Activists From The United States

"The strong man holds in a living blend strongly marked opposites. The idealists are usually not realistic, and the realists are not usually idealistic. The militant are not generally known to be passive, nor the passive to be militant. Seldom are the humble self-assertive, or the self-assertive humble. But life at its best is a creative synthesis of opposites in fruitful harmony. The philosopher Hegel said that truth is found neither in the thesis nor the antithesis, but in the emergent synthesis which reconciles the two."

"It is no longer a choice between violence and non-violence; it is either non-violence or non-existence. The alternative to disarmament, the alternative to suspension of nuclear tests, the alternative to strengthening the United Nations and disarming the whole world may well be a civilization plunged into the abyss of annihilation. I never intend to become adjusted to the madness of militarism, and maybe the great need of our nation and our world today is for a society of the creative maladjusted, 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 exist half slave and half free. As maladjusted as Thomas Jefferson, who in the midst of an age amazingly adjusted to slavery could cry out in words lifted to cosmic proportions, "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal. As maladjusted as Jesus of Nazareth, who in the midst of the fascinating and intricate military machinery of the Roman Empire could cry out, "He who lives by the sword will perish by the sword," and also, "Love your enemies; bless them that curse you, pray for them that do spitefully use you." And I believe that such maladjustment will help us emerge from the bleak and desolate midnight of man's inhumanity to man into the bright and glittering daybreak of freedom and justice. And then we will be able to go that additional distance, and we will speed up the day when all of God's children, white men and black men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands right here in America and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, "Free at last, free at last! Thank God Almighty we are free at last!""

"I say to you in very honest terms that there are some things in our social order and in the world to which I'm proud to be maladjusted, and I would hope the men of good will will be maladjusted to these same things until the good society is realized. I never intend to adjust myself to segregation and discrimination. I never intend to become adjusted to religious bigotry. I never intend to adjust myself to the madness of militarism and the self-defeating effects of physical violence."

"God is not interested merely in the freedom of black men and brown men and any other 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 where every man will respect the dignity and the worth of human personality. This is what we work for and this is the good society which we must seek in America. But it will not come until enough people are willing to stand up and mobilize forces of good will, to seek to implement that which is just and right."

"We have come to the point where we are able to say to those who will even use violence to block us, we will match you capacity to inflict suffering with our capacity to endure suffering. We will meet you physical force with soul force. Do to us what you will, and we will still love you. We cannot in all good conscience obey your unjust laws, because noncooperation with evil is as much a moral obligation as is cooperation with good. And so throw us in jail, and we will still love you. Bomb our homes and threaten our children, and, as difficult as it is, we will still love you."

"Agape is more than aesthetic or romantic love. Agape is more than friendship. Agape is creative, redemptive good for all men. It is an overflowing love which seeks nothing in return. Theologians would say that it is the love of God operating in the human heart, and when one rises to love on this level, he loves every man, not because he likes that particular person, but because God loves him, and he rises to the level of loving the person who does the evil deed, while hating the deed that the person does. And I think that this is what Jesus meant when he said, "Love your enemies," and I'm happy that he didn't say "Like you enemies," because it's pretty difficult to like some people. "Like" is affectionate, "like" is sentimental at points, and it's pretty difficult to like somebody bombing your home or threatening your children, or seeking to destroy you. It's pretty difficult to like them, but Jesus says, love them, and "love" is greater than "like." "Love" is understanding, creative good will, for all men, and I believe firmly that it is this kind of love that will lead us on through this period of transition, and make it possible for us to achieve the real society of brotherhood."

"Now when I talk about love, I'm not talking about emotional bosh; I'm not talking about some weak, sentimental something; I'm talking about something strong and powerful. I'm talking about something that is active good will, not just a passive, dead something."

