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We must live with our own conscience. Each and every one of us must live with his own conscience.”
I tried to decide just how I should respond to them. Whether I should act like the teacher that I was, or like the nigger that I was supposed to be.
To show too much intelligence would have been an insult to them. To show a lack of intelligence would have been a greater insult to me.
At the university I had read about slave masters who had done the same when buying new slaves, and I had read of cattlemen doing it when purchasing horses and cattle. At least Dr. Joseph had graduated to the level where he let the children spread out their own lips, rather than using some kind of crude metal instrument. I appreciated his humanitarianism.
And I thought to myself, What am I doing? Am I reaching them at all? They are acting exactly as the old men did earlier. They are fifty years younger, maybe more, but doing the same thing those old men did who never attended school a day in their lives. Is it just a vicious circle? Am I doing anything?
He had told us then that most of us would die violently, and those who did not would be brought down to the level of beasts.
“I was afraid to run
You have to go away to know about life.
How do people come up with a date and time to take life from another man? Who made them God?
Twelve white men say a black man must die, and another white man sets the date and time without consulting one black person. Justice?
“We black men have failed to protect our women since the time of slavery. We stay here in the South and are broken, or we run away and leave them alone to look after the children and themselves. So each time a male child is born, they hope he will be the one to change this vicious circle—which he never does.
Yet they must believe. They must believe, if only to free the mind, if not the body. Only when the mind is free has the body a chance to be free. Yes, they must believe, they must believe. Because I know what it means to be a slave. I am a slave.
