Martin Luther King Day Quotes

Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

I have a dream that one day little black boys and girls will be holding hands with little white boys and girls.

The day we see the truth and cease to speak is the day we begin to die

One day we will learn that the heart can never be totally right when the head is totally wrong

One day the absurdity of the almost universal human belief in the slavery of other animals will be palpable. We shall then have discovered our souls and become worthier of sharing this planet with them.

I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.

You may be 38 years old, as I happen to be. And one day, some great opportunity stands before you and calls you to stand up for some great principle, some great issue, some great cause. And you refuse to do it because you are afraid…. You refuse to do it because you want to live longer…. You’re afraid that you will lose your job, or you are afraid that you will be criticized or that you will lose your popularity, or you’re afraid that somebody will stab you, or shoot at you or bomb your house; so you refuse to take the stand. Well, you may go on and live until you are 90, but you’re just as dead at 38 as you would be at 90. And the cessation of breathing in your life is but the belated announcement of an earlier death of the spirit.

And one day we must ask the question, "Why are there forty million poor people in America?" And when you begin to ask that question, you are raising questions about the economic system, about a broader distribution of wealth. When you ask that question, you begin to question the capitalistic economy.

Mother Dear, one day I'm going to turn this world upside down." --From My Brother Martin, by Christine King Farris

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s dream was a manifestation of hope that humanity might one day get out of its own way by finding the courage to realize that love and nonviolence are not indicators of weakness but gifts of significant strength.

I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: 'We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.

The whirlwinds of revolt will continue to shake the foundations of our nation until the bright day of justice emerges.

I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal." I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood. I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice. I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. I have a dream today! I have a dream that one day, down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of "interposition" and "nullification" -- one day right there in Alabama little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers. I have a dream today! I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, and every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight; "and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed and all flesh shall see it together.

And when this happens, when we allow freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands 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 have a dream, that one day on the red hills of Georgia...

The early Christians rejoiced when they were deemed worthy to suffer for what they believed. In those days the Church was not merely a thermometer that recorded the ideas and principles o popular opinion; it was a thermostat that transformed the mores of society.

Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter. —MARTIN LUTHER KING JR. Mastering

On the one hand we are called to play the good Samaritan on life's roadside; but that will be only an initial act. One day we must come to see that the whole Jericho road must be transformed so that men and women will not be constantly beaten and robbed as they make their journey on life's highway. True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar; it is not haphazard and superficial. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring. "A Time to Break Silence," at Riverside Church

Thanksgiving is the holiday that encompasses all others. All of them, from Martin Luther King Day to Arbor Day to Christmas to Valentine's Day, are in one way or another about being thankful.

In the days ahead we must not consider it unpatriotic to raise certain basic questions about our national character.

I have the audacity to believe that peoples everywhere can have three meals a day for their bodies, education and culture of their minds, and dignity, equality, and freedom for their spirits. I believe that what self-centered men have torn down, men other-centered can build up I still believe that one day mankind will bow before the altars of God and be crowned triumphant over war and bloodshed, and nonviolent redemptive goodwill will proclaim the rule of the land.

Now, I say to you today my friends, even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream. I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: - 'We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.

I have a dream. I have a dream that one day, people will be judged by the content of their character, not by the color of their skin.

I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a desert state sweltering in the heat of injustice and oppression, will one day be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.

I figure if Doc is right about the time I have left,I should wrap up my adolescence in the next few days, get into my early productive stages about the third week of school, go through my midlife crisis during Martin Luther King Jr's birthday, redouble my efforts at productivity and think about my legacy, say, Easter, and start cashing in my 401(k)s a couple weeks before Memorial Day.

One of these days I'm going to put my body where my mind is.

I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made straight and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed and all flesh shall see it together.

In his grave, we praise him for his decency - but when he walked amongst us, we responded with no decency of our own. When he suggested that all men should have a place in the sun - we put a special sanctity on the right of ownership and the privilege of prejudice by maintaining that to deny homes to Negroes was a democratic right. Now we acknowledge his compassion - but we exercised no compassion of our own. When he asked us to understand that men take to the streets out of anguish and hopelessness and a vision of that dream dying, we bought guns and speculated about roving agitators and subversive conspiracies and demanded law and order. We felt anger at the effects, but did little to acknowledge the causes. We extol all the virtues of the man - but we chose not to call them virtues before his death. And now, belatedly, we talk of this man's worth - but the judgement comes late in the day as part of a eulogy when it should have been made a matter of record while he existed as a living force. If we are to lend credence to our mourning, there are acknowledgements that must be made now, albeit belatedly. We must act on the altogether proper assumption that Martin Luther King asked for nothing but that which was his due... He asked only for equality, and it is that which we denied him. [excerpt from a letter to The Los Angeles Times in response to the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr.; April 8, 1968

I look forward confidently to the day when all who work for a living will be one with no thought to their separateness as Negroes, Jews, Italians or any other distinctions. This will be the day when we bring into full realization the American dream -- a dream yet unfulfilled.

We have to stand up for what is right-- work, march, struggle for what is right-- but we must stay vigilant that it is for the good of all

Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter. —MARTIN LUTHER KING JR.

On Slavery: The saddest slap in the face is we have NO monument, no real statues or memorials, no special day of Atonement or Remembrance (NOT ONE), no thanks for 400+ years of free labor, forced servitude across the Trans-Atlantic, ass beatings, buying ourselves and families out of slavery, rape and plunder...but everyone else has monuments, special museums, and even movies. This is what America thinks of black people, so-called black president and all, who has been largely silent on this subject...we'll even celebrate Leprechauns, Easter Bunnies, and Secretary's Day before we acknowledge our history.

Everyone appears to be courageous until bad weathers arrive, and then we know the true leaders.

In a world facing the revolt of ragged and hungry masses of God's children; in a world torn between the tensions of East and West, white and colored, individuals and collectivists; in a world whose cultural and spiritual power lags so far behind her technological capabilities that we live each day on the verge of nuclear co-annihilation; in this world, nonviolence is no longer an option for intellectual analysis, it is an imperative for action

One day our society will come to respect the sanitation worker if it is to survive, for the person who picks up our garbage, in the final analysis, is as significant as the physician, for if he doesn’t do his job, diseases are rampant.

As Martin Luther King Jr. once said, “Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.

Mrs. Clinton, speaking to a black church audience on Martin Luther King Day last year, did describe President George W. Bush as treating the Congress of the United States like 'a plantation,' adding in a significant tone of voice that 'you know what I mean ...' She did not repeat this trope, for some reason, when addressing the electors of Iowa or New Hampshire. She's willing to ring the other bell, though, if it suits her. But when an actual African-American challenger comes along, she rather tends to pout and wince at his presumption (or did until recently).

They were the good old days. Don't give up hope in the bad new days, which will become the good old days. We appreciate Kennedy because he was killed; Martin Luther King was a great man. If you'd meet Naropa or Tilopa on the spot you'd be pissed off. History is very deceptive, reality is more important. There is a piece of philosophy for you.

I'm hungry for knowledge. The whole thing is to learn every day, to get brighter and brighter. That's what this world is about. You look at someone like Gandhi, and he glowed. Martin Luther King glowed. Muhammad Ali glows. I think that's from being bright all the time, and trying to be brighter.

It’s not even right to complain or whine to others about how busy you are. You and I have the same amount of time in a day as Gandhi, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Mother Teresa, Michael Jordan or anyone else who has achieved greatness.

Our lives begin to end the day that we become silent about things that matter.

The most risky day in the world will be the day the bird will decide to swim and the fish will decide to fly. Stay glued to what you can do.

Let us be dissatisfied until that day when nobody will shout "White Power!" — when nobody will shout "Black Power!" — but everybody will talk about God's power and human power.

America hasn’t seen this type of ethnic polarization since the days leading up to the 1964 Civil Rights Act and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

As Martin Luther King Jr. said in his “I Have a Dream” speech, whose fiftieth anniversary has now passed, “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.”1 King’s dream failed that night in Florida when Zimmerman decided to follow Martin because of the color of his skin.

MLK was not generally revered during his lifetime; He was decried and vilified by the mainstream (white) media. MLK had Cassandra vision, and was unstoppable even in death. Less stoppable in death. For MLK Day today, please let's read his most challenging proclamations and let us revere him for them.

I say to you today, my friends, that in spite of the difficulties and frustrations of the moment, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream. I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal." I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slaveowners will be able to sit down together at a table of brotherhood. I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a desert state, sweltering with the heat of injustice and oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice. I have a dream that my four children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

You don't have to stand up for your rights to get justice, sometimes you can sit for your rights like Rosa Parks.

I have a dream my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. I have a dream today!

Even today there still exists in the South--and in certain areas of the North--the license that our society allows to unjust officials who implement their authority in the name of justice to practice injustice against minorities. Where, in the days of slavery, social license and custom placed the unbridled power of the whip in the hands of overseers and masters, today--especially in the southern half of the nation--armies of officials are clothed in uniform, invested with authority, armed with the instruments of violence and death and conditioned to believe that they can intimidate, maim or kill Negroes with the same recklessness that once motivated the slaveowner. If one doubts this conclusion, let him search the records and find how rarely in any southern state a police officer has been punished for abusing a Negro.

The end we seek is a society at peace with itself, a society that can live with its conscience. And that will be a day not of the white man, not of the black man. That will be the day of man as man.

A jail within a jail. In those long hours, he struggled over Reverend King's equation. "Throw us in jail and we will love you ... But be assured that we will wear you down by our capacity to suffer, and one day we will win our freedom. We will not only win our freedom for ourselves, we will so appeal to your heart and your conscience that we will win you in the process and our victory will be a double victory." No he could not make that leap to love. He understood neither the impulse of the proposition nor the will to execute it.

A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth. With righteous indignation, it will look at thousands of working people displaced from their jobs with reduced incomes as a result of automation while the profits of the employers remain intact, and say: “This is not just.” It will look across the oceans and see individual capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa and South America, only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries, and say: “This is not just.” It will look at our alliance with the landed gentry of Latin America and say: “This is not just.” The Western arrogance of feeling that it has everything to teach others and nothing to learn from them is not just. A true revolution of values will lay hands on the world order and say of war: “This way of settling differences is not just.” This business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation’s homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into the veins of peoples normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice and love. A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death. America, the richest and most powerful nation in the world, can well lead the way in this revolution of values. There is nothing to prevent us from paying adequate wages to schoolteachers, social workers and other servants of the public to insure that we have the best available personnel in these positions which are charged with the responsibility of guiding our future generations. There is nothing but a lack of social vision to prevent us from paying an adequate wage to every American citizen whether he be a hospital worker, laundry worker, maid or day laborer. There is nothing except shortsightedness to prevent us from guaranteeing an annual minimum—and livable—income for every American family. There is nothing, except a tragic death wish, to prevent us from reordering our priorities, so that the pursuit of peace will take precedence over the pursuit of war. There is nothing to keep us from remolding a recalcitrant status quo with bruised hands until we have fashioned it into a brotherhood.

One day we will learn that the heart can never be totally right if the head is totally wrong. Only through the bringing together of head and heart—intelligence and goodness—shall man rise to a fulfillment of his true nature.

Robert Kennedy, whose summer home is eight miles from the home I live in all year round, was shot two nights ago. He died last night. So it goes. Martin Luther King was shot a month ago. He died, too. So it goes. And every day my Government gives me a count of corpses created by military science in Vietnam. So it goes. My father died many years ago now—of natural causes. So it goes. He was a sweet man. He was a gun nut, too. He left me his guns. They rust.

When days grow dark and nights grow dreary, we can be thankful that our God combines in his nature a creative synthesis of love and justice that will lead us through life's dark valleys and into sunlit pathways of hope and fulfillment.

When dark situations arise, it is opportunity for you to reveal the leader in you. Rise and deal with them.

Most fiction is really nonfiction--and most nonfiction is really fiction!

The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. spoke in religious institutions almost every day of his adult life but never once told a congregation or gathering there for whom to vote.

Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.” Martin Luther King Jnr.

I have the audacity to believe that peoples everywhere can have three meals a day for their bodies, education and culture for their minds, and dignity, equality and freedom for their spirits.

...we may be consoled that God has two lights; a light to guide us in the brightness of the day when hopes are fulfilled and circumstances are favorable, and a light to guide us in the darkness of the midnight when we are thwarted and the slumbering giants of gloom and hopelessness rise in our souls.

It has been my conviction ever since reading Rauschenbusch that any religion that professes concern for the souls of men and is not equally concerned about the slums that damn them, the economic conditions that strangle them, and the social conditions that cripple them is a spiritually moribund religion only waiting for the day to be buried. It well has been said: “A religion that ends with the individual, ends.

Structures of evil do not crumble by passive waiting. If history teaches anything, it is that evil is recalcitrant and determined, and never voluntarily relinquishes its hold short of an almost fanatical resistance. Evil must be attacked by a counteracting persistence, by the day-to-day assault of the battering rams of justice.

...when President Clinton, on the anniversary of his election, spoke in the church in Tennessee where Martin Luther King, Jr., had delivered his last sermon. Inspired by the place and the occasion, he made one of the most eloquent speeches of his presidency. What would King have said, he asked, had he lived to see this day? "He would say, I did not live and die to see the American family destroyed. I did not live and die to see thirteen-year-old boys get automatic weapons and gun down nine-year-olds just for the kick of it. I did not live and die to see young people destroy their lives with drugs and then build fortunes destroying the lives of others. This is not what I came here to do. I fought for freedom, he would say, but not for the freedom of people to kill each other with reckless abandon; not for the freedom of children to have children and the fathers of the children walk away from them and abandon them as if they don't amount to anything. I fought for people to have the right to work, but not have whole communities and people abandoned. This is not what I lived and died for." After describing what his administration was doing to curb drugs and violence, the President concluded that the government alone could not do the job. The problem was caused by "the breakdown of the family, the community and the disappearance of jobs," and unless we "reach deep inside to the values, the spirit, the soul and the truth of human nature, none of the other things we seek to do will ever take us where we need to go.

