An Apology to the African American People in Behalf of White America: Part III

An Apology to the African American People in Behalf of White America:  Part III


A Promise of Rectification Through Transformation of K-12 Education 




I am sorry for all that you have had to endure.


But I thank you for oratorical eloquence, democratic spirit, and artistic genius. I thank you for the foresight and courage of A. Philip Randolph in leading the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters and planning a March on Washington that in the 1940s forced the hands of Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman, impelling those presidents to bring greater fairness to federal hiring practices and service in the military.


And, oh my goodness, thank you so very much for the brilliance of Thurgood Marshall in arguing the Brown v. Board of Education, Topeka, Kansas case; the courage of Rosa Parks in sparking the Montgomery Bus Boycott; for the tenacity of the Little Rock Nine; and for the ascendance of that preeminent leader and nonpareil orator, Dr. Martin Luther King.


Thank you specifically for his classic call for brotherhood, sisterhood, love, and justice--- once again based on that claim to the Constitution that he staked, as had Douglass, Barnett, Randolph, Marshall, Parks, and the persistent African American people as a whole--- when he joined others in fulfillment of the March on Washington envisioned by Randolph:


Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.


     I Have a Dream


Delivered at the March on Washington, 28 August 1963


I say to you today, my friends, that even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American Dream. I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed that “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.”


I have a dream that one day, on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave-owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.


I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will be judged not by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.


I have a dream today. I have a dream that one day down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of interposition and nullification, right there in Alabama, little black boys and black girls will join hands with little white boys and white girls and walk together as sisters and brothers.


I have a dream today. I have a dream that one day “every valley shall be exalted, the hills and mountains shall be made low, the rough places will be made plains, and the crooked places will be made straight, and the Glory of the Lord will be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together."


This is our hope. This is the faith that I go back to the South with. With this faith we can hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day.


And this will be the day. This will be the day when all of God’s children will be able to sing with new meaning, “My country, ‘tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing. Land where my fathers died, land of the pilgrim’s pride, from every mountainside, let freedom ring”---


And if America is to be a great nation, this must become true. So let freedom ring from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire. Let freedom ring from the mighty mountains of New York. Let freedom ring from the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania. Let freedom ring from the snowcapped mountains of Colorado. Let freedom ring form the curvaceous slopes of California.


But not only that.


Let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia!


Let freedom ring from Lookout Mountain in Tennessee!


Let freedom ring from every hill and molehill of Mississippi. From every mountainside, let freedom ring.


And when this happens, and when we allow freedom to ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will speed that day when all of God’s children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of that old Negro spiritual, “Free at last! Free at last! Thank God almighty, we are free at last."


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But I am sorry.


I am so, so sorry for the injustice heaped upon Emmett Till; James Meredith; and Addie Mae Collins, Cynthia Wesley, Carole Robertson, and Denise McNair--- four precious little girls whose lives disappeared in flames of hatred at 16th Street Baptist Church (Birmingham, Alabama) in 1963.


As tenaciously as you had been holding the Constitution high for all to see, how catastrophic were these acts of terror and intimidation. You deserved accolades, African America. But you received hateful threats for seeking education, and you died when American-grown terrorists perpetrated ghoulish disembodiment and murderous arson.


I am so very sorry.


 I am sorry every day that my feet hit the ground.


 I am sorry to my very soul.


You deserved none of this.


 And at the midpoint of the 1960s, in the aftermath of such horrific acts inflicted upon the young and promising, you sent forth another spokesperson, who proclaimed loudly and eloquently that enough was enough:


Malcolm X

Address to Mississippi Youth


Gathering Sponsored by the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC),
31 December 1964.


One of the most important things I think young people, especially today, should learn is how to see for yourself and listen for yourself and think for yourself. If you form the habit of going by what you hear others say about someone, or going by what others think about someone, instead of searching that thing out for yourself and seeing for yourself, you will be walking west when you think you’re going east, and you will be walking east when you think you’re going west. The most important thing we can learn to do today is think for ourselves.


