martin luther king's 1965 speech at penn state

8/9/2019 Martin Luther King's 1965 speech at Penn State

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Source: News.psu.edu

On Jan. 21, 1965, Martin Luther King Jr. spoe to an esti!ated crowd o"#,$$$ peop%e in &ecreation 'ui%ding on the (enn State )ni*ersit+ (arca!pus. e ta%ed a-out the ci*i% rights !o*e!ent, !erica/s %egac+

o" s%a*er+ and segregation and the princip%es he -e%ie*ed wou%dchange the wor%d. 0he e*ent was co!!e!orated in 2$$6 with ahistorica% !arer p%aced outside o" &ec a%%. is speech "o%%ows:

Dean [Jules] Heller [of the Department of Arts and Architecture],members of the faculty and members of the student body of this greatinstitution of learning, ladies and gentlemen.

I did not pause to say how delighted and honored to be here tonightand to be part of your lecture series. It's always a rich and rewardingeperience when I can ta!e a brief brea! from the day"to"day demands

of our struggle for freedom and human dignity and discuss the issuesin#ol#ed in that struggle with college and uni#ersity students andconcerned people of goodwill all o#er our nation and o#er the world. $oI can assure you it's a real pleasure to be with you.

As has been stated, I would li!e to use as a sub%ect from which tospea! the future of integration. &y basic theme for the e#ening is thatwe ha#e come a long, long way in the struggle for racial %ustice, but weha#e a long, long way to go before the problem is sol#ed.

ow let us begin by noticing that we ha#e come a long, long way. I

would li!e to open this point by stating that the egro himself hascome a long, long way in ree#aluating his own intrinsic worth. In orderto illustrate this, a little history is necessary. (ou will remember that itwas in the year )*)+ when the rst egro sla#es landed on the shoresof this nation. -hey were brought here from the shores of Africa. nli!ethe /ilgrims fathers who landed at /lymouth a year

-hroughout sla#ery, the egro was treated in a #ery inhuman fashion.He was a thing to be used, not a person to be respected. -he famousDred $cott decision of )012 well illustrated the status of the egroduring sla#ery. In this decision, the $upreme 3ourt said in substance

that the egro is not a citi4en of the nited $tates5 he is merelyproperty, sub%ect to the dictates of his owner. And it went on to saythat the egro has no rights that the white man is bound to respect.

6ith the growth of sla#ery it became necessary to gi#e some%ustication for it. It seems to be a fact of life that human beingscannot continue to do wrong without e#entually reaching out for somethin rationali4ation to clothe an ob#ious wrong in the beautiful


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garments of righteousness. -his is eactly what happened. 7#en the8ible and religion was misused to crystalli4e the patterns of the status9uo. And so from some pulpits it was argued that the egro is inferiorby nature because of oah's curse upon the children of Ham. And theapostle /aul's dictum became a watchword: ;$er#ants, be obedient to

your master.; And then one brother had probably read the logic of thegreat philosopher Aristotle. Aristotle did a great deal to bring into beingwhat we !now as pharmacological philosophy. And in pharmacologicyou ha#e a big word called the syllogism, which has a ma%or premiseand a minor premise and a conclusion. And so this brother decided toput his argument of the inferiority of the egro in the framewor! of anAristotelian syllogism. He came out with his ma%or premise, all men arecreated in the image of


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>ifty years ago or e#en @1 years ago, a year had hardly passed whennumerous egroes were not brutally lynched in the $outh by some#icious mob. =ynchings ha#e about ceased today, and this representsprogress. At the turn of the century, there were #ery few egroesregistered to #ote in the $outh. 8y )+0 that number had leaped to

21B,BBB. 8y )+*B, it had leaped to about ).@ million. And when wewent into the presidential elections some few wee!s ago, we had a fewmore than @ million egroes registered to #ote in the $outh, whichmeans we ha#e added more than 0BB,BBB new egro registered #otersin the last three or four years, far from what it ought to be, but itrepresents progress. 6e'#e come a long, long way.

In the area of economic %ustice we ha#e seen some strides. -hea#erage egro wage"earner of today who happens to be employedearns )B times more than the a#erage egro wage"earner of )B yearsago. -he national income of the egro is now better than C@0 billion a

year, which is more than all of the eports of the nited $tates andmore than the national budget of 3anada. -his re#eals that we ha#emade some strides in the 9uest for economic %ustice.

8ut probably more than in any other area, we ha#e seen in our day andin our age the gradual demise of the system of legal segregation. ow,we all !now the long history of segregation in our country. It had itslegal beginning in )0+*, when the $upreme 3ourt rendered a decision!nown as the /lessy #. >erguson decision, which established thedoctrine of separate but e9ual as the law of the land. And for years weha#e li#ed with this /lessy doctrine, which ended up plunging the

egro into the abyss of eploitation, where he eperienced theblea!ness of nagging in%ustice. -hen something else happened. It wasin the year )+1 that the $upreme 3ourt eamined the legal body ofsegregation and pronounced it constitutionally dead, and said insubstance that the old /lessy doctrine must go, that separate facilitiesare inherently une9ual, and that to segregate a child a child on thebasis of his race is to deny that child e9ual protection of the law. 6eha#e seen many, many changes since that decision in )+1.

