Dean
[Jules] Heller [of the Department of Arts and Architecture],
members of the faculty and members of the student body of this
great institution of learning, ladies and gentlemen.
I did not
pause to say how delighted and honored to be here tonight and
to be part of your lecture series. It's always a rich and rewarding
experience when I can take a brief break from the day-to-day
demands of our struggle for freedom and human dignity and discuss
the issues involved in that struggle with college and university
students and concerned people of goodwill all over our nation
and over the world. So I can assure you it's a real pleasure
to be with you.
As has been
stated, I would like to use as a subject from which to speak
the future of integration. My basic theme for the evening is
that we have come a long, long way in the struggle for racial
justice, but we have a long, long way to go before the problem
is solved.
Now let us
begin by noticing that we have come a long, long way. I would
like to open this point by stating that the Negro himself has
come a long, long way in reevaluating his own intrinsic worth.
In order to illustrate this, a little history is necessary.
You will remember that it was in the year 1619 when the first
Negro slaves landed on the shores of this nation. They were
brought here from the shores of Africa. Unlike the Pilgrims
fathers who landed at Plymouth a year
Throughout
slavery, the Negro was treated in a very inhuman fashion. He
was a thing to be used, not a person to be respected. The famous
Dred Scott decision of 1857 well illustrated the status of the
Negro during slavery. In this decision, the Supreme Court said
in substance that the Negro is not a citizen of the United States;
he is merely property, subject to the dictates of his owner.
And it went on to say that the Negro has no rights that the
white man is bound to respect.
With the growth
of slavery it became necessary to give some justification for
it. It seems to be a fact of life that human beings cannot continue
to do wrong without eventually reaching out for some thin rationalization
to clothe an obvious wrong in the beautiful garments of righteousness.
This is exactly what happened. Even the Bible and religion was
misused to crystallize the patterns of the status quo. And so
from some pulpits it was argued that the Negro is inferior by
nature because of Noah's curse upon the children of Ham. And
the apostle Paul's dictum became a watchword: "Servants, be
obedient to your master." And then one brother had probably
read the logic of the great philosopher Aristotle. Aristotle
did a great deal to bring into being what we know as pharmacological
philosophy. And in pharmacologic you have a big word called
the syllogism, which has a major premise and a minor premise
and a conclusion. And so this brother decided to put his argument
of the inferiority of the Negro in the framework of an Aristotelian
syllogism. He came out with his major premise, all men are created
in the image of God. Then came his minor premise, God, as everybody
knows, is not a Negro. Therefore, the Negro is not a man. This
was the kind of reasoning that prevailed.
Living with
the conditions of slavery and then later segregation, many Negroes
lost faith in themselves, and many came to feel that perhaps
they were less than human, perhaps they were inferior. But then
something happened to the Negro. Circumstances made it possible
and necessary for him to travel more: the coming of the automobile,
the upheavals of two world wars, the Great Depression. So his
rural plantation background gradually gave way to urban industrial
life. And even his cultural life was gradually rising through
the steady decline of crippling illiteracy. And all of these
forces conjoined to cause the Negro to take a new look at himself.
The Negro masses all over began to reevaluate themselves, and
the Negro came to feel that he was somebody. His religion revealed
him that God loves all of his children, and that all men are
made in His image, that the basic thing about a man is not his
specificity but his fundamental, not the texture of his hair
or the color of his skin but his eternal dignity and worth.
And so the Negro could now unconsciously cry out with the eloquent
poet, "Fleecy locks and black complexion cannot forfeit nature's
claim. Skin may differ, but affection dwells in white and black
the same, and were I so tall as to reach the pole of the grasp
the ocean at a span, I must be measured by my soul; the mind
is the standard of the man."
With this
new sense of dignity and with this new sense of Determination
to struggle, suffer and sacrifice in order to be free. So in
a real sense we have come a long, long way since 1619. But not
only has the Negro come a long, long way in reevaluating his
own intrinsic worth; if we are to be true to the facts, we must
say that the whole nation has come a long, long way in extending
the frontiers of civil rights.
