The Civil Rights movement and its goals for the future

Once the. Dane appeared Mr Bell and members of the faculty and members of the student body of this great institution of learning. Ladies and gentlemen. I need not paused to say how varied and lighted I am to. Be back here on the campus of Stanford University and to have the great opportunity of being a part of your lecture see Reeves. I must apologize and of our began a beginning for being late. But this was something far beyond my control. I just don't have the capacity to control the plane was

an hour plane left Los Angeles about 45 minutes late I don't know exactly what was wrong it may have been a mechanical problem and of course when I'm on a plane that has had a mechanical. Difficulty I'm always happy to get on the ground. Now as a Baptist preacher I would not like to give you the impression that I don't have faith in God and the ad is simply that I have had more experience with them on the ground. Oh yeah. I do want to say how honored I am to be in a very serious vein. I have always had great respect. For. Father Ritchie an old cultural academic and social heritage.

Stanford University. And I stand here today with a great appreciation still for that. Great heritage. And I'm deeply indebted to Dean Pierre for these very kind and generous words of introduction. As I listened to his. Wonderful and eloquent words I felt something like the old maid who had never been married. And one day she went to work in the lady for whom she works and I hear you're going to get married and she said no I'm not but thank God for the Roma. I know all of these mandalas sayings that have been said can't be true but thank God for the room. Now there are several things that. One could talk about. For such a larger concern down enlighten the audience. So many problems facing our nation and our world.

That one could just take off anywhere. But today I would like to talk mainly about the race problems and so I have to rush right out and go to New York to talk about. Vietnam tomorrow and I've been talking about it a great deal this week and weeks before that. I'd like to use a subject from which to speak this afternoon and the other America and I use this subject because that are literally to America. One America is beautiful. Far situation and in a sense is America is overflowing with the milk of prosperity and the honey of opportunity.

There's America is the habitat of millions of people. Who have food and material necessities for the body was culture and education fogged our minds. Freedom and human dignity of spirit. And this is America millions of people. Experience every day. The opportunity for having life liberty and the pursuit of happiness and all of that dimensions. And then there's America. Millions of young people grow up in the sunlight of opportunity. But tragically and unfortunately there. Is another America.

This of America has barely been us about it. That constantly transforms the billions of hope and to the good dispatch. In this America a million years of work starving man walk the streets Day L.A. and studs for jobs that do not exist in this America millions of people find themselves living in a rat infested environment and feel. This and this is America. People are poor by the millions and they find themselves perishing on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity and the sun's a greatest tragedy.

This of America is what it does to little children little children and this of America. Are forced to grow up with clouds of inferiority of farming every day and little mental sky. And as we look at this other America. We see it as an I Reno blasted hopes shattered dream has many people of various backgrounds live in the US of America. America sama Mexican Americans I'm a Puerto Rican. Some are in the news. Some happen to be from other groups. Millions of them are Appalachian white but probably the largest group and there's other America in proportion to its size and the

population is the American Negro. American Negro finds himself living in a triple ghetto ghetto of raves a ghetto of poverty a ghetto of human misery. So what we are seeking to do in the civil rights movement. Is to deal with this problem to deal with this problem of the two America. Yes we are seeking to make America one nation and divisible with liberty and justice for all. Now let me say that the struggle for civil rights and the struggle to make these two Americas one America is much more difficult today than it was 10 years

ago. For about a decade or maybe 12 years we have struggled all across the south and glorious struggle to get rid of our. Legal overt segregation and all of the humiliation that surrounded that. System of segregation and ascends this was a struggle for decency. We could not. Go to a lunch counter in so many instances and get a hamburger our cup of coffee. We could not make use of public accommodation and public transportation was segregated. And often we had to sit in the back with and transportation transportation within city as we often had to stand over empty seats because sections were reserved for whites only.

