Speeches - Anthology

IB English: Anthology of Speeches
CONTENTS
Page Author Title

2 Martin Luther King I Have a Dream
5 John F Kennedy Inaugural Address
7 Malcolm X The Ballot or the Bullet
20 Susan B. Anthony After Being Convicted of
Voting
21 Indira Gandhi After the assassination of Dr
Martin Luther King
23 Sojourner Truth Aint I a Woman?
24 Oprah Winfrey On being awarded the first
Bob Hope humanitarian
award
25 Winston Churchill We Shall Fight on the
Beaches
31 George W. Bush First Inaugural Address
34 Elizabeth Glaser Address to Democrat
National Convention
36 Mary Fisher A Whisper of AIDS
39 George Wallace Inaugural Address
47 Barack Obama A New Beginning
56 Ursula Le Guin A Left-Handed
Commencement Speech
58 Enoch Powell Rivers of Blood
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Martin Luther King, Jr.

"I Have a Dream"
I am happy to join with you today in what will go down in history as the greatest demonstration for freedom in
the history of our nation.
Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand today, signed the Emancipation
Proclamation. This momentous decree came as a great beacon light of hope to millions of Negro slaves who had
been seared in the flames of withering injustice. It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of their
captivity.
But one hundred years later, the Negro still is not free. One hundred years later, the life of the Negro is still
sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination. One hundred years later, the
Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity. One hundred years
later, the Negro is still languished in the corners of American society and finds himself an exile in his own land.
And so we've come here today to dramatize a shameful condition.
In a sense we've come to our nation's capital to cash a check. When the architects of our republic wrote the
magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory
note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men, yes, black men as well as
white men, would be guaranteed the "unalienable Rights" of "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." It is
obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note, insofar as her citizens of color are concerned.
Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check, a check which has
come back marked "insufficient funds."
But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. We refuse to believe that there are insufficient
funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation. And so, we've come to cash this check, a check that will
give us upon demand the riches of freedom and the security of justice.
We have also come to this hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of Now. This is no time to
engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism. Now is the time to make real
the promises of democracy. Now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit
path of racial justice. Now is the time to lift our nation from the quicksands of racial injustice to the solid rock of
brotherhood. Now is the time to make justice a reality for all of God's children.
It would be fatal for the nation to overlook the urgency of the moment. This sweltering summer of the Negro's
legitimate discontent will not pass until there is an invigorating autumn of freedom and equality. Nineteen sixty-
three is not an end, but a beginning. And those who hope that the Negro needed to blow off steam and will now
be content will have a rude awakening if the nation returns to business as usual. And there will be neither rest
nor tranquility in America until the Negro is granted his citizenship rights. The whirlwinds of revolt will
continue to shake the foundations of our nation until the bright day of justice emerges.
But there is something that I must say to my people, who stand on the warm threshold which leads into the
palace of justice: In the process of gaining our rightful place, we must not be guilty of wrongful deeds. Let us
not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred. We must forever
conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline. We must not allow our creative protest to
degenerate into physical violence. Again and again, we must rise to the majestic heights of meeting physical
force with soul force.
The marvelous new militancy which has engulfed the Negro community must not lead us to a distrust of all
white people, for many of our white brothers, as evidenced by their presence here today, have come to realize
that their destiny is tied up with our destiny. And they have come to realize that their freedom is inextricably
bound to our freedom.
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We cannot walk alone.

And as we walk, we must make the pledge that we shall always march ahead.
We cannot turn back.
There are those who are asking the devotees of civil rights, "When will you be satisfied?" We can never be
satisfied as long as the Negro is the victim of the unspeakable horrors of police brutality. We can never be
satisfied as long as our bodies, heavy with the fatigue of travel, cannot gain lodging in the motels of the
highways and the hotels of the cities. We cannot be satisfied as long as the negro's basic mobility is from a
smaller ghetto to a larger one. We can never be satisfied as long as our children are stripped of their self-hood
and robbed of their dignity by signs stating: "For Whites Only." We cannot be satisfied as long as a Negro in
Mississippi cannot vote and a Negro in New York believes he has nothing for which to vote. No, no, we are not
satisfied, and we will not be satisfied until "justice rolls down like waters, and righteousness like a mighty
stream."
I am not unmindful that some of you have come here out of great trials and tribulations. Some of you have come
fresh from narrow jail cells. And some of you have come from areas where your quest -- quest for freedom left
you battered by the storms of persecution and staggered by the winds of police brutality. You have been the
veterans of creative suffering. Continue to work with the faith that unearned suffering is redemptive. Go back to
Mississippi, go back to Alabama, go back to South Carolina, go back to Georgia, go back to Louisiana, go back
to the slums and ghettos of our northern cities, knowing that somehow this situation can and will be changed.
Let us not wallow in the valley of despair, I say to you today, my friends.
And so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply
rooted in the American dream.
I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: "We hold these
truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal."
I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave
owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.
I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering
with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.
I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the
color of their skin but by the content of their character.
I have a dream today!
I have a dream that one day, down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips
dripping with the words of "interposition" and "nullification" -- one day right there in Alabama little black boys
and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.
I have a dream today!
I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, and every hill and mountain shall be made low, the
rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight; "and the glory of the Lord shall
be revealed and all flesh shall see it together."2
This is our hope, and this is the faith that I go back to the South with.
With this faith, we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith, we will be
able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith,
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we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for
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freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day.

And this will be the day -- this will be the day when all of God's children will be able to sing with new meaning:
My country 'tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing.
Land where my fathers died, land of the Pilgrim's pride,
From every mountainside, let freedom ring!
And if America is to be a great nation, this must become true.
And so let freedom ring from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire.
Let freedom ring from the mighty mountains of New York.
Let freedom ring from the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania.
Let freedom ring from the snow-capped Rockies of Colorado.
Let freedom ring from the curvaceous slopes of California.
But not only that:
Let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia.
Let freedom ring from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee.
Let freedom ring from every hill and molehill of Mississippi.
From every mountainside, let freedom ring.
And when this happens, when we allow freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet,
from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and
white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the
old Negro spiritual:
Free at last! Free at last!
Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!3

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John F. Kennedy
Inaugural Address
Vice President Johnson, Mr. Speaker, Mr. Chief Justice, President Eisenhower, Vice President Nixon, President
Truman, reverend clergy, fellow citizens:
We observe today not a victory of party, but a celebration of freedom -- symbolizing an end, as well as a
beginning -- signifying renewal, as well as change. For I have sworn before you and Almighty God the same
solemn oath our forebears prescribed nearly a century and three-quarters ago.
The world is very different now. For man holds in his mortal hands the power to abolish all forms of human
poverty and all forms of human life. And yet the same revolutionary beliefs for which our forebears fought are
still at issue around the globe -- the belief that the rights of man come not from the generosity of the state, but
from the hand of God.
We dare not forget today that we are the heirs of that first revolution. Let the word go forth from this time and
place, to friend and foe alike, that the torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans -- born in this
century, tempered by war, disciplined by a hard and bitter peace, proud of our ancient heritage, and unwilling to
witness or permit the slow undoing of those human rights to which this nation has always been committed, and
to which we are committed today at home and around the world.
Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any
hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, to assure the survival and the success of liberty.
This much we pledge -- and more.
To those old allies whose cultural and spiritual origins we share, we pledge the loyalty of faithful friends. United
there is little we cannot do in a host of cooperative ventures. Divided there is little we can do -- for we dare not
meet a powerful challenge at odds and split asunder.
To those new states whom we welcome to the ranks of the free, we pledge our word that one form of colonial
control shall not have passed away merely to be replaced by a far more iron tyranny. We shall not always expect
to find them supporting our view. But we shall always hope to find them strongly supporting their own freedom
-- and to remember that, in the past, those who foolishly sought power by riding the back of the tiger ended up
inside.
To those people in the huts and villages of half the globe struggling to break the bonds of mass misery, we
pledge our best efforts to help them help themselves, for whatever period is required -- not because the
Communists may be doing it, not because we seek their votes, but because it is right. If a free society cannot
help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich.
To our sister republics south of our border, we offer a special pledge: to convert our good words into good
deeds, in a new alliance for progress, to assist free men and free governments in casting off the chains of
poverty. But this peaceful revolution of hope cannot become the prey of hostile powers. Let all our neighbors
know that we shall join with them to oppose aggression or subversion anywhere in the Americas. And let every
other power know that this hemisphere intends to remain the master of its own house.
To that world assembly of sovereign states, the United Nations, our last best hope in an age where the
instruments of war have far outpaced the instruments of peace, we renew our pledge of support -- to prevent it
from becoming merely a forum for invective, to strengthen its shield of the new and the weak, and to enlarge the
area in which its writ may run.
Finally, to those nations who would make themselves our adversary, we offer not a pledge but a request: that
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both sides begin anew the quest for peace, before the dark powers of destruction unleashed by science engulf all
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humanity in planned or accidental self-destruction.

We dare not tempt them with weakness. For only when our arms are sufficient beyond doubt can we be certain
beyond doubt that they will never be employed.
But neither can two great and powerful groups of nations take comfort from our present course -- both sides
overburdened by the cost of modern weapons, both rightly alarmed by the steady spread of the deadly atom, yet
both racing to alter that uncertain balance of terror that stays the hand of mankind's final war.
So let us begin anew -- remembering on both sides that civility is not a sign of weakness, and sincerity is always
subject to proof. Let us never negotiate out of fear, but let us never fear to negotiate.
Let both sides explore what problems unite us instead of belaboring those problems which divide us.
Let both sides, for the first time, formulate serious and precise proposals for the inspection and control of arms,
and bring the absolute power to destroy other nations under the absolute control of all nations.
Let both sides seek to invoke the wonders of science instead of its terrors. Together let us explore the stars,
conquer the deserts, eradicate disease, tap the ocean depths, and encourage the arts and commerce.
Let both sides unite to heed, in all corners of the earth, the command of Isaiah -- to "undo the heavy burdens,
and [to] let the oppressed go free."
And, if a beachhead of cooperation may push back the jungle of suspicion, let both sides join in creating a new
endeavor -- not a new balance of power, but a new world of law -- where the strong are just, and the weak
secure, and the peace preserved.
All this will not be finished in the first one hundred days. Nor will it be finished in the first one thousand days;
nor in the life of this Administration; nor even perhaps in our lifetime on this planet. But let us begin.
In your hands, my fellow citizens, more than mine, will rest the final success or failure of our course. Since this
country was founded, each generation of Americans has been summoned to give testimony to its national
loyalty. The graves of young Americans who answered the call to service surround the globe.
Now the trumpet summons us again -- not as a call to bear arms, though arms we need -- not as a call to battle,
though embattled we are -- but a call to bear the burden of a long twilight struggle, year in and year out,
"rejoicing in hope; patient in tribulation," a struggle against the common enemies of man: tyranny, poverty,
disease, and war itself.
Can we forge against these enemies a grand and global alliance, North and South, East and West, that can assure
a more fruitful life for all mankind? Will you join in that historic effort?
In the long history of the world, only a few generations have been granted the role of defending freedom in its
hour of maximum danger. I do not shrink from this responsibility -- I welcome it. I do not believe that any of us
would exchange places with any other people or any other generation. The energy, the faith, the devotion which
we bring to this endeavor will light our country and all who serve it. And the glow from that fire can truly light
the world.
And so, my fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country.
My fellow citizens of the world, ask not what America will do for you, but what together we can do for the
freedom of man.
Finally, whether you are citizens of America or citizens of the world, ask of us here the same high standards of
strength and sacrifice which we ask of you. With a good conscience our only sure reward, with history the final
judge of our deeds, let us go forth to lead the land we love, asking His blessing and His help, but knowing that
here on earth God's work must truly be our own.
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The Ballot or the Bullet

by Malcolm X
April 3, 1964
Cleveland, Ohio
Mr. Moderator, Brother Lomax, brothers and sisters, friends and enemies: I just can't believe
everyone in here is a friend, and I don't want to leave anybody out. The question tonight, as I
understand it, is "The Negro Revolt, and Where Do We Go From Here?" or What Next?" In
my little humble way of understanding it, it points toward either the ballot or the bullet.
Before we try and explain what is meant by the ballot or the bullet, I would like to clarify
something concerning myself. I'm still a Muslim; my religion is still Islam. That's my
personal belief. Just as Adam Clayton Powell is a Christian minister who heads the
Abyssinian Baptist Church in New York, but at the same time takes part in the political
struggles to try and bring about rights to the black people in this country; and Dr. Martin
Luther King is a Christian minister down in Atlanta, Georgia, who heads another
organization fighting for the civil rights of black people in this country; and Reverend
Galamison, I guess you've heard of him, is another Christian minister in New York who has
been deeply involved in the school boycotts to eliminate segregated education; well, I myself
am a minister, not a Christian minister, but a Muslim minister; and I believe in action on all
fronts by whatever means necessary.
Although I'm still a Muslim, I'm not here tonight to discuss my religion. I'm not here to try
and change your religion. I'm not here to argue or discuss anything that we differ about,
because it's time for us to submerge our differences and realize that it is best for us to first see
that we have the same problem, a common problem, a problem that will make you catch hell
whether you're a Baptist, or a Methodist, or a Muslim, or a nationalist. Whether you're
educated or illiterate, whether you live on the boulevard or in the alley, you're going to catch
hell just like I am. We're all in the same boat and we all are going to catch the same hell from
the same man. He just happens to be a white man. All of us have suffered here, in this
country, political oppression at the hands of the white man, economic exploitation at the
hands of the white man, and social degradation at the hands of the white man.
Now in speaking like this, it doesn't mean that we're anti-white, but it does mean we're anti-
exploitation, we're anti-degradation, we're anti-oppression. And if the white man doesn't want
us to be anti-him, let him stop oppressing and exploiting and degrading us. Whether we are
Christians or Muslims or nationalists or agnostics or atheists, we must first learn to forget our
differences. If we have differences, let us differ in the closet; when we come out in front, let
us not have anything to argue about until we get finished arguing with the man. If the late
President Kennedy could get together with Khrushchev and exchange some wheat, we
certainly have more in common with each other than Kennedy and Khrushchev had with each
other.
If we don't do something real soon, I think you'll have to agree that we're going to be forced
either to use the ballot or the bullet. It's one or the other in 1964. It isn't that time is running
out -- time has run out!
1964 threatens to be the most explosive year America has ever witnessed. The most explosive
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year. Why? It's also a political year. It's the year when all of the white politicians will be back
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in the so-called Negro community jiving you and me for some votes. The year when all of the
white political crooks will be right back in your and my community with their false promises,
building up our hopes for a letdown, with their trickery and their treachery, with their false
promises which they don't intend to keep. As they nourish these dissatisfactions, it can only
lead to one thing, an explosion; and now we have the type of black man on the scene in
America today -- I'm sorry, Brother Lomax -- who just doesn't intend to turn the other cheek
any longer.
Don't let anybody tell you anything about the odds are against you. If they draft you, they
send you to Korea and make you face 800 million Chinese. If you can be brave over there,
you can be brave right here. These odds aren't as great as those odds. And if you fight here,
you will at least know what you're fighting for.
I'm not a politician, not even a student of politics; in fact, I'm not a student of much of
anything. I'm not a Democrat. I'm not a Republican, and I don't even consider myself an
American. If you and I were Americans, there'd be no problem. Those Honkies that just got
off the boat, they're already Americans; Polacks are already Americans; the Italian refugees
are already Americans. Everything that came out of Europe, every blue-eyed thing, is already
an American. And as long as you and I have been over here, we aren't Americans yet.
Well, I am one who doesn't believe in deluding myself. I'm not going to sit at your table and
watch you eat, with nothing on my plate, and call myself a diner. Sitting at the table doesn't
make you a diner, unless you eat some of what's on that plate. Being here in America doesn't
make you an American. Being born here in America doesn't make you an American. Why, if
birth made you American, you wouldn't need any legislation; you wouldn't need any
amendments to the Constitution; you wouldn't be faced with civil-rights filibustering in
Washington, D.C., right now. They don't have to pass civil-rights legislation to make a
Polack an American.
No, I'm not an American. I'm one of the 22 million black people who are the victims of
Americanism. One of the 22 million black people who are the victims of democracy, nothing
but disguised hypocrisy. So, I'm not standing here speaking to you as an American, or a
patriot, or a flag-saluter, or a flag-waver -- no, not I. I'm speaking as a victim of this
American system. And I see America through the eyes of the victim. I don't see any
American dream; I see an American nightmare.
These 22 million victims are waking up. Their eyes are coming open. They're beginning to
see what they used to only look at. They're becoming politically mature. They are realizing
that there are new political trends from coast to coast. As they see these new political trends,
it's possible for them to see that every time there's an election the races are so close that they
have to have a recount. They had to recount in Massachusetts to see who was going to be
governor, it was so close. It was the same way in Rhode Island, in Minnesota, and in many
other parts of the country. And the same with Kennedy and Nixon when they ran for
president. It was so close they had to count all over again. Well, what does this mean? It
means that when white people are evenly divided, and black people have a bloc of votes of
their own, it is left up to them to determine who's going to sit in the White House and who's
going to be in the dog house.
lt. was the black man's vote that put the present administration in Washington, D.C. Your
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vote, your dumb vote, your ignorant vote, your wasted vote put in an administration in
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Washington, D.C., that has seen fit to pass every kind of legislation imaginable, saving you
until last, then filibustering on top of that. And your and my leaders have the audacity to run
around clapping their hands and talk about how much progress we're making. And what a
good president we have. If he wasn't good in Texas, he sure can't be good in Washington,
D.C. Because Texas is a lynch state. It is in the same breath as Mississippi, no different; only
they lynch you in Texas with a Texas accent and lynch you in Mississippi with a Mississippi
accent. And these Negro leaders have the audacity to go and have some coffee in the White
House with a Texan, a Southern cracker -- that's all he is -- and then come out and tell you
and me that he's going to be better for us because, since he's from the South, he knows how to
deal with the Southerners. What kind of logic is that? Let Eastland be president, he's from the
South too. He should be better able to deal with them than Johnson.
In this present administration they have in the House of Representatives 257 Democrats to
only 177 Republicans. They control two-thirds of the House vote. Why can't they pass
something that will help you and me? In the Senate, there are 67 senators who are of the
Democratic Party. Only 33 of them are Republicans. Why, the Democrats have got the
government sewed up, and you're the one who sewed it up for them. And what have they
given you for it? Four years in office, and just now getting around to some civil-rights
legislation. Just now, after everything else is gone, out of the way, they're going to sit down
now and play with you all summer long -- the same old giant con game that they call
filibuster. All those are in cahoots together. Don't you ever think they're not in cahoots
together, for the man that is heading the civil-rights filibuster is a man from Georgia named
Richard Russell. When Johnson became president, the first man he asked for when he got
back to Washington, D.C., was "Dicky" -- that's how tight they are. That's his boy, that's his
pal, that's his buddy. But they're playing that old con game. One of them makes believe he's
for you, and he's got it fixed where the other one is so tight against you, he never has to keep
his promise.
So it's time in 1964 to wake up. And when you see them coming up with that kind of
conspiracy, let them know your eyes are open. And let them know you -- something else
that's wide open too. It's got to be the ballot or the bullet. The ballot or the bullet. If you're
afraid to use an expression like that, you should get on out of the country; you should get
back in the cotton patch; you should get back in the alley. They get all the Negro vote, and
after they get it, the Negro gets nothing in return. All they did when they got to Washington
was give a few big Negroes big jobs. Those big Negroes didn't need big jobs, they already
had jobs. That's camouflage, that's trickery, that's treachery, window-dressing. I'm not trying
to knock out the Democrats for the Republicans. We'll get to them in a minute. But it is true;
you put the Democrats first and the Democrats put you last.
Look at it the way it is. What alibis do they use, since they control Congress and the Senate?
What alibi do they use when you and I ask, "Well, when are you going to keep your
promise?" They blame the Dixiecrats. What is a Dixiecrat? A Democrat. A Dixiecrat is
nothing but a Democrat in disguise. The titular head of the Democrats is also the head of the
Dixiecrats, because the Dixiecrats are a part of the Democratic Party. The Democrats have
never kicked the Dixiecrats out of the party. The Dixiecrats bolted themselves once, but the
Democrats didn't put them out. Imagine, these lowdown Southern segregationists put the
Northern Democrats down. But the Northern Democrats have never put the Dixiecrats down.
No, look at that thing the way it is. They have got a con game going on, a political con game,
and you and I are in the middle. It's time for you and me to wake up and start looking at it
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like it is, and trying to understand it like it is; and then we can deal with it like it is.
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The Dixiecrats in Washington, D.C., control the key committees that run the government.
The only reason the Dixiecrats control these committees is because they have seniority. The
only reason they have seniority is because they come from states where Negroes can't vote.
This is not even a government that's based on democracy. lt. is not a government that is made
up of representatives of the people. Half of the people in the South can't even vote. Eastland
is not even supposed to be in Washington. Half of the senators and congressmen who occupy
these key positions in Washington, D.C., are there illegally, are there unconstitutionally.
I was in Washington, D.C., a week ago Thursday, when they were debating whether or not
they should let the bill come onto the floor. And in the back of the room where the Senate
meets, there's a huge map of the United States, and on that map it shows the location of
Negroes throughout the country. And it shows that the Southern section of the country, the
states that are most heavily concentrated with Negroes, are the ones that have senators and
congressmen standing up filibustering and doing all other kinds of trickery to keep the Negro
from being able to vote. This is pitiful. But it's not pitiful for us any longer; it's actually pitiful
for the white man, because soon now, as the Negro awakens a little more and sees the vise
that he's in, sees the bag that he's in, sees the real game that he's in, then the Negro's going to
develop a new tactic.
These senators and congressmen actually violate the constitutional amendments that
guarantee the people of that particular state or county the right to vote. And the Constitution
itself has within it the machinery to expel any representative from a state where the voting
rights of the people are violated. You don't even need new legislation. Any person in
Congress right now, who is there from a state or a district where the voting rights of the
people are violated, that particular person should be expelled from Congress. And when you
expel him, you've removed one of the obstacles in the path of any real meaningful legislation
in this country. In fact, when you expel them, you don't need new legislation, because they
will be replaced by black representatives from counties and districts where the black man is
in the majority, not in the minority.
If the black man in these Southern states had his full voting rights, the key Dixiecrats in
Washington, D. C., which means the key Democrats in Washington, D.C., would lose their
seats. The Democratic Party itself would lose its power. It would cease to be powerful as a
party. When you see the amount of power that would be lost by the Democratic Party if it
were to lose the Dixiecrat wing, or branch, or element, you can see where it's against the
interests of the Democrats to give voting rights to Negroes in states where the Democrats
have been in complete power and authority ever since the Civil War. You just can't belong to
that Party without analyzing it.
I say again, I'm not anti-Democrat, I'm not anti-Republican, I'm not anti-anything. I'm just
questioning their sincerity, and some of the strategy that they've been using on our people by
promising them promises that they don't intend to keep. When you keep the Democrats in
power, you're keeping the Dixiecrats in power. I doubt that my good Brother Lomax will
deny that. A vote for a Democrat is a vote for a Dixiecrat. That's why, in 1964, it's time now
for you and me to become more politically mature and realize what the ballot is for; what
we're supposed to get when we cast a ballot; and that if we don't cast a ballot, it's going to end
up in a situation where we're going to have to cast a bullet. It's either a ballot or a bullet.
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In the North, they do it a different way. They have a system that's known as gerrymandering,
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whatever that means. It means when Negroes become too heavily concentrated in a certain
area, and begin to gain too much political power, the white man comes along and changes the
district lines. You may say, "Why do you keep saying white man?" Because it's the white
man who does it. I haven't ever seen any Negro changing any lines. They don't let him get
near the line. It's the white man who does this. And usually, it's the white man who grins at
you the most, and pats you on the back, and is supposed to be your friend. He may be
friendly, but he's not your friend.
So, what I'm trying to impress upon you, in essence, is this: You and I in America are faced
not with a segregationist conspiracy, we're faced with a government conspiracy. Everyone
who's filibustering is a senator -- that's the government. Everyone who's finagling in
Washington, D.C., is a congressman -- that's the government. You don't have anybody
putting blocks in your path but people who are a part of the government. The same
government that you go abroad to fight for and die for is the government that is in a
conspiracy to deprive you of your voting rights, deprive you of your economic opportunities,
deprive you of decent housing, deprive you of decent education. You don't need to go to the
employer alone, it is the government itself, the government of America, that is responsible for
the oppression and exploitation and degradation of black people in this country. And you
should drop it in their lap. This government has failed the Negro. This so-called democracy
has failed the Negro. And all these white liberals have definitely failed the Negro.
So, where do we go from here? First, we need some friends. We need some new allies. The
entire civil-rights struggle needs a new interpretation, a broader interpretation. We need to
look at this civil-rights thing from another angle -- from the inside as well as from the
outside. To those of us whose philosophy is black nationalism, the only way you can get
involved in the civil-rights struggle is give it a new interpretation. That old interpretation
excluded us. It kept us out. So, we're giving a new interpretation to the civil-rights struggle,
an interpretation that will enable us to come into it, take part in it. And these handkerchief-
heads who have been dillydallying and pussy footing and compromising -- we don't intend to
let them pussyfoot and dillydally and compromise any longer.
How can you thank a man for giving you what's already yours? How then can you thank him
for giving you only part of what's already yours? You haven't even made progress, if what's
being given to you, you should have had already. That's not progress. And I love my Brother
Lomax, the way he pointed out we're right back where we were in 1954. We're not even as
far up as we were in 1954. We're behind where we were in 1954. There's more segregation
now than there was in 1954. There's more racial animosity, more racial hatred, more racial
violence today in 1964, than there was in 1954. Where is the progress?
And now you're facing a situation where the young Negro's coming up. They don't want to
hear that "turn the-other-cheek" stuff, no. In Jacksonville, those were teenagers, they were
throwing Molotov cocktails. Negroes have never done that before. But it shows you there's a
new deal coming in. There's new thinking coming in. There's new strategy coming in. It'll be
Molotov cocktails this month, hand grenades next month, and something else next month. It'll
be ballots, or it'll be bullets. It'll be liberty, or it will be death. The only difference about this
kind of death -- it'll be reciprocal. You know what is meant by "reciprocal"? That's one of
Brother Lomax's words. I stole it from him. I don't usually deal with those big words because
I don't usually deal with big people. I deal with small people. I find you can get a whole lot of
11
small people and whip hell out of a whole lot of big people. They haven't got anything to
lose, and they've got every thing to gain. And they'll let you know in a minute: "It takes two
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to tango; when I go, you go."

