Anti Racism Activists

"Well, I don't know what will happen now. We've got some difficult days ahead. But it doesn't matter with me now. Because I've been to the mountaintop. And I don't mind. Like any man, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I'm not concerned about that now. I just want to do God's will. And He's allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I've looked over. And I've seen the promised land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people will get to the promised land. And I'm happy, tonight. I'm not worried about anything. I'm not fearing any man. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord."

"When people criticize Zionists, they mean Jews, You are talking anti-Semitism!"

"To be a Christian without prayer is no more possible than to be alive without breathing"

"The old law of an eye for an eye leaves everybody blind."

"Justice runs down like water, and righteousness like a mighty stream."

"Everything that is done in the world is done by hope."

"Even if I knew that tomorrow the world would go to pieces, I would still plant my apple tree."

"Peace and justice are goals for man."

"I mourn the loss of thousands of precious lives, but I will not rejoice in the death of one, not even an enemy. Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that."

"Martin Luther King Jr. held to the fact that an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth would end up with a blind society and a toothless generation."

"He was always gracious and courteous to women, whether they were attractive to him or not. He had perfect manners. He was well educated. He was warm and friendly. He could make them laugh. He was good company, something that cannot always be said of heroes. These qualities made him even more attractive in close proximity than he was at a distance. Then, too, Martin's own love of women was apparent in ways that could not be easily pinpointed — but which women clearly sensed, even from afar."

"There was a qualitative growth in Martin Luther King. To me, having just to see him grow from the American Civil Rights Movement, the passive resistance, the non-violent resistance, and to see him grow into one going to Africa, meeting with Nkrumah, returning, broadening his sight to include all oppressed people (which is why he was killed, of course), so that his Poor People's March said, 'I want Black people, poor white, Native American, Mexican American, Asian American; I want everybody who is poor, downtrodden and oppressed, come. We will sit in Washington.'"

"I think that he was a magnificent spirit. He could only have happened in the United States. Although he was inspired by Mahatma Gandhi and Bertrand Russell, he was an American phenomenon. He was a great spiritual leader and an extraordinary man."

"Martin Luther King, Jr., more than any other public figure helped to solidify my ideas and inspired me to act upon them."

"It seemed a miracle that I would meet, and have the blessing to know and work with, one of the two saints of the phenomenon which had won my heart when I was barely sixteen years old: the concept of radical nonviolence, introduced to the world as a revolutionary political tool by Mahatma Gandhi in India, and reintroduced now by Martin Luther King, Jr., in the United States of America."

"There is no way to verify the FBI's information. It is not clear whether the agents involved were transcribing the true reality of King's private life, or creating idle gossip as part of their campaign against him. Alongside the tapes was the now-infamous, anonymous letter urging King to avoid embarrassment, with the words, "There is only one thing left for you to do. You know what it is. ... There is but one way out for you." It was delivered inside a manila envelope. The letter runs to more than 500 words, and claims to be from an African-American who supported the civil rights movement. In fact, it was written by the FBI."

"It wasn't a Republican who wiretapped and snooped on Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., but Democrats John F. Kennedy and his brother Robert, who signed the order as Attorney General."

"In this time of division and hatred, I’ve found myself returning time and again to Dr King’s words as a source of comfort and guidance, and a number of things have struck me. First is how overtly Christian the speech was, imbued throughout with biblical theology. Of course Dr King was a Baptist minister, so this is no surprise, but his faith was clearly central to everything he said and did and he wasn’t embarrassed, unlike most politicians and even senior clergy today, to make this plain. Second, far from wanting to destroy America, as many modern activists advocate, he wanted to build it up. He saw the “magnificent” words of the US Constitution and the Declaration of Independence as a “promissory note” to deliver “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” to all Americans.For black Americans this had become a “bad cheque” that had come back marked “insufficient funds” and he saw it as nothing less than a sacred obligation on his fellow countrymen to put right this injustice."

"King used to say, "People think of me as a civil rights leader, but fundamentally, I'm a Baptist preacher.""

