What’s Up With the Ending?

And it is happening on a wider scale. Too many of the more militant leaders are preaching Negro superiority. I pray that the Negro will not miss his chance to rise to greatness, to build from the strength gained through his past suffering and, above all, to rise beyond vengeance.
If some spark does set the keg afire, it will be a senseless tragedy of ignorant against ignorant, injustice answering injustice—a holocaust that will drag down the innocent and right-thinking masses of human beings.

Then we will all pay for not having cried for justice long ago. (38.12)

One moment we're talking to a black kid, and the next moment Griffin is giving us explicit commentary on the future of race relations in America. Talk about whiplash-inducing changes of tone. This part of the book is totally different from any other part, and it's clear that Griffin is talking directly to the reader. This isn't about the past; this is about the future.

Griffin basically ends the book asking black people not to become violent against white people. He just wants peace between the races. Of course, he's not just saying this out of the blue. Things were changing in the two years it took for Griffin to publish this book.

While some civil-rights leaders, like Martin Luther King Jr., were fighting for equality using nonviolent means, other people were not so peaceful. Black nationalist leaders like Malcolm X believed that black people were superior to white people, and advocated the use of self-defense by any means necessary, including violence.

So this is Griffin's way of saying, in an eloquent journalistic manner, "Can we all just get along?"