I’ve come here tonight and plead with you :
believe in yourself and believe that you’re somebody.
I said to a group last night,
Nobody else can’ do this for us.
No document can do this for us.
No Lincoln-ian proclamation can do this for us;
No Johnson-ian civil rights bill can do this for us.
If the negro is to be free he must move down into the inner resources of his own soul and sign – with a pen-and-ink of self-asserted manhood- his own Emancipation Proclamation.
Don’t let anybody take your manhood.
Be proud of our heritage; as somebody said earlier tonight: we don’t have anything to be ashamed of … somebody told a lie one day.