Fifty years
ago or even 25 years ago, a year had hardly passed when numerous
Negroes were not brutally lynched in the South by some vicious
mob. Lynchings have about ceased today, and this represents
progress. At the turn of the century, there were very few Negroes
registered to vote in the South. By 1948 that number had leaped
to 750,000. By 1960, it had leaped to about 1.2 million. And
when we went into the presidential elections some few weeks
ago, we had a few more than 2 million Negroes registered to
vote in the South, which means we have added more than 800,000
new Negro registered voters in the last three or four years,
far from what it ought to be, but it represents progress. We've
come a long, long way.
In the area
of economic justice we have seen some strides. The average Negro
wage-earner of today who happens to be employed earns 10 times
more than the average Negro wage-earner of 10 years ago. The
national income of the Negro is now better than $28 billion
a year, which is more than all of the exports of the United
States and more than the national budget of Canada. This reveals
that we have made some strides in the quest for economic justice.
But probably
more than in any other area, we have seen in our day and in
our age the gradual demise of the system of legal segregation.
Now, we all know the long history of segregation in our country.
It had its legal beginning in 1896, when the Supreme Court rendered
a decision known as the Plessy v. Ferguson decision, which established
the doctrine of separate but equal as the law of the land. And
for years we have lived with this Plessy doctrine, which ended
up plunging the Negro into the abyss of exploitation, where
he experienced the bleakness of nagging injustice. Then something
else happened. It was in the year 1954 that the Supreme Court
examined the legal body of segregation and pronounced it constitutionally
dead, and said in substance that the old Plessy doctrine must
go, that separate facilities are inherently unequal, and that
to segregate a child a child on the basis of his race is to
deny that child equal protection of the law. We have seen many,
many changes since that decision in 1954.
And then just
last year, on July 2, the president of out nation signed into
law a strong, comprehensive civil rights bill. I am happy to
say that since the signing of that bill, we have seen surprising
and extensive levels of compliance all across the South, particularly
in with reference to the public accommodations section of the
bill. Certainly there are still some pockets of resistance,
where we will have to do a great deal of work. We can all be
consoled by the fact that by and large, in cities and communities
and states all across the south, have responded to the civil
rights bill with amazing good sense and reasonableness. This
reveals that we have come a long, long way. And I am absolutely
convinced that the system of segregation is on its deathbed
today, and the only thing uncertain about it is how costly is
how costly the segregationists will make the funeral. We have
come a long, long way since 1896.
Now, this
would be a very fine and good place for me to end my speech
tonight. First, it would mean making a short speech, and this
would be a magnificent accomplishment for a Baptist preacher.
Second, it would mean that the problem is almost solved now
and that we don't have much to do. It would be a marvelous thing
if speakers all over our country could talk about this problem
in terms of the problem that once existed but that no longer
has existence. But if I stopped at this point, I would be merely
be stating a fact and not telling the truth. You know, a fact
is merely the absence of contradiction but truth is the presence
of coherence. Truth is the relatedness of facts. Now, it is
a fact that we have come a long, long way, but it isn't the
whole truth, and I am afraid that if I stop at this point, I
would leave you the victims of a dangerous optimism and I will
send you away victimized with an illusion wrapped in superficiality.
So in order to tell the truth it is necessary to move on and
not only say that we've come a long, long way, but we have a
long, long way to go before the problem of racial injustice
is solved.
I don't think
I have to point this out too much. We need only open our newspapers
and turn on our televisions, and we see with our own eyes that
this problem is still with us. We can look around in our communities,
wherever we live, and we will see it because no community in
our country can boast of clean hands in the area of brotherhood,
and so if we will only look, we will only notice the developments
in our nation, we will be objective enough and realistic enough
and honest enough to know that we have a long, long way to go.
