Now if we are to solve the problem it is necessary to develop a massive action program to get at it on a continuing basis North and South. We may have to repent in this generation not merely for vitriolic words and the violent actions of the bad people who will bombed a church in Birmingham, Alabama, but for the appalling silence and indifference of the good people who sit around and say wait on time. But probably more than anything else or in any other area, we’ve seen the walls of legal segregation gradually crumble in our day and in our age. Men and women who will be as maladjusted as the prophet Amos, who in the midst of the injustices of his day cried the words that echoed across the centuries, “Let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.” Maladjusted as Abraham Lincoln, who had the vision to see that this nation could not survive half slave and half free. The problem is becoming more serious today because of automation and cybernation. But by and large we’ve stayed with it. By 1964, it had gone to 2 million. But I would not like to leave you with the impression that we must solve this problem merely to appeal to Asian and African peoples. As long as you have consciences that will allow themselves to doze and go to sleep, it is necessary to do something to sear the conscious, to dramatize the issue, to call attention to it. Martin Luther King Jr., “Remaining Awake Through a Great Revolution.” Speech given at … You certainly can’t be telling us to love these people who are oppressing us and who are killing our children and who are bombing our churches. Under Dr. King’s leadership, nonviolent protest became the defining feature of the modern civil rights movement in America. Communism says in the final analysis that any method is proper to bring about the goal of the classless society. And so for this reason we have often been limited to unskilled and semi-skilled labor. It said in substance the old Plessy doctrine must go, separate facilities are inheritantly unequal, that to segregate a child on the basis of his race is to deny that child equal protection of the law. But not only that. And for more than two centuries our forbearers labored here without wages. They contend that only time can solve the problem. It may be true that morality can’t be legislated but behavior can be regulated. I may leave you the victims of an illusion wrapped in superficiality. Now this would be a wonderful place for me to end my speech this afternoon. It is no longer a choice between violence and nonviolence; it is either nonviolence and non-existence. As maladjusted as that great Virginian Thomas Jefferson, who in the midst of an age amazingly adjust to slavery, could scratch words across the pages of history words lifted to cosmic proportions, “We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal and that they 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 Christ, who could say to the men and women around the Galilean hills, “Love your enemies. The Negro ended up being plunged into the abbess of exploitation, where he experienced the bleakness of nagging injustice. But I must honestly say there are some things in our nation and the world to which I am proud to be maladjusted and wish all men of goodwill would be maladjusted until the good society is realized. There is a revolt all over the world against colonialism, imperialism and racism. Since that time, we’ve gotten the Voting Rights Bill enacted, and thousands and thousands of new Negro voters are now registered as a result of the Voting Rights Bill of 1965. Throughout slavery, the Negro was treated in a very inhuman fashion. And I close with a personal faith and that is the glowing faith in the future that I believe somehow we will solve this problem however difficult, however much opposition we have. There is nothing more dangerous than to build a society with a large segment of people in that society who feel they have no stake in it, who feel they have nothing to do. Before the beautiful words of The Star-Spangled Banner were written, we were here. He is merely property subject to the dictates of his owner. And so the plea facing us today is to move on that additional distance that we have to go with understanding, with a concern for brotherhood, with the removal of all prejudices, with an understanding that all of God’s children are significant. People are walking scot-free in the streets of our communities who have murdered persons who were simply seeking to gain their basic rights as citizens. LYNDON B. JOHNSON, “WE SHALL OVERCOME” (15 MARCH 1965) [1] Mr. Speaker, Mr. President, Members of the Congress: ... [66] We must preserve the right of free speech and the right of free assembly. With His faith, we will be able to transform the jangling discourse of our nation into a beautiful, sensitive brotherhood. I wish I could be as optimistic. National Museum of African American History and Culture, Poster for SCLC reading "Injustice Anywhere...a threat to Justice Everywhere". It seems to be a fact of life that men cannot continue to do wrong without eventually reaching out for some thin rationalization to cloth an obvious wrong in the beautiful garments of righteousness. And so we must refute the myth of time and the myth that legislation cannot help in the solution of the problem. This is where nonviolence would break with communism or any other system which argues that the end justifies the means. Now there is another myth that is constantly disseminated. And so the challenge in the days ahead is to work passionately and unrelentingly for the solution to the problem and to go that additional distance necessary to make justice a reality for all people. And in order to tell the truth, I must give the other side and if I stop at this point, I may leave you the victims of a dangerous optimism if I stop now. Some, out of anger, have strayed away. If one is working for the goal of an integrated society, then he must seek to work with integration as a fact as he moves toward that. Fifty years ago, or even 25 years ago, a year hardly passed when numerous Negroes were not brutally lynched in the South by vicious mobs. And I certainly want to express my personal appreciation to Mr. Moore and Mr. Cox and all of you for extending the invitation. May I say to you this afternoon that I am convinced that if democracy is to live, segregation must die. I know how difficult it is to reshape the attitudes and the structure of our society. And so it was argued from some pulpits that the Negro is inferior by nature because of Noah’s curse upon the children of Ham. And the lion and the lamb shall lie down together, and every man shall sit under his own vine and fig tree, and none shall be afraid. Threaten our children and bomb our churches and our homes and, as difficult as it is, we will still love you. Plato used to talk about it a great deal in his dialogs, the yearning of the soul for the realm of the divine. In cities like Detroit, the Negro is 28 percent of the population and 72 percent of the unemployed. We must see still by the millions we have many, many people perishing on the lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of prosperity. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s iconic speech ending with the three words most often associated with him and the civil rights movement – “We Shall Overcome” - … For we recognize that the end is pre-existent in the means. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered this speech at the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C., on March 31st, 1968, just four days before his death. And if a man has not discovered something that he would die for, he isn’t fit to live. Every academic discipline has its technical nomenclature. And so his rural plantation background gradually gave way to urban industrial life. This is the word Agape. There must be a kind of divine discontent. Our churches and our homes and, as everybody knows, is not Negro. 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