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ESSAYS  ROBESON
because they have important common ideas, ideals, interests, and very important goals.

It is a warm and wonderful experience to be greeted by a complete stranger in a strange place, only to find that he or she is not a stranger at all, but a relation in our Freedom family. The members of our Freedom family take great pride in their membership, which is varied and widely scattered throughout the fabric of North and South America, Eastern and Western Europe, Asia and Africa. Our numbers, strength, prestige and morale are increasing steadily and rapidly. There is no doubt in my mind that the Freedom Family will be the Ruling family in the world in this era.

The Beeches, Enfield, Conn.
Speech delivered at a Meeting at Riverside Plaza, N. y. for the Victims of the Smith Act, October 1951.

THE RISING TIDE

I REMEMBER hearing, when I was growing up, a lot of talk about the Yellow Peril...the Black Menace...the Rising Tide of Color.

It now turns out that there really was a Peril, a Menace, and a Rising Tide. The "Peril" was that the Asian people would take over Asia, and they are doing so. The "Menace" was that the African people would take over Africa, and they are beginning to do just that. And the Rising Tide of Color turned out to be the rising tide of people—People: white, yellow, brown and black, rising to take over their own countries, to govern them for their own benefit.

Now everybody knows that tide is a natural phenomenon. You just can't hold back a tide. You have to adjust yourself to it, or be drowned.

Nearly all the major powers combined to try to hold back the rising tide of people in the Soviet Union, and found that they could not. The rising tide of people has already spread over Eastern Europe, over China, and is rising elsewhere in Europe and Asia, in Africa and Latin America, and even in the USA.

It looks as though everybody everywhere had better stop worrying about this tide, stop fighting it, and instead, accept it for the natural phenomenon which it is, and jump in and learn to swim.

New World Review, November 1952.

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