It was a hot summer day.
I remember that.
And I was probably sweating a little bit more than the heat required because I was afraid of how people were going to take what I knew I had to say.
It was a meeting of civil rights leaders in Washington, DC in 1984.
The Civil rights Coalition, Leadership Council, I think is what they might have called themselves.
Leadership Council on Civil Rights.
And looking out the faces of these, you know, you see them on the television, they're on the news.
They are, quote, our leaders, close quote, they wanted to hear from me.
So I felt a certain pride.
I did feel a little trepidation that people are going to be mad at me.
But at the same time, I was a little bit excited at that prospect because, you know, I'm the town crier.
I'm the fellow who's saying the emperor has no clothes.
I felt empowered by this idea that I'd seen something that was important that other people weren't.
And I was there to announce it to the world, and I showed up and I gave my spiel.
The moral victory of the civil rights movement is virtually complete, and yet racial divisions remain.
Since the 1980s, we've been faced with a new american dilemma, one that is especially difficult for black leaders and members of the black middle class.
And I draw a contrast between the enemy without and the enemy within the enemy without, which is white racism.
Sure, it continues to exist, but much constrained by the legislation of civil rights and voting rights and so forth, and the enemy within being problems in african american society that ended up limiting our ability to take advantage of the opportunities that had been opened up.
With the successes of the civil rights movement, the bottom stratum of the black community has compelling problems that can no longer be blamed solely on white racism and that force us to confront fundamental failures in black society.
And then I'd have a long discussion of the character of this enemy within families, with fatherlessness and early unwed pregnancy and so on, criminal behavior that made it hard to do business in certain neighborhoods and limited the life chances of the people who had to live there.