We did not have the right to vote. And so many areas of the South. And the struggle was to deal with these problems. Certainly they were difficult problems they were humiliating condition by the fountains we protested these conditions. We made it clear that it was all to rid o to Muslim or honorable to accept jail SEO experiences. To accept segregation and humiliation by the thousand students and adults decided to sit and at segregated lunch counters to protest conditions there. When they were sitting at those lunch counters they were in reality standing up for the best in the American dream and seeking to take the

whole nation back to those great wells of democracy which were dug deep by the Founding Fathers and the formulation of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence. Many things were gained as a result of these years of struggle and 1964. The Civil Rights Bill came into being after the Birmingham movement which did a great deal to subpoena the conscience of a large segment of the nation. To appear before the Judgment Seat of morality on the whole question of civil rights. After the Selma movement in 1965 we were able to get a voting rights bill. All of these things represented strive. But we must see that the struggle today is much more difficult.

It's more difficult today because we are struggling now for our genuine equality. It's much easier to integrate a lunch counter. Than it is to guarantee a livable and calm and a good solid job. It's much easier to guarantee the right to vote. Than it is to guarantee the right to live insanitary decent housing conditions. It is much easier to integrate a public park. Than it is to make genuine quality integrated education a reality. And so today we are struggling for something which as we demand. Genuine equality. It's not merely a struggle against extremist behavior toward negroes. And I'm convinced that many of the very people who

supported us in the struggle in the south. Are not willing to go all the way now. I came to see this in a very difficult and painful way in Chicago over the last year or grab some of the people who came quickly to march with us and Selma and Birmingham. Were active around Chicago. And I came to see that so many people who supported Martin and even financially what we were doing in Birmingham in Selma. Were really outraged against the extremist behavior. Our book Karna and Jim Clark taught negroes rather than believing in genuine equality for a negro was. And I think this is what we've got to see now and this is what makes the struggle. Much more difficult. So as a result of all of this we see many problems existing

today that are growing more difficult. It's something that is often overlooked. By the Negro is generally live in worst slums today than 20 or 25 years ago in the north. Schools are more segregated today than they were in 1954 when the Supreme Court's decision on desegregation was rendered economically the negroes were worse off today than he was 15 and 20 years ago. And so the unemployment rate among whites. At one time was about the same as the unemployment rate among Negroes. But today the unemployment rate among Negroes is twice. That

of right. And the average income of the Negro is today 50 percent less than white. And as we look at these problems we see them growing and developing every day. We see the fact that the negro economically. Is facing a depression in his everyday life. That is more staggering than the depression of the 30 years the unemployment rate in the nation as a whole is about 4 percent. The statistics would say from the Labor Department that among Negroes it's about 8.4 percent. But the persons who are in the labor market who still gold to employment agencies to see jobs and so they can be calculated. The statistics can be gotten because they are still somehow in the labor market.

But there are hundreds of thousands of negroes who have given up they've lost hope. They've come to feel that. Life is a long and desolate car a door for them with no exit sign. And so they no longer go to look for a job. There are those who would estimate that these persons who are call the discouraged person. Would be six to seven percent in the Negro community. And that means that unemployment among Negroes may well be 16 percent among Negro youth and some of our largest urban areas it goes to 30 and 40 percent. And so you can see what I mean when I say that in the Negro community that is a major tragic and staggering depression. That we face every day line. Now the other thing that we've got to come to see now that many of us didn't see

during the last 10 years. That is that racism is still alive in American society and much more widespread than we realize. Women see racism for what it is. It is a myth of the superior. And inferior race. It is the false and tragic notion that one particular group. One particular race is responsible for all of the progress all of the Insight has and the total flow of history. And the theory that another group or another race is totally to preyed innately pure. And innately inferior. In the final analysis racism is evil because of this.

It's 0 2 but logic is genocide. Hitler was a sick and tragic man who carried racism to its logical conclusion and he ended up leading the nation to the point of killing about 6 million Jews. And this is the tragedy of racism because it's Otome at large it. Is genocide. If one says that I am not good enough to live next door to him. If one says that I am not good enough to eat at a lunch counter to have a good decent job or to go to school with him merely because of my race he is saying consciously are unconsciously that I do not deserve to exist. To use a philosophical analogy. Racism is not based on some. Empirical generalization it is based rather on an ontological affirmation.

It is not the assertion that certain people are behind culturally our wives because of environmental conditions. It is the affirmation that the very being of a people is inferior. And this is the great tragedy of it. I submit that however unpleasant it is we must honestly see and admit. That racism is still deeply rooted all over America. Is still deeply rooted in the north. And it's still deeply rooted in the south. This leads me to say something about another discussion that we hear a great deal. And that is the so-called white backlash. I would like to honestly say to you that the white backlash is merely a new name for an old phenomenon. It's not something that just

came into being because shout shouts of black power because negroes engaged in riots and Watts for instance. The fact is that the state of California voted if our housing be allowed of existence before anybody shouted black power before anybody right who didn't watch it may well be the Sharpes of black power and riots in Watts and the Harlem's in the other areas of the consequences. I'll go right back lash rather than the cause of what it is necessary to see is that there has never been. A thing. Solid monistic determined commitment on the part of the vast majority of white Americans. The whole question of civil rights and on the whole question of racial equality. This is something that truth in men of goodwill.

To admit they do sat on the Statue of Liberty that America is the home of exile. But it didn't take us long to realize that America has been a home. Right exiles from Europe but it has not evinced the same kind of maternal care and concern for its black exiles from Africa. It is no wonder that in one of his sorrow songs a Negro could sing out. Sometimes I feel like a motherless child what great estrangement. What a great sense of rejection caused to people to emerge with such a matter of far. As they looked over their lives. What I'm trying to get across here is that. Our nation has constantly taken a positive step forward on the question of racial justice and

racial equality. But over and over again at the same time. It made certain backward steps and this has been the persistence of the so-called white backlash. In 1863 the negro was freed from the bondage of physical slavery. But at the same time the nation refused to give him land to make that freedom meaningful. And at that same period America was giving millions of acres of land in the West and the Midwest. Which meant that America was willing to undergird it white peasants from Europe. With an economic flow out that would make it possible to grow and develop. And refused to give that economic floor to its black

peasant so to speak. This is why Frederick Douglass could say that emancipation for the negro was freedom to hunger freedom to the winds and rains of having freedom without a roof to cover their heads. He went on to say that it was freedom without bread to eat freedom without land to cultivate. It was freedom and famine at the same time. But it does not stop there. And 1875 the nation passed the Civil Rights Bill. And refused to enforce. The 1964 the nation passed our weak US civil rights bill and even to this day that Bill has not been totally enforced in all of its dimensions. The nation heralded a new day of concern for the poor or the poverty stricken by the disadvantage and brought into

being a poverty below. But at the same time it puts such little money into the program that it was hardly and still remains hardly a good skirmish against poverty. White politicians in surburban suburbs talk eloquently. Against open housing and in the same breath contend that they are not a racist. All of this and all of these things tell us. That America has been backlashing. On the whole question of. Basic constitutional and God given rights for Negroes and other. Disadvantaged groups for more than three hundred years. So these conditions persistence of widespread poverty and of. Tragic conditions in schools and other areas of life

all of these things are brought about a great deal of despair. And a great deal of desperation. A great deal of disappointment and even bitterness in the Negro communities today all of our cities confront huge problem. All of our state is our potential of power to keep these as a result of the continued existence of these conditions. Many in moments of anger. Many in moments of deep bitterness engage in right. Let me say as I've always said and I will always continue to say that riots are socially destructive and self-defeating. I'm still convinced that non violence is a most potent weapon available

to oppressed people and vast struggle for freedom and justice. I feel that violence will only create more social problems than they will solve. That in a real sense it is impractical for the Negro to even think of mounting. A violent revolution in the United States. So I will continue. To condemn riots. You continue to say to my brothers and sisters that this is not the way I intended to affirm that there is another way. But at the same time. It is as necessary for me to be as vigorous in condemning the condition which cause a person to feel that they must gay engage in Ryder's activities as it is for me to condemn right. I think America.

