“What are we? Since that’s your question, I’m going to answer you. We’re this country, and it wouldn’t be a thing without us, nothing at all. Who does the planting? Who does the watering? Who does the harvesting? Coffee, cotton, rice, sugar cane, caco, corn, bananas, vegetables, and all the fruits, who’s going to grow them if we don’t? Yet with all that, we’re poor, that’s true. We’re out of luck, that’s true. We’re miserable, that’s true. But do you know why, brother? Because of our ignorance. We don’t know yet what a force we are, what a single force – all the peasants, all the Negroes of the plain and hill, all united. Some day, when we get wise to that, we’ll rise up from one end of the country to the other. Then we’ll call a General Assembly of the Masters of the Dew, a great big coumbite of farmers and we’ll clear out poverty and plant a new life.”
Jacques Roumain, Masters of the Dew (Gouverneurs de la rosée), Translated by Langston Hughes and Mercer Cook, (1944).
Via Sharifa Rhodes-Pitts, Harlem is Nowhere
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"What are we? … We’re this country, and it wouldn’t be a thing without us, nothing at all": http://t.co/GffKzKjv #haiti #ows
“Who does the planting? Who does the watering? Who does the harvesting?” ~Jacques Roumain, Masters of the Dew (1944): http://t.co/GffG2aal