DBQ: Document-Based Questions
for American History Students - Scroll down to print .pdf file.
…There is no Negro problem. There is no Southern problem.
There is no Northern problem. There is only an American problem.
And we are met here tonight as Americans—not as Democrats or
Republicans—we are met here as Americans to solve that problem….
Many of the issues of civil rights are very complex and most
difficult. But about this there can and should be no argument.
Every American citizen must have an equal right to vote.
Yet the harsh fact is that in many places in this country men
and women are kept from voting simply because they are Negroes….
Wednesday I will send to Congress a law designed to eliminate
illegal barriers to the right to vote….
But even if we pass this bill, the battle will not be over. What
happened in Selma is part of a far larger movement which reaches
into every section and State of America. It is the effort of
American Negroes to secure for themselves the full blessings of
American life.
Their cause must be our cause too. Because it is not just
Negroes, but really it is all of us, who must overcome the
crippling legacy of bigotry and injustice.
And we shall overcome….