I mentioned
that lynchings have about ceased, but other things are happening
just as tragic. Civil rights workers are still being brutally
murdered, simply because they are working for the ideals of
justice and freedom. And we can never forget the fact, that
not too long ago, four beautiful innocent, unoffending girls,
Negro girls, were killed in the church of God on Sunday morning.
We can never forget the fact that Medgar Evers was shot down
in Jackson, Miss., not too long ago. We can never forget the
fact that just this past summer, three civil rights workers
were brutally murdered in Philadelphia, Miss., and to this day
nothing has been done about it. This reveals that justice is
far from a reality.
Down in Mississippi
now they seem to have a new motto, not "attend the church of
your choice" but "burn the church of your choice." Since May
of last year, more than 45 Negro churches have burned down in
the state of Mississippi. This reveals that we are far from
the goal of freedom, far from the goal of brotherhood.
I mentioned
voter registration and the fact that we have about 2 million
Negroes registered to vote in the South, and I guess this looks
good on the surface, but we must see the other side. There are
still approximately 10 million Negroes still living in the South,
and about 6 million are of voting age. This means that there
are 4 million Negroes in the southern part of the United States
who are not registered to vote as voters. It is not merely because
of apathy and complacency here and there. Many of these persons
are not registered because all types of conniving methods are
still being used to keep the Negro from becoming a registered
voter. Complex literacy tests are still given, with questions
that a person with a Ph.D. in any field couldn't answer or a
person with a law degree from the best universities in our nation
couldn't answer, to the even more difficult question of "how
many bubbles do you find in a bar of soap." They tell me they
ask questions like that occasionally in some parts of Alabama
and Mississippi. And then in many instances individuals are
faced with threats of violence and outright acts of violence
if they seek to register and if they seek to vote.
In the last
few days my organization has been working in Selma, Ala., where
we have centered the struggle mainly around the right to vote.
And there is an accounting, For almost 16,000 Negroes, and only
about 250 are registered to vote, not because they don't want
to register, but because the registrars absolutely refuse to
register Negroes as voters. On Last Monday, we led more than
800 people down to the courthouse. Not a single one was registered.
On Tuesday we led a similar number down, and they were only
greeted with arrests from the brutal sheriff of Dallas County,
and the same thing on Wednesday. And at the pace at which they
are registering Negroes in Dallas County, it will take exactly
132 years to get half of the Negroes eligible to vote registered
in that county. This is the pattern throughout most of the so-called
Black Belt counties across the South.
If democracy
is to be a reality, this problem must be solved. And I think
now the time has come for the federal government to do much
more than it has ever done or ever dreamed of doing to make
justice a reality at the ballot box. I think the time has come
for federal registrars to be posted in every county where Negroes
cannot register. I think the time has come to make the process
even more simple than that. If local registrars refuse to register
Negroes, then some system must be set up where they can go directly
to the post office and register. This falls under the domain
of the president and of the federal government. Every obstacle
must be removed if we are to have a healthy and mature democracy.
Every obstacle must be moved that stands in the way of the Negro
becoming a registered voter. And so we still have a long, long
way to go in this area.
I mentioned
economic justice, and I used the figure $28 billion, which sounds
good and sounds large. But before we become too optimistic and
complacent, let me give you some other figures, which tell us
about a glaring gulf, a terrible gap that we still find in our
society. Forty-two percent of the Negro citizens of our country,
the Negro families of our country, still earn less than $2,000
a year, while just 17 percent of the white families earn less
than $2,000 a year. Twenty-one percent of the Negro families
of our country earn less than $1,000 a year, while six percent
of the white families earn less than $1,000 a year. Eighty-eight
percent of the Negro families of our country earn less than
$5,000 a year, while just 58 percent of the white families earn
less than $5,000 a year.
