Today, I went on YouTube, and found a short clip of the Great Debaters. That clip was taken from the part where Willy College is debating against Harvard, and it's James Farmer Jr. turn to speak. I really like his speech, and I think that it's so heart moving, and inspiring.
Here's the script of what he said. I think it is very persuasive and quite good.
Why Nonviolent Civil Disobedience?
"In Texas, they lynch Negros.
My teammates and I saw a man strung by his neck and set on fire.
We drove through a lynch mob, press our faces against the floorboard.
I look at my teammates.
I saw the fear in their eyes.
And worse, the shame.
What was this Negros crime that he should be hung without trail in a dark forests fill with fog. Was he a thief? Was he a killer? Or just a negro.
Was he a sharecropper? A preacher.
Were his children waking up for him?
And who are we just lied there and do nothing.
No matter what he did, the mob was the criminal, but the law did nothing. J
ust left us wondering.
Why?
My opponents said, 'nothing that erodes the rules of law be moral.'
But there is no rule of law in the Jim Crow south not when Negros are denied housing turning away from schools, hospitals, and not when we were lynch.
St. Augustine said, 'An unjust law is no law at all', which means I have a right even a duty to resist with violence, or civil disobedience.
You should pray I choose the latter."
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