When you have seen vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers at will, and drown your sisters and brothers at whim; when you have seen hate-filled policeman curse, kick and even kill your Black brothers and sisters; when you see the vast majority of your twenty million Negro brothers smothering in an air-tight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society; when you suddenly find your tongue twisted, and your speech stammering, as you seek to explain to your six-year-old daughter why she can't go to the public amusement park, and see her developing an unconscious bitterness toward White people; when you have to concoct an answer for a five-year-old son who is asking 'Daddy, why do White people treat Colored people so mean?'; when you are humiliated day-in and day-out by nagging signs reading 'White' and 'Colored'; when your first name becomes 'Nigger', your middle name becomes 'Boy', however old you are, and your last name becomes 'John', and your wife and mother are never given the respected title 'Missus'; when you are harried by day and haunted by night by the fact that you are a Negro, living constantly at tip-toe stance, never quite knowing what to expect next, and are plagued with inner fears and outer resentments; when you are forever fighting a degrading and degenerating sense of nobodiness – then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait.
