MLK: The Other America

they'll appear mr. bell members of the faculty and members of the student body of this great institution of learning ladies and gentlemen now there are several things that one could talk about the fourth such a large concerned and enlightened audience there are so many problems facing our nation in our world that one could just take off anywhere but today I would like to talk mainly about the race problem since I'll 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 but I'd like to use as a subject from which to speak this afternoon the other America and I use this subject because there are literally two Americans one America is beautiful fall situation and in a census America is overflowing with the milk of prosperity and the honey of opportunity this America is the habitat of millions of people who have food and material necessities for their bodies culture and education for their minds freedom and human dignity for their spirits in this America millions of people experience every day the opportunity of having life liberty and the pursuit of happiness in all of their dimensions and in this America millions of young people grow up in the sunlight of opportunity but tragically and unfortunately there is another America this other America has a barely ugliness about it that constantly transforms the bouillon sea of Hope into the fatigue of despair in this America millions of work starved men walk the streets daily in such for jobs that do not exist in this America millions of people find themselves living in rat-infested vermin feel slums in this America people are pulled by the millions and they find themselves perishing on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity in a sense the greatest tragedy of the sorbets America is what it does to little children little children in this urban America are forced to grow up with clouds of inferiority farming every day in their little mental skies and as we look at this oven America we see it as an arena of blasted hopes and shattered dreams many people of various backgrounds live in this of America America sama Mexican American summer Puerto Ricans some Indians some happened to be from other groups millions of them are Appalachian white probably the largest group in this other America in proportion to its size in the population is the American Negro an American Negro finds himself living in a triple ghetto a ghetto race a ghetto of poverty again is to deal with this problem to deal with this problem of the two Americans we are seeking to make America one nation indivisible with liberty and justice for all now let me say that the struggle for civil rights had a struggle to make these two Americans one America is much more difficult today than it was five or ten years ago for about a decade or maybe twelve years we struggled all across the south and glorious struggles to get rid of legal overt segregation and all of the humiliation that surrounded that system of segregation in a sense 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 accommodations public transportation was segregated and often we had to sit in the back and within transportation transportation within cities we often had to stand over empty seats because sections were reserved for whites only we did not have the right to vote in so many areas of the south and the struggle was to deal with these problems I'll certainly they were difficult problems they were humiliating conditions by the thousands we protested these conditions we made it clear that it was altered ultimately more honorable to accept jail sail experiences than to accept segregation and humiliation by the thousand students and adults decided to sit-in at segregated lunch counters to protest conditions there and 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 would there be by the founding fathers in the formulation of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence many things were gained as a result of these years of struggle in 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 now all of these things represented strides but we must see that the struggle today is much more difficult it's more difficult today because we are struggling now for genuine equality and it's much easier to integrate a lunch counter than it is to guarantee a livable income and a good solid job it's much easier to guarantee the right to vote than it is to guarantee the right to live and sanitary decent housing conditions it is much easier to integrate a public park than it is to make genuine quality integrated education of reality and so today we are struggling for something which says we demand genuine equality it's not merely a struggle against extremist behavior toward Negroes and I'm convinced that many of the rare people who supported us in the struggle in the south I'm not willing to go all the way now I came to see this in a very difficult and painful way in Chicago of the last year where I've lived and worked some of the people who came quickly to March with us in Selma and Birmingham were an active around Chicago and I came to see that so many people who supported moral and even financially what we were doing in Birmingham and Selma were really outraged against the extremist behavior of Bull Connor and Jim Clark toward Negroes rather than believing in genuine equality for Negroes and I think this is what we've got to see now and this is what makes the struggle much more difficult and 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 but Negroes generally lived 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 Negro is worth 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 rates among Negroes but today the unemployment rate among Negroes is twice that of whites and the average income of the Negro is today 50% less than whites and as we look at these problems we see them growing and developing every day and 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 30s the unemployment rate of the nation as a whole is about 4% statistics would say from the Labor Department that among Negroes it's about 8.4 percent but these are