Newspapers / The Carolinian (Raleigh, N.C.) / July 2, 1966, edition 1 / Page 5
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V> ;•> ' " JF" rjP \ i i&Js aM'-'V I AM THE NATION I WAS BORN on July 4, 1776, and the Declaration of Independence is my birth certificate. The blood lines of the world run in my veins, because I offered freedom to the oppressed. I am many things, and many people. I am the nation. I am 195 million living souls— and the ghost of millions who have lived and died for me. I am Nathan Hale and Paul Re vere. I stood at Lexington and fired the shot heard around the world. I am Washington, Jefferson and Patrick Henry. I am John Paul Jones, the Green Mountain Boys and Davy Crockett. I am Lee and Grant and Abe Lincoln. I remember the Alamo, the Maine and Pearl Harbor. When freedom called I answered and stayed until it was over, ever there. I left my heroic dead in Flanders Fields, on the rock of Corregidor, on the bleak slopes of Korea and in the steaming jungle of Vietnam. I am the Brooklyn Bridge, the wheat lands of Kansas and the gran- ite hills of Vermont. I am the coal fields of the Virginias and Pennsyl vania, the fertile lands of the West, the Golden Gate and the Grand Canyon. I am Independence Hall, the Monitor and the Merrimac. I am big. I sprawl from the At lantic to the Pacific... my arms reach out to embrace Alaska and Hawaii... 3 million square miles throbbing with industry. I am more than 5 million farms. I am forest, field, mountain and desert. I am quiet villages—and cities that never sleep. You can look at me and see Ben Franklin walking down the streets of Philadelphia with his breadloaf under his arm. You can see Betsy Ross with her needle. You can see the lights of Christmas, and hear the strains of “Auld Lang Syne” as the calendar turns. I am Babe Ruth and the World Series. I am 130,000 schools and colleges, and 320,000 churches where my people worship God as they think best. I am a ballot dropped in a box, the roar of a crowd in a stadium and the voice of a choir in a cathedral. I am an editorial in a newspaper and a letter to a Con gressman. I am Eli Whitney and Stephen Foster. I am Tom Edison, Albert Einstein and Billy Graham. I am Horace Greeley, Will Rogers and the Wright brothers. I am George Washington Carver, Daniel Web ster and Jonas Salk. i am Longfellow, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Walt Whitman and Thomas Paine. Yes, I am the nation, and these are the things that I am. I was con ceived in freedom and, God willing, in freedom I will spend the rest of my days. May 1 possess always the in tegrity, the courage and the strength to keep myself unshackled, to re main a citadel of freedom and a beacon of hope to the world. This is my wish , my goal, my prayer in this year of 1966—0ne hundred and ninety years after I was born. Courtesy of Xorfolk 6 Western Railway WE&mouKum SULSiaB. N. a. SATURDAY. JULY 19M PUBLISHED IN THE PUBLIC INTEREST BY ; BelT . •'inrwmiimimic rr-rr-n N i - mu hut —” 5
The Carolinian (Raleigh, N.C.)
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July 2, 1966, edition 1
5
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