Speeches- Incomplete Inserts and Fragments, no date

insert #4, page 11 a statement on stakes between red lines [text in right hand corner] F Natl Politics

There's not going to be ^just one Back candidate for the Presidency, in 1972, but 5 or 6 or more.

These will be locally based Black candidates, well known in their respective states, chosen by consensus among Black political activists in their states.

[text in left hand margin] press 9/13/71

These Blacks will run as "favorite sons or daughters" in their home states, where they are well known, and not 1,000s of miles from home.

They will aid the election of independent Black delegates, responsive

to the Black community, and not ^bound to organized labor and notone as hand-servants of any of the regular candidates.

Their candidcies will say to those who want the Black vote in '72 - as well as those who think that vote can be bought or sold or belongs to them through habit or

custom, that the Black vote in 1972 belongs to the candidate Black or white, who delivers to Black people in dollars and cents in jobs and education and homes and peace.

The condition of the poor in this country is scandalous. The Citizens Inquiry into Hunger said some months ago: No other Western country permits such large proportions of its people to endure the lives we press on our poor. To make four fifths of our nation more affluent than any other people in history, we have degraded one-fifth miserably and mercilessilly."

If you want to know what living in a big city ghetto means, in Atlantic City or Newark, or Detroit, or Chicago, listen to this figure: if all Americans lived as close together as black people do in some parts of Harlem, all of the population of the United States could be put into three of New York's five boroughs, leaving the other two - and all of the rest of the United States, with no people at all.

Gentlemen, it is a pleasure to speak before you. I had at first thought I would speak on your sorry record of hiring women and Black people until I realized that a look around this room would suffice.

I had thought about making a political speech, but I am not a candidate for state-wide office, and I know the Democrats aren't going to nominate me for Vice-President again, so I though I'd tell you, the truth.

We ^{Black people} are caught in a terrible position. We would like to have Vice-President Humphrey elected President of the United States. We believe, especially in the South, that his election means the difference between our continuing to build a movement and having what little movement exists there now falter and die, chrushed by Strom Thurmond and others of the Nixon camp.

We then, in large numbers if the Harris poll is correct, will vote for the Vice-President. ^{Even though it will be difficult for some of us}. But if the polls are correct on that, then they are equally correct when they say that ex-Vice-President Nixon will be the next President of the United States.

So we will be faced four ^for the next four - and perhaps for the next eight years - a government ruled by a man who months before the Republican convention said he wouldn't get black votes, a man told delegates at the GOP convention in Miami that he was publically for open housing but privately against it, a government ruled by a man whose advisers includ^e Strom Thurmond.

Under that sort of government, every possible step must be taken to build a strong movement, ^{that can sustain the forces of progress for the next few difficult years ahead}

First, black people must become politically sophisticated. We must become black political units, either in Sunflower County, Mississippi or in Westchester County, New York.

We must work as a majority, and must work as a minority. We must not exclude any tactic, but must be prepared to use all of them.

Secondly, we must seek allies. College students are useful partners in action, but are useless as political allies. They have no vote, their voices gave unheeded. We must look to the unorganized for aid and comfort.

^{We must not exclude any allies, but must enter into any coalition with anyone on a basis of equality.}