Reply #20: It wasn't the leaders who initiated the change; it was the people who demanded their rights and were

[terisan]

not willing to be denied. Ask Rep. John Lewis, who got beaten at Selma. There is an old community organizer's saying that a Leader is someone who sees a parade and gets in front of it.

Words have their place, leaders have their place, inspiration has its place but without that resolve in the bellies of the dispossessed nothing happens.

No leader can can put that resolve there. He or she can build on it and can reinforce it but without the determination of the people to suffer the ultimate for overcoming evil nothing happens.

Without black people on the move in the 1960s, the rest of America would have watched, applauded the speeches, shook their heads , and turned away.