Author Unknown (New Yorker?)

[Jesse] Jackson grew up with great oratory, of course – but, he said, he’d always been most impressed by the power of simplicity. “There’s something about the sound of the genuine. You know it when you hear it. I remember once in South Carolina, way back when I was a kid, a singing group, the Five Blind Boys of Mississippi, came to our church. They had a tenor named Archie Brownlee with a really sweet voice. And before they sang that day Archie Brownlee said, ‘This is my last tour through the South. And I hope you’ll forgive me if there’s a little liquor on my breath’ – now this was in a church, and so there was some rustling in the pines -–’‘but I’m not using it for pleasure. I have the cancer, and I need it to ease the pain… But don’t worry about me, because I’m going across the river. I hear there’s a man on the other side who cures cancer, and can make the blind to see.’ Well, the place just went crazy. The power of a simple truth.”