《-We Shall Overcome-》由会员分享，可在线阅读，更多相关《-We Shall Overcome-（18页珍藏版）》请在金锄头文库上搜索。
1、We Shall Overcome Lyndon Baines Johnson:Mr. Speaker, Mr. President, Members of the Congress:I speak tonight for the dignity of man and the destiny of democracy.I urge every member of both parties, Americans of all religions and of all colors, from every section of this country, to join me in that ca
2、use.At times history and fate meet at a single time in a single place to shape a turning point in mans unending search for freedom. So it was at Lexington and Concord. So it was a century ago at Appomattox. So it was last week in Selma, Alabama. There, long-suffering men and women peacefully protest
3、ed the denial of their rights as Americans. Many were brutally assaulted. One good man, a man of God, was killed.There is no cause for pride in what has happened in Selma. There is no cause for self-satisfaction in the long denial of equal rights of millions of Americans. But there is cause for hope
4、 and for faith in our democracy in what is happening here tonight. For the cries of pain and the hymns and protests of oppressed people have summoned into convocation all the majesty of this great government - the government of the greatest nation on earth. Our mission is at once the oldest and the
5、most basic of this country: to right wrong, to do justice, to serve man.In our time we have come to live with the moments of great crisis. Our lives have been marked with debate about great issues - issues of war and peace, issues of prosperity and depression. But rarely in any time does an issue la
6、y bare the secret heart of America itself. Rarely are we met with a challenge, not to our growth or abundance, or our welfare or our security, but rather to the values, and the purposes, and the meaning of our beloved nation.The issue of equal rights for American Negroes is such an issue.And should
7、we defeat every enemy, and should we double our wealth and conquer the stars, and still be unequal to this issue, then we will have failed as a people and as a nation. For with a country as with a person, What is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?There is no Neg
8、ro problem. There is no Southern problem. There is no Northern problem. There is only an American problem. And we are met here tonight as Americans - not as Democrats or Republicans. We are met here as Americans to solve that problem.This was the first nation in the history of the world to be founde
9、d with a purpose. The great phrases of that purpose still sound in every American heart, North and South: All men are created equal, government by consent of the governed, give me liberty or give me death. Well, those are not just clever words, or those are not just empty theories. In their name Ame
10、ricans have fought and died for two centuries, and tonight around the world they stand there as guardians of our liberty, risking their lives.Those words are a promise to every citizen that he shall share in the dignity of man. This dignity cannot be found in a mans possessions; it cannot be found i
11、n his power, or in his position. It really rests on his right to be treated as a man equal in opportunity to all others. It says that he shall share in freedom, he shall choose his leaders, educate his children, provide for his family according to his ability and his merits as a human being. To appl
12、y any other test - to deny a man his hopes because of his color, or race, or his religion, or the place of his birth is not only to do injustice, it is to deny America and to dishonor the dead who gave their lives for American freedom.Our fathers believed that if this noble view of the rights of man
13、 was to flourish, it must be rooted in democracy. The most basic right of all was the right to choose your own leaders. The history of this country, in large measure, is the history of the expansion of that right to all of our people. Many of the issues of civil rights are very complex and most diff
14、icult. But about this there can and should be no argument.Every American citizen must have an equal right to vote.There is no reason which can excuse the denial of that right. There is no duty which weighs more heavily on us than the duty we have to ensure that right.Yet the harsh fact is that in ma
15、ny places in this country men and women are kept from voting simply because they are Negroes. Every device of which human ingenuity is capable has been used to deny this right. The Negro citizen may go to register only to be told that the day is wrong, or the hour is late, or the official in charge
16、is absent. And if he persists, and if he manages to present himself to the registrar, he may be disqualified because he did not spell out his middle name or because he abbreviated a word on the application. And if he manages to fill out an application, he is given a test. The registrar is the sole judge of whether he passes this test. He may be asked to recite the entire Constitution, or explain the most complex provis
