Justice is never given; it is exacted and the struggle must be continuous for freedom is never a final fact, but a continuing evolving process to higher and higher levels of human, social, economic, political and religious relationship.
A community is democratic only when the humblest and weakest person can enjoy the highest civil, economic, and social rights that the biggest and most powerful possess.
Lincoln was the spokesman of the rising capitalist class of the North, who viewed the emancipation of Negro slaves as indispensable to the development and triumph of the manufacturers and bankers of the industrial North, East and West over the slave-holder of the South.
I suggest that ten thousand Negroes march on Washington, D.C., the capital of the Nation, with the slogan, ‘We loyal Negro American citizens demand the right to work and fight for our country.’
We seek the right to play our part in advancing the cause of national defense and national unity. But certainly, there can be no true national unity where one-tenth of the population is denied their basic rights as American citizens.
