When human rights are abused on a grand scale, the broth of purity boils and feeds the rebellion of a new order.

Recognizing a problem doesn't always bring a solution, but until we recognize that problem, there can be no solution.

It is dangerous to be an American Negro male. America has never wanted its Negroes to be men, and does not, generally, treat them as men. It treats them as mascots, pets, or things.

People who treat other people as less than human must not be surprised when the bread they have cast on the waters comes floating back to them, poisoned.

There are few things under heaven more unnerving than the silent, accumulating contempt and hatred of a people.

It is astonishing that in a country so devoted to the individual, so many people should be afraid to speak.

It will be hard James but you come from sturdy peasant stock men who picked cotton and dammed rivers and built railroads and in the teeth of the most terrifying odds achieved an unassailable and monumental dignity You come from a long line of great poets some of the greatest poets since Homer. One of them said "The very time I thought I was lost My dungeon shook and my chains fell off." You know and I know that the country is celebrating one hundred years of freedom one hundred years too soon. We cannot be free until they are free. God bless you James and Godspeed.