Ladies and Gentlemen - I'm only going to talk to you just for a minute or so this evening. Because... I have some very sad news for all of you, and I think sad news for all of our fellow citizens, and people who love peace all over the world, and that is that Martin Luther King was shot and was killed tonight in Memphis, Tennessee. Martin Luther King dedicated his life to love and to justice between fellow human beings. He died in the cause of that effort. In this difficult day, in this difficult time for the United States, it's perhaps well to ask what kind of a nation we are and what direction we want to move in. For those of you who are black - considering the evidence evidently is that there were white people who were responsible - you can be filled with bitterness, and with hatred, and a desire for revenge. We can move in that direction as a country, in greater polarization - black people amongst blacks, and white amongst whites, filled with hatred toward one another. Or we can make an effort, as Martin Luther King did, to understand and to comprehend, and replace that violence, that stain of bloodshed that has spread across our land, with an effort to understand, compassion and love. For those of you who are black and are tempted to be filled with hatred and mistrust of the injustice of such an act, against all white people, I would only say that I can also feel in my own heart the same kind of feeling. I had a member of my family killed, but he was killed by a white man. But we have to make an effort in the United States, we have to make an effort to understand, to get beyond these rather difficult times. My favorite poet was Aeschylus. He once wrote: "Even in our sleep, pain which cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart, until, in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God." What we need in the United States is not division; what we need in the United States is not hatred; what we need in the United States is not violence and lawlessness, but is love and wisdom, and compassion toward one another, and a feeling of justice toward those who still suffer within our country, whether they be white or whether they be black. (Interrupted by applause) So I ask you tonight to return home, to say a prayer for the family of Martin Luther King, yeah that's true, but more importantly to say a prayer for our own country, which all of us love - a prayer for understanding and that compassion of which I spoke. We can do well in this country. We will have difficult times. We've had difficult times in the past. And we will have difficult times in the future. It is not the end of violence; it is not the end of lawlessness; and it's not the end of disorder. But the vast majority of white people and the vast majority of black people in this country want to live together, want to improve the quality of our life, and want justice for all human beings that abide in our land. Let us dedicate ourselves to what the Greeks wrote so many years ago: to tame the savageness of man and make gentle the life of this world. Let us dedicate ourselves to that, and say a prayer for our country and for our people. Thank you very much.

And I say to you this morning, that if you have never found something so dear and so precious to you that you will die for it, then you aren't fit to live. You may be 38 years old as I happen to be, and one day some great opportunity stands before you and calls upon you to stand up for some great principle, some great issue, some great cause--and you refuse to do it because you are afraid; you refuse to do it because you want to live longer; you're afraid that you will lose your job, or you're afraid that you will be criticized or that you will lose your popularity or you're afraid that somebody will stab you or shoot at you or bomb your house, and so you refuse to take the stand. Well you may go on and live until you are 90, but you're just as dead at 38 as you would be at 90! And the cessation of breathing in your life is but the belated announcement of an earlier death of the spirit. You died when you refused to stand up for right, you died when you refused to stand up for truth, you died when you refused to stand up for justice.

So, just to take King, because he's visible. On Martin Luther King Day, he's greatly celebrated for what he did in the early 1960s when he was saying 'I Have a Dream' and 'let's get rid of racist sheriffs in Alabama.' That was okay. By 1965 he was getting to be a dangerous figure. For one thing, he was turning against the war in Vietnam pretty strongly. For another, he was working to be at the head of a developing poor people's movement. He was assassinated when he was taking part in a strike of sanitation workers and he was on his way to Washington for a poor people's convention. He was going beyond racist sheriffs in Alabama to northern racism, which is much more deep-seated and class-based.

If we look at our history with honesty and clarity we will be forced to admit that our federal form of government has been, from the day of its birth, weakened in integrity, confused and confounded in its direction, by the unresolved race question. It is as if a political thalidomide drug taken during pregnancy caused the birth of a crippled nation.

If you desire to mine the gold of good intentions in others, then forgiveness is essential. And it’s rarely a one-time thing. Civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. was right when he said, “Forgiveness is not an occasional act; it is a permanent attitude.

We are going to win our freedom because both the sacred heritage of our nation and the eternal will of the Almighty God are embodied in our echoing demands. So however difficult it is during this period, however difficult it is to continue to live with the agony and the continued existence of racism, however difficult it is to live amidst the constant hurt, the constant insult and the constant disrespect, I can still sing we shall overcome. We shall overcome because the arc of the moral universe is long but it bends towards justice. We shall overcome because Carlisle is right. "No lie can live forever." We shall overcome because William Cullen Bryant is right. "Truth crushed to earth will rise again." We shall overcome because James Russell Lowell is right. "Truth forever on the scaffold, wrong forever on the throne."   Yet that scaffold sways the future. We shall overcome because the Bible is right.  "You shall reap what you sow." 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 all of God's children all over this nation - black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old negro spiritual, "Free at Last, Free at Last, Thank God Almighty, We are Free At Last.

We will be greatly misled if we feel that the problem will work itself out. Structures of evil do not crumble by passive waiting. If history teaches anything, it is that evil is recalcitrant and determined, and never voluntarily relinquishes its hold short of an almost fanatical resistance. Evil must be attacked by a counteracting persistence, by the day-to-day assault of the battering rams of justice.

Dr. Martin Luther King put it like this: “We are called to play the Good Samaritan on life’s roadside . . . but one day we must come to see that the whole Jericho road must be transformed so that men and women will not be constantly beaten and robbed. True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar. It comes to see that a system that produces beggars needs to be repaved. We are called to be the Good Samaritan, but after you lift so many people out of the ditch you start to ask, maybe the whole road to Jericho needs to be repaved.”23

The Negro’s economic problem was compounded by the emergence and growth of automation. Since discrimination and lack of education confined him to unskilled and semi-skilled labor, the Negro was and remains the first to suffer in these days of great technological development.

There is a pressing need for a liberalism in the North which is truly liberal, a liberalism that firmly believes in integration in its own community as well as in the Deep South. It is one thing to agree that the goal of integration is morally and legally right; it is another thing to commit oneself positively and actively to the ideal of integration—the former is intellectual assent, the latter is actual belief. These are days that demand practices to match professions. This is no day to pay lip service to integration; we must pay life service to it.

Modern psychology has a word that is probably used more than any other word in modern psychology. It is the word “maladjusted.” This word is the ringing cry to modern child psychology. Certainly, we all want to avoid the maladjusted life. In order to have real adjustment within our personalities, we all want the well‐adjusted life in order to avoid neurosis, schizophrenic personalities. But I say to you, my friends, as I move to my conclusion, there are certain things in our nation and in the world which I am proud to be maladjusted and which I hope all men of good‐will will be maladjusted until the good societies realize. I say very honestly that I never intend to become adjusted to segregation and discrimination. I never intend to become adjusted to religious bigotry. I never intend to adjust myself to economic conditions that will take necessities from the many to give luxuries to the few. I never intend to adjust myself to the madness of militarism, to self‐defeating effects of physical violence… In other words, I’m about convinced now that there is need for a new organization in our world. The International Association for the Advancement of Creative Maladjustment‐‐men and women who will be as maladjusted as the prophet Amos. Who in the midst of the injustices of his day could cry out in words that echo across the centuries, “Let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.

I have a dream today. I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight, and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together.

So often the contemporary church is a weak, ineffectual voice with an uncertain sound. So often it is an archdefender of the status quo. Far from being disturbed by the presence of the church, the power structure of the average community is consoled by the church’s silent—and often even vocal—sanction of things as they are. But the judgment of God is upon the church as never before. If today’s church does not recapture the sacrificial spirit of the early church, it will lose its authenticity, forfeit the loyalty of millions, and be dismissed as an irrelevant social club with no meaning for the twentieth century. Every day I meet young people whose disappointment with the church has turned into outright disgust.

In those days the church was not merely a thermometer that recorded the ideas and principles of popular opinion; it was a thermostat that transformed the mores of society.

Calamities reveal your capabilities. Take note of this and when times get odd, prepare and shine.

Ensure you have done each day’s portion of the heavy responsibilities resting on you. Never delay your success!

The essence of adversity is to show us the real brave people who can withstand it.

I look to a day when people will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.

John Bunyan: “I will stay in jail to the end of my days before I make a butchery of my conscience.

Everybody can be great because anybody can serve.

I look to a day when people will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character. Martin Luther King, Jr.

This would be an unbearable world were God to have only a single light, but we may be consoled that God has two lights: a light to guide us in the brightness of the day when hopes are fulfilled and circumstances are favorable, and a light to guide us in the darkness of the midnight when we are thwarted and the slumbering giants of gloom and hopelessness rise in our souls.

I have the audacity to believe that peoples everywhere can have three meals a day for their bodies, education and culture for their minds, and dignity, equality, and freedom for their spirits.

But the judgement of God is upon the church as never before. If today's church does not recapture the sacrificial spirit of the early church, it will lose its authenticity, forfeit the loyalty of millions, and be dismissed as an irrelevant social club with no meaning for the twentieth century. Every day I meet young people whose disappointment with the church has turned into outright disgust.

The famous speech Martin Luther King Jr. delivered on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial on August 28, 1963, included the sentence: "I have a dream that my four children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character". Today's left-wing, through identity politics, affirmative-action policies, and hiring quotas, has shattered that dream.

I have bad news for you, for all of our fellow citizens, and people who love peace all over the world, and that is that Martin Luther King was shot and killed tonight. Martin Luther King dedicated his life to love and to justice for his fellow human beings, and he died because of that effort. In this difficult day, in this difficult time for the United States, it is perhaps well to ask what kind of a nation we are and what direction we want to move in. For those of you who are black--considering the evidence there evidently is that there were white people who were responsible--you can be filled with bitterness, with hatred, and a desire for revenge. We can move in that direction as a country, in great polarization--black people amongst black, white people amongst white, filled with hatred toward one another. Or we can make an effort, as Martin Luther King did, to understand and to comprehend, and to replace that violence, that stain of bloodshed that has spread across our land, with an effort to understand with compassion and love. For those of you who are black and are tempted to be filled with hatred and distrust at the injustice of such an act, against all white people, I can only say that I feel in my own heart the same kind of feeling. I had a member of my family killed, but he was killed by a white man. But we have to make an effort in the United States, we have to make an effort to understand, to go beyond these rather difficult times. My favorite poet was Aeschylus. He wrote: "In our sleep, pain which cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart until, in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God." What we need in the United States is not division; what we need in the United States is not hatred; what we need in the United States is not violence or lawlessness; but love and wisdom, and compassion toward one another, and a feeling of justice toward those who still suffer within our country, whether they be white or they be black. So I shall ask you tonight to return home, to say a prayer for the family of Martin Luther King, that's true, but more importantly to say a prayer for our own country, which all of us love--a prayer for understanding and that compassion of which I spoke. We can do well in this country. We will have difficult times; we've had difficult times in the past; we will have difficult times in the future. It is not the end of violence; it is not the end of lawlessness; it is not the end of disorder. But the vast majority of white people and the vast majority of black people in this country want to live together, want to improve the quality of our life, and want justice for all human beings who abide in our land. Let us dedicate ourselves to what the Greeks wrote so many years ago: to tame the savageness of man and make gentle the life of this world. Let us dedicate ourselves to that, and say a prayer for our country and for our people.

Of all people, only Mr. King came close to exposing the true magic of black people,” Arabella explained. “For many years we debated killing him for our own protection.” Miss Josephine listened in amazement. “Blacks killed Martin Luther King Jr.?” Arabella scowled. “Not Doctor King . . . ,” she exclaimed. “We hired a man to kill Stephen King. Unfortunately the assassin was inept, and the intended hit-and-run was a failure.

..I began speaking.. First, I took issue with the media's characterization of the post-Katrina New Orleans as resembling the third world as its poor citizens clamored for a way out. I suggested that my experience in New Orleans working with the city's poorest people in the years before the storm had reflected the reality of third-world conditions in New Orleans, and that Katrina had not turned New Orleans into a third-world city but had only revealed it to the world as such. I explained that my work, running Reprieve, a charity that brought lawyers and volunteers to the Deep South from abroad to work on death penalty issues, had made it clear to me that much of the world had perceived this third-world reality, even if it was unnoticed by our own citizens. To try answer Ryan's question, I attempted to use my own experience to explain that for many people in New Orleans, and in poor communities across the country, the government was merely an antagonist, a terrible landlord, a jailer, and a prosecutor. As a lawyer assigned to indigent people under sentence of death and paid with tax dollars, I explained the difficulty of working with clients who stand to be executed and who are provided my services by the state, not because they deserve them, but because the Constitution requires that certain appeals to be filed before these people can be killed. The state is providing my clients with my assistance, maybe the first real assistance they have ever received from the state, so that the state can kill them. I explained my view that the country had grown complacent before Hurricane Katrina, believing that the civil rights struggle had been fought and won, as though having a national holiday for Martin Luther King, or an annual march by politicians over the bridge in Selma, Alabama, or a prosecution - forty years too late - of Edgar Ray Killen for the murder of civil rights workers in Philadelphia, Mississippi, were any more than gestures. Even though President Bush celebrates his birthday, wouldn't Dr. King cry if he could see how little things have changed since his death? If politicians or journalists went to Selma any other day of the year, they would see that it is a crumbling city suffering from all of the woes of the era before civil rights were won as well as new woes that have come about since. And does anyone really think that the Mississippi criminal justice system could possibly be a vessel of social change when it incarcerates a greater percentage of its population than almost any place in the world, other than Louisiana and Texas, and then compels these prisoners, most of whom are black, to work prison farms that their ancestors worked as chattel of other men? ... I hoped, out loud, that the post-Katrina experience could be a similar moment [to the Triangle Shirtwaist factory fiasco], in which the American people could act like the children in the story and declare that the emperor has no clothes, and hasn't for a long time. That, in light of Katrina, we could be visionary and bold about what people deserve. We could say straight out that there are people in this country who are racist, that minorities are still not getting a fair shake, and that Republican policies heartlessly disregard the needs of individual citizens and betray the common good. As I stood there, exhausted, in front of the thinning audience of New Yorkers, it seemed possible that New Orleans's destruction and the suffering of its citizens hadn't been in vain.

I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be. This is the way our world is made. No individual or nation can stand out boasting of being independent. We are interdependent. —Martin Luther King, Jr.

Thomas Paine is America’s single great revolutionary theorist. We have produced a slew of admirable anarchists (Alexander Berkman, Emma Goldman, Dorothy Day, and Noam Chomsky), and radical leaders have arisen out of oppressed groups (Sitting Bull, Frederick Douglass, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Fannie Lou Hamer, Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, Cornel West, and bell hooks). But we do not have a tradition of revolutionists. This makes Paine unique.

