Martin Luther King Jr. Day: The URI speech in 1966. Events around region…

Photo: from plaque at URI

Jan. 15th, 8am – MLK Breakfast, Rhodes on the Pawtuxet – Ministers Alliance Scholarship Breakfast

Jan. 15th, 11am – Woonsocket, Laying of Wreath at MLK Garden Sculpture, corner of South Main & Mason Streets

Jan. 15th, 4pm – Ebenezer Baptist Church, 475 Cranston Street, Providence – The Martin Luther King Jr. State Holiday Commission will be holding its annual celebration of the life, and death, of the civil rights leader.  The commission requests all attendees to arrive at 3:30 p.m. and the event is open to the public. The official holiday commemoration will include remarks by commission members, state and religious leaders, several musical presentations, and a number of awards will be presented. Rep. Raymond A. Hull, chair of the MLK State Holiday Commission that annually organizes and hosts the celebration, will serve as Master of Ceremonies.

Jan. 15th, 2pm – Mixed Magic Theatre, Pawtucket – a Martin Luther King Jr. Day Celebration program will include a student-led reading of MLK’s iconic “Letter From Birmingham City Jail”.  

Jan. 15th, 10am to 4pm – Preservation Society of Newport County – Free general admission to the Newport Mansions, to include the Breakers and Rosecliff mansions, which will be open for self-guided tours from 10 am to 4 pm and 10 am to 3 pm, respectively. The other mansions are closed for the season. As part of the celebration, visitors are also encouraged to download the Newport Mansions audio tour app onto their smartphone in advance and bring their own earbuds or headphones. The Preservation Society of Newport County is dedicated to preserving and interpreting historical sites, landscapes, and social history. For more information visit their website.

Jan. 15th 10:30am to 2:30pm – Providence Children’s Museum, Providence – interactive play “MLK: Amazing Grace”: two performances with award-winning storytellers and actors Rochel Coleman and Valerie Tutson will bring history to life in this interactive play for kids. Age-appropriate play provides children the opportunity to see Dr. King’s fight through a child’s eyes, bringing his lessons into their worlds. Registration is required for events and includes museum admission. Regular discounts will apply. The Museum focuses on children ages 1 to 11, and the adults who care for them by presenting hands-on, play-based exhibits and programs that explore arts, culture and science, technology, engineering, and math. 

In Boston area:

Jan. 15th, 10am to 4pm – Peabody Essex Museum Salem, MA – Free admission to the Peabody Essex Museum. Celebrate King’s legacy by enjoying free admission to the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem. View related exhibitions, like “America: A Hymnal” by Bethany Collins, a sound and visual exhibit deconstructing patriotic anthems, and participate in live art-making with local artist Rahim Gray.

Jan. 15th, 10am to 5pm – Museum of Fine Arts, Boston – Museum of Fine Arts MLK Day Open House. Massachusetts residents can enjoy free admission (including special exhibits). In addition to viewing the museum’s collection, visitors can take free guided tours, participate in art-making, learn about job opportunities at the museum and watch live performances by Boston City Singers and DJ WhySham.

Jan. 15th, 9am to 4pm – Franklin Park Zoo and Stone Zoo, Franklin, MA – Free admission to the Franklin Park Zoo and Stone Zoo. Free admission. Both zoos will feature informational talks with zookeepers and mystery animal encounters throughout the day. 

Jan. 15th, 11am to 4pm – Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston, MA – Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day Of Service at Gardner Museum. Free admission (with advance ticket reservation) to the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in honor of MLK Day. Includes storytelling, conversations with community leaders, interactive art-making and live music.

Jan. 15th, 10am to 5pm – Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, MA – Free admission to the ICA. Free admission to the ICA Boston (with advance ticket reservation) and celebrate King’s legacy with three current exhibitions at the museum, including “Forecast Form: Art in the Caribbean Diaspora, 1990s–Today,” as well as art-making activities.

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Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. speech at URI in 1966.

The revered civil rights leader delivered a speech on the status of race relations in the U.S. to a capacity crowd of 5,000 in Keaney Gym at URI on October 5th, 1966. In 2023, a 14-inch by 24-inch plaque was installed at URI which carries an image of King taken during his visit and a quote from his speech: “In spite of the tensions of this moment, in spite of the setbacks, in spite of my personal frustrations, my deep disappointments, in spite of some of the developments that are so confusing taking place today, I believe that we are still going to win our freedom. Our goal is freedom and I believe that we are going to get there because ultimately the goal of America is freedom and I have not lost faith in America.”

