We have waited for more than 340 years for our constitutional and God given
rights. The nations of Asia and Africa are moving with jetlike speed toward
gaining political independence, but we still creep at horse and buggy pace
toward gaining a cup of coffee at a lunch counter. Perhaps it is easy for those
who have never felt the stinging darts of segregation to say, “Wait.” But when
you have seen vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers at will and drown your
sisters and brothers at whim; when you have seen hate-filled policemen curse,
kick and even kill your black brothers and sisters; when you see the vast
majority of your twenty million Negro brothers smothering in an airtight cage of
poverty in the midst of an affluent society; when you suddenly find your tongue
twisted and your speech stammering as you seek to explain to your six year old
daughter why she can’t go to the public amusement park that has just been
advertised on television, and see tears welling up in her eyes when she is told
that Funtown is closed to colored children, and see ominous clouds of
inferiority beginning to form in her little mental sky, and see her beginning to
distort her personality by developing an unconscious bitterness toward white
people; when you have to concoct an answer for a five year old son who is
asking: “Daddy, why do white people treat colored people so mean?”; when you
take a cross county drive and find it necessary to sleep night after night in
the uncomfortable corners of your automobile because no motel will accept you;
when you are humiliated day in and day out by nagging signs reading “white” and
“colored”; when your first name becomes “n****r,” your middle name becomes “boy”
(however old you are) and your last name becomes “John,” and your wife and
mother are never given the respected title “Mrs.”; when you are harried by day
and haunted by night by the fact that you are a Negro, living constantly at
tiptoe stance, never quite knowing what to expect next, and are plagued with
inner fears and outer resentments; when you are forever fighting a degenerating
sense of “nobodiness”–then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait.
There comes a time when the cup of endurance runs over, and men are no longer
willing to be plunged into the abyss of despair. I hope, sirs, you can
understand our legitimate and unavoidable impatience.