I must confess, my friends, that the road ahead will not always be smooth. There will still be rocky places of frustration and meandering points of bewilderment. There will be inevitable setbacks here and there. And there will be those moments when the buoyancy of hope will be transformed into the fatigue of despair. Our dreams will sometimes be shattered and our ethereal hopes blasted. We may again, with tear-drenched eyes, have to stand before the bier of some courageous civil rights worker whose life will be snuffed out by the dastardly acts of bloodthirsty mobs. But difficult and painful as it is, we must walk on in the days ahead with an audacious faith in the future.

I picked up the large lapel button richly worked in purple, green and yellow plastic. 'January 1997,' it announced, 'Day of Visionaries.' Beneath the slogan was a portrait of Dr Martin Luther King Jr. And next to him, sharing the billing as it were, was a same-size picture of our newly elected President. And below was the official logo of the inauguration committee. I’m sorry, but that’s too much. Much too much. I can tune out the Chief Executive when he drivels on about building a bridge to Newt Gingrich. I can be shaking a cocktail or grilling a lobster when he intones that 'nothing big ever came from being small.' I can be receiving a telephone call in a foreign language and still keep up with him when he says that the future lies before us, and the past behind, and that we must light the torch of knowledge from the fountain of wisdom (or whatever). As Orwell once remarked, after a point you stop noticing that you have said things like 'The jackboot is thrown into the melting pot,’ or 'The fascist octopus has sung its swansong.' Motor-mouth and automatic pilot and sheer flatulence and conceit supply their own mediocre, infinitely renewable energy. But this cheap, cheery little button turned the scale. It’s one thing to be bored, or subjected to boredom. It’s another to be insulted. This is a pot of piss flung in the face. What does it take to get people disgusted these days?

which Trump released as one of the last acts of his presidency, on Martin Luther King Day. Written without input from any scholars who specialize in American history, it sought to reinforce the exceptional nature of our country, and to put forth a “patriotic” narrative that downplays racism and inequality and emphasizes a unity predicated on seeing slavery, segregation, and ongoing racial injustice as aberrations in a fundamentally just and exceptionally free nation.21

Rationalization and the incessant search for scapegoats are the psychological cataracts that blind us to our individual and collective sins. But the day has passed for bland euphemisms. He who lives with untruth lives in spiritual slavery.

Instead of submitting to surreptitious cruelty in thousands of dark jail cells and on countless shadowed street corners, he would force his oppressor to commit his brutality openly--in the light of day--with the rest of the world looking on.

Early Christians rejoiced when they were deemed worthy to suffer for what they believed. In those days the Church was not merely a thermometer that recorded the ideas and principles of popular opinion; it was a thermostat that transformed the mores of society...If the Church of today does not recapture the sacrificial spirit of the early Church, it will lose its authentic ring, forfeit the loyalty of millions, and be dismissed as an irrelevant social club with no meaning for the twentieth century.

A true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and justice of many of our past and present policies. On the one hand we are called to play the good Samaritan on life’s roadside; but that will be only an initial act. One day we must come to see that the whole Jericho road must be transformed so that men and women will not be constantly beaten and robbed as they make their journey on life’s highway. True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar; it is not haphazard and superficial. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring. A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth. With righteous indignation, it will look across the seas and see individual capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa and South America, only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries, and say: “This is not just.” It will look at our alliance with the landed gentry of Latin America and say: “This is not just.” The Western arrogance of feeling that it has everything to teach others and nothing to learn from them is not just. A true revolution of values will lay hands on the world order and say of war: “This way of settling differences is not just.” This business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation’s homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into veins of people normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice and love. A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.

I have a dream that one day the state of Alabama, whose governor’s lips are presently dripping with the words of interposition and nullification, will be transformed into a situation where little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls and walk together as sisters and brothers. I have a dream today. I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight, and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together. This is our hope. This is the faith with which I return to the South. 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 work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day.

Seldom do I pause to answer criticism of my work and ideas. If I sought to answer all the criticisms that cross my desk, my secretaries would have little time for anything other than such correspondence in the course of the day, and I would have no time for constructive work.

We have not thoroughly assessed the bodies snatched from dirt and sand to be chained in a cell. We have not reckoned with the horrendous, violent mass kidnapping that we call the Middle Passage. We have not been honest about all of America's complicity - about the wealth the South earned on the backs of the enslaved, or the wealth the North gained through the production of enslaved hands. We have not fully understood the status symbol that owning bodies offered. We have not confronted the humanity, the emotions, the heartbeats of the multiple generations who were born into slavery and died in it, who never tasted freedom on America's land. The same goes for the Civil War. We have refused to honestly confront the fact that so many were willing to die in order to hold the freedom of others in their hands. We have refused to acknowledge slavery's role at all, preferring to boil things down to the far more palatable "state's rights." We have not confessed that the end of slavery was so bitterly resented, the rise of Jim Crow became inevitable - and with it, a belief in Black inferiority that lives on in hearts and minds today. We have painted the hundred-year history of Jim Crow as little more than mean signage and the inconvenience that white people and Black people could not drink from the same fountain. But those signs weren't just "mean". They were perpetual reminders of the swift humiliation and brutal violence that could be suffered at any moment in the presence of whiteness. Jim Crow meant paying taxes for services one could not fully enjoy; working for meager wages; and owning nothing that couldn't be snatched away. For many black families, it meant never building wealth and never having legal recourse for injustice. The mob violence, the burned-down homes, the bombed churches and businesses, the Black bodies that were lynched every couple of days - Jim Crow was walking through life measuring every step. Even our celebrations of the Civil Rights Movement are sanitized, its victories accentuated while the battles are whitewashed. We have not come to grips with the spitting and shouting, the pulling and tugging, the clubs, dogs, bombs, and guns, the passion and vitriol with which the rights of Black Americans were fought against. We have not acknowledged the bloodshed that often preceded victory. We would rather focus on the beautiful words of Martin Luther King Jr. than on the terror he and protesters endured at marches, boycotts, and from behind jail doors. We don't want to acknowledge that for decades, whiteness fought against every civil right Black Americans sought - from sitting at lunch counters and in integrated classrooms to the right to vote and have a say in how our country was run. We like to pretend that all those white faces who carried protest signs and batons, who turned on their sprinklers and their fire hoses, who wrote against the demonstrations and preached against the changes, just disappeared. We like to pretend that they were won over, transformed, the moment King proclaimed, "I have a dream." We don't want to acknowledge that just as Black people who experienced Jim Crow are still alive, so are the white people who vehemently protected it - who drew red lines around Black neighborhoods and divested them of support given to average white citizens. We ignore that white people still avoid Black neighborhoods, still don't want their kids going to predominantly Black schools, still don't want to destroy segregation. The moment Black Americans achieved freedom from enslavement, America could have put to death the idea of Black inferiority. But whiteness was not prepared to sober up from the drunkenness of power over another people group. Whiteness was not ready to give up the ability to control, humiliate, or do violence to any Black body in the vicinity - all without consequence.

I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal. ‘I have a dream that one day, on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down to gether at the table of brotherhood – I have a dream. ‘That one day even the state of Mississippi – a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of op pression – will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice. I have a dream.’ He had hit a rhythm, and two hundred thousand people felt it sway their souls. It was more than a speech: it was a poem and a canticle and a prayer as deep as the grave. The heartbreaking phrase ‘I have a dream’ came like an amen at the end of each ringing sentence. ‘. . . That my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the colour of their skin but by the content of their character – I have a dream today. ‘I have a dream that one day down in Alabama – with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of interposition and nullification – one day right there in Alabama, little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers – I have a dream today. ‘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 work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day.’ Looking around, Jasper saw that black and white faces alike were running with tears. Even he felt moved, and he had thought himself immune to this kind of thing. ‘And when this happens; when we allow freedom to ring; when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city; we will be able to speed up that day when all of God’s children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands . . .’ Here he slowed down, and the crowd was almost silent. King’s voice trembled with the earthquake force of his passion. ‘. . . and sing, in the words of the old Negro spiritual: ‘Free at last! ‘Free at last! ‘Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!

Martin Luther King Jr. was denied a gun permit as a result of gun control laws put into effect by white male Democrats. Out of all the law-abiding, peace-loving people, this man was denied the means to protect himself while those who wished to do him harm for believing in equality were allowed to carry. Dr. King was disarmed by Democrat laws. That is just one in a series of examples of the explicit racism behind left-wing gun grabs. It should be taught in schools, how the origination of modern-day gun control laws were designed to prevent racial equality.

King established a Pan-African frame for what was to follow. He harkened back to a night in West Africa in 1957 when he stood with Ralph Bunche and the black congressmen Adam Clayton Powell and Charles Diggs and witnessed Kwame Nkrumah’s installation as the first president of the new nation of Ghana. Being there had called up the most primal associations, linking him, present-day Africans, and his own slave forebears in an intimate embrace. He had strolled the streets of Accra and wept with joy as he heard both young and old Ghanaians calling out “free-doom!

There has never been a mechanism, through something like a truth and reconciliation commission, for telling ourselves the truth about what we have done in a way that would broadly legitimate government policies to repair systemic discrimination across generations. Instead, we pine for national rituals of expiation that wash away our guilt without the need for an admission of guilt, celebrating Martin Luther King Jr. Day or pointing to the election of Barack Obama, and in the process doing further damage to the traumatized through a kind of historical gaslighting.

Just two weeks earlier, Martin Luther King Jr. stood on the steps of the National Mall and gave his famous “I Have a Dream” speech. In the following days, Alabama began integrating high schools and elementary schools for the first time in its history. The world was changing, and segregationists who worshipped at the altar of white supremacy could not contain their hatred and frustration. This was the third bombing in just eleven days since the integration order—but the first to prove deadly. White folks were making clear that they would rather see Black people die violent deaths than attend school with their children.

This book is fiction and all the characters are my own, but it was inspired by the story of the Dozier School for Boys in Marianna, Florida. I first heard of the place in the summer of 2014 and discovered Ben Montgomery’s exhaustive reporting in the Tampa Bay Times. Check out the newspaper’s archive for a firsthand look. Mr. Montgomery’s articles led me to Dr. Erin Kimmerle and her archaeology students at the University of South Florida. Their forensic studies of the grave sites were invaluable and are collected in their Report on the Investigation into the Deaths and Burials at the Former Arthur G. Dozier School for Boys in Marianna, Florida. It is available at the university’s website. When Elwood reads the school pamphlet in the infirmary, I quote from their report on the school’s day-to-day functions. Officialwhitehouseboys.org is the website of Dozier survivors, and you can go there for the stories of former students in their own words. I quote White House Boy Jack Townsley in chapter four, when Spencer is describing his attitude toward discipline. Roger Dean Kiser’s memoir, The White House Boys: An American Tragedy, and Robin Gaby Fisher’s The Boys of the Dark: A Story of Betrayal and Redemption in the Deep South (written with Michael O’McCarthy and Robert W. Straley) are excellent accounts. Nathaniel Penn’s GQ article “Buried Alive: Stories From Inside Solitary Confinement” contains an interview with an inmate named Danny Johnson in which he says, “The worst thing that’s ever happened to me in solitary confinement happens to me every day. It’s when I wake up.” Mr. Johnson spent twenty-seven years in solitary confinement; I have recast that quote in chapter sixteen. Former prison warden Tom Murton wrote about the Arkansas prison system in his book with Joe Hyams called Accomplices to the Crime: The Arkansas Prison Scandal. It provides a ground’s-eye view of prison corruption and was the basis of the movie Brubaker, which you should see if you haven’t. Julianne Hare’s Historic Frenchtown: Heart and Heritage in Tallahassee is a wonderful history of that African-American community over the years. I quote the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. a bunch; it was energizing to hear his voice in my head. Elwood cites his “Speech Before the Youth March for Integrated Schools” (1959); the 1962 LP Martin Luther King at Zion Hill, specifically the “Fun Town” section; his “Letter from Birmingham Jail”; and his 1962 speech at Cornell College. The “Negroes are Americans” James Baldwin quote is from “Many Thousands Gone” in Notes of a Native Son. I was trying to see what was on TV on July 3, 1975. The New York Times archive has the TV listings for that night, and I found a good nugget.

This may well be,” I said, “the darkest hour just before dawn. We have moved all of these months with the daring faith that God was with us in our struggle. The many experiences of days gone by have vindicated that faith in a most unexpected manner. We must go out with the same faith, the same conviction. We must believe that a way will be made out of no way.

Man was born into barbarism when killing his fellow man was a normal condition of existence. He became endowed with a conscience. And he has now reached the day when violence toward another human being must become as abhorrent as eating another’s flesh. Nonviolence, the answer to the Negroes’ need, may become the answer to the most desperate need of all humanity.

To this day the white poor also suffer deprivation and the humiliation of poverty if not of color. They are chained by the weight of discrimination, though its badge of degradation does not mark them. It corrupts their lives, frustrates their opportunities and withers their education. In one sense it is more evil for them, because it has confused so many by prejudice that they have supported their own oppressors.

minimizes the trauma, either by shifting blame for it onto fringe actors of the present (“These acts don’t represent who we are”), relative values of the times (“Everyone back then believed in slavery”), or, worst, back onto the traumatized (“They are responsible for themselves”). There has never been a mechanism, through something like a truth and reconciliation commission, for telling ourselves the truth about what we have done in a way that would broadly legitimate government policies to repair systemic discrimination across generations. Instead, we pine for national rituals of expiation that wash away our guilt without the need for an admission of guilt, celebrating Martin Luther King Jr. Day or pointing to the election of Barack Obama, and in the process doing further damage to the traumatized through a kind of historical gaslighting.

Martin Luther King Jr. said in the final sermon of his life, the day before he was assassinated, about the dangers of the Jericho Road: It’s a winding, meandering road. It’s really conducive for ambushing. . . . In the day of Jesus it came to be known as the “Bloody Pass.” And you know, it’s possible that the priest and the Levite looked over that man on the ground and wondered if the robbers were still around. Or it’s possible that they felt that the man on the ground was merely faking. And he was acting like he had been robbed and hurt, in order to seize them over there, lure them there for quick and easy seizure. And so the first question that the Levite asked was, “If I stop to help this man, what will happen to me?” But then the Good Samaritan came by. And he reversed the question: “If I do not stop to help this man, what will happen to him?”1

On the one hand we are called to play the Good Samaritan on life’s roadside, but that will be only an initial act. One day we must come to see that the whole Jericho Road must be transformed so that men and women will not be constantly beaten and robbed as they make their journey on life’s highway. True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring.

If we are arrested every day, if we are exploited every day, if we are trampled over every day, don't ever let anyone pull you so low as to hate them. We must use the weapon of love. We must have compassion and understanding for those who hate us. We must realize so many people are taught to hate us that they are not totally responsible for their hate. But we stand in life at midnight, we are always on the threshold of a new dawn.

FIRST MARTIN LUTHER KING JR. in Memphis, then Bobby Kennedy in downtown Los Angeles. Soon it felt like you couldn’t open a paper without seeing the bleeding body of an important man. Stella started switching off the news when her daughter came bounding into the kitchen for breakfast. Loretta said that, a couple months ago, Cindy asked her what assassination meant. She told her the truth, of course—that an assassination is when someone kills you to make a point. Which was correct enough, Stella supposed, but only if you were an important man. Important men became martyrs, unimportant ones victims. The important men were given televised funerals, public days of mourning. Their deaths inspired the creation of art and the destruction of cities. But unimportant men were killed to make the point that they were unimportant—that they were not even men—and the world continued on.

It is not an overstatement to say the systematic mass incarceration of people of color in the United States would not have been possible in the post–civil rights era if the nation had not fallen under the spell of a callous colorblindness. The seemingly innocent phrase, “I don’t care if he’s black . . .” perfectly captures the perversion of Martin Luther King Jr.’s dream that we may, one day, be able to see beyond race to connect spiritually across racial lines. Saying that one does not care about race is offered as an exculpatory virtue, when in fact it can be a form of cruelty. It is precisely because we, as a nation, have not cared much about African Americans that we have allowed our criminal justice system to create a new racial undercaste. The deeply flawed nature of colorblindness, as a governing principle, is evidenced by the fact that the public consensus supporting mass incarceration is officially colorblind. It purports to see black and brown men not as black and brown, but simply as men—raceless men—who have failed miserably to play by the rules the rest of us follow quite naturally. The fact that so many black and brown men are rounded up for drug crimes that go largely ignored when committed by whites is unseen. Our collective colorblindness prevents us from seeing this basic fact. Our blindness also prevents us from seeing the racial and structural divisions that persist in society: the segregated, unequal schools, the segregated, jobless ghettos, and the segregated public discourse—a public conversation that excludes the current pariah caste. Our commitment to colorblindness extends beyond individuals to institutions and social arrangements. We have become blind, not so much to race, but to the existence of racial caste in America. More

The Negro's economic problem was compounded by the emergence and growth of automation. Since discrimination and lack of education confined him to unskilled and semi-skilled labor, the Negro was and remains the first to suffer in these days of great technological development. The Negro knew all too well that there was not in existence the kind of vigorous retraining program that could really help him to grapple with the magnitude of his problem.

The hard truth is that neither Negro nor white has yet done enough to expect the dawn of a new day. While much has been done, it has been accomplished by too few and on a scale too limited for the breadth of the goal. Freedom is not won by a passive acceptance of suffering. Freedom is won by a struggle against suffering. By this measure, Negroes have not yet paid the full price for freedom. And whites have not yet faced the full cost of justice.

I am a Negro and I know, being dark, I have been due in the past to see dark days, but them days is passing. All the fiery crosses in the world is not going to scare me back into where I were before the Harlem riots, Martin Luther King, Adam Powell, and Malcolm X. Also, I might include that lady, Annie Lee Cooper, who hit Sheriff Clark in the eye in Alabama. When a Southern colored woman hits a Southern white sheriff in the eye in a public place like Selma, a new day has come.

Is it simply quixotic to hope to preserve human civilization from either the effects of burning fossil fuels or preparing for nuclear war? As Martin Luther King Jr. warned us,328 one year to the day before his death, “There is such a thing as being too late.” In challenging us on April 4, 1967, to recognize “the fierce urgency of now” he was speaking of the “madness of Vietnam,” but he also alluded on that same occasion to nuclear weapons and to the even larger madness that has been the subject of this book: “We still have a choice today: nonviolent coexistence or violent coannihilation.” He went on: We must move past indecision to action.… If we do not act, we shall surely be dragged down the long, dark, and shameful corridors of time reserved for those who possess power without compassion, might without morality, and strength without sight. … Now let us begin. Now let us rededicate ourselves to the long and bitter, but beautiful, struggle for a new world.

Montgomery, Alabama. December 1, 1955. Early evening. A public bus pulls to a stop and a sensibly dressed woman in her forties gets on. She carries herself erectly, despite having spent the day bent over an ironing board in a dingy basement tailor shop at the Montgomery Fair department store. Her feet are swollen, her shoulders ache. She sits in the first row of the Colored section and watches quietly as the bus fills with riders. Until the driver orders her to give her seat to a white passenger. The woman utters a single word that ignites one of the most important civil rights protests of the twentieth century, one word that helps America find its better self. The word is “No.” The driver threatens to have her arrested. “You may do that,” says Rosa Parks. A police officer arrives. He asks Parks why she won’t move. “Why do you all push us around?” she answers simply. “I don’t know,” he says. “But the law is the law, and you’re under arrest.” On the afternoon of her trial and conviction for disorderly conduct, the Montgomery Improvement Association holds a rally for Parks at the Holt Street Baptist Church, in the poorest section of town. Five thousand gather to support Parks’s lonely act of courage. They squeeze inside the church until its pews can hold no more. The rest wait patiently outside, listening through loudspeakers. The Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. addresses the crowd. “There comes a time that people get tired of being trampled over by the iron feet of oppression,” he tells them. “There comes a time when people get tired of being pushed out of the glittering sunlight of life’s July and left standing amidst the piercing chill of an Alpine November.” He praises Parks’s bravery and hugs her. She stands silently, her mere presence enough to galvanize the crowd. The association launches a citywide bus boycott that lasts 381 days. The people trudge miles to work. They carpool with strangers. They change the course of American history.

The fourth challenge we face is to unite around powerful action programs to eradicate the last vestiges of racial injustice. We will be greatly misled if we feel that the problem will work itself out. Structures of evil do not crumble by passive waiting. If history teaches anything, it is that evil is recalcitrant and determined, and never voluntarily relinquishes its hold short of an almost fanatical resistance. Evil must be attacked by a counteracting persistence, by the day-to-day assault of the battering rams of justice.

Many poor whites, however, were the derivative victims of slavery. As long as labor was cheapened by the involuntary servitude of the black man, the freedom of white labor, especially in the South, was little more than a myth. it was free only to bargain from the depressed base imposed by slavery on the whole labor market. Nor did this derivative bondage end when formal slavery gave way to the de-facto slavery of discrimination. To this day the white poor also suffer deprivation and the humiliation of poverty if not of color.

But though I was initially disappointed at being categorized as an extremist, as I continued to think about the matter I gradually gained a measure of satisfaction from the label. Was not Jesus an extremist for love: "Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you." Was not Amos an extremist for justice: "Let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream." Was not Paul an extremist for the Christian gospel: "I bear in my body the marks of the Lord Jesus." Was not Martin Luther an extremist: "Here I stand; I cannot do otherwise, so help me God." And John Bunyan: "I will stay in jail to the end of my days before I make a butchery of my conscience." And Abraham Lincoln: "This nation cannot survive half slave and half free." And Thomas Jefferson: "We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal . . So the question is not whether we will be extremists, but what kind of extremists we will be. Will we be extremists for hate or for love? Will we be extremists for the preservation of injustice or for the extension of justice? In that dramatic scene on Calvary's hill three men were crucified. We must never forget that all three were crucified for the same crime—the crime of extremism. Two were extremists for immorality, and thus fell below their environment. The other, Jesus Christ, was an extremist for love, truth and goodness, and thereby rose above his environment. Perhaps the South, the nation and the world are in dire need of creative extremists.

HE remembered looking "agape" in his encyclopedia volume after he read Dr. King's speech in the DEFENDER. The newspaper ran the address in full after the reverend's appearance at Cornell College. If Elwood had come across the word before, through all those years of skipping around the book, it hadn't stuck in his head. King described "agape" as a divine love operating in the heart of man. A selfless love, an incandescent love, the highest there is. He called upon his Negro audience to cultivate that pure love for their oppressors, that it might carry them to the other side of the struggle. Elwood tried to get his head around it, now that it was no longer the abstraction floating in his head last spring. It was real now. "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. Send your hooded perpetrators of violence into our communities after midnight hours, and drag us out onto some wayside road, and beat us and leave us half-dead, and we will still love you. But be ye assured that we will wear you down by our capacity to suffer, and one day we will win our freedom. The capacity to suffer. Elwood--all the Nickel boys--existed in the capacity. Breathed in it, ate in it, dreamed in it. That was their lives now. Otherwise they would have perished. The beatings, the rapes, the unrelenting winnowing of themselves. They endured. But to love those who destroyed them? To make that leap? "We will meet your physical force with soul force. Do to us what you will and we will still love you." Elwood shook his head. What a thing to ask. What an impossible thing.

We need to reclaim the word 'feminism'. We need the word 'feminism' back real bad. When statistics come in saying that only 29% of American women would describe themselves as feminist - and only 42% of British women - I used to think, What do you think feminism IS, ladies? What part of 'liberation for women' is not for you? Is it freedom to vote? The right not to be owned by the man you marry? The campaign for equal pay? 'Vogue' by Madonna? Jeans? Did all that good shit GET ON YOUR NERVES? Or were you just DRUNK AT THE TIME OF THE SURVEY? These days, however, I am much calmer-since I realized that it's technically impossible for a woman to argue against feminism. Without feminism, you wouldn't be allowed to have a debate on a woman's place in society. You'd be too busy giving birth on the kitchen floor-biting down on a wooden spoon so as not to disturb the men's card game-before going back to hoeing the rutabaga field. This is why those female columnists in the Daily Mail-giving daily wail against feminism-amuse me. They paid you 1,600 pounds for that, dear, I think. And I bet it' going into your bank account and not your husband's. The more women argue, loudly, against feminism, the more they both prove it exists and that they enjoy its hard-won privileges. Because for all that people have tried to abuse it and disown it, "feminism" is still the word we need...We need the only word we have ever had to describe "making the world equal for men and women". Women's reluctance to use it sends out a really bad signal. Imagine if, in the 1960's, it had become fashionable for black people to say they "weren't into" civil rights. "No, I'm not into Civil Rights! That Martin Luther King is too shouty. He just needs to chill out, to be honest." But then, I do understand why women started to reject the word feminism. It ended up being invoked in so many baffling inappropriate contexts that you'd presume it was some spectacularly unappealing combination of misandry, misery, and hypocrisy, which stood for ugly clothes, constant anger, and, let's face it, no fucking...Feminism has had exactly the same problem that "political correctness" has had: people keep using the phrase without really knowing what it means.

It is, however, important to understand that giving a man his due may often mean giving him special treatment. I am aware of the fact that this has been a troublesome concept for many liberals, since it conflicts with their traditional ideal of equal opportunity and equal treatment of people according to their individual merits. But this is a day which demands new thinking and the reevaluation of old concepts. A society that has done something special against the Negro for hundreds of years must now do something special for him, in order to equip him to compete on a just and equal basis.

first two days of Montgomery’s integrated bus service were without incident. Then, at 1:30 A.M. on Sunday morning, December 23, a shotgun blast ripped through the front door of King’s home. The floodlights were on, but no watchman was present. King, Coretta, and Yoki were asleep, and no one was injured. King chose not to call the police, but he did announce the incident to his Dexter congregation later that morning. “It may be that some of us may have to die,” he solemnly remarked. That evening, at a mass meeting, he declared that “I would like to tell whoever did it that it won’t do any good to kill me

And so the first question that the Levite asked was, "If I stop to help this man, what will happen to me?" But then the Good Samaritan came by. And he reversed the question: "If I do not stop to help this man, what will happen to him?" That's the question before you tonight. Not, "If I stop to help the sanitation workers, what will happen to all of the hours that I usually spend in my office every day and every week as a pastor?" The question is not, "If I stop to help this man in need, what will happen to me?" "If I do not stop to help the sanitation workers, what will happen to them?" That's the question.

I learned a lesson many years ago from a report of two men who flew to Atlanta to confer with a civil rights leader at the airport. Before they could begin to talk, the porter sweeping the floor drew the local leader aside to talk about a matter that troubled him. After fifteen minutes had passed, one of the visitors said bitterly to his companion, “I am just too busy for this kind of nonsense. I haven’t come a thousand miles to sit and wait while he talks to a porter.” The other replied, “When the day comes that he stops having time to talk to a porter, on that day I will not have the time to come one mile to see him.

Something is happening in Memphis; something is happening in our world. And you know, if I were standing at the beginning of time, with the possibility of taking a kind of general and panoramic view of the whole of human history up to now, and the Almighty said to me, "Martin Luther King, which age would you like to live in?" I would take my mental flight by Egypt and I would watch God's children in their magnificent trek from the dark dungeons of Egypt through, or rather across the Red Sea, through the wilderness on toward the promised land. And in spite of its magnificence, I wouldn't stop there. I would move on by Greece and take my mind to Mount Olympus. And I would see Plato, Aristotle, Socrates, Euripides and Aristophanes assembled around the Parthenon. And I would watch them around the Parthenon as they discussed the great and eternal issues of reality. But I wouldn't stop there. I would go on, even to the great heyday of the Roman Empire. And I would see developments around there, through various emperors and leaders. But I wouldn't stop there. I would even come up to the day of the Renaissance, and get a quick picture of all that the Renaissance did for the cultural and aesthetic life of man. But I wouldn't stop there. I would even go by the way that the man for whom I am named had his habitat. And I would watch Martin Luther as he tacked his ninety-five theses on the door at the church of Wittenberg. But I wouldn't stop there. I would come on up even to 1863, and watch a vacillating President by the name of Abraham Lincoln finally come to the conclusion that he had to sign the Emancipation Proclamation. But I wouldn't stop there. I would even come up to the early thirties, and see a man grappling with the problems of the bankruptcy of his nation. And come with an eloquent cry that we have nothing to fear but "fear itself." But I wouldn't stop there.

