John Lewis: [oh yeah!] We gon' win 'em! But we got to have information, see?
That's right! See?
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.
They don't know what's inside us. They don't know, no, they don't know!
So we gotta get together.
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?
All these things have to be done.
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.
Having looked at what we been doing three hundred and fifty years,
how we've suffered on the slave block, in the cotton fields,
how we been hung up by the head or by the feet and whipped,
we been dyin' every day and the way things are a Negro comes into life not to live,
but he comes in here to die.
And every day he's dyin' bit by bit. 'Cause it's a sad thing to be segregated.
We can't even be human.
Ya got to go around with a lot of burdens on ya.
And ya got to wonder, "Can I go here?" and "Can I go there?"
In Chicago they not free. I used to live up there.
I went downtown and every time I go downtown I wonder, "Can I go in this restaurant?" or "Can I go in that restaurant?"
And that's not freedom! [No, no!] Freedom is when you know within your soul that you are a man.
There are times when people have experienced that, but not in America.
I was over in the Philippines and it was like a whole weight lifted up off of me.
You know, I felt somethin' like I was floatin' in the air almost, 'cause I knew there wasn't any segregation.
And that's the way these soldiers comin' back from France and Germany have felt.
They'll tell you about it, am I right, you who've been in the army?
They know what I'm talkin' about, it's like a whole weight bein' taken off of you.