Here is the full speech of Dr. King from that day:

Concerning the whole matter of racial justice and the whole question of racial integration. I get the question everywhere I go and it is always the question “Is there any real progress being made in the area of race relations?” And as I discuss this and discuss the future of integration, I would like to use as a basic thesis for our thinking together the idea that we have made significant strides, but we still have much to do. In other words, we have come a long, long way, but we still have a long, long way to go. At first I’d like to mention 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 year 1619 that the first negro slaves landed on the shores of this nation. And unlike the pilgrim fathers who landed at Plymouth a year later, they were brought here against their wills. And throughout slavery the Negro was treated in a very inhuman fashion. He was a thing to be used, rather than a person to be respected. Indeed he was 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 our nation 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. And this is exactly what happened. Even the Bible and religion were used – or I should say misused – to justify the patterns of the status quo and to crystalize the prejudices of many people. So from some pulpits it was argued 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 one brother had probably read the logicof the great philosopher Aristotle. And you know Aristotle did a great deal to bring into being what we now know as phenomenologic in Philosophy and phenomenologic as what is known as the syllogism which has a major premise, a minor premise, and a conclusion. And 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 made 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 is the kind of reasoning that prevails.

Well, living with the conditions of slavery and then later racial segregation, many Negroes lost faith in themselves. Many came to feel that perhaps they were less than human. But then something happened to the Negro and circumstances made it necessary and possible for him to travel more. The coming of the automobile, the upheavals of two world wars, the Great Depression. And 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.

Negro masses all over began to reevaluate themselves and the Negro came to feel that he was somebody. His religion revealed to 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 fundamentum;  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 black and white the same. If I was so tall as to reach the pole or to the grasp the ocean at a span, I must be measured by my soul. The mind is the standard of the man. And with this new sense of dignity and this new sense of self respect, a new Negro came into being with a new determination to struggle, to suffer and sacrifice, in order to be free. And so 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, the nation itself has made significant strides in extending the frontiers of democracy and civil rights. We can look at many things and we can see many things that would justify this contention. Probably the most glaring expression of the progress made has been the steady decline of legal segregation, legally sanctioned segregation. Now we all know the long history of the system of segregation. It had its legal beginning in 1896 when the Supreme Court of the nation rendered a decision known as the Plessy vs. Ferguson decision. This decision established the doctrine of ‘separate but equal’ as the law of the land. Of course we now know what happened as a result of that Plessy doctrine. That was always a Strict enforcement of the separate, without the slightest intention to abide by the equal. The Negro ended up being plunged into the abyss of exploitation where he experienced the bleakness of nagging injustice. But something else happened in the 50s.

It was in the year of 1954, on May 17th, that the Supreme Court looked at the system of segregation. It was in this year that the Supreme Court of the nation decided to pronounce legal segregation constitutionally dead. It went on to say through that decision that separate facilities are inherently unequal and that to segregate a child on the basis of his race is to deny that child equal protection of the law. And then other developments started taking place. Negroes by the thousands started engaging in nonviolent protest activities. In 1955 and 6 it was the Montgomery bus boycott, which served as a force to end the segregation on buses all across the south. And then as a result of many other developments, we finally started getting civil rights bills. The first in 1957 and then came that civil rights bill in 1964. Bill with ten titles dealing with many facets of the problem confronting the nation and the problem confronting the American Negro. It was in 1965 that the nation decided to grapple with the problem of the denial of the right to vote and so we got a Voting Rights Bill. All of these things represented real progress and they represented the fact that the nation was making significant strides in the area of civil rights. All of these to place it figuratively in Biblical language, we have broken loose from the Egypt of slavery, and we have moved through wilderness of legal segregation, and now we stand on the border of the promised land of integration. We have come a long, long way since 1896.

Now this would be a wonderful place for me to end my lecture tonight. First it would mean making a very short speech and this would be a magnificent accomplishment for a Baptist preacher. But secondly it would mean that the problem is just about solved. You know it would be a wonderful thing if speakers all over our nation could talk about this problem in terms of a problem that used to be but that no longer has existence. But you see if I stop at this point I will merely be stating a fact and not telling the truth.