Dr. King understood radical love as a form of death—a relentless self-examination in which a fearful, hateful, egoistic self dies daily to be reborn into a courageous, loving, and sacrificial self. For both Day and King, this radical love flows from an imitation of Christ, a response to an invitation of self-surrender in order to emerge fully equipped to fight for justice in a cold and cruel world of domination and exploitation. The scandal of the Cross is precisely the unstoppable and unsuffocatable love that keeps moving in a blood-soaked history, even in our catastrophic times. There is no radical King without his commitment to radical love.

The same mass media that told us Lee Harvey Oswald killed John F. Kennedy—and that James Earl Ray killed Martin Luther King, Sirhan Sirhan killed Robert F. Kennedy, Arthur Bremer was the lone gunman when George Wallace was shot, and Ted Kennedy was responsible for the death of Mary Jo Kopechne—brainwash this society every single day. The creation of the SLA is only one more propaganda lie. We can’t discuss Patty’s brainwashing without looking at our own. Our sensitivities and emotions were tested over the same period of time as Patty Hearst’s and Donald DeFreeze’s. Patty was taken to a building near the death trap on 54th Street to witness six of her close associates and intimates for the last four months shot and burned to death. We watched the event in living color over Friday’s TV Dinner. All of us took part. The only ones to gain from the maneuvers of the SLA were the military and police agencies. They have already spent between $5 and $10 million “pursuing” the SLA. Ten thousand young adults were stopped, searched or arrested within a three-week period. SWAT police teams are now located in every major city. Police helicopter contracts are escalating. Computerized police information systems will increase. And the CIA will openly take over local police departments, no longer hide behind public relations doors. The creation of the fictitious Symbionese Liberation Army was a cruel hoax perpetrated on the American public.

While Negroes form the vast majority of America's disadvantaged, there are millions of white poor who would also benefit from such a bill. The moral justification for special measures for Negroes is rooted in the robberies inherent in the institution of slavery. Many poor whites, however, were the derivative victims of slavery. As long as labor was cheapened by the involuntary servitude of the black man, the freedom of white labor, especially in the South, was little more than a myth. It was free only to bargain from the depressed base imposed by slavery upon the whole labor market. Nor did this derivative bondage end when formal slavery gave way to the de-facto slavery of discrimination. To this day the white poor also suffer deprivation and the humiliation of poverty if not of color. They are chained by the weight of discrimination, though its badge of degradation does not mark them. It corrupts their lives, frustrates their opportunities and withers their education. In one sense it is more evil for them, because it has confused so many by prejudice that they have supported their own oppressors. It is a simple matter of justice that America, in dealing creatively with the task of raising the Negro from backwardness, should also be rescuing a large stratum of the forgotten white poor. A Bill of Rights for the Disadvantaged could mark the rise of a new era, in which the full resources of the society would be used to attack the tenacious poverty which so paradoxically exists in the midst of plenty.

Washington is a city of spectacles. Every four years, imposing Presidential inaugurations attract the great and the mighty. Kings, prime ministers, heroes and celebrities of every description have been feted there for more than 150 years. But in its entire glittering history, Washington had never seen a spectacle of the size and grandeur that assembled there on August 28, 1963. Among the nearly 250,000 people who journeyed that day to the capital, there were many dignitaries and many celebrities, but the stirring emotion came from the mass of ordinary people who stood in majestic dignity as witnesses to their single-minded determination to achieve democracy in their time. They came from almost every state in the union; they came in every form of transportation; they gave up from one to three days' pay plus the cost of transportation, which for many was a heavy financial sacrifice. They were good-humored and relaxed, yet disciplined and thoughtful. They applauded their leaders generously, but the leaders, in their own hearts, applauded their audience. Many a Negro speaker that day had his respect for his own people deepened as he felt the strength of their dedication. The enormous multitude was the living, beating heart of an infinitely noble movement. It was an army without guns, but not without strength. It was an army into which no one had to be drafted. It was white and Negro, and of all ages. It had adherents of every faith, members of every class, every profession, every political party, united by a single ideal. It was a fighting army, but no one could mistake that its most powerful weapon was love.

It is time for all of us to tell each other the truth about who and what have brought the Negro to the condition of deprivation against which he struggles today. In human relations the truth is hard to come by, because most groups are deceived about themselves. Rationalization and the incessant search for scapegoats are the psychological cataracts that blind us to our individual and collective sins. But the day has passed for bland euphemisms. He who lives with untruth lives in spiritual slavery. Freedom is still the bonus we receive for knowing the truth. “Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free.” It would be neither true nor honest to say that the Negro’s status is what it is because he is innately inferior or because he is basically lazy and listless or because he has not sought to lift himself by his own bootstraps. To find the origins of the Negro problem we must turn to the white man’s problem.

The enormous spotlight that focused on King, combined with the construction of Rosa Parks as a saintly symbol, hid the women's long struggle in the dimly lit background, obscuring the origins of the MIA and erasing women from the movement. For decades, the Montgomery bus boycott has been told as a story triggered by Rosa Park's spontaneous refusal to give up her seat followed by the triumphant leadership of men like Fred Gray, Martin Luther King, Jr., E. D. Nixon, and Ralph Abernathy. While these men had a major impact on the emerging protest movement, it was black women's decade-long struggle against mistreatment and abuse by white bus drivers and police officers that launched the boycott. Without an appreciation for the particular predicaments of black women in the Jim Crow South, it is nearly impossible to understand why thousands of working-class and hundreds of middle-class black women chose to walk rather than ride the bus for 381 days.

The first book he gave me was “The Autobiography of Malcolm X” And I thought he was trying to tell me something because Malcolm was Muslim Malcolm was a thug Malcolm was in jail Malcolm was all about the people Malcolm went to Mecca Malcom said some shit Malcolm was shot dead The only book I gave Clyde was “The Rose That Grew from Concrete” I was definitely trying to tell him something because Tupac was a poet Tupac was a thug Tupac went to jail Tupac was all about the people Tupac went everywhere Tupac said some shit Tupac was shot dead Clyde didn’t know that Umi made me read all about Malcolm in eighth grade Clyde didn’t know that I read about Martin Luther King and Nelson Mandela, too Clyde didn’t know that I’d read big books and watched documentaries on my own Clyde didn’t know that I’d reread that book in five days because after two months He asked me if I was done And by that point I had gotten through twelve books To take my mind off things for a little while, I said

…in America there is no escape from the awareness of color and the fact that our society places a qualitative difference on a person of dark skin. Every Negro comes face to face with this color shock, and it constitutes a major emotional crisis. It is accompanied by a sort of fatiguing, wearisome hopelessness. If one is rejected because he is uneducated, he can at least be consoled by the fact that it may be possible for him to get an education. If one is rejected because he is low on the economic ladder, he can at least dream of the day that he will rise from his dungeon of economic deprivation. If one is rejected because he speaks with an accent, he can at least, if he desires, work to bring his speech in line with the dominant group. If, however, one is rejected because of his color, he must face the anguishing fact that he is being rejected because of something in himself that cannot be changed. All prejudice is evil, but the prejudice that rejects a man because of the color of his skin is the most despicable expression of man’s inhumanity to man.

And so being a Negro in America is not a comfortable existence. It means being a part of the company of the bruised, the battered, the scarred and the defeated. Being a Negro in America means trying to smile when you want to cry. It means trying to hold on to physical life amid psychological death. It means the pain of watching your children grow up with clouds of inferiority in their mental skies. It means having your legs cut off, and then being condemned for being a cripple. It means seeing your mother and father spiritually murdered by the slings and arrows of daily exploitation, and then being hated for being an orphan. Being a Negro in America means listening to suburban politicians talk eloquently against open housing while arguing in the same breath that they are not racists. It means being harried by day and haunted by night by a nagging sense of nobodyness and constantly fighting to be saved from the poison of bitterness. It means the ache and anguish of living in so many situations where hopes unborn have died. After 348 years racial injustice is still the Negro’s burden and America’s shame.

Thus through two centuries a continuous indoctrination of Americans has separated people according to mythically superior and inferior qualities while a democratic spirit of equality was evoked as the national ideal. These concepts of racism, and this schizophrenic duality of conduct, remain deeply rooted in American thought today. This tendency of the nation to take one step forward on the question of racial justice and then to take a step backward is still the pattern. Just as an ambivalent nation freed the slaves a century ago with no plan or program to make their freedom meaningful, the still ambivalent nation in 1954 declared school segregation unconstitutional with no plan or program to make integration real. Just as the Congress passed a civil rights bill in 1868 and refused to enforce it, the Congress passed a civil rights bill in 1964 and to this day has failed to enforce it in all its dimensions. Just as the Fifteenth Amendment in 1870 proclaimed Negro suffrage, only to permit its de facto withdrawal in half the nation, so in 1965 the Voting Rights Law was passed and then permitted to languish with only fractional and halfhearted implementation.

Let me say first of all that I profoundly deplore the events that have occurred in Los Angeles in these last few tragic days. I believe and have said on many occasions that violence is not the answer to social conflict whether it is engaged in by white people in Alabama or by Negroes in Los Angeles. Violence is all the more regrettable in this period in light of the tremendous nonviolent sacrifices that both Negro and white people together have endured to bring justice to all men. But it is equally clear, as President Johnson pointed out yesterday, that it is the job of all Americans “to right the wrong from which such violence and disorder spring.” The criminal responses which led to the tragic outbreaks of violence in Los Angeles are environmental and not racial. The economic deprivation, racial isolation, inadequate housing, and general despair of thousands of Negroes teaming in Northern and Western ghettoes are the ready seeds which gave birth to tragic expressions of violence. By acts of commission and omission none of us in this great country has done enough to remove injustice. I therefore humbly suggest that all of us accept our share of responsibility for these past days of anguish.

In 1964 the fear & loathing of Barry Goldwater was startling. Martin Luther King, Jr., detected “dangerous signs of Hitlerism in the Goldwater campaign.” Joachim Prinz, president of the American Jewish Congress, warned that “a Jewish vote for Goldwater is a vote for Jewish suicide.” And George Meany, head of the AFL-CIO, saw power falling into “the hands of union-hating extremists, racial bigots, woolly-minded seekers after visions of times long past.” On Election Day Goldwater suffered a devastating defeat, winning only 41 electoral votes. It was the judgment of the establishment that Goldwater’s critique of American liberalism had been given its final exposure on the national political scene. Conservatives could now go back to their little lairs and sing to themselves their songs of nostalgia and fancy, and maybe gather together every few years to hold testimonial dinners in honor of Barry Goldwater, repatriated by Lyndon Johnson to the parched earth of Phoenix, where dwell only millionaires seeking dry air to breathe and the Indians Barry Goldwater could now resume photographing. But then of course 16 years later the world was made to stand on its head when Ronald Reagan was swept into office on a platform indistinguishable from what Barry had been preaching. During

In the days ahead we must not consider it unpatriotic to raise certain basic questions about our national character. We must begin to ask: Why are there forty million poor people in a nation overflowing with such unbelievable affluence? Why has our nation placed itself in the position of being God’s military agent on earth, and intervened recklessly in Vietnam and the Dominican Republic? Why have we substituted the arrogant undertaking of policing the whole world for the high task of putting our own house in order? All these questions remind us that there is a need for a radical restructuring of the architecture of American society. For its very survival’s sake, America must reexamine old presuppositions and release itself from many things that for centuries have been held sacred. For the evils of racism, poverty and militarism to die, a new set of values must be born. Our economy must become more person-centered than property- and profit-centered. Our government must depend more on its moral power than on its military power. Let us, therefore, not think of our movement as one that seeks to integrate the Negro into all the existing values of American society. Let us be those creative dissenters who will call our beloved nation to a higher destiny, to a new plateau of compassion, to a more noble expression of humaneness.

Now we all should seek to live a well adjusted life in order to avoid neurotic and schizophrenic personalities. But there are some things within our social order to which I am proud to be maladjusted and to which I call upon you to be maladjusted. I never intend to adjust myself to segregation and discrimination. I never intend to adjust myself to mob rule. I never intend to adjust myself to the tragic effects of the methods of physical violence and to tragic militarism. I call upon you to be maladjusted to such things. I call upon you to be as maladjusted as Amos who in the midst of the injustices of his day cried out in words that echo across the generation, 'Let judgment run 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 Jefferson, who in the midst of an age amazingly adjusted to slavery could cry out, 'All men are created equal and are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights and that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.' As maladjusted as Jesus of Nazareth who dreamed a dream of the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man. God grant that we will be so maladjusted that we will be able to gout and change our world and our civilization. And then we will be able to move from the bleak and desolate midnight of man's inhumanity to man to the bright and glittering daybreak of freedom and justice.

