Martin Luther King The Three Evils of Society

mr. chairman friends and brothers in this first gathering of the National Conference on new politics ladies and gentlemen can you hear me in the back I don't know if the clan is in here tonight enough with all the trouble we are having with these microphones seldom if ever has we're still working with him as I was about to say seldom if ever has such a diverse and truly ecumenical gathering convened under the aegis of politics in our nation and I want to commend the leadership of the National Conference on new politics for all of the great work that they have done in making this significant convention possible and the Bauer brand nature we affirm that something new is taken place on the American political horizon we have come here from the dusty plantations of the deep south and the depressing kettles of the north we have come from the great universities and the flourishing suburbs we have come from Appalachian poverty and from conscience-stricken wealth but we have come and we have come here because we share a common concern for the moral health of our nation we have come because our eyes have seen through the superficial glory and glitter of our society and observed the coming of judgment like the prophet of old we have read the handwriting on the wall we have seen our nation weighed in the balance of history and found wanting we have come because we see this as a dark hour in the affairs of men for most of us this is a new mood we are traditionally the idealists we are the marchers from Mississippi and Selma in Washington who staked our lives on the American dream during the first half of this decade many a symbol here campaigned assiduously for Lyndon Johnson in 1964 because we could not stand idly by and watch our nation contaminated by the eighteenth-century policies of Goldwater isn't we were the hardcore activists who were willing to believe that southerners could be reconstructed in the constitutional image we were the dreamers of a dream that dark yesterday's of man's inhumanity to man would soon be transformed into bright tomorrow's of justice now it is hard to escape the disillusionment of betrayal our hopes have been blasted and our dreams have been shattered the promise of a Great Society was shipwrecked off the coast of Asia on the dreadful peninsula to Vietnam the poor black and white the poor black and white are still perishing on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity what happens to a dream deferred it leads to bewildering frustration and corroding bitterness I came to see this in a personal experience here in Chicago last summer and all the speaking that I have done in the United States before there are audiences including some hostile whites the only time that I have ever been fooled was one night in our regular weekly mass meeting by some angry young men of our movement I went home that night with an ugly feeling selfishly I thought of my sufferings and sacrifices over the last 12 years why would they do one so close to them but as I lay awake thinking I finally came to myself and I could not for the life of me have lessened patience and understanding for those young men for 12 years I and others like me had held our radiant promises of progress I had preached to them about my dream I had lectured to them about the not too distant day when they would have freedom all here now I had urged them to have faith in America and in white society their hopes have soared they were now booing me because they felt that we weren't able to deliver on our promises they were boring because we had urged them to have faith in people who had too often proved to be unfaithful they were now hostile because they were watching the dream that they had so readily accept accepted turned into a frustrating nightmare this situation is all the more ominous and view of the rising expectations of men the world over the deep rumblings that we hear today rumbling of discontent is the thunder of disinherited masses rising from dungeons of oppression to the bright hills of freedom all over the world like a fever freedom is spreading in the widest liberation movement in history the great masses of people are determined to end the exploitation of their races and lands and in one majestic chorus they are singing in the words of our freedom song and gonna let nobody turn us around and so the collision course is set the people cry for freedom and the Congress attempts to legislate repression millions yes billions are appropriated for mass murder but the most meager pittance of foreign aid for international development is crushed in the surge of reaction unemployment rages at a major depression level in the black ghettos but the bipartisan response is an anti riot bill rather than a serious poverty program the modest proposals for model cities rent supplement and rat control pitiful as they were to begin with get caught in the maze of congressional inaction and I submit to you tonight that a congress that proves to be more anti-negro than anti rat needs to be dismissed it seems that our legislative assemblers have adopted Nero as their patron saint and a bent on fiddling while our cities burn even when the people persist and in the face of great obstacles developed indigenous leadership and self-help approaches to their problems and finally tread the forest of bureaucracy to obtain existing government funds the corrupt political order seeks to crush even this beginning of Hope the case of CD GM and Mississippi is the most publicized example but it is a story repeated many times across our nation our own experience here in Chicago is especially painful at present after an enthusiastic approval by H CW's Department of adult education SCLC began an adult literacy project to aid 1,000 young men and women who have been pushed out of overcrowded get old schools and obtaining basic basically literacy skills to requisite to receiving jobs we had an agreement with a and P stores for 750 jobs through SCLC's job program operation breadbasket and had