The problem
is becoming even more difficult today because of a denial of
educational opportunities, because of a denial of apprenticeship
training in so many instances. We as a people have been limited
to unskilled and semi-skilled labor by and large. Now a force
known as automation or cybernation, scrapping some 40,000 jobs
a week. The Negro is getting the double blow of outright discrimination
on the one hand and the inevitable shifts taking place in our
society as a result of automation. And I say if this problem
is to be solved there must be massive retraining programs, massive
public works programs, and this will be the way to somehow change
the injustices that we see, and bring about the new adjustments
necessary to survive in an automated society.
There is nothing
more tragic than to build a society with a segment of people
in that society who feel they have no stake in it, who feel
that they have nothing to lose, who walk around the streets
day in and day out with no jobs, who walk the streets day in
and day out feeling that life is little more than a long and
desolate corridor with no exit sign. These are the people who
will riot. These are the people who have lost a sense of hope
and out of despair turn to the methods that we all abhor. And
so economic justice must become a reality in order to meet and
solve all of the social problems that we face today.
I mentioned
the fact that segregation is gradually passing away. Here again
I must mention the other side. It may be true as I implied,
figuratively speaking, that Old Man Segregation is on his death
bed, but history has shown that social systems have a great
last-minute breathing power. The guardians of the status quo
are always on hand with their oxygen tents to keep the old order
alive. And so segregation is still with us. It is still confronted
in certain places in the South in its glaring and conspicuous
forms. And we still confront it all over the North in its hidden
and subtle forms. The battle in the days ahead will be to remove
these subtle forms. The battle will not be in the days ahead
to integrate a lunch counter. It will be to deal with the hardcore
problems of discrimination expressed in inadequate jobs, expressed
in ghettoized and in inadequate housing, expressed in de facto
segregation within the public schools. It will be much more
difficult to deal with these problems. Until the job problem
is solved, until the problem of housing discrimination is solved,
until the problem of de facto segregation in the public schools
is solved, we will still have a long, long way to go before
the American dream becomes a reality.
So segregation
is still with us. I am absolutely convinced that if democracy
is to live, segregation must die. Racial segregation is a cancer
in the body politic which must be removed before our moral health
can be realized. And so the challenge ahead is to work passionately
and unrelentingly to remove racial injustice from every area
of our nation's life. In order to do this, it will be necessary
to develop a powerful, creative action program. This problem
will not solve itself. It will not work itself out. Massive
action programs will be necessary all over the nation in order
to remove the last vestiges of segregation and discrimination.
Now if we
are going to have this kind of massive action program that is
necessary to solve the problem, we've got to get rid of one
or two false notions that are disseminated around our nation,
false ideas and myths that are constantly circulated.
Now, one is
the myth of time. You've heard this idea. It is the notion that
only time can solve the problem. It is the idea that we must
somehow sit down comfortably by the wayside and wait on time.
The individuals who believe in this constantly say to the Negro
and his allies in the white community, "Just be nice and just
be patient and don't disturb the peace and just continue to
pray, and in a hundred or 200 years the problem will just work
itself out. Only time can solve the problem."
I think there
is an answer to that myth. It is that time is neutral. It can
be used either constrictively or destructively. I must honestly
say to you tonight that I feel that the forces of ill will in
our nation, the extreme rightists of our nation, the forces
committed to negative ends of our nation have used time much
more effectively than the forces of goodwill. And it may well
be that we will have repent in this generation not merely for
the vitriolic words and the violent actions of the bad people
who would bomb a church in Birmingham, Ala., but for the appalling
silence of the good people who sit around and say, "Wait on
time." Somewhere we must see that human progress never rolls
in on the wheels of inevitability. It comes through the tireless
efforts and the persistent work of dedicated individuals willing
to be coworkers with God, and without this hard work, time itself
becomes an ally of the primitive forces of social stagnation.
We must help time, and we must constantly realize that the time
is always right to do right.
Now, there
is another myth that is constantly circulated. It is the notion
that legislation really can't solve this problem; it doesn't
really have a role. Of course, you've heard this: There are
those individuals who say the main thing is to change the heart,
and you can't change the heart through legislation. I think
there is an answer to that myth. It may be true that morality
cannot be legislated, but behavior can be regulated. It may
be true that the law cannot change the heart, but it can restrain
the heartless. It may be true that you cannot legislate integration
but you can legislate desegregation. It may even be true that
the law can't make a man love me, but it can restrain him from
lynching me, and I think that's pretty important also. So while
the law may not be able to change the hearts of men, it does
the change the habits of men. When you change the habits of
men, pretty soon the attitudes and the hearts will be change.
There is a
need for strong civil rights legislation. I think there is a
need for additional legislation on the federal level, particularly
in the area of voter registration. I think there is a need for
federal legislation to grapple with other issues in the housing
area and others. But I think, even more, it is necessary for
every state to have strong civil rights legislation, to deal
with the problems I mentioned earlier, namely job discrimination,
segregated housing and segregated educational facilities. There
is a need for every state to have a strong FEPC (Fair Employment
Practices Commission) bill; there is a need for every state
to have a strong housing law outlawing discrimination in housing,
and I think, with this kind of legislative thrust, we can see
many, many changes in the future and this will help us a great
deal to go this additional distance to make justice a reality.
Now along
with all of this, it would be necessary to continue what we
refer to as direct action against injustice, where individuals
are willing to present their very bodies and their very lives
in order to rectify the social evils that may engulf the community.
And this is what we have seen across the past few years, powerful
direct action programs that have brought about many changes
all over the South and all over the United States. And, of course,
I believe that this direct action program must be undergirded
with a creative philosophy and a powerful method, namely the
method of nonviolent resistance.
Now, I'd like
to take a few minutes just to say a few words about nonviolence
since it has been at the center of our struggle and has been
the basic philosophical system that has undergirded our struggle,
so to speak. May I say that I am still absolutely convinced
that nonviolence is a most potent weapon available to oppressed
people in their struggle for justice and human dignity. It has
a way of disarming the opponent. It exposes his moral defenses.
It weakens his morale and at the same time it works on his conscience,
and he just doesn't know how to handle it. If he doesn't beat
you, wonderful. If he beats you, you'll develop the quiet courage
of accepting blows without retaliating. If he doesn't put you
in jail, wonderful; nobody with any sense loves to go to jail.
But if he puts you in jail, you go in that jail and transform
it from a dungeon of shame to a haven of freedom and human dignity.
Even if he tries to kill you, you develop the inner conviction
that there are some things so dear, some things so precious,
some things so eternally true that they are worth dying for,
and if a man has not discovered something that he will die for,
he isn't fit to live. This is what the nonviolent discipline
says, and I submit to you this evening that there is power here
and there is something here that can change social situations.
There is another
thing about nonviolence; it gives one ways to struggle to secure
moral ends through moral means. One of the great debates of
history, mainly through philosophical circles, has been over
the whole question of ends and means. There have always been
those who argue that the end justifies the means. This is where
nonviolence would break with their idea that the end justifies
the means because in the real sense, the end is preexistent
in the means. The means represents the ideal and the making
and the end in process. In the long run of history, destructive
means cannot bring about constructive ends, and it is a marvelous
thing to have a method of struggle which says that means and
ends must cohere. The means that we use to get to the noble
end of integration and brotherhood must be as pure as the end
that we seek.
That is another
thing about nonviolence; when one is true to it in its essence
and true to it in its most genuine expression, that is that
the love ethic stands at the center. In other words, it becomes
possible to struggle against an unjust system and yet maintain
an attitude of active good will toward the perpetrators of that
unjust system. Now when I get to this point people always question
me; they begin to say, "What in the world do you mean? How can
you love people who are oppressing you and are seeking to destroy
you and who would use to violence to block your just and legitimate
aspirations?" I always have to stop and try to explain what
I mean at this point, because when I talk about love I'm not
talking about emotional bosh; I'm not talking about a weak sentimental,
affectionate emotion. I'm talking about something much deeper.
