![]() They knew that " white supremacists" had defied the Supreme Court and that southern governors had attempted to interpose themselves between the people and the highest law of the land. They knew that Negroes living in the capital of their own nation were confined to ghettos and could not always get a job - for which they were qualified. They knew that a great-great-grandson of Crispus Attucks might be ruled out of some restricted, all-white restaurant in some restricted, all-white section of a southern town, his United States Marines uniform notwithstanding. They knew that African nations had burst the bonds of colonialism. They knew something about current events. The boy and the girl knew more than history. ![]() The war had been won - but not a just peace. Abraham Lincoln had signed a document that would come to be known as the Emancipation Proclamation . The pale history books in Harlem and Birmingham told how the nation had fought a war over slavery. Wherever there was hard work, dirty work, dangerous work-in the mines, on the docks, in the blistering foundries- Negroes had done more than their share. This speaker told how, for two hundred years, without wages, black people, brought to this land in slave ships and in chains, had drained the swamps, built the homes, made cotton "king" and helped, on whip-lashed backs, to lift this nation from colonial obscurity to commanding influence in domestic commerce and world trade. Once the girl had heard a speaker, invited to her school during Negro History Week. The boy's Sunday-school teacher has told him that one of the team who designed the capital of their nation, Washington, D.C., was a Negro, Benjamin Banneker. They know that the first American to shed blood in the revolution which freed his country from British oppression was a black seaman named Crispus Attucks. They know that Negroes were with George Washington at Valley Forge. Yet this boy and this girl know something of the part of history which has been censored by the white writers and purchasers of board-of education books. Not all of history is recorded in the books supplied to school children in Harlem or Birmingham. This boy and this girl, separated by stretching miles, are wondering: Why does misery constantly haunt the Negro? In some distant past, had their forebears done some tragic injury to the nation, and was the curse of punishment upon the black race? Had they shirked in their duty as patriots, betrayed their country, denied their national birthright? Had they refused to defend their land against a foreign foe? He will always be a "porter", for there are no promotions for the Negro in this store, where every counter serves him except the one that sells hot dogs and orange juice. The girl's father is a porter in a downtown department store. Neighbors say if the ambulance hadn't come so late - to take her to the all-Negro hospital - the mother might still be alive. She can no longer attend the all-Negro school in her neighborhood - because her mother died only recently after a car accident. The girl is forced to play the role of their mother. Half a dozen small children, in various stages of undress, are scampering about the house. It needs paint badly and the patched-up roof appears in danger of caving in. She is sitting on the stoop of a rickety wooden one-family house in Birmingham. His mother is a sleep in domestic - working for a family on Long Island. The boy goes to a school attended mostly by Negro students with a scattering of Puerto Ricans. The drunks, the jobless, the junkies are shadow figures of his everyday world. He is sitting on a stoop in front of a vermin-infested apartment house in Harlem. It is the beginning of the year of our Lord 1963. I learned a lot.Īuthor-Leader-Frederick-Douglass.txt Jump Everyone is welcome to copy this HTML page - and, utilize it as you wish. Readers should realize I am a white, Senior American - thus, my "shred" (as defined above) may reflect this. ![]() : Date: 3-9-2021 : TEXT of BOOK "WHY WE CAN'T WAIT" BY Introduction ( by Martin Luther King - Jr.)Ģ. ![]() A careful, absorptive, respectful reading (of information) - where - the on-line reader (me) places "hyperlinks" & comments - into the posted, published document TEXT - to aid " ignorant American readers" ** that may come after. THIS PAGE ALSO CONTAINS THE "Shred" Completed 9-6-2020 I invite YOU to copy the HTML page - paste it into a Mricrosoft WORD file, etc. ( ) Please inform yourself - and, at least look at the non-shredded content. NOTE: THIS HTML PAGE ALSO CONTAINS THE "Shred" Completed ON 9-6-2020. UPDate: 8-8-2021 :: HOME A PAGE ABOUT THE BOOK : " WHY WE CAN'T WAIT" BY Martin Luther King, Jr. ![]()
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