A Black Woman's Body Was Never Hers

The Only Thing We Took Out Was The Constitution Of The State Of Mississippi And The Interpretation Of The Constitution. We Had 63,000 People Registered On The Freedom Registration Form. And We Tried From Every Level To Go Into The Regular Democratic Party Medium. We Tried From The Precinct Level. The 16th Of June When They Were Holding Precinct Meetings All Across The State, I Was There And There Was Eight Of Us There To Attend The Meeting, And They Had The Door Locked At 10 O'clock In The Morning. This Is What's Happening In The State Of Mississippi.

We Worked All The Time, Just Worked And Then We Would Be Hungry And My Mother Was Clearing Up A New Ground Trying To Help Feed Us For $1.25 A Day. She Was Using An Axe, Just Like A Man, And Something Flew Up And Hit Her In Her Eye. It Eventually Caused Her To Lose Both Of Her Eyes And I Began To Get Sicker And Sicker Of The System There. I Used To See My Mother Wear Clothes That Would Have So Many Patches On Them, They Had Been Done Over And Over And Over Again. She Would Do That But She Would Try To Keep Us Decent.

You Know What Really Made Me Sick? I Was In Washington, D.c. At Another Time Reading In A Paper Where The U.s. Gives Byron De La Beckwith - The Man Who Is Charged With Murdering Medgar Evers - They Were Giving Him So Much Money For Some Land And I Ask "is This America?" We Can No Longer Ignore The Fact That America Is Not The "land Of The Free And The Home Of The Brave."

People Have Got To Get Together And Work Together. I'm Tired Of The Kind Of Oppression That White People Have Inflicted On Us And Are Still Trying To Inflict.

I Believe In Christianity Because The Scriptures Said: "the Things That Have Been Done In The Dark Will Be Known On The House Tops."