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This I Believe 19xx.xx.xx Floyd Cramer
00:04:22
This I Believe 19xx.xx.xx Floyd Cramer
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- [00:01]
A
This I believe. Floyd Kramer is a bank president. The son of an Arkansas farmer, he went to New York in 1927 to become a bank guard. He got lost on Wall street and wound up instead with a job at the New York Trust as a messenger boy. Fourteen years later, he organized the Washington Heights Federal Savings and Loan association in New York City. Here now is the creed of Floyd Kramer.
- [00:26]
B
I was born in one of the southern states almost 40 years after the collapse of the Confederacy. As a child, I listened to many stories about the old south and how much better life was before the war. I heard much about a luxury that had faded. It seemed to me that everything my people had possessed had been taken away from them by cruel and misunderstanding enemies, generally referred to as the north or the Yankees. For several years I hated that enemy and couldn't possibly understand why it had invaded the land of my people and had deprived them of so much. This feeling remained with me until I grew old enough to think for myself. And as I grew older and thought more and more for myself, I began to realize that there was a little bit more to the story than I had learned. I came to understand American history a little better and the great issue that slavery had presented. In the middle of the last century, I saw the great figure of Abraham Lincoln walk across the stage of American history. I saw and felt the conflicting forces of civil war, the terrible passions aroused, the hatreds and the bloodshed of a people fighting itself. I saw and relived again a period when brother fought brother and a nation turned against itself. I was glad that all this had preceded me. But there were other things that I also saw, things that remained with my people and with me. These were the lingering animosities, the feelings of a defeated people which carried forward from generation to generation. There was the sectionalism still with us. But most of all, and worst of all, there was a helplessness of a people crying over spilt milk, milk that had been spilt more than 40 years before. The south had physically recovered more than it had recovered mentally. This troubled me. It troubled me because I could not understand it. I belonged to a new generation. The Civil War and all that followed, it was in the past. As a boy in my teens, I came to clearly believe that the whole south could resurrect itself almost immediately if its people could find the will to do so. As a man today, I am glad that this has largely happened and that it is continuing to happen before my very eyes. But out of all this, there came to me a fervent belief that I myself can create for myself whatever I want if I will it. Every individual seems to be imbued by his Creator with the power to do anything for himself that he wishes. The only requirement is that he believe that he can do it. There are always with us individuals, groups of individuals, in fact, whole nations steeped in despair because they like the will to lift themselves out of this despair. For myself, I have seen enough of life to convince me that this is true. I know many men and women today who have created for themselves a position in the world which they wanted because they have wanted it badly enough to put other things aside and to work for it. But their success is mostly due to the fact that they believed in themselves and believed in their ability to reach their goals. No amount of money or no other advantage can compensate for a lack of faith in one's own self. After all is said and done, the fact remains that I can reach in this life whatever goal I cherish if I believe that I can do so.
- [04:12]
A
That was Floyd Kramer, a New York banker who has always fought for better interracial relations and is an active member of the Urban League.