“Every bombed village is my home town”

Organization for Positive Peace will upload the speeches of past freedom fighters and revolutionaries that we believe are of central importance to our times but are little known and little studied. We will also upload documents of great importance to the fight against racism, imperialism and poverty around the world. These are all available on the Archives section of the main website. To begin with, we have uploaded three documents.

The first is a letter written by James Baldwin and read out on the 100th anniversary of W.E.B Du Bois. Baldwin was present, along with Martin Luther King Jr. and others at the Du Bois Centennial celebration held at Carnegie Hall, New York City in 1968 organized by Freedomways. The letter portrays Baldwin’s absolute opposition to the War in Vietnam and his belief that what Western nations need is a complete metamorphosis. As he says

“I need scarcely state to what extent the Western self-interest and the black self-interest find themselves at war, but it is precisely this message which the Western nations, and this one above all, will have to accept, if they expect to survive. Nothing is more unlikely than that the Western nations, and this one above all, will be able to welcome so vital a metamorphosis.”

and goes on to say

“many, many millions of people long for our downfall, and it is not because they are Communists. It is because ignorance is in the saddle here, and we ride mankind. Let us attempt to face the fact that we are a racist society, racist to the very marrow, and we are fighting a racist war. No black man in chains in his own country, and watching the many deaths occurring around him every day, believes for a mo­ment that America cares anything at all about—the freedom of Asia. My own condition, as a black man in America, tells me what Americans really feel and really want, and tells me who they really are. And therefore, every bombed village is my home town.”

The second is an article written by Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth published in Freedomways. Rev. Shuttlesworth was one of the most heroic figures of the Southern Freedom Movement. His incredible bravery and courage in the face of the most violent opposition is reflected in what he writes

“Time would fail to tell of the personal involvement of my family and myself. The thousands of crank and very real telephone threats, the mobs at Terminal Station, and at Phillips High School, before which I was dragged and beaten in the streets and my wife stabbed in the hip; the two dynamite explosions, through which we lived by the grace of God; the agonies of having to crusade almost alone, at first; the brutal tactics unleashed upon us by the city-all these things did not move us, nor deter us from our goal.”

Finally, we have transcribed and uploaded a speech by Diane Nash which describes the various stages of an agapic energy campaign. Diane Nash was the courageous leader of the group of students in Nashville who continued the Freedom Rides after the first rides had been disrupted and stopped by the violence of white supremacists in Alabama. She says

“My contemporaries and I had you in mind when we acted. We were in dangerous situations, and sometimes people would freak out. A number of times I saw the person standing next to them put their arm around that person’s shoulder and say, “Remember what we are doing is important. We are doing this for generations yet unborn.” So although we had not met you, you should know that we loved you. And we were trying our best to create a society, the best society we could for you to be born into and to come of age. Freedom is not something you get and then you’ve got it. Freedom is a constant, never-ending struggle. Every individual, that includes you, and every generation faces its own challenges”