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[ Applause ] >> On our next selection, whoever won that third since Mrs. Helen Dawson is a soloist by Mac Farland. [ Music ]

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[MUSIC] ♪ On that morn, sir ♪ ♪ Come ye to the waters ♪ ♪ And hear the top-low honey ♪

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♪ Come ye by and eat ♪ ♪ Oh ♪ ♪ Oh, if you want my person ♪ ♪ Come into the waters ♪

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♪ I'll be there to hold you ♪ ♪ Come, be loyal to me ♪ ♪ Oh, everyone ♪ ♪ Oh, everyone ♪

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♪ Oh, everyone ♪ ♪ Oh, oh ♪ ♪ Oh, if you want my person ♪ ♪ At her say ♪

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♪ Tide to the water ♪ ♪ Are ye and know my name ♪ ♪ Come ye, come ye ♪ ♪ I am here ♪

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♪ Therefore do ye spend money ♪ ♪ O God, which is not bread ♪ ♪ On your labour ♪ ♪ O God ♪

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♪ Which satisfieth not ♪ ♪ Who can ♪ ♪ Diligently ♪ ♪ Hold to me ♪

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♪ And it ♪ ♪ He thought which is good ♪ ♪ And loved your soul ♪ ♪ Your soul ♪

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♪ Delight itself in fatness ♪ ♪ Oh ♪ ♪ Oh, everyone that worships ♪ ♪ I choose the water ♪

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♪ And he that hath no money ♪ ♪ How me why am I ♪ ♪ Inquire you here ♪ ♪ And come unto me ♪

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♪ Here, here on your snow-shell ♪ ♪ And I will make an everlasting covenant with you ♪ ♪ Even though she may be far away ♪ ♪ Even though she may cease of day ♪

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♪ In my own ♪ ♪ Irreconcilable ♪ ♪ Come unto me ♪ ♪ Here, here on your throne shall I lie ♪

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♪ And I will praise and evermore cry ♪ ♪ Therefore we must be in covenant with you ♪ ♪ Even as you mercy fortune ♪ (singing in foreign language)

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[Music] ♪ In my glory ♪ ♪ I heard the voice of Jesus say ♪ ♪ Behold I am the Son of God ♪

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♪ And I am the Son of God ♪ ♪ O'er the water freely gill ♪ ♪ The living water thirsty one ♪ ♪ Stoop down a drink and kneel ♪

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♪ And let the voice of Jesus say ♪ ♪ He, all my freely giv'n ♪ ♪ For every water ♪ ♪ Thirst he won ♪

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♪ Strew down and drink ♪ ♪ Of his ♪ ♪ I came to Jesus ♪ ♪ And I drank of God's life giving stream ♪

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♪ Mother's waste ♪ ♪ My soul relied ♪ ♪ On now I live in Him ♪ ♪ I gave to Jesus and I pray ♪

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♪ Father my faith is true ♪ ♪ My curse was great ♪ ♪ My soul revived ♪ ♪ And now I live in thee ♪

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♪ My first ♪ ♪ For everyone ♪ ♪ The last day ♪ ♪ My birth was with ♪

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♪ My soul ♪ ♪ My soul ♪ ♪ Who is reborn and everlasting ♪ ♪ My soul divine ♪

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♪ And all ♪ ♪ All ♪ ♪ I ♪ ♪ Will ♪

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♪vet ♪ ♪ My life now I feel ♪ ♪ Now I feel ♪ ♪ Heaven ♪

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[applause] [ Background noise ] [WHISTLE BLOWING] [MUSIC PLAYING]

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[ Music ] >> I'm only human. I'm just a woman. Lord, help me to be what you want me to be, and all that I am.

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Amen. Amen. Show me the stairway. Yeah.

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Amen. I had to climb But for my sake Teach me to take

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One day at a time Lord Jesus, you remember When you walked among men [MUSIC]

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now than then. Troubles and heartaches keep clouding my mind. But for thy sake teach me to take one day at a time. One day at a time, sweet Jesus. That's all I'm asking of you.

