us - and all our problems - slip from the American scene.

That mood was shattered ^{in the '50s} first in Montgomery with marching feet and then ^{in the 60s} in every Southern city at lunch stools, ^{and bus station seats. Black power became a reality at Southern polling places.}

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That movement became politcal, and forced change on one of the political parties, made Black men Mayors and Congressmen.

It is largely forgotten now. Today's Black youth know more about what happened during reconstruction than they do about what happened ten years ago.

Now the stage is set for a new beginning.

What is happening now happened once before in American history in the years after Reconstruction. ^{Insert #2}The promises that Black people would be included in the social and economic life of the nation were repudiated. Instead of fulfulling the dream, then and ^as now:

- Thewho be ^liberal crusaders for social justice and democracy became weary as Black people could no longer be considered a purely Southern problems;

- The aspirations for and movement of Blacks began to be curtailed by organized violence and barbarity and by a series of legal maneuvers designed to make Black men less than political and economic equals:

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- The hopes and belief of Black people that racial equality and social justice could be achieved through litigation, legislation, negotiation, occasional direct action and strong alliances with white liberal groups were supplanted by disillusionment, bitterness, and open anger;

- The gult and indignation of Northern supportes of the Southern drive for equality turned into an attitude of cautious - and now open - racism when the Nothern Black man began to take seriously the claims of progess and began to look for visible signs in Northern cities.*

We are between ^{through with} the two great national conventions that choose the four white men, two of whom Black people - and all other Americans - will suffer or prosper under, over the next four years.

In three months ^{a few weeks} we will all go to the polls to choose between these men, and to choose what the future for us will be.

The next President of the United States will have an effect on all

*Paraphrased, in part, from a speech by Dr. Kenneth Clark to the SRC