'Where Do We Go From Here'
'Where Do We Go From Here'
Atlanta, Georgia
16 August 1967
Now, in order to answer the question, "Where
do we go from here?" which is our theme, we must first
honestly recognize where we are now. When the Constitution
was written, a strange formula to determine taxes and representation
declared that the Negro was 60 percent of a person. Today
another curious formula seems to declare he is 50 percent
of a person. Of the good things in life, the Negro has approximately
one half those of whites. Of the bad things of life, he has
twice those of whites. Thus half of all Negroes live in substandard
housing. And Negroes have half the income of whites. When
we view the negative experiences of life, the Negro has a
double share. There are twice as many unemployed. The rate
of infant mortality among Negroes is double that of whites
and there are twice as many Negroes dying in Vietnam as whites
in proportion to their size in the population.
In other spheres, the figures are equally alarming. In
elementary schools, Negroes lag one to three years behind whites, and
their segregated schools receive substantially less money per student
than the white schools. One twentieth as many Negroes as whites attend
college. Of employed Negroes, 75 percent hold menial jobs.
This is where we are. Where do we go from here? First,
we must massively assert our dignity and worth. We must stand up amidst
a system that still oppresses us and develop an unassailable and
majestic sense of values. We must no longer be ashamed of being black.
The job of arousing manhood within a people that have been taught for so
many centuries that they are nobody is not easy.
Depiction
of Blackness and Negro Contributions
Even semantics have conspired to make that
which is black seem ugly and degrading. In Roget's Thesaurus there are
120 synonyms for blackness and at least 60 of them are offensive, as for
example, blot, soot, grim, devil and foul. And there are some 134
synonyms for whiteness and all are favorable, expressed in such words as
purity, cleanliness, chastity and innocence. A white lie is better than
a black lie. The most degenerate member of a family is a "black
sheep." Ossie Davis has suggested that maybe the English language
should be reconstructed so that teachers will not be forced to teach the
Negro child 60 ways to despise himself, and thereby perpetuate his false
sense of inferiority, and the white child 134 ways to adore himself, and
thereby perpetuate his false sense of superiority.
The tendency to ignore the Negro's contribution to
American life and to strip him of his personhood, is as old as the
earliest history hooks and as contemporary as the morning's newspaper.
To upset this cultural homicide, the Negro must rise up with an
affirmation of his own Olympian manhood. Any movement for the Negro's
freedom that overlooks this necessity is only waiting to be buried. As
long as the mind is enslaved, the body can never be free. Psychological
freedom, a firm sense of self-esteem, is the most powerful weapon
against the long night of physical slavery. No Lincolnian Emancipation
Proclamation or Johnsonian Civil Rights Bill can totally bring this kind
of freedom. The Negro will only be free when he reaches down to the
inner depths of his own being and signs with the pen and ink of
assertive manhood his own Emancipation Proclamation. And, with a spirit
straining toward true self-esteem, the Negro must boldly throw off the
manacles of self-abnegation and say to himself and to the world, "I
am somebody. I am a person. I am a man with dignity and honor. I have a
rich and noble history. How painful and exploited that history has been.
Yes, I was a slave through my foreparents and I am not ashamed of that.
I'm ashamed of the people who were so sinful to make me a slave."
Yes, we must stand up and say, "I'm black and I'm beautiful,"
and this self-affirmation is the black man's need, made compelling by
the white man's crimes against him.
Basic
Challenges
Another basic challenge is to discover how
to organize our strength in terms of economic and political power. No
one can deny that the Negro is in dire need of this kind of legitimate
power. Indeed, one of the great problems that the Negro confronts is his
lack of power. From old plantations of the South to newer ghettos of the
North, the Negro has been confined to a life of voicelessness and
powerlessness. Stripped of the right to make decisions concerning his
life and destiny he has been subject to the authoritarian and sometimes
whimsical decisions of this white power structure. The plantation and
ghetto were created by those who had power. both to confine those who
had no power and to perpetuate their powerlessness. The problem of
transforming the ghetto, therefore, is a problem of power-confrontation
of the forces of power demanding change and the forces of power
dedicated to the preserving of the status quo. Now power properly
understood is nothing but the ability to achieve purpose. It is the
strength required to bring about social, political and economic change.
Walter Reuther defined power one day. He said, "Power is the
ability of a labor union like the U.A.W. to make the most powerful
corporation in the world, General Motors, say 'Yes' when it wants to say
'No.' That's power."