It would be nonsense for me or anybody to stand up and love
their violent oppressors in an affectionate sense.
Fortunately
the Greek language comes to our aid at this point. There are
three words in Greek for love. There is the word eros. Eros
is a sort of aesthetic love. Plato talks about it a great deal
in his dialogues, a yearning in the soul for the realm of the
divine. It has come to us to be a sort of romantic love, and
in this sense we all know about eros, we have experienced it
and read about it in all of the beauties of literature. In a
sense Edgar Allen Poe was talking about eros when he was talking
about his beautiful Annabelle Lee with a love surrounded by
the halo of eternity. In a sense Shakespeare was talking about
eros when he said, "love is not love which alters when it alteration
finds or bends with a remover to remove. It is an ever fixed
mark that looks on tempests and is never shaken, it is a star
to every wandering bark." You know, I can remember it because
I used to quote it to my wife when we were courting. That's
eros.
Then the Greek
language talks about phileo, which is another level of love.
On this level you love because you are loved. It is a reciprocal
love. You love the people that you like, the people that you
get along with. This is friendship. Then the Greek language
comes out with the word agape. Agape is more than aesthetic
or romantic love; agape is more than friendship. Agape is understanding,
creative, redemptive good will for all men. It is an overflowing
love which seeks nothing in return. Theologians would say it
is the love of God operating in the human heart. And when one
rises to love on this level, he loves the person who does the
evil deed while hating the deed that the person does. I think
this is what Jesus meant when he said "Love your enemies," and
I am happy he didn't say, "Like your enemies," because it is
pretty difficult to like some people, and I must confess I find
it hard some of the things that Sen. Eastland and Sen. Stennis
and Sen. Thurmond and Gov. Wallace and Gov. Barnett are doing.
I really find it difficult to like what they are doing and to
like them, but Jesus said love them, and love is greater than
like. Love is understanding, creative, redemptive good will
for all men. And when it becomes a great and powerful love,
it becomes a demanding love which demands justice. It becomes
a love that says in substance, "You are your brother's keeper,
and you have a moral responsibility to lead him from his evil
ways." And I think this is the kind of love ethic, I think this
is the kind of attitude, that will help us rise from dark yesterdays
to bright and noble tomorrows.
I think it
will help those of us who have been on the oppressed end emerging
with the right attitude. We will not seek to rise from a position
of disadvantage to one of advantage, thereby subverting justice.
We will not seek to substitute one tyranny for another. We will
know that a doctrine of black supremacy is as dangerous as the
doctrine of white supremacy, and that God is not interested
merely in the freedom of brown men and yellow men and black
men; God is interested in the freedom of the whole human race
and the creation of a society where all men will live together
as brothers, and every man will respect the dignity and the
worth of human personality. So with hard, determined work, undergirded
by a philosophy of nonviolence, I believe we will be able to
go this additional distance in the days ahead.
If we are
to solve this problem, men and women of good will, students
all over this country must develop a sort of divine discontent.
You know, there are certain technical words within every academic
discipline that soon become stereotypes and clichés.
Every academic discipline has its technical nomenclature. Modern
psychology has a word that is probably used more than other
word in psychology. It is the word "maladjusted."
Certainly
we all want to live the well-adjusted life in order to avoid
neurotic and schizophrenic personalities. But I must honestly
say to you tonight, my friends, that there are some things in
our nation and some things in the world which I am proud to
be maladjusted, in which I call all men of goodwill to be maladjusted
until the good society is realized.
