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the very people who create these conditions that force them to live this sort of life that are the first to accuse them of being lazy, shiftless, and immoral.

Not One Medical School in the South

Some of our young people, as a result of tremendous sacrifice not only on their part, but on the part of their whole families, manage to enter a college or university. But here too they find the same kind of discrimination facing them. They are barred from becoming editors of the college newspaper, barred from the debating teams and the honor societies and fraternities, barred, in many cases, from having their hair cut in the college barber-shop. Many medical schools and law schools are absolutely closed to Negroes, others make it a hundred times more difficult for a Negro than a white.
 
In the south, every college and university is operated under the law of Jim Crow. No university that admits whites will admit Negroes. And in the South, there are hardly any professional schools for young Negro men and women. There are theological seminaries and agricultural colleges - but not a single Negro medical school in the whole South! 

Professionals Enslaved by Negro Poverty 

Who of us can forget that not once in the history of the Naval Academy or of West Point have the officers allowed a Negro to graduate, that they have always subjected him to discrimination and ostracism to break his morale, and where that fails arbitrarily "flunked" him in his courses.

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And suppose that a young Negro does graduate from a professional school in college, what chance does he have today? White corporations won't employ Negro professionals - and the Negro professional today has to depend for his living on serving the Negro people, or finding employment in a Negro business. The Negro professional is enslaved by the poverty of his own people.

You May Become a Scottsboro Boy

Of course, it is worst of all for the young Negro who has no work at all. You have grown to young manhood, you may be qualified to do a specialist's work in industry or business - your family needs any money you can bring in. You make the rounds of all the places where there might be work - any work, hard work - but there is no work for you.
 
You hang around the street corners. Petty racketeers try to get you to do their criminal errands for them, giving you a quarter or a dollar, and leaving it so that if anybody gets caught and goes to jail, it will be you. You don't want to live a life of crime - you don't want to hang idly around street corners and eat the bread from the family table. So you may set out across the country, hoping to find work in some other place so that you can become self-supporting and self-respecting. Everywhere you go, you run across the same story. You are liable to get pulled off a freight-train and sent off to jail or a chain gang for the crime of looking for work. You are running the risk of becoming another Scottsboro boy. Any young Negro is in danger of becoming another Scottsboro boy.

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