The black nationalists, those whose philosophy is black nationalism, in bringing about this
new interpretation of the entire meaning of civil rights, look upon it as meaning, as Brother
Lomax has pointed out, equality of opportunity. Well, we're justified in seeking civil rights, if
it means equality of opportunity, because all we're doing there is trying to collect for our
investment. Our mothers and fathers invested sweat and blood. Three hundred and ten years
we worked in this country without a dime in return -- I mean without a dime in return. You
let the white man walk around here talking about how rich this country is, but you never stop
to think how it got rich so quick. It got rich because you made it rich.
You take the people who are in this audience right now. They're poor. We're all poor as
individuals. Our weekly salary individually amounts to hardly anything. But if you take the
salary of everyone in here collectively, it'll fill up a whole lot of baskets. It's a lot of wealth. If
you can collect the wages of just these people right here for a year, you'll be rich -- richer
than rich. When you look at it like that, think how rich Uncle Sam had to become, not with
this handful, but millions of black people. Your and my mother and father, who didn't work
an eight-hour shift, but worked from "can't see" in the morning until "can't see" at night, and
worked for nothing, making the white man rich, making Uncle Sam rich. This is our
investment. This is our contribution, our blood.
Not only did we give of our free labor, we gave of our blood. Every time he had a call to
arms, we were the first ones in uniform. We died on every battlefield the white man had. We
have made a greater sacrifice than anybody who's standing up in America today. We have
made a greater contribution and have collected less. Civil rights, for those of us whose
philosophy is black nationalism, means: "Give it to us now. Don't wait for next year. Give it
to us yesterday, and that's not fast enough."
I might stop right here to point out one thing. Whenever you're going after something that
belongs to you, anyone who's depriving you of the right to have it is a criminal. Understand
that. Whenever you are going after something that is yours, you are within your legal rights to
lay claim to it. And anyone who puts forth any effort to deprive you of that which is yours, is
breaking the law, is a criminal. And this was pointed out by the Supreme Court decision. It
outlawed segregation.
Which means segregation is against the law. Which means a segregationist is breaking the
law. A segregationist is a criminal. You can't label him as anything other than that. And when
you demonstrate against segregation, the law is on your side. The Supreme Court is on your
side.
Now, who is it that opposes you in carrying out the law? The police department itself. With
police dogs and clubs. Whenever you demonstrate against segregation, whether it is
segregated education, segregated housing, or anything else, the law is on your side, and
anyone who stands in the way is not the law any longer. They are breaking the law; they are
not representatives of the law. Any time you demonstrate against segregation and a man has
the audacity to put a police dog on you, kill that dog, kill him, I'm telling you, kill that dog. I
say it, if they put me in jail tomorrow, kill that dog. Then you'll put a stop to it. Now, if these
white people in here don't want to see that kind of action, get down and tell the mayor to tell
the police department to pull the dogs in. That's all you have to do. If you don't do it,
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someone else will.

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If you don't take this kind of stand, your little children will grow up and look at you and think
"shame." If you don't take an uncompromising stand, I don't mean go out and get violent; but
at the same time you should never be nonviolent unless you run into some nonviolence. I'm
nonviolent with those who are nonviolent with me. But when you drop that violence on me,
then you've made me go insane, and I'm not responsible for what I do. And that's the way
every Negro should get. Any time you know you're within the law, within your legal rights,
within your moral rights, in accord with justice, then die for what you believe in. But don't
die alone. Let your dying be reciprocal. This is what is meant by equality. What's good for
the goose is good for the gander.
When we begin to get in this area, we need new friends, we need new allies. We need to
expand the civil-rights struggle to a higher level -- to the level of human rights. Whenever
you are in a civil-rights struggle, whether you know it or not, you are confining yourself to
the jurisdiction of Uncle Sam. No one from the outside world can speak out in your behalf as
long as your struggle is a civil-rights struggle. Civil rights comes within the domestic affairs
of this country. All of our African brothers and our Asian brothers and our Latin-American
brothers cannot open their mouths and interfere in the domestic affairs of the United States.
And as long as it's civil rights, this comes under the jurisdiction of Uncle Sam.
But the United Nations has what's known as the charter of human rights; it has a committee
that deals in human rights. You may wonder why all of the atrocities that have been
committed in Africa and in Hungary and in Asia, and in Latin America are brought before the
UN, and the Negro problem is never brought before the UN. This is part of the conspiracy.
This old, tricky blue eyed liberal who is supposed to be your and my friend, supposed to be in
our corner, supposed to be subsidizing our struggle, and supposed to be acting in the capacity
of an adviser, never tells you anything about human rights. They keep you wrapped up in
civil rights. And you spend so much time barking up the civil-rights tree, you don't even
know there's a human-rights tree on the same floor.
When you expand the civil-rights struggle to the level of human rights, you can then take the
case of the black man in this country before the nations in the UN. You can take it before the
General Assembly. You can take Uncle Sam before a world court. But the only level you can
do it on is the level of human rights. Civil rights keeps you under his restrictions, under his
jurisdiction. Civil rights keeps you in his pocket. Civil rights means you're asking Uncle Sam
to treat you right. Human rights are something you were born with. Human rights are your
God-given rights. Human rights are the rights that are recognized by all nations of this earth.
And any time any one violates your human rights, you can take them to the world court.
Uncle Sam's hands are dripping with blood, dripping with the blood of the black man in this
country. He's the earth's number-one hypocrite. He has the audacity -- yes, he has -- imagine
him posing as the leader of the free world. The free world! And you over here singing "We
Shall Overcome." Expand the civil-rights struggle to the level of human rights. Take it into
the United Nations, where our African brothers can throw their weight on our side, where our
Asian brothers can throw their weight on our side, where our Latin-American brothers can
throw their weight on our side, and where 800 million Chinamen are sitting there waiting to
throw their weight on our side.
13
Let the world know how bloody his hands are. Let the world know the hypocrisy that's
practiced over here. Let it be the ballot or the bullet. Let him know that it must be the ballot
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or the bullet.
When you take your case to Washington, D.C., you're taking it to the criminal who's
responsible; it's like running from the wolf to the fox. They're all in cahoots together. They all
work political chicanery and make you look like a chump before the eyes of the world. Here
you are walking around in America, getting ready to be drafted and sent abroad, like a tin
soldier, and when you get over there, people ask you what are you fighting for, and you have
to stick your tongue in your cheek. No, take Uncle Sam to court, take him before the world.
By ballot I only mean freedom. Don't you know -- I disagree with Lomax on this issue -- that
the ballot is more important than the dollar? Can I prove it? Yes. Look in the UN. There are
poor nations in the UN; yet those poor nations can get together with their voting power and
keep the rich nations from making a move. They have one nation -- one vote, everyone has an
equal vote. And when those brothers from Asia, and Africa and the darker parts of this earth
get together, their voting power is sufficient to hold Sam in check. Or Russia in check. Or
some other section of the earth in check. So, the ballot is most important.
Right now, in this country, if you and I, 22 million African-Americans -- that's what we are --
Africans who are in America. You're nothing but Africans. Nothing but Africans. In fact,
you'd get farther calling yourself African instead of Negro. Africans don't catch hell. You're
the only one catching hell. They don't have to pass civil-rights bills for Africans. An African
can go anywhere he wants right now. All you've got to do is tie your head up. That's right, go
anywhere you want. Just stop being a Negro. Change your name to Hoogagagooba. That'll
show you how silly the white man is. You're dealing with a silly man. A friend of mine who's
very dark put a turban on his head and went into a restaurant in Atlanta before they called
themselves desegregated. He went into a white restaurant, he sat down, they served him, and
he said, "What would happen if a Negro came in here? And there he's sitting, black as night,
but because he had his head wrapped up the waitress looked back at him and says, "Why,
there wouldn't no nigger dare come in here."
So, you're dealing with a man whose bias and prejudice are making him lose his mind, his
intelligence, every day. He's frightened. He looks around and sees what's taking place on this
earth, and he sees that the pendulum of time is swinging in your direction. The dark people
are waking up. They're losing their fear of the white man. No place where he's fighting right
now is he winning. Everywhere he's fighting, he's fighting someone your and my
complexion. And they're beating him. He can't win any more. He's won his last battle. He
failed to win the Korean War. He couldn't win it. He had to sign a truce. That's a loss.
Any time Uncle Sam, with all his machinery for warfare, is held to a draw by some rice
eaters, he's lost the battle. He had to sign a truce. America's not supposed to sign a truce.
She's supposed to be bad. But she's not bad any more. She's bad as long as she can use her
hydrogen bomb, but she can't use hers for fear Russia might use hers. Russia can't use hers,
for fear that Sam might use his. So, both of them are weapon-less. They can't use the weapon
because each's weapon nullifies the other's. So the only place where action can take place is
on the ground. And the white man can't win another war fighting on the ground. Those days
are over The black man knows it, the brown man knows it, the red man knows it, and the
yellow man knows it. So they engage him in guerrilla warfare. That's not his style. You've got
to have heart to be a guerrilla warrior, and he hasn't got any heart. I'm telling you now.
14
I just want to give you a little briefing on guerrilla warfare because, before you know it,
before you know it. It takes heart to be a guerrilla warrior because you're on your own. In
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conventional warfare you have tanks and a whole lot of other people with you to back you up
-- planes over your head and all that kind of stuff. But a guerrilla is on his own. All you have
is a rifle, some sneakers and a bowl of rice, and that's all you need -- and a lot of heart. The
Japanese on some of those islands in the Pacific, when the American soldiers landed, one
Japanese sometimes could hold the whole army off. He'd just wait until the sun went down,
and when the sun went down they were all equal. He would take his little blade and slip from
bush to bush, and from American to American. The white soldiers couldn't cope with that.
Whenever you see a white soldier that fought in the Pacific, he has the shakes, he has a
nervous condition, because they scared him to death.
The same thing happened to the French up in French Indochina. People who just a few years
previously were rice farmers got together and ran the heavily-mechanized French army out of
Indochina. You don't need it -- modern warfare today won't work. This is the day of the
guerrilla. They did the same thing in Algeria. Algerians, who were nothing but Bedouins,
took a rine and sneaked off to the hills, and de Gaulle and all of his highfalutin' war
machinery couldn't defeat those guerrillas. Nowhere on this earth does the white man win in a
guerrilla warfare. It's not his speed. Just as guerrilla warfare is prevailing in Asia and in parts
of Africa and in parts of Latin America, you've got to be mighty naive, or you've got to play
the black man cheap, if you don't think some day he's going to wake up and find that it's got
to be the ballot or the bullet.
l would like to say, in closing, a few things concerning the Muslim Mosque, Inc., which we
established recently in New York City. It's true we're Muslims and our religion is Islam, but
we don't mix our religion with our politics and our economics and our social and civil
activities -- not any more We keep our religion in our mosque. After our religious services
are over, then as Muslims we become involved in political action, economic action and social
and civic action. We become involved with anybody, any where, any time and in any manner
that's designed to eliminate the evils, the political, economic and social evils that are
afflicting the people of our community.
The political philosophy of black nationalism means that the black man should control the
politics and the politicians in his own community; no more. The black man in the black
community has to be re-educated into the science of politics so he will know what politics is
supposed to bring him in return. Don't be throwing out any ballots. A ballot is like a bullet.
You don't throw your ballots until you see a target, and if that target is not within your reach,
keep your ballot in your pocket.
The political philosophy of black nationalism is being taught in the Christian church. It's
being taught in the NAACP. It's being taught in CORE meetings. It's being taught in SNCC
Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee meetings. It's being taught in Muslim meetings.
It's being taught where nothing but atheists and agnostics come together. It's being taught
everywhere. Black people are fed up with the dillydallying, pussyfooting, compromising
approach that we've been using toward getting our freedom. We want freedom now, but we're
not going to get it saying "We Shall Overcome." We've got to fight until we overcome.
The economic philosophy of black nationalism is pure and simple. It only means that we
should control the economy of our community. Why should white people be running all the
stores in our community? Why should white people be running the banks of our community?
15
Why should the economy of our community be in the hands of the white man? Why? If a
black man can't move his store into a white community, you tell me why a white man should
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move his store into a black community. The philosophy of black nationalism involves a re-
education program in the black community in regards to economics. Our people have to be
made to see that any time you take your dollar out of your community and spend it in a
community where you don't live, the community where you live will get poorer and poorer,
and the community where you spend your money will get richer and richer.
Then you wonder why where you live is always a ghetto or a slum area. And where you and I
are concerned, not only do we lose it when we spend it out of the community, but the white
man has got all our stores in the community tied up; so that though we spend it in the
community, at sundown the man who runs the store takes it over across town somewhere.
He's got us in a vise. So the economic philosophy of black nationalism means in every
church, in every civic organization, in every fraternal order, it's time now for our people to be
come conscious of the importance of controlling the economy of our community. If we own
the stores, if we operate the businesses, if we try and establish some industry in our own
community, then we're developing to the position where we are creating employment for our
own kind. Once you gain control of the economy of your own community, then you don't
have to picket and boycott and beg some cracker downtown for a job in his business.
The social philosophy of black nationalism only means that we have to get together and
remove the evils, the vices, alcoholism, drug addiction, and other evils that are destroying the
moral fiber of our community. We our selves have to lift the level of our community, the
standard of our community to a higher level, make our own society beautiful so that we will
be satisfied in our own social circles and won't be running around here trying to knock our
way into a social circle where we're not wanted. So I say, in spreading a gospel such as black
nationalism, it is not designed to make the black man re-evaluate the white man -- you know
him already -- but to make the black man re-evaluate himself. Don't change the white man's
mind -- you can't change his mind, and that whole thing about appealing to the moral
conscience of America -- America's conscience is bankrupt. She lost all conscience a long
time ago. Uncle Sam has no conscience.
They don't know what morals are. They don't try and eliminate an evil because it's evil, or
because it's illegal, or because it's immoral; they eliminate it only when it threatens their
existence. So you're wasting your time appealing to the moral conscience of a bankrupt man
like Uncle Sam. If he had a conscience, he'd straighten this thing out with no more pressure
being put upon him. So it is not necessary to change the white man's mind. We have to
change our own mind. You can't change his mind about us. We've got to change our own
minds about each other. We have to see each other with new eyes. We have to see each other
as brothers and sisters. We have to come together with warmth so we can develop unity and
harmony that's necessary to get this problem solved ourselves. How can we do this? How can
we avoid jealousy? How can we avoid the suspicion and the divisions that exist in the
community? I'll tell you how.
I have watched how Billy Graham comes into a city, spreading what he calls the gospel of
Christ, which is only white nationalism. That's what he is. Billy Graham is a white
nationalist; I'm a black nationalist. But since it's the natural tendency for leaders to be jealous
and look upon a powerful figure like Graham with suspicion and envy, how is it possible for
him to come into a city and get all the cooperation of the church leaders? Don't think because
they're church leaders that they don't have weaknesses that make them envious and jealous --
16
no, everybody's got it. It's not an accident that when they want to choose a cardinal, as Pope I
over there in Rome, they get in a closet so you can't hear them cussing and fighting and
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carrying on.
Billy Graham comes in preaching the gospel of Christ. He evangelizes the gospel. He stirs
everybody up, but he never tries to start a church. If he came in trying to start a church, all the
churches would be against him. So, he just comes in talking about Christ and tells everybody
who gets Christ to go to any church where Christ is; and in this way the church cooperates
with him. So we're going to take a page from his book.
Our gospel is black nationalism. We're not trying to threaten the existence of any
organization, but we're spreading the gospel of black nationalism. Anywhere there's a church
that is also preaching and practicing the gospel of black nationalism, join that church. If the
NAACP is preaching and practicing the gospel of black nationalism, join the NAACP. If
CORE is spreading and practicing the gospel of black nationalism, join CORE. Join any
organization that has a gospel that's for the uplift of the black man. And when you get into it
and see them pussyfooting or compromising, pull out of it because that's not black
nationalism. We'll find another one.
And in this manner, the organizations will increase in number and in quantity and in quality,
and by August, it is then our intention to have a black nationalist convention which will
consist of delegates from all over the country who are interested in the political, economic
and social philosophy of black nationalism. After these delegates convene, we will hold a
seminar; we will hold discussions; we will listen to everyone. We want to hear new ideas and
new solutions and new answers. And at that time, if we see fit then to form a black nationalist
party, we'll form a black nationalist party. If it's necessary to form a black nationalist army,
we'll form a black nationalist army. It'll be the ballot or the bullet. It'll be liberty or it'll be
death.
It's time for you and me to stop sitting in this country, letting some cracker senators, Northern
crackers and Southern crackers, sit there in Washington, D.C., and come to a conclusion in
their mind that you and I are supposed to have civil rights. There's no white man going to tell
me anything about my rights. Brothers and sisters, always remember, if it doesn't take
senators and congressmen and presidential proclamations to give freedom to the white man, it
is not necessary for legislation or proclamation or Supreme Court decisions to give freedom
to the black man. You let that white man know, if this is a country of freedom, let it be a
country of freedom; and if it's not a country of freedom, change it.
We will work with anybody, anywhere, at any time, who is genuinely interested in tackling
the problem head-on, nonviolently as long as the enemy is nonviolent, but violent when the
enemy gets violent. We'll work with you on the voter-registration drive, we'll work with you
on rent strikes, we'll work with you on school boycotts; I don't believe in any kind of
integration; I'm not even worried about it, because I know you're not going to get it anyway;
you're not going to get it because you're afraid to die; you've got to be ready to die if you try
and force yourself on the white man, because he'll get just as violent as those crackers in
Mississippi, right here in Cleveland. But we will still work with you on the school boycotts
be cause we're against a segregated school system. A segregated school system produces
children who, when they graduate, graduate with crippled minds. But this does not mean that
a school is segregated because it's all black. A segregated school means a school that is
controlled by people who have no real interest in it whatsoever.
17
Let me explain what I mean. A segregated district or community is a community in which