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Teach me to do all the things that you want me to. Yesterday's gone, sweet Jesus, and tomorrow may never be mine. But for my sake, show me the way one day at a time. One day at a time.

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Sweet Jesus, that's all I'm asking of you. Teach me to do all of the things that you want me to. Yesterday's gone, sweet Jesus, and tomorrow may never be mine. But for thy sake and mine too, show me the way one day at a time.

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[APPLAUSE] --here in this institute. I'm glad to be here and to see my brother, whom we're very proud of.

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I also want to be here tonight to share with you-- I've just finished writing a book last night about the black child. And I'm here to talk about that child tonight

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and to ask your help, because I think that the kind of energy that you have put into Bishop this last year, and just shows you that black folk can do whatever they want to do when they put their minds to it.

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The kind of things that you've done to keep these colleges alive and keep Bishop alive, we've got to put into our children for the next decade. And I want to talk tonight about three things.

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I want to describe the condition of the black child in 1980. And we've come a long way. But we've got a long way to go yet before our children have a fair chance. I want to talk about what we can do as black people, as black church women, as black church

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men, black colleges to help black children and to lay out an action program for the 80s. But basically when you look at the young black child or the older black child for that matter, what you see is a portrait of inequality. Let me sketch it for you.

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A black child today still lacks a fair chance to live, to learn, to thrive, and to contribute in America. His mother is three times more likely to die in childbirth, and he is twice as likely to die in the first year of life as a white baby.

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One in 43 black infants dies each year. of them could be saved if they had decent access to health care. Black children are more likely to be sick because they are more likely to be poor. Black children suffer new tuberculosis rates five times white rates.

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Black teenagers die from hard and congenital defects at twice the rate of white teenagers. Yet black children and black youth are almost twice as likely to lack a usual place of medical care as are white children. And our children are five times more likely to have to go to hospital emergency rooms or outpatient clinics as the place of usual medical care. Most white

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children have their own doctor and dentist they go to. A black baby today has a nearly one in two chance of being born in poverty and faces a losing struggle to escape poverty throughout childhood. He's twice as likely to be on welfare,

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and he's twice as likely to grow up poor as a white child. His mother goes to work when he's younger. She works longer hours, and she makes less money than a white mother.

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If he has a father at home, the father is 70% more likely than a white father to be unemployed. When his father does work, he's likely to make 50% less than a white father.

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And when both parents work, they are still likely to make only half as much as a white family. A black child today is twice as likely as a white child to live with neither parent, and seven times as likely

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to see his parents separate, and he's three times as likely as a white child to see his father die. A black child is twice as likely to grow up in a family whose head did not finish high school,

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and four times less likely than a white child to grow up in a family whose head graduated from college. When he goes to school, he faces a one in three chance of going to a racially isolated school,

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and he's twice as likely to be suspended, he's twice as likely to be expelled, he's twice as likely to be given corporal punishment, he's three times more likely than a white child

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to be labeled educable, mentally retarded, and is only half as likely to be called gifted. He's twice as likely to drop out of school and almost twice as likely to be behind grade level

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as a white child. And the longer he's in school, the further behind he drops. If and when he looks for work, he is three times more likely than a white youth to be unemployed.

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If he finishes high school, he has a higher unemployment rate than a white child who dropped out of elementary school. If he goes to college and graduates, he has about the same unemployment rate

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as a white high school dropout. And some folk are saying we don't need affirmative action today. Between 11 and 17 years old, a black child

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has more than a 1 in 10 chance of getting into trouble. He's seven times more likely than a white child to be arrested for violent crimes. He's twice as likely to be arrested for serious property

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crimes as a white child. A black male teenager is five times more likely to be murdered and twice as likely to end up in a juvenile or adult correctional facility, which for too many of our children

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is the conclusion of a winding uphill struggle to beat the odds against success. Now, black organizations and black churches and black preachers and black teachers

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have got to stand up for black children. Because if we don't, nobody else will. Too many Americans view our children as expendable because they see them as deficits,

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and we've got to turn them into the assets we know they are. We have got to counter this attitude and the neglect which accompanies it by making the black child and the black family a major focus over the next decade.

