I am an educated black woman in a time when educated black people will be called upon to risk everything for the rights of black people everywhere.

But, ladies and gentlemen, we will also be asked to make sacrifices in matters that are not our affair and that do not concern us, sacrifices that would leave our people bleeding or wounded, or even dead, from battle. There is no equality for us in this lifetime.

We are free, but we are not equal. We are free, but not as free as other people in this land are free.

Until the War, we claimed to be equal; simpletons, some say, but equal man to man.