You Know I'm Not Hung Up On

[my Mother] Tried So Hard To Make Life Easy For Us. Those Are The Things That Forced Me To Try To Do Something Different And When This Movement Came To Mississippi I Still Feel It Is One Of The Greatest Things That Ever Happened Because Only A Person Living In The State Of Mississippi Knows What It Is Like To Suffer; Knows What It Is Like To Be Hungry; Knows What It Is Like To Have No Clothing To Wear.

One Of The Things I Remember As A Child: There Was A Man Named Joe Pulliam. He Was A Great Christian Man; But One Time, He Was Living With A White Family And This White Family Robbed Him Of What He Earned. They Didn't Pay Him Anything. This White Man Gave Him $150 To Go To The Hill, (you See, I Lived In The Black Belt Of Mississippi)... To Get Another Negro Family. Joe Pulliam Knew What This White Man Had Been Doing To Him So He Kept The $150 And Didn't Go.

I Was Treated Much Better In Africa Than I Was Treated In America. And You See, Often I Get Letters Like This: "go Back To Africa."

I Don't Know About The Press, But I Know In The Town Where I Live Everybody Was Aware That I Was In Africa, Because I Remember After I Got Back Some Of The People Told Me That Mayor Dura Of Our Town Said He Just Wished They Would Boil Me In Tar.

Not Only Have We Paid The Price With Our Names In Ink, But We Have Also Paid In Blood. And They Can't Say That Black People Can't Be Intelligent, Because Going Back To Africa, In Guinea, There Are Almost 4 Million People There And What He, President [sekou] Toure, Is Doing To Educate The People: As Long As The French People Had It They Weren't Doing A Thing That Is Being Done Now.