"One of the great philosophical debates of the centuries has been over the whole question of ends and means. There have been those individuals from Machiavelli on down who argued that the end justifies the means. Sometimes systems of government have followed this theory. Listen to Lenin as he says "Lying, deceit, violence, concealing and withholding the truth are all justifiable means to bring about the end of the classless society." This is the great weakness and tragedy of communism and any other system that argues that the end justifies the means, for in a real sense, the end is pre-existent in the means; the means represent the ideal in the making, and the end in process. In the long run of history, immoral means cannot bring about moral ends. Destructive means cannot bring about constructive goals. The beauty of non-violence is that is makes it possible for the individual to struggle to secure moral ends through moral means. Another thing about it is that is makes it possible for the individual to apply the love-ethic in the struggle for freedom and justice. It makes it possible for the individual to place love at the center of his life, and thereby transform a social situation. This is the beauty of non-violence, because hate is always injurious. It is as injurious to the hater as it is to the hated. Psychiatrists are telling us now of many of the strange things that have happened in the subconscious. Many of the inner conflicts are rooted in hate, and so they are saying now, love or perish. And the beauty of non-violence is that it is possible to fight war without violence, and it is possible to struggle for that which is right with love in one's heart."

"If integration is to be a reality, the Negro must struggle for it. And so the Negro must continue to work through legislation; he must continue to work to double the number of registered voters, so that he political climate can be changed; he must continue to work through the courts, and get the law clarified and the Constitution clear on this issue. Then even after working in these areas, he must understand that a court order can only declare rights; it can never thoroughly deliver them. And only when people themselves begin to act, are rights which are on thin paper given life blood. And so the Negro must supplement all that is done through legislation, through voting, and through the courts with non-violent direct action."

"There is also need for leadership and concern on the part of white people of good will in the North, if this problem is to be solved. Genuine liberalism on the question of race. And what we too often find in the North is a sort of quasi-liberalism based on the principle of looking objectively at all sides, and it is a liberalism that gets so involved in looking at all sides, that it doesn't get committed to either side. It is a liberalism that is so objectively analytical that it fails to get subjectively committed. It is a liberalism that is neither hot nor cold but lukewarm. And we must come to see that his problem in the United States is not a sectional problem, but a national problem. No section of our country can boast of clean hands in the area of brotherhood. It is one thing for a white person of good will in the North to rise up with righteous indignation when a bus is burned in Anniston, Alabama, with freedom riders, or when a nasty mob assembles around a University of Mississippi, and even goes to the point of killing and injuring people to keep one Negro out of the university, or when a Negro is lynched or churches burned in the South; but that same person of good will must rise up with the same righteous indignation when a Negro in his state or in his city cannot live in a particular neighborhood because of the color of his skin, or cannot join a particular academic society or fraternal order or sorority because of the color of his or her skin, or cannot get a particular job in a particular firm because her happens to be a Negro. In other words, a genuine liberalism will see that the problem can exist even in one's front and back yard, and injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere."

"I would not have you believe for one minute tonight that there are not white persons of good will in the South. I am absolutely convinced that there are hundred and thousands, nay millions of white people of good will in the South, but most of them are silent today because of fear — fear of political, social and economic reprisal. God grant that the people of good will will rise up with courage, take over the leadership, and open channels of communication between races, for I think that one of the tragedies of our whole struggle is that the South is still trying to live in monologue, rather than dialogue, and I am convinced that men hate each other because they fear each other. They fear each other because that don't know each other and they don't know each other because they don't communicate with each other, and they don't communicate with each other because they are separated from each other. And God grant that something will happen to open channels of communication, that something will happen because men of good will will rise to the level of leadership."

"Education does have a great role to play in this period of transition. But it is not either education or legislation; it is both education and legislation. It may be true that morality cannot be legislated, but behavior can be regulated. It may be true that the law cannot make a man love me, but it can keep him from lynching me, and I think that's pretty important also. It may be true that the law cannot change the heart, but it can restrain the heartless, and this is what we often so and we have to do in society through legislation. We must depend on religion and education to change bad internal attitudes, but we need legislation to control the external effects of those bad internal attitudes. And so there is a need for meaningful civil right legislation."