recruited over 500 pupils the first week at that point congressman Kachinsky and the daily machine intervened and demanded that Washington cut off our funds our channal them through the machine control poverty program in Chicago now we have no problem with administrative supervision but we do have a desire to be independent of machine control and the Democratic Party patronage network for this desire for politically independent approach to the needs of our brothers funds are being stopped as of September 15 and a very meaningful program discontinued yes our is dark evil comes forth in the guise of good it is a time of double-talk when men in high places have a high blood pressure of deceptive rhetoric and an anemia of concrete performance we crowd against welfare handouts to the poor but generously approve and oil depletion allowance to make the rich richer six Mississippi plantations received more than a million dollars a year not to plant cotton but no provision is made to feed the tenant farmer who is put out of work by the government subsidy the crowning achievement in hypocrisy must go to those staunch Republicans and Democrats of the Midwest and West who were given land by our government when they came here as immigrants from Europe they were given education through the land-grant colleges they were provided with agricultural agents to keep them abreast of farming trends they were granted low-interest loans stayed in the mechanization of their farms and now that they have succeeded in becoming successful they are paid not to farm and these are the same people who now say to black people whose ancestors were brought to this country in Chains and who were emancipated in 1863 without being given land to cultivate a bread to eat that they must pull themselves up by their own bootstraps what what they truly advocate is socialism for the rich and capitalism for the poor I wish that I could say that this is just a passing phase in the cycle of our nation's life said in the times of war times of reaction throughout the society but I suspect that we are now experienced in the coming to the surface of a triple pronged sickness that has been lurking within our body politic from it's very beginning that is the sickness of racism excessive materialism and militarism not only is this our nation's dilemma it is the plague of Western civilization as Arliss 1906 WB Dubois prophesied that the problem of the 20th century will be the problem of the color line now as we stand two thirds into this crucial period of history we know full well that racism is still that hound of hell which dogs the tracks of our civilization have a sense of birth of our nation white America has had a schizophrenic personality on the question of race she has been torn between cells herself in which he proudly profess the great principles of democracy and herself in which she madly practice the antithesis of democracy and this tragic duality has produced a strange indecisiveness and ambivalence toward the Negro cause in America to take a step backward simultaneously with every step forward on the question of racial justice to be at once attracted to the negro and repelled vine to love and to hate him there has never been a solid unified determined first to make justice a reality fair for Americans the step backward has a new name today it is called the white backlash but the white backlash is nothing new it is a surfacing of old prejudices hostilities and ambivalences that have always been there it was cause neither it was cause neither by the crowd back power now by the unfortunate reached recent wave of riots in our cities the white backlash of today is rooted in the same problem that has characterized America ever since the black man landed in Chains on the shores of this nation this does not imply that all white Americans are racists far from it many white people have through a deep moral compulsion fought long and hard for racial justice now does it mean that America has made no progress in our attempt to cure the body politic of the disease of racism or that the dogma of racism has not been considerably modified in recent years however for the good of America it is necessary to refute the idea that the dominant ideology in our country even today is freedom and equality while racism is just an occasional departure from the NAM on the part of a few bigoted extremists racism can well be that corrosive evil that will bring down the curtain on Western civilization Arnold Honda has said that some 26 civilizations have risen upon the face of the earth almost all of them have descended into the junk heaps of destruction the decline and fall of these civilizations according to tonbei was not caused by external invasions but by internal decay they fail to respond creatively to the challenges impinging upon them if America does not respond creatively to the challenge to banish racism some future historian will have to say that a great civilization died because it lacked the soul and commitment to make justice a reality for all men the second aspect of our afflicted society's extreme materialism an asian writer has betrayed our dilemma in candy terms he says you call your thousand material devices label saving machinery yet you are forever busy with the multiplying of your old machinery you grow increasingly fatigued anxious nervous dissatisfied whatever you have you want more and wherever you are you want to go some whales your devices are neither time-saving nor soul-saving machinery they are so many sharp Spurs which urge you on to invent more machinery and to do more business this tells us something about our civilization that cannot be cast aside as a prejudice charge by an Eastern thicker who is jealous of Western prosperity we cannot escape the indictment this does not mean that we must turn back the clock of scientific progress no one can overlook the wonders that science has wrought for our lives the automobile will not abdicate in favor of the horse-and-buggy of the train in favor of the stagecoach of attracted in favor