Dearest Friends:

I wrote to all of you very hurriedly on April 4th and have received four answers from you which I treasure dearly. Enclosed is a leaflet advertising an affair for May 17th which I'm selling tickets for. It promises to be a wonderful evening and we are only sorry you won't be with us.

My two boys spent last Saturday afternoon picketing Woolworths in Harlem with a large group of young people. I am sorry when I think of how easy it is to do what we are doing compared with your job. It is, of course, because of the problems you are now facing that so little headway was made before. It takes great courage to face the issues squarely and do something about it. To interrupt your lives in this way, to sit in jail, to face danger ..... we were all too weak and so we failed.

It doesn't take a great majority to change the world - it only takes a dedicated minority like yourselves. There are still many Negro people who continue to believe that this cannot be done but as the battle progresses more and more are beginning to understand that it can. There are also many white people who are gathering the courage they need from day to day to admit their wrongs - or having known all the while these things were wrong are now finding the strength to say so, since others are. We refer to man as an intelligent being, it's enough to make me laugh. We are evolving constantly and some have made much more headway than others - you young people are some of those.

Man is very early put on one track or another by his parents and society around him and there he stays for the remainder of his life. There are very few who have the intelligence to look about them - to see out of their environment and to over deviate from their set path. The ones who do are the brighter ones. The majority of people can be likened to a pack of sheep - witness the Germans in the last war. They could have been led either to good or to bad and since a madman came to power with a handful of followers they were led to their destruction.

Man is also as a rule so foolishly afraid to be "different". This is a frightening thing, a thing they cannot face. They must go in packs for protection. In a world like ours it is an honor to be different from the pack if one has the ability to think at all.

-2-

I am embarrassed to think that we sit up here and have the nerve to spur you kids on. We are not suffering, we are in no danger and it is easy to do. I am ashamed that we have no more to do than what we are doing. I do know, however, that unless you do what you are doing nothing will change - it will be another hundred years and someone else will have to do it - maybe.

There is nothing worth having in this kind of a society. We have been idiots to accept those conditions for so many years. I know that when we finally stand up and refuse to take any more of it that the whole thing will collapse. The Negro people have tremendous power and they have been unaware of it. The sleeping giant is waking, not only here but around the world. And so I can only beg of you, do not give up this fight for we shall surely win it.

Very sincerely yours

[Signature] N. Baker

Mrs. Nellie Baker

675 East 170 Street