the persons who are in the labor market who still go to employment agencies to seek 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 come to feel that life is a long and desolate corridor for the with no exit sign and so they no longer go to look for John there those who would estimate that these persons who are called the discouraged persons would be six to seven percent in the Negro community and that means that unemployment among Negroes may well be sixteen percent among Negro youth in some of our large urban areas it goes to thirty and forty 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 in our everyday lives now the other thing that we've got to come to see now that many of us didn't see too well during the last ten years that is that racism is still alive in American society and much more widespread than we realize and we must see racism for what it is it is a myth of the superior and the 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 insights and the total flow of history and the theory that another group another race is totally depraved innately impure and innately inferior in the final analysis racism is evil because this its ultimate logic is genocide Hitler was a sick and tragic man who carried racism to its logical conclusion and he ended up leading a nation to the part of killing about six million Jews and this is the tragedy of racism because it's Oh logic is genocide if one says that I'm not good enough to live next door to him if one says that I am not good enough to eat at a lunch counter but they have a good decent job but to go to school with him merely because of my race he is saying consciously or unconsciously that I do not deserve to exist to use a philosophical analogy here 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 otherwise because of environmental conditions it is the affirmation that the very being of a people is inferior and this is a great tragedy of it I said that however unpleasant it is we must honestly see an admit that racism is still deeply rooted all over America still deeply rooted in the north and it still deeply rooted in the South now 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 this came into being because shouts of shouts of black power or because Negroes engaged in riots and watts for instance the fact is that the state of California voted a fair house and bail out of existence before anybody shouted black power before anybody rioted in watts it may well be the Sharps of black power and riots and Watson the harlem's in the other areas or the consequences of the right backlash rather than the what it is necessary to see is that there has never been a single solid monastic 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 impels all men of goodwill to admit it is said on the Statue of Liberty that America is the home of exams but it doesn't take us long to realize that America has been the home of its white exiles from Europe but it has not events the same kind the maternal care and concern for its black exams from Africa there 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 great sense of rejection caused the people to emerge with such a metaphor as they looked over their lives what I'm trying to get across 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 a of land in the West and the Midwest which meant that America was willing to undergird it's white peasants from Europe with an economic flow of that would make it possible to grow and develop and refused to give that economic floor to it's 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 heaven freedom without roofs 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 in 1875 the nation passed a civil rights bill and refused to enforce it in 1964 the nation passed a weaker 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 of the poverty-stricken for the disadvantaged and brought into being a poverty bill 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 and sober suburbs talk eloquently against open housing and in the same breath contend that they are not racist now all of this and all of these things tell us that America has been back lashing on the whole question of basic constitutional and god-given rights for Negroes and other disadvantaged groups for more than 300 years so these conditions persistence of widespread poverty of slums and of tragic conditions in schools and other areas of life all of these things have brought about a great deal of despair and the great deal of desperation a great deal of disappointment and even bitterness in the Negro communities and today all of our cities confront huge problems all of our cities are potentially powder kegs as a result of the continued existence of these conditions many in moments of anger many in moments of deep bitterness engaged in riots 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 the most potent weapon available to oppress people in their struggle for freedom and justice I feel that violence will only create more social problems than they able saw 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 and continue to say to my brothers and sisters that this is not the way continue 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 conditions which calls persons to who feel that they must get engaged in riotous activities as it is for me to condemn riots 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 condemn riots and then the final analysis a riot is the language of the unheard 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 it has failed to hear that the promises of freedom and justice have not been met and it has failed to hear that large segments of white society are more concerned about tranquility in the status quo than about justice equality and humanity and so on a real sense our nation some of the riots are caused by our nation's winters of 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 guarantors of riot prevention now let me go on to say that if we are to deal with all of the problems that I've talked about that we are to bring America to the point that we have one nation indivisible with