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along with each of you, by radio and television and newspapers, that a small poignant drama was being played out at a junior high school in the Canarsie section of Brooklyn.

Twenty-nine black children who live in public housing were trying very hard to go to school, and have been trying, in fact, since school opened in September, and several days last week, they sat in a bus outside of Junior High School 211 all day long as agitated and angry white parents barred their entrance into this school to which they were assigned. Oh, they say they don't object because the children are black, but it's inconceivable that this pitiful drama would be taking place at all if the children were white.

And it goes on, and I am reminded by it, for perhaps the ten thousandth time in recent months that our country is, in its current sickness, rolling back and erasing some twenty fine years in which we had begun to achieve decency and dignity as a nation that would no longer abide slavery or its long, incredible aftermath.

What is happening in Canarsie? What is peculiar to Canarsie that makes it different from Little Rock, or Jackson, or Selma, or Orangeburg?

And, of course, it isn't just Canarsie. It's Cairo, Illinois; Pontiac, Michigan - and Forest Hills, and those nine towns in Westchester that won't take even one hundred each of black, or brown or aged poor.

What kind of social amnesty have we granted the North as opposed to the South?

Aren't we in danger in the North and all across this country of re-institution of government by repression and fear as awful as the darkest days in the South - different only in the added ugliness of hypocrisy that pretends racism is something else?

It is a dangerous time in the United States of America.

So I stand here on this occasion, beautiful in so many ways, reminded of the ugliness that plagues us in this time and place.

Many of you have said kind and generous things about me. I hope I am not foolish. I am easy to anger, but I think I am not imprudent. I say what I am saying now with a measured judgment, convinced that I can say this in the company of my friends without fear.

Tonight has been a sparkling moment for me, an unforgettable honor - an hour of undiminished pride. But I am reminded of my brothers and sisters who, by and large, live and barely survive in the ghettos and the prisons of this nation. And I am reminded that when I am grateful, I must also be their advocate. And that when I am proud, I must remember to cry.

Thank you.

[[image - black and white photograph of man at speaker's podium]]
[[caption]] Dr. Reed of N.Y. State NAACP [[/caption]]

[[image - black and white photograph of Roy Wilkins at speaker's podium]]
[[caption]] Roy Wilkins, National Executive Director, NAACP [[/caption]]

[[image - black and white photograph of Judge William H. Booth at speaker's podium]]
[[caption]] Judge William H. Booth [[/caption]]