The black masses want not to be shrunk from as though they are plague-ridden. They want not to be walled up in slums, in the ghettos, like animals. They want to live in an open, free society where they can walk with their heads up, like men, and women! Few white people realize that many black people today dislike and avoid spending more time than they must about white people. This 'integration' image, as it is popularly interpreted, has millions of vain, self-exalted white people convinced that black people want to sleep in bed with them - and that's a lie!

These Negroes who go for integration and intermarriage are linking up with the very people who lynched their fathers, raped their mothers, and put their kid sisters in the kitchen to scrub floors.

They tell us we are all citizens, that we were born in this country. Well, a cat can have kittens in the oven, but that doesn't make them biscuits!

Daring to reach, to climb, to crawl, to scratch, to get back up when you've been knocked down, to push forward - ever forward - to forgive. It means sacrificing everything if necessary, to carve out a place for your own existence. It means living.

The white man is going to keep you integration-minded Negroes cooped up here in America, and when you discover that the white man is a trickster, a devil, that he has no intentions of integrating, then you Negroes will run wild.

Culture is an indispensable weapon in the freedom struggle.

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 back in the cotton patch, you should get back in the alley.