What is it that America has failed to hear? That the plight of the Negro poor has worsened over the last few years. It has failed to hear that the promises of freedom and justice have not been met.

The price that America must pay for the continued oppression of the Negro and other minority groups is the price of its own destruction.

All too many of those who live in affluent America ignore those who exist in poor America.

The history books, which have almost completely ignored the contribution of the Negro in American history, have only served to intensify the Negroes' sense of worthlessness and to augment the anachronistic doctrine of white supremacy.

The majority of white Americans consider themselves sincerely committed to justice for the Negro. They believe that American society is essentially hospitable to fair play and to steady growth toward a middle-class Utopia embodying racial harmony. But unfortunately this is a fantasy of self-deception and comfortable vanity.

With all of her dazzling achievements and stupendous material strides, America has maintained its strange ambivalence on the question of racial justice.