[1970] To play the heavy is as a rule a more difficult task than the role of protagonist on the side of righteousness. Rhetoric and oratory rely on the underpinnings of logic and ethics to persuade the enlightened; whereas sophistry relies on gyrations of half-truths, innuendoes and prejudice — no small task if deliberate, but ironically very simple if out of ignorance.Little wonder, then, that giants like Douglass, Walker and Garvey ring out through the ages as exemplars of style and persuasion. In the 60s these giants were great historical sources for the blacks who crawled out of their insulated Harlem renaissance, along with disillusioned liberal whites in Washington willing to accept minimal responsibility for the 400 years of black oppression, though not blame precisely. The ugly war, assassinations, and Watergate, of course put a stop to the march on the path of King’s dream.

The heavy character resides in all of us as individuals but from the clearer vantage of law and the higher perspective of history somehow the whispers of what should be done takes hold and haunts the social consciousness to action. What with the turmoil, Watergate creaked unnoticed until one day the foghorn went off and the ship of state was alerted. Evil forces at work, in spite of the destruction left in its wake eventually succumbs to its own symbiotic erosion. Its irrational strain breaks down because it unwittingly generates a moral resistance supported by the logic of social consciousness. Had the Confederates won, they would have collapsed from empty values and isolation.

Ironically the North won and perpetuated the South’s evil institutions. Even Nixon someday will go the route of Macbeth to the pit of idiocy of sound and fury — the mirror of ourselves, of every indecent and corrupt ideologies in the sad composition of history.

What use legitimate rhetoric, why articulate what’s already in the heart, why dwell on the obvious? As Douglass said, “What, then remains to be argued?’ Yet Douglass knew all too well that without argument, constant persuasion, the sleeping body politic will never waken to a sense of justice. Douglass was under no illusion that the listeners on the conclusion of his July Fourth Speech would march on Washington; but he did know that his speech would go down in history, and perhaps one day to be used as a weapon for posterity’s struggles.

This is the function of great oratory: a persuasive record in history added to the slow awakening of a just nation. Moses did not invent God; poets before him did. King, Malcolm X, or Cleaver did not invent black protest; Walker, Garvey and Douglass did. It is interesting to speculate — since Walker’s son as legislator was unable to bear fruit — who the great, black legislator will be in tying these disparate forces of deeply rooted righteousness, or will the legislator, motivated by the ghost of Garvey, first lead his people from the great land of sin?

[Garvey]The whites have always been an unjust, jealous, unmerciful, avaricious and blood-thirsty set of beings, always seeking after power and authority.

 In the meantime there will be other black spokesmen, other John the Baptists, who find it necessary to prick the conscience of the nation and to stir “their black brethren from the lethargy so common to wearisome oppression.” The wheel of justice were lugged to the hub of freedom by Walker, a martyr, and Garvey; Douglass set it in motion on a very appropriate day.