The Man of Love - Part 2

Above all, the determination of the Negro himself to gain freedom and equality will be a powerful force in defeating the barriers of integration. For many years the Negro tacitly accepted segregation. He was the victim of stagnant passivity and deadening complacency. Through the forces of history, something happened to the Negro. The social upheavals of two world wars, the great depression, and the spread of the automobile have made it both possible and necessary for the Negro to move away from his former isolation on the rural plantation. The decline of agriculture and parallel growth of industry have drawn large numbers of Negroes to urban centers and brought about a gradual improvement in their economic status. New contexts have led to a broadened outlook and new possibilities for education and advancement. And all of these factors have conjoined to cause the Negro to take a fresh look at himself. His expanding life experiences have created within him a consciousness that he is an equal element in a larger social compound and accordingly should be given rights and privileges commensurate with his new responsibilities.

Once plagued with the tragic sense of inferiority resulting from the crippling effects of slavery and segregation, the Negro has now been driven to reevaluate himself. He has come to feel that he is somebody. He has come to feel that the important thing about a man is not his specificity but his fundamentum, not the texture of his hat or the color of his skin but his eternal worth to God. And so the Negro can now cry out with the eloquent poet

Fleecy locks and black complexion
cannot forfeit nature’s claim
Skin may differ, but affection
Dwells in black and white the same.
And were I so tall as to reach the pole
Or to grasp the ocean at a span,
I must be measured by my soul
The mind is the standard of the man.

