There is one thing you have got to learn about our movement. Three people are better than no people.

Black people know what white people mean when they say “law and order”.

All of this is on account we want to register [sic], to become first-class citizens, and if the Freedom Democratic Party is not seated now, I question America. Is this America, the land of the free and the home of the brave where we have to sleep with our telephones off the hooks because our lives be threatened daily because we want to live as decent human beings - in America?

I would like to talk about some of the things that happened that made me know that there was something wrong in the south from a child.

I went almost naked to see that my mother was kept decent and treated as a human being for the first time in all of her life.

If I am truly free, who can tell me how much of my freedom I can have today?

The only thing I really feel is necessary is that the black people, not only in Mississippi, will have to actually upset this applecart. What I mean by that is, so many things are under the cover that will have to be swept out and shown to this whole world, not just to America. This thing they say of "the land of the free and the home of the brave" is all on paper. It doesn't really mean anything to us. The only way we can make this thing a reality in America is to do all we can to destroy this system and bring this out to the light that has been under the cover all these years.