Posted By: Anthony Powell
Date: Saturday, 9 August 2003, at 10:03 a.m.

In Response To: Re: Harlem Hellfighters (Tony Dorty)

Hello, again just reviewing some interviews I conducted many years ago that seem to fit what we have been talking about! In 1926 a year before my granddad retired he and Warrent Officer Vance Marchbanks, spoke at a local black church near old Fort Apache, Arizona remember these words spoken by these colored men so many years ago!

"A short time ago President Coolidge said"I do not believe there can be permanent prosperity which does not rest on the everlasting foundation of Justice." Let us hope that the time will come when opportunities and accommodations, justice in the country, justice in the communities and equal rights in all respects will not be denied any person on account of race or color. We love this country, its ours, our blood has been shed here, our grandfathers and grandmothers are buried here. We realize that there are benefits derived from this civilization established here and we are willing to pay to the last drop of blood the debt we owe this country. But my friends we will never be able to get what we want in this country until we are willing to organize and stand together as one man on things essential to the welfare of our people as a whole.
I have been designated to give you a talk on my memories as a trooper at Fort Apache, but I am fully pursuaded by the dictations of my mind to also give you some of my ideas as an American citizen and a man who loves his people and has their welfare at jeart. I cannot hope to change the social and moral conditions or the political conditions as they effect my people in the United States. You cannot change them, but 15,000,000 people can change them. If you want equal rights in this country, if you want to make yourselves felt, if you do not want your children to wait long years before they have the bread on the table, the leisure in their lives they ought to have, the opportunity in life the ought to have; if you do not want to wait yourselves, write on your banner so that every political trimmer can read it; so that every politician no matter how short sighted he may be can read it,'WE NEVER FORGET, WE NEVER FORGET, WE NEVER FORGET".