American DEWAR FAMILY Cameron Dewar Ursula “Beep” Dewar, his sister Woody Dewar, his father Bella Dewar, his mother PESHKOV-JAKES FAMILY George Jakes Jacky Jakes, his mother Greg Peshkov, his father Lev Peshkov, his grandfather Marga, his grandmother MARQUAND FAMILY Verena Marquand Percy Marquand, her father Babe Lee, her mother CIA Florence Geary Tony Savino Tim Tedder, semiretired Keith Dorset OTHERS Maria Summers Joseph Hugo, FBI Larry Mawhinney, Pentagon Nelly Fordham, old flame of Greg Peshkov Dennis Wilson, aide to Bobby Kennedy Skip Dickerson, aide to Lyndon Johnson Leopold “Lee” Montgomery, reporter Herb Gould, television journalist on This Day Suzy Cannon, gossip reporter Frank Lindeman, television network owner REAL HISTORICAL CHARACTERS John F. Kennedy, thirty-fifth U.S. president Jackie, his wife Bobby Kennedy, his brother Dave Powers, assistant to President Kennedy Pierre Salinger, President Kennedy’s press officer Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference Lyndon B. Johnson, thirty-sixth U.S. president Richard Nixon, thirty-seventh U.S. president Jimmy Carter, thirty-ninth U.S. president Ronald Reagan, fortieth U.S. president George H. W. Bush, forty-first U.S. president British LECKWITH-WILLIAMS FAMILY Dave Williams Evie Williams, his sister Daisy Williams, his mother Lloyd Williams, M.P., his father Eth Leckwith, Dave’s grandmother MURRAY FAMILY Jasper Murray Anna Murray, his sister Eva Murray, his mother MUSICIANS IN THE GUARDSMEN AND PLUM NELLIE Lenny, Dave Williams’s cousin Lew, drummer Buzz, bass player Geoffrey, lead guitarist OTHERS Earl Fitzherbert, called Fitz Sam Cakebread, friend of Jasper Murray Byron Chesterfield (real name Brian Chesnowitz), music agent Hank Remington (real name Harry Riley), pop star Eric Chapman, record company executive German FRANCK FAMILY Rebecca Hoffmann Carla Franck, Rebecca’s adoptive mother Werner Franck, Rebecca’s adoptive father Walli Franck, son of Carla Lili Franck, daughter of Werner and Carla Maud von Ulrich, née Fitzherbert, Carla’s mother Hans Hoffmann, Rebecca’s husband OTHERS Bernd Held, schoolteacher Karolin Koontz, folksinger Odo Vossler, clergyman REAL HISTORICAL PEOPLE Walter Ulbricht, first secretary of the Socialist Unity Party (Communist) Erich Honecker, Ulbricht’s successor Egon Krenz, successor to Honecker Polish Stanislaw “Staz” Pawlak, army officer Lidka, girlfriend of Cam Dewar Danuta Gorski, Solidarity activist REAL HISTORICAL PEOPLE Anna Walentynowicz, crane driver Lech Wałesa, leader of the trade union Solidarity General Jaruzelski, prime minister Russian DVORKIN-PESHKOV FAMILY Tanya Dvorkin, journalist Dimka Dvorkin, Kremlin aide, Tanya’s twin brother Anya Dvorkin, their mother Grigori Peshkov, their grandfather Katerina Peshkov, their grandmother Vladimir, always called Volodya, their uncle Zoya, Volodya’s wife Nina, Dimka’s girlfriend OTHERS Daniil Antonov, features editor at TASS Pyotr Opotkin, features editor in chief Vasili Yenkov, dissident Natalya Smotrov, official in the Foreign Ministry

Our cities have constructed elaborate expressways and elevated skyways, and white Americans speed from suburb to inner city through vast pockets of black deprivation without ever getting a glimpse of the suffering and misery in their midst. But while so many white Americans are unaware of conditions inside the ghetto, there are very few ghetto dwellers who are unaware of the life outside. Their television sets bombard them day by day with the opulence of the larger society. From behind the ghetto walls they see glistening towers of glass and steel springing up almost overnight. They hear jet liners speeding over their heads at six hundred miles an hour. They hear of satellites streaking through outer space and revealing details of the moon. Then they begin to think of their own conditions. They know that they are always given the hardest, ugliest, most menial work to do. They look at these impressive buildings under construction and realize that almost certainly they cannot get those well-paying construction jobs, because building trade unions reserve them for whites only. They know that people who built the bridges, the mansions and docks of the South could build modern buildings if they were only given a chance for apprenticeship training. They realize that it is hard, raw discrimination that shuts them out. It is not only poverty that torments the Negro; it is the fact of poverty amid plenty. It is a misery generated by the gulf between the affluence he sees in the mass media and the deprivation he experiences in his everyday life.

If anyone had questioned how deeply the summer's activities had penetrated the consciousness of white America, the answer was evident in the treatment accorded the March on Washington by all the media of communication. Normally Negro activities are the object of attention in the press only when they are likely to lead to some dramatic outbreak, or possess some bizarre quality. The March was the first organized Negro operation which was accorded respect and coverage commensurate with its importance. The millions who viewed it on television were seeing an event historic not only because of the subject, but because it was being brought into their homes. Millions of white Americans, for the first time, had a clear, long look at Negroes engaged in a serious occupation. For the first time millions listened to the informed and thoughtful words of Negro spokesmen, from all walks of life. The stereotype of the Negro suffered a heavy blow. This was evident in some of the comment, which reflected surprise at the dignity, the organization and even the wearing apparel and friendly spirit of the participants. If the press had expected something akin to a minstrel show, or a brawl, or a comic display of odd clothes and bad manners, they were disappointed. A great deal has been said about a dialogue between Negro and white. Genuinely to achieve it requires that all the media of communication open their channels wide as they did on that radiant August day. As television beamed the image of this extraordinary gathering across the border oceans, everyone who believed in man's capacity to better himself had a moment of inspiration and confidence in the future of the human race. And every dedicated American could be proud that a dynamic experience of democracy in his nation's capital had been made visible to the world.

The Negro had never really been patient in the pure sense of the word. The posture of silent waiting was forced upon him psychologically because he was shackled physically. In the days of slavery, this suppression was openly, scientifically and consistently applied. Sheer physical force kept the Negro captive at every point. He was prevented from learning to read and write, prevented by laws actually inscribed in the statute books. He was forbidden to associate with other Negroes living on the same plantation, except when weddings or funerals took place. Punishment for any form of resistance or complaint about his condition could range from mutilation to death. Families were torn apart, friends separated, cooperation to improve their condition carefully thwarted. Fathers and mothers were sold from their children and children were bargained away from their parents. Young girls were, in many cases, sold to become the breeders of fresh generations of slaves. The slaveholders of America had devised with almost scientific precision their systems for keeping the Negro defenseless, emotionally and physically. With the ending of physical slavery after the Civil War, new devices were found to "keep the Negro in his place." It would take volumes to describe these methods, extending from birth in jim-crow hospitals through burial in jim-crow sections of cemeteries. They are too well known to require a catalogue here. Yet one of the revelations during the past few years is the fact that the straitjackets of race prejudice and discrimination do not wear only southern labels. The subtle, psychological technique of the North has approached in its ugliness and victimization of the Negro the outright terror and open brutality of the South. The result has been a demeanor that passed for patience in the eyes of the white man, but covered a powerful impatience in the heart of the Negro.

Negroes have proceeded from a premise that equality means what it says, and they have taken white Americans at their word when they talked of it as an objective. But most whites in America in 1967, including many persons of goodwill, proceed from a premise that equality is a loose expression for improvement. White America is not even psychologically organized to close the gap—essentially it seeks only to make it less painful and less obvious but in most respects to retain it. Most of the abrasions between Negroes and white liberals arise from this fact. White America is uneasy with injustice and for ten years it believed it was righting wrongs. The struggles were often bravely fought by fine people. The conscience of man flamed high in hours of peril. The days can never be forgotten when the brutalities at Selma caused thousands all over the land to rush to our side, heedless of danger and of differences in race, class and religion. After the march to Montgomery, there was a delay at the airport and several thousand demonstrators waited more than five hours, crowding together on the seats, the floors and the stairways of the terminal building. As I stood with them and saw white and Negro, nuns and priests, ministers and rabbis, labor organizers, lawyers, doctors, housemaids and shopworkers brimming with vitality and enjoying a rare comradeship, I knew I was seeing a microcosm of the mankind of the future in this moment of luminous and genuine brotherhood. But these were the best of America, not all of America. Elsewhere the commitment was shallower. Conscience burned only dimly, and when atrocious behavior was curbed, the spirit settled easily into well-padded pockets of complacency. Justice at the deepest level had but few stalwart champions. A good many observers have remarked that if equality could come at once the Negro would not be ready for it. I submit that the white American is even more unprepared.

If one could prove from established and reliable histories that the events in Judith really happened, it would be a noble and fine book, and should properly be in the Bible. Yet it hardly squares with the historical accounts of the Holy Scriptures, especially Jeremiah and Ezra. For these show how Jerusalem and the whole country were destroyed, and were thereafter laboriously rebuilt during the time of the monarchy of the Persians who occupied the land. Against this the first chapter of Judith claims that King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon was the first one to set about conquering this territory; it creates the impression that these events took place before the captivity of the Jews, and before the rise of the Persian monarchy. Philo, on the contrary, says that they happened after the release and return of the Jews from Babylon under King Ahasuerus, at which time the Jews had rebuilt neither the temple nor Jerusalem, and had no government. Thus as to both time and name, error and doubt are still present, so that I cannot reconcile [the accounts] at all. Such an interpretation strikes my fancy, and I think that the poet deliberately and painstakingly inserted the errors of time and name in order to remind the reader that the book should be taken and understood as that kind of a sacred, religious, composition. It may even be that in those days they dramatized literature like this, Just as among us the Passion and other sacred stories are performed. In a common presentation or play they conceivably wanted to teach their people and youth to trust God, to be righteous, and to hope in God for all help and comfort, in every need, against all enemies, etc. Therefore this is a fine, good, holy, useful book, well worth reading by us Christians. For the words spoken by the persons in it should be understood as though they were uttered in the Holy Spirit by a spiritual, holy poet or prophet who, in presenting such persons in his play, preaches to us through them. Next after Judith, therefore, like a song following a play, belongs the Wisdom of Philo, a work which denounces tyrants and praises the help which God bestows on his people. The song [that follows] may well be called an illustration of this book [of Judith].

If one could prove from established and reliable histories that the events in Judith really happened, it would be a noble and fine book, and should properly be in the Bible. Yet it hardly squares with the historical accounts of the Holy Scriptures, especially Jeremiah and Ezra. For these show how Jerusalem and the whole country were destroyed, and were thereafter laboriously rebuilt during the time of the monarchy of the Persians who occupied the land. Against this the first chapter of Judith claims that King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon was the first one to set about conquering this territory; it creates the impression that these events took place before the captivity of the Jews, and before the rise of the Persian monarchy. Philo, on the contrary, says that they happened after the release and return of the Jews from Babylon under King Ahasuerus, at which time the Jews had rebuilt neither the temple nor Jerusalem, and had no government. Thus as to both time and name, error and doubt are still present, so that I cannot reconcile [the accounts] at all. Such an interpretation strikes my fancy, and I think that the poet deliberately and painstakingly inserted the errors of time and name in order to remind the reader that the book should be taken and understood as that kind of a sacred, religious, composition. It may even be that in those days they dramatized literature like this, Just as among us the Passion and other sacred stories are performed. In a common presentation or play they conceivably wanted to teach their people and youth to trust God, to be righteous, and to hope in God for all help and comfort, in every need, against all enemies, etc. Therefore this is a fine, good, holy, useful book, well worth reading by us Christians. For the words spoken by the persons in it should be understood as though they were uttered in the Holy Spirit by a spiritual, holy poet or prophet who, in presenting such persons in his play, preaches to us through them. Next after Judith, therefore, like a song following a play, belongs the Wisdom of Philo, a work which denounces tyrants and praises the help which God bestows on his people. The song [that follows] may well be called an illustration of this book [of Judith].

For years now I have heard the word “Wait!” It rings in the ear of every Negro with piercing familiarity. This “Wait” has almost always meant “Never.” We must come to see, with one of our distinguished jurists, that “justice too long delayed is justice denied.” We have waited for more than 340 years for our constitutional and God-given rights. The nations of Asia and Africa are moving with jet-like speed toward gaining political independence, but we still creep at horse-and-buggy pace toward gaining a cup of coffee at a lunch counter. Perhaps it is easy for those who have never felt the stinging darts of segregation to say, “Wait.” But when you have seen vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers at will and drown your sisters and brothers at whim; when you have seen hate-filled policemen curse, kick, and even kill your black brothers and sisters; when you see the vast majority of your twenty million Negro brothers smothering in an airtight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society; when you suddenly find your tongue twisted and your speech stammering as you seek to explain to your six-year-old daughter why she can’t go to the public amusement park that has just been advertised on television, and see tears welling up in her eyes when she is told that Funtown is closed to colored children, and see ominous clouds of inferiority beginning to form in her little mental sky, and see her beginning to distort her personality by developing an unconscious bitterness toward white people; when you have to concoct an answer for a five-year-old son who is asking: “Daddy, why do white people treat colored people so mean?”; when you take a cross-county drive and find it necessary to sleep night after night in the uncomfortable corners of your automobile because no motel will accept you; when you are humiliated day in and day out by nagging signs reading “white” and “colored”; when your first name becomes “nigger,” your middle names becomes “boy” (however old you are), and your last name becomes “John,” and your wife and mother are never given the respected title “Mrs.”; when you are harried by day and haunted by night by the fact that you are a Negro, living constantly at tiptoe stance, never quite knowing what to expect next, and are plagued with inner fears and outer resentments; when you are forever fighting a degenerating sense of “nobodiness”—then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait.

In Mississippi, where I lived from 1967 to 1974, people who challenged the system anticipated menace, battery, even murder, every day. In this context, I sometimes felt ashamed that my contributions at the time were not more radical. I taught in two local black colleges, I wrote about the Movement, and I created tiny history booklets which were used to teach the teachers of children enrolled in Head Start. And, of course, I was interracially married, which was illegal. It was perhaps in Mississippi during those years that I understood how the daily news of disaster can become, for the spirit, a numbing assault, and that one's own activism, however modest, fighting against this tide of death, provides at least the possibility of generating a different kind of "news." A "news" that empowers rather that defeats. There is always a moment in any kind of struggle when one feels in full bloom. Vivid. Alive. One might be blown to bits in such a moment and still be at peace. Martin Luther King, Jr., at the mountaintop. Gandhi dying with the name of God on his lips. Sojourner Truth baring her breasts at a women's rights convention in 1851. Harriet Tubman exposing her revolver to some of the slaves she had freed, who, fearing an unknown freedom, looks longingly backward to their captivity, thereby endangering the freedom of all. To be such a person or to witness anyone at this moment of transcendent presence is to know that what is human is linked, by a daring compassion, to what is divine. During my years of being close to people engaged in changing the world I have seen fear turn into courage. Sorrow into joy. Funerals into celebrations. Because whatever the consequences, people, standing side by side, have expressed who they really are, and that ultimately they believe in the love of the world and each other enough *to be that* - which is the foundation of activism. It has become a common feeling, I believe, as we have watched our heroes falling over the years, that our own small stone of activism, which might not seem to measure up to the rugged boulders of heroism we have so admired, is a paltry offering toward the building of an edifice of hope. Many who believe this choose to withhold their offerings out of shame. This is the tragedy of our world. For we can do nothing substantial toward changing our course on the planet, a destructive one, without rousing ourselves, individual by individual, and bringing our small, imperfect stones to the pile. In this regard, I have a story to tell.