"Time is neutral. It can be used either constructively or destructively, and I'm convinced that in many points the people of ill will in the United States have used time much more effectively than the people of good will. It may well be that we will have to repent in this generation not merely for the vitriolic words and actions of the bad people, but for the appalling silence of the good people. Something must come to remind us that human progress never rolls in on the wheels of inevitability; evolution may be true in the biological realm — at that point Darwin is right; but when a Herbert Spencer seeks to apply it to the whole of society, there is very little evidence for it. Human progress comes through the tireless efforts and the persistent work of dedicated individuals who are willing to be co-workers with God. Without this hard work, time itself becomes the ally of the primitive forces of irrational emotionalism and social stagnation. And so we must help time, and realize that the time is always ripe to do right."

"The forces of good will must be mobilized in order to go the additional distance and make integration and the brotherhood of man a reality. First, the federal government must use all of its constitutional authority to enforce the law of the land. As we look back over the years, we must honestly admit that only one branch of the government has given consistent, forthright, vigorous leadership, namely the judicial branch of the government, but the executive and legislative branches of the government have been all too apathetic, all too silent, and sometimes hypocritical. The time has come for all of the branches of the federal government to work in a vigorous manner to make integration a reality."

"I know that there are those that are saying to the individuals who are involved in the freedom struggle, slow up for a while; you're pushing things too fast. Or they may say, adopt a policy of moderation. Well, if moderation means moving on toward the goal of justice, with wise restraint and calm reasonableness, then moderation is a great virtue, which all men of good will must seek to achieve during this tense period of transition. But if moderation means slowing up in the move for freedom, capitulating to the undemocratic practices of the guardians of a deadening status quo, then moderation is a tragic vice which all men of good will must condemn. The fact is, we can't afford to slow up. We have our self-respect to maintain, but even more than that, because of our love for democracy and because of our love for America, we can't afford to slow up."

"Even in terms of breaking down the barriers of segregation, there is still much to be done. It may be true, as I just said, figuratively speaking that old man segregation is on his deathbed. But history has proven that social systems have a great last-minute breathing power, and 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. We still confront it in the South in its glaring and conspicuous forms. We still confront it in every other section of this country in its hidden and subtle forms. But if democracy is to live, segregation must die, for racial segregation is a cancer in the body politic. Segregation must be removed before our moral and democratic health can be realized."

"All types of conniving methods are still being used to keep Negroes from becoming registered voters. Complex literacy tests are often given, with questions that a Ph. D. in any field or a person with a law degree from any great law university in the world could not answer to the even more difficult question of, how many bubbles do you find on a bar of soap? They tell me that occasionally they will ask that question in Mississippi and Alabama. And there are still millions of Negroes who are not registered to vote because of these methods being used."

"It is one of the strange ironies of history, that in a nation founded on the principle that all men are created equal, men are still arguing over whether the color of a man's skin determines the content of his character."

"If I stopped at this point, I would be merely stating a fact, and not telling the truth. You see, 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've come a long, long way, but it isn't the whole truth. In order to tell the truth, it would be necessary to add the other part, and I'm afraid that if I stopped at this point, I would leave you the victims of a dangerous optimism. If I stopped here, I would leave you the victims of an illusion wrapped in superficialities. 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 that we've a long, long way to go before the American dream is a reality, before this problem is solved."

"The old order of segregation is gradually passing away. To put it figuratively and in Biblical language, we've broken loose from the Egypt of slavery, and we have moved through the wilderness of racial segregation, and now we stand on the border of the promised land of integration. There can be no gainsaying of the fact that the system of segregation is on its deathbed today, and the only thing uncertain about it is how costly the South will make the funeral. This reveals that we've come a long, long way since 1896."