Must see that riots do not develop out of thin air. Certain conditions continue to exist in our society which must be condemned as vigorously. As we can damn right in the final analysis. A riot is the language of the UN heard. What is it that America has failed to hear. It has failed to hear that the plight of the negro poor has worsened over the last few years has failed to hear that the promises of freedom and justice have not been met. And it failed to hear that a large segment of white society are more concerned about trying on quality and the status quo than about justice equality and humanity and so on a real sense of our nation's summers of riots are caused by our nation's went to

delay. And as long as America postpones justice we stand in the position of having these recurrences of violence and riots over and over again. Social justice and progress are the absolute Garen of riot prevention. Now let me go on to say that if we had to deal with all of the problems that I've talked about. There we ought to bring America to the point that we have one nation indivisible with liberty and justice for that certain thing is that we must do. The job ahead must be massive and positive. We must develop massive action programs all over the

United States of America in order to deal with the problems that I have mentioned. Now in order to develop these massive action programs we've got to get rid of one of two false notions that continue to exist in our society. One is the notion that only can solve the problem. Of racial injustice. I'm sure you've heard this idea. It is the notion almost that that is something in the very very flow of time that will miraculously cure all need boobs. And I've heard this over and over again and they are goals and they are often sincere people who say to Negroes and their allies and the right community that we should slow up and just be nice and patient and continue to pray and 100 to 200 years of problem will work itself out.

Because on that time can solve the problem. I think that is an answer to that myth and it is that time is neutral. It can be used either construct of really a destructive way and I'm absolutely convinced that the forces of ill will in our nation the extreme right is a nomination. I've often used time much more effectively than the forces of good will and it may well be that we will have to repent in this generation not merely for the vitriolic words of the bad people and the violent actions of the bad people. But for the appalling silence and indifference of the good people who sit around and say wait on time some way are we must come to see that social progress. Now Bo Roseanne on the wheels of inevitability. It comes through the tireless efforts on the

persistent work of dedicated individuals and without this hard work. Time itself becomes an ally. Og the primitive forces of social stagnation. And so we must help time. And we must realize that the time is always right. To do right. Not as another notion that gets out it keeps around everwhere adds and the sockets and the Norco California and all over our nation into the notion that legislation can solve the problem it can't do anything in this area. And those who project this argument contend that you've got to change the heart and that you can change the heart through legislation. Now I would be the first one to say that there is a real need for a lot of hard change in and our country and I believe in changing the heart I preach about it I believe in

the need for conversion in many instances and regeneration and to use the illogical term and I would be the first to say that if the race problem in America is to be solved. Right person must treat the negro right. Not merely because the law says it but because it's natural. Because it's right. And because the Negro is his brother. So I realize that if we are to have a truly integrated society men and women will have to rise to the majestic heights of being obedient to the on and forcible. But after saying this let me say another thing which gives the other side and that is that although it may be true that. Ma reality can not be legislated behavior can be regulated

even though it may be true that the law cannot change the heart. It can restrain the heartless. Even though it may be true. That the law cannot make a man love me it can restrain him from lynching me and I think that's pretty important also. So while the law may not change the hearts of men it can and it does change the habits of men. And when you began to change the habits of men produced the attitudes will be changed. Produce the hearts will be changed. I am convinced that we still need strong civil rights legislation. There's a bill before Congress right now to have a national. Federal open housing be a. Federal law declaring discrimination and housing unconstitutional and also a build to make the administration of justice real

all over our country and I'm nobody can doubt the need but there's nobody can doubt the need if you thinks about the fact that since 1963. 50 a negro white civil rights workers have been brutally murdered in the state of Mississippi alone. And not a single person has been convicted for these dastardly crimes there have been some indictments but no one has been convicted. So there is a need for a federal law. Dealing with the whole question of the administration of justice that is the need for housing laws all over our country and it is tragic indeed that Congress last allowed this bill to die. And that bill died in Congress a bit of democracy died a bit of our commitment to justice die. And if it happens again in this