people live, but outsiders control the politics and the economy of that community. They never
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refer to the white section as a segregated community. It's the all-Negro section that's a
segregated community. Why? The white man controls his own school, his own bank, his own
economy, his own politics, his own everything, his own community; but he also controls
yours. When you're under someone else's control, you're segregated. They'll always give you
the lowest or the worst that there is to offer, but it doesn't mean you're segregated just
because you have your own. You've got to control your own. Just like the white man has
control of his, you need to control yours.
You know the best way to get rid of segregation? The white man is more afraid of separation
than he is of integration. Segregation means that he puts you away from him, but not far
enough for you to be out of his jurisdiction; separation means you're gone. And the white
man will integrate faster than he'll let you separate. So we will work with you against the
segregated school system because it's criminal, because it is absolutely destructive, in every
way imaginable, to the minds of the children who have to be exposed to that type of crippling
education.
Last but not least, I must say this concerning the great controversy over rifles and shotguns.
The only thing that I've ever said is that in areas where the government has proven itself
either unwilling or unable to defend the lives and the property of Negroes, it's time for
Negroes to defend themselves. Article number two of the constitutional amendments provides
you and me the right to own a rifle or a shotgun. It is constitutionally legal to own a shotgun
or a rifle. This doesn't mean you're going to get a rifle and form battalions and go out looking
for white folks, although you'd be within your rights -- I mean, you'd be justified; but that
would be illegal and we don't do anything illegal. If the white man doesn't want the black
man buying rifles and shotguns, then let the government do its job.
That's all. And don't let the white man come to you and ask you what you think about what
Malcolm says -- why, you old Uncle Tom. He would never ask you if he thought you were
going to say, "Amen!" No, he is making a Tom out of you." So, this doesn't mean forming
rifle clubs and going out looking for people, but it is time, in 1964, if you are a man, to let
that man know. If he's not going to do his job in running the government and providing you
and me with the protection that our taxes are supposed to be for, since he spends all those
billions for his defense budget, he certainly can't begrudge you and me spending $12 or $15
for a single-shot, or double-action. I hope you understand. Don't go out shooting people, but
any time -- brothers and sisters, and especially the men in this audience; some of you wearing
Congressional Medals of Honor, with shoulders this wide, chests this big, muscles that big --
any time you and I sit around and read where they bomb a church and murder in cold blood,
not some grownups, but four little girls while they were praying to the same God the white
man taught them to pray to, and you and I see the government go down and can't find who
did it.
Why, this man -- he can find Eichmann hiding down in Argentina somewhere. Let two or
three American soldiers, who are minding somebody else's business way over in South
Vietnam, get killed, and he'll send battleships, sticking his nose in their business. He wanted
to send troops down to Cuba and make them have what he calls free elections -- this old
cracker who doesn't have free elections in his own country.
No, if you never see me another time in your life, if I die in the morning, I'll die saying one
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thing: the ballot or the bullet, the ballot or the bullet.

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If a Negro in 1964 has to sit around and wait for some cracker senator to filibuster when it
comes to the rights of black people, why, you and I should hang our heads in shame. You talk
about a march on Washington in 1963, you haven't seen anything. There's some more going
down in '64.
And this time they're not going like they went last year. They're not going singing ''We Shall
Overcome." They're not going with white friends. They're not going with placards already
painted for them. They're not going with round-trip tickets. They're going with one way
tickets. And if they don't want that non-nonviolent army going down there, tell them to bring
the filibuster to a halt.
The black nationalists aren't going to wait. Lyndon B. Johnson is the head of the Democratic
Party. If he's for civil rights, let him go into the Senate next week and declare himself. Let
him go in there right now and declare himself. Let him go in there and denounce the Southern
branch of his party. Let him go in there right now and take a moral stand -- right now, not
later. Tell him, don't wait until election time. If he waits too long, brothers and sisters, he will
be responsible for letting a condition develop in this country which will create a climate that
will bring seeds up out of the ground with vegetation on the end of them looking like
something these people never dreamed of. In 1964, it's the ballot or the bullet.
Thank you.
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Susan B. Anthony After Being Convicted of Voting, 1873
Friends and fellow citizens: I stand before you tonight under indictment for the alleged crime
of having voted at the last presidential election, without having a lawful right to vote. It shall
be my work this evening to prove to you that in thus voting, I not only committed no crime,
but, instead, simply exercised my citizen's rights, guaranteed to me and all United States
citizens by the National Constitution, beyond the power of any state to deny.
The preamble of the Federal Constitution says:
"We, the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice,
insure domestic tranquillity, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare,
and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this
Constitution for the United States of America."
It was we, the people; not we, the white male citizens; nor yet we, the male citizens; but we,
the whole people, who formed the Union. And we formed it, not to give the blessings of
liberty, but to secure them; not to the half of ourselves and the half of our posterity, but to the
whole people - women as well as men. And it is a downright mockery to talk to women of
their enjoyment of the blessings of liberty while they are denied the use of the only means of
securing them provided by this democratic-republican government - the ballot.
For any state to make sex a qualification that must ever result in the disfranchisement of one
entire half of the people, is to pass a bill of attainder, or, an ex post facto law, and is therefore
a violation of the supreme law of the land. By it the blessings of liberty are forever withheld
from women and their female posterity.
To them this government has no just powers derived from the consent of the governed. To
them this government is not a democracy. It is not a republic. It is an odious aristocracy; a
hateful oligarchy of sex; the most hateful aristocracy ever established on the face of the
globe; an oligarchy of wealth, where the rich govern the poor. An oligarchy of learning,
where the educated govern the ignorant, or even an oligarchy of race, where the Saxon rules
the African, might be endured; but this oligarchy of sex, which makes father, brothers,
husband, sons, the oligarchs over the mother and sisters, the wife and daughters, of every
household - which ordains all men sovereigns, all women subjects, carries dissension,
discord, and rebellion into every home of the nation.
Webster, Worcester, and Bouvier all define a citizen to be a person in the United States,
entitled to vote and hold office.
The only question left to be settled now is: Are women persons? And I hardly believe any of
our opponents will have the hardihood to say they are not. Being persons, then, women are
citizens; and no state has a right to make any law, or to enforce any old law, that shall abridge
their privileges or immunities. Hence, every discrimination against women in the
constitutions and laws of the several states is today null and void, precisely as is every one
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against Negroes.
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Indira Gandhi: After the assassination of Dr Martin Luther King
This is a poignant moment for all of us. We remember vividly your last visit to our country.
We had hoped that on this occasion, Dr. King and you would be standing side by side on this
platform. That was not to be. He is not with us but we feel his spirit. We admired Dr. King.
We felt his loss as our own. The tragedy rekindled memories of the great martyrs of all time
who gave their lives so that men might live and grow. We thought of the great men in your
own country who fell to the assassin's bullet and of Mahatma Gandhi's martyrdom here in this
city, this very month, twenty-one years ago. Such events remain as wounds in the human
consciousness, reminding us of battles, yet to be fought and tasks still to be accomplished.
We should not mourn for men of high ideals. Rather we should rejoice that we had the
privilege of having had them with us, to inspire us by their radiant personalities. So today we
are gathered not to offer you grief, but to salute a man who achieved so much in so short a
time. It is befitting, Madam, that you whom he called the "courage by my side", you who
gave him strength and encouragement in his historic mission, should be with us to receive
this award.
You and your husband both had foreseen that death might come to him violently. It was
perhaps inherent in the situation. Dr. King chose death for the theme of a sermon, remarking
that he would like to be remembered as a drum major for justice, for peace and for
righteousness. When you were once asked what you would do if your husband were
assassinated, you were courage personified, replying that you might weep but the work would
go on. Your face of sorrow, so beautiful in its dignity coupled with infinite compassion, will
forever be engraved in our hearts.
Mahatma Gandhi also had foreseen his end and had prepared himself for it. Just as training
for violence included learning to kill, the training for non-violence, he said, included learning
how to die. The true badge of the satyagrahi is to be unafraid.
As if he too had envisaged the martyrdoms of Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King,
Rabindranath Tagore once sang:
In anger we slew him,
With love let us embrace him now,
For in death he lives again amongst us,
The mighty conqueror of death.
This award, Madam, is the highest tribute our nation can bestow on work for understanding
and brotherhood among men. It is named after a man who himself was a peace-maker and
who all his life laboured passionately for freedom, justice and peace in India and throughout
the world. Dr. Martin Luther King's struggle was for these same values. He paid for his ideals
with his blood, forging a new bond among the brave and the conscientious of all races and all
nations.
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Dr. King's dream embraced the poor and the oppressed of all lands. His work ennobled us. He
spoke of the right of man to survive and recognized three threats to the survival of man--
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racial injustice, poverty and war. He realised that even under the lamp of affluence which was
held aloft by science, lay the shadow of poverty, compelling two-thirds of the peoples of the
world to exist in hunger and want. He proclaimed that mankind could be saved from war only
if we cared enough for peace to sacrifice for it.
Dr. Martin Luther King drew his inspiration from Christ, and his method of action from
Mahatma Gandhi. Only through truth can untruth be vanquished. Only through love can
hatred be quenched. This is the path of the Buddha and of Christ, and in our own times, that
of Mahatma Gandhi and of Martin Luther King.
They believed in the equality of all men. No more false doctrine has been spread than that of
the superiority of one race over another. It is ironical that there should still be people in this
world who judge men not by their moral worth and intellectual merit but by the pigment of
their skin or other physical characteristics.
Some governments still rest on the theory of racist superiority--such as the governments of
South Africa and the lawless regime in Rhodesia. Unregenerate groups in other countries
consider one colour superior to another. Our own battle is not yet over. Caste and other
prejudices still survive, but most of us are ashamed of them and recognise them as evils to be
combated. We are trying hard to eradicate them.
While there is bondage anywhere, we ourselves cannot be fully free. While there is
oppression anywhere, we ourselves cannot soar high. Martin Luther King was convinced that
one day the misguided people who believed in racial superiority would realise the error of
their ways. His dream was that white and black, brown and yellow would live and grow
together as flowers in a garden with their faces turned towards the sun. As you yourself said,
"All of us who believe in what Martin Luther King stood for, must see to it that his spirit
never dies". That spirit can never die. There may be setbacks in our fight for the equality of
all men. There may be moments of gloom. But victory must and will be ours. Let us not rest
until the equality of all races and religions becomes a living fact. That is the most effective
and lasting tribute that we can pay to Dr. King.
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Sojourner Truth: Ain't I a Woman? (1851)
Well, children, where there is so much racket there must be something out of kilter. I think
that 'twixt the negroes of the South and the women at the North, all talking about rights, the
white men will be in a fix pretty soon. But what's all this here talking about?
That man over there says that women need to be helped into carriages, and lifted over ditches,
and to have the best place everywhere. Nobody ever helps me into carriages, or over mud-
puddles, or gives me any best place! And ain't I a woman? Look at me! Look at my arm! I
have ploughed and planted, and gathered into barns, and no man could head me! And ain't I a
woman? I could work as much and eat as much as a man - when I could get it - and bear the
lash as well! And ain't I a woman? I have borne thirteen children, and seen most all sold off
to slavery, and when I cried out with my mother's grief, none but Jesus heard me! And ain't I
a woman?
Then they talk about this thing in the head; what's this they call it? [member of audience
whispers, "intellect"] That's it, honey. What's that got to do with women's rights or negroes'
rights? If my cup won't hold but a pint, and yours holds a quart, wouldn't you be mean not to
let me have my little half measure full?
Then that little man in black there, he says women can't have as much rights as men, 'cause
Christ wasn't a woman! Where did your Christ come from? Where did your Christ come
from?
From God and a woman!
Man had nothing to do with Him.
If the first woman God ever made was strong enough to turn the world upside down all alone,
these women together ought to be able to turn it back , and get it right side up again!
And now they is asking to do it, the men better let them.
Obliged to you for hearing me, and now old Sojourner ain't got nothing more to say.
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Oprah Winfrey: On Receiving the first Bob Hope Humanitarian Award

(2002)
Thank you everybody. Thank you Tom, and Bob and Dolores, who are home watching I
hope, thank you so much, and to everyone who voted for me.
There really is nothing more important to me than striving to be a good human being. So, to
be here tonight and be acknowledged as the first to receive this honor is beyond expression in
words for me. 'I am a human being, nothing human is alien to me.' Terence said that in 154
B.C. and when I first read it many years ago, I had no idea of the depth of that meaning.
I grew up in Nashville with a father who owned a barbershop, Winfrey's Barber Shop, he still
does, I can't get him to retire. And every holiday, every holiday, all of the transients and the
guys who I thought were just losers who hung out at the shop, and were always bumming
haircuts from my father and borrowing money from my dad, all those guys always ended up
at our dinner table. They were a cast of real charactersit was Fox and Shorty and Bootsy
and Slim. And I would say, 'Bootsy, could you pass the peas please?' And I would often say
to my father afterwards, 'Dad, why can't we just have regular people at our Christmas
dinner?'because I was looking for the Currier & Ives version. And my father said to me,
'They are regular people. They're just like you. They want the same thing you want.' And I
would say, 'What?' And he'd say, 'To be fed.' And at the time, I just thought he was talking
about dinner. But I have since learned how profound he really was, because we all are just
regular people seeking the same thing. The guy on the street, the woman in the classroom, the
Israeli, the Afghani, the Zuni, the Apache, the Irish, the Protestant, the Catholic, the gay, the
straight, you, mewe all just want to know that we matter. We want validation. We want the
same things. We want safety and we want to live a long life. We want to find somebody to
love. Stedman, thank you. We want to find somebody to laugh with and have the power and
the place to cry with when necessary.
The greatest pain in life is to be invisible. What I've learned is that we all just want to be
heard. And I thank all the people who continue to let me hear your stories, and by sharing
your stories, you let other people see themselves and for a moment, glimpse the power to
change and the power to triumph.
Maya Angelou said, 'When you learn, teach. When you get, give.' I want you to know that
this award to me means that I will continue to strive to give back to the world what it has
given to me, so that I might even be more worthy of tonight's honor.
Thank you."
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Winston Churchill: We shall fight on the beaches
June 4, 1940
House of Commons
The position of the B. E.F had now become critical As a result of a most skillfully conducted retreat
and German errors, the bulk of the British Forces reached the Dunkirk bridgehead. The peril facing
the British nation was now suddenly and universally perceived. On May 26, "Operation Dynamo "--
the evacuation from Dunkirk began. The seas remained absolutely calm. The Royal Air Force--
bitterly maligned at the time by the Army--fought vehemently to deny the enemy the total air
supremacy which would have wrecked the operation. At the outset, it was hoped that 45,000 men
might be evacuated; in the event, over 338,000 Allied troops reached England, including 26,000
French soldiers. On June 4, Churchill reported to the House of Commons, seeking to check the
mood of national euphoria and relief at the unexpected deliverance, and to make a clear appeal to
the United States.
From the moment that the French defenses at Sedan and on the Meuse were broken at the end of the
second week of May, only a rapid retreat to Amiens and the south could have saved the British and
French Armies who had entered Belgium at the appeal of the Belgian King; but this strategic fact
was not immediately realized. The French High Command hoped they would be able to close the
gap, and the Armies of the north were under their orders. Moreover, a retirement of this kind would
have involved almost certainly the destruction of the fine Belgian Army of over 20 divisions and the
abandonment of the whole of Belgium. Therefore, when the force and scope of the German
penetration were realized and when a new French Generalissimo, General Weygand, assumed
command in place of General Gamelin, an effort was made by the French and British Armies in
Belgium to keep on holding the right hand of the Belgians and to give their own right hand to a
newly created French Army which was to have advanced across the Somme in great strength to
grasp it.
However, the German eruption swept like a sharp scythe around the right and rear of the Armies of
the north. Eight or nine armored divisions, each of about four hundred armored vehicles of different
kinds, but carefully assorted to be complementary and divisible into small self-contained units, cut
off all communications between us and the main French Armies. It severed our own communications
for food and ammunition, which ran first to Amiens and afterwards through Abbeville, and it shore
its way up the coast to Boulogne and Calais, and almost to Dunkirk. Behind this armored and
mechanized onslaught came a number of German divisions in lorries, and behind them again there
plodded comparatively slowly the dull brute mass of the ordinary German Army and German
people, always so ready to be led to the trampling down in other lands of liberties and comforts
which they have never known in their own.
I have said this armored scythe-stroke almost reached Dunkirk-almost but not quite. Boulogne and
Calais were the scenes of desperate fighting. The Guards defended Boulogne for a while and were
then withdrawn by orders from this country. The Rifle Brigade, the 60th Rifles, and the Queen
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Victoria's Rifles, with a battalion of British tanks and 1,000 Frenchmen, in all about four thousand
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strong, defended Calais to the last. The British Brigadier was given an hour to surrender. He spurned
the offer, and four days of intense street fighting passed before silence reigned over Calais, which
marked the end of a memorable resistance. Only 30 unwounded survivors were brought off by the
Navy, and we do not know the fate of their comrades. Their sacrifice, however, was not in vain. At
least two armored divisions, which otherwise would have been turned against the British
Expeditionary Force, had to be sent to overcome them. They have added another page to the glories
of the light divisions, and the time gained enabled the Graveline water lines to be flooded and to be
held by the French troops.
Thus it was that the port of Dunkirk was kept open. When it was found impossible for the Armies of
the north to reopen their communications to Amiens with the main French Armies, only one choice
remained. It seemed, indeed, forlorn. The Belgian, British and French Armies were almost
surrounded. Their sole line of retreat was to a single port and to its neighboring beaches. They were
pressed on every side by heavy attacks and far outnumbered in the air.
When, a week ago today, I asked the House to fix this afternoon as the occasion for a statement, I
feared it would be my hard lot to announce the greatest military disaster in our long history. I
thought-and some good judges agreed with me-that perhaps 20,000 or 30,000 men might be re-
embarked. But it certainly seemed that the whole of the French First Army and the whole of the
British Expeditionary Force north of the Amiens-Abbeville gap would be broken up in the open field
or else would have to capitulate for lack of food and ammunition. These were the hard and heavy
tidings for which I called upon the House and the nation to prepare themselves a week ago. The
whole root and core and brain of the British Army, on which and around which we were to build,
and are to build, the great British Armies in the later years of the war, seemed about to perish upon
the field or to be led into an ignominious and starving captivity.
That was the prospect a week ago. But another blow which might well have proved final was yet to
fall upon us. The King of the Belgians had called upon us to come to his aid. Had not this Ruler and
his Government severed themselves from the Allies, who rescued their country from extinction in
the late war, and had they not sought refuge in what was proved to be a fatal neutrality, the French
and British Armies might well at the outset have saved not only Belgium but perhaps even Poland.
Yet at the last moment, when Belgium was already invaded, King Leopold called upon us to come to
his aid, and even at the last moment we came. He and his brave, efficient Army, nearly half a million
strong, guarded our left flank and thus kept open our only line of retreat to the sea. Suddenly,
without prior consultation, with the least possible notice, without the advice of his Ministers and
upon his own personal act, he sent a plenipotentiary to the German Command, surrendered his
Army, and exposed our whole flank and means of retreat.
I asked the House a week ago to suspend its judgment because the facts were not clear, but I do not
feel that any reason now exists why we should not form our own opinions upon this pitiful episode.
The surrender of the Belgian Army compelled the British at the shortest notice to cover a flank to the
sea more than 30 miles in length. Otherwise all would have been cut off, and all would have shared
the fate to which King Leopold had condemned the finest Army his country had ever formed. So in
doing this and in exposing this flank, as anyone who followed the operations on the map will see,
contact was lost between the British and two out of the three corps forming the First French Army,
who were still farther from the coast than we were, and it seemed impossible that any large number
27
of Allied troops could reach the coast.

