MORDECAI WYATT JOHNSON

"In addition to my family concerns, I had ambivalent feelings about leaving the South in spite of my resolve not to live there. On the Sunday before commencement this inner conflict was stirred up again by Dr. Mordecai Johnson 's impassioned appeal to the graduating class in his baccalaureate address . One of the great spellbinders of his time, he had the capacity to sway even the most skeptical of his listeners. That Sunday he was at his best as he urged the graduating seniors of Howard's professional schools to go South, placing their knowledge and skills at the service of southern Negroes. 'Why don't you put your degree in your back pocket or hand it to your mother,' Dr. Johnson asked us, 'and go down to "Brassos Bottom " in Mississippi where you are needed most?' He reminded us that more than three-fourths of the nation's Negro population lived in the southern states, while two-thirds of the twelve hundred of the nation's Negro lawyers lived outside the South. 'If men like Bilbo and Rankin refuse to see the needs of our beloved Southland because of their blind spot on race,' he said, 'why don't you go down there and become the true spokesman for those people?'" P.246-247, "Further Adversities," PAULI MURRAY : THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A BLACK ACTIVIST , FEMINIST , LAWYER, PRIEST AND POET (1987, 2003)