- One day right there in Alabama, little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little
- white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers. I have a dream today. Thank you, Mrs. Wagador. I'll
- come back and get Cory. That's your mother? Yeah. Your what? What? Your mother's colored. Of course,
- I'm colored.
- But one day, this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed. We hold these truths
- to be self-evident that all men are created equal. It's just when I saw you at the funeral, to see how
- much we look alike.
- to see how much we look alike. It just didn't seem right not to at least say hello and to meet you.
- At least once. I just felt I had to do it. You know, common blood. Yes, yes, common blood. I think I
- understand, Clay. Our physical similarity is disarming, isn't it? Our physical similarity is disarming, isn't it?
- We're brothers. You have been the veterans of creative suffering. Continue to work with the faith that
- honor and suffering is redemptive. Your restraint is admirable. Your restraint is admirable. Yeah.
- With this faith, we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony
- of brotherhood. Now, come on, boys. Where's your spirit? I don't hear no singing. When you were slaves,
- you sang like birds. Come on, how about a good old nigger work song? What's wrong, man?
- I get no kick from champagne. Mere alcohol doesn't thrill me at all. So tell me, why should it be true
- that I get a belt out of you?
- Some get a kick from cocaine. Hold it, hold it. What the hell is that shit? I'm in a song. A real song.
- Something like... Swing low, sweet chariot. Swing low, chariot. Don't know that one, huh?
- Well, how about the camp town ladies? The camp town ladies. The camp town ladies. Oh, you know. The
- camp town ladies sing this song, doo-dah, doo-dah. The camp town racetrack five miles long, all a doo-dah
- day. Run, run, run.
- Let freedom ring when it happens. When we allow freedom to ring. When we let it ring from every village
- and every hamlet, from every state and every city. We will be able to speed up that day when all of
- our children, black men and white men,
- and 10,000 Protestants and Catholics will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro
- spiritual. Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty! We are free at last! Here, let me pour that
- for you. Thank you, Maurice. Nice party, huh? Very enjoyable. Yeah, this is a nice town. It's the kind
- of town you could settle down and carve yourself out of home.
- Listen, Stevens, I'm not going to mince words. After your brother gets sent up the river, there's going
- to be a certain job opportunity open up that I want to speak to you about. You want me to replace Chris?
- There's no point in broadcasting it. Look, you showed me something today, Stevens. You showed me a man
- who is ready and willing to pick up the fallen standard and continue the charge.
- You've got a way with words, son. You've got the Stevens way with words. And on top of that, you don't
- sound black. Truth is, Bernard, if I close my eyes, you sound as white as Casper. You know something,
- Maurice? I like you. I do. And it troubles me. Troubles you? Yeah, this may come as a shock, but you're
- a bigot. Bigot? You're a racist. Wait a minute, because you don't sound black. I'm a bigot and a racist.
- Look, Stevens, I know black people. I've been around black people and know how they talk. They say,
- uh, thing instead of thing. And they say, uh, ax. I ax you this, brother. I ax you that. Now, you don't
- say ax. Neither does Colin Powell and that, uh, that, uh, Denzel fella. You know what's interesting?
- Is the linkage of King's English and superior breeding. And the further linkage of superior breeding
- with being white. Now, rather than saying,
- there's a black person speaking King's English, we say there's a black person speaking white. What's
- wrong with that? Well, for a long time, it hung me up. I mean, I tried to talk ghetto in high school,
- and it wasn't me. Very unsettling. Well, what's your point? My point? Well, I'm not exactly sure. Although,
- admittedly, you're a racist, and what you said makes me uncomfortable, there's a crown with truth to it.
- So I suspect it has more to do with intellectual and cultural standards than it does with racial
- distinctions. Why is it that when I say something like that, I'm a racist, and when you say something
- like that, you're just being thoughtful? Oh, no, Maurice. I'm a racist, too. For a long time, I didn't
- like being around white people. But once I realized that imperialism, slavery, and genocide weren't
- exclusively white institutions, it helped me loosen up a bit. I have a dream that one day,
- Even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat
- of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice. I have a dream. Sit down, please.
- Well, what can I do for you today?
- I have this problem, this very delicate matter. I have a friend of mine who wants to emigrate to South
- Africa. Yes, of course. I can certainly help him do that. Oh, sure. But I want you to talk him out of
- it. Talk him out of it? Yeah. Whatever for? Well, you see, this is such a bad time for him to go to
- South Africa. I mean, with all the trouble and everything, OK? Oh, look, why don't you ask your friend
- to come back later in the week? We can sit down. No, he's here. He's here. He's here? Yeah, he's here
- now. Where? Alphonse. Alphonse.