Now a lot of us are preachers, and all of us have our
moral convictions and concerns, and so often have problems with power.
There is nothing wrong with power if power is used correctly. You see,
what happened is that some of our philosophers got off base. And one of
the great problems of history is that the concepts of love and power
have usually been contrasted as opposites - polar oppositesÑÑso that
love is identified with a resignation of power, and power with a denial
of love.
It was this misinterpretation that caused Nietzsche,
who was a philosopher of the will to power, to reject the Christian
concept of love. It was this same misinterpretation which induced
Christian theologians to reject the Nietzschean philosophy of the will
to power in the name of the Christian idea of love. Now, we've got to
get this thing right. What is needed is a realization that power without
love is reckless and abusive, and love without power is sentimental and
anemic. Power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice,
and justice at its best is power correcting everything that stands
against love. And this is what we must see as we move on. What has
happened is that we have had it wrong and confused in our own country,
and this has led Negro Americans in the past to seek their goals through
power devoid of love and conscience.
This is leading a few extremists today to advocate for
Negroes the same destructive and conscienceless power that they have
justly abhorred in whites. It is precisely this collision of immoral
power with powerless morality which constitutes the major crisis of our
times.
Developing
a Program?
We must develop a program that will drive
the nation to a guaranteed annual income. Now, early in this century
this proposal would have been greeted with ridicule and denunciation, as
destructive of initiative and responsibility. At that time economic
status was considered the measure of the individual's ability and
talents. And, in the thinking of that day, the absence of worldly goods
indicated a want of industrious habits and moral fiber. We've come a
long way in our understanding of human motivation and of the blind
operation of our economic system. Now we realize that dislocations in
the market operations of our economy and the prevalence of
discrimination thrust people into idleness and bind them in constant or
frequent unemployment against their will. Today the poor are less often
dismissed, I hope, from our consciences by being branded as inferior or
incompetent. We also know that no matter how dynamically the economy
develops and expands, it does not eliminate all poverty.
The problem indicates that our emphasis must be
twofold. We must create full employment or we must create incomes.
People must be made consumers by one method or the other. Once they are
placed in this position we need to be concerned that the potential of
the individual is not wasted. New forms of work that enhance the social
good will have to be devised for those for whom traditional jobs are not
available. In I879 Henry George anticipated this state of affairs when
he wrote in Progress and Poverty:
The fact is that the work which improves the condition
of mankind, the work which extends knowledge and increases power and
enriches literature and elevates thought, is not done to secure a
living. It is not the work of slaves driven to their tasks either by the
task, by the taskmaster, or by anirnal (sic) necessity. It is the work
of men who somehow find a form of work that brings a security for its
own sake and a state of society where want is abolished.
Work of this sort could be enormously increased, and we
are likely to find that the problems of housing and education, instead
of preceding the elimination of poverty, will themselves be affected if
poverty is first abolished. The poor transformed into purchasers will do
a great deal on their own to alter housing decay. Negroes who have a
double disability will have a greater effect on discrimination when they
have the additional weapon of cash to use in their struggle.
Beyond these advantages, a host of positive
psychological changes inevitably will result from widespread economic
security. The dignity of the individual will flourish when the decisions
concerning his life are in his own hands, when he has the means to seek
self-improvement. Personal conflicts among husbands, wives and children
will diminish when the unjust measurement of human worth on the scale of
dollars is eliminated .
Now our country can do this. John Kenneth Galbraith
said that a guaranteed annual income could be done for about twenty
billion dollars a year. And I say to you today, that if our nation can
spend thirty-five billion dollars a year to fight an unjust, evil war in
Vietnam, and twenty billion dollars to put a man on the moon, it can
spend billions of dollars to put God's children on their own two feet
right here on earth.
Commitment
To Nonviolence
Now, let me say briefly that we must
reaffirm our commitment to nonviolence. I want to stress this. The
futility of violence in the struggle for racial justice has been
tragically etched in all the recent Negro riots. Yesterday, I tried to
analyze the riots and deal with their causes. Today I want to give the
other side. There is certainly something painfully sad about a riot. One
sees screaming youngsters and angry adults fighting hopelessly and
aimlessly against impossible odds. And deep down within them, you can
even see a desire for self-destruction, a kind of suicidal longing.
