Through my singing and acting and speaking, I want to make freedom ring. Maybe I can touch people's hearts better than I can their minds, with the common struggle of the common man.

In Russia I felt for the first time like a full human being. No color prejudice like in Mississippi, no color prejudice like in Washington. It was the first time I felt like a human being.

Yes, I heard my people singing!-in the glow of parlor coal-stove and on summer porches sweet with lilac air, from choir loft and Sunday morning pews-and my soul was filled with their harmonies. Then, too, I heard these songs in the very sermons of my father, for in the Negro's speech there is much of the phrasing and rhythms of folk-song. The great, soaring gospels we love are merely sermons that are sung; and as we thrill to such gifted gospel singers as Mahalia Jackson, we hear the rhythmic eloquence of our preachers, so many of whom, like my father, are masters of poetic speech.

The faces and the tactics of the leaders may change every four years, or two, or one, but the people go on forever.

Like any other people, like fathers, mothers, sons and daughters in every land, when the issue of peace or war has been put squarely to the American people, they have registered for peace.

The answer to injustice is not to silence the critic but to end the injustice.

Freedom is a hard-bought thing.