Thus He dethroned the king of Israel by the king of Assyria, and, in turn, the king of Assyria by the king of Babylon, the king of Babylon by the king of Persia, the king of Persia by Alexander, the king in Greece, the Greek kingdom by the Romans, the Romans by the Goths and the Turks. And if the world stands long enough, the Turks, too, will find someone to knock them off. That is the way it goes on and on, both in great and in small governments; both among emperors and kings we behold a constant seating and unseating. The whole world with its governments appears to be God’s cavalry tournament, with all of His horsemen stabbing and unseating each other. The rule is: Whoever lies prostrate, lies prostrate; whoever is mounted, is mounted. And all of this happens because of their injustice and their violence, and because it is their fault whenever evils and injustices prevail in a country. The devil, the supreme prince of the world, goads them on, so that they do not use the sword, committed to them by God, aright, just as the world also misuses all the other gifts of God. And yet the sword is necessary, as eating and drinking are. But because of their abuse of it God constantly wrests the sword from the fist of one and gives it to another. Sword and government always remain in the world, but the persons sitting on thrones must continue to topple and tumble as they deserve. But that is what deceived the Jews and hardened their hearts, so that they did not believe Habakkuk. Since they did not commit adultery and had no idols at the time, they assumed that they were godly and had a gracious God. Consequently they were not at all expecting God’s wrath. That is peculiar of these people down to the present day, as it is of all hypocrites and work-righteous: they always imagine that they above all others are the dear children. They cannot believe that they are deserving of wrath. They say, as we read in Micah 2:7: “Should this be said, O house of Jacob? Is the Spirit of the Lord impatient? etc.” For if they had acknowledged that they are sinners, they would have obeyed Habakkuk. They would have reformed fearfully and humbly, as the Ninevites did, and averted the punishment. But since they did not do this, it is certain that they regarded Habakkuk as a fool and idle preacher but themselves as godly, as innocent, and as the true children of God. And this is what we see our own clergy do even today. Amid the most terrible sins and blasphemies they think that they are serving God and are pleasing to Him.

Urban riots must now be recognized as durable social phenomena. They may be deplored, but they are there and should be understood. Urban riots are a special form of violence. They are not insurrections. The rioters are not seeking to seize territory or to attain control of institutions. They are mainly intended to shock the white community. They are a distorted form of social protest. The looting which is their principal feature serves many functions. It enables the most enraged and deprived Negro to take hold of consumer goods with the ease the white man does by using his purse. Often the Negro does not even want what he takes; he wants the experience of taking. But most of all, alienated from society and knowing that this society cherishes property above people, he is shocking it by abusing property rights. There are thus elements of emotional catharsis in the violent act. This may explain why most cities in which riots have occurred have not had a repetition, even though the causative conditions remain. It is also noteworthy that the amount of physical harm done to white people other than police is infinitesimal and in Detroit whites and Negroes looted in unity. A profound judgment of today’s riots was expressed by Victor Hugo a century ago. He said, ‘If a soul is left in the darkness, sins will be committed. The guilty one is not he who commits the sin, but he who causes the darkness.’ The policymakers of the white society have caused the darkness; they create discrimination; they structured slums; and they perpetuate unemployment, ignorance and poverty. It is incontestable and deplorable that Negroes have committed crimes; but they are derivative crimes. They are born of the greater crimes of the white society. When we ask Negroes to abide by the law, let us also demand that the white man abide by law in the ghettos. Day-in and day-out he violates welfare laws to deprive the poor of their meager allotments; he flagrantly violates building codes and regulations; his police make a mockery of law; and he violates laws on equal employment and education and the provisions for civic services. The slums are the handiwork of a vicious system of the white society; Negroes live in them but do not make them any more than a prisoner makes a prison. Let us say boldly that if the violations of law by the white man in the slums over the years were calculated and compared with the law-breaking of a few days of riots, the hardened criminal would be the white man. These are often difficult things to say but I have come to see more and more that it is necessary to utter the truth in order to deal with the great problems that we face in our society.

he reflected on how his mother had raised him, that if he was ever in a situation where there were no seats and women were standing, the chivalrous thing to do would be to give up his seat. He didn’t want to do that on this day; so he reasoned that if he would just close his eyes and not see women standing, he could continue his comfortable life.

Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.” — Martin Luther King, Jr. — A Gift of Love

The seemingly innocent phrase, “I don’t care if he’s black …” perfectly captures the perversion of Martin Luther King Jr.’s dream that we may, one day, be able to see beyond race to connect spiritually across racial lines. Saying that one does not care about race is offered as an exculpatory virtue, when in fact it can be a form of cruelty. It is precisely because we, as a nation, have not cared much about African Americans that we have allowed our criminal justice system to create a new racial undercaste. The deeply flawed nature of colorblindness, as a governing principle, is evidenced by the fact that the public consensus supporting mass incarceration is officially colorblind.

The seemingly innocent phrase, “I don’t care if he’s black …” perfectly captures the perversion of Martin Luther King Jr.’s dream that we may, one day, be able to see beyond race to connect spiritually across racial lines. Saying that one does not care about race is offered as an exculpatory virtue, when in fact it can be a form of cruelty. It is precisely because we, as a nation, have not cared much about African Americans that we have allowed our criminal justice system to create a new racial undercaste.

men with guns stole our future by killing the best of our leaders, again and again—in one single tragic year, Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy. And day after day, death upon death, they steal our dreams by killing the people we love.

For King, the essence of democracy is the belief that each person is created in the image of God. “We will know one day that God made us to live together as brothers and to respect the dignity and worth of every man,” he affirms.

We must develop and maintain the capacity to forgive. He who is devoid of the power to forgive is devoid of the power to love. There is some good in the worst of us and some evil in the best of us. When we discover this, we are less prone to hate our enemies.” ― Martin Luther King, Jr. ―

Gone are the days when the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. declared: “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.”48

Do as Martin Luther King, Jr. said, “Take the first step in faith. You don't have to see the whole staircase, just take the first step.

SATURDAY, APRIL 4 Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up. Galatians 6:9 (NIV) WRITING IS MY CALLING. EVEN without compensation, I would write. My latest book explores the life of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. I wrote the first draft in 2005. Countless editors rejected it. Over ten years, I rewrote the manuscript no fewer than eight times. Each new revision was denied for publication. As an orator and Bible scholar, Dr. King said, “Faith is taking the first step even when you don’t see the whole staircase.” I was tempted to quit on many days as my manuscript received mountain-high rejection notices. Isaiah’s words comforted me, “But they that wait upon the LORD shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint” (Isaiah 40:31, KJV). Ultimately I did not quit or cave to self-defeat, and my book was finally published in 2018. The decade that I spent revising the text proved to be a priceless exercise in learning patience and sharpening my writing skills. My dream was deferred, but it was not denied. And here is a spiritual nugget that was gleaned from my ten-year writing journey: The soul will grow weary when it toils toward an unseen promise. Yet, as I labor to attain the vision that I hold for myself, the Spirit of the Lord strengthens my heart and emotions as I press ahead. What are you laboring to achieve? If you refuse to quit, Jesus will touch you with His unwavering perseverance. Despite what happens in the process, never give up on yourself. Press onward. Jesus will bring you to a successful finish. —ALICE THOMPSON

In carrying out his mandate, it is evident that, in addition to being a man of prayer, Dr. King was a contemplative, Dr. Ruth Haley Barton, founder of the Transforming Center, affirmed the inclusion of contemplation and prayerfulness in his life when, in honor of Martin Luther King Day in January 2010, she wrote that Dr. King’s “life was characterized by a powerful integration of prayer and contemplation with a profound commitment to decisive and loving action in the world.’ Barton’s insight is extremely valuable in the discussion of the power of prayer and spiritual direction from an African American perspective. In identifying Dr. King as a man of contemplative action, she included a clear definition of that term: ‘Contemplative action is action that emerges from our real encounters with God. It is doing what God calls us to do when he calls us to do it - no matter how afraid we are or how ill-equipped we feel. Contemplative action is the willingness to go beyond being primarily concerned for our own safety and survival to the place where we know that our real life is hidden with Christ in God no matter what happens to our physical life. Contemplative action is doing the right thing, at the right time, in the right Spirit, completely given over to a Power that is beyond our own - even, and perhaps most especially, when the risks are very great. This kind of action is impossible without being radically in touch with the Source of our life through prayer and contemplation.

1) “How did I end up down this rabbit hole of being obsessed with men on the DL (down-low)? Why did I prefer playing more in the straight arena with the closet cases (as they were called in my day) and the bisexual men over the gay ones?” 2) “We didn’t identify in my day; you were either gay, bisexual, or straight. People will always label others or pigeonhole them without even knowing for sure who they really are. They presumably stereotype and judge just by your outward appearance.” 3) “It wasn't until the seventh grade that Sister Gloria would be my social studies teacher, and I began leaning more towards being an extrovert than the anxious introvert that I was. All the accolades go to her. She lit the flame under my ass that would be the catalyst for my advocacy. Her podium, located front and center of the classroom, became ground zero for me and where I found my voice.” 4) “Their taunting was my kryptonite. My peers hated me for no other reason than the fact that they thought I was gay. I was only thirteen and often wondered how they knew who I was before I did.” 5) “Evangelical Christian Anita Bryant (First Lady of Religious Bigotry), along with her minions, led a crusade against the LGBTQ community back in 1977 and said we were trying to recruit children and that ‘Homosexuals are human garbage.’ My first thoughts were, how unchristian and deplorable of her to even say something like that, not to mention, to make it her life’s mission promoting hate.” 6) “Are there any more Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. kind of Christians in this country today? Dr. King knew about his friend’s homosexuality and arrest. Being a religious man and a pastor, Dr. King could have cast judgment and shunned Bayard Rustin like so many other religious leaders did at the time. But he didn’t. That, to me, is the true meaning of being a Christian. He loved Bayard unconditionally and was unbiased towards his sexual orientation. Dr. King was not a counterfeit Christian and practiced what he preached—and that, along with remembering what Jesus had said, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself,’ is the bottom line to Christianity and all faiths.” 7) “We are all God’s children! That is what I was taught in Catholic school. God doesn’t make mistakes—it’s as simple as that. Love is love—period! I don’t need anyone’s validation or approval, I define myself.” 8) “You will bake our cakes, you will provide us our due healthcare, you will do our joint tax returns, and yes, you will bless our unions, too. Otherwise, you cannot call yourselves Christians or even Americans, for that matter.” 9) “The torch has been passed. But we must never forget the LGBT pioneers that have come before and how they fought in the streets for our lives. Never forget the Stonewall riots of 1969 nor the social stigma put upon us during the HIV/AIDS epidemic from its onset in the early 1980s. Remember how many died alone because nobody cared. Finally, keep in mind how we were all pathologized and labeled in the medical books until 1973.

In Sum The human mind evolved for living in tribes that engaged in frequent (and often violent) conflict; our modern-day minds readily divide the world into “us” and “them,” even on trivial or arbitrary criteria, as Henri Tajfel’s psychological experiments demonstrated. Identity politics takes many forms. Some forms, such as that practiced by Martin Luther King, Jr., and Pauli Murray, can be called common-humanity identity politics, because its practitioners humanize their opponents and appeal to their humanity while also applying political pressure in other ways. Common-enemy identity politics, on the other hand, tries to unite a coalition using the psychology embedded in the Bedouin proverb “I against my brothers. I and my brothers against my cousins. I and my brothers and my cousins against the world.” It is used on the far right as well as the far left.

Three years later, the civil rights lawyer vividly recalled that day: “In his straightforward way, Yablonski told me that he had decided to run for the presidency of the UMWA, that he would probably be killed before the fight was over, but that he had to do it.” Rauh knew Martin Luther King Jr. and Bobby Kennedy well, but he always said that Jock Yablonski’s decision to risk his life for the country’s coal miners was the greatest act of courage and moral fiber he ever saw.

Three score and seven years after Plessy came the most resounding statement of all, when the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., stood under the shadow of Abraham Lincoln and immortalized the moral vision of the civil rights movement by declaring, ‘I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.’ ”23 Today, civil rights Marxism preaches and demands the opposite.

You keep writing about war protests and flag burnings. None of that is in the Stars and Stripes. And Barb’s mom said Martin Luther King says this war is unjust. I’m starting to wonder about it myself. But can’t they support the warriors and hate the war? Our men are dying every day in service of their country. Doesn’t that matter anymore?

This hardened response to those on the “other team” is not an invention of modern American politics. It seems to be hardwired into the circuitry of our brains. The Old Testament is filled with stories of sometimes deadly tribalism, and scientific data gives us insight into why that happens. In 1968, elementary school teacher Jane Elliott conducted a famous experiment with her students in the days after the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. She divided the class by eye color. The brown-eyed children were told they were better. They were the “in-group.” The blue-eyed children were told they were less than the brown-eyed children—hence becoming the “out-group.” Suddenly, former classmates who had once played happily side by side were taunting and torturing one another on the playground. Lest we assign greater morality to the “out-group,” the blue-eyed children were just as quick to attack the brown-eyed children once the roles were reversed.6

I was talking to a group of college students recently. One...posed the "what's the point?" question. I was born into an America where most couldn't sit in a classroom with someone of a different race and women could not attend many of our universities. When I was five I saw my mom crying in front of the TV because our president had been assassinated. I read newspapers every day with stories about Civil Rights protests and the Vietnam War, where 60,000 Americans and hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese were killed. When I was 10, I saw the TV news bulletin about Martin Luther King's assassination and then, two months later, the murder of Bobby Kennedy. Kids not much older than me were gunned down by the National Guard and law and law envorcement at Kent State and Jackson State. We accepted the possibility of nuclear war as a fact of life. When I was 16, a president resighned to avoid impeachment because of his corruption. I felt just like you do - that the adults had really screwed the world up. But I saw how young people marching helped bring about better civil rights laws, and how young people protesting helped end the Vietnam War. So when I turned eighteen, I registered to vote as fast as I could to make things better, in my state and in the country. And...I've seen a lot of things get better in my state and my country. Now you see things that make you angry. Good! They'll get better if you throw yourself into solving them in your own way.

We were still confined to that corner. More and more people joined us, some black and some white. On the second day, we awoke to learn that somebody must have told Martin Luther King that things were getting out of hand in Montgomery, because rumor had it that he left the line of march from Selma to join us in the hood. Despite myself, I was thrilled at the prospect of marching with King. I knew this was SNCC turf, and I was now with SNCC, but how can you not be thrilled with the prospect of being so close to the big man himself?

If this book is a thriller, it’s also a requiem, the story of the last days of a great figure and the end of his movement.

But though I was initially disappointed at being categorized as an extremist, as I continued to think about the matter I gradually gained a measure of satisfaction from the label. Was not Jesus an extremist for love: “Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you.” Was not Amos an extremist for justice: “Let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.” Was not Paul an extremist for the Christian gospel: “I bear in my body the marks of the Lord Jesus.” Was not Martin Luther an extremist: “Here I stand; I cannot do otherwise, so help me God.” And John Bunyan: “I will stay in jail to the end of my days before I make a butchery of my conscience.” And Abraham Lincoln: “This nation cannot survive half slave and half free.” And Thomas Jefferson: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal …” So the question is not whether we will be extremists, but what kind of extremists we will be. Will we be extremists for hate or for love? Will we be extremists for the preservation of injustice or for the extension of justice? In that dramatic scene on Calvary’s hill three men were crucified. We must never forget that all three were crucified for the same crime—the crime of extremism. Two were extremists for immorality, and thus fell below their environment. The other, Jesus Christ, was an extremist for love, truth, and goodness, and thereby rose above his environment.

Was not Jesus an extremist for love: “Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you.” Was not Amos an extremist for justice: “Let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.” Was not Paul an extremist for the Christian gospel: “I bear in my body the marks of the Lord Jesus.” Was not Martin Luther an extremist: “Here I stand; I cannot do otherwise, so help me God.” And John Bunyan: “I will stay in jail to the end of my days before I make a butchery of my conscience.” And Abraham Lincoln: “This nation cannot survive half slave and half free.” And Thomas Jefferson: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal …” So the question is not whether we will be extremists, but what kind of extremists we will be. Will we be extremists for hate or for love? Will we be extremists for the preservation of injustice or for the extension of justice? In that dramatic scene on Calvary’s hill three men were crucified. We must never forget that all three were crucified for the same crime—the crime of extremism.

Even as he took firm and reassuring command of the federal government, Johnson began to recast the civil rights struggle from a legal question to a ringing moral issue.* With a credibility that no northerner could claim, Johnson took his case for equal rights directly to the South.

You will never be rewarded for the dreams you slept over day in day out. You will be rewarded for dreams you stay awake and achieved.

Most of the people who attempt to draw back the success of the world are those who don’t care about anything. They live life every day without asking why.

Hatred is a burden that can hunt you day by day, robbing you off your personal joy in broad day light.

Questions to Consider 1. Strategic intent is a powerful core for any strategy. We can sometimes lose sight of this core, wrapped in the minutiae of the day and focused on task accomplishment. In the process, our strategy can lose its focus. Select a major goal in your professional life right now and assess whether your strategy is guided by a strong, focused core of strategic intent. Can you narrate this intent in one or two short sentences? 2. Strategic intent means identifying an extreme gap between resources and ambitions and developing a strategy to fulfill those ambitions. Are your own goals ambitious, or have you intentionally set goals that are easily met? If it’s the latter, set a major goal today that seems out of reach and then realistically assess what resources must be acquired and what capabilities developed to achieve that goal. 3. We sometimes shortchange ourselves by not thinking grandly enough. John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King were grand thinkers and visionaries who were able to articulate strategic intent to achieve almost impossible goals. Do you have grand goals, or have you unintentionally limited yourself by closing off certain options before they are even considered? Spend a few minutes each day thinking “grandly” about ideas that most people would reject, telling themselves, “You can’t do that.

Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter. —MARTIN LUTHER KING JR.

Woodstock, summer of 1969, was the turning point of rock festivals. Time magazine described this happening as “one of the most significant political and sociological events of the age.” One half-million American youth assembled for a three-day rock concert. They were non-violent, fun-loving hippies who resembled the large followings of Mahatma Gandhi in India and Rev. Martin Luther King in the USA, both strong advocates of non-violence. Both assassinated. It is important to understand the kinds of drugs and chemical agents available to stifle dissent, the mentality of people hell-bent on changing the course of history, to comprehend that cultures and tastes can be moved in directions according to game plans in the hands of a few people. Adolf Hitler’s first targets in Nazi Germany were Gypsies and the students. LSD was a youth-oriented drug perfected in the laboratory. When it was combined with other chemicals and given wide distribution, all that remained were marching orders to go to war.

American DEWAR FAMILY Cameron Dewar Ursula “Beep” Dewar, his sister Woody Dewar, his father Bella Dewar, his mother PESHKOV-JAKES FAMILY George Jakes Jacky Jakes, his mother Greg Peshkov, his father Lev Peshkov, his grandfather Marga, his grandmother MARQUAND FAMILY Verena Marquand Percy Marquand, her father Babe Lee, her mother CIA Florence Geary Tony Savino Tim Tedder, semiretired Keith Dorset OTHERS Maria Summers Joseph Hugo, FBI Larry Mawhinney, Pentagon Nelly Fordham, old flame of Greg Peshkov Dennis Wilson, aide to Bobby Kennedy Skip Dickerson, aide to Lyndon Johnson Leopold “Lee” Montgomery, reporter Herb Gould, television journalist on This Day Suzy Cannon, gossip reporter Frank Lindeman, television network owner REAL HISTORICAL CHARACTERS John F. Kennedy, thirty-fifth U.S. president Jackie, his wife Bobby Kennedy, his brother Dave Powers, assistant to President Kennedy Pierre Salinger, President Kennedy’s press officer Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference Lyndon B. Johnson, thirty-sixth U.S. president Richard Nixon, thirty-seventh U.S. president Jimmy Carter, thirty-ninth U.S. president Ronald Reagan, fortieth U.S. president George H. W. Bush, forty-first U.S. president British LECKWITH-WILLIAMS FAMILY Dave Williams Evie Williams, his sister Daisy Williams, his mother Lloyd Williams, M.P., his father Eth Leckwith, Dave’s grandmother MURRAY FAMILY Jasper Murray Anna Murray, his sister Eva Murray, his mother MUSICIANS IN THE GUARDSMEN AND PLUM NELLIE Lenny, Dave Williams’s cousin Lew, drummer Buzz, bass player Geoffrey, lead guitarist OTHERS Earl Fitzherbert, called Fitz Sam Cakebread, friend of Jasper Murray Byron Chesterfield (real name Brian Chesnowitz), music agent Hank Remington (real name Harry Riley), pop star Eric Chapman, record company executive German FRANCK FAMILY Rebecca Hoffmann Carla Franck, Rebecca’s adoptive mother Werner Franck, Rebecca’s adoptive father Walli Franck, son of Carla Lili Franck, daughter of Werner and Carla Maud von Ulrich, née Fitzherbert, Carla’s mother Hans Hoffmann, Rebecca’s husband OTHERS Bernd Held, schoolteacher Karolin Koontz, folksinger Odo Vossler, clergyman REAL HISTORICAL PEOPLE Walter Ulbricht, first secretary of the Socialist Unity Party (Communist) Erich Honecker, Ulbricht’s successor Egon Krenz, successor to Honecker Polish Stanislaw “Staz” Pawlak, army officer Lidka, girlfriend of Cam Dewar Danuta Gorski, Solidarity activist REAL HISTORICAL PEOPLE Anna Walentynowicz, crane driver Lech Wałesa, leader of the trade union Solidarity General Jaruzelski, prime minister Russian DVORKIN-PESHKOV FAMILY Tanya Dvorkin, journalist Dimka Dvorkin, Kremlin aide, Tanya’s twin brother Anya Dvorkin, their mother Grigori Peshkov, their grandfather Katerina Peshkov, their grandmother Vladimir, always called Volodya, their uncle Zoya, Volodya’s wife Nina, Dimka’s girlfriend OTHERS Daniil Antonov, features editor at TASS Pyotr Opotkin, features editor in chief Vasili Yenkov, dissident Natalya Smotrov, official in the Foreign Ministry Nik Smotrov, Natalya’s husband Yevgeny Filipov, aide to Defense Minister Rodion Malinovsky Vera Pletner, Dimka’s secretary Valentin, Dimka’s friend Marshal Mikhail Pushnoy REAL HISTORICAL CHARACTERS Nikita Sergeyevitch Khrushchev, first secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union Andrei Gromyko, foreign minister under Khrushchev Rodion Malinovsky, defense minister under Khrushchev Alexei Kosygin, chairman of the Council of Ministers Leonid Brezhnev, Khrushchev’s successor Yuri Andropov, successor to Brezhnev Konstantin Chernenko, successor to Andropov Mikhail Gorbachev, successor to Chernenko Other Nations Paz Oliva, Cuban general Frederik Bíró, Hungarian politician Enok Andersen, Danish accountant

Martin Luther King Jr. said this: “There was a time when the church was very powerful. In those days the church was not merely a thermometer that recorded the ideas and principles of popular opinion; it was a thermostat that transformed the mores of society. Whenever the early Christians entered a town, the power structure got disturbed and immediately sought to convict them for being ‘disturbers of the peace’ and ‘outside agitators.’ But they went on with the conviction that they were ‘a colony of heaven,’ and had to obey God rather than man. They were small in number but big in commitment. They were too God-intoxicated to be ‘astronomically intimidated.’ They brought an end to such ancient evils as infanticide and gladiatorial contest.

I think, in the end, we have to say that there should be no discussion of Martin Luther King Jr. without Ella Baker, which is to say they are complementary. These two figures, voices, tendencies in the Black freedom movement, and particularly in the human freedom movement in general, they say something to young people these days in the age of Obama. See, Obama ends up being the worst example of messianic leadership, captured by a vicious system that is oligarchic domestically and imperialistic globally and uses the resonances of this precious freedom struggle as a way of legitimating himself in the eyes of both the Black people and the mainstream Americans, and acting as if as community organizer he has some connection to Ella Baker, which is absurd and ludicrous in light of him running the oligarchic system and being so proud of heading the killing machine of US imperial powers. So that when young people - who now find themselves in an even more desperate situation given the present crisis - think about the legacy of Martin King and legacy of Ella Baker in the age of Obama, it compounds the misunderstandings and misconstructions, and sabotages the intellectual clarity and political will necessary to create the kind of change we need. To use jazz metaphors, what we need would be the expression and articulation of different tempos and different vibrations and different actions and different witnesses, so it's antiphonal; it's call-and-response, and in the call-and-response, there are Ella Baker-like voices tied to various kinds of deep democratic witnesses that have to do with everyday people organizing themselves. And then you've got the Martin-like voices that are charismatic, which are very much tied to a certain kind of messianic leadership, which must be called into question, which must be democratized, which must be de-patriarchalized. And yet they are part of this jazz combo.

Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled. —Matthew 5:6 (KJV) Hey, old man.” It was my sister Keri on the line. “I can’t believe you are about to turn forty.” Hearing those words rang hard in my head. How could I be forty? It was time for a reality check. I was passionate about my career. My son Harrison was a wellspring of joy, and six-month-old Mary Katherine had forever changed Corinne’s and my life for the better. Yet, I couldn’t help but think about my shortcomings. Did I reach out to others or was I too self-centered? Was I giving back in proportion to what had been given to me? Was I mindful enough of the teachings of Jesus? Was I His defender? I tortured myself remembering that Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. achieved greatness before age forty. How could my life ever measure up to theirs? My big day started with birthday calls, but by lunch I was feeling disappointed. How anticlimactic it seemed. In the afternoon, Corinne suggested we take a drive to a friend’s farm. She led me to a converted barn and swung open the door. “Surprise!” The room was filled with family and friends. Toasts followed. One friend spoke of our work in Africa; another thanked me for helping his parents through a hard financial time; another mentioned my work in the inner city. Small steps, I thought. Tiny acts far from greatness. But wait! Why am I treating forty as a deadline? What better age to begin again to make the world right, to reach out, to give, to defend God’s rightness? Everything old turned new in that moment, and I was on my way. Father, I want to do more than long for a better world. Come with me. Help me make it happen. —Brock Kidd Digging Deeper: Gal 6:9; Eph 2:10

In a sermon entitled “The American Dream,” Martin Luther King, Jr., said: You see, the founding fathers were really influenced by the Bible. The whole concept of the imago dei, as it is expressed in Latin, the “image of God,” is the idea that all men have something within them that God injected. Not that they have substantial unity with God, but that every man has a capacity to have fellowship with God. And this gives him a uniqueness, it gives him worth, it gives him dignity. And we must never forget this as a nation: There are no gradations in the image of God. Every man from a treble white to a bass black is significant on God’s keyboard, precisely because every man is made in the image of God. One day we will learn that. We will know one day that God made us to live together as brothers and to respect the dignity and worth of every man. This is why we must fight segregation with all of our nonviolent might.80

The insults, the humiliations filtered into every aspect of life in Montgomery, literally from the hospital in which you were born to the cemetery in which you were buried. There were statues and plaques honoring Confederate heroes throughout the city, high schools and streets bore their names. The state officially celebrated Robert E. Lee’s birthday, Confederate president Jefferson Davis’s birthday and Confederate Memorial Day.

Martin Luther King Jr., closing down one of his sermons in the early days in Montgomery, speaks of what it means to be a witness: Honesty impels me to admit that transformed nonconformity, which is always costly and never altogether comfortable, may mean walking through the valley of the shadow of suffering, losing a job, or having a six-year-old daughter ask, “Daddy, why do you have to go to jail so much?

To this day, it is unclear who shot Martin Luther King, Jr.,

The uplifting rhetoric on Martin Luther King Jr. Day typically reaches as far as his “I have a dream” speech at the huge demonstration in Washington in August 1963. But King did not terminate his activities then. He went on to become a prominent critic of the Vietnam War and to organize and support struggles for housing, workers’ rights, and other popular needs in the North. He was assassinated in 1968 while supporting a garbage workers’ strike,5 the day after he had delivered another memorable speech that is barely known. He was organizing a poor people’s movement and another march on Washington to demand human and civil rights for all Americans, including Aboriginal and white Americans. None of this was tolerable to establishment liberalism. He was bitterly condemned for supposedly losing his way. It’s fine to condemn racist Alabama sheriffs—but “not in my backyard.” His major commitments are omitted from the schools and the media.

We all have the same twenty-four hours in a day, and yet what Mother Teresa, Albert Einstein, Bill Gates, and Martin Luther King Jr. accomplished in their days is a lot more than what many others have. The difference comes back to intention and attention.