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Transcription: {SPEAKER name="John Lewis"}
[00:21:08]
[oh yeah!]
We gon' win 'em! But we got to have information, see?
[00:21:13]
That's right! See?
[00:21:16]
All these little things we got to do, you know, they don't understand us when we say, "Yes'm" and shake our heads and smile.
[00:21:23]
They don't know what's inside us. They don't know, no, they don't know!
[00:21:29]
So we gotta get together.
[00:21:31]
And ultimately all the maids in Greenwood have got to get together, and have some sort of a maid's union where we can get four dollars a day instead of two and a half to three, or even five dollars a day, you see?
[00:21:46]
All these things have to be done.
[00:21:49]
I'm not gonna hold you up too much longer, but I'd like to end this thing with what we say all the time.
[00:22:00]
Having looked at what we been doing three hundred and fifty years,
[00:22:04]
how we've suffered on the slave block, in the cotton fields,
[00:22:09]
how we been hung up by the head or by the feet and whipped,
[00:22:13]
we been dyin' every day and the way things are a Negro comes into life not to live,
[00:22:21]
but he comes in here to die.
[00:22:24]
And every day he's dyin' bit by bit. 'Cause it's a sad thing to be segregated.
[00:22:29]
We can't even be human.
[00:22:30]
Ya got to go around with a lot of burdens on ya.
[00:22:34]
And ya got to wonder, "Can I go here?" and "Can I go there?"
[00:22:37]
In Chicago they not free. I used to live up there.
[00:22:41]
I went downtown and every time I go downtown I wonder, "Can I go in this restaurant?" or "Can I go in that restaurant?"
[00:22:47]
And that's not freedom! [No, no!] Freedom is when you know within your soul that you are a man.
[00:22:55]
There are times when people have experienced that, but not in America.
[00:22:59]
I was over in the Philippines and it was like a whole weight lifted up off of me.
[00:23:04]
You know, I felt somethin' like I was floatin' in the air almost, 'cause I knew there wasn't any segregation.
[00:23:09]
And that's the way these soldiers comin' back from France and Germany have felt.
[00:23:14]
They'll tell you about it, am I right, you who've been in the army?
[00:23:17]
They know what I'm talkin' about, it's like a whole weight bein' taken off of you.