liberty and justice for all there are certain things that we must do the job ahead must be massive and positive we must develop massive and 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 or two false notions that continue to exist in our society one is the notion that only time can solve the problem of racial injustice I'm sure you've heard this idea it is the notion almost that is something in the Vera the very flow of time that will miraculously cure all evils and I've heard this over and over again there are those and they often sincere people who say to Negroes and their lives in the white community that we should slow up and just be nice and patient and continue to pray and in 102 or 200 years the problem will work itself out because on the time can solve the problem I think that is an answer to that myth and it is a time is neutral it can be used either constructively or destructively and I'm absolutely convinced that the forces of ill-will in our nation the extreme writers in our nation have 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 in the violet actions of the bad people but for the appalling silence and indifference of the good people who sit around and say wait on time somewhere we must come to see that social progress never rolls in on the wheels of inevitability it comes to the tireless efforts and the persistent work of dedicated individuals and without this hard work time itself becomes an air alarm of 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's around Everywhere's and the south it's in the north it's in California and all over our nation it's the notion that legislation can't 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't change the heart through legislation now I would be the first one to say that there is real need for a lot of heart changing in our country and I believe in changing the heart I preached about it I believe in the need for conversion in many instances and regeneration to use theological terms and I would be the first to say that if the race problem in America is to be solved the white person must treat the Negro right not merely because the law says it but the cause 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 unenforceable but after saying this let me say another thing which gives the other side and that is that although it may be true that morality cannot be legislated behavior can be regulated even though it may be true that the law cannot check the heart it can restrain the hardness 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 begin to change the habits of men pretty soon the attitudes will be changed pretty soon the hearts will be changed I'm convinced that we still need strong civil rights legislation there's a bill before Congress right now to have a national federal open housing bill a federal law declaring discrimination in housing unconstitutional and also a bill to make the administration of justice real all over our country now nobody can doubt the need for this nobody can doubt the need if he thinks about the fact that since 1963 some 50 Negroes and whites civil rights workers have been brutally murdered in the state of Mississippi alone and not a single person has been convicted for these deaths of the crimes there have been some indictments but no one has been convicted and so there is a need for the whole question of the administration of justice there is a need for fair housing laws all over our country and it is tragic indeed that Congress last year allowed this bill to die and that bill died in Congress a bit of democracy died our commitment to justice die if it happens again in this section session of Congress 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 Negro central cities ringed by white suburbs this is only inviting social disaster and the only way this problem will be solved is by the nation taking a strong stand and by state governments taking a strong stand against housing segregation and against discrimination in all of these areas now there's another thing that I'd like to mention is I talked about the massive action program and time will not permit me to go into specific programmatic action to any great degree but it must be realized now that the Negro hole cannot solve the problem by himself there again there those who always say to the Negroes why don't you do something for yourself why don't you lift yourselves by your own bootstraps and we hear this over and over again now certainly there are many things that we must do for ourselves and that only we can do for ourselves certainly we must develop within a sense of dignity and self-respect that nobody else can give us a sense of man have a sense of person a sense of not beer being ashamed of our heritage not being ashamed of our color it was wrong and tragic that that Negro ever allowed himself to be ashamed of the fact that he was black or ashamed of the fact that his home and sister home was effort and so there's a great deal that the Negro can do to develop self-respect there's a great deal of 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 himself man was on the plane with me some weeks ago and he came talk with me and he said the problem dr. King that I see with what you all are doing is that every time I see you and having Negroes you were protesting and you aren't doing anything before 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 her people he said to lift themselves by their own bootstraps and then he went on to say hover groups face disadvantages they Irish the Italians and he went down the line I said to him that it does not help the negro it only deepens his frustration on feeling and sensitive people to say to him that other ethnic groups who migrated our immigrants to this country that's 100 years ago or so have God is beyond him and he came here some 344 years ago mind him the Negro came to this country involuntarily in Chains while others came voluntarily I went on to remind him that no other racial group has been a slave on American soil I went on to remind him that the other 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 doors were closed to him that were not closed to other groups and I'm to say the people that you ought to lift yourself by your own bootstraps but it is a cruel jest to say to a bootless man that he ought to lift himself eyes on bootstraps the fact is a millions of Negroes as a result of centuries of denial and neglect have been left bootless and they find themselves impoverished aliens in this affluent society and that 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 guaranteed annual income a guaranteed minimum income for all people and for all families of our country it seems to me it seems to me that the civil rights movement must now begin to organize for the guaranteed annual income begin to organize people all over outcomes and mobilize forces so that we can bring to the attention of our nation this need and this something which I believe will go a long long way toward dealing with the Negro's economic problem and the economic problem with many other poor people confronted our nation now I said I wasn't going to talk about Vietnam but I can't make a speech without mentioning some of the problems that we face they're the cause because I think this wall has diverted attention from civil rights it has strengthened the forces of reaction in our country and is brought to the forefront the military industrial complex that even President Eisenhower warned us against at one time and above all it is destroying human lives it's destroying the lives of thousands of the young promising men of our nation strong the lives of little boys and little girls in Vietnam but 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 our nation has the resources to do it the national gross product of America will rise to this founding figure some eight hundred settlers this year we have the resources the question is well the nation has the will and I submit that if we can spy billion dollars a year the fight an ill-considered war in Vietnam and twenty billion dollars to put a man on the moon our nation can spend billions of dollars when on their own two feet right here on earth let me say another thing that's more in the realm of the spirit I guess that is if we're to go on in the days ahead and make sure Brotherhood a reality it is necessary for us to realize more than ever before that the destinies of the Negro and the white man are tied together now there are still a lot of people who don't realize this the races still don't realize this but it is a fact now that Negros and whites are tied together and we need each other the Negro needs the white man to save him from his fear the white man needs the Negro to save him from his guilt we are tied together in so many ways our language our music our cultural patterns our material prosperity and even our food on amalgam of black and white so there can be no separate black path to power and fulfillment that does not intersect white roots there can be no separate white path to power and fulfillment sort 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 now that integration is not merely a romantic or aesthetic something where you merely add color to a still predominantly white power structure integration must be seen also on political terms where there shared power and where black men and white men share power together to build a new and a great nation in a real sense we all caught in an inescapable network of mutuality tied in a single garment of destiny Jean Dom play stood years ago in graphic terms no man is an island and pirate self every man is a piece of the continent a part of the Maine and he goes on toward the end to say any man's death diminishes me because I'm involved in mankind therefore never send to know For Whom the Bell Tolls it tolls for thee and so we all in the same situation the salvation of the Negroes would mean the salvation of the white man and the destruction the light and of the ongoing progress of the Negro will be the destruction of ongoing progress of the nation now let me say finally that we have difficult days ahead but I haven't despaired 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 I still 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 and America not be trusted and I would be the first to say that they're all too many who are still guarded by the racist ethos I am still convinced they're still many of white persons of goodwill and I'm happy to say that I see them every day in the student generation who cherish democratic trends 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 going to achieve our freedom because however much America strays away from the ideals of justice the goal of America is freedom views dance conda 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 edged across the pages of history of the majestic words of the Declaration of Independence we were here before the beautiful words of the star-spangled banner were written we were here for more than two centuries our forebears 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 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're gonna wear our freedom because both the secret of our nation and the eternal will of the Almighty God I embody danaiah coin demands and so I can still sing we shall overcome we shall overcome because the awful tomorrow long but it bends toward justice we shall overcome because Carlyle is right no lie can live forever we shall overcome because William Cullen Bryant is right since Christy will rise again she'll overcome because James Russell Lowell is right truth forever on the scaffold wrong fire bomb the throne yet that scaffold sways the future with me we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope this base we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood with this babe 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 a great tomorrow in the word sure 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

Channel: The Martin Luther King, Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change

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Length: 47min 55sec (2875 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 02 2015