BENJAMIN ELIJAH MAYS: SCHOOLMASTER OF
THE MOVEMENT, A BIOGRAPHY, by Randal Maurice Jelks (University of
North Carolina Press: 2012) p.223-224
“This is not a short war, this is
a long war”
“Desegregation and eventually
integration present a special challenge to Negroes and especially to
Negro youth. No allowance will be made for our shortcomings because
for two hundred forty-six years our ancestors were slaves and for
another one hundred years we were enslaved again through segregation
by law and by custom. No allowance will be made for our poverty even
though the average income of the Negro family is only about 55
percent of the average white family... What am I trying to say? I am
trying to tell you with every ounce of my one hundred seventy-five
pounds that you, with low income, poor academic backgrounds before
college, unfortunate home conditions, handicapped ancestors for three
and a half centuries—you are now required to compete in the open
market with those who have more favorable circumstances than you for
several centuries. Our inadequacies will be printed in the press,
flashed over the radio, and screened on television. Nobody will
explain the reason for our shortcomings.” (February 1964 address
excerpt at Livingstone College in Salisbury, North Carolina on its
Founders Day)