"The whole nation has come a long, long way in extending the frontiers of civil rights. If we are true to the facts, we must admit this. Twenty-five years ago, a year hardly passed when numerous Negroes were not brutally lynched by some vicious mob in the South. Today lynchings have about ceased. Twenty-five years ago, most of the states in the South had what was known as a poll-tax. The poll-tax system was cleverly contrived to keep many, many Negroes from becoming registered voters. Today the poll-tax has been eliminated in all but four states. And just a few weeks ago, Congress unanimously passed a bill amending the Constitution calling for an end to the poll-tax in all federal elections."

"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 the obvious wrong in the beautiful garments of righteousness. The philosopher-psychologist William James used to talk a great deal about the stream of consciousness. He says that the very interesting and unique thing about human nature is that man had the capacity temporarily to block the stream of consciousness and place anything in it that he wants to, and so we often end up justifying the rightness of the wrong. This is exactly what happened during the days of slavery. Even the Bible and religion were misused to crystallize the patterns of the status quo. And so it was argued from pulpits across the nation that the Negro was inferior by nature, because of Noah's curse upon the children of Ham. The apostle Paul's dictum became a watchword: Servants, be obedient to your master. And then one brother had probably studied the logic of the great philosopher Aristotle. You know Aristotle did a great deal to bring into being what we know as formal logic, and he talked about the syllogism, which had a major premise and a minor premise and a conclusion. And so this brother could put his argument in the framework of an Aristotelian syllogism. He could say, All men are made in the image of God. This was the major premise; then came the minor premise: God, as everybody knows, is not a Negro. Therefore, the Negro is not a man. This was the type of reasoning that prevailed."

"It was in the year 1619 that the first Negro slaves landed on the shores of this nation. They were brought here form the shores of Africa. Unlike the pilgrim fathers who landed at Plymouth a year later, there were brought here against their will. Throughout slavery, the Negro was treated in a very inhuman fashion. He was a thing that was used, not a person to be respected. He was little more than a depersonalized cog in a vast plantation machine. The famous Dred Scott decision of 1857 well illustrated the status of the Negro during slavery, for in this decision, the Supreme Court of the nation said that the Negro was not a citizen of the United States, he was merely property subject to the dictates of his owner."

"It is interesting to notice that the extreme pessimist and the extreme optimist agree on at least one point. They both feel that we must sit down and do nothing in the area of race relations. The extreme optimist says do nothing because integration is inevitable. The extreme pessimist says do nothing because integration is impossible. But there is a third attitude that can be taken, namely the realistic position. The realist in this area seeks to combine the truths of two opposites, while avoiding the extremes of both, and so the realist would agree with the optimist that we have come a long, long way in grappling with this problem, but he would balance that by agreeing with the pessimist that we have a long, long way to go before the problem is solved in the United States. And it is this realistic position that I would like to use as a basis for our thinking together as we think of progress and as we think of the future of integration."

"There is but one way to commemorate the Emancipation Proclamation. That is to make its declarations of freedom real; to reach back to the origins of our nation when our message of equality electrified an unfree world, and reaffirm democracy by deeds as bold and daring as the issuance of the Emancipation Proclamation."

"Beyond the war years the grim and tortured struggle of Negroes to win their own freedom is an epic of battle against frightful odds. If we have failed to do enough, it was not the will for freedom that was weak, but the forces against us which were too strong."

"The Emancipation Proclamation shattered in one blow the slave system, undermining the foundations of the economy of the rebellious South; and guaranteed that no slave-holding class, if permitted to exist in defeat, could prepare a new and deadlier war after resuscitation. The Proclamation opened the door to self-liberation by the Negro upon which he immediately acted by deserting the plantations in the South and joining the Union armies in the North."

