RPW to Broggi letter 1/8/66 searchable text

[Manuscript notes, probably archival, in top margin: "Publisher of Who Speaks for the Negro"    "Who Speaks for the Negro?"]

2495 Redding Road, Fairfield, Connecticut, January 8, 1966

Dear Miss Broggi:

          I am sorry to be slow in answering your kind letter of December 22, but I have only come back now from my vacation.  I appreciate the effort you have put into working out your suggested cuts, and in large part I accept them.  But I do have some counter-suggestions.

          Among the Negroes cut out entirely by your suggestion would be Adam Clayton Powell (pp 132-144); Roy Wilkins (pp 144-157); and James Farmer.  Now Powell is the most powerful Negro, politically, in the United States – the only Negro who has actually made aplace [a place] for himself in national politics.  Furthermore, he has a vast symbolic meaning for Negroes.  As for Wikkins, [Wilkins] he is the head of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the most powerful Negro organization, the pioneer in the whole civil rights struggle; and he personally is the spokesman for a very important segment of Negro opinion.  Farmer is the head of the Congressof [Congress of] Racial Equality, a more militant organization, and a man of great personal force.  It seems to me that we simply cannot ignore these men

          You also suggest cutting a few pages at the beginning of King’s section – but those pages put his whole action in Montgomery in perspective

          You cut Carl Rowan (pp 305-313), who is not of the rank of Powell, Wilkins, and Farmer as a “leader,” but who has been head of the United States Information Agency, one of the nost [most] sensitive spots in our relations abroad, and who is a famous journalist.

          To come to the last chapter, I don’t see how the book can be left without some sort of summing up, some indication of the forces and their direction, plus, I may say, some indication of my personal attitudes.

          To turn to what I propose, I am sending a copy of the book by air, with my markings.  These are in RED for my suggested cuts.  I have restored Powell, Wilkins, Farmer, and a fraction of Chapter VI.  To compensate for the material I have thus added, I have made a number of incidental cuts along the way, sometimes only a paragraph at a time.  I have taken out Walker (pp 221-232).

          To compar , [compare] in space, my cuts with yours, I have something like this:

                             (SEE page 2)

[Page 2 is missing from the document]