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Another indication of this same process was the skillful talk-in staged by Illinous legislators, I believe it will be necessary in the future to extend this process. For 100 years, white politicians have used the whole range of parliamentary weapons to deny black people human rights. It is time now, I think, for black officeholders to use the whole range of parliamentary weapons in a nonviolent campaign within the political process.

This would be a service no only to black Americans but also to white Americans. For black people embody the most advanced social and economic interests of this society. And action on behalf of their interests is action also on behalf of the real interests of whites, Today, as in 1776 black people embody the truth of the Declaration of Independence. And the mission of the black politician is to ^do what white politicians have failed to do, define and actualize liberty and equality as a faith and a way of life.

In the final analysis, as Emmett John Hughes pointed out, the art of politics is "the subtle and sensitive attuning and disciplin ^ing of all words and deeds--not to mend the petty conflict of the moment, nor to close some tiny gap in the discourse of the day--but to define and to advance designs and policies for a thousand tomorrows." And that is the historic mission of the black politican today: the advancing of designs and policies for a thousand tomorrows for blacks and whites.