Martin Luther King, Honorary Degree at Newcastle University 1967

his congregation is held to the service of comparing honor degrees translum I do not suppose that many of us shopping with an HR old son have been required to sit in a particular part of a shoe shop because of the color of our skin nor do I imagine that our wives have often had to explain to distraught children that daddy went to jail to help other people never before has this university or its parent University of Durham honored an American Negro and it is all the more fitting therefore that we should meet today to recognize the creative achievement of one whose contribution to furthering the brotherhood and dignity of man are amongst the most significant in the modern world so mr. Chancellor I ask you now Bertha the symbolic gesture and of the highest mark of distinction this university can afford to confer upon Martin Luther King Christian pastor and social revolutionary the degree of Doctor of civil law or norris casa the Autonomous University I confer upon you the degree of Doctor of civil law an onus mr. Chancellor mr. vice chancellor ladies and gentlemen I need not pause to say how very delighted I am to be here today and to have the privilege of sharing with you and this significant experience words are certainly an adequate for me to express my deep and genuine appreciation to the University of Newcastle for honoring me today in such a significant way and I can assure you that you're honoring me today in this very meaningful way is of inestimable value for the continuance of my humble efforts and although I cannot in any way say that I am worthy of such a great honour I can also assure you that you give me renewed courage and vigor to carry on in the struggle to make peace and justice a reality for all men and women all over the world and honouring me today you not only honor me but you honor the hundreds and thousands of people with whom I have worked and with whom I have been associated in the struggle for racial justice and so I say thanks not only for myself but also thank you for them and I can assure you that this day will remain dear to as long as the chords of memory shall lengthen that of three urgent and indeed great problems that we face not only in the United States of America but all over the world today but is the problem of racism the problem of poverty and the problem of war and the things that I have been trying to do and our struggle at home and in the struggle that has taken place all over the world has been to deal forthrightly and in depth with these great and grave problems that pervade our world as you well know racism is a reality in many sections of our world today racism is still the colored man's burden and the white man shame and the world will never rise to its full moral or political or even social maturity until racism is totally eradicated racism is exactly what it says it is a myth of the inferior race it is a notion that a particular race is worthless and degradation innate layer the tragedy of racism is that it is based not on an empirical generalization but on an ontological affirmation it is the idea that the very being of a people is inferior well it may be true that morality cannot be legislated but behavior can be regulated it may be true that the law cannot change the heart but it can restrain the Harkness it may be true that the law can't make a man love me but it can restrain him from lynching me and I think that is pretty important also and so while the law may not change the hearts of men it does change the habits of men if it's vigorously enforced and through changes in habits pretty soon attitudinal changes will take place than even the heart may be changed in the process and so that is a challenge and a great one for all men of goodwill to work passionately and unrelentingly to get rid of racial injustice whether it exists in the United States of America whether it exists in England or whether it exists in South Africa wherever it is a lie it must be defeated and somewhere along the way and this sometimes sick and often terribly schizophrenic world we've got to come to see but the destiny of white and colored persons is tied together in a real sense we are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality and finally there can be no separate black path to power and fulfillment that does not intersect white roots and there can be no separate white path to power and fulfillment short of social disaster that does not recognize a necessity of sharing that power with colored aspirations for freedom and human dignity with this faith we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation and all of the nations of the world into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood and speed up the day when all over the world justice will roll down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream thank you

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Length: 10min 17sec (617 seconds)

Published: Sun Aug 12 2012