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We must break our children out of the gulches of illiteracy and ill health. We've got to get out of the shabby housing and rough streets, which paralyze the energies

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and suppress the ambitions and blast the hope of too many of our children. We've got to see that opportunity for our children is more than crime and drugs and having a baby.

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Caring must be shown in our adult examples and in our actions at home, in our churches, in our colleges, and in our communities, and in the way in which we vote.

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I want to lay out 10 steps that I think black parents and black churches and black organizations can take to help black children. The first one really is an attitudinal change.

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We have simply every one of us to decide that we're going to become active and effective advocates for black and poor children. We must take a much stronger and more systematic interest in our children's problems. If the widespread nutrition, health, child care, education, and employment needs that

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that I've talked about tonight, or to be changed, we're gonna have to constantly talk about them. We're gonna have to organize and challenge them, and we're gonna have to vote for leaders

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who are prepared to do something about these problems. The second step we're gonna have to take is we're gonna have to do some homework. We're gonna have to become very well-informed

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about the needs of black children and black families in our communities, in our churches, and in this country. We're not going to help black children uninformed. We must argue with facts as well as emotion,

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and we must teach as well as preach. We must take the time to define the problems facing children in our churches and in our communities, and we must analyze and seek appropriate remedies

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to correct the problems that we've identified. We've got to begin to hold study groups in our churches and in our clubs. We ought to invite speakers who are knowledgeable about

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and active about children's issues and figure out how we can support positive efforts to deal with the problems of our children in our communities and nationally.

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The third step we're going to have to take is to stop giving or accepting excuses for doing nothing. How many folk you always hear hiding behind, "Whatever I do won't make any difference anyway"?

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Or I've heard a whole lot of folk tell me, in particular black folk, "I paid my dues, and I'm going to get mine now." Well, these do-nothing excuses are an abnegation

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of personal responsibility for each other and for our children. How many black folk we know today think we're out of the woods because we've got two cars,

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a big mortgage, and a Saks Fifth Avenue charge card? But I'll just tell you that any black person who thinks this way is courting danger and jeopardizing our children's futures.

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I read Frederick Douglass a lot, And he talks about the fragility of change. And we've got to really make sure that we stay vigilant, because I think in 1980, we stand poised between progress

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and regression. We should know our lessons after Reconstruction and after the Nixon forward years. And we look at the attacks now on government spending

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and on programs for the poor and the revival of the Ku Klux Klan, and we can go back again unless we stand up and watch out. Frederick Douglass said, and we should heed his warnings when he talked about how quickly

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change can go the other way, and I want to quote him for a minute. He said, "I know that from the acorn evolves the oak, but I also know that the commonest accident may destroy its potential character and defeat its natural destiny. One wave," he says, "brings its treasure from the briny deep, but another wave sweeps it

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back to its primal depths. The sayings that revolutions never go back must be taken with limitations. Black folk cannot sit down and think that the hard-earned progress of the '60s cannot go back, because I think we're facing a lot of resistance to our problems right now. We are facing a national quick-fix mentality that resents the fact that centuries

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of segregation and discrimination didn't disappear quietly and cheaply in a decade. And we've got to remain vigilant if our children are to have a better chance than I've just described they still don't have. The fourth thing we're going to have to understand if we're going to survive in the '80s and

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help our children is that nobody is going to give us anything. Nobody's going to give our children anything. Frederick Douglass put it bluntly. He said, "Men may not get all they pay for in this world,

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but they must certainly pay for all they get." Whatever we achieve for black children and families is going to depend more on what we do with our votes in our churches, with our willpower,

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than what anybody in power, Jimmy Carter or any other president is going to do on their own. They will do what we demand them to do. The fifth thing we're going to have to take,

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the fifth step we're going to have to understand is we're going to have to recognize that the ground rules for achieving change are different now than they were five or 10 years ago.

