| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Running a Thousand Miles for Freedom by William and Ellen Craft: While these men remained in the city, a prominent
whig gentleman sent word to William Craft, that
if he would submit peaceably to an arrest, he and
his wife should be bought from their owners, cost
what it might. Craft replied, in effect, that he was
in a measure the representative of all the other
fugitives in Boston, some 200 or 300 in number;
that, if he gave up, they would all be at the mercy
of the slave-catchers, and must fly from the city at
any sacrifice; and that, if his freedom could be
bought for two cents, he would not consent to com-
Running a Thousand Miles for Freedom |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Father Damien by Robert Louis Stevenson: in a priest? Damien believed his own religion with the simplicity
of a peasant or a child; as I would I could suppose that you do.
For this, I wonder at him some way off; and had that been his only
character, should have avoided him in life. But the point of
interest in Damien, which has caused him to be so much talked about
and made him at last the subject of your pen and mine, was that, in
him, his bigotry, his intense and narrow faith, wrought potently
for good, and strengthened him to be one of the world's heroes and
exemplars.
Damien WAS NOT SENT TO MOLOKAI, BUT WENT THERE WITHOUT ORDERS.
Is this a misreading? or do you really mean the words for blame? I
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from I Have A Dream by Martin Luther King, Jr.: many of our white brothers, as evidenced by their presence here
today, have come to realize that their destiny is tied up with
our destiny and their freedom is inextricably bound to our
freedom. We cannot walk alone.
And as we walk, we must make the pledge that we shall march
ahead. We cannot turn back. There are those who are asking the
devotees of civil rights, "When will you be satisfied?" We can
never be satisfied as long as our bodies, heavy with the fatigue
of travel, cannot gain lodging in the motels of the highways and
the hotels of the cities. We cannot be satisfied as long as the
Negro's basic mobility is from a smaller ghetto to a larger one.
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