Martin Luther King told of his growing nightmares and his enduring dreams in the rolling, hypnotic cadences of the rural preacher. But it was the humane, incorruptible mystique of the man that won the crowd, his crescendo phrases winning affirmations of “amen” and “Say it, brother” again and again.
“I must confess that it did my heart a world of good to sit back and listen to Mr. X. list the sins of the white man toward the black man in America. He does it well”
“The spirit of Gandhian agape that hung like a halo over Selma, with its nuns and angelic-faced students, was gone, replaced by a clenched militancy fueled by a despair expressed by Martin King's admission that his dream of Washington 1963 has turned into a nightmare.”
“Women's liberation is being called by many names today. It is called 'the movement,' it is called 'the cause,' it is called 'the revolution.' The liberation of women is, in my view, at one and the same time, all of the things it is called, and none of those things.”
“They were amazed, those young women who had been meeting in small groups or taking part in small actions for months. No one of them would have dared to say before that evening that the women's liberation movement had 20,000 members in New York City alone.”
“The public image of an abortionist was of an evil, leering, drunken, perverted butcher at worst, and a cold, mysterious, money-hungry Park Avenue price-gouger at best. And then there was Dr. Spencer with his clinic on the main street of a small American town, who believed in abortions, and who was kind”
“My point is to highlight why current nostalgia for the organic community black Americans supposedly lost with the success of the civil rights movement is so frighteningly shortsighted and dangerous”