You see a fact is merely an absence of contraction, but truth is the presence of coherence. Truth is the relatedness of fact. Now, it’s a fact that we’ve come a long, long way, but it isn’t the whole truth. We have to see the other side. And, if I stop at this point, I may leave you the victims of a dangerous optimism. If I stop at this point, I may leave all of us the victims of 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 also remind each of us assembled here that we still have a long, long way to go before the problem of racial injustice is solved and before we have a truly integrated society.

Now we need only open our newspapers and turn on our televisions and look around our  communities to see this. We can look all over our nation and we see that the problem is still alive. We can see violence still perpetrated against Negroes and white civil rights workers.  Take a state like Mississippi, where numerous persons are constantly lynched and killed and not a single white person has been convicted. This has happened over the years. It has happened this year. It has happened in every year gone by. In the last 18 months, some 58 negro churches have been burned to the ground in the state of Mississippi and nothing has been done about it. It seems they have a new motto there. Not attend the church of your
choice, but burn the church of your choice. How tragic this is.

In Granada, Mississippi, where my organization is working at the present time. Children for the first time – negro children — went to integrated schools and what did they confront on the first day. Young negro boys and girls confronted by grown white men beating them with chains, beating them with sticks, beating them with clubs. This reveals that we still have a long, long way to go. And this is happening in so many communities, things just like this. The unpunished murders are still a reality. And so in that particular area there’s still much that must be done.

But there is another kind of violence that is just as bad as the physical violence. It is one thing to lynch an individual physically, it is another thing to lynch an individual spiritually. And by the millions, Negroes all over America are being lynched day in and day out psychologically and spiritually. More than 40% of the negro families of our country live in dilapidated, deteriorating housing units. So many find themselves find themselves living in rat-infested, vermin-filled slums. These are the facts of life. These are the things that we face every day.

The other thing is the fact is that Negroes – in spite of the decision of 1954 on desegregating the schools. Negroes are still by and large attending segregated schools. That is not only true in the South, it is true in the North. In most of our large cities, negro students find themselves segregated in inadequate schools. […] More money is spent on suburban schools and the schools in the white community per pupil than on the schools in the ghetto. And so young negro boys and girls find themselves finishing high school every year reading at a sixth grade level. Not because they are dumb, not because they don’t have the native intelligence, but because they schools are so devoid of quality, so overcrowded, they don’t have the opportunity
to bring out those qualities that are there in terms of potentiality. These again are the facts that we face in most of our big cities.

I would imagine that the most critical problem facing the Negro today is the economic problem. This is a serious problem all over the country. Many people fail to realize it, but that problem has gotten worse. 30 years ago the unemployment rate among Negroes and whites was about the same. Today there are two Negroes unemployed nationally to every one white. It’s two to one. And in the Negro community, we are facing a major depression economically. When we think of the fact that the national rate of unemployment is about 4% but when we come to the negro community it is nearer 12%. And if we were to add to that the number of people that have lost hope to the point that they don’t seek to find jobs anymore that could easily be another 3 or 4 percent. And if the nation as a whole was confronting what the Negro is confronting economically, we would be in a major depression – more staggering than the depression of the 30s. By the thousands and millions, Negroes in all of our cities walk the cities in search of jobs that do not exist. But not only is unemployment the problem, but poverty among the Negroes is found as much among the Negroes who are working every day, 8 and 10 hours, but earning so little that they are absolutely incapable of gaining the basic necessities of life. The problem is that all of the persons who are poverty-stricken realize that it doesn’t have to be this way because they know about the affluence of the larger society. They look at the expressways near the ghetto. They see the tall buildings going up every day. They look up in the skies and see the jet planes flying by. They go to work in the suburbs so often and see the beautiful homes and lovely atmosphere and yet they come back to their ghetto and to that slum. And it makes for misery because it is misery amid plenty. It is poverty amid affluence.

And so the Negro finds himself perishing on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity. And we can see all of the social problems developing as a result of this kind of economic situation. And there are ways that those individuals who begin to say that we can’t integrate […] because if we integrate the schools, if we integrate housing, this will pull the white race back a generation. And they go on to say that you know the Negro has high crime tendencies, criminal tendencies. And in all of our cities, the Negroes have the highest crime rate. The individuals who set forth these arguments never go on to say that if there are lagging standards in the Negro community – and there certainly are – they lag because of segregation and discrimination. They never go on to say that criminal responses are environmental and not racial. Poverty, social isolation, economic deprivation breed crime whatever the racial group may be. And it is a tortuous logic to use the tragic results of segregation as an argument for the continuation of it.