It’s good to keep ears wide-open and listen to what everybody else has to say, but when you come to make decisions, you have to weigh all of what you’ve heard on its own, and place it where it belongs, and come to a decision for yourself; you’ll never regret it. But if you form the habit of taking what someone else says about a thing without checking it out for yourself, you’ll find that other people will have you hating your friends and loving your enemies. This is one of the things that our people are beginning to learn today--- that it is very important to think a situation out for yourself. If you don’t do it, you’ll always be maneuvered into a situation where you are never fighting your actual enemies, where you find yourself fighting your own self.


I think our people are the best examples of that. Many of us want to be nonviolent and we talk very loudly, you know, about being nonviolent. Here in Harlem, where there are probably more black people concentrated than any place in the world, some talk that nonviolent talk too. But we find that they are not nonviolent with each other. You can go out to Harlem Hospital where there are more black patients than any hospital in the world, and see them going in there all cut up and shot up and busted up where we find they got violent with each other.


My experience has been that in many instances where you find Negroes talking about nonviolence, they are not nonviolent with each other, and they are not loving to each other, or forgiving with each other. Usually when they say they’re nonviolent, they mean they’re nonviolent with somebody else. I think you understand what I mean. They are nonviolent with the enemy. A person can come to your home, and if he’s white and wants to heap some kind of brutality on you, you’re nonviolent; or he even take your father and put a rope around his neck and you’re nonviolent. But if another Negro just stomps his foot, you’ll rumble with him in a minute. Which shows you there’s an inconsistency there.


So we here in the Organization for Afro-American Unity are with the struggle in Mississippi one thousand percent. We’re with the efforts to register our people to vote one thousand percent. But what we do not go along with is anybody telling us to help nonviolently. We think that if the government says that Negroes have the right to vote, and then some Negroes come out to vote, and some kind of Ku Klux Klan is going to put them in the river, and the government doesn’t do anything about it, it’s time for us to organize and band together and equip ourselves and qualify ourselves to protect ourselves. And once you can protect yourself, you don’t have to worry about being hurt.


That doesn’t mean we’re against white people, but we sure are against the Ku Klux Klan and the White Citizens Councils; and anything else that looks like it’s against us, we’re against it. Excuse me for raising my voice, but his thing, you know, gets me upset. Imagine that--- a country that’s supposed to be a democracy, supposed to stand for freedom and all of that kind of stuff--- when they draft you and put you in the Army and send you to Saigon to fight for them--- and then you’ve got to turn around and all night long discuss how you’re going to just get the right to register and vote without being murdered.


You get your freedom by letting your enemy know that you’ll do anything to get it. It’s the only way you’ll get it. When you get that kind of attitude, they’ll label you as a “crazy Negro,” or they’ll call you a “crazy nigger”--- and they don’t say Negro. Or they’ll call you an extremist or a subversive, or seditious, or a red or a radical. But when you stay radical long enough, and get enough people to be like you, you’ll get your freedom.


So don’t go around here trying to make friends with your enemies. They’re not your friends, no, they’re your enemies. Treat them like that and fight them, and you’ll get your freedom: and after you get your freedom, your enemy will respect you. And we’ll respect you. And I say that with no hate. I don’t have hate in me. I have no hate at all. I don’t have any hate. I’ve got some sense. I’m not going to let someone who hates me tell me to love him. I’m not that way out. And you, young as you are, and because you start thinking, you’re not going to do it either. The only time you’re going to get in that bag is if somebody puts you there. Somebody else, who doesn’t have your welfare at heart.


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So on you went.


Some of you seized the American Dream that became more attainable with the passage of civil rights, voting rights, fair employment, and fair housing legislation. But others of you were left behind, as Dr. King knew in organizing the Poor People’s March at the moment that more homegrown terrorism blew him away in 1968.


 I am sorry for the loss of Malcom X and Martin Luther King to assassination.


I am sorry that so many of you languish still at the urban core, and as a teacher I apologize profusely for our wretched public schools from which if you graduate at all, you graduate with nothing resembling the education that a high school diploma should signify.