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You Know I Would Be King (Not!)

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Secondly, let us keep the issues where they are. The issue is injustice. The issue is the refusal of Memphis to be fair and honest in its dealings with its public servants, who happen to be sanitation workers. Now, we've got to keep attention on that. That's always the problem with a little violence. You know what happened the other day, and the press dealt only with the window-breaking. I read the articles. They very seldom got around to mentioning the fact that one thousand, three hundred sanitation workers were on strike, and that Memphis is not being fair to them, and that Mayor Loeb is in dire need of a doctor. They didn't get around to that.

You know I would be King (Not!)
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We aren't going to let any mace stop us. We are masters in our nonviolent movement in disarming police forces; they don't know what to do, I've seen them so often. I remember in Birmingham, Alabama, when we were in that majestic struggle there we would move out of the 16th Street Baptist Church day after day; by the hundreds we would move out. And Bull Connor would tell them to send the dogs forth and they did come; but we just went before the dogs singing, "Ain't gonna let nobody turn me round." Bull Connor next would say, "Turn the fire hoses on." And as I said to you the other night, Bull Connor didn't know history. He knew a kind of physics that somehow didn't relate to the transphysics that we knew about. And that was the fact that there was a certain kind of fire that no water could put out. And we went before the fire hoses; we had known water. If we were Baptist or some other denomination, we had been immersed. If we were Methodist, and some others, we had been sprinkled, but we knew water.

That couldn't stop us. And we just went on before the dogs and we would look at them; and we'd go on before the water hoses and we would look at it, and we'd just go on singing "Over my head I see freedom in the air." And then we would be thrown in the paddy wagons, and sometimes we were stacked in there like sardines in a can. And they would throw us in, and old Bull would say, "Take them off," and they did; and we would just go in the paddy wagon singing, "We Shall Overcome." And every now and then we'd get in the jail, and we'd see the jailers looking through the windows being moved by our prayers, and being moved by our words and our songs. And there was a power there which Bull Connor couldn't adjust to; and so we ended up transforming Bull into a steer, and we won our struggle in Birmingham.

But I'm going to tell you what my imagination tells me. It's possible that these men were afraid. You see, the Jericho road is a dangerous road. I remember when Mrs. King and I were first in Jerusalem. We rented a car and drove from Jerusalem down to Jericho. And as soon as we got on that road, I said to my wife, "I can see why Jesus used this as a setting for his parable." It's a winding, meandering road. It's really conducive for ambushing. You start out in Jerusalem, which is about 1200 miles, or rather 1200 feet above sea level. And by the time you get down to Jericho, fifteen or twenty minutes later, you're about 2200 feet below sea level. That's a dangerous road. In the days 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?"



And I want to say tonight, I want to say that I am happy that I didn't sneeze. Because if I had sneezed, I wouldn't have been around here in 1960, when students all over the South started sitting-in at lunch counters. And I knew that as they were sitting in, they were really standing up for the best in the American dream. And taking the whole nation back to those great wells of democracy which were dug deep by the Founding Fathers in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. If I had sneezed, I wouldn't have been around in 1962, when Negroes in Albany, Georgia, decided to straighten their backs up. And whenever men and women straighten their backs up, they are going somewhere, because a man can't ride your back unless it is bent. If I had sneezed, I wouldn't have been here in 1963, when the black people of Birmingham, Alabama, aroused the conscience of this nation, and brought into being the Civil Rights Bill. If I had sneezed, I wouldn't have had a chance later that year, in August, to try to tell America about a dream that I had had. If I had sneezed, I wouldn't have been down in Selma, Alabama, been in Memphis to see the community rally around those brothers and sisters who are suffering. I'm so happy that I didn't sneeze.

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

England needed a strong ruler in the early 1500s, someone who would prevent her from slipping back into the endless, ruinous civil wars of the past and establish a modern and efficient nation-state. Henry VIII was such a king.

You deplore the demonstrations taking place in Birmingham. But your statement, I amsorry tosay, fails to express a similar concern for the conditions that brought about thedemonstrations. I amsure that none of you would want to rest content with the superficial kind of socialanalysis that dealsmerely with effects and does not grapple with underlying causes. It is unfortunate thatdemonstrations are taking place in Birmingham, but it is even more unfortunate that thecity's whitepower structure left the Negro community with no alternative.

We have waited for more than 340 years for our constitutional and God given rights. Thenations of Asia and Africa are moving with jetlike speed toward gaining politicalindependence, butwe still creep at horse and buggy pace toward gaining a cup of coffee at a lunch counter.Perhaps it iseasy for those who have never felt the stinging darts of segregation to say, "Wait." Butwhen you haveseen vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers at will and drown your sisters andbrothers at whim;when you have seen hate filled policemen curse, kick and even kill your black brothers andsisters;when you see the vast majority of your twenty million Negro brothers smothering in anairtight cageof poverty in the midst of an affluent society; when you suddenly find your tongue twistedand yourspeech stammering as you seek to explain to your six year old daughter why she can't go tothe publicamusement park that has just been advertised on television, and see tears welling up inher eyes whenshe is told that Funtown is closed to colored children, and see ominous clouds ofinferiority beginningto form in her little mental sky, and see her beginning to distort her personality bydeveloping anunconscious bitterness toward white people; when you have to concoct an answer for a fiveyear oldson who is asking: "Daddy, why do white people treat colored people so mean?"; when youtake across county drive and find it necessary to sleep night after night in the uncomfortablecorners of yourautomobile because no motel will accept you; when you are humiliated day in and day out bynagging signs reading "white" and "colored"; when your first name becomes "nigger," yourmiddlename becomes "boy" (however old you are) and your last name becomes "John," and your wifeandmother are never given the respected title "Mrs."; when you are harried by day and hauntedby nightby the fact that you are a Negro, living constantly at tiptoe stance, never quite knowingwhat toexpect next, and are plagued with inner fears and outer resentments; when you are foreverfighting adegenerating sense of "nobodiness"--then you will understand why we find it difficult towait. Therecomes a time when the cup of endurance runs over, and men are no longer willing to beplunged intothe abyss of despair. I hope, sirs, you can understand our legitimate and unavoidableimpatience.You express a great deal of anxiety over our willingness to break laws. This is certainlyalegitimate concern. Since we so diligently urge people to obey the Supreme Court'sdecision of 1954outlawing segregation in the public schools, at first glance it may seem ratherparadoxical for usconsciously to break laws. One may well ask: "How can you advocate breaking some laws andobeyingothers?" The answer lies in the fact that there are two types of laws: just and unjust. Iwould be the firstto advocate obeying just laws. One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obeyjust laws.Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws. I would agree with St.Augustinethat "an unjust law is no law at all."

In your statement you assert that our actions, even though peaceful, must be condemnedbecause they precipitate violence. But is this a logical assertion? Isn't this likecondemning a robbedman because his possession of money precipitated the evil act of robbery? Isn't this likecondemningSocrates because his unswerving commitment to truth and his philosophical inquiriesprecipitated theact by the misguided populace in which they made him drink hemlock? Isn't this likecondemningJesus because his unique God consciousness and never ceasing devotion to God's willprecipitatedthe evil act of crucifixion? We must come to see that, as the federal courts haveconsistently affirmed,it is wrong to urge an individual to cease his efforts to gain his basic constitutionalrights because thequest may precipitate violence. Society must protect the robbed and punish the robber.I had also hoped that the white moderate would reject the myth concerning time in relationtothe struggle for freedom. I have just received a letter from a white brother in Texas. Hewrites: "AllChristians know that the colored people will receive equal rights eventually, but it ispossible that youare in too great a religious hurry. It has taken Christianity almost two thousand years toaccomplishwhat it has. The teachings of Christ take time to come to earth." Such an attitude stemsfrom a tragicmisconception of time, from the strangely irrational notion that there is something in thevery flow oftime that will inevitably cure all ills. Actually, time itself is neutral; it can be usedeither destructively orconstructively. More and more I feel that the people of ill will have used time much moreeffectivelythan have the people of good will. We will have to repent in this generation not merelyfor the hatefulwords and actions of the bad people but for the appalling silence of the good people.Humanprogress never rolls in on wheels of inevitability; it comes through the tireless effortsof men willing tobe co workers with God, and without this hard work, time itself becomes an ally of theforces of socialstagnation. We must use time creatively, in the knowledge that the time is always ripe todo right.Now is the time to make real the promise of democracy and transform our pending nationalelegy intoa creative psalm of brotherhood. Now is the time to lift our national policy from thequicksand of racialinjustice to the solid rock of human dignity.
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You Know I Would Be King (Not!) Владимир Галимов <vladimirgalimovx4xr5u@gmail.com> - 2023-12-02 21:44 -0800

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