section session of Congress. A greater degree of our commitment to democratic principles will die. And I can see no more dangerous trend in our country than the constant developing of predominantly negroes central say it is ringed by white suburbs. This is only inviting social disaster. And the only way this problem will be saw is by the nation taking a strong stand and by. State governments taking. A strong stand against housing segregation and against discrimination and all of these areas. Now that is another thing that I'd like to mention as I talk about the massive action program and my permit me to go into a specific program out of action to any great degree. But it must be realized

that. The Negro cannot solve the problem by himself. And there are those who always say to Negroes Why don't you do something for yourself. Why don't you live just by your own bootstraps. And we hear this over and. Over again. Certainly there are many things that we must do for ourselves and that only we can do for ourselves we must develop with then a sense of dignity and self-respect that nobody else can give us a sense of manhood a sense of personhood. A sense of not being being ashamed of our heritage not being ashamed of our color. It was wrong and tragic that the negro Abbott allowed himself. To be ashamed of the fact that he was black out ashamed of the fact that he was

home and Sesto home was Africa. And so that has a great deal that the negro can do to develop self-respect. That's a great deal that the Negro must do and can do to amass political and economic power. Within his own community and by using his own resources. So we must do certain things for ourselves but this must not negate the fact. And cause a nation to overlook the fact. That the Negro cannot solve the problem and himself. A man was on the plane with me some weeks ago and he came with me and he said a problem Dr. King that I see with what you are doing is that every time I see you and other negroes you are protesting and you are not. You aren't doing anything for yourself. He went on to tell me that he was very poor at one time and he was able

to make it by doing something for himself. Why don't you teach your people he said. They live themselves by their bootstraps and then he went on to say other groups face disadvantages the Irish the Italians and he went down the line. And I said to him that it does not help the negro it only deepens his frustration. For unfeeling insensitive people to say to him that other ethnic groups who migrated were immigrants to this country just a hundred years ago or so have gotten beyond him and he came here some. Three hundred forty four years ago. And I went on to remind him. That the negro came to this country and voluntarily in chains while others came. Voluntarily. I want to remind him that no other racial group has been a slave on American soil. I went on to remind him that they are the

problem that we have faced over the years is that the society placed a stigma. On the color of the Negro on the color of his skin because he was black. The doors were closed to him that were not closed to other groups. And I finally said to him that it's a nice thing to say to people that you ought to lift yourself by your own bootstraps. But it is a cruel jest to say to a bootlace man that he ought to lift himself by his own bootstraps. The fact is that millions of negroes as a result of sin and neglect. I've been left and they find him. Pobre just aliens and there's a flow of society. And bad is a great deal that the society can and must do. If the Negro is to gain the economic security that he

needs now one of the answers it seems to me is a Garand deed and you will end come a Garand minimum income for all people and for all family is of our country. It seems to me before. I'm saying to me that the civil rights movement must now began to organize is for the guaranteed annual income began Dogon eyes people all over our country and mobilize forces so that we can bring to the attention of our nation. This need and this is something which I believe will go a long long way toward dealing with the negro's economic problem and the economic problems with many other poor people confront and nation. Now No. I said I was going to talk about Vietnam but I can't make a speech without mentioning some of

the problems that we face they are the cause of that was. I've. Because I think this wall has diverted attention from civil rights. It has strengthened the forces of reaction in our country and has brought to the forefront the military industrial complex that even President Eisenhower warned us against at one time. Above all it is destroying human life. Is. Just a straw on the lives of thousands of the young promising men Avan nation strong the lives of little boys and little girls in Vietnam. What one of the greatest things that this war is doing to us and civil rights is that it is allowing the Great Society to be shot down on the battlefields of Vietnam every day.