"My friends, the time for action is upon us. The enemies of justice wants you to think of Dr. King as only a civil rights leader, but he had a much broader agenda. He was a tireless crusader for the rights of the poor, for an end to the war in Vietnam long before it was popular to take that stand, and for the rights of workers everywhere. Many people find it convenient to forget that Martin was murdered while supporting a desperate strike on that tragic day in Memphis, Tennessee. He died while fighting for the rights of sanitation workers. Dr. King's dedication to the rights of the workers who are so often exploited by the forces of greed has profoundly touched my life and guided my struggle."

"He was very pure in mind and heart. He was a lover: a lover not only of his race but a lover of all mankind. His heart was so broad, so great, so magnanimous, and this gave him a most sincere feeling of absolute oneness with everyone. This is what made him so divinely great."

"There is a reason that I require all new agents and analysts to study the FBI's interaction with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and to visit his memorial in Washington as part of their training. And there is a reason I keep on my desk a copy of Attorney General Robert Kennedy's approval of J. Edgar Hoover's request to wiretap Dr. King. It is a single page. The entire application is five sentences long, it is without fact or substance, and is predicated on the naked assertion that there is "communist influence in the racial situation." The reason I do those things is to ensure that we remember our mistakes and that we learn from them."

"In the way we think about past movements, I encourage people to look beyond heroic male figures. While Martin Luther King is someone I revere, I don't like to allow his representation to erase the contributions of ordinary people. The 1955 Montgomery bus boycott was successful because Black women, domestic workers, refused to ride the bus."

"Martin Luther King is dead now, but he left a legacy. He planted in all of us, black and white, the seeds of love of justice, of decency, of honor, and we must not fail to have these seeds bear fruit. Martin Luther King is dead now, and there is only time for action. The time for debate, the time for blame, the time for accusation is over. Ours is a clear call to action. We must not only dedicate ourselves to great principles, but we must apply those principles to our lives. Martin Luther King is dead now, and he is because he dared believe in nonviolence in a world of violence. Because he dared believe in peace in a world of conflict. He is dead now because he challenged all of us to believe in his dream. Martin Luther King is dead now, and we cannot allow the substance of his dream to turn into the ashes of defeat. If we are to build a tribute to what he stood for, we must, each of us, stand for the same things."

"A lot of people are waiting for Martin Luther King or Mahatma Gandhi to come back — but they are gone. We are it. It is up to us. It is up to you."

"In Montgomery, Alabama, Jonah and I went to the Civil Rights Memorial, and then we walked around to Dexter Baptist Church and went up into Martin's pulpit. I'd forgotten what a little place it was. We looked out from the little pulpit in that little church and talked about how something so big started from a place so small. Just a lot of committed people of faith in church on one side of the street, and all the power of Alabama in the state capitol right across the street. As a young lawyer, I used to listen to Dr. King in chapel at Spelman College. One of the thngs I liked about him was that he didn't pretend to be a great powerful know-it-all. I remember him discussing openly his gloom, depression, his fears, admitting that he didn't know what the next step was. He would then say: "Take the first step in faith. You don't have to see the whole staircase, just take the first step.""

"How many know that Dr. King, with a phraseology reminiscent of the biblical prophets, also said, “This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism?” Or, “There are those who are asking the devotees of civil rights, ‘When will you be satisfied?’”... The “I Have a Dream Speech” speech reads like an activists’ wake up alarm. Tens of thousands of grassroots activists worked hard to win this president’s reelection. With Obama’s inauguration in a few weeks, can we revitalize the profound calling in Kings’ speech to really tackle the struggles we face today — a polarized Congress, a Tea Party-infused Republican right, high unemployment, a regressive attack on women’s rights to our own bodies, a decades-long epidemic of gun violence in our inner cities, a fragmented healthcare system? In the second term of our first black presidency, can we not just honor Dr. King’s words as history, but infect ourselves with his passion for creating the change we believe in? Along with losing weight and exercising more, make a political New Year’s resolution this year. But first, for inspiration and vision, read Dr. King’s speech."

"Dr. King's birthday is a celebration of his life and values, but it is more than that. The slogan 'A Day On, Not A Day Off' is very important. MLK Day is a day of learning, commitment and service, and I hope a great many students get involved."

"Hitherto unseen FBI surveillance records reviewed by King biographer David J. Garrow in 2019 surfaced shocking allegations about King's personal life that are in stark contrast to his reputation as an icon of social justice and Christian morality. Apart from more graphic details about numerous extramarital affairs, these documents allege King participated in the rape and sexual abuse of a female parishioner by a fellow minister. "King looked on, laughed and offered advice," during the rape, according to the files. Evidence about King's true character as revealed in these FBI records has been excluded from the hagiographic treatment of his legacy embraced by Democrats and Republicans alike. Indeed, the latter seem most willing to ignore the more unsavory parts of his story to serve their own ends."

"While Republicans and Democrats have been able to selectively quote King to fit their policy and propaganda needs, what may soon be indisputable is his reputation as the vilest kind of abuser, as revealed by Garrow's 2019 research. Garrow is no right-winger eager to trash King's reputation. On the contrary, Garrow is a democratic socialist, who won a Pulitzer Prize for an earlier glowing biography of Dr. King. Garrow spent weeks poring over never-before-seen FBI documents, publishing his shocking findings in the British magazine Standpoint. They reveal the agency's surveillance of King in new detail, which began due to his connection to Stanley D. Levison, a New York attorney with Communist Party ties, who gave King $10,000 in cash over two years, or nearly $90,000 in 2021 dollars. Garrow reviewed one report showing that King's friend, Logan Kearse, the pastor of Baltimore's Cornerstone Baptist Church, brought several of his female "parishioners" to Washington. He offered King and his friends an introduction. "The group met in his room and discussed which women among the parishioners would be suitable for natural or unnatural sex acts," the report states. "When one of the women protested that she did not approve of this, the Baptist minister immediately and forcibly raped her." King "looked on, laughed and offered advice" as the minister raped the parishioner. Garrow added that the agents who captured the incident on a microphone-transmitted tape-recording "would not have had any apparent motive … to inaccurately embellish upon the actual recording and its full transcript.""

"Our dream ticket would have been one consisting of Martin Luther King and Benjamin Spock, linking the issues of civil rights and peace."

"If there is one thing that captures popular understanding of the Jewish community's relationship to the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., it's an image from Selma, 1965. Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel links arms with a line of activists that include Rev. King, a shoulder's breadth away, on their historic march to Montgomery. Heschel's comments afterward have taken on a similarly iconic status: "I felt my feet were praying.""

"In a private letter written to Morris Abram, president of the American Jewish Committee and a longtime King supporter, King wrote that "Israel's right to exist as a state in security is incontestable." It is less often noted that King also stressed the need to develop the Arab world in order to prevent future conflicts. Or that he urged for greater understanding for what he believed was the root cause of the Arab world's anger. As he wrote to Abram in that same letter: "The great powers have the obligation to recognize the Arab world is in a state of imposed poverty and backwardness that must threaten peace and harmony.""

"The whole future of America will depend upon the impact and influence of Dr. King."

"Schools across the country celebrate Dr. Martin Luther King Day today... Many schools show his historic “I Have a Dream” speech at the Lincoln Memorial, a speech given before hundreds of thousands... Dr. King’s commitment provides a wonderful example for all of us, but particularly for the young. By the wisdom of his teaching, the justice of his cause, the intensity of his commitment, he helped transform America. Today, Dr. King’s example is more important than ever. Inequality has reached new extremes. We have a president that purposefully rouses racial and ethnic fears and divisions. Politics has become bitter, partisan, and increasingly marked by extreme and often hateful rhetoric. We are spending more and more on the Pentagon—already the largest military budget by far in the world—and cutting back on programs for the vulnerable, everything from food stamps, to Medicaid, to public housing and aid for poor schools and students. We end up with guided missiles and misguided young people—a tragic waste. Today, a new PPoor People’s Campaign is building, organizing lines of race, region, and religion. It has been marching on state legislatures and now is increasing pressure on Washington. It is not about right or left, but about right and wrong. Dr. King called on us to express the better angels of our souls. Now, as we celebrate his life, we would do well to put his lessons into practice."