"When Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation it was not the act of an opportunistic politician issuing a hollow pronouncement to placate a pressure group. Our truly great presidents were tortured deep in their hearts by the race question. [...] Lincoln's torments are well known, his vacillations were facts. In the seething cauldron of '62 and '63 Lincoln was called the "Baboon President" in the North, and "coward", "assassin" and "savage" in the South. Yet he searched his way to the conclusions embodied in these words, "In giving freedom to the slave we assure freedom to the free, honorable alike in what we give and what we preserve." On this moral foundation he personally prepared the first draft of the Emancipation Proclamation, and to emphasize the decisiveness of his course he called his cabinet together and declared he was not seeking their advice as to its wisdom but only suggestions on subject matter. Lincoln achieved immortality because he issued the Emancipation Proclamation. His hesitation had not stayed his hand when historic necessity charted but one course. No President can be great, or even fit for office, if he attempts to accommodate to injustice to maintain his political balance."

"The Emancipation Proclamation had four enduring results. First, it gave force to the executive power to change conditions in the national interest on a broad and far-reaching scale. Second, it dealt a devastating blow to the system of slaveholding and an economy built upon it, which had been muscular enough to engage in warfare on the Federal government. Third, it enabled the Negro to play a significant role in his own liberation with the ability to organize and to struggle, with less of the bestial retaliation his slave status had permitted to his masters. Fourth, it resurrected and restated the principle of equality upon which the founding of the nation rested."

"Our pride and progress could be unqualified if the story might end here. But history reveals that America has been a schizophrenic personality where these two documents are concerned. On the one hand she has proudly professed the basic principles inherent in both documents. On the other hand she has sadly practiced the antithesis of these principles."

"The Declaration of Independence proclaimed to a world, organized politically and spiritually around the concept of the inequality of man, that the dignity of human personality was inherent in man as a living being. The Emancipation Proclamation was the offspring of the Declaration of Independence. It was a constructive use of the force of law to uproot a social order which sought to separate liberty from a segment of humanity."

"If our nation had done nothing more in its whole history than to create just two documents, its contribution to civilization would be imperishable. The first of these documents is the Declaration of Independence and the other is that which we are here to honor tonight, the Emancipation Proclamation. All tyrants, past, present and future, are powerless to bury the truths in these declarations, no matter how extensive their legions, how vast their power and how malignant their evil."

"Negroes are almost entirely a working people.... Our needs are identical with labor's needs: decent wages, fair working conditions, livable housing, old-age security, health and welfare measures, conditions in which families can grow, have education for their children and respect in the community. That is why Negroes support labor's demands and fight laws which curb labor. That is why the labor-hater and labor-baiter is virtually always a twin-headed creature, spewing anti-Negro epithets from one mouth and anti-labor propaganda from the other mouth."

"History is a great teacher. Now everyone knows that the labor movement did not diminish the strength of the nation but enlarged it. By raising the living standards of millions, labor miraculously created a market for industry and lifted the whole nation to undreamed of levels of production. Those who attack labor forget these simple truths, but history remembers them."

"Less than a century ago the laborer had no rights, little or no respect, and led a life which was socially submerged and barren....American industry organized misery into sweatshops and proclaimed the right of capital to act without restraints and without conscience. The inspiring answer to this intolerable and dehumanizing existence was economic organization through trade unions. The worker became determined not to wait for charitable impulses to grow in his employer. He constructed the means by which fairer sharing of the fruits of his toil had to be given to him or the wheels of industry, which he alone turned, would halt and wealth for no one would be available..."

"We want to rely upon the goodwill of those who oppose us. Indeed, we have brought forward the method of nonviolence to give an example of unilateral goodwill in an effort to evoke it in those who have not yet felt it in their hearts. But we know that if we are not simultaneously organizing our strength we will have no means to move forward. If we do not advance, the crushing burden of centuries of neglect and economic deprivation will destroy our will, our spirits and our hope. In this way, labor's historic tradition of moving forward to create vital people as consumers and citizens has become our own tradition, and for the same reasons."