- What are you doing? I think there must be some mistake. Say what? Sir, listen to your friend here. He
- knows what he's talking about. I don't think you really want to go to South Africa. Why not? Because
- you're black. You are. This will be the day when all of God's children
- be able to sing with new meaning. My country tears at thee. Sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing. Land
- where my fathers died, land of the pilgrims' pride. From every mountainside, let freedom ring. And if
- America is to be a great nation, this must become true. So let freedom ring. From the prodigious hilltops
- of New Hampshire, let freedom ring.
- from the mighty mountains of New York. Let freedom ring from the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania.
- Let freedom ring from the snow-capped Rockies of Colorado. Let freedom ring from the curvaceous slopes
- of California. But not only that, let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia. Let freedom ring
- from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee.
- The sheriff is a niche! What did he say? The sheriff is near! No, God of Blaming didn't believe it!
- The sheriff is a niche!
- Chairman of the Welcoming Committee, it is my privilege to extend a laurel and hearty handshake to our
- new... nigger.
- Excuse me while I whip this out. The only thing that matters is what they feel and how much they feel
- for each other. And if it's half of what we felt,
- For you two and the problems you're going to have, they seem almost unimaginable. But you'll have no
- problem with me. And I think that when Christina and I and your mother have some time to work on him,
- you'll have no problem with your father, John. But you do know, I'm sure you know, what you're up against.
- There'll be a hundred million people right here in this country who will be shocked and offended and
- appalled at the two of you. And the two of you will just have to ride that out, maybe every day for
- the rest of your lives. You can try to ignore those people, or you can feel sorry for them and for their
- prejudices and their bigotry and their blind hatreds and stupid fears.
- But for necessary, you'll just have to cling tight to each other and say, screw all those people. Anybody
- could make a case, and a hell of a good case, against your getting married. The arguments are so obvious
- that nobody has to make them. But you're two wonderful people who happen to fall in love and happen
- to have a pigmentation problem.
- And I think that now, no matter what kind of a case some bastard could make against your getting married,
- there would be only one thing worse. And that would be if, knowing what you two are, knowing what you
- two have, and knowing what you two feel, you didn't get married.
- Tillie, when the hell are we gonna get some dinner? I have a dream that one day every valley shall be
- exalted, and every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the
- crooked places will be made straight, and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall
- see it together. What do you want to know? Is Mr. Biasi at R.N.? No, a technician. She used to be a
- dancer. She told you that? We're friends. She told me about it.
- She was performing with a modern dance company. I don't know if she made a living out of it. But you
- do know what happened? She was attacked down in the subway by three youthful offenders. After she recovered,
- she came to work here. And what was her reaction to the attack? Same as anybody's. She was fearful,
- resentful of all the little... Little what? Little black bastards?
- You see some black teenagers on the train? Are you automatically afraid of them, Miss Maltese? Aren't you?
- the former slaves and the sons of former slave owners. Will they be able to sit down together at the
- table of brotherhood? How about your glasses? Can I get you a drink either, Mr. and Mrs. Prentice? No,
- thank you. John, would you? Mike? No, you've had enough as it is already. Dad? What's going on? There's
- something I want to say, and I'd like you to sit down and see if you can keep quiet for once in your
- life. Please, sit down, John. Sit down, Chris, please.
- I have a few things to say and you might just think they're important. This has been a very strange
- day. I don't think that's putting it too strongly. I might even say it's been an extraordinary day.
- I've been out there thinking about the day and the way it has gone. And it seems to me that now I need
- to make a few personal statements for a variety of reasons.
- The day began for me when I walked into this house, and Tilly said to me... Excuse me. Tilly!
- Just a moment, take a sec. Everything has been ready, it's been ready. All right, all right, Tilly,
- sit down. Mr. and Mrs. Panters, this is Miss Matilda Biss, who's been a member of this family for 22
- years, and who today has been making a great deal of trouble. Sit down, Tilly. How is it that we know
- who we are?
- We might wake up in the night, disoriented, and wonder where we are. We may have forgotten where the
- window, or the door, or the bathroom is, or who is sleeping beside us. We may think, perhaps, that we
- have lived through what we just dreamed of. Or we may wonder if we are now still dreaming. But we never
- wonder who we are.
- However confused we might be about every other particular of our existence, we always know that it is
- us, that we are now who we have always been. We never wake up and wonder, who am I? Because our knowledge
- of who we are is mediated by what we doctors of the mind call ourselves schemata, the richest
- most stable and most complex memory structures we have. They are the structures which connect us to
- our pasts and allow us to imagine our futures. To lose those connections would be a sign of pathology,
- a pathology called amnesia. But it makes no sense to begin this story here without its history, its past. So,
- Let me take you back to a proper beginning, to a time before identity has been confused.