Essay: WHAT CAN I DO?

'THE conscience of the white man has always been the Negro's potential ally. Even before the Abolitionists' underground railroad spirited runaway Southern slaves to comparative sanctuary in the North, there were white Americans willing to denounce, and even to oppose, a system that infringed the cardinal tenet of democracy. But white conscience has been too passive, too diffuse, too reticent a force, in part because the power of the individual conscience is difficult to pool, and in part because the cause of equal rights is such a massive undertaking. Now there is widespread...

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