We must either have all the rights of American citizens, or

we must be exterminated, for we can never again be slaves;

nor can we cease to trouble the American people while any

right enjoyed by others is denied or withheld from us.

And so, in viewing this mixed record of the administration, we

ask it to bring forth from those clouds of ambiguity the bright

rays of clarity; we ask it to make its positive achievement a base

from which to launch a total commitment, with massive re-

sources, for an end to poverty and racism in the land. We ask it to

turn our doubts into belief, and to provide that moral leadership

the poet speaks of when he says:

One day posterity will remember

This strange area, these strange times,

When honesty was called courage.

As the president of the United States prepares for this historic

journey to China, we of the Urban League movement ask him to

make a spiritual pilgrimage to Black America; to demonstrate his

concern with the hungry children of the urban ghettos and the

rural farmlands as he is demonstrating his concern with the

strategies of world politics.

Such leadership will be needed in the trying days ahead, in

these days whose realities have moved beyond those of civil

rights, for it must be understood that the civil rights movement

of the sixties was a movement dedicated to obtaining, conferring,

16

VERNON E. JORDAN, JR.

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