"Dr. King was a union man, and the Amazon workers of Bessemer saw themselves as following in his footsteps on the long road toward justice."

"Martin Luther King is really a tricky person. ... I just can't see a picture of Martin Luther King without thinking, you know, that man's terrible."

"I'm more determined than ever that my husband's dream will become a reality."

"Martin Luther King’s famous “I Have a Dream” speech, delivered at the 28 August 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, synthesized portions of his previous sermons and speeches, with selected statements by other prominent public figures... As King and his advisors prepared his speech for the conclusion of the 1963 march, he solicited suggestions for the text. Clarence Jones offered a metaphor for the unfulfilled promise of constitutional rights for African Americans, which King incorporated into the final text: “America has defaulted on this promissory note insofar as her citizens of color are concerned”... King recalled that he did not finish the complete text of the speech until 3:30 A.M. on the morning of 28 August. Later that day, King stood at the podium overlooking the gathering. Although a typescript version of the speech was made available to the press on the morning of the march, King did not merely read his prepared remarks. He later recalled: “I started out reading the speech, and I read it down to a point … the audience response was wonderful that day…. And all of a sudden this thing came to me that … I’d used many times before.... ‘I have a dream.’ And I just felt that I wanted to use it here … I used it, and at that point I just turned aside from the manuscript altogether. I didn’t come back to it” (King, 29 November 1963)."

"("Can you think of a usable term that approximates the social notion of conquest and is still rooted in pacifism?") Kingston: Well, I guess Martin Luther King Jr. said "overcome, we shall overcome." That's a lovely word "overcome." It's coming home, and over means going high and flying above. That's very nice."

"In U.S. historiography, as in American popular culture, historians have tended to over-emphasize the role of the individual in history. Great men are identified as founders and leaders; they become the virtual representatives of the movement: William Lloyd Garrison for abolition, Eugene Debs for the socialist movement, Martin Luther King Jr. for the civil rights movement. In fact, no mass movement of any significance is carried forward by and dependent upon one leader, or one symbol. There are always leaders of subgroups, of local and regional organizations, competing leaders representing differing viewpoints, and, of course, the ground troops of anonymous activists. And, as can be shown in each of the above cases, emphasis on the "great man" omits women, minorities, many of the actual agents of social change. In so doing it gives a partial, an erroneous picture of how social change was actually achieved in the past and thereby fosters apathy and confusion about how social change can be made in the present."

"One of the great accomplishments of Martin Luther King (and apologies for invoking him, since it has become so banal) is that he managed to bring prejudiced people to his side. Attitudes in the South toward blacks and their place in society were changed by viewing well-dressed men and women attacked by dogs and blasted by fire hoses. The starry-eyed might claim that prejudice was thereby eliminated, and in many cases that was surely true. But a more modest view is that many people, still maintaining antipathy toward black Americans, found the visuals to be repellent. They didn’t like King and his supporters, but they disliked what they saw even more. Such thinking, that humans frequently have to select between two bad choices, is part and parcel of the right-wing view of humanity and seems a far more realistic explanation of human behavior than the idea that prejudice was or can be somehow totally or even largely expunged from a culture grounded in it."

"Let the strivings of us all, prove Martin Luther King Jr. to have been correct, when he said that humanity can no longer be tragically bound to the starless midnight of racism and war. Let the efforts of us all, prove that he was not a mere dreamer when he spoke of the beauty of genuine brotherhood and peace being more precious than diamonds or silver or gold. Let a new age dawn!"

"Martin Luther King was an exponent of nonviolence. Nevertheless, the U.S. imperialists did not on that account show any tolerance toward him, but used counter-revolutionary violence and killed him in cold blood."

"We can be slow as well to give greatness its due, a mistake I made myself long ago when I voted against a federal holiday in memory of Dr. King. I was wrong. I was wrong. And eventually realized that, in time to give full support for a state holiday in Arizona. I'd remind you we can all be a little late sometimes in doing the right thing, and Dr. King understood this about his fellow Americans."

