There can be no social order without social justice. - Stokely Carmichael

Lowndes had one of the nation’s worst records for individual and institutional racism, a reputation for brutality that made white as well as black Alabama shiver. In this county, eighty-one percent black, the whites had ruled the entire area and subjugated black people to that rule unmercifully. [...] The history of the county shows that black people could come together to do only three things: sing, pray, dance. Any time they came together to do anything else, they were threatened or intimidated. For decades, black people had been taught to believe that voting, politics, is “white folks’ business.” And the white folks had indeed monopolized that business, by methods which ran the gamut from economic intimidation to murder.

The town of Tuskegee, in Macon County, Alabama, is undoubtedly one of the most significant areas in the history of the black man in this country. People throughout the world know Tuskegee as the home base of Booker T. Washington, from 1881 to his death in 1915. He founded Tuskegee Institute in 1881 and he was widely acclaimed as the leader of black people during that period. Dr. George Washington Carver, the scientist, became a second great name; his accomplishments in the Tuskegee Institute science laboratory with peanuts and sweet potatoes made him internationally known and respected at a time when most whites and many blacks knew nothing of Dr. W. E. B. DuBois, and other black intellectuals of that day.

Indeed, the colonial white power structure has been a most formidable foe. It has perpetuated a vicious circle—the poverty cycle—in which the black communities are denied good jobs, and therefore stuck with a low income and therefore unable to obtain a good education with which to obtain good jobs. [...] They cannot qualify for credit at most reputable places; they then resort to unethical merchants who take advantage of them by charging higher prices for inferior goods. They end up having less funds to buy in bulk, thus unable to reduce overall costs. They remain trapped. In the face of such realities, it becomes ludicrous to condemn black people for “not showing more initiative.” Black people are not in a depressed condition because of some defect in their character. The colonial power structure clamped a boot of oppression on the neck of the black people and then, ironically, said “they are not ready for freedom.” Left solely to the good will of the oppressor, the oppressed would never be ready. And no one accepts blame. And there is no “white power structure” doing it to them. And they are in that condition “because they are lazy and don’t want to work.” And this is not colonialism. And this is the land of opportunity, and the home of the free. And people should not become alienated. But people do become alienated.