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.1586482985-Jordan:Layout 1 8/25/08 10:09 AM Page 2424VERNON E.JORDAN, JR.landed, and we are here to stay.This nation too often forgets thatthis land is sprinkled with our sweat, watered with our tears, andfertilized with our blood.It too often forgets that we helpedbuild America’s power and glory, that we dug taters, toted cotton,lifted bales, sank the canals, and laid the railroad tracks thatlinked ocean to ocean.We, too, sing “God Bless America”; we, too,sing: “O beautiful for spacious skies, for amber waves of grain.”We, too, as black people, pledge allegiance to what that flag andwhat America is supposed to represent.We’ve died in America’severy war, and black men are dying tonight in disproportionatenumbers in the rice paddies in Indochina.Yes, this land is our land and America will work for blackpeople, or it will not work for anyone!And so it is black people, who, by our belief in the ideals ofAmerican democracy, can help this nation to overcome its crisisof spirit and enter a new era of hope and fulfillment.The UrbanLeague movement is a key instrumentality of this effort to makeAmerica work for all of its citizens.It is to the Urban League thatblack people and poor people turn for leadership and commit-ment.It is to the Urban League that, from the crevices of this na-tion’s poverty-stricken ghettos, comes the plea: Is there no balmin Gilead? Is there no physician here?The true meaning of the Urban League was seen on that terri-ble Tuesday in March, when Whitney Young rode down thStreet for the last time.That long ribbon of a street was throngedby the people he served, the constituency he represented.Theywere all there—blacks, whites, Puerto Ricans, schoolchildren, [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]