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The enemy attacked on all sides with great strength and fierceness, and their main power, the power
of their far more numerous Air Force, was thrown into the battle or else concentrated upon Dunkirk
and the beaches. Pressing in upon the narrow exit, both from the east and from the west, the enemy
began to fire with cannon upon the beaches by which alone the shipping could approach or depart.
They sowed magnetic mines in the channels and seas; they sent repeated waves of hostile aircraft,
sometimes more than a hundred strong in one formation, to cast their bombs upon the single pier that
remained, and upon the sand dunes upon which the troops had their eyes for shelter. Their U-boats,
one of which was sunk, and their motor launches took their toll of the vast traffic which now began.
For four or five days an intense struggle reigned. All their armored divisions-or what Was left of
them-together with great masses of infantry and artillery, hurled themselves in vain upon the ever-
narrowing, ever-contracting appendix within which the British and French Armies fought.
Meanwhile, the Royal Navy, with the willing help of countless merchant seamen, strained every
nerve to embark the British and Allied troops; 220 light warships and 650 other vessels were
engaged. They had to operate upon the difficult coast, often in adverse weather, under an almost
ceaseless hail of bombs and an increasing concentration of artillery fire. Nor were the seas, as I have
said, themselves free from mines and torpedoes. It was in conditions such as these that our men
carried on, with little or no rest, for days and nights on end, making trip after trip across the
dangerous waters, bringing with them always men whom they had rescued. The numbers they have
brought back are the measure of their devotion and their courage. The hospital ships, which brought
off many thousands of British and French wounded, being so plainly marked were a special target
for Nazi bombs; but the men and women on board them never faltered in their duty.
Meanwhile, the Royal Air Force, which had already been intervening in the battle, so far as its range
would allow, from home bases, now used part of its main metropolitan fighter strength, and struck at
the German bombers and at the fighters which in large numbers protected them. This struggle was
protracted and fierce. Suddenly the scene has cleared, the crash and thunder has for the moment-but
only for the moment-died away. A miracle of deliverance, achieved by valor, by perseverance, by
perfect discipline, by faultless service, by resource, by skill, by unconquerable fidelity, is manifest to
us all. The enemy was hurled back by the retreating British and French troops. He was so roughly
handled that he did not hurry their departure seriously. The Royal Air Force engaged the main
strength of the German Air Force, and inflicted upon them losses of at least four to one; and the
Navy, using nearly 1,000 ships of all kinds, carried over 335,000 men, French and British, out of the
jaws of death and shame, to their native land and to the tasks which lie immediately ahead. We must
be very careful not to assign to this deliverance the attributes of a victory. Wars are not won by
evacuations. But there was a victory inside this deliverance, which should be noted. It was gained by
the Air Force. Many of our soldiers coming back have not seen the Air Force at work; they saw only
the bombers which escaped its protective attack. They underrate its achievements. I have heard
much talk of this; that is why I go out of my way to say this. I will tell you about it.
This was a great trial of strength between the British and German Air Forces. Can you conceive a
greater objective for the Germans in the air than to make evacuation from these beaches impossible,
and to sink all these ships which were displayed, almost to the extent of thousands? Could there have
been an objective of greater military importance and significance for the whole purpose of the war
than this? They tried hard, and they were beaten back; they were frustrated in their task. We got the
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Army away; and they have paid fourfold for any losses which they have inflicted. Very large
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formations of German aeroplanes-and we know that they are a very brave race-have turned on
several occasions from the attack of one-quarter of their number of the Royal Air Force, and have
dispersed in different directions. Twelve aeroplanes have been hunted by two. One aeroplane was
driven into the water and cast away by the mere charge of a British aeroplane, which had no more
ammunition. All of our types-the Hurricane, the Spitfire and the new Defiant-and all our pilots have
been vindicated as superior to what they have at present to face.
When we consider how much greater would be our advantage in defending the air above this Island
against an overseas attack, I must say that I find in these facts a sure basis upon which practical and
reassuring thoughts may rest. I will pay my tribute to these young airmen. The great French Army
was very largely, for the time being, cast back and disturbed by the onrush of a few thousands of
armored vehicles. May it not also be that the cause of civilization itself will be defended by the skill
and devotion of a few thousand airmen? There never has been, I suppose, in all the world, in all the
history of war, such an opportunity for youth. The Knights of the Round Table, the Crusaders, all
fall back into the past-not only distant but prosaic; these young men, going forth every morn to
guard their native land and all that we stand for, holding in their hands these instruments of colossal
and shattering power, of whom it may be said that
Every morn brought forth a noble chance

And every chance brought forth a noble knight,
deserve our gratitude, as do all the brave men who, in so many ways and on so many occasions, are
ready, and continue ready to give life and all for their native land.
I return to the Army. In the long series of very fierce battles, now on this front, now on that, fighting
on three fronts at once, battles fought by two or three divisions against an equal or somewhat larger
number of the enemy, and fought fiercely on some of the old grounds that so many of us knew so
well-in these battles our losses in men have exceeded 30,000 killed, wounded and missing. I take
occasion to express the sympathy of the House to all who have suffered bereavement or who are still
anxious. The President of the Board of Trade [Sir Andrew Duncan] is not here today. His son has
been killed, and many in the House have felt the pangs of affliction in the sharpest form. But I will
say this about the missing: We have had a large number of wounded come home safely to this
country, but I would say about the missing that there may be very many reported missing who will
come back home, some day, in one way or another. In the confusion of this fight it is inevitable that
many have been left in positions where honor required no further resistance from them.
Against this loss of over 30,000 men, we can set a far heavier loss certainly inflicted upon the
enemy. But our losses in material are enormous. We have perhaps lost one-third of the men we lost
in the opening days of the battle of 21st March, 1918, but we have lost nearly as many guns -- nearly
one thousand-and all our transport, all the armored vehicles that were with the Army in the north.
This loss will impose a further delay on the expansion of our military strength. That expansion had
not been proceeding as far as we had hoped. The best of all we had to give had gone to the British
Expeditionary Force, and although they had not the numbers of tanks and some articles of equipment
which were desirable, they were a very well and finely equipped Army. They had the first-fruits of
all that our industry had to give, and that is gone. And now here is this further delay. How long it
will be, how long it will last, depends upon the exertions which we make in this Island. An effort the
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like of which has never been seen in our records is now being made. Work is proceeding
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everywhere, night and day, Sundays and week days. Capital and Labor have cast aside their
interests, rights, and customs and put them into the common stock. Already the flow of munitions
has leaped forward. There is no reason why we should not in a few months overtake the sudden and
serious loss that has come upon us, without retarding the development of our general program.
Nevertheless, our thankfulness at the escape of our Army and so many men, whose loved ones have
passed through an agonizing week, must not blind us to the fact that what has happened in France
and Belgium is a colossal military disaster. The French Army has been weakened, the Belgian Army
has been lost, a large part of those fortified lines upon which so much faith had been reposed is gone,
many valuable mining districts and factories have passed into the enemy's possession, the whole of
the Channel ports are in his hands, with all the tragic consequences that follow from that, and we
must expect another blow to be struck almost immediately at us or at France. We are told that Herr
Hitler has a plan for invading the British Isles. This has often been thought of before. When
Napoleon lay at Boulogne for a year with his flat-bottomed boats and his Grand Army, he was told
by someone. "There are bitter weeds in England." There are certainly a great many more of them
since the British Expeditionary Force returned.
The whole question of home defense against invasion is, of course, powerfully affected by the fact
that we have for the time being in this Island incomparably more powerful military forces than we
have ever had at any moment in this war or the last. But this will not continue. We shall not be
content with a defensive war. We have our duty to our Ally. We have to reconstitute and build up the
British Expeditionary Force once again, under its gallant Commander-in-Chief, Lord Gort. All this is
in train; but in the interval we must put our defenses in this Island into such a high state of
organization that the fewest possible numbers will be required to give effective security and that the
largest possible potential of offensive effort may be realized. On this we are now engaged. It will be
very convenient, if it be the desire of the House, to enter upon this subject in a secret Session. Not
that the government would necessarily be able to reveal in very great detail military secrets, but we
like to have our discussions free, without the restraint imposed by the fact that they will be read the
next day by the enemy; and the Government would benefit by views freely expressed in all parts of
the House by Members with their knowledge of so many different parts of the country. I understand
that some request is to be made upon this subject, which will be readily acceded to by His Majesty's
Government.
We have found it necessary to take measures of increasing stringency, not only against enemy aliens
and suspicious characters of other nationalities, but also against British subjects who may become a
danger or a nuisance should the war be transported to the United Kingdom. I know there are a great
many people affected by the orders which we have made who are the passionate enemies of Nazi
Germany. I am very sorry for them, but we cannot, at the present time and under the present stress,
draw all the distinctions which we should like to do. If parachute landings were attempted and fierce
fighting attendant upon them followed, these unfortunate people would be far better out of the way,
for their own sakes as well as for ours. There is, however, another class, for which I feel not the
slightest sympathy. Parliament has given us the powers to put down Fifth Column activities with a
strong hand, and we shall use those powers subject to the supervision and correction of the House,
without the slightest hesitation until we are satisfied, and more than satisfied, that this malignancy in
our midst has been effectively stamped out.
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Turning once again, and this time more generally, to the question of invasion, I would observe that
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there has never been a period in all these long centuries of which we boast when an absolute
guarantee against invasion, still less against serious raids, could have been given to our people. In
the days of Napoleon the same wind which would have carried his transports across the Channel
might have driven away the blockading fleet. There was always the chance, and it is that chance
which has excited and befooled the imaginations of many Continental tyrants. Many are the tales
that are told. We are assured that novel methods will be adopted, and when we see the originality of
malice, the ingenuity of aggression, which our enemy displays, we may certainly prepare ourselves
for every kind of novel stratagem and every kind of brutal and treacherous maneuver. I think that no
idea is so outlandish that it should not be considered and viewed with a searching, but at the same
time, I hope, with a steady eye. We must never forget the solid assurances of sea power and those
which belong to air power if it can be locally exercised.
I have, myself, full confidence that if all do their duty, if nothing is neglected, and if the best
arrangements are made, as they are being made, we shall prove ourselves once again able to defend
our Island home, to ride out the storm of war, and to outlive the menace of tyranny, if necessary for
years, if necessary alone. At any rate, that is what we are going to try to do. That is the resolve of
His Majesty's Government-every man of them. That is the will of Parliament and the nation. The
British Empire and the French Republic, linked together in their cause and in their need, will defend
to the death their native soil, aiding each other like good comrades to the utmost of their strength.
Even though large tracts of Europe and many old and famous States have fallen or may fall into the
grip of the Gestapo and all the odious apparatus of Nazi rule, we shall not flag or fail. We shall go on
to the end, we shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with
growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our Island, whatever the cost
may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the
fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender, and even if, which I do
not for a moment believe, this Island or a large part of it were subjugated and starving, then our
Empire beyond the seas, armed and guarded by the British Fleet, would carry on the struggle, until,
in God's good time, the New World, with all its power and might, steps forth to the rescue and the
liberation of the old.
31
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1
GEORGE W. BUSH: First Inaugural Address
President Clinton, distinguished guests and my fellow citizens, the peaceful transfer of
authority is rare in history, yet common in our country. With a simple oath, we affirm old
traditions and make new beginnings.
2
As I begin, I thank President Clinton for his service to our nation.
3
And I thank Vice President Gore for a contest conducted with spirit and ended with
grace.
I am honored and humbled to stand here, where so many of Americas leaders have 4
come before me, and so many will follow.

5
We have a place, all of us, in a long storya story we continue, but whose end we will
not see. It is the story of a new world that became a friend and liberator of the old, a story
of a slave-holding society that became a servant of freedom, the story of a power that
went into the world to protect but not possess, to defend but not to conquer.
6
It is the American storya story of flawed and fallible people, united across the
generations by grand and enduring ideals.
7
The grandest of these ideals is an unfolding American promise that everyone belongs,
that everyone deserves a chance, that no insignificant person was ever born.
8
Americans are called to enact this promise in our lives and in our laws. And though our
nation has sometimes halted, and sometimes delayed, we must follow no other course.
Through much of the last century, Americas faith in freedom and democracy was a 9
rock in a raging sea. Now it is a seed upon the wind, taking root in many nations.
10
Our democratic faith is more than the creed of our country, it is the inborn hope of our
humanity, an ideal we carry but do not own, a trust we bear and pass along. And even
after nearly 225 years, we have a long way yet to travel.
11
While many of our citizens prosper, others doubt the promise, even the justice, of our
own country. The ambitions of some Americans are limited by failing schools and hidden
prejudice and the circumstances of their birth. And sometimes our differences run so
deep, it seems we share a continent, but not a country.
12
We do not accept this, and we will not allow it. Our unity, our union, is the serious work
of leaders and citizens in every generation. And this is my solemn pledge: I will work to
build a single nation of justice and opportunity.
13
I know this is in our reach because we are guided by a power larger than ourselves who
creates us equal in His image.
14
And we are confident in principles that unite and lead us onward.
15
America has never been united by blood or birth or soil. We are bound by ideals that
move us beyond our backgrounds, lift us above our interests and teach us what it means
to be citizens. Every child must be taught these principles. Every citizen must uphold
them. And every immigrant, by embracing these ideals, makes our country more, not less,
American.
32
Today, we affirm a new commitment to live out our nations promise through civility, 16
courage, compassion and character.

Page
17
America, at its best, matches a commitment to principle with a concern for civility. A
civil society demands from each of us good will and respect, fair dealing and forgiveness.
18
Some seem to believe that our politics can afford to be petty because, in a time of peace,
the stakes of our debates appear small.
19
But the stakes for America are never small. If our country does not lead the cause of
freedom, it will not be led. If we do not turn the hearts of children toward knowledge and
character, we will lose their gifts and undermine their idealism. If we permit our economy
to drift and decline, the vulnerable will suffer most.
20
We must live up to the calling we share. Civility is not a tactic or a sentiment. It is the
determined choice of trust over cynicism, of community over chaos. And this
commitment, if we keep it, is a way to shared accomplishment.
21
America, at its best, is also courageous.
22
Our national courage has been clear in times of depression and war, when defending
common dangers defined our common good. Now we must choose if the example of our
fathers and mothers will inspire us or condemn us. We must show courage in a time of
blessing by confronting problems instead of passing them on to future generations.
Together, we will reclaim Americas schools, before ignorance and apathy claim more 23
young lives.
24
We will reform Social Security and Medicare, sparing our children from struggles we
have the power to prevent. And we will reduce taxes, to recover the momentum of our
economy and reward the effort and enterprise of working Americans.
25
We will build our defenses beyond challenge, lest weakness invite challenge.
26
We will confront weapons of mass destruction, so that a new century is spared new
horrors.
27
The enemies of liberty and our country should make no mistake: America remains
engaged in the world by history and by choice, shaping a balance of power that favors
freedom. We will defend our allies and our interests. We will show purpose without
arrogance. We will meet aggression and bad faith with resolve and strength. And to all
nations, we will speak for the values that gave our nation birth.
28
America, at its best, is compassionate. In the quiet of American conscience, we know
that deep, persistent poverty is unworthy of our nations promise.
29
And whatever our views of its cause, we can agree that children at risk are not at fault.
Abandonment and abuse are not acts of God, they are failures of love.
30
And the proliferation of prisons, however necessary, is no substitute for hope and order
in our souls.
31
Where there is suffering, there is duty. Americans in need are not strangers, they are
citizens, not problems, but priorities. And all of us are diminished when any are hopeless.
32
Government has great responsibilities for public safety and public health, for civil rights
and common schools. Yet compassion is the work of a nation, not just a government.
And some needs and hurts are so deep they will only respond to a mentors touch or a 33
pastors prayer. Church and charity, synagogue and mosque lend our communities their
humanity, and they will have an honored place in our plans and in our laws.
34
33
Many in our country do not know the pain of poverty, but we can listen to those who do.
35
And I can pledge our nation to a goal: When we see that wounded traveler on the road to
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Jericho, we will not pass to the other side.

