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Are you truly free? What kind of
MLK on psychological bondage -
"As long as the mind is enslaved, the body can power do you
never be free. Psychological freedom, a firm
sense of self-esteem, is the most powerful have?
weapon against the long night of physical
slavery." "Indeed, one of the great
problems that the Negro
According to MLK, "No Lincolnian Emancipation Proclamation, confronts is his lack of
no Johnsonian civil rights bill can totally bring this kind of power," noted MLK. From
freedom. The Negro will only be free when he reaches down to the old plantations of the
the inner depths of his own being and signs with the pen and ink South to the newer ghettos
of assertive manhood his own emancipation proclamation. And of the North, the Negro has
with a spirit straining toward true self-esteem, the Negro must been confined to a life of
boldly throw off the manacles of self-abnegation and say to voicelessness and
himself and to the world, I am somebody." powerlessness. Stripped of
the right to make decisions
Who has the power? concerning his life and
Now, power properly destiny, he has been subject
understood is nothing but to the authoritarian and
the ability to achieve sometimes whimsical
purpose. Power is the decisions of the white power
strength required to bring structure. The plantation and
about social, political, and the ghetto were created by
those who had power, both
economic change. to confine those who had no
power and to perpetuate
their powerlessness.

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