I know that if the peace movement takes its message boldly to the Negro people a powerful force can be secured in pursuit of the greatest goal of all mankind. And the same is true of labor and the great democratic sections of our population.

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.

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

When I sang my American folk melodies in Budapest, Prague, Tiflis, Moscow, Oslo, or the Hebrides or on the Spanish front, the people understood and wept or rejoiced with the spirit of the songs. I found that where forces have been the same, whether people weave, build, pick cotton, or dig in the mine, they understand each other in the common language of work, suffering, and protest.

The intolerance of the few, or the risk of it, carries the day against the wider humanity of the many.

I did a long concert tour in England and Denmark and Sweden, and I also sang for the Soviet people, one of the finest musical audiences in the world.

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.