Tweet
Re: Reparations: Is it appropriate?
It's interesting to note that 40 years after this speech, black people from New Orleans have been scattered to the four winds, while unethical business owners "hire" illegal immigrants to clean up and rebuild the city.
An Excerpt from "Why Jesus Called Man a Fool"
Martin Luther King Jr.
Our white brothers must see this; they haven’t seen it up to now. The great problem facing our nation today in the area of race is that it is the black man who to a large extent produced the wealth of this nation. And the nation doesn’t have sense enough to share its wealth and its power with the very people who made it so. And I know what I’m talking about this morning. The black man made America wealthy.
We’ve been here—that’s why I tell you right now, I’m not going anywhere. They can talk, these groups, some people talking about a separate state, or go back to Africa. I love Africa, it’s our ancestral home. But I don’t know about you. My grandfather and my great-grandfather did too much to build this nation for me to be talking about getting away from it. Before the Pilgrim fathers landed at Plymouth in 1620, we were here. Before Jefferson etched across the pages of history the majestic words of the Declaration of Independence, we were here. Before the beautiful words of the "Star Spangled Banner" were written, we were here. For more than two centuries, our forebearers labored here without wages. They made cotton king. With their hands and with their backs and with their labor, they built the sturdy docks, the stout factories, the impressive mansions of the South.
Now this nation is telling us that we can’t build. Negroes are excluded almost absolutely from the building trades. It’s lily white. Why? Because these jobs pay six, seven, eight, nine and ten dollars an hour, and they don’t want Negroes to have it. [applause] And I feel that if something doesn’t happen soon, and something massive, the same indictment will come to America—"Thou fool!"
Martin Luther King Jr.
Our white brothers must see this; they haven’t seen it up to now. The great problem facing our nation today in the area of race is that it is the black man who to a large extent produced the wealth of this nation. And the nation doesn’t have sense enough to share its wealth and its power with the very people who made it so. And I know what I’m talking about this morning. The black man made America wealthy.
We’ve been here—that’s why I tell you right now, I’m not going anywhere. They can talk, these groups, some people talking about a separate state, or go back to Africa. I love Africa, it’s our ancestral home. But I don’t know about you. My grandfather and my great-grandfather did too much to build this nation for me to be talking about getting away from it. Before the Pilgrim fathers landed at Plymouth in 1620, we were here. Before Jefferson etched across the pages of history the majestic words of the Declaration of Independence, we were here. Before the beautiful words of the "Star Spangled Banner" were written, we were here. For more than two centuries, our forebearers labored here without wages. They made cotton king. With their hands and with their backs and with their labor, they built the sturdy docks, the stout factories, the impressive mansions of the South.
Now this nation is telling us that we can’t build. Negroes are excluded almost absolutely from the building trades. It’s lily white. Why? Because these jobs pay six, seven, eight, nine and ten dollars an hour, and they don’t want Negroes to have it. [applause] And I feel that if something doesn’t happen soon, and something massive, the same indictment will come to America—"Thou fool!"
Comment