There Is One Thing You Have Got

My Mother Got Down Sick In 53 And She Lived With Me, An Invalid, Until She Passed Away In 1961. And During The Time She Was Staying With Me Sometime I Would Be Worked So Hard I Couldn't Sleep At Night.

I Think There Will Be Great Leaders Emerging From The State Of Mississippi. The People That Have The Experience To Know And The People Not Interested In Letting Somebody Pat You On The Back And Tell Us "i Think It Is Right." And It Is Very Important For Us Not To Accept A Compromise And After I Got Back To Mississippi, People There Said It Was The Most Important Step That Had Been Taken.

Actually, Some Of The Things I Experienced As A Child Still Linger On; What The White Man Has Done To The Black People In The South!

I Remember, And I Will Never Forget, One Day - I Was Six Years Old And I Was Playing Beside The Road And This Plantation Owner Drove Up To Me And Stopped And Asked Me "could I Pick Some Cotton." I Told Him I Didn't Know And He Said, "yes, You Can. I Will Give You Things That You Want From The Commissary Store," And He Named A Huge List That He Called Off. I Picked The 30 Pounds Of Cotton That Week, But I Found Out What Actually Happened Was He Was Trapping Me Into Beginning The Work I Was To Keep Doing And I Never Did Get Out Of His Debt Again.

I Would Like To Talk About Some Of The Things That Happened That Made Me Know That There Was Something Wrong In The South From A Child.