Before Rosa Parks said I'm not going to go back to the back of the bus, Barbara Johns
showed us how not to go back to the back of the bus, you know. Before anybody invented
black power, remember Rap Brown and Stokely Carmackle with black power? Well, Barbara
Johns had always showed us how to use black power and to use it effectively.
Before Martin Luther King had his dream, Barbara Johns showed us how to work to make our dreams
come true. Because it's the story of a young person having moved mountains, having done
what some would have called the impossible dream, that she was able to achieve that.
So she's certainly a role model for people all over the world, not just young people
but adults as well, but certainly young people. It's a positive message for them.
Our teachers say we can fly just as high as anyone else. That's what I want to do.
Fly just as high. I said fly. You know, I've been sitting in my embarrassment and my hunger
for so long that I forgot about standing up. So today, I'm going to ask you to stand with
me. Before we fly, before we fly just as high as anyone else, we got to walk just as proud
as anyone else. And that's what we're going to do.
It was a clear understanding that what we're about to do is going to be something that's
going to cause major, major change. They didn't realize how major that change was going to
be at the time.
That's what we're going to do.