36
America, at its best, is a place where personal responsibility is valued and expected.
37
Encouraging responsibility is not a search for scapegoats, it is a call to conscience. And
though it requires sacrifice, it brings a deeper fulfillment. We find the fullness of life not
only in options, but in commitments. And we find that children and community are the
commitments that set us free.
38
Our public interest depends on private character, on civic duty and family bonds and
basic fairness, on uncounted, unhonored acts of decency which give direction to our
freedom.
39
Sometimes in life we are called to do great things. But as a saint of our times has said,
every day we are called to do small things with great love. The most important tasks of a
democracy are done by everyone.
40
I will live and lead by these principles: to advance my convictions with civility, to
pursue the public interest with courage, to speak for greater justice and compassion, to
call for responsibility and try to live it as well.
41
In all these ways, I will bring the values of our history to the care of our times.
42
What you do is as important as anything government does. I ask you to seek a common
good beyond your comfort; to defend needed reforms against easy attacks; to serve your
nation, beginning with your neighbor. I ask you to be citizens: citizens, not spectators;
citizens, not subjects; responsible citizens, building communities of service and a nation
of character.
43
Americans are generous and strong and decent, not because we believe in ourselves, but
because we hold beliefs beyond ourselves. When this spirit of citizenship is missing, no
government program can replace it. When this spirit is present, no wrong can stand
against it.
44
After the Declaration of Independence was signed, Virginia statesman John Page wrote
to Thomas Jefferson: We know the race is not to the swift nor the battle to the strong.
Do you not think an angel rides in the whirlwind and directs this storm?
45
Much time has passed since Jefferson arrived for his inauguration. The years and
changes accumulate. But the themes of this day he would know: our nations grand story
of courage and its simple dream of dignity.
We are not this storys author, who fills time and eternity with his purpose. Yet his 46
purpose is achieved in our duty, and our duty is fulfilled in service to one another.
47
Never tiring, never yielding, never finishing, we renew that purpose today, to make our
country more just and generous, to affirm the dignity of our lives and every life.
48
This work continues. This story goes on. And an angel still rides in the whirlwind and
directs this storm.
God bless you all, and God bless America.
34
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Elizabeth Glaser, Address to the Democrat National Convention (1992)
I'm Elizabeth Glaser. Eleven years ago, while giving birth to my first child, I hemorrhaged
and was transfused with seven pints of blood. Four years later, I found out that I had been
infected with the AIDS virus and had unknowingly passed it to my daughter, Ariel, through
my breast milk, and my son, Jake, in utero.
Twenty years ago I wanted to be at the Democratic Convention because it was a way to
participate in my country. Today, I am here because it's a matter of life and death. Exactly --
Exactly four years ago my daughter died of AIDS. She did not survive the Reagan
Administration. I am here because my son and I may not survive four more years of leaders
who say they care, but do nothing. I -- I am in a race with the clock. This is not about being a
Republican or an Independent or a Democrat. It's about the future -- for each and every one
of us.
I started out just a mom -- fighting for the life of her child. But along the way I learned how
unfair America can be today, not just for people who have HIV, but for many, many people --
poor people, gay people, people of color, children. A strange spokesperson for such a group:
a well-to-do white woman. But I have learned my lesson the hard way, and I know that
America has lost her path and is at risk of losing her soul. America wake up: We are all in a
struggle between life and death.
I understand -- I understand the sense of frustration and despair in our country, because I
know firsthand about shouting for help and getting no answer. I went to Washington to tell
Presidents Reagan and Bush that much, much more had to be done for AIDS research and
care, and that children couldn't be forgotten. The first time, when nothing happened, I
thought, "They just didn't hear me." The second time, when nothing happened, I thought,
"Maybe I didn't shout loud enough." But now I realize they don't hear because they don't
want to listen.
When you cry for help and no one listens, you start to lose your hope. I began to lose faith in
America. I felt my country was letting me down -- and it was. This is not the America I was
raised to be proud of. I was raised to believe that other's problems were my problems as well.
But when I tell most people about HIV, in hopes that they will help and care, I see the look in
their eyes: "It's not my problem," they're thinking. Well, it's everyone's problem and we need
a leader who will tell us that. We need a visionary to guide us -- to say it wasn't all right for
Ryan White to be banned from school because he had AIDS, to say it wasn't alright for a man
or a woman to be denied a job because they're infected with this virus. We need a leader who
is truly committed to educating us.
I believe in America, but not with a leadership of selfishness and greed -- where the wealthy
35
get health care and insurance and the poor don't. Do you know -- Do you know how much my
AIDS care costs? Over 40,000 dollars a year. Someone without insurance can't afford this.
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Even the drugs that I hope will keep me alive are out of reach for others. Is their life any less
valuable? Of course not. This is not the America I was raised to be proud of -- where rich
people get care and drugs that poor people can't. We need health care for all. We need a
leader who will say this and do something about it.
I believe in America, but not a leadership that talks about problems but is incapable of
solving them -- two HIV commission reports with recommendations about what to do to
solve this crisis sitting on shelves, gathering dust. We need a leader who will not only listen
to these recommendations, but implement them.
I believe in America, but not with a leadership that doesn't hold government accountable. I go
to Washington to the National Institutes of Health and say, "Show me what you're doing on
HIV." They hate it when I come because I try to tell them how to do it better. But that's why I
love being a taxpayer, because it's my money and they must feel accountable.
I believe in an America where our leaders talk straight. When anyone tells President Bush
that the battle against AIDS is seriously under-funded, he juggles the numbers to mislead the
public into thinking we're spending twice as much as we really are. While they play games
with numbers, people are dying.
I believe in America, but an America where there is a light in every home. A thousand points
of light just wasn't enough: My house has been dark for too long.
Once every generation, history brings us to an important crossroads. Sometimes in life there
is that moment when it's possible to make a change for the better. This is one of those
moments.
For me, this is not politics. This is a crisis of caring.
In this hall is the future -- women, men of all colors saying, "Take America back." We are --
We are just real people wanting a more hopeful life. But words and ideas are not enough.
Good thoughts won't save my family. What's the point of caring if we don't do something
about it? A President and a Congress that can work together so we can get out of this gridlock
and move ahead, because I don't win my war if the President cares and the Congress, or if the
Congress cares and the President doesn't support the ideas.
The people in this hall this week, the Democratic Party, all of us can begin to deliver that
partnership, and in November we can all bring it home.
My daughter lived seven years, and in her last year, when she couldn't walk or talk, her
wisdom shone through. She taught me to love, when all I wanted to do was hate. She taught
me to help others, when all I wanted to do was help myself. She taught me to be brave, when
all I felt was fear. My daughter and I loved each other with simplicity. America, we can do
the same.
This was the country that offered hope. This was the place where dreams could come true,
not just economic dreams, but dreams of freedom, justice, and equality. We all need to hope
that our dreams can come true. I challenge you to make it happen, because all our lives, not
36
just mine, depend on it.

Page
Thank you.
Mary Fisher A Whisper of AIDS (Address to the Republican National

Convention, 1992)
Less than three months ago, at platform hearings in Salt Lake City, I asked the Republican
Party to lift the shroud of silence which has been draped over the issue of HIV/AIDS. I have
come tonight to bring our silence to an end.
I bear a message of challenge, not self-congratulation. I want your attention, not your
applause. I would never have asked to be HIV-positive. But I believe that in all things there is
a good purpose, and so I stand before you and before the nation, gladly.
The reality of AIDS is brutally clear. Two hundred thousand Americans are dead or dying; a
million more are infected. Worldwide forty million, or sixty million or a hundred million
infections will be counted in the coming few years. But despite science and research, White
House meetings and congressional hearings, despite good intentions and bold initiatives,
campaign slogans and hopeful promises-despite it all, it's the epidemic which is winning
tonight.
In the context of an election year, I ask you-here, in this great hall, or listening in the quiet of
your home-to recognize that the AIDS virus is not apolitical creature. It does not care whether
you are Democrat or Republican. It does not ask whether you are black or white, male or
female, gay or straight, young or old.
Tonight, I represent an AIDS community whose members have been reluctantly drafted from
every segment of American society. Though I am white and a mother, I am one with a black
infant struggling with tubes in a Philadelphia hospital. Though I am female and contracted
this disease in marriage, and enjoy the warm support of my family, I am one with the lonely
gay man sheltering a flickering candle from the cold wind of his family 's rejection.
This is not a distant threat; it is a present danger. The rate of infection is increasing fastest
among women and children. Largely unknown a decade ago, AIDS is the third leading killer
of young-adult Americans today-but it won't be third for long. Because, unlike other diseases,
this one travels. Adolescents don't give each other cancer or heart disease because they
believe they are in love. But HIV is different And we have helped it along. We have killed
each other-with our ignorance, our prejudice, and our silence.
We may take refuge in our stereotypes but we cannot hide there long. Because HIV asks only
one thing of those it attacks: Are you human? And this is the right question: Are you human?
Because people with HIV have not entered some alien state of being. They are human. They
have not earned cruelty and they do not deserve meanness. They don't benefit from being
isolated or treated as outcasts. Each of them is exactly what God made: a person. Not evil,
deserving of our judgment; not victims, longing for our pity. People. Ready for support and
worthy of compassion.
37
My call to you, my Party, is to take a public stand no less compassionate than that of the
Page
President and Mrs. Bush. They have embraced me and my family in memorable ways. In the
place of judgment, they have shown affection. In difficult moments, they have raised our
spirits. In the darkest hours, I have seen them reaching not only to me, but also to my parents,
armed with that stunning grief and special grace that comes only to parents who have
themselves leaned too long over the bedside of a dying child.
With the President's leadership, much good has been done; much of the good has gone
unheralded; as the President has insisted, "Much remains to be done."
But we do the President's cause no good if we praise the American family but ignore a virus
that destroys it. We must be consistent if we are to b believed. We cannot love justice and
ignore prejudice, love our children and fear to teach them. Whatever our role, as parent or
policy maker, we must act as eloquently as we speak-else we have no integrity.
My call to the nation is a plea for awareness. If you believe you are safe, you are in danger.
Because I was not hemophiliac, I was not at risk. Because I was not gay, I was not at risk.
Because I did not inject drugs, I was not at risk.
My father has devoted much of his lifetime to guarding against another holocaust. He is part
of the generation who heard Pastor Niemoeller come out of the Nazi death camps to say,
"They came after the Jews and I was not a Jew, so I did not protest. They came after the
Trade Unionists, and I was not a Trade Unionist, so I did not protest. They came after the
Roman Catholics, and I was not a Roman Catholic, so I did not protest. Then they came after
me, and there was no one left to protest."
The lesson history teaches is this: If you believe you are safe, you are at risk. If you do not
see this killer stalking your children, look again. There is no family or community, no race or
religion, no place left in America that is safe. Until we genuinely embrace this message, we
are a nation at risk.
Tonight, HIV marches resolutely towards AIDS in more than a million American homes,
littering its pathway with the bodies of the young. Young men. Young women. Young
parents. Young children. One of the families is mine. If it is true that HIV inevitably turns to
AIDS, then my children will inevitably turn to orphans.
My family has been a rock of support. My 84-year-old father, who has pursued the healing of
the nations, will not accept the premise that he cannot heal his daughter. My mother has
refused to be broken; she still calls at mid-night to tell wonderful jokes that make me laugh.
Sisters and friends, and my brother Phillip (whose birthday is today)-all have helped carry me
over the hardest places. I am blessed, richly and deeply blessed, to have such a family.
But not all of you have been so blessed. You are HIV-positive but dare not say it. You have
lost loved ones, but you dared not whisper the word AIDS. You weep silently; you grieve
alone.
I have a message for you: It is not you who should feel shame, it is we. We who tolerate
ignorance and practice prejudice, we who have taught you to fear. We must lift our shroud of
silence, making it safe for you to reach out for compassion. It is our task to seek safety for
38
our children, not in quiet denial but in effective action.

Page
Some day our children will be grown. My son Max, now four, will take the measure of his
mother; my son Zachary, now two, will sort through his memories. I may not be here to hear
their judgments, but I know already what I hope they are.
I want my children to know that their mother was not a victim. She was a messenger. I do not
want them to think, as I once did, that courage is the absence of fear; I want them to know
that courage is the strength to act wisely when most we are afraid. I want them to have the
courage to step forward when called by their nation, or their Party, and give leadership-no
matter what the personal cost. I ask no more of you than I ask of myself, or of my children.
To the millions of you who are grieving, who are frightened, who have suffered the ravages
of AIDS firsthand: Have courage and you will find comfort.
To the millions who are strong, I issue this plea: Set aside prejudice and politics to make
room for compassion and sound policy.
To my children, I make this pledge: I will not give in, Zachary, because I draw my courage
from you. Your silly giggle gives me hope. Your gentle prayers give me strength. And you,
my child, give me reason to say to America, "You are at risk." And I will not rest, Max, until
I have done all I can to make your world safe. I will seek a place where intimacy is not the
prelude to suffering.
I will not hurry to leave you, my children. But when I go, I pray that you will not suffer
shame on my account.
To all within sound of my voice, I appeal: Learn with me the lessons of history and of grace,
so my children will not be afraid to say the word AIDS when I am gone. Then their children,
and yours, may not need to whisper it at all.
God bless the children, and bless us all.

39
Page
George Wallace Inaugural Address on being elected Governor of

Alabama (1963)
Governor Patterson, Governor Barnette, from one of the greatest states in this nation,
Mississippi, Judge Brown, representing Governor Hollings of South Carolina, _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _, members of the Alabama Congressional
Delegation, members of the Alabama Legislature, distinguished guests, fellow Alabamians:
Before I begin my talk with you, I want to ask you for a few minutes patience while I say
something that is on my heart: I want to thank those home folks of my county who first gave
an anxious country boy his opportunity to serve in State politics. I shall always owe a lot to
those who gave me that first opportunity to serve.
I will never forget the warm support and close loyalty at the folks of Suttons, Haigler's
Mill, Eufaula, Beat 6 and Beat 14, Richards Cross Roads and Gammage Beat . . . at Baker
Hill, Beat 8, and Comer, Spring Hill, Adams Chapel and Mount Andrew . . . White Oak,
Baxter's Station, Clayton, Louisville and Cunnigham Place; Horns Crossroads, Texasville and
Blue Springs, where the vote was 304 for Wallace and 1 for the opposition . . . and the dear
little lady whom I heard had made that one vote against me . . by mistake . . because she
couldn't see too well . . and she had pulled the wrong lever . . . Bless her heart. At Clio, my
birthplace, and Elamville. I shall never forget them. May God bless them.
And I shall forever remember that election day morning as I waited . . . and suddenly at
ten o'clock that morning the first return of a box was flashed over this state: it carried the
message . . . . Wallace 15, opposition zero; and it came from the Hamrick Beat at Putman's
Mountain where live the great hill people of our state. May God bless the mountain man . .
his loyalty is unshakeable, he'll do to walk down the road with.
I hope you'll forgive me these few moments of remembering . . . but I wanted them . . and
you . . to know, that I shall never forget.
And I wish I could shake hands and thank all of you in this state who voted for me . . and
those of you who did not . . for I know you voted your honest convictions . . . and now, we
must stand together and move the great State of Alabama forward.
I would be remiss, this day, if I did not thank my wonderful wife and fine family for their
patience, support and loyalty . . . . and there is no man living who does not owe more to his
mother than he can ever repay, and I want my mother to know that I realize my debt to her.
This is the day of my Inauguration as Governor of the State of Alabama. And on this day I
feel a deep obligation to renew my pledges, my covenants with you . . . the people of this
great state.
40
General Robert E. Lee said that "duty" is the sublimest word on the English language and
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I have come, increasingly, to realize what he meant. I SHALL do my duty to you, God
helping . . . to every man, to every woman . . . yes, to every child in this state. I shall fulfill
my duty toward honesty and economy in our State government so that no man shall have a
part of his livelihood cheated and no child shall have a bit of his future stolen away.
I have said to you that I would eliminate the liquor agents in this state and that the money
saved would be returned to our citizens . . . I am happy to report to you that I am now filling
orders for several hundred one-way tickets and stamped on them are these words . . . "for
liquor agents . . . destination: . . . out of Alabama." I am happy to report to you that the big-
wheeling cocktail-party boys have gotten the word that their free whiskey and boat rides are
over . . . that the farmer in the field, the worker in the factory, the businessman in his office,
the housewife in her home, have decided that the money can be better spent to help our
children's education and our older citizens . . . and they have put a man in office to see that it
is done. It shall be done. Let me say one more time . . . . no more liquor drinking in your
governor's mansion.
I shall fulfill my duty in working hard to bring industry into our state, not only by
maintaining an honest, sober and free-enterprise climate of government in which industry can
have confidence . . but in going out and getting it . . . so that our people can have industrial
jobs in Alabama and provide a better life for their children.
I shall not forget my duty to our senior citizens . . . so that their lives can be lived in
dignity and enrichment of the golden years, nor to our sick, both mental and physical . . . and
they will know we have not forsaken them. I want the farmer to feel confident that in this
State government he has a partner who will work with him in raising his income and
increasing his markets. And I want the laboring man to know he has a friend who is sincerely
striving to better his field of endeavor.
I want to assure every child that this State government is not afraid to invest in their future
through education, so that they will not be handicapped on every threshold of their lives.
Today I have stood, where once Jefferson Davis stood, and took an oath to my people. It is
very appropriate then that from this Cradle of the Confederacy, this very Heart of the Great
Anglo-Saxon Southland, that today we sound the drum for freedom as have our generations
of forebears before us done, time and time again through history. Let us rise to the call of
freedom-loving blood that is in us and send our answer to the tyranny that clanks its chains
upon the South. In the name of the greatest people that have ever trod this earth, I draw the
line in the dust and toss the gauntlet before the feet of tyranny . . . and I say . . . segregation
today . . . segregation tomorrow . . . segregation forever.
The Washington, D.C. school riot report is disgusting and revealing. We will not sacrifice
our children to any such type school system--and you can write that down. The federal troops
in Mississippi could be better used guarding the saftey of the citizens of Washington, D.C.,
where it is even unsafe to walk or go to a ballgame--and that is the nation's capitol. I was
safer in a B-29 bomber over Japan during the war in an air raid, than the people of
Washington are walking to the White House neighborhood. A closer example is Atlanta. The
city officials fawn for political reasons over school integration and THEN build barricades to
stop residential integration--what hypocrisy!
41
Let us send this message back to Washington by our representatives who are with us
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today . . that from this day we are standing up, and the heel of tyranny does not fit the neck of
an upright man . . . that we intend to take the offensive and carry our fight for freedom across
the nation, wielding the balance of power we know we possess in the Southland . . . . that
WE, not the insipid bloc of voters of some sections . . will determine in the next election who
shall sit in the White House of these United States . . . That from this day, from this hour . . .
from this minute . . . we give the word of a race of honor that we will tolerate their boot in
our face no longer . . . . and let those certain judges put that in their opium pipes of power and
smoke it for what it is worth.
Hear me, Southerners! You sons and daughters who have moved north and west
throughout this nation . . . . we call on you from your native soil to join with us in national
support and vote . . and we know . . . wherever you are . . away from the hearths of the
Southland . . . that you will respond, for though you may live in the fartherest reaches of this
vast country . . . . your heart has never left Dixieland.
And you native sons and daughters of old New England's rock-ribbed patriotism . . . and
you sturdy natives of the great Mid-West . . and you descendants of the far West flaming
spirit of pioneer freedom . . we invite you to come and be with us . . for you are of the
Southern spirit . . and the Southern philosophy . . . you are Southerners too and brothers with
us in our fight.
What I have said about segregation goes double this day . . . and what I have said to or
about some federal judges goes TRIPLE this day.
Alabama has been blessed by God as few states in this Union have been blessed. Our state
owns ten percent of all the natural resources of all the states in our country. Our inland
waterway system is second to none . . . and has the potential of being the greatest waterway
transport system in the entire world. We possess over thirty minerals in usable quantities and
our soil is rich and varied, suited to a wide variety of plants. Our native pine and forestry
system produces timber faster than we can cut it and yet we have only pricked the surface of
the great lumber and pulp potential.
With ample rainfall and rich grasslands our live stock industry is in the infancy of a giant
future that can make us a center of the big and growing meat packing and prepared foods
marketing. We have the favorable climate, streams, woodlands, beaches, and natural beauty
to make us a recreational mecca in the booming tourist and vacation industry. Nestled in the
great Tennessee Valley, we possess the Rocket center of the world and the keys to the space
frontier.
While the trade with a developing Europe built the great port cities of the east coast, our
own fast developing port of Mobile faces as a magnetic gateway to the great continent of
South America, well over twice as large and hundreds of times richer in resources, even now
awakening to the growing probes of enterprising capital with a potential of growth and wealth
beyond any present dream for our port development and corresponding results throughout the
connecting waterways that thread our state.
And while the manufacturing industries of free enterprise have been coming to our state in
increasing numbers, attracted by our bountiful natural resouces, our growing numbers of
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skilled workers and our favorable conditions, their present rate of settlement here can be
increased from the trickle they now represent to a stream of enterprise and endeavor, capital
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and expansion that can join us in our work of development and enrichment of the educational
futures of our children, the opportunities of our citizens and the fulfillment of our talents as
God has given them to us. To realize our ambitions and to bring to fruition our dreams, we as
Alabamians must take cognizance of the world about us. We must re-define our heritage, re-
school our thoughts in the lessons our forefathers knew so well, first hand, in order to
function and to grow and to prosper. We can no longer hide our head in the sand and tell
ourselves that the ideology of our free fathers is not being attacked and is not being
threatened by another idea . . . for it is. We are faced with an idea that if a centralized
government assume enough authority, enough power over its people, that it can provide a
utopian life . . that if given the power to dictate, to forbid, to require, to demand, to distribute,
to edict and to judge what is best and enforce that will produce only "good" . . and it shall be
our father . . . . and our God. It is an idea of government that encourages our fears and
destroys our faith . . . for where there is faith, there is no fear, and where there is fear, there is
no faith. In encouraging our fears of economic insecurity it demands we place that economic
management and control with government; in encouraging our fear of educational
development it demands we place that education and the minds of our children under
management and control of government, and even in feeding our fears of physical infirmities
and declining years, it offers and demands to father us through it all and even into the grave.
It is a government that claims to us that it is bountiful as it buys its power from us with the
fruits of its rapaciousness of the wealth that free men before it have produced and builds on
crumbling credit without responsibilities to the debtors . . . our children. It is an ideology of
government erected on the encouragement of fear and fails to recognize the basic law of our
fathers that governments do not produce wealth . . . people produce wealth . . . free people;
and those people become less free . . . as they learn there is little reward for ambition . . . that
it requires faith to risk . . . and they have none . . as the government must restrict and penalize
and tax incentive and endeavor and must increase its expenditures of bounties . . . then this
government must assume more and more police powers and we find we are become
government-fearing people . . . not God-fearing people. We find we have replaced faith with
fear . . . and though we may give lip service to the Almighty . . in reality, government has
become our god. It is, therefore, a basically ungodly government and its appeal to the psuedo-
intellectual and the politician is to change their status from servant of the people to master of
the people . . . to play at being God . . . without faith in God . . . and without the wisdom of
God. It is a system that is the very opposite of Christ for it feeds and encourages everything
degenerate and base in our people as it assumes the responsibilities that we ourselves should
assume. Its psuedo-liberal spokesmen and some Harvard advocates have never examined the
logic of its substitution of what it calls "human rights" for individual rights, for its
propaganda play on words has appeal for the unthinking. Its logic is totally material and
irresponsible as it runs the full gamut of human desires . . . including the theory that everyone
has voting rights without the spiritual responsibility of preserving freedom. Our founding
fathers recognized those rights . . . but only within the framework of those spiritual
responsiblities. But the strong, simple faith and sane reasoning of our founding fathers has
long since been forgotten as the so-called "progressives" tell us that our Constitution was
written for "horse and buggy" days . . . so were the Ten Commandments.
Not so long ago men stood in marvel and awe at the cities, the buildings, the schools, the
autobahns that the government of Hitler's Germany had built . . . just as centuries before they
stood in wonder of Rome's building . . . but it could not stand . . . for the system that built it
had rotted the souls of the builders . . . and in turn . . . rotted the foundation of what God
43
meant that men should be. Today that same system on an international scale is sweeping the
world. It is the "changing world" of which we are told . . . it is called "new" and "liberal". It is
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as old as the oldest dictator. It is degenerate and decadent. As the national racism of Hitler's
Germany persecuted a national minority to the whim of a national majority . . . so the