It is necessary to go back to the causal basis. All of these problems, economic and otherwise, create many social problems. And there is nothing more dangerous than to build a society with a large segment of that society feeling that it has no stake in it. There is nothing more dangerous than to have a lot of people in the nation feeling that they have nothing to lose. These are the people who will engage in misguided activities. These are the people who will riot. We have to come to see that while condemning riots with all of our might, we must as strongly condemn that conditions which persist in our society that cause people to feel so desperate, cause people to feel so frustrated, cause them to feel in such despairing situations that they engage in this misguided activity. In the final analysis, the riot is language of the unheard. What it is that America has failed to hear? It has failed to hear, as I said earlier, that the economic plight of the Negro poor has worsened. It has failed to hear that the rising expectations of improvement have not been met, failed to hear that large segments of white society are more concerned about tranquility and the status quo than about justice and humanity.

Now some of the riots are caused by our nation’s winters of delay. As long as there are the deferred dreams and the blasted hopes and the failure to implement even laws that we have on the books, we will find people engaging in these acts which are certainly not constructive. There are cries of black power. And, while I have always made it clear that cannot agree with these cries, in the final analysis we’ve got to see that the cry of black power is a cry of pain, a cry of anguish. Black power is a slogan born from the wounds of frustration, disappointment and despair and so these are the things that must be seen as the result of the conditions that exist. And yet I know that violence is not the answer, that riots can never be the answer to the Negro’s problem in America. There is no military solution to our problem. This is why I will continue to preach with all my might a doctrine of nonviolence. I am convinced today as I have been all along that violence creates many more social problems than it solves. And he old eye for an eye philosophy will end up leaving everybody blind. Somebody has to be strong enough and moral enough to meet physical force with soul force. Somebody must be strong enough to meet hate with love. I think the answer is in deepening our commitment to nonviolence. I still believe it is the most potent weapon available to the Negro in his struggle for freedom and human dignity.

Now there are some things that we must do as a nation if we are going on this additional distance and reach that glad day when we will have an integrated society. I want to suggest some of these things. The first: there must be a massive action program to deal with the blight and the intolerable conditions facing the American Negro and other minority groups that face discrimination. I say a massive action program because it cannot be done in a token manner, cannot be done in a surface manner. There must be structural changes. It’s gonna take billions of dollars to do it.

If we had the will as a nation, we could do it. But I am afraid that we have the resources and the know-how devoid of the will. I am afraid that at too many points we are more concerned about the size of the national gross product than we are about the number of people that will benefit from it. I am afraid that we are more concerned about winning the war in Vietnam than winning the war against poverty here at home. That fact is that our national gross product this year is about 730 billion dollars. Just think of what could be used within that to solve this one huge wrong facing our nation. It seems to me if we can spend 800 dollars dollars a second, two billion dollars a month, 24 billion dollars a year in Vietnam [ …], we can spend billions of dollars to put god’s children on their own two feet here on earth. And the resources are here. And we can get rid of slums. It isn’t a real problem. It’s not too difficult to rid of slums. It isn’t too difficult to have work for everybody. It isn’t too difficult to give everybody a livable income in our nation. If we only had the will. It would take about 10 billion dollars a year to do it. That’s just half of what we are spending trying to get a man to the moon. 10 billion dollars a year over the next 10 years, a hundred billion dollars, would solve most of the economic housing problems that we confront. So there must be a massive action program.