Occasionally Negroes contend that the 1965 Watts riot
and the other riots in various cities represented effective civil rights
action. But those who express this view always end up with stumbling
words when asked what concrete gains have been won as a result. At best,
the riots have produced a little additional antipoverty money allotted
by frightened government officials, and a few water-sprinklers to cool
the children of the ghettos. It is something like improving the food in
the prison while the people remain securely incarcerated behind bars.
Nowhere have the riots won any concrete improvement such as have the
organized protest demonstrations. When one tries to pin down advocates
of violence as to what acts would be effective, the answers are
blatantly illogical. Sometimes they talk of overthrowing racist state
and local governments and they talk about guerrilla warfare. They fail
to see that no internal revolution has ever succeeded in overthrowing a
government by violence unless the government had already lost the
allegiance and effective control of its armed forces. Anyone in his
right mind knows that this will not happen in the United States. In a
violent racial situation, the power structure has the local police, the
state troopers, the National Guard and, finally, the Army to call onÑÑall
of which are predominantly white. Furthermore, few if any violent
revolutions have been successful unless the violent minority had the
sympathy and support of the nonresistant majority. Castro may have had
only a few Cubans actually fighting with him up in the hills, but he
could never have overthrown the Batista regime unless he had the
sympathy of the vast majority of Cuban people.
It is perfectly clear that a violent revolution on the
part of American blacks would find no sympathy and support from the
white population and very little from the majority of the Negroes
themselves. This is no time for romantic illusions and empty
philosophical debates about freedom. This is a time for action. What is
needed is a strategy for change, a tactical program that will bring the
Negro into the mainstream of American life as quickly as possible. So
far, this has only been offered by the nonviolent movement. Without
recognizing this we will end up with solutions that don't solve, answers
that don't answer and explanations that don't explain.
And so I say to you today that I still stand by
nonviolence. And I am still convinced that it is the most potent weapon
available to the Negro in his struggle for justice in this country. And
the other thing is that I am concerned about a better world. I'm
concerned about justice. I'm concerned about brotherhood. I'm concerned
about truth. And when one is concerned about these, he can never
advocate violence. For through violence you may murder a murderer but
you can't murder. Through violence you may murder a liar but you can't
establish truth. Through violence you may murder a hater, but you can't
murder hate. Darkness cannot put out darkness. Only light can do that.
And I say to you, I have also decided to stick to love.
For I know that love is ultimately the only answer to mankind's
problems. And I'm going to talk about it everywhere I go. I know it
isn't popular to talk about it in some circles today. I'm not talking
about emotional bosh when I talk about love, I'm talking about a strong,
demanding love. And I have seen too much hate. I've seen too much hate
on the faces of sheriffs in the South. I've seen hate on the faces of
too many Klansmen and too many White Citizens Councilors in the South to
want to hate myself, because every time I see it, I know that it does
something to their faces and their personalities and I say to myself
that hate is too great a burden to bear. I have decided to love. If you
are seeking the highest good, I think you can find it through love. And
the beautiful thing is that we are moving against wrong when we do it,
because John was right, God is love. He who hates does not know God, but
he who has love has the key that unlocks the door to the meaning of
ultimate reality.
I want to say to you as I move to my conclusion, as we
talk about "Where do we go from here," that we honestly face
the fact that the Movement must address itself to the question of
restructuring the whole of American society. There are forty million
poor people here. 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. And I'm simply saying that
more and more, we've got to begin to ask questions about the whole
society. We are called upon to help the discouraged beggars in life's
market place. But one day we must come to see that an edifice which
produces beggars needs restructuring. It means that questions must be
raised. You see, my friends, when you deal with this, you begin to ask
the question, "Who owns the oil?" You begin to ask the
question, "Who owns the iron ore?" You begin to ask the
question, "Why is it that people have to pay water bills in a world
that is two thirds water?" These are questions that must be asked.
About
Communism
Now, don't think that you have me in a
"bind" today. I'm not talking about Communism.
What I'm saying to you this morning is that Communism
forgets that life is individual. Capitalism forgets that life is social,
and the Kingdom of Brotherhood is found neither in the thesis of
Communism nor the antithesis of capitalism but in a higher synthesis. It
is found in a higher synthesis that combines the truths of both. Now,
when I say question the whole society, it means ultimately coming to see
that the problem of racism, the problem of economic exploitation, and
the problem of war are all tied together. These are the triple evils
that are interrelated.