international racism of the liberals seek to persecute the international white minority to the
whim of the international colored majority . . . so that we are footballed about according to
the favor of the Afro-Asian bloc. But the Belgian survivors of the Congo cannot present their
case to a war crimes commission . . . nor the Portuguese of Angola . . . nor the survivors of
Castro . . . nor the citizens of Oxford, Mississippi.
It is this theory of international power politic that led a group of men on the Supreme
Court for the first time in American history to issue an edict, based not on legal precedent,
but upon a volume, the editor of which said our Constitution is outdated and must be changed
and the writers of which, some had admittedly belonged to as many as half a hundred
communist-front organizations. It is this theory that led this same group of men to briefly
bare the ungodly core of that philosophy in forbidding little school children to say a prayer.
And we find the evidence of that ungodliness even in the removal of the words "in God we
trust" from some of our dollars, which was placed there as like evidence by our founding
fathers as the faith upon which this system of government was built. It is the spirit of power
thirst that caused a President in Washington to take up Caesar's pen and with one stroke of it
make a law. A Law which the law making body of Congress refused to pass . . . a law that
tells us that we can or cannot buy or sell our very homes, except by his conditions . . . and
except at HIS descretion. It is the spirit of power thirst that led the same President to launch a
full offensive of twenty-five thousand troops against a university . . . of all places . . . in his
own country . . . and against his own people, when this nation maintains only six thousand
troops in the beleagured city of Berlin. We have witnessed such acts of "might makes right"
over the world as men yielded to the temptation to play God . . . but we have never before
witnessed it in America. We reject such acts as free men. We do not defy, for there is nothing
to defy . . . since as free men we do not recognize any government right to give freedom . . .
or deny freedom. No government erected by man has that right. As Thomas Jefferson said,
"The God who gave us life, gave us liberty at the same time; no King holds the right of
liberty in his hands." Nor does any ruler in American government.
We intend, quite simply, to practice the free heritage as bequeathed to us as sons of free
fathers. We intend to re-vitalize the truly new and progressive form of government that is less
that two hundred years old . . . a government first founded in this nation simply and purely on
faith . . . that there is a personal God who rewards good and punishes evil . . . that hard work
will receive its just deserts . . . that ambition and ingenuity and incentiveness . . . and profit of
such . . are admirable traits and goals . . that the individual is encouraged in his spiritual
growth and from that growth arrives at a character that enhances his charity toward others
and from that character and that charity so is influenced business, and labor and farmer and
government. We intend to renew our faith as God-fearing men . . . not government-fearing
men nor any other kind of fearing-men. We intend to roll up our sleeves and pitch in to
develop this full bounty God has given us . . . to live full and useful lives and in absolute
freedom from all fear. Then can we enjoy the full richness of the Great American Dream.
We have placed this sign, "In God We Trust," upon our State Capitol on this Inauguration
Day as physical evidence of determination to renew the faith of our fathers and to practice the
free heritage they bequeathed to us. We do this with the clear and solemn knowledge that
such physical evidence is evidently a direct violation of the logic of that Supreme Court in
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Washington D.C., and if they or their spokesmen in this state wish to term this defiance . . . I
say . . . then let them make the most of it.
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This nation was never meant to be a unit of one . . . but a united of the many . . . . that is
the exact reason our freedom loving forefathers established the states, so as to divide the
rights and powers among the states, insuring that no central power could gain master
government control.
In united effort we were meant to live under this government . . . whether Baptist,
Methodist, Presbyterian, Church of Christ, or whatever one's denomonation or religious
belief . . . each respecting the others right to a separate denomination . . . each, by working to
develop his own, enriching the total of all our lives through united effort. And so it was
meant in our political lives . . . whether Republican, Democrat, Prohibition, or whatever
political party . . . each striving from his separate political station . . . respecting the rights of
others to be separate and work from within their political framework . . . and each separate
political station making its contribution to our lives . . . .
And so it was meant in our racial lives . . . each race, within its own framework has the
freedom to teach . . to instruct . . to develop . . to ask for and receive deserved help from
others of separate racial stations. This is the great freedom of our American founding
fathers . . . but if we amalgamate into the one unit as advocated by the communist
philosophers . . then the enrichment of our lives . . . the freedom for our development . . . is
gone forever. We become, therefore, a mongrel unit of one under a single all powerful
government . . . and we stand for everything . . . and for nothing.
The true brotherhood of America, of respecting the separateness of others . . and uniting in
effort . . has been so twisted and distorted from its original concept that there is a small
wonder that communism is winning the world.
We invite the negro citizens of Alabama to work with us from his separate racial station . .
as we will work with him . . to develop, to grow in individual freedom and enrichment. We
want jobs and a good future for BOTH races . . the tubercular and the infirm. This is the basic
heritage of my religion, if which I make full practice . . . . for we are all the handiwork of
God.
But we warn those, of any group, who would follow the false doctrine of communistic
amalgamation that we will not surrender our system of government . . . our freedom of race
and religion . . . that freedom was won at a hard price and if it requires a hard price to retain
it . . we are able . . and quite willing to pay it.
The liberals' theory that poverty, discrimination and lack of opportunity is the cause of
communism is a false theory . . . if it were true the South would have been the biggest single
communist bloc in the western hemisphere long ago . . . for after the great War Between the
States, our people faced a desolate land of burned universities, destroyed crops and homes,
with manpower depleted and crippled, and even the mule, which was required to work the
land, was so scarce that whole communities shared one animal to make the spring plowing.
There were no government handouts, no Marshall Plan aid, no coddling to make sure that our
people would not suffer; instead the South was set upon by the vulturous carpetbagger and
federal troops, all loyal Southerners were denied the vote at the point of bayonet, so that the
infamous, illegal 14th Amendment might be passed. There was no money, no food and no
45
hope of either. But our grandfathers bent their knee only in church and bowed their head only
to God.
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Not for a single instant did they ever consider the easy way of federal dictatorship and
amalgamation in return for fat bellies. They fought. They dug sweet roots from the ground
with their bare hands and boiled them in iron pots . . . . they gathered poke salad from the
woods and acorns from the ground. They fought. They followed no false doctrine . . . they
knew what the wanted . . and they fought for freedom! They came up from their knees in the
greatest disply of sheer nerve, grit and guts that has ever been set down in the pages of
written history . . . and they won! The great writer, Rudyard Kipling wrote of them, that:
"There in the Southland of the United States of America, lives the greatest fighting breed of
man . . . in all the world!"
And that is why today, I stand ashamed of the fat, well-fed whimperers who say that it is
inevitable . . . that our cause is lost. I am ashamed of them . . . . and I am ashamed for them.
They do not represent the people of the Southland.
And may we take note of one other fact, with all trouble with communists that some
sections of this country have . . . there are not enough native communists in the South to fill
up a telephone booth . . . . and THAT is a matter of public FBI record.
We remind all within hearing of this Southland that a Southerner, Peyton Randolph,
presided over the Continental Congress in our nation's beginning . . . that a Southerner,
Thomas Jefferson, wrote the Declaration of Independence, that a Southerner, George
Washington, is the Father of our country . . . that a Southerner, James Madison, authored our
Constitution, that a Southerner, George Mason, authored the Bill of Rights and it was a
Southerner who said, "Give me liberty . . . . . . or give me death," Patrick Henry.
Southerners played a most magnificent part in erecting this great divinely inspired system
of freedom . . and as God is our witnesses, Southerners will save it.
Let us, as Alabamians, grasp the hand of destiny and walk out of the shadow of fear . . .
and fill our divine destination. Let us not simply defend . . but let us assume the leadership of
the fight and carry our leadership across this nation. God has placed us here in this crisis . . .
let is not fail in this . . our most historical moment.
You are here today, present in this audience, and to you over this great state, wherever you
are in sound of my voice, I want to humbly and with all sincerity, thank you for your faith in
me.
I promise you that I will try to make you a good governor. I promise you that, as God
gives me the wisdom and the strength, I will be sincere with you. I will be honest with you.
I will apply the old sound rule of our fathers, that anything worthy of our defense is
worthy of one hundred percent of our defense. I have been taught that freedom meant
freedom from any threat or fear of government. I was born in that freedom, I was raised in
that freedom . . . I intend to live live in that freedom . . . and God willing, when I die, I shall
leave that freedom to my children . . . as my father left it to me.
My pledge to you . . . to "Stand up for Alabama," is a stronger pledge today than it was the
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first day I made that pledge. I shall "Stand up for Alabama," as Governor of our State . . . you
stand with me . . . and we, together, can give courageous leadership to millions of people
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throughout this nation who look to the South for their hope in this fight to win and preserve
our freedoms and liberties.
So help me God.
And my prayer is that the Father who reigns above us will bless all the people of this great
sovereign State and nation, both white and black.
I thank you.
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Barack Obama A New Beginning (2009)
REMARKS BY THE PRESIDENT

ON A NEW BEGINNING
Cairo University
Cairo, Egypt
1:10 P.M. (Local)
PRESIDENT OBAMA: Thank you very much. Good afternoon. I am honored to be in the
timeless city of Cairo, and to be hosted by two remarkable institutions. For over a thousand
years, Al-Azhar has stood as a beacon of Islamic learning; and for over a century, Cairo
University has been a source of Egypt's advancement. And together, you represent the
harmony between tradition and progress. I'm grateful for your hospitality, and the hospitality
of the people of Egypt. And I'm also proud to carry with me the goodwill of the American
people, and a greeting of peace from Muslim communities in my country: Assalaamu
alaykum. (Applause.)
We meet at a time of great tension between the United States and Muslims around the world -
- tension rooted in historical forces that go beyond any current policy debate. The
relationship between Islam and the West includes centuries of coexistence and cooperation,
but also conflict and religious wars. More recently, tension has been fed by colonialism that
denied rights and opportunities to many Muslims, and a Cold War in which Muslim-majority
countries were too often treated as proxies without regard to their own
aspirations. Moreover, the sweeping change brought by modernity and globalization led
many Muslims to view the West as hostile to the traditions of Islam.
Violent extremists have exploited these tensions in a small but potent minority of
Muslims. The attacks of September 11, 2001 and the continued efforts of these extremists to
engage in violence against civilians has led some in my country to view Islam as inevitably
hostile not only to America and Western countries, but also to human rights. All this has
bred more fear and more mistrust.
So long as our relationship is defined by our differences, we will empower those who sow
hatred rather than peace, those who promote conflict rather than the cooperation that can help
all of our people achieve justice and prosperity. And this cycle of suspicion and discord must
end.
I've come here to Cairo to seek a new beginning between the United States and Muslims
around the world, one based on mutual interest and mutual respect, and one based upon the
truth that America and Islam are not exclusive and need not be in competition. Instead, they
overlap, and share common principles -- principles of justice and progress; tolerance and the
dignity of all human beings.
I do so recognizing that change cannot happen overnight. I know there's been a lot of
publicity about this speech, but no single speech can eradicate years of mistrust, nor can I
answer in the time that I have this afternoon all the complex questions that brought us to this
point. But I am convinced that in order to move forward, we must say openly to each other
the things we hold in our hearts and that too often are said only behind closed doors. There
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must be a sustained effort to listen to each other; to learn from each other; to respect one
another; and to seek common ground. As the Holy Koran tells us, "Be conscious of God and
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speak always the truth." (Applause.) That is what I will try to do today -- to speak the truth
as best I can, humbled by the task before us, and firm in my belief that the interests we share
as human beings are far more powerful than the forces that drive us apart.
Now part of this conviction is rooted in my own experience. I'm a Christian, but my father
came from a Kenyan family that includes generations of Muslims. As a boy, I spent several
years in Indonesia and heard the call of the azaan at the break of dawn and at the fall of
dusk. As a young man, I worked in Chicago communities where many found dignity and
peace in their Muslim faith.
As a student of history, I also know civilization's debt to Islam. It was Islam -- at places like
Al-Azhar -- that carried the light of learning through so many centuries, paving the way for
Europe's Renaissance and Enlightenment. It was innovation in Muslim communities --
(applause) -- it was innovation in Muslim communities that developed the order of algebra;
our magnetic compass and tools of navigation; our mastery of pens and printing; our
understanding of how disease spreads and how it can be healed. Islamic culture has given us
majestic arches and soaring spires; timeless poetry and cherished music; elegant calligraphy
and places of peaceful contemplation. And throughout history, Islam has demonstrated
through words and deeds the possibilities of religious tolerance and racial
equality. (Applause.)
I also know that Islam has always been a part of America's story. The first nation to
recognize my country was Morocco. In signing the Treaty of Tripoli in 1796, our second
President, John Adams, wrote, "The United States has in itself no character of enmity against
the laws, religion or tranquility of Muslims." And since our founding, American Muslims
have enriched the United States. They have fought in our wars, they have served in our
government, they have stood for civil rights, they have started businesses, they have taught at
our universities, they've excelled in our sports arenas, they've won Nobel Prizes, built our
tallest building, and lit the Olympic Torch. And when the first Muslim American was
recently elected to Congress, he took the oath to defend our Constitution using the same Holy
Koran that one of our Founding Fathers -- Thomas Jefferson -- kept in his personal
library. (Applause.)
So I have known Islam on three continents before coming to the region where it was first
revealed. That experience guides my conviction that partnership between America and Islam
must be based on what Islam is, not what it isn't. And I consider it part of my responsibility
as President of the United States to fight against negative stereotypes of Islam wherever they
appear. (Applause.)
But that same principle must apply to Muslim perceptions of America. (Applause.) Just as
Muslims do not fit a crude stereotype, America is not the crude stereotype of a self-interested
empire. The United States has been one of the greatest sources of progress that the world has
ever known. We were born out of revolution against an empire. We were founded upon the
ideal that all are created equal, and we have shed blood and struggled for centuries to give
meaning to those words -- within our borders, and around the world. We are shaped by every
culture, drawn from every end of the Earth, and dedicated to a simple concept: E pluribus
unum -- "Out of many, one."
Now, much has been made of the fact that an African American with the name Barack
Hussein Obama could be elected President. (Applause.) But my personal story is not so
unique. The dream of opportunity for all people has not come true for everyone in America,
but its promise exists for all who come to our shores -- and that includes nearly 7 million
American Muslims in our country today who, by the way, enjoy incomes and educational
levels that are higher than the American average. (Applause.)
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Moreover, freedom in America is indivisible from the freedom to practice one's

religion. That is why there is a mosque in every state in our union, and over 1,200 mosques
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within our borders. That's why the United States government has gone to court to protect the
right of women and girls to wear the hijab and to punish those who would deny
it. (Applause.)
So let there be no doubt: Islam is a part of America. And I believe that America holds within
her the truth that regardless of race, religion, or station in life, all of us share common
aspirations -- to live in peace and security; to get an education and to work with dignity; to
love our families, our communities, and our God. These things we share. This is the hope of
all humanity.
Of course, recognizing our common humanity is only the beginning of our task. Words alone
cannot meet the needs of our people. These needs will be met only if we act boldly in the
years ahead; and if we understand that the challenges we face are shared, and our failure to
meet them will hurt us all.
For we have learned from recent experience that when a financial system weakens in one
country, prosperity is hurt everywhere. When a new flu infects one human being, all are at
risk. When one nation pursues a nuclear weapon, the risk of nuclear attack rises for all
nations. When violent extremists operate in one stretch of mountains, people are endangered
across an ocean. When innocents in Bosnia and Darfur are slaughtered, that is a stain on our
collective conscience. (Applause.) That is what it means to share this world in the 21st
century. That is the responsibility we have to one another as human beings.
And this is a difficult responsibility to embrace. For human history has often been a record of
nations and tribes -- and, yes, religions -- subjugating one another in pursuit of their own
interests. Yet in this new age, such attitudes are self-defeating. Given our interdependence,
any world order that elevates one nation or group of people over another will inevitably
fail. So whatever we think of the past, we must not be prisoners to it. Our problems must be
dealt with through partnership; our progress must be shared. (Applause.)
Now, that does not mean we should ignore sources of tension. Indeed, it suggests the
opposite: We must face these tensions squarely. And so in that spirit, let me speak as clearly
and as plainly as I can about some specific issues that I believe we must finally confront
together.
The first issue that we have to confront is violent extremism in all of its forms.
In Ankara, I made clear that America is not -- and never will be -- at war with
Islam. (Applause.) We will, however, relentlessly confront violent extremists who pose a
grave threat to our security -- because we reject the same thing that people of all faiths
reject: the killing of innocent men, women, and children. And it is my first duty as President
to protect the American people.
The situation in Afghanistan demonstrates America's goals, and our need to work
together. Over seven years ago, the United States pursued al Qaeda and the Taliban with
broad international support. We did not go by choice; we went because of necessity. I'm
aware that there's still some who would question or even justify the events of 9/11. But let us
be clear: Al Qaeda killed nearly 3,000 people on that day. The victims were innocent men,
women and children from America and many other nations who had done nothing to harm
anybody. And yet al Qaeda chose to ruthlessly murder these people, claimed credit for the
attack, and even now states their determination to kill on a massive scale. They have
affiliates in many countries and are trying to expand their reach. These are not opinions to be
debated; these are facts to be dealt with.
Now, make no mistake: We do not want to keep our troops in Afghanistan. We see no
military -- we seek no military bases there. It is agonizing for America to lose our young
men and women. It is costly and politically difficult to continue this conflict. We would
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gladly bring every single one of our troops home if we could be confident that there were not
violent extremists in Afghanistan and now Pakistan determined to kill as many Americans as
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they possibly can. But that is not yet the case.