And then %ust last year, on July @, the president of out nation signedinto law a strong, comprehensi#e ci#il rights bill. I am happy to say that

since the signing of that bill, we ha#e seen surprising and etensi#ele#els of compliance all across the $outh, particularly in with referenceto the public accommodations section of the bill. 3ertainly there arestill some poc!ets of resistance, where we will ha#e to do a great dealof wor!. 6e can all be consoled by the fact that by and large, in citiesand communities and states all across the south, ha#e responded tothe ci#il rights bill with ama4ing good sense and reasonableness. -hisre#eals that we ha#e come a long, long way. And I am absolutely


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con#inced that the system of segregation is on its deathbed today, andthe only thing uncertain about it is how costly is how costly thesegregationists will ma!e the funeral. 6e ha#e come a long, long waysince )0+*.

ow, this would be a #ery ne and good place for me to end myspeech tonight. >irst, it would mean ma!ing a short speech, and thiswould be a magnicent accomplishment for a 8aptist preacher.$econd, it would mean that the problem is almost sol#ed now and thatwe don't ha#e much to do. It would be a mar#elous thing if spea!ers allo#er our country could tal! about this problem in terms of the problemthat once eisted but that no longer has eistence. 8ut if I stopped atthis point, I would be merely be stating a fact and not telling the truth.(ou !now, a fact is merely the absence of contradiction but truth is thepresence of coherence. -ruth is the relatedness of facts. ow, it is afact that we ha#e come a long, long way, but it isn't the whole truth,

and I am afraid that if I stop at this point, I would lea#e you the #ictimsof a dangerous optimism and I will send you away #ictimi4ed with anillusion wrapped in superciality. $o in order to tell the truth it isnecessary to mo#e on and not only say that we'#e come a long, longway, but we ha#e a long, long way to go before the problem of racialin%ustice is sol#ed.

I don't thin! I ha#e to point this out too much. 6e need only open ournewspapers and turn on our tele#isions, and we see with our own eyesthat this problem is still with us. 6e can loo! around in ourcommunities, where#er we li#e, and we will see it because no

community in our country can boast of clean hands in the area ofbrotherhood, and so if we will only loo!, we will only notice thede#elopments in our nation, we will be ob%ecti#e enough and realisticenough and honest enough to !now that we ha#e a long, long way togo.

I mentioned that lynchings ha#e about ceased, but other things arehappening %ust as tragic. 3i#il rights wor!ers are still being brutallymurdered, simply because they are wor!ing for the ideals of %usticeand freedom. And we can ne#er forget the fact, that not too long ago,four beautiful innocent, uno?ending girls, egro girls, were !illed in the

church of


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Down in &ississippi now they seem to ha#e a new motto, not ;attendthe church of your choice; but ;burn the church of your choice.; $ince&ay of last year, more than 1 egro churches ha#e burned down inthe state of &ississippi. -his re#eals that we are far from the goal offreedom, far from the goal of brotherhood.

I mentioned #oter registration and the fact that we ha#e about @million egroes registered to #ote in the $outh, and I guess this loo!sgood on the surface, but we must see the other side. -here are stillapproimately )B million egroes still li#ing in the $outh, and about *million are of #oting age. -his means that there are million egroesin the southern part of the nited $tates who are not registered to #oteas #oters. It is not merely because of apathy and complacency hereand there. &any of these persons are not registered because all typesof conni#ing methods are still being used to !eep the egro frombecoming a registered #oter. 3omple literacy tests are still gi#en, with

9uestions that a person with a /h.D. in any eld couldn't answer or aperson with a law degree from the best uni#ersities in our nationcouldn't answer, to the e#en more dicult 9uestion of ;how manybubbles do you nd in a bar of soap.; -hey tell me they as! 9uestionsli!e that occasionally in some parts of Alabama and &ississippi. Andthen in many instances indi#iduals are faced with threats of #iolenceand outright acts of #iolence if they see! to register and if they see! to#ote.

In the last few days my organi4ation has been wor!ing in $elma, Ala.,where we ha#e centered the struggle mainly around the right to #ote.

And there is an accounting, >or almost )*,BBB egroes, and only about@1B are registered to #ote, not because they don't want to register, butbecause the registrars absolutely refuse to register egroes as #oters.En =ast &onday, we led more than 0BB people down to the courthouse.ot a single one was registered. En -uesday we led a similar numberdown, and they were only greeted with arrests from the brutal sheri?of Dallas 3ounty, and the same thing on 6ednesday. And at the paceat which they are registering egroes in Dallas 3ounty, it will ta!eeactly )F@ years to get half of the egroes eligible to #ote registeredin that county. -his is the pattern throughout most of the so"called8lac! 8elt counties across the $outh.

If democracy is to be a reality, this problem must be sol#ed. And I thin!now the time has come for the federal go#ernment to do much morethan it has e#er done or e#er dreamed of doing to ma!e %ustice areality at the ballot bo. I thin! the time has come for federal registrarsto be posted in e#ery county where egroes cannot register. I thin! thetime has come to ma!e the process e#en more simple than that. Iflocal registrars refuse to register egroes, then some system must be


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set up where they can go directly to the post oce and register. -hisfalls under the domain of the president and of the federal go#ernment.7#ery obstacle must be remo#ed if we are to ha#e a healthy andmature democracy. 7#ery obstacle must be mo#ed that stands in theway of the egro becoming a registered #oter. And so we still ha#e a

long, long way to go in this area.

I mentioned economic %ustice, and I used the gure C@0 billion, whichsounds good and sounds large. 8ut before we become too optimisticand complacent, let me gi#e you some other gures, which tell usabout a glaring gulf, a terrible gap that we still nd in our society.>orty"two percent of the egro citi4ens of our country, the egrofamilies of our country, still earn less than C@,BBB a year, while %ust )2percent of the white families earn less than C@,BBB a year. -wenty"onepercent of the egro families of our country earn less than C),BBB ayear, while si percent of the white families earn less than C),BBB a

year. 7ighty"eight percent of the egro families of our country earn lessthan C1,BBB a year, while %ust 10 percent of the white families earnless than C1,BBB a year.

-he problem is becoming e#en more dicult today because of a denialof educational opportunities, because of a denial of apprenticeshiptraining in so many instances. 6e as a people ha#e been limited touns!illed and semi"s!illed labor by and large. ow a force !nown asautomation or cybernation, scrapping some B,BBB %obs a wee!. -heegro is getting the double blow of outright discrimination on the onehand and the ine#itable shifts ta!ing place in our society as a result of

automation. And I say if this problem is to be sol#ed there must bemassi#e retraining programs, massi#e public wor!s programs, and thiswill be the way to somehow change the in%ustices that we see, andbring about the new ad%ustments necessary to sur#i#e in an automatedsociety.

-here is nothing more tragic than to build a society with a segment ofpeople in that society who feel they ha#e no sta!e in it, who feel thatthey ha#e nothing to lose, who wal! around the streets day in and dayout with no %obs, who wal! the streets day in and day out feeling thatlife is little more than a long and desolate corridor with no eit sign.

-hese are the people who will riot. -hese are the people who ha#e losta sense of hope and out of despair turn to the methods that we allabhor. And so economic %ustice must become a reality in order to meetand sol#e all of the social problems that we face today.

I mentioned the fact that segregation is gradually passing away. Hereagain I must mention the other side. It may be true as I implied,gurati#ely spea!ing, that Eld &an $egregation is on his death bed,


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but history has shown that social systems ha#e a great last"minutebreathing power. -he guardians of the status 9uo are always on handwith their oygen tents to !eep the old order ali#e. And so segregationis still with us. It is still confronted in certain places in the $outh in itsglaring and conspicuous forms. And we still confront it all o#er the

orth in its hidden and subtle forms. -he battle in the days ahead willbe to remo#e these subtle forms. -he battle will not be in the daysahead to integrate a lunch counter. It will be to deal with the hardcoreproblems of discrimination epressed in inade9uate %obs, epressed inghettoi4ed and in inade9uate housing, epressed in de factosegregation within the public schools. It will be much more dicult todeal with these problems. ntil the %ob problem is sol#ed, until theproblem of housing discrimination is sol#ed, until the problem of defacto segregation in the public schools is sol#ed, we will still ha#e along, long way to go before the American dream becomes a reality.

$o segregation is still with us. I am absolutely con#inced that ifdemocracy is to li#e, segregation must die. Gacial segregation is acancer in the body politic which must be remo#ed before our moralhealth can be reali4ed. And so the challenge ahead is to wor!passionately and unrelentingly to remo#e racial in%ustice from e#eryarea of our nation's life. In order to do this, it will be necessary tode#elop a powerful, creati#e action program. -his problem will notsol#e itself. It will not wor! itself out. &assi#e action programs will benecessary all o#er the nation in order to remo#e the last #estiges ofsegregation and discrimination.

ow if we are going to ha#e this !ind of massi#e action program that isnecessary to sol#e the problem, we'#e got to get rid of one or two falsenotions that are disseminated around our nation, false ideas and mythsthat are constantly circulated.

ow, one is the myth of time. (ou'#e heard this idea. It is the notionthat only time can sol#e the problem. It is the idea that we mustsomehow sit down comfortably by the wayside and wait on time. -heindi#iduals who belie#e in this constantly say to the egro and hisallies in the white community, ;Just be nice and %ust be patient anddon't disturb the peace and %ust continue to pray, and in a hundred or

@BB years the problem will %ust wor! itself out. Enly time can sol#e theproblem.;

I thin! there is an answer to that myