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What Shall We Tell Our Children 1973 What shall we tell our children who are black? What shall we tell our children who are white? What shall we tell children of every race and hue? For all children are the children of all of us And all of us bear responsibility for all children What shall we tell them? How can we show them the conditions of their lives So they will see how they can change them? Those who are poverty stricken in the midst of plenty Who must live in rat-infested slums While decent homes stand empty Who go to bend hungry While grocery shelves are heavy Who huddle in tattered rags While racks in stores are sagging Who yearn for a good education But languish in programmed illiteracy Whose intellectual growth is stunted And whose ignorance is compounded While the Academics produce more drones for the labor colony What shall we tell them? How can we show them the conditions of their lives So they will see how they can change them? What shall we tell our children The men and women of the future? We shall tell them the truth It is our bounded duty to tell them the truth It may be painful. We must tell them the truth We may be criticized. We must tell them the truth We may be castigated. We must tell them the truth The truth shall be, shall show them the conditions of their lives Of a glorified way of life, the greatest in the world Which is not concerned with people, but with profits Not with the well-being of the many, but with the interests of a few Not with the welfare and future of the people But only with the profit-making present We shall tell them the truth about a way of life The greatest in the world Where freedom and equality is granted to every man, woman and child Where everyone, providing he is willing to do what is