And that's why we're partnering with a coalition of 46 countries. And despite the costs
involved, America's commitment will not weaken. Indeed, none of us should tolerate these
extremists. They have killed in many countries. They have killed people of different faiths --
but more than any other, they have killed Muslims. Their actions are irreconcilable with the
rights of human beings, the progress of nations, and with Islam. The Holy Koran teaches that
whoever kills an innocent is as -- it is as if he has killed all mankind. (Applause.) And the
Holy Koran also says whoever saves a person, it is as if he has saved all
mankind. (Applause.) The enduring faith of over a billion people is so much bigger than the
narrow hatred of a few. Islam is not part of the problem in combating violent extremism -- it
is an important part of promoting peace.
Now, we also know that military power alone is not going to solve the problems in
Afghanistan and Pakistan. That's why we plan to invest $1.5 billion each year over the next
five years to partner with Pakistanis to build schools and hospitals, roads and businesses, and
hundreds of millions to help those who've been displaced. That's why we are providing more
than $2.8 billion to help Afghans develop their economy and deliver services that people
depend on.
Let me also address the issue of Iraq. Unlike Afghanistan, Iraq was a war of choice that
provoked strong differences in my country and around the world. Although I believe that the
Iraqi people are ultimately better off without the tyranny of Saddam Hussein, I also believe
that events in Iraq have reminded America of the need to use diplomacy and build
international consensus to resolve our problems whenever possible. (Applause.) Indeed, we
can recall the words of Thomas Jefferson, who said: "I hope that our wisdom will grow with
our power, and teach us that the less we use our power the greater it will be."
Today, America has a dual responsibility: to help Iraq forge a better future -- and to leave
Iraq to Iraqis. And I have made it clear to the Iraqi people -- (applause) -- I have made it
clear to the Iraqi people that we pursue no bases, and no claim on their territory or
resources. Iraq's sovereignty is its own. And that's why I ordered the removal of our combat
brigades by next August. That is why we will honor our agreement with Iraq's
democratically elected government to remove combat troops from Iraqi cities by July, and to
remove all of our troops from Iraq by 2012. (Applause.) We will help Iraq train its security
forces and develop its economy. But we will support a secure and united Iraq as a partner,
and never as a patron.
And finally, just as America can never tolerate violence by extremists, we must never alter or
forget our principles. Nine-eleven was an enormous trauma to our country. The fear and
anger that it provoked was understandable, but in some cases, it led us to act contrary to our
traditions and our ideals. We are taking concrete actions to change course. I have
unequivocally prohibited the use of torture by the United States, and I have ordered the prison
at Guantanamo Bay closed by early next year. (Applause.)
So America will defend itself, respectful of the sovereignty of nations and the rule of
law. And we will do so in partnership with Muslim communities which are also
threatened. The sooner the extremists are isolated and unwelcome in Muslim communities,
the sooner we will all be safer.
The second major source of tension that we need to discuss is the situation between Israelis,
Palestinians and the Arab world.
America's strong bonds with Israel are well known. This bond is unbreakable. It is based
upon cultural and historical ties, and the recognition that the aspiration for a Jewish homeland
is rooted in a tragic history that cannot be denied.
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Around the world, the Jewish people were persecuted for centuries, and anti-Semitism in
Europe culminated in an unprecedented Holocaust. Tomorrow, I will visit Buchenwald,
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which was part of a network of camps where Jews were enslaved, tortured, shot and gassed to
death by the Third Reich. Six million Jews were killed -- more than the entire Jewish
population of Israel today. Denying that fact is baseless, it is ignorant, and it is
hateful. Threatening Israel with destruction -- or repeating vile stereotypes about Jews -- is
deeply wrong, and only serves to evoke in the minds of Israelis this most painful of memories
while preventing the peace that the people of this region deserve.
On the other hand, it is also undeniable that the Palestinian people -- Muslims and Christians
-- have suffered in pursuit of a homeland. For more than 60 years they've endured the pain of
dislocation. Many wait in refugee camps in the West Bank, Gaza, and neighboring lands for
a life of peace and security that they have never been able to lead. They endure the daily
humiliations -- large and small -- that come with occupation. So let there be no doubt: The
situation for the Palestinian people is intolerable. And America will not turn our backs on the
legitimate Palestinian aspiration for dignity, opportunity, and a state of their
own. (Applause.)
For decades then, there has been a stalemate: two peoples with legitimate aspirations, each
with a painful history that makes compromise elusive. It's easy to point fingers -- for
Palestinians to point to the displacement brought about by Israel's founding, and for Israelis
to point to the constant hostility and attacks throughout its history from within its borders as
well as beyond. But if we see this conflict only from one side or the other, then we will be
blind to the truth: The only resolution is for the aspirations of both sides to be met through
two states, where Israelis and Palestinians each live in peace and security. (Applause.)
That is in Israel's interest, Palestine's interest, America's interest, and the world's
interest. And that is why I intend to personally pursue this outcome with all the patience and
dedication that the task requires. (Applause.) The obligations -- the obligations that the
parties have agreed to under the road map are clear. For peace to come, it is time for them --
and all of us -- to live up to our responsibilities.
Palestinians must abandon violence. Resistance through violence and killing is wrong and it
does not succeed. For centuries, black people in America suffered the lash of the whip as
slaves and the humiliation of segregation. But it was not violence that won full and equal
rights. It was a peaceful and determined insistence upon the ideals at the center of America's
founding. This same story can be told by people from South Africa to South Asia; from
Eastern Europe to Indonesia. It's a story with a simple truth: that violence is a dead end. It is
a sign neither of courage nor power to shoot rockets at sleeping children, or to blow up old
women on a bus. That's not how moral authority is claimed; that's how it is surrendered.
Now is the time for Palestinians to focus on what they can build. The Palestinian Authority
must develop its capacity to govern, with institutions that serve the needs of its people.
Hamas does have support among some Palestinians, but they also have to recognize they
have responsibilities. To play a role in fulfilling Palestinian aspirations, to unify the
Palestinian people, Hamas must put an end to violence, recognize past agreements, recognize
Israel's right to exist.
At the same time, Israelis must acknowledge that just as Israel's right to exist cannot be
denied, neither can Palestine's. The United States does not accept the legitimacy of continued
Israeli settlements. (Applause.) This construction violates previous agreements and
undermines efforts to achieve peace. It is time for these settlements to stop. (Applause.)
And Israel must also live up to its obligation to ensure that Palestinians can live and work and
develop their society. Just as it devastates Palestinian families, the continuing humanitarian
crisis in Gaza does not serve Israel's security; neither does the continuing lack of opportunity
in the West Bank. Progress in the daily lives of the Palestinian people must be a critical part
52
of a road to peace, and Israel must take concrete steps to enable such progress.
And finally, the Arab states must recognize that the Arab Peace Initiative was an important
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beginning, but not the end of their responsibilities. The Arab-Israeli conflict should no longer
be used to distract the people of Arab nations from other problems. Instead, it must be a
cause for action to help the Palestinian people develop the institutions that will sustain their
state, to recognize Israel's legitimacy, and to choose progress over a self-defeating focus on
the past.
America will align our policies with those who pursue peace, and we will say in public what
we say in private to Israelis and Palestinians and Arabs. (Applause.) We cannot impose
peace. But privately, many Muslims recognize that Israel will not go away. Likewise, many
Israelis recognize the need for a Palestinian state. It is time for us to act on what everyone
knows to be true.
Too many tears have been shed. Too much blood has been shed. All of us have a
responsibility to work for the day when the mothers of Israelis and Palestinians can see their
children grow up without fear; when the Holy Land of the three great faiths is the place of
peace that God intended it to be; when Jerusalem is a secure and lasting home for Jews and
Christians and Muslims, and a place for all of the children of Abraham to mingle peacefully
together as in the story of Isra -- (applause) -- as in the story of Isra, when Moses, Jesus, and
Mohammed, peace be upon them, joined in prayer. (Applause.)
The third source of tension is our shared interest in the rights and responsibilities of nations
on nuclear weapons.
This issue has been a source of tension between the United States and the Islamic Republic of
Iran. For many years, Iran has defined itself in part by its opposition to my country, and there
is in fact a tumultuous history between us. In the middle of the Cold War, the United States
played a role in the overthrow of a democratically elected Iranian government. Since the
Islamic Revolution, Iran has played a role in acts of hostage-taking and violence against U.S.
troops and civilians. This history is well known. Rather than remain trapped in the past, I've
made it clear to Iran's leaders and people that my country is prepared to move forward. The
question now is not what Iran is against, but rather what future it wants to build.
I recognize it will be hard to overcome decades of mistrust, but we will proceed with courage,
rectitude, and resolve. There will be many issues to discuss between our two countries, and
we are willing to move forward without preconditions on the basis of mutual respect. But it
is clear to all concerned that when it comes to nuclear weapons, we have reached a decisive
point. This is not simply about America's interests. It's about preventing a nuclear arms race
in the Middle East that could lead this region and the world down a hugely dangerous path.
I understand those who protest that some countries have weapons that others do not. No
single nation should pick and choose which nation holds nuclear weapons. And that's why I
strongly reaffirmed America's commitment to seek a world in which no nations hold nuclear
weapons. (Applause.) And any nation -- including Iran -- should have the right to access
peaceful nuclear power if it complies with its responsibilities under the nuclear Non-
Proliferation Treaty. That commitment is at the core of the treaty, and it must be kept for all
who fully abide by it. And I'm hopeful that all countries in the region can share in this goal.
The fourth issue that I will address is democracy. (Applause.)
I know -- I know there has been controversy about the promotion of democracy in recent
years, and much of this controversy is connected to the war in Iraq. So let me be clear: No
system of government can or should be imposed by one nation by any other.
That does not lessen my commitment, however, to governments that reflect the will of the
people. Each nation gives life to this principle in its own way, grounded in the traditions of
its own people. America does not presume to know what is best for everyone, just as we
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would not presume to pick the outcome of a peaceful election. But I do have an unyielding
belief that all people yearn for certain things: the ability to speak your mind and have a say
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in how you are governed; confidence in the rule of law and the equal administration of
justice; government that is transparent and doesn't steal from the people; the freedom to live
as you choose. These are not just American ideas; they are human rights. And that is why
we will support them everywhere. (Applause.)
Now, there is no straight line to realize this promise. But this much is clear: Governments
that protect these rights are ultimately more stable, successful and secure. Suppressing ideas
never succeeds in making them go away. America respects the right of all peaceful and law-
abiding voices to be heard around the world, even if we disagree with them. And we will
welcome all elected, peaceful governments -- provided they govern with respect for all their
people.
This last point is important because there are some who advocate for democracy only when
they're out of power; once in power, they are ruthless in suppressing the rights of
others. (Applause.) So no matter where it takes hold, government of the people and by the
people sets a single standard for all who would hold power: You must maintain your power
through consent, not coercion; you must respect the rights of minorities, and participate with
a spirit of tolerance and compromise; you must place the interests of your people and the
legitimate workings of the political process above your party. Without these ingredients,
elections alone do not make true democracy.
AUDIENCE MEMBER: Barack Obama, we love you!
PRESIDENT OBAMA: Thank you. (Applause.) The fifth issue that we must address
together is religious freedom.
Islam has a proud tradition of tolerance. We see it in the history of Andalusia and Cordoba
during the Inquisition. I saw it firsthand as a child in Indonesia, where devout Christians
worshiped freely in an overwhelmingly Muslim country. That is the spirit we need
today. People in every country should be free to choose and live their faith based upon the
persuasion of the mind and the heart and the soul. This tolerance is essential for religion to
thrive, but it's being challenged in many different ways.
Among some Muslims, there's a disturbing tendency to measure one's own faith by the
rejection of somebody else's faith. The richness of religious diversity must be upheld --
whether it is for Maronites in Lebanon or the Copts in Egypt. (Applause.) And if we are
being honest, fault lines must be closed among Muslims, as well, as the divisions between
Sunni and Shia have led to tragic violence, particularly in Iraq.
Freedom of religion is central to the ability of peoples to live together. We must always
examine the ways in which we protect it. For instance, in the United States, rules on
charitable giving have made it harder for Muslims to fulfill their religious obligation. That's
why I'm committed to working with American Muslims to ensure that they can fulfill zakat.
Likewise, it is important for Western countries to avoid impeding Muslim citizens from
practicing religion as they see fit -- for instance, by dictating what clothes a Muslim woman
should wear. We can't disguise hostility towards any religion behind the pretence of
liberalism.
In fact, faith should bring us together. And that's why we're forging service projects in
America to bring together Christians, Muslims, and Jews. That's why we welcome efforts
like Saudi Arabian King Abdullah's interfaith dialogue and Turkey's leadership in the
Alliance of Civilizations. Around the world, we can turn dialogue into interfaith service, so
bridges between peoples lead to action -- whether it is combating malaria in Africa, or
providing relief after a natural disaster.
The sixth issue -- the sixth issue that I want to address is women's rights. (Applause.) I know
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- I know -- and you can tell from this audience, that there is a healthy debate about this
issue. I reject the view of some in the West that a woman who chooses to cover her hair is
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somehow less equal, but I do believe that a woman who is denied an education is denied
equality. (Applause.) And it is no coincidence that countries where women are well
educated are far more likely to be prosperous.
Now, let me be clear: Issues of women's equality are by no means simply an issue for
Islam. In Turkey, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Indonesia, we've seen Muslim-majority countries
elect a woman to lead. Meanwhile, the struggle for women's equality continues in many
aspects of American life, and in countries around the world.
I am convinced that our daughters can contribute just as much to society as our
sons. (Applause.) Our common prosperity will be advanced by allowing all humanity -- men
and women -- to reach their full potential. I do not believe that women must make the same
choices as men in order to be equal, and I respect those women who choose to live their lives
in traditional roles. But it should be their choice. And that is why the United States will
partner with any Muslim-majority country to support expanded literacy for girls, and to help
young women pursue employment through micro-financing that helps people live their
dreams. (Applause.)
Finally, I want to discuss economic development and opportunity.
I know that for many, the face of globalization is contradictory. The Internet and television
can bring knowledge and information, but also offensive sexuality and mindless violence into
the home. Trade can bring new wealth and opportunities, but also huge disruptions and
change in communities. In all nations -- including America -- this change can bring
fear. Fear that because of modernity we lose control over our economic choices, our politics,
and most importantly our identities -- those things we most cherish about our communities,
our families, our traditions, and our faith.
But I also know that human progress cannot be denied. There need not be contradictions
between development and tradition. Countries like Japan and South Korea grew their
economies enormously while maintaining distinct cultures. The same is true for the
astonishing progress within Muslim-majority countries from Kuala Lumpur to Dubai. In
ancient times and in our times, Muslim communities have been at the forefront of innovation
and education.
And this is important because no development strategy can be based only upon what comes
out of the ground, nor can it be sustained while young people are out of work. Many Gulf
states have enjoyed great wealth as a consequence of oil, and some are beginning to focus it
on broader development. But all of us must recognize that education and innovation will be
the currency of the 21st century -- (applause) -- and in too many Muslim communities, there
remains underinvestment in these areas. I'm emphasizing such investment within my own
country. And while America in the past has focused on oil and gas when it comes to this part
of the world, we now seek a broader engagement.
On education, we will expand exchange programs, and increase scholarships, like the one that
brought my father to America. (Applause.) At the same time, we will encourage more
Americans to study in Muslim communities. And we will match promising Muslim students
with internships in America; invest in online learning for teachers and children around the
world; and create a new online network, so a young person in Kansas can communicate
instantly with a young person in Cairo.
On economic development, we will create a new corps of business volunteers to partner with
counterparts in Muslim-majority countries. And I will host a Summit on Entrepreneurship
this year to identify how we can deepen ties between business leaders, foundations and social
entrepreneurs in the United States and Muslim communities around the world.
On science and technology, we will launch a new fund to support technological development
55
in Muslim-majority countries, and to help transfer ideas to the marketplace so they can create
more jobs. We'll open centers of scientific excellence in Africa, the Middle East and
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Southeast Asia, and appoint new science envoys to collaborate on programs that develop new
sources of energy, create green jobs, digitize records, clean water, grow new crops. Today
I'm announcing a new global effort with the Organization of the Islamic Conference to
eradicate polio. And we will also expand partnerships with Muslim communities to promote
child and maternal health.
All these things must be done in partnership. Americans are ready to join with citizens and
governments; community organizations, religious leaders, and businesses in Muslim
communities around the world to help our people pursue a better life.
The issues that I have described will not be easy to address. But we have a responsibility to
join together on behalf of the world that we seek -- a world where extremists no longer
threaten our people, and American troops have come home; a world where Israelis and
Palestinians are each secure in a state of their own, and nuclear energy is used for peaceful
purposes; a world where governments serve their citizens, and the rights of all God's children
are respected. Those are mutual interests. That is the world we seek. But we can only
achieve it together.
I know there are many -- Muslim and non-Muslim -- who question whether we can forge this
new beginning. Some are eager to stoke the flames of division, and to stand in the way of
progress. Some suggest that it isn't worth the effort -- that we are fated to disagree, and
civilizations are doomed to clash. Many more are simply skeptical that real change can
occur. There's so much fear, so much mistrust that has built up over the years. But if we
choose to be bound by the past, we will never move forward. And I want to particularly say
this to young people of every faith, in every country -- you, more than anyone, have the
ability to reimagine the world, to remake this world.
All of us share this world for but a brief moment in time. The question is whether we spend
that time focused on what pushes us apart, or whether we commit ourselves to an effort -- a
sustained effort -- to find common ground, to focus on the future we seek for our children,
and to respect the dignity of all human beings.
It's easier to start wars than to end them. It's easier to blame others than to look inward. It's
easier to see what is different about someone than to find the things we share. But we should
choose the right path, not just the easy path. There's one rule that lies at the heart of every
religion -- that we do unto others as we would have them do unto us. (Applause.) This truth
transcends nations and peoples -- a belief that isn't new; that isn't black or white or brown;
that isn't Christian or Muslim or Jew. It's a belief that pulsed in the cradle of civilization, and
that still beats in the hearts of billions around the world. It's a faith in other people, and it's
what brought me here today.
We have the power to make the world we seek, but only if we have the courage to make a
new beginning, keeping in mind what has been written.
The Holy Koran tells us: "O mankind! We have created you male and a female; and we have
made you into nations and tribes so that you may know one another."
The Talmud tells us: "The whole of the Torah is for the purpose of promoting peace."
The Holy Bible tells us: "Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of
God." (Applause.)
The people of the world can live together in peace. We know that is God's vision. Now that
must be our work here on Earth.
Thank you. And may God's peace be upon you. Thank you very much. Thank
you. (Applause.)
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Ursula K. LeGuin A Left-Handed Commencement Address (1983)
I want to thank the Mills College Class of '83 for offering me a rare chance: to speak aloud in
public in the language of women.
I know there are men graduating, and I don't mean to exclude them, far from it. There is a
Greek tragedy where the Greek says to the foreigner, If you don't understand Greek, please
signify by nodding. Anyhow, commencements are usually operated under the unspoken
agreement that everybody graduating is either male or ought to be. Thats why we are all
wearing these twelfth-century dresses that look so great on men and make women look either
like a mushroom or a pregnant stork. Intellectual tradition is male. Public speaking is done in
the public tongue, the national or tribal language; and the language of our tribe is the men's
language. Of course women learn it. We're not dumb. If you can tell Margaret Thatcher from
Ronald Reagan, or Indira Gandhi from General Somoza, by anything they say, tell me how.
This is a mans world, so it talks a mans language. The words are all words of power.
Youve come a long way, baby, but no way is long enough. You cant even get there by
selling yourself out: because there is theirs, not yours.
Maybe weve had enough words of power and talk about the battle of life. Maybe we need
some words of weakness. Instead of saying now that I hope you will all go forth from this
ivory tower of college into the Real World and forge a triumphant career or at least help your
husband to and keep our country strong and be a success in everything - instead of talking
about power, what if I talked like a woman right here in public? It wont sound right. Its
going to sound terrible. What if I said what I hope for you is first, if only if you want
kids, I hope you have them. Not hordes of them. A couple, enough. I hope theyre beautiful. I
hope you and they have enough to eat, and a place to be warm and clean in, and friends, and
work you like doing. Well, is that what you went to college for? Is that all? What about
success?
Success is somebody elses failure. Success is the American Dream we can keep dreaming
because most people in most places, including thirty million of ourselves, live wide awake in
the terrible reality of poverty. No, I do not wish you success. I dont even want to talk about
it. I want to talk about failure.
Because you are human beings you are going to meet failure. You are going to meet
disappointment, injustice, betrayal, and irreparable loss. You will find youre weak where
you thought yourself strong. Youll work for possessions and then find they possess you. You
will find yourself as I know you already have in dark places, alone, and afraid.
What I hope for you, for all my sisters and daughters, brothers and sons, is that you will be
able to live there, in the dark place. To live in the place that our rationalizing culture of
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success denies, calling it a place of exile, uninhabitable, foreign.

