Martin Luther King, Jr., "What Is Your Life's Blueprint?"

and help welcome our honored distinguished guests the Reverend dr. Martin Luther King [Applause] thank you very kindly principle for nazy mr. Williams members of the faculty and members of the student body barrett junior high school ladies and gentlemen i need not pause to say they're delighted I am to be here today and to have the opportunity of taking a brief break in a pretty busy schedule in the city of Philadelphia to share with you the students of Barrett junior high school and I want to express my personal appreciation to the principal and the administration for inviting me and for giving me the opportunity to see this very fine than enthusiastic group of students here at Barrett I guess I ought to start out with a commercial and that is tonight we're gonna have a great night in the city of Philadelphia after spectrum I know you've heard of that new impressive structure called the spectrum and I know you've heard of Harry Belafonte and Aretha Franklin and nipsey Russell and Sidney Poitier and all of these other great and outstanding artists well they're going to be here tonight at the spectrum and I hope that each of you will go home and tell your parents to be that a night for this great freedom festival and I hope you will come also it will be a great experience and by coming you will be supporting the work of the civil rights movement now that I've gotten the commercial out of the way move on and say some things that I want to say very briefly and I'm being brown honest I'm going to be brief because I have other engagements I don't have a tradition of being briefed all the time you know I'm a Baptist preaching we can talk a long time but I'm gonna really be brief today I want to ask you a question and that is what is in your life's blueprint this is the most important and crucial period of your lives for what you do now and what you decide now at this age may well determine which way your life shall go and whenever a building is constructed you usually have an architect who draws a blueprint and that blueprint serves as the pattern as the guide as the model for those who are to build the building and a building is not well erected without a good sound and solid blueprint now each of you is in the process of building the structure of your lives and the question is whether you have a proper a solid and a sound blueprint and I want to suggest some of the things that should be in your life's blueprint number one in your life's blueprint should be a deep belief in your own dignity your own Worth and your own somebody nice don't allow anybody to make you feel that you are nobody always feel that you count always feel that you have Worth and all always feel that your life has ultimate significance now that means that you should not be ashamed of your color you know it's very unfortunate that in so many instances our society has placed a stigma on the Negroes color and you know there are some Negroes who are ashamed of themselves but don't be ashamed of your color don't be ashamed of your biological features somehow you must be able to say in your own lives and really believe it I am black but beautiful and [Applause] and therefore you need not be loved into purchasing cosmetics advertise to make you lighter neither do you need to process your hair to make it appear straight and it as good as anybody else's have in the world [Applause] now in your life's blueprint be sure that you have there a principle of somebody 'no secondly in your life's blueprint you must have as a basic principle the determination to achieve excellence in your various fields of endeavor you're going to be deciding as the days and the years unfold what you will do in life what your life's work will be and once you discover what it will be set out to do it and to do it well and I say to you my young friends that doors are opening to each of you doors of opportunity opening to each of you that were not open to your mother's and to your father's and the great challenge facing you is to be ready to enter these doors as they open Ralph Waldo Emerson the great essay has said in a lecture back in 1871 that if a man can write a better book of preach a better sermon I'll make a better mousetrap than his neighbor even if he builds his house in the woods the world will make a beaten path to his door that hadn't always been true but it will become increasingly truth and so I would urge you to study hard to burn the midnight oil I would say to you don't drop out of school and I understand all of the sociological reasons why we often drop out of school but I urge you in spite of your economic plight in spite of the situation that you are forced to live so often with intolerable conditions stay in school and when you discover what you're gonna be in life set out to do it as if God Almighty called you at this particular moment in history to do it and just don't set out to do a good Negro job but do a good job that anybody could do don't set out to be just a good Negro doctor or good Negro lawyer good Negro school teacher a good Negro preacher a good Negro bar bar beautician a good Negro skilled laborer for if you set out to do that you have already flux your matriculation exam for entrance into the university of integration central to do a good job and do that job so called at the living the dead of unborn couldn't do it any better Falls you'll love to be a streetsweeper sweep streets like Michelangelo painted pictures sweep streets like Beethoven composed music sweep streets like Liam teen pricings before the metric Metropolitan Opera and sweep streets like Shakespeare wrote poetry sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will have to pause and say here lived a great street sweeper who swept his job well if you can't be a pine on the top of the hill be a scrub in the valley but be the best little scrub on the side of the real be a bush if you can't be a tree if you can't be a highway just be a trail if you can't be the Sun be a star for it isn't my size that you win are you fail be the best of whatever you are [Applause] we always we already have some noble examples of black men and black women who demonstrated to us that human nature cannot be catalogued they and their own lives have walked through long and desolate nights of oppression and yet they've risen up in plunged against cloud field nights of affliction new and blazing stars of inspiration and so from an old slave cabin of Virginia's heels Booker T Washington rose up to be one of America's grid leaders he lit a torch in Alabama and darkness flared in that setting yes you should know this because it's in your own city from a poverty-stricken area of Philadelphia Pennsylvania Maren Anderson rose up to be the world's greatest contralto so that a Toscanini could say that a voice like this comes on to once in a century and sibelius of Finland could say my roof is too low for such a voice from the Red Hills of Gordon County Georgia and the harms of a mother who can neither read nor write roll and haze rolls up to be one of the world's great singers and carried his melodious voice into the palaces and mansions of kings and queens from crippling circumstances there came a George Washington Carver to carve for himself an imperishable niche in the annals of science there was a start in the diplomatic sky and then came Ralph Bunche the grandson of a slave preacher and he reached up and grabbed it and allowed it to shine in his life with all of its scintillating beauty there was a star in the air sky then came Jackie Robinson in his day and Willie Mays in his day with that powerful bats in that calm spirits in came Jesse Owens with his fleet and dashing feet then came Joe Lewis and Muhammad Ali with intoxicated fists all of them came to tell us that we can be somebody and to justify the conviction of the port flee salats and black complexion cannot forfeit nature's claim skin may differ but affection dwells in black and white the same and if I was so tall less to reach the pole to grasp of the ocean at a span I must be measured by my soul the mind is a standard of the man finally and finally in your life's blueprint must be a commitment to the eternal principles of beauty love and justice don't allow anybody to pull you so low as to make you hate them don't allow anybody to cause you to lose your self-respect to the point that you do not struggle for justice however young you are you have a responsibility to seek to make your nation a better nation in which to live you have a responsibility to seek to make life better for everybody and so you must be involved in the struggle for freedom and justice now in this struggle for freedom and justice there are many constructive things that we all can do and that we all must do and we must not give ourselves to those things which will not solve our problems you heard the word nonviolent and you've heard the word violent I happen to believe in non-violence we struggled with this method with young people and adults alike all over the south and we have won some significant victories and we've got to struggle with it all over the North because the problems are as serious in the north as they are in the south but I believe as we struggle with these problems we've got a struggle with them with a method that can be militant but at the same time does not destroy life of property and so our slogan must not be burn baby burn it must be big Oh baby bill yes our slogan must be learn baby learn so that we can earn baby earn [Applause] and with a powerful commitment I believe that we can transform dark yesterday's of injustice and to bright tomorrow's of justice and humanity let us keep going toward the gold of selfhood to the realization of the dream of brotherhood and toward the realization of the dream of understanding goodwill let nobody stop us I close by quoting once more the man that the young lady quoted that magnificent black bard who is now passed on Langston Hughes one day he wrote a poem entitled mother to son the mother didn't always have a grandma right but she uttered words of great symbolic for fun dirty well son I'll tell you life for me ain't been no crystal stared it's had tax in it boards torn up places with no carpet on the floor bare but all the time I've been a climbing on and reaching landings and turning corners and sometimes going in the dark but ain't been no light so boy don't you stop now don't you set out on the steps because you finds us kind of hard but I was still going boy I still climbing and life for me ain't been no crystal stair well life for none of us has been a crystal style but we must keep moving we must keep going if you can't fly run if you can't run walk if you can't walk crawl but by all means keep moving [Applause]

Channel: Beacon Press

Views: 3,393,792

Keywords: mlk, speeches, inspirational, Martin Luther King Jr. (Author), black lives matter, speech, talks for young people, civil rights, Dr. King Speeches, what is your life's blueprint, motivation, Black (Ethnicity), African American (Ethnicity), young people's lives, rare speech, MLK Day, Black History Month, Martin Luther King Jr. Day (Holiday), the king legacy, African-American History (Field Of Study)

Id: ZmtOGXreTOU

Length: 20min 38sec (1238 seconds)

Published: Tue May 19 2015