Speech about looking back upon black history, 1976 (2 of 2)

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survival, our spiritual freedom and our social growth? Either we do this or we die. There is no alternative. If America proposed the murder of our group, its moral descent into imbecility and crime and its utter loss of manhood, self-assertion and courage, the sooner we realize this the better. By that great line of McKay, "if we must die, let it not be like hogs." But the alternative of not dying like hogs is not that of dying or killing like snarling dogs. It is rather conquering the world by thought and brain and plan; by expression and organized cultural ideals. Therefore, let us not beat futile wings in impotent frenzy; but carefully plan and guide our segregated life, organize in industry and politics to protect it and expand it. What will be, no one knows. It may be a great physical segregation of the world along the color line; it may be an economic rebirth which

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insures spiritual and group integrity amid physical diversity. It may be utter annihilation of class and race and color²² barriers in one ultimate mankind, differentiated by talent, suceptibility and gift -- but any of these ends are matters of long centuries and not years. We live in years, swift, flying, transient years. We hold the possible future in our hands, but not by wish and will, only by thought, plan and organization."^*

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^*W. E. B. DuBois, Fisk News, Vol. 6, #10, 1936 (Commencement Address, 1933)