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Well, were already foreigners. Women as women are largely excluded from, alien to, the
self-declared male norms of this society, where human beings are called Man, the only
respectable god is male, the only direction is up. So thats their country; lets explore our
own. Im not talking about sex; thats a whole other universe, where every man and woman is
on their own. Im talking about society, the so-called mans world of institutionalized
competition, aggression, violence, authority, and power. If we want to live as women, some
separatism is forced upon us: Mills College is a wise embodiment of that separatism. The
war-games world wasnt made by us or for us; we cant even breathe the air there without
masks. And if you put the mask on youll have a hard time getting it off. So how about going
on doing things our own way, as to some extent you did here at Mills? Not for men and the
male power hierarchy thats their game. Not against men, either thats still playing by
their rules. But with any men who are with us: thats our game. Why should a free woman
with a college education either fight Machoman or serve him? Why should she live her life
on his terms?
Machoman is afraid of our terms, which are not all rational, positive, competitive, etc. And so
he has taught us to despise and deny them. In our society, women have lived, and have been
despised for living, the whole side of life that includes and takes responsibility for
helplessness, weakness, and illness, for the irrational and the irreparable, for all that is
obscure, passive, uncontrolled, animal, unclean the valley of the shadow, the deep, the
depths of life. All that the Warrior denies and refuses is left to us and the men who share it
with us and therefore, like us, cant play doctor, only nurse, cant be warriors, only civilians,
cant be chiefs, only indians. Well so that is our country. The night side of our country. If
there is a day side to it, high sierras, prairies of bright grass, we only know pioneers tales
about it, we havent got there yet. Were never going to get there by imitating Machoman.
We are only going to get there by going our own way, by living there, by living through the
night in our own country.
So what I hope for you is that you live there not as prisoners, ashamed of being women,
consenting captives of a psychopathic social system, but as natives. That you will be at home
there, keep house there, be your own mistress, with a room of your own. That you will do
your work there, whatever youre good at, art or science or tech or running a company or
sweeping under the beds, and when they tell you that its second-class work because a
woman is doing it, I hope you tell them to go to hell and while theyre going to give you
equal pay for equal time. I hope you live without the need to dominate, and without the need
to be dominated. I hope you are never victims, but I hope you have no power over other
people. And when you fail, and are defeated, and in pain, and in the dark, then I hope you
will remember that darkness is your country, where you live, where no wars are fought and
no wars are won, but where the future is. Our roots are in the dark; the earth is our country.
Why did we look up for blessing instead of around, and down? What hope we have lies
there. Not in the sky full of orbiting spy-eyes and weaponry, but in the earth we have looked
down upon. Not from above, but from below. Not in the light that blinds, but in the dark that
nourishes, where human beings grow human souls.
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Rivers of
Blood (1968)
by Enoch Powell
Speech delivered by Conservative M.P. Enoch Powell in Birmingham on the subject of
immigration on 20 April 1968.
The supreme function of statesmanship is to provide against preventable evils. In seeking to

do so, it encounters obstacles which are deeply rooted in human nature. One is that by the
very order of things such evils are not demonstrable until they have occurred: at each stage in
their onset there is room for doubt and for dispute whether they be real or imaginary. By the
same token, they attract little attention in comparison with current troubles, which are both
indisputable and pressing: whence the besetting temptation of all politics to concern itself
with the immediate present at the expense of the future. Above all, people are disposed to
mistake predicting troubles for causing troubles and even for desiring troubles: "If only," they
love to think, "if only people wouldn't talk about it, it probably wouldn't happen."
Perhaps this habit goes back to the primitive belief that the word and the thing, the name and
the object, are identical. At all events, the discussion of future grave but, with effort now,
avoidable evils is the most unpopular and at the same time the most necessary occupation for
the politician.
Those who knowingly shirk it deserve, and not infrequently receive, the curses of those who
come after. A week or two ago I fell into conversation with a constituent, a middle-aged,
quite ordinary working man employed in one of our nationalised industries. After a sentence
or two about the weather, he suddenly said: "If I had the money to go, I wouldn't stay in this
country." I made some deprecatory reply to the effect that even this government wouldn't last
for ever; but he took no notice, and continued: "I have three children, all of them been
through grammar school and two of them married now, with family. I shan't be satisfied till I
have seen them all settled overseas. In this country in 15 or 20 years' time the black man will
have the whip hand over the white man."
I can already hear the chorus of execration. How dare I say such a horrible thing? How dare I
stir up trouble and inflame feelings by repeating such a conversation? The answer is that I do
not have the right not to do so. Here is a decent, ordinary fellow Englishman, who in broad
daylight in my own town says to me, his Member of Parliament, that his country will not be
worth living in for his children. I simply do not have the right to shrug my shoulders and
think about something else. What he is saying, thousands and hundreds of thousands are
saying and thinking - not throughout Great Britain, perhaps, but in the areas that are already
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undergoing the total transformation to which there is no parallel in a thousand years of

English history. In 15 or 20 years, on present trends, there will be in this country three and a
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half million Commonwealth immigrants and their descendants. That is not my figure. That is
the official figure given to parliament by the spokesman of the Registrar General's Office.
There is no comparable official figure for the year 2000, but it must be in the region of five to
seven million, approximately one-tenth of the whole population, and approaching that of
Greater London. Of course, it will not be evenly distributed from Margate to Aberystwyth
and from Penzance to Aberdeen. Whole areas, towns and parts of towns across England will
be occupied by sections of the immigrant and immigrant-descended population.
As time goes on, the proportion of this total who are immigrant descendants, those born in
England, who arrived here by exactly the same route as the rest of us, will rapidly increase.
Already by 1985 the native-born would constitute the majority. It is this fact which creates
the extreme urgency of action now, of just that kind of action which is hardest for politicians
to take, action where the difficulties lie in the present but the evils to be prevented or
minimised lie several parliaments ahead.
The natural and rational first question with a nation confronted by such a prospect is to ask:
"How can its dimensions be reduced?" Granted it be not wholly preventable, can it be
limited, bearing in mind that numbers are of the essence: the significance and consequences
of an alien element introduced into a country or population are profoundly different
according to whether that element is 1 per cent or 10 per cent. The answers to the simple and
rational question are equally simple and rational: by stopping, or virtually stopping, further
inflow, and by promoting the maximum outflow. Both answers are part of the official policy
of the Conservative Party.
It almost passes belief that at this moment 20 or 30 additional immigrant children are arriving
from overseas in Wolverhampton alone every week - and that means 15 or 20 additional
families a decade or two hence. Those whom the gods wish to destroy, they first make mad.
We must be mad, literally mad, as a nation to be permitting the annual inflow of some 50,000
dependants, who are for the most part the material of the future growth of the immigrant-
descended population. It is like watching a nation busily engaged in heaping up its own
funeral pyre. So insane are we that we actually permit unmarried persons to immigrate for the
purpose of founding a family with spouses and fiances whom they have never seen. Let no
one suppose that the flow of dependants will automatically tail off. On the contrary, even at
the present admission rate of only 5,000 a year by voucher, there is sufficient for a further
25,000 dependants per annum ad infinitum, without taking into account the huge reservoir of
existing relations in this country and I am making no allowance at all for fraudulent entry.
In these circumstances nothing will suffice but that the total inflow for settlement should be
reduced at once to negligible proportions, and that the necessary legislative and
administrative measures be taken without delay.
I turn to re-emigration. If all immigration ended tomorrow, the rate of growth of the
immigrant and immigrant-descended population would be substantially reduced, but the
prospective size of this element in the population would still leave the basic character of the
national danger unaffected. This can only be tackled while a considerable proportion of the
total still comprises persons who entered this country during the last ten years or so. Hence
the urgency of implementing now the second element of the Conservative Party's policy: the
encouragement of re-emigration. Nobody can make an estimate of the numbers which, with
generous assistance, would choose either to return to their countries of origin or to go to other
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countries anxious to receive the manpower and the skills they represent. Nobody knows,
because no such policy has yet been attempted. I can only say that, even at present,
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immigrants in my own constituency from time to time come to me, asking if I can find them
assistance to return home. If such a policy were adopted and pursued with the determination
which the gravity of the alternative justifies, the resultant outflow could appreciably alter the
prospects.
The third element of the Conservative Party's policy is that all who are in this country as
citizens should be equal before the law and that there shall be no discrimination or difference
made between them by public authority. As Mr Heath has put it we will have no "first-class
citizens" and "second-class citizens ". This does not mean that the immigrant and his
descendent should be elevated into a privileged or special class or that the citizen should be
denied his right to discriminate in the management of his own affairs between one fellow-
citizen and another or that he should be subjected to imposition as to his reasons and motive
for behaving in one lawful manner rather than another.
There could be no grosser misconception of the realities than is entertained by those who
vociferously demand legislation as they call it "against discrimination", whether they be
leader writers of the same kidney and sometimes on the same news papers which year after
year in the 1930s tried to blind this country to the rising peril which confronted it, or
archbishops who live in palaces, faring delicately with the bedclothes pulled right up over
their heads. They have got it exactly and diametrically wrong. The discrimination and the
deprivation, the sense of alarm and of resentment, lies not with the immigrant population but
with those among whom they have come and are still coming. This is why to enact legislation
of the kind before parliament at this moment is to risk throwing a match on to gunpowder.
The kindest thing that can be said about those who propose and support it is that they know
not what they do.
Nothing is more misleading than comparison between the Commonwealth immigrant in

Britain and the American negro. The negro population of the United States, which was
already in existence before the United States became a nation, started literally as slaves and
were later given the franchise and other rights of citizenship, to the exercise of which they
have only gradually and still incompletely come. The Commonwealth immigrant came to
Britain as a full citizen, to a country which knew no discrimination between one citizen and
another, and he entered instantly into the possession of the rights of every citizen, from the
vote to free treatment under the National Health Service. Whatever drawbacks attended the
immigrants arose not from the law or from public policy or from administration, but from
those personal circumstances and accidents which cause, and always will cause, the fortunes
and experience of one man to be different from another's.
But while, to the immigrant, entry to this country was admission to privileges and
opportunities eagerly sought, the impact upon the existing population was very different. For
reasons which they could not comprehend, and in pursuance of a decision by default, on
which they were never consulted, they found themselves made strangers in their own country.
They found their wives unable to obtain hospital beds in childbirth, their children unable to
obtain school places, their homes and neighbourhoods changed beyond recognition, their
plans and prospects for the future defeated; at work they found that employers hesitated to
apply to the immigrant worker the standards of discipline and competence required of the
native-born worker; they began to hear, as time went by, more and more voices which told
61
them that they were now the unwanted. They now learn that a one way privilege is to be
established by act of parliament; a law which cannot, and is not intended to, operate to protect
Page
them or redress their grievances is to be enacted to give the stranger, the disgruntled and the
agent-provocateur the power to pillory them for their private actions.
In the hundreds upon hundreds of letters I received when I last spoke on this subject two or
three months ago, there was one striking feature which was largely new and which I find
ominous. All Members of Parliament are used to the typical anonymous correspondent; but
what surprised and alarmed me was the high proportion of ordinary, decent, sensible people,
writing a rational and often well-educated letter, who believed that they had to omit their
address because it was dangerous to have committed themselves to paper to a Member of
Parliament agreeing with the views I had expressed, and that they would risk penalties or
reprisals if they were known to have done so. The sense of being a persecuted minority which
is growing among ordinary English people in the areas of the country which are affected is
something that those without direct experience can hardly imagine. I am going to allow just
one of those hundreds of people to speak for me:
"Eight years ago in a respectable street in Wolverhampton a house was sold to a negro. Now
only one white (a woman old-age pensioner) lives there. This is her story. She lost her
husband and both her sons in the war. So she turned her seven-roomed house, her only asset,
into a boarding house. She worked hard and did well, paid off her mortgage and began to put
something by for her old age. Then the immigrants moved in. With growing fear, she saw one
house after another taken over. The quiet street became a place of noise and confusion
Regretfully, her white tenants moved out.
"The day after the last one left, she was awakened at 7am by two negroes who wanted to use
her phone to contact their employer. When she refused, as she would have refused any
stranger at such an hour, she was abused and feared she would have been attacked but for the
chain on her door. Immigrant families have tried to rent rooms in her house, but she always
refused. Her little store of money went, and after paying rates, she has less than 2 per week.
She went to apply for a rate reduction and was seen by a young girl,.who on hearing she had
a seven-roomed house, suggested she should let part of it. When she said the only people she
could get were negroes, the girl said, 'Racial prejudice won't get you anywhere in this
country.' So she went home.
"The telephone is her lifeline. Her family pay the bill, and help her out as best they can.
Immigrants have offered to buy her house at a price which the prospective landlord would
be able to recover from his tenants in weeks, or at most a few months. She is becoming afraid
to go out. Windows are broken. She finds excreta pushed through her letter box. When she
goes to the shops, she is followed by children, charming, wide-grinning piccaninnies. They
cannot speak English, but one word they know. 'Racialist', they chant. When the new Race
Relations Bill is passed, this woman is convinced she will go to prison. And is she so wrong?
I begin to wonder"
The other dangerous delusion from which those who are wilfully or otherwise blind to
realities suffer, is summed up in the word "integration". To be integrated into a population
means to become for all practical purposes indistinguishable from its other members. Now, at
all times, where there are marked physical differences, especially of colour, integration is
difficult though, over a period, not impossible. There are among the Commonwealth
62
immigrants who have come to live here in the last 15 years many thousands whose wish and
purpose is to be integrated and whose every thought and endeavour is bent in that direction.
Page
But to imagine that such a thing enters the heads of a great and growing majority of
immigrants and their descendants is a ludicrous misconception, and a dangerous one.
We are on the verge here of a change. Hitherto it has been force of circumstance and of
background which has rendered the very idea of integration inaccessible to the greater part of
the immigrant population - that they never conceived or intended such a thing, and that their
numbers and physical concentration meant the pressures towards integration which normally
bear upon any small minority did not operate. Now we are seeing the growth of positive
forces acting against integration, of vested interests in the preservation and sharpening of
racial and religious differences, with a view to the exercise of actual domination, first over
fellow-immigrants and then over the rest of the population. The cloud no bigger than a man's
hand, that can so rapidly overcast the sky, has been visible recently in Wolverhampton and
has shown signs of spreading quickly. The words I am about to use, verbatim as they
appeared in the local press on 17 February, are not mine, but those of a Labour Member of
Parliament who is a minister in the present government "The Sikh communities' campaign to
maintain customs inappropriate in Britain is much to be regretted. Working in Britain,
particularly in the public services, they should be prepared to accept the terms and conditions
of their employment. To claim special communal rights (or should they say rites?) leads to a
dangerous fragmentation within society. This communalism is a canker; whether practised by
one colour or another it is to be strongly condemned." All credit to John Stonehouse for
having had the insight to perceive that, and the courage to say it.
For these dangerous and divisive elements the legislation proposed in the Race Relations Bill
is the very pabulum they need to flourish. Here is the means of showing that the immigrator
communities can organise to consolidate their members, to agitate and campaign against their
fellow citizens, and to overawe and dominate the rest with the legal weapons which the
ignorant and the ill-informed have provided. As I look ahead, I am filled with foreboding;
like the Roman, I seem to see "the River Tiber foaming with much blood". That tragic and
intractable phenomenon which we watch with horror on the other side of the Atlantic but
which there is interwoven with the history and existence of the States itself, is coming upon
us here by our own volition and our own neglect. Indeed, it has all but come. In numerical
terms, it will be of American proportions long before the end of the century. Only resolute
and urgent action will avert it even now. Whether there will be the public will to demand and
obtain that action, I do not know. All I know is that to see, and not to speak, would be the
great betrayal.
63
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Page Author Title

Martin Luther King, Jr.

We cannot walk alone.

We cannot turn back.

I have a dream today!

I have a dream today!

freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day.

My country 'tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing.

Land where my fathers died, land of the Pilgrim's pride,

From every mountainside, let freedom ring!

And if America is to be a great nation, this must become true.

Let freedom ring from the mighty mountains of New York.

Let freedom ring from the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania.

Let freedom ring from the snow-capped Rockies of Colorado.

Let freedom ring from the curvaceous slopes of California.

But not only that:

Let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia.

Let freedom ring from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee.

Let freedom ring from every hill and molehill of Mississippi.

From every mountainside, let freedom ring.

Free at last! Free at last!

Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!3

This much we pledge -- and more.

humanity in planned or accidental self-destruction.

The Ballot or the Bullet

to tango; when I go, you go."

someone else will.

Let me explain what I mean. A segregated district or community is a community in which

thing: the ballot or the bullet, the ballot or the bullet.

Susan B. Anthony After Being Convicted of Voting, 1873

The preamble of the Federal Constitution says:

Indira Gandhi: After the assassination of Dr Martin Luther King

In anger we slew him,

With love let us embrace him now,

For in death he lives again amongst us,

The mighty conqueror of death.

Sojourner Truth: Ain't I a Woman? (1851)

Oprah Winfrey: On Receiving the first Bob Hope Humanitarian Award

Winston Churchill: We shall fight on the beaches

of Allied troops could reach the coast.

Every morn brought forth a noble chance

come before me, and so many will follow.

courage, compassion and character.

Jericho, we will not pass to the other side.

Elizabeth Glaser, Address to the Democrat National Convention (1992)

For me, this is not politics. This is a crisis of caring.

just mine, depend on it.

Mary Fisher A Whisper of AIDS (Address to the Republican National

our children, not in quiet denial but in effective action.

God bless the children, and bless us all.

George Wallace Inaugural Address on being elected Governor of

Germany persecuted a national minority to the whim of a national majority . . . so the

Barack Obama A New Beginning (2009)

REMARKS BY THE PRESIDENT

Moreover, freedom in America is indivisible from the freedom to practice one's

they possibly can. But that is not yet the case.

Ursula K. LeGuin A Left-Handed Commencement Address (1983)

success denies, calling it a place of exile, uninhabitable, foreign.

The supreme function of statesmanship is to provide against preventable evils. In seeking to

undergoing the total transformation to which there is no parallel in a thousand years of

Nothing is more misleading than comparison between the Commonwealth immigrant in

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