"Then, as now, getting arrested or jailed or associated with criminality in any fashion, whether in a hoodie or a suit and tie, was bound to upset the political establishment. When Black Lives Matter activists blocked traffic and engaged in other acts of mass civil disobedience, many white liberals and older black activists charged that King wouldn’t have approved of the type of disruption these protests caused. While the likes of King and Rosa Parks are now celebrated for their acts of defiance, their protests were no less controversial at the time, even within the civil-rights movement."

"He (Martin Luther King Jr.) felt it was important that children of all races see an African American female appearing on television as an equal."

"Unlike the others commemorated in this place, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was not a president of the United States — at no time in his life did he hold public office. He was not a hero of foreign wars. He never had much money, and while he lived he was reviled at least as much as he was celebrated. By his own accounts, he was a man frequently racked with doubt, a man not without flaws, a man who, like Moses before him, more than once questioned why he had been chosen for so arduous a task — the task of leading a people to freedom, the task of healing the festering wounds of a nation's original sin. And yet lead a nation he did. Through words he gave voice to the voiceless. Through deeds he gave courage to the faint of heart. By dint of vision, and determination, and most of all faith in the redeeming power of love. he endured the humiliation of arrest, the loneliness of a prison cell, the constant threats to his life, until he finally inspired a nation to transform itself, and begin to live up to the meaning of its creed. Like Moses before him, he would never live to see the Promised Land. But from the mountain top, he pointed the way for us — a land no longer torn asunder with racial hatred and ethnic strife, a land that measured itself by how it treats the least of these, a land in which strength is defined not simply by the capacity to wage war but by the determination to forge peace — a land in which all of God's children might come together in a spirit of brotherhood. We have not yet arrived at this longed for place. For all the progress we have made, there are times when the land of our dreams recedes from us — when we are lost, wandering spirits, content with our suspicions and our angers, our long-held grudges and petty disputes, our frantic diversions and tribal allegiances. And yet, by erecting this monument, we are reminded that this different, better place beckons us, and that we will find it not across distant hills or within some hidden valley, but rather we will find it somewhere in our hearts."

"It is right for us to celebrate Dr. King's marvelous oratory, but it is worth remembering that progress did not come from words alone. Progress was hard. Progress was purchased through enduring the smack of billy clubs and the blast of fire hoses. It was bought with days in jail cells and nights of bomb threats. For every victory during the height of the civil rights movement, there were setbacks and there were defeats. We forget now, but during his life, Dr. King wasn't always considered a unifying figure. Even after rising to prominence, even after winning the Nobel Peace Prize, Dr. King was vilified by many, denounced as a rabble-rouser and an agitator, a communist and a radical."

"If he were alive today, I believe he would remind us that the unemployed worker can rightly challenge the excesses of Wall Street without demonizing all who work there, that the businessman can enter tough negotiations with his company's union without vilifying the right to collectively bargain. He would want us to know we can argue fiercely about the proper size and role of government without questioning each other's love for this country, with the knowledge that in this democracy, government is no distant object, but is rather an expression of our common commitments to one another. He would call on us to assume the best in each other rather than the worst and challenge one another in ways that ultimately heal rather than wound. In the end, that's what I hope my daughters take away from this monument. I want them to come away from here with a faith in what they can accomplish when they are determined and working for a righteous cause. I want them to come away from here with a faith in other people and a faith in a benevolent God. This sculpture, massive and iconic as it is, will remind them of Dr. King's strength, but to see him only as larger than life would do a disservice to what he taught us about ourselves. He would want them to know that he had setbacks, because they will have setbacks. He would want them to know that he had doubts, because they will have doubts. He would want them to know that he was flawed, because all of us have flaws. It is precisely because Dr. King was a man of flesh and blood and not a figure of stone that he inspires us so. His life, his story, tells us that change can come if you don't give up. He would not give up, no matter how long it took, because in the smallest hamlets and the darkest slums, he had witnessed the highest reaches of the human spirit; because in those moments when the struggle seemed most hopeless, he had seen men and women and children conquer their fear; because he had seen hills and mountains made low and rough places made plain, and the crooked places made straight and God make a way out of no way. And that is why we honor this man — because he had faith in us. And that is why he belongs on this Mall, because he saw what we might become."