If you will let me be a preacher just a little bit -
One night, a juror came to Jesus and he wanted to know what he could do
to be saved. Jesus didn't get bogged down in the kind of isolated
approach of what he shouldn't do. Jesus didn't say, "Now Nicodemus,
you must stop lying." HE didn't say, "Nicodemus, you must stop
cheating if you are doing that." He didn't say, "Nicodemus,
you must not commit adultery." He didn't say, "Nicodemus, now
you must stop drinking liquor if you are doing that excessively."
He said something altogether different, because Jesus realized something
basic - that if a man will lie, he will steal. And if a man will steal,
he will kill. So instead of just getting bogged down in one thing, Jesus
looked at him and said, "Nicodemus, you must be born again."
He said, in other words, "Your whole structure
must be changed." A nation that will keep people in slavery for 244
years will "thingify" them - make them things. Therefore they
will exploit them, and poor people generally, economically. And a nation
that will exploit economically will have to have foreign investments and
everything else, and will have to use its military might to protect
them. All of these problems are tied together. What I am saying today is
that we must go from this convention and say, "America, you must be
born again!"
Conclusion
So, I conclude by saying again today that
we have a task and let us go out with a "divine
dissatisfaction." Let us be dissatisfied until America will no
longer have a high blood pressure of creeds and an anemia of deeds. Let
us be dissatisfied until the tragic walls that separate the outer city
of wealth and comfort and the inner city of poverty and despair shall be
crushed by the battering rams of the forces of justice. [,et us be
dissatisfied until those that live on the outskirts of hope are brought
into the metropolis of daily security. Let us be dissatisfied until
slums are cast into the junk heaps of history, and every family is
living in a decent sanitary home. Let us be dissatisfied until the dark
yesterdays of segregated schools will be transformed into bright
tomorrows of quality, integrated education. Let us be dissatisfied until
integration is not seen as a problem but as an opportunity to
participate in the beauty of diversity. Let us be dissatisfied until men
and women, however black they may be, will be judged on the basis of the
content of their character and not on the basis of the color of their
skin. Let us be dissatisfied. Let us be dissatisfied until every state
capitol houses a governor who will do justly, who will love mercy and
who will walk humbly with his God. Let us be dissatisfied until from
every city hall, justice will roll down like waters and righteousness
like a mighty stream. Let us be dissatisfied until that day when the
lion and the lamb shall lie down together. and every man will sit under
his own vine and fig tree and none shall be afraid. Let us be
dissatisfied. And men will recognize that out of one blood God made all
men to dwell upon the face of the earth. 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.
I must confess, my friends, 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. 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. Difficult and painful as it is, we must walk on in
the days ahead with an audacious faith in the future. And as we continue
our charted course, we may gain consolation in the words so nobly left
by that great black bard who was also a great freedom fighter of
yesterday, James Weldon Johnson:
Stony
the road we trod,
Bitter the chastening rod
Felt in the days
When hope unborn had died.
Yet with a steady beat,
Have not our weary feet
Come to the place
For which our fathers sighed?
We have come over the way
That with tears hath been watered.
We have come treading our paths
Through the blood of the slaughtered,
Out from the gloomy past,
Till now we stand at last
Where the bright gleam
Of our bright star is cast.
Let this affirmation be our ringing cry. It
will give us the courage to face the uncertainties of the future. It
will give our tired feet new strength as we continue our forward stride
toward the city of freedom. When our days become dreary with low
hovering clouds of despair, and when our nights become darker than a
thousand midnights, let us remember that there is a creative force in
this universe, working to pull down the gigantic mountains of evil, a
power that is able to make a way out of no way and transform dark
yesterdays into bright tomorrows. Let us realize the arc of the moral
universe is long but it bends toward justice.
Let us realize that William Cullen Bryant
is right: "Truth crushed to earth will rise again." Let us go
out realizing that the Bible is right: "Be not deceived, God is not
mocked. Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap." This is
our hope for the future, and with this faith we will be able to sing in
some not too distant tomorrow with a cosmic past tense, "We have
overcome, we have overcome, deep in my heart, I did believe we would
overcome."
This address was made to the Tenth Anniversary Convention of the S.C.L.C. in Atlanta on August 16, 1967.
Martin Luther King Jr- Biography