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TRIBUTE TO KING AND DU BOIS          BELAFONTE

we should demand only by what we wanted.  Life is not so generous and neat.  Our demands have to be related to our strength.
  To recognize that today the adversary is weaker than fifty years ago is to say that now we should strengthen our unity, increase our militance and broaden our demands.  We are the most vital social force in the nation.  If we keep ourselves together the monolithic insti-tution of racism and exploitation must fall.  Just as a black King David, Martin Luther King, Jr., in the South fifteen years ago, de-clared segregation was doomed and put together the non-violent army that took it to its deserved grave.  We now have a mandate.  For Dr. King told us a time would come when the enemy would be weak enough and we would be strong enough.  We need to listen closely to his prophetic voice because the time is near and we have work to do.
  On this very platform in one of his last major addresses before his death in 1968, Dr. King said of Dr. Du Bois, and I quote:

  "Above all he did not content himself with hurling invectives for emotional release and then to retire into smug passive satis-faction.  History had taught him it is not enough for people to be angry-the supreme task is to organize and unite people so that their anger becomes a transforming force.  It was never possible to know where the scholar Du Bois ended and the organizer Du Bois began.  The two qualities in him were a single unified force.
  "This life style of Dr. Du Bois is the most important quality this generation of Negroes needs to emulate.  The educated Negro who is not really part of us, and the angry militant who fails to organize us have nothing in common with Dr. Du Bois.  He exem-plified black power in achievement and he organized black power in action.  It was no abstract slogan to him.
  "We cannot talk of Dr. Du Bois without recognizing that he was a radical all of his life.  Some people would like to ignore the fact that he was a Communist in his later years.  It is worth noting that Abraham Lincoln warmly welcomed the support of Karl Marx during the Civil War and corresponded with him freely.  In con-temporary life the English speaking world has no difficulty with the fact that Sean O'Casey was a literary giant of the twentieth century and a Communist, or that Pablo Neruda is generally con-sidered the greatest living poet, though he also served in the Chil-ean Senate as a Communist.  It is time to cease muting the fact that Dr. Du Bois was a genius and chose to be a Communist.  Our

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