And I submit this afternoon that we can end poverty in the United States. Nation has the resources to do it. National gross product of America will rise to this founding figure of some age from seven hundred and eighty billion dollars this year. We have the resources. The question is whether the nation has and will. And I've submit that if we can spend thirty five billion dollars a year to fight any ill considered war in Vietnam and 20 billion dollars to put a man on the moon on nation can spend billions of dollars to put God's children on their own two feet. My view on it was. The.

Let me say another thing that is more in the realm of the spirit I guess that is if we are to go on in the days ahead and make true brotherhood a reality it is necessary for us to realize more than ever before that the destiny of the negro and the white man. Our time together. Now that. A lot of people who don't realize just the races still don't realize this but it is a fact that negro rights are tied together. And we need each other.

The negro needs the white man and to save him from his fear of the white man needs the negro to save him from his guilt. We are tied together in so many ways our language I'm using our cultural patterns our material prosperity and even our food on amalgam of black and white. So that can be no separate black path to power and fulfillment. That does not intersect white groups that can be no separate white path to power and fulfillment short of social disaster. It does not recognize the need of sharing that power with black aspirations for freedom and justice. We must come to see that integration is not merely a romantic or aesthetic something where you merely add color to a steel predominantly white power

structure. Integration must be seen also on political terms as shared power. And where black men and white men share power together to build a new and a great nation and a real sense we all caught in an inescapable network of mutuality tired in a single garment of destiny. Plaisted years ago in graphic terms no man is an island entire of itself every man is a piece of the continent a part of the main. He goes on to of the and to say Any man's death diminishes me because I am involved in mankind that form never send to know for whom the bell tolls it tolls for thee. And so we are all in the same situation. The salvation of the Negro will mean the salvation of the Upright Man and the destruction of light.

And I'll be ongoing progress with the new growth will be the destruction of the ongoing progress of the nation. Now let me say finally that we have difficult days ahead but I have been this bad. Somehow I maintain hope in spite of hope and I've talked about the difficulties and how hard the problems will be as we tackle them. But I want to close by saying this afternoon that I still have faith in the future and IV's do you believe that these problems can. Be solved. And so I will not join anyone who will say that we still can't develop a coalition of conscience. I realize and understand the discontent and the agony and the disappointment and even the bitterness of those who

feel that whites in America not be trusted. And I would be the first to say that they're all too many who are still guided by the racist ethos. And I am still convinced that Steele many white persons of goodwill. And I'm happy to say that I see them every day in the student generation who cherish democratic principles and justice above principle and who will stick with the cause of justice and the cause of civil rights and the cause of peace. Throughout the days ahead and so I refuse to despair. I think we are gone achieve freedom because however. Much America strays away from the ideals of justice the goal of America is freedom. Abuse Dan's gone though we may be. Our

destiny is tied up in the destiny of America. Before the pilgrim fathers landed at Plymouth we were here before Jefferson to cross the pages of history. The majestic words of the Declaration of Independence. We were here for the beautiful words of The Star-Spangled Banner were written we were here for more than two centuries for battles labored here without wages. They made cotton king. They built the homes of their masters in the midst of the most humiliating and oppressive conditions. And yet out of a bottomless vitality they continued to grow and develop. And I say that if the inexpressible cruelties of slavery couldn't stop us the opposition that we now face including the so-called white backlash will surely fail. We are going to win our freedom because of both the sacred heritage of a nation and the eternal

will of the Almighty God. I am bought it and I echoing demands. And so I can still sing We Shall Overcome. We shall overcome because the arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice. We shall overcome because Carlisle is right. No lie can live forever. We shall overcome. Because William called Bryant is right. Truth crushed earth will rise again. We shall overcome because James Russell Lowell is right. Truth fired on the scaffold wrong fireball on the throne. You have that scaffold sways the future with this phase. We will be able to hew out of the mounting of despair. A stone of hope. This faith we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful centenary of brotherhood with this faith we will be able to speed up the

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 live together as brothers and sisters all over this great nation. That will be a great day that will be our great tomorrow. In the words of the scripture to speak symbolically that will be the day when the morning stars will sing together and the sons of God will shout for joy. Thank you. Will allow America.