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The levels of competency required of our young people and of ourselves and those of us seeking change has gotten higher. People are fighting over a very scarce resource pie.

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And we can no longer effectively represent the interests of black children and black families simply by asserting that what we want is morally right or by looking at children's or poor people's programs

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or civil rights programs alone. The politics and the trade-offs are much more complicated today. We must gain and teach our children

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greater technical proficiency in how bureaucracies work, and how programs are delivered and administered, and how to impact and monitor budget processes. You see, black folks spend too much time in the wrong place.

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Whoever controls the money controls the policy. And we've got to begin to figure out how that money is spent before it's spent and to make sure that our children get their fair share. Sixth step we're going to have to learn to take is learn how to focus.

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We've got to focus. We ought to always have our vision of the big picture and we ought to always know where we're going down the road, but we've got to break down our big goals into manageable pieces for action.

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So much of our current effort is diluted by our failure as black people to set priorities and to stick with them until they're accomplished. Too many possible incremental gains are overlooked while we focus on big agendas that we can't accomplish.

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We must begin to set immediate, intermediate, and long-range goals and go step by step until we win them. If you go in to people with a list of 30 things and say, "I want all these things," they're they're gonna pick out the least important one

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and they're gonna set your priority for you. We've gotta figure out what is the most important two or three things that we can get done, get them and then go back for the fourth, fifth and sixth

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until we end up with the whole thing. The seventh thing we're gonna have to learn that we must expend our energy on real issues and not symbolic ones.

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We must not be bought off as black people by appeals to vanity of the state. As we think we go to the White House for dinner and that's going to solve black folks' problems.

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If poor folk can't eat, somebody going to the White House for dinner. We have got to watch out for endless treadmills of consultation and endless conferences

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where we talk as an excuse for not acting. Consultation and conferences can be important, but they are not substitutes for programs and money. We must begin to not confuse the difference

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between means and ends. But another important dimension, I think, that I think about an awful lot, the kind of values we're transmitting

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to our children as black people, and whether we're confusing what is important, or I guess there's another way to Mary McLeod Bethune, we get mixed up, we mix up the externals with the internals.

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Nannie Burroughs, I don't know how many of us know about Nannie Burroughs, who was a great church woman, and I've been rereading Nannie Burroughs' speech lately. She spoke all the time of the need for black folk

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to organize ourselves inside. We have got to begin to focus more on what's in our children's heads and hearts and less on what is on their backs and on their feet.

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I was so struck when I was in Mississippi back-- we were always down there in the middle of the '60s, struggling folks just to survive. And there were always some of us who

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were too busy trying to figure out how we get our mink coat without figuring out we didn't have anywhere to wear it. I was sitting one night in the middle of the Norgole Ball, Lyndon Johnson, in fact, with the college president's wife.

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Most college president's wives aren't this way. But we were looking at the television, and across the television set came Fannie Lou Hamer. I don't know how many of you know,

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but Ms. Hamer's a great lady. She was a sharecropper in Mississippi. She had more sense than most of us put together. But she had been invited,

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because of her work in the civil rights movement, up to the Norgal Ball for LBJ. And when she came on the television screen, the college president's wife said,

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my goodness, there's Miss Hamer, and she doesn't have on a long gown. And I said, well, that's all right, Miss Hamer's there and we're not,

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and we got the long gowns. (audience laughing) You see, we have got to make sure that we know what's important.

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We have got to figure out more about where we're going than what we're wearing. We have come too far, it seems to me. Too far to think that what we've struggled for all these years is going to be squandered

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on kind of the materialistic values of the culture and lose that special dimension of struggle and service to others that our past has dictated. We've got to teach our children what's important inside. The eighth thing that we've got to do to help black children is to teach them how to persist,

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we have got to persist and dig in for a long fight. We've got a lot of things to do for black children and families in the 80s, but they will not be achieved overnight. Nothing is more likely to bring about change than persistence.

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And black folk in the United States are not alone. [ Silence ]