This is 1966 and it seems to me that it’s “time out” for nice words. It’s time black people got together. We have to say things nobody else in this country is willing to say and find the strength internally and from each other to say the things that need to be said. We have to understand the lies this country has spoken about black people and we have to set the record straight. No one else can do that but black people.

I remember when I was in school they used to say, “If you work real hard, if you sweat, if you are ambitious, then you will be successful.” I’m here to tell you that if that was true, black people would own this country, because we sweat more than anybody else in this country. We have to say to this country that you have lied to us. We picked your cotton for $2.00 a day, we washed your dishes, we’re the porters in your bank and in your building, we are the janitors and the elevator men. We worked hard and all we get is a little pay and a hard way to go from you. …

Everybody in this country jumps up and says, “I’m a friend of the civil rights movement. I’m a friend of the Negro.” We haven’t had the chance to say whether or not that man is stabbing us in the back or not. All those people who are calling us friends are nothing but treacherous enemies and we can take care of our enemies but God deliver us from our “friends.” … We have to build a strong base to let them know if they touch one black man driving his wife to the hospital in Los Angeles, or one black man walking down a highway in Mississippi or if they take one black man who has a rebellion and put him in jail and start talking treason, we are going to disrupt this whole country…

We have to stop apologizing for each other. We must tell our black brothers and sisters who go to college, “Don’t take any job for IBM or Wall Street because you aren’t doing anything for us. You are helping this country perpetuate its lies about how democracy rises in this country.” They have to come back to the community, where they belong and use their skills to help develop us. We have to tell the doctors, “You can’t go to college and come back and charge us $5.00 and $10.00 a visit. You have to charge us 50 cents and be thankful you get that.” …

We have to talk about wars and soldiers and just what that means. A mercenary is a hired killer and any black man serving in this man’s army is a black mercenary, nothing else. A mercenary fights for a country for a price but does not enjoy the rights of the country for which he is fighting. A mercenary will go to Vietnam to fight for free elections for the Vietnamese but doesn’t have free elections in Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia, Texas, Louisiana, South Carolina and Washington, D.C. …

We have to study black history but don’t get fooled. You should know who John Hullett is, and Fannie Lou Hamer is, who Lerone Bennett is, who Max Stanford is, who Lawrence Landry is, who May Mallory is and who Robert Williams is. You have to know these people yourselves because you can’t read about them in a book or in the press. You have to know what Mr. X said from his own lips not the Chicago Sun-Times. That responsibility is ours. The Muslims call themselves Muslims but the press calls them black Muslims. We have to call them Muslims and go to their mosque to find out what they are talking about.…

There is a psychological war going on in this country and it’s whether or not black people are going to be able to use the terms they want about their movement without white people’s blessing. We have to tell them we are going to use the term “Black Power” and we are going to define it because Black Power speaks to us. We can’t let them project Black Power because they can only project it from white power and we know what white power has done to us.