You Must Let Me Wail

(Callie Greer from Lowndes County, Alabama sharing testimony at a Poor People's Campaign direct action event in Washington, DC: May 14, 2018 – photo by: Stephen Pavey)

You can find this chapter in the book: We Cry Justice: Reading the Bible with the Poor People's Campaign, edited by Liz Theoharis (2021).

You can read a small portion of this chapter as it's used in a reflection by the Center for Action and Contemplation for Daily Meditation on March 6, 2025.

If you subscribe in any form to the Hope In Focus journal / newsletter you will be able to read the chapter below.

“There are days in this country when you wonder what your role in this country is and your place in it. How precisely are you going to reconcile yourself to your situation here and how you are going to communicate to the vast, heedless, unthinking, cruel white majority that you are here? I am terrified at the moral apathy, the death of the heart, which is happening in my country. These people deluded themselves for so long that they really don’t think I’m human. I base this on their conduct, not on what they say. This means that they have become moral monsters.” - James Baldwin