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FREEDOMWAYS          FIRST QUARTER 1972

irrational obsessive anti-communism has led us into too many quagmires to be retained as if it were a mode of scientific think-ing."*

  If there be those among you here tonight who may find that quote irrelevant then I suggest you reflect on, that while we are here gath-ered, a glorious sister, Angela Davis, is in a cruel cell of repression fulfilling her commitment to our freedom.  Indeed the relevance of this award being made to Martin Luther King, Jr., tonight can be clearly found in a 1907 statement replying to criticism of a speech made in 1906 by Dr. Du Bois to the Niagara movement a quarter of a century before the birth of Dr. King, and I quote:

  "The man that has a grievance is supposed to speak for himself.  No one can speak for him-no one knows the thing as well as he does.  Therefore, it is reasonable to say that if the man does not complain that it is because he has no complaint.  If a man does not express his needs, then it is because his needs are filled.  And it has been our great mistake in the last decade that we have been silent and still have not complained when it was our duty not merely to ourselves but to our country and to humanity in general to complain and to complain loudly.  It is then high time that the Negro agitator should be in the land.
  "It is not a pleasant role to play.  It is not always pleasant to nice ears to hear a man ever coming with his dark facts and un-pleasant conditions.  Nevertheless it is highest optimism to bring forward the dark side of any human picture.  When a man does this he says to the world: "Things are bad but it is worthwhile to let the world know that things are bad in order that they may become better.'  The real crushing pessimism takes hold of the world when people says things are so bad that they are not worth complaining of because they cannot be made better.
  "It is manifest that within the last year the whole race in the United States has awakened to the fact that they have lost ground and must start complaining and complain loudly.  It is their busi-ness to complain."

  The absence of Dr. King speaks so profoundly.  Not just to those of us who were close to him and loved him dearly, but to the entire
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* From the Centennial Address of Dr. King at Carnegie Hall in New York City, February 23, 1968.  The occasion was The International Cultural Evening sponsored by FREEDOMWAYS Magazine on the 100th Birthday of Dr. Du Bois.

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