Now we need to get rid of one of two myths if we are going to go one in the days ahead and they still persist all over the nation. One is what I refer to as the myth of time. I’m sure you’ve heard this. It is the notion that there is something in the very flow of time that will miraculously heal all of the ills of society. Certainly I’ve heard this a great deal. People who are often very sincere said to those of us in the civil rights movement and our allies in the white community. They say ‘slow up.’ They say ‘be nice, be patient, and just wait 100 or 200 years and the problem will work itself out.’ Because only time can solve the problem. Well there is an answer to that myth and that is that time is neutral. It can be used either constructively or destructively. And I’m afraid that the forces of ill will in our nation have used the time much more effectively than forces of good will. And we may have to repent in this generation not merely for the vitriolic words and the violent actions of the bad people, but for the appalling silence of the good people who sit around and say ‘wait on time.’ Somewhere we must come to see that human progress never rolls in on the wheels of inevitability. It comes through the tireless efforts and the consistent work of dedicated individuals who are willing to be coworkers with God. Without that kind of hard work, time itself becomes an ally of the primitive and irrational forces of social stagnation. This is what is happening over the nation today. We hear a lot of talk of a white backlash. I don’t know it that’s the right word, it’s probably a white “frontlash.” Bringing to the surface prejudices and hatreds that have been latent. Latent hostilities that are now coming out in the open. This is what we are faced with all over. And down in my home state of Georgia, the people decided that they would try desperately to turn the clock of history back by electing as the democratic standard-bearer a man named Lester Maddox. Now I don’t know if you know him, but he is an axe-swinging, pistol-packing man who prefers to use the axe handle and the pistol to abiding by the law of the land and seeing the Negro as a citizen of this nation. And this is what happened in Georgia which reveals that Georgia is a sick state, like so many others, produced by the diseases of a sick
nation. And I can see in his election something very dangerous. It portends difficult days ahead. It portends days ahead in race relations that will be confusingly dreary and darker than a thousand midnights. And I started thinking when he was elected that somewhere along the way the seeds had been planted for his election. The bigots are speaking out now and all too many good people are silent. Those reactionary forces are coming alive again. The nation is taking a swing to the reactionary and all too many people are silent through this period, seeking an excuse for inaction, seeking an excuse for not doing what is right. Edmund Burke said on one occasion, ‘when bad men combine, good men must unite.’

This is the challenge facing America. When bad men plot, good men must plan. When bad men burn and bomb, good men must build and bind. When bad men shout words of hatred, good men must proclaim the glories of love. When bad men seek to preserve a deadening status quo, good men must seek to give birth to justice and brotherhood. And the challenge facing America today is for the good people to rise up and unite and engage in an action program and use time creatively and constructively.

There is another myth that gets around a great deal. It is the notion that legislation cannot deal with the problems which we face in civil rights. The heart must be changed, the argument goes, and you can’t change the heart through laws, through legislation, judicial degrees and what have you. Now I think there is a half truth here. If we are going to have an integrated society, white Americans must treat negro Americans right not merely because the law says it, but because it’s natural and right. It must be done because white man sees that the Negro is his brother. And that he is not only his brother’s keeper, but that he is his brother’s brother. And so I recognize that if we are to come to the real day of integration, people must be obedient to the unenforceable. But after saying this it is necessary to see the other side. It may be true that you can’t legislate integration, but you can legislate desegregation. 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 the law cannot 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 change the hearts of men, it does change the habits of men. And when you begin to change the habits of people, pretty soon they adjust to it. Pretty soon they discover that they can live with it. And pretty soon the attitudes begin to change. There is need for civil rights legislation.

Our nation did a tragic thing through its Congress a few days ago and that is it defeated a civil rights bill which dealt on the one hand with the whole question of the administration of justice, but on the other hand a question seriously facing America and that is the question of open housing. If we cannot learn to live together, and get rid of the myths of the past and the notions that have been spread around the country that have no basis in reality – that Negroes depreciate housing values and that the minute that Negroes move in a community the housing value, the property value, goes down. There’s absolutely no truth in this. It only goes down when the whites run out and it becomes a new all-negro community That’s when it goes down – because the whole society begins to neglect that community then. The services are not the same. The blockbusting pattern destroys everything that could be united within that community. The fact is that through studies we have discovered that [when] Negroes move into communities, property values actually go up when it remains an integrated community. And there is no more dangerous trend in our nation than the building up of predominantly negro central cities, ringed by white suburbs. This is doing nothing but inviting social disaster. Yet the nation fails to deal with this problem. When that civil rights bill died two days ago, a bit of our commitment to justice died. When that bill died, our commitment to democracy died. When that bill died, so much that can make America the nation it is called to be died. So I hope that in the next session of Congress this will come back again and that the good people will get together and see that it is passed and dealt with properly.

