This occurs to me as if it were my own original thought and brand new to the world. White folks don’t have to do anything to you specifically. After they do it to a couple of other people that you know about, you are so incapacitated by fear that you ain’t no use to the struggle anyhow. For example, I was terrified of going to Alabama. I have never been there so I don’t know how it is, right? Gut reaction: terror. I am in fear and trembling for days before we go, hoping Karen won’t say anything out of the way to the white folks so we won’t get killed. Not talked at, but killed. A death fear. That kind of fear just for a non-offensive first visit to Birmingham. How did those Movement folks ever get up enough courage to start marching and demonstrating? I don’t know what I could/would have done. Being in Detroit is different from being in Mississippi/Alabama/Georgia! It is so depressing. If you know one person who got lynched, you are immediately fearful that next time it might be you. And these Movement folks I know all knew folks who got killed; murdered. It’s horrible. It is a psychological thing mostly, I think. Oppression is built on a series of assumptions, and if they begin to crumble, the system is in grave danger. The assumptions have got to be just as strong with the oppressed as with the oppression mongers. The oppressed must feel inferior and then he will act inferior. Amazing. I just thought about this in terms of me going to Alabama and it all became very clear. Damn these racist white folks! They are a bitch!!!!!!!!