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during slavery and its aftermath. Many of them migrated to the cities in the wake of this newfound freedom.

Cities represented a new hope for economic opportunity and freedom. For many who came to the cities, that dream is yet to be realized They remain there today, huddled in the midst of urban decay, inadequate housing, few job opportunities, poor educational facilities, and inaccessible health care.

The poor and powerless in the cities have always been the constituency of the NAACP. The quality of the urban environment will determine the quality of their lives and the lives of their children.

We must effectively address the issues that afflict the people in our cities and recognize that the problems of the cities are national problems that require a national response.

Our challenge at this point is to fashion a political economic force for progress out of the lives and hopes of black Americans. It is in the political and economic arenas where we can most effectively build upon the legal accomplishments of the past.

To a large extent, we were freed as a people from the shackles of slavery by the Fourteenth Amendment, but the Fourteenth Amendment has not been a vehicle for the achievement of economic equality and this remains the great unfinished agenda.

Just as the NAACP was once the conscience of a nation in calling for an end to legal inequality, so now and in the future must we articulate the conscience of this nation in regard to economic equality.

We must challenge ourselves and challenge the nation to secure some basic measure of economic independence for all its citizens. We must preach a new gospel of economic self-help to the policymakers of tomorrow. We must encourage the innovative use of government programs to foster economic independence in the black community.

And we must preach this gospel to the private sector as well. New opportunities for public and private sector cooperation, such as Urban Development Action Grants, Neighborhood Commercial Revitalization and DOT Urban initiatives, suggest the new direction in which we must move. The partnership of public and private sector enterprises is one example of the new coalitions that may be possible in the coming years. However, framers and administrators of programs to encourage public and private partnership must never lose sight of program goals, the partnership is a new type of business relationship, created to bring new investment and increased economic activity to urban areas. There is a growing fear among many of the nation's urban leaders that these new programs are becoming so structural that they no longer allow for projects innovative enough to meet the combined interests of the urban poor and the city's business leaders.

No matter how innovative a program is, unless it remains innovative in the administration of the program, it will become a victim of bureaucratic stagnation and no longer will meet the needs it was designed for in the final place. 

In order to achieve economic equality and to create a new economic force within our cities, we must be in a position to influence policy. 

The cutting edge of the civil rights movement has always been politics. We must use that political force to reorder priorities, to establish a new agenda that will strengthen the capability of our people to break the cycle of poverty. However, our efforts at public/private partnership should be directed toward making us business owners and entrepreneurs in the private sector, not hostages of political whims as employees totally dependent on governmental programs.

Through the ballot box, through the wise use of the franchise, we can articulate our positions and our desires for new action. It requires not only voter registration but also voter education.

With our political capital we can invest in economic policy. And as our economic force increases our political force will gain momentum — each building upon the other.

There are political and economic coalitions to be formed in our cities — coalitions based on the need to address a whole complex of urban issues at the national level. Throughout the 20th century, cities have been the bulwarks of the Democratic Party, and for the most part have not received the full fruits of this alliance. Revenue sharing which is the cornerstone of the financial stability of most cities was a Republican and not a Democratic initiative. This is not to say that the urban dwellers of America have not found an emotional and psychological refuge within the Democratic Party. It is simply to point out the basic reality of the situation. President Carter is to be commended for his urban initiative efforts but the programs which have been forthcoming from it are more idealistic and complicated than workable and productive. As the ballot box has been the salvation of the civil rights movement, so it must also be for the salvation of the cities. As we approach 1980, cities of America should look not at whether candidates are Republican or Democrats, but what their plans and their priorities and their goals are in relationship to the immense needs of the urban areas of America.

The NAACP should be the vehicle, the instrument through which these new alliances coalesce and form a single united voice. As we move into these critical two decades of the 20th century, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People should also be the National Association for the Advancement of City People — black and white.

We are passing through a period of legal and judicial unrest, where the Bakkes and the Webers and the other landmark cases are a necessary step in the process of resolving modern social uncertainties. Through the resolution of such issues by the Supreme Court there may emerge a new understanding of the commonality of interest which unites rather than divides the underclass in America.

Perhaps such cases will some day lay to rest the impulse which leads us to fight against each other, so that black and white together can unite in a common effort to fight against inflation, against inadequate public education, against unemployment.

We must make the cities livable for everyone. Thus, our agenda in the 1980's is not simply an agenda for the advancement of the black community. It is an agenda which would advance the quality of life and the concept of community for all people.

We must give renewed meaning and life to the words and the wisdom of W.E.B. Du Bois, who wrote some 65 years ago: "The American Negro demands equality — political equality, industrial equality and social equality; and he is never going to rest satisfied with anything less."

We demand these things not in the name of black Americans only, but in the name of all Americans.

For no man has equality if another man does not.

No nation has economic security if each of its citizens does not. Let the word go forth across this land that we will not rest satisfied until all Americans, without exception, enjoy the benefits of political, economic and social justice which is their right.

Ours is a message for all people and all seasons. Our [[Ours]] is a message that will endure the test of time just as this great Association has endured the passage of years.

Freedom and justice, brothers and sisters, for ourselves and for all our brothers and sisters.

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