Obediently Yours

This is Logic I've spoken these words before but not on the radio To be born free is to be born in debt To live in freedom without fighting slavery To profiteer I have met Southerners who expect and fear a Negro insurrection I see no purpose in withholding this from general discussion There may be those within that outcast ten percent of the American people Who someday will strike back at their oppressors But to put down that mob, a mob would riot I'd like to ask, please: who will put down that mob I'm an overpaid producer with pleasant reasons to rejoice, and I do In the wholesome practicability of the profit system But surely, my right to having more than enough is cancelled If I don't use that more to help those who have less I owe the very profit I make to the people I make it from If this is radicalism, it comes automatically to most of us in show business It being generally agreed that any public man owes his position to the public That's what I mean when I say I'm your obedient servant We must, each day, earn what we own A healthy man owes to the sick all that he can do for them An educated man owes to the ignorant all that he can do for them A free man owes to the world's slaves all that he can do for them And what is to be done is more, much more, than good works Christmas baskets, bonuses and tips, and bread and circuses There is only one thing to be done with slaves Free them If we can't die in behalf of progress, we can live for it Progress, we Americans take to mean, a fuller realization of democracy The measure of progress, as we understand it, is the measure of equality enjoyed by all men We can do something about that The way our fighting brothers and sisters looked at it Some of them dead as I speak these words The way they looked at it, we're lucky And they're right, we're lucky to be alive But only if our lives make life itself worth dying for We must be worthy of our luck or we are damned Our lives were spared, but this is merely the silliest of accidents Unless we put the gift of life to the hard employments of justice If we waste that gift, we won't have anywhere to hide from the indignation of history I want to say this The morality of the auction block is out of date There is no room in the American century for Jim Crow Tomorrow's democracy discriminates against discrimination Its charter won't include the freedom to end freedom Race hate isn't human nature, race hate is the abandonment of human nature But this is true There are alibis for the phenomenal excuses, economic and social But the brutal fact is simply this Where the racist lies acceptable, there is corruption The race haters must be stopped, the lynchings must be stopped The murders must be avenged I come in that boy's name and in the name of all Who, in this land of ours, have no voice of their own I come with a call for action This is the time for it I call for action against the cause of riot It won't surprise me if I'm accused in some quarters of inciting to riot Well, I'm very interested in riots, I'm very interested in avoiding them So I call for action against the cause of riots Law is the best action, the most decisive It's in the people's power to see to it that what makes lynchings and starts wars is dealt with Not by well-wishers, but by policemen, and I mean good policemen Over several generations Maybe there'll be men who can't be weaned away from the fascist vices of race hate But we should deny such men responsibility in public affairs Exactly as we deny responsibility to the wretched victims of the drug habit There are laws against peddling dope There can be laws against peddling race hate But every man has the right to his own opinion as an American boasts But race hate is not an opinion, it's a phobia It isn't a viewpoint, race hate is a disease In a people's world, the incurable racist has no rights He must be deprived of influence in a people's government He must be segregated, as he himself would segregate the colored and semitic peoples Anything very big is very simple If there's a big race question, there's a big answer to it And a big answer is simple, like the word "no" America can write her name across this century, and so she will If we, the people, brown and black and red Rise now to the great occasion of our brotherhood It will take courage It calls for the doing of great deeds, which means the dreaming of great dreams Giving the world back to its inhabitants is too big a job for the merely practical No one of us will live to see a blameless peace We strive and pray and die for what will be here when we're gone Our children's children are the ancestors of a free people To the generations: the fight is worth it And that just about means that my time is up When my time's up, I remain as always, obediently yours