A considerable literature has developed around the relationship of psychoanalysis and religion. In the identification of targets, conflict parties may use religion or belief to define in-groups and out-groups. If it may be said of the slavery era that the white man took the world and gave the Negro Jesus, then it may be said of the Reconstruction era that the southern aristocracy took the world and gave the poor white man Jim Crow. Let us march on poverty (Let us march) until no American parent has to skip a meal so that their children may eat. Alabama God’s children will be able to walk the earth in decency and honor. But if we will go on with the faith that nonviolence and its power can transform dark yesterdays into bright tomorrows, we will be able to change all of these conditions. And so I plead with you this afternoon as we go ahead: remain committed to nonviolence.

Let us march on ballot boxes, (Let’s march) march on ballot boxes until race-baiters disappear from the political arena. Let us march on ballot boxes (Let us march) until we send to our city councils (Yes, sir), state legislatures, (Yes, sir) and the United States Congress, (Yes, sir) men who will not fear to do justly, love mercy, and walk humbly with thy God. Let us march on ballot boxes (Let us march. It’s better, modern Stoics reason, to strive to be the best, most virtuous person possible, to live a life honoring God and being kind to others, than to get caught up in all that doesn’t matter. Negro slaves to the fact that they were being fleeced by the emerging Bourbon interests. And as the noted historian, C. Vann Woodward, in his book, The Strange Career of Jim Crow, clearly points out, the segregation of the races was really a political stratagem employed by the emerging Bourbon interests in the South to keep the southern masses divided and southern labor the cheapest in the land.

And when his undernourished children cried out for the necessities that his low wages could not provide, he showed them the Jim Crow signs on the buses and in the stores, on the streets and in the public buildings. He gave him Jim Crow. And he ate Jim Crow. Jim Crow, a psychological bird that told him that no matter how bad off he was, at least he was a white man, better than the black man. The “Back to Salem” movement broke into at least three factions: 1. The original Salem people who stayed at Salem with it as headquarters; 2. Dugger and Severson, who went to Jerusalem; and 3. Olson and Groshans, who formed the Seventh Day Church of God in Caldwell, Idaho. This pair hugs your legs without restricting movement unlike traditional outfits. That crippled and eventually destroyed the Populist Movement of the nineteenth century. It was normalcy by a cafe in Selma, Alabama, that led to the brutal beating of Reverend James Reeb. It was normalcy on Highway 80 (Yes, sir) that led state troopers to use tear gas and horses and billy clubs against unarmed human beings who were simply marching for justice.

Yes, we are on the move and no wave of racism can stop us. It is normalcy all over our country (Yes, sir) which leaves the Negro perishing on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of vast ocean of material prosperity. That’s what happened when the Negro and white masses of the South threatened to unite and build a great society: a society of justice where none would pray upon the weakness of others; a society of plenty where greed and poverty would be done away; a society of brotherhood where every man would respect the dignity and worth of human personality. To meet this threat, the southern aristocracy began immediately to engineer this development of a segregated society. We must come to see that the end we seek is a society at peace with itself, a society that can live with its conscience. Toward the end of the Reconstruction era, something very significant happened. There were no laws segregating the races then.