of the hand plough of the scientific method in favor of ignorance and superstition but our moral lag must be redeemed when scientific power outruns moral power we end up with guided missiles and misguided men when we foolishly maximize a minimum and minimize the maximum we sign the warrant our own day of doom it is this moral lag in our thing oriented society that blinds us to the human realities around us and encourages us and the greed and exploitation which create the sector of poverty in the midst of well again we have deluded ourselves into believing the myth that capitalism grew and prospered out of the Protestant ethic of hard work and sacrifice the fact is that capitalism was built on the exploitation and suffering of black slaves and continues to thrive on the exploitation of the poor both black and white both here and abroad if Negroes and poor whites do not participate in the free flow of wealth within our economy they will forever be poor giving the energy that talents and their limited funds to the consumer market but reaping few benefits and services in return the way to end poverty is to end the exploitation of the poor ensure them insure them a fair share of the government services and the nation's resources our proposed recently that a national agency B it's established to provide employment for everyone needing it nothing is more socially inexcusable than unemployment in this age in the 30s when the nation was bankrupt it instituted such an agency the WPA in the present conditions of a nation flooded with resources it is barbarous to condemn people desire and work to Souls sapping inactivity and posit poverty and I am convinced that even this one massive act of concern would do more than all the state police and armies of the nation to quell riots and steal hatreds the tragedy is in our materialistic culture does not possess the statesmanship necessary to do it Victor Hugo could have been thinking of 20th century America when he wrote there's always more misery among the law classes than there is humanity in the higher classes the time has come for America to face the inevitable choice between materialism and humanism we must avoid at least as much to our children's education and the health of the pool as we do to the care of our mobiles and the building of beautiful impressive hotels we must also realize that the problems of racial injustice and economic injustice cannot be solved without a radical redistribution of political and economic power we must further recognize that the ghetto is a domestic colony black people must develop programs that will aid in the transfer of power and wealth into the hands of revit residents of the ghetto so that they may in reality control their own destinies this is a meaning of new politics people of goodwill in the larger community must support the black man in this effort the final phase of our national sickness is the disease of militarism nothing more clearly demonstrates our nation's abuse of military power than our tragic adventure in Vietnam this war has played havoc with the destiny of the entire world it is torn up the Geneva agreement it is seriously impaired the United Nations it has exacerbated the hatred between continents and worse still between races it has frustrated our development of home at home telling our own underprivileged citizens that we place insatiable military demands above their most critical needs it has greatly contributed to the forces of reaction in America and strengthen the military industrial complex and it has practically destroyed Vietnam and left thousands of American and Vietnamese youth maimed and mutilated and expose the whole world to the risk of nuclear warfare above all the war in Vietnam has revealed what senator Fulbright calls our nation's arrogance of power we are not we are arrogant in professing to be concerned about the freedom of foreign nations while not setting our own house in order many of our senators and congressmen vote joyously to appropriate billions of dollars for the war in Vietnam and many of these same senators and congressmen vote loudly against a fair housing bill to make it possible for a Negro veteran of Vietnam to purchase a decent home we are Negro soldiers to kill on foreign battlefields but awful little protection for their relatives from beatings and killings in our own selves we are willing to make the Negro 100 percent of a citizen in warfare but reduce him to 50 percent of a citizen on American soil no war in our nation's history has ever been so violet --iv of our conscience our natural national interests and so destructive of our moral standing before the world no enemy has ever been able to cause such damage to us as we inflict upon ourselves the inexorable decay of our urban centers has fled into terrifying domestic conflict as the pursuit of foreign war absorbs our wealth and energy squall and poverty scar cities as our military might destroy cities in a far-off land to support oligarchy to intervene in domestic conflict the president who cherishes consensus for peace has intensified the wall in answer to a crier to stop the wall it has brought taunting led to one minutes flying time from China to a moment before the midnight of world conflagration we are offered a tax for war instead of a plan for peace men of reason should no longer debate the merits of war our means of financing war they should end the war and restore sanity and human to American policy and if the will of the people continues to be unheeded all men of goodwill must create a situation in which the 1967-68 elections are made a referendum on the wall the American people the American people must have an opportunity to vote into oblivion those who cannot detach themselves from militarism those who lead us you saw we are here because we believe we hope we pray that something new might emerge in the political life of this nation which will produce a new man new structures and institutions and a new life for mankind I'm convinced that this new life will not emerge until our nation undergoes a radical revolution of values when machines or machines and computers profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people the giant Triplets of racism economic exploitation and militarism are incapable of being conquered a civilization can flounder as Redd Utley in the face of moral bankruptcy as it can through financial bankruptcy a true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and justice of many of our past and present policies we are called the play the good Samaritans on life's roadside but that will only be an initial act one day the whole Jericho Road must be transformed so the men and women will not be beaten and robbed as they make that journey through life true compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar it understands that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring a true revolution of values will soon look on easily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth with righteous indignation it will look at thousands of working people displaced from their jobs with reduced income as a result of automation while the profits of the employers remain intact and say this is not just it will look across the oceans and see individual capitalists of the West invest in huge sums of money in Asia and Africa only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries and say this is not just it will look at our alliance with the landed gentry of Latin America and say this is not just a true revolution of values will lay hands on the world order and say a wall this way of settling differences is not just this business of burning human beings with napalm of filling our nation's homes with our friends and widows of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into the veins of people's nomally humane of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged cannot be reconciled with wisdom justice and love a nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death so what we must all see is that these are revolutionary times all over the globe men are revolting against old systems of exploitation and out of the wounds of a frail world new systems and of justice and equality of being born the shirtless and barefoot people of the earth arising up as never before the people who said in darkness have seen a great light we in the West must support these revolutions it is a sad fact that because of comfort complacency a morbid fear of communism and I would have proneness to adjust to injustice the Western nations that initiated so much of the revolutionary spirit of the modern world have now become the arch anti revolutionaries this is driven minute to feel that only Marxism has the revolutionary spirit communism is a judgment and in a sense communism is a judgment of our failure to make democracy real and to follow through on the revolutions that we initiated how long the hope today lies in our ability to recapture the revolutionary spirit and go out into the sometimes hostile world declaring eternal opposition to poverty racism and militarism with this powerful commitment we shall boldly challenge the status quo and unjust mores and thereby speed the day when every Valley shall be exalted and every mountain and Hill shall be made low and the crooked places shall be made straight and the rough places plain may I say in conclusion that is a need now more than ever before for men and when men and women in our nation to be creatively maladjusted mr. Davis said and I say to you that I choose to be among the maladjusted as my good friend bill coffin said there are those who have criticized me and many of you for taking a stand against the war in Vietnam and for seeking to say to the nation that the issues of civil rights cannot be separated from the issues of peace I want to say to you tonight that I intend to keep these issues mixed because they are mixed some while we must see that justice is indivisible injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere and I have fought fault now too long into ha against segregated public accommodations till end up at this point in my life segregating my moral concern and so let us stand in this convention knowing that on some positions cowardice ask the question is it safe expediency asks the question is it politic vanity asks the question is it populum but conscience as the question is it right on some position on some positions it is necessary for the moral individual to take a stand that is neither safe now politic now popular but he must do it because it is right and we say to our nation tonight we say to our government we even say - I FBI we will not be harassed we will not make a butchery of our conscience we will not be intimidated and we will be heard

Channel: E. Joesph Doalmsavid

Views: 1,943,535

Rating: 4.7496514 out of 5

Keywords: Martin Luther King

Id: j8d-IYSM-08

Length: 43min 11sec (2591 seconds)

Published: Sat Sep 14 2013

Reddit Comments

[u/RemusofReem]

History books have turned MLK into a God of liberalism. In reality he was a man like any other with his own political convictions.

[u/SavageSavant]

This is why I think he was assassinated. The calls for social justice are OK. As long as he doesn't call for economic justice, that takes it too far the hegemony must respond to that call.

[u/QuarterOztoFreedom]

Other than being a civil rights activist, MLK was a radical socialist too. I feel like the history books only discuss his civil rights achievements, and don't even touch on his politics. I've even heard some conservatives today describe MLK as a conservative.

[u/Zachrist]

I read the title as MLK 3: Evils of Society and was excited to read about an awesome movie.

[u/yptn]

*built... Sorry for the bad spelling

[u/LordoftheWoods]

Yup, he was a socialist.

[u/[deleted]]

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• /r/RemovedComments: MLK 3 evils of society "Capitalism was build on the exploitation and suffering of black slaves and continues to thrive on the exploitation of the poor"

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