For hundreds of years the quiet sobbing of an oppressed people had been unheard by millions of white Americans-the bitterness of the Negroes' lives remote and unfelt except by a sensitive few.

Many negros by the thousands and millions have been left bootless as a result of all of these years of oppression and as a result of a society that deliberately made his color a stigma and something worthless and degrading.

We speak here of the challenge of the dichotomies of war and peace, violence and non-violence, racism and human dignity, oppression and repression and liberty and human rights, poverty and freedom from want.

We stand here today as nothing more than a representative of the millions of our people who dared to rise up against a social system whose very essence is war, violence, racism, oppression, repression and the impoverishment of an entire people.

When that moment comes, we shall, together, rejoice in a common victory over racism, apartheid and white minority rule.

The deep rumbling of discontent that we hear today is the thunder of disinherited masses rising from dungeons of oppression to the bright hills of freedom in one majestic chorus.