I’m looking to be shot any time I step out of my car. If I die, it will be in a good cause. I’ve been fighting for America just as much as the soldie… - Medgar Evers

There is an urgent need for dedicated and courageous leadership. If we are to solve the problems ahead and make social justice a reality, this leadership must be four-fold in our various communities. Men and women in every possible community endeavor should busy themselves in an effort to work out our problem on a mutual respectful basis with our fellow men. This is no time for fainthearted men, but rather a time when our true faith in God should emerge and take over our complete self. It is spoke of in one passage of the scripture, that man should not fear men who can only destroy the body but rather God, who can destroy both body and soul.

Tonight the Negro plantation worker in the Delta knows from his radio and television what happened today all over the world. He knows what Black people are doing and he knows what white people are doing. He can see on the 6:00 o’clock news screen the picture of a 3:00 o’clock bite by a police dog. He knows about the new free nations in Africa and knows that a Congo native can be a locomotive engineer, but in Jackson he cannot even drive a garbage truck.

He sees a city over 150,000, of which 40% is Negro, in which there is not a single Negro policeman or policewoman, school crossing guard, fireman, clerk, stenographer, or supervisor employed in any city department or the Mayor’s office in other than menial capacities . . .