(audience clapping)
[ASA PHILIP RANDOLPH] I have the pleasure to present
to this great audience, young John Lewis, National Chairman,
Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee.
Brother John Lewis.
(audience clapping)
[JOHN LEWIS] We march today for jobs and freedom.
But, we have nothing to be proud of.
For hundred and thousand of our brothers are not here.
For they're receiving starvation wages,
or no wages at all.
While we stand here there are sharecroppers
in the Delta of Mississippi, who are out in the field
working for less than $3 a day, 12 hours a day.
While we stand here, there are students in jail
on trumped-up charges.
Our brother James Farmer, along with many others,
is also in jail.
We come here today with a great sense of misgiving.
It is true that we support the administration's
civil rights bill.
We support it with great reservation, however.
Unless Title III is put in this bill, there's nothing to protect
the young children, and old women
who must face police dogs and fire hoses in the South
while they engage in peaceful demonstrations.
(audience clapping)
In its present form, this bill will not protect
the citizens of Danville, Virginia, who must live
in constant fear of a police state.
It will not protect the hundreds and thousands
of people that have been arrested on trumped charges.
What about the three young men, SNCC field secretaries
in Americus, Georgia, who faced the death penalty
for engaging in peaceful protests?
As it stands now, the voting section of this bill will not
help the thousands of black people
who want to vote.
It will not help the citizens of Mississippi,
of Alabama and Jordan, who are qualified to vote,
but lack of sixth-grade education.
'One man, one vote,'
is the African cry.
It is ours too.
It must be ours!
(audience clapping)
We must have legislation that will protect
the Mississippi Sharecropper, who is put off of his farm
because he dares to register to vote.
We need a bill that will provide for the homeless
and starving people of this nation.
We need a bill that will ensure the equality
of a maid who earn $5 a week in a home of a family whose
total income of $100,000 a year.
We must have a good FEPC bill.
(audience clapping)
My friends, let's not forget that we are involved
in a serious social revolution.
By and large, American politics
is dominated by politicians who build their career
on moral compromise and ally themselves
with open forms of political, economic,
and social exploitation.
(audience clapping)
They are exceptions, of course.
We salute those.
But, what political leader can stand up and say, 'My party
is a party of principles?'
For the party of Kennedy is also the party of Eastland.
(audience clapping)
The party of Javits is also the party of Goldwater.
Where is our party?
Where is the political party that will make it unnecessary
to march on Washington?
Where is the political party that will make it unnecessary
to march in the streets of Birmingham?
Where is the political party that will protect
the citizens of Albany, Georgia?
Do you know that in Albany, Georgia,
nine of our leaders have been indicted,
not by the Dixiecrats, but by the federal government
for peaceful protest?
What did the federal government do when Albany's deputy sheriff
beat attorney C.B. King and left him half-dead?
What did the federal government do
when local police official kicked and assaulted
a pregnant wife of Slater King, and she lost her baby?
To those who have said, 'Be patient and wait,'
we have long said that we cannot be patient.
We do not want our freedom gradually,
but we want to be free now!
(audience clapping)
We are tired.
we are tired of being beaten by policemen.
We are tired of seeing our people locked up in jail over
and over again.
And then you holler,"Be patient".
How long can we be patient?
We want our freedom and we want it now.
(audience clapping)
We do not want to go to jail.
But we will go to jail if this is a prize we must pay
for love,
brotherhood, and true peace.
I appeal to all of you to get in this great revolution
that is sweeping this nation.
Get in and stay in the streets of every city, every village,
and hamlet of this nation until true freedom comes,
until the revolution of 1776 is complete.
We must get in this revolution and complete the revolution.
For in the Delta in Mississippi, in Southwest Georgia,
in the Black Belt of Alabama, in Harlem, in Chicago,
Detroit, Philadelphia, and all over this nation,
the black masses are on the march for jobs and freedom.
(audience clapping)
They're talking about slow down and stop.
We will not stop.
All of the forces of Eastland Barnett, Wallace, and Thurmond
will not stop this revolution.
(audience clapping)
If we do not get meaningful legislation
out of this Congress,
the time will come when we will not confine
our marching to Washington.
We will march through the South: through the streets of Jackson,
through the streets of Danville, through the streets
of Cambridge, through the street of Birmingham
(audience clapping)
But we will march with spirit of love and with spirit
of dignity that we have shown here today.
(audience clapping)
By the force of our demands our determination, and our numbers,
we shall splinter the segregated South into a thousand pieces,
and put them together in the image of God
and democracy.
We must say, 'Wake up America! Wake up! For we cannot stop,
and we will not, and cannot be patient.
(audience clapping)