And we, you and I and every other good, decent citizen of this great and powerful democracy of ours are left with such unspeakable shame as we have not known in a long, long time. This did not happen in the deep South; there were no mysterious elements involved; no flags with the crooked cross flew over Freeport: it was in our own back yard that this rotten thing happened, in a suburb of our queen of cities, where, as they say, tolerance and culture have been raised to a level beyond all the rest of the land.
You would think, would you not, that following hard upon this shameful affair there would be such an outcry as all men would hear, a voice of anger to reach into the remotest corner of the nation, a wave of protest, a storm of indignation?
But that was not the case.
You would think, would you not, that in the Congress of this republic and in the legislature of this proud and sovereign state, many, many voices would call for a different kind of justice?
But those voices were not raised.
You would think, would you not, that the much-hailed free press of this free city would carry news stories and editorials which blazed with anger--which indicted a system which permitted such things to happen?
But that, too, was not the case.
Yet you would think, at least, would you not, that in our pulpits, which are set up under those lofty ceilings, under the domed roofs, to preach the brotherhood of man--there, at least, you would think a note of protest, of shame, of sorrow, would sound?
The silence was deep and profound. True, here and there voices were raised--but not in the high places, not in the streamlined periodicals, not in the halls of justice, not in the houses of God. In those places, the silence was deep and profound.
So, left as we are, in our complete and unspeakable shame, we have good reason for reflection. It is not enough to hate Jim Crow; it is not enough to hate anti-Semitism; it is not enough to hate a fixed and a perjured justice, such as operated in the framework of this infamous case. Those are not enough. There must be protests, mass meetings and more mass meetings, and still it is not enough; our voices must boil up like a cauldron of hot anger--but even that will not be enough.
It will only be enough when we learn the nature of the gun. Consider the gun; consider it muzzle on, as it looked to those four brothers, as they stood with their backs to the wall.
It has a familiar tilt, hasn't it? It is recognizable, isn't it--as recognizable as if it were giving tongue from the black hole of its muzzle? Different, somehow from other guns? And now, as you search back in your memory, it comes clearer.
The same gun that stalked through Berlin in a brown uniform, then in a black one; the gun that punched holes in the heads of anti-fascists who lay in the concentration camps, too weak to rise; the gun that slashed the faces of Russian and Polish and French children and battered in their skulls; the gun that murdered and killed until the whole world was a slaughterhouse.
And today, the gun is in your own back yard. What are you going to do about it? Have we learned nothing? Is any crime greater than silence or indifference?