"Negroes in the United States read the history of labor and find it mirrors their own experience. We are confronted by powerful forces telling us to rely on the goodwill and understanding of those who profit by exploiting us. They deplore our discontent, they resent our will to organize, so that we may guarantee that humanity will prevail and equality will be exacted. They are shocked that action organizations, sit-ins, civil disobedience and protests are becoming our everyday tools, just as strikes, demonstrations and union organization became yours to insure that bargaining power genuinely existed on both sides of the table."

"We must work assiduously and with determined boldness to remove from the body politic this cancerous disease of discrimination which is preventing our democratic and Christian health from being realized. Then and only then will we be able to bring into full realization the dream of our American democracy-a dream yet unfulfilled. A dream of equality of opportunity, of privilege and property widely distributed; a dream of a land where men will not take necessities from the many to give luxuries to the few; a dream of a land where men do not argue that the color of a man's skin determines the content of his character, where they recognize that the basic thing about a man is not his specific but his fundamentum; a dream of a place where all our gifts and resources are held not for ourselves alone but as instruments of service for the rest of humanity; the dream of a country where every man will respect the dignity and worth of all human personality, and men will dare to live together as brothers-that is the dream."

"We must set out to do a good job irrespective of race. We must seek to do our life's work so well that nobody could do it better."

"Doors are opening now that were not open in the past, and the great challenge facing minority groups is to be ready to enter these doors as they open. No greater tragedy could befall us at this hour but that of allowing new opportunities to emerge with out the concomitant preparedness to meet them."

"One of the sure signs of maturity is the ability to rise to the point of self criticism."

"But if physical death is the price that a man must pay to free his children and his white brethren from a permanent death of the spirit, then nothing could be more redemptive. This is the type of soul force that I am convinced will triumph over the physical force of the oppressor."

"The non-violent resistors can summarize their message in the following simple terms: we will take direct action against injustice without waiting for other agencies to act. We will not obey unjust laws or submit to unjust practices. We will do this peacefully, openly and cheerfully because our aim is to persuade. We adopt the means of non-violence because our end is a community at peace with itself. We will try to persuade with our words, but if our words fail, we will try to persuade with our acts. We will always be willing to talk and seek fair compromise, but we are ready to suffer when necessary and even risk our lives to become witnesses to the truth as we see it."

"I feel that this way of non-violence is vital because it is the only way to reestablish the broken community. It is the method which seeks to implement the just law by appealing to the conscience of the great decent majority who through blindness, fear, pride or irrationality have allowed their consciences to sleep."

"In this period of social change the Negro must work on two fronts. On the one hand we must continue to break down the barrier of segregation. We must resist all forms of racial injustice. This resistance must always be on the highest level of dignity and discipline. It must never degenerate to the crippling level of violence. There is another way-a way as old as the insights of Jesus of Nazareth and as modern as the methods of Mahatma Gandhi. It is a way not for the weak and cowardly but for the strong and courageous. It has been variously called passive resistance, non-violent resistance or simply Christian love. It is my great hope that as the Negro plunges deeper into the quest for freedom, he will plunge deeper into the philosophy of non-violence. As a race we must work passionately and unrelentingly for first-class citizenship, but we must never use second class methods to gain it. Our aim must not be to defeat or humiliate the white man, but to win his friendship and understanding. We must never become bitter nor should we succumb to the temptation of using violence in the struggle, for if this happens, unborn generations will be the recipients of a long and desolate night of bitterness and our chief legacy to the future will be an endless reign of meaningless chaos."

"Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. Therefore, no American can afford to be apathetic about the problem of racial justice. It is a problem that meets every man at his front door."

"Whenever racial discrimination exists it is a tragic expression of man's spiritual degeneracy and moral bankruptcy. Therefore, it must be removed not merely because it is diplomatically expedient, but because it is morally compelling."

"It is a trite yet urgently true observation that if America is to remain a first-class nation, it cannot have second-class citizens."

"The best way to solve any problem is to remove the cause."

"We must keep moving. If you can't fly, run; if you can't run, walk; if you can't walk, crawl; but by all means keep moving."