the lines that made me cries:
James Farmer Jr.:
In
Texas they lynch
Negroes. My teammates and I saw a man strung up by his
neck and set on fire. We drove through a
lynch mob, pressed our faces
against the floorboard. I looked at my teammates. I saw the fear in
their eyes and, worse, the shame. What was this Negro’s crime that he
should be hung without trial in a dark forest filled with fog. Was he a
thief? Was he a killer? Or just a Negro? Was he a sharecropper? A
preacher? Were his children waiting up for him? And who are we to just
lie there and do nothing. No matter what he did, the mob was the
criminal. But the
law did nothing. Just left us wondering, “Why?” My
opponent says nothing that erodes the
rule of law can be moral. But
there is no rule of law in the
Jim Crow south. Not when Negroes are
denied housing. Turned away from schools, hospitals. And not when we
are lynched.
St Augustine said, “An unjust law in no law at all.’ Which
means I have a right, even a duty to resist. With violence or civil
disobedience. You should pray I choose the latter.