I must honestly
say to you that I never intend to adjust myself to segregation
and discrimination. I never intend to adjust myself to religious
bigotry. I never intend to become adjusted to economic conditions
which will take necessities from the many to give luxuries to
the few. I never intend to adjust to the madness of militarism
and the self-defeating effects of physical violence, for in
a day when Sputniks and Explorers are dashing through outer
space, and guided ballistic missiles are carving highways of
death through the stratosphere, no nation can win a war. It
is no longer the choice between violence and nonviolence, it
either nonviolence or nonexistence. The alternative to disarmament,
the alternative to a greater suspension of nuclear tests, the
alternative to strengthening the United Nations, and thereby
disarming the whole world, may well be a civilization plunged
into the abyss of annihilation.
So it may
well be that our world is in dire need of a new organization,
the International Association for the Advancement of Creative
Maladjustment, men and women who will be as maladjusted as the
prophet Amos, who in the midst of the injustices of his day,
could cry out in words that echo across the centuries, "Let
justice roll down like waters and righteousness like a mighty
stream"; as maladjusted as Abraham Lincoln, who had the vision
to see that this nation could not survive half slave and half
free; as maladjusted as Thomas Jefferson, who in the midst an
age amazingly adjusted to slavery, could etch across the pages
of history words lifted to cosmic proportions, "We hold these
truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that
they are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights
, and among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness";
as maladjusted as Jesus Christ, who could say to the men and
women around the hills of Galilee, "Love your enemies; bless
them that curse you; pray for them that despitefully use you,"
and who could go on to say, "He who lives by the sword will
perish by the sword." Through such maladjustment, we will be
able to emerge from the bleak and desolate midnight of man's
inhumanity to man to the bright and glittering daybreak of freedom
and justice.
And I say
to you that I still have faith in America, and I have still
have the faith to believe that we will solve this problem. We
have the resources in this nation to solve it and I believe
that gradually we are gaining the will to solve it, and that
is developing a coalition of conscience on the question of racial
injustice, and I would hope that in the days ahead, the forces
of goodwill will work even harder in order to go this additional
distance in order to make the brotherhood of man a reality all
over America.
I know that
there are still some difficult days ahead, that there is still
much work to be done, and I know that some of us so often have
to stand amid the surging movement of life's restless sea, constantly
face chilly winds of adversity, but in spite of this I still
believe that we will solve this problem. Oh, every now and then
it becomes difficult to believe it, but I will never lose that
faith. Living every day amid the threat of death, living amid
the agony of the tensions that inevitably come as a result of
being on the front lines of the struggle, one is tempted to
despair at moments, but we have a theme song in our movement,
and I will continue to sing it because I believe it: "We shall
overcome, we shall overcome, deep in my heart I do believe we
shall overcome. "
Now, before
the victory's won, some of us will have to get scarred up a
bit, but we shall overcome. Before the victory is won, some
more will be thrown into crowded and frustrating jail cells,
but we shall overcome. Before the victory is won, some will
be called bad names, some will be called Reds and Communists
because they believe in the brotherhood of man, but we shall
overcome. Before the victory is won, some more may have to face
physical death, but if physical death is the price that some
must pay to free their children and their white brothers from
an eternal psychological death and eternal death of the spirit,
then nothing can be more redemptive. Yes, we shall overcome,
because the arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward
justice.
We shall overcome
because Carlyle is right, no lie can live forever. We shall
overcome because William Cullen Bryant is right, truth crushed
to earth will rise again. We shall overcome because there is
something in the very structure of the cosmos that justifies
James Russell Lowell in saying, "Truth forever on the scaffold,
wrong forever on the throne, yet that scaffold sways the future,
and behind the dim unknown standeth God within the shadow, keeping
watch above his own. "With this faith, we will be able to hew
out of the mountain of despair the stone of hope; with this
faith we will be able to transform the jangling discords of
our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this
faith, we will be able to speed up the day when all of God's
children all over this nation, black men and white men, Jews
and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics will be able to join
hands and sing in the world of the old Negro spiritual, "Free
at last, free at last, thank God almighty, we are free at last."
Thank you.
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