Carolina QuotesPicket lines, school boycotts/They try to say it's a communist plot/All I want is equality/For my sister, my brother, my people, and me
Nina Simone Carolinian
Source
Mississippi Goddam 1964
- year
- 1964
Cite this record
“Picket lines, school boycotts/They try to say it's a communi…” Nina Simone. Carolina Quotes, record CQ-152A845DC1. https://carolinaquotes.com/quote/152a845dc1
More from Nina Simone
As I became more knowledgeable I came to my own conclusions about separatism. In the white man's world the black man would always lose out, so the idea of a separate black nation, whether it was in America or in Africa, made sense. But I didn't believe that there was any basic difference between the races - whoever is on top uses whatever means they can to keep the other down, and if black America was on top they'd use race as a way of oppressing whites in exactly the way they themselves were oppressed. Anyone who has power only has it at the expense of someone else and to take that power away from them you have to use force, because they'll never give it up from choice. That is what I came to believe, and it was a big step forward in my political thinking because I realized that what we were really fighting for was the creation of a new society. When I had started out in the movement all I wanted were my rights under the Constitution, but the more I thought about it the more I realized that no matter what the President or the Supreme Court might say, the only way we could get true equality was if America changed completely, top to bottom. And this change had to start with my own people, with black revolution.
The president, LBJ, went on TV to declare 7 April a Day of National Mourning. This was the same man who had ordered thousands of US citizens - black and white - overseas to die in a foreign jungle while he ignored the war at home. Our president was obviously a man of violence. Why shouldn't the rest of us be the same?
Mr. Backlash, Mr. Backlash/Just who do you think I am?/You raise my taxes, freeze my wages/And send my son to Vietnam/You give me second class houses/And second class schools/Do you think that all colored folks/Are just second class fools?