Another thing that we must do is somehow come to the point of seeing that the Negro and the white man are tied together in a single garment of destiny. The sooner we see this, the better it will be for everybody in America. The fact is that there is no separate black path to power and fulfillment that does not intersect white paths. There is no separate white path to power and fulfillment, short of social chaos, that does not share that power with black aspirations for freedom and human dignity. In this interdependent society, we are bound to live together. The sooner we learn it, the greater this nation will be. The Negro needs the white man to save him from his fears. The white man needs the Negro to save him from his guilt. In this interrelated society every Negro is a little white and every white person is a little negro. Our music, our language, our material prosperity, and even our food are all an amalgam of black and white. And so all over America, we must come to see that black and white together we shall overcome. It is necessary to see this in order to come to a truly integrated society. John Donne was right. No man is an island entire itself. Every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. He goes on to say, toward the end, ‘any man’s death diminishes me, because I’m involved in Mankind. And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for thee.’ This is true in our national life. No man, no racial group, is an island entire of itself. Whatever happens to one, happens to all. As long as the Negro is down in the valley of despair, in the valley of poverty, in a real sense white America has to face the fact that it diminishes itself by not getting the Negro out of that valley. As so we are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality. Whatever effects one directly, effects all indirectly. This is the challenge [of] an action program and a real commitment so that nobody will have to talk about a white backlash, nobody will be going around talking about black power, but everybody will be talking about a kind of striped power where black and white work together for the building  of the human power that all of God’s children need and must have in order to live. In other words, if this problem is to be solved there will have to be some divine discontent around.

In every academic discipline, there are technical words that usually become a part of the nomenclature of that discipline. Every academic discipline has its technical vocabulary. Modern psychology has a word that is probably used more than any other word in psychology. It is the word maladjusted. Certainly we all want to live the well-adjusted life, in order to avoid the neurotic and schizophrenic personalities, but I must honestly say to you tonight that there are
some things in our nation and the world of which I am proud to be maladjusted, of which I don’t mind calling upon all people of good will to be maladjusted. Until the good society is realized, I must honestly say that I never intend to adjust myself to segregation and discrimination. I never intend to adjust myself to religious bigotry. I never intend to adjust myself to the madness of militarism and the self-defeating effects of physical violence. It is quite appalling for me to pick up the paper and see that a former president of our nation – President Eisenhower – can even make the suggestion that it may be necessary to use nuclear weapons in the war in Vietnam. Nothing to me is more frightening and nothing is more damaging in terms of advice in a day when Sputniks and [Geminis?] are dashing through outer space. Guided ballistic missiles are carving highways of death through the stratosphere. No nation can win a war. It is no longer a choice between violence and nonviolence. It is either nonviolence or nonexistence. President Kennedy was right. Mankind must put an end to war or war will put an end to Mankind. The alternative to disarmament, the alternative to 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 and our earthly habitat will be transformed into an inferno that even the mind of Dante could not imagine.

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 echoed 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 of an age amazingly adjusted to slavery, scratched 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 unalienable rights and that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.’ As maladjusted as Jesus of Nazareth, who could say to the men and women of his day, ‘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 into the bright and glittering daybreak of freedom and justice. And we will be able to build right here a new and beautiful America where every man will respect the dignity and worth of human personality.

And may I close by giving you my personal faith. In spite of the tensions of this moment, in spite of the setbacks, in spite of my personal frustrations, my deep disappointments, in spite of some of the developments that are so confusing, taking place today, I believe that we are still going to win our freedom. Our goal is freedom and I believe that we are going to get there because ultimately the goal of America is freedom and I have not lost faith in America.

Abused and scorned though we may be, our destiny is tied up with the destiny of America. Before the Pilgrim fathers landed in Plymouth, we were here. Before Jefferson etched across the pages of history the words that I just mentioned, we were here. Before the beautiful words of the Star Spangled Banner were written, we were here. For more than two centuries, our forebearers labored without wages. They made cotton king. They built the homes of their masters in the midst of the most humiliating and oppressive conditions. And yet out of a bottomless vitality, they continued to grow and develop. If the inexpressible cruelties of slavery couldn’t stop us, the opposition that we now face will surely fail. We’re gonna win our freedom because both the sacred heritage of our nation and the eternal wheel of the almighty God are embodied in our echoing demands. Yes, we will get there because Carlisle is right: ‘no lie can live forever.’

We will reach the glad day of integration because William Cullen Bryant is right: ‘truth, crushed to earth, will rise again.’ We will win the victory for justice because James Russell Lowell is right: 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.’

So with this faith, we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a 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 black men and white men, Jews and gentiles, Protestants and Catholics will join hands all over this nation and sing in the words of the old negro spirituals ‘free at last, free at last, thank God almighty we are free at last.’

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