With this new sense of dignity in this new sense of self-respect, a new Negro has emerged with the determination to achieve freedom and human dignity. Unfortunately the Negro has been willing to grapple with the creative and powerful approach to his problem in the South, namely nonviolent resistance. It is my great hope that as a Negro plunges deeper into the quest for freedom he will plunge deeper into the philosophy of non-violence. As a race, we must work passionately and unrelentingly for first-class citizenship, but we must never use second class methods to gain it. We must never become bitter now should we succumb to the temptation of using violence in the struggle where this happens unborn generations will be the recipients of a long and desolate night of bitterness and our chief legacy to the future would be an endless rain
of meaningless chaos I feel that this way of non-violence is vital because it is the only way to reestablish the broken community it is a method which seeks to implement the just law by
appealing to the conscience of the great decent majority
who through blindness fear pride or irrationality have allowed their conscience is to sleep the nonviolent resistors can summarize our message in the following simple terms we will take
direct action against injustice without waiting for other agency stack we will not o be unjust laws or submit to unjust
practices we will do this peacefully openly and cheerfully because i am is to persuade we adopt the means of non-violence because I end is a community at peace with itself we will try to persuade with our words but if our words fail we will try to persuade with our act we will always be willing to talk and seek fair compromise but we are ready to suffer when necessary and even risked our lives to become witnesses to the truth as we see it now I realize that this approach will mean suffering and sacrifice some will ask what if physical violence is inflicted upon the Negro as a result of this following this method what then can be his defense his defenses to meet every act of violence toward an individual Negro with factor there are thousands of others who will present themselves in his place as potential victims if the oppressors bombed the home of one Negro for his courage then this must be met by the fact that they will be required to bomb the homes of hundreds and thousands of Negro if they deny bread and milk to Negro children whose parents want them to be free then they must be required to deny these children every necessity of life water and air itself this dynamic unity this amazing self-respect
this willingness to suffer this refusal to hit back will soon cause the oppressor to become ashamed of his own methods he will be left glutted with his own barbarity forced to stand before the world and his God splattered with the blood and reeking with the stench of his Negro brother he will call an end to his self defeating massacre yes a Negro must be able to say to all of those white brothers who would seek to defeat him and to block his advance we will match your capacity to inflict suffering by our capacity to endure suffering we will meet your physical force with soul force do to us what you will then we will still love you we cannot in all good conscience obey your unjust laws because non-cooperation with evil is as much a moral obligation as is cooperation with good and so put us in jail and we will go behind the walls of incarceration with understanding goodwill in our hearts yes bomb our homes and threaten our children and we will still love you send you hooded perpetrators of violence into our communities at the midnight hours and drag us out on some way side road and beat us and leave us have did and we will still love you send your propaganda agents around the country make it appear that we are not fit morally culturally otherwise for integration and we will still love you be assured that we will wear you down by our capacity to suffer one day we will win our freedom but we will not only win freedom for ourselves we will so appeal to your heart and conscience we will when you in the process thereby our victory will be a double victory this approach to the problem is not without successful precedent we have the magnificent example of Mohandas K Gandhi who challenge the might of the British Empire and won independence for his people by using only the weapons of truth non-injury courage and soul force today we have the example of thousands of Negro students in the South who have courageously challenged the principalities of segregation these young students have taken the deep groans and the passionate yearnings of the Negro people and filtered them in our own Souls and fashion them in a creative protest which is an epic known all over our nation today for the last few months they have moved in a uniquely meaningful of it imparting light and heat too distant satellites through their nonviolent direct action they have been able to open hundreds of formulas segregated lunch counters in more than one hundred and twelve cities in the south it is no overstatement to characterize these events as historic never before in the United States has so large a body of students spread a struggle over so great an area in pursuit of a goal of human dignity and freedom and I am convinced that future historians will have to record this student movement as one of the greatest epics of our heritage now as I come toward my conclusion let me correct what may be a false impression derived from all that I have said I have talked about the emerging new order of integration and the force is that I had worked to assure its realization this you may conclude that we can sit comfortably by the wayside and wait on the coming of the inevitable nothing could be further from the truth if we go out with that impression we will be the victims of a dangerous optimism we believe this we will be the victims of an illusion wrapped in superficiality human progress is neither automatic nor inevitable glow in ian's theory of evolution may be valid in the biological round herbert spencer seeks to apply to the whole of society that is very little evidence for it for even a superficial look at history reveals that no social advanced roles in on the wheels of inevitability every step toward the goal of justice requires sacrifice suffering and struggle the tireless exertions and passionate concern of dedicated individuals without this persistent work time itself becomes an ally of the insurgent and primitive forces or the irrational emotionalism and social stagnation we have already suffered temporary setbacks in America as a result of this lack of vigorous and positive action this is particularly true in the area to school integration here the forces that stand for the best in our national life have been tragically ineffectual a year after the Supreme Court had declared school segregation unconstitutional it handed down a decree outlining the details by which integration should proceed with all deliberate speed while the court did not set a definite deadline for the termination of this process it did set a time for the beginning it was clear that the court had chosen this reasonable approach with the expectation that the forces of goodwill would immediately get to work and prepare the communities for a smooth and peaceful transition the forces of goodwill failed to come through it is true that immediately after the first decision was rendered leading Church Labor and Social Welfare leaders issued statements upholding the decision and many supporting resolutions were adopted by the organization's but hardly a single group said forth an action program way and their members could actively work to bring about a piece peaceful transition neither did they develop a plan where bow in individuals in southern communities who were willing to work for desegregation could receive organizations support in the face of economic reprisals and physical violence as a result of the failure of the moral forces of the nation to mobilize behind school integration the forces of defeat were given the chance to organize and crystallized our opposition while the good people stood silently and complacent Lee by the misguided people active favorite Church and synagogue had developed an action problem if every civic and social welfare organization every labor union and educational institution and worked out concrete plans for implementing their righteous resolutions the press radio and television and turn their powerful instruments in the direction of educating and elevating the people on this issue yes if the President of the United States and the Congress had taken a forthright stand if these things had happened federal troops might not have been forced to walk the corridors of Central High School in a little rock arkansas the present disgraceful acts in New Orleans Louisiana would probably be non-existent in the final analysis integration will become a reality in America when enough people come to believe from the President of the United States on down that it is morally right and willing to work passionately and assiduously for its fulfillment this is needed north and south no section in our nation and boast of clean hands in the area of brotherhood it is good for white persons of the north to rise up in righteous indignation when a Negro is lynched in Mississippi they should be equally incensed when a Negro is not able of living in their neighborhoods when the Negro is not able to join their professional society when a Negro cannot get a certain position in their firms merely because of his race and other words there must be people in America if this problem is to be saw will have a sort of divine discontent let a certain technical words in the vocabulary of every academic discipline which tend to become stereotypes and cliches psychologists have a word which is probably used more frequently than any other word in modern psychology it is the word maladjusted this word is a ringing cried of modern child psychology maladjusted now in a sense all of us must seek to live the well-adjusted length in order to avoid neurotic and
schizophrenic personalities and I close this evening by saying that as some things in our social system to which I'm proud to be maladjusted and I would suggest that all men of goodwill ought to be maladjusted I never intend to adjust myself to the evils of
segregation and discrimination I never intend to be adjusted to religious bigotry I never intend to become adjusted to the madness and militarism the self-defeating effects of physical violence and I submit that is need for a little more maladjustment for you see it may well be that the salvation of our world lies in the hands of the maladjusted the challenge to us is to be maladjusted and maladjusted as a prophet amos who in the midst of the injustice is of his day that crowd in words that echo across the centuries that judgment run down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream maladjusted is abraham lincoln who had the vision to see that this nation could not survive half-slave and how free is maladjusted as different who in the midst of an age amazingly adjusted to slavery could cry out in words lifted to cosmic proportions all men are created equal and are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights that among these are life liberty and the pursuit of happiness as maladjusted assess and maladjusted as Jesus of Nazareth dad to dream a dream of the Fatherhood of God than the brotherhood of man who could stand before people of his days the midst of the fascinated in intricate military machinery of the Roman Empire and say he who lives by the sword will perish by the sword the world is in desperate need of such maladjustment through such maladjustment we will be able to emerge from the bleak and desolate midnight of man's inhumanity to man into the bright and glittering daybreak of freedom and justice then America will truly be the land of the free and the home of the brave this will be the day when all of God's children black men and white men Jews and Gentiles Protestants and ethics be able to join hands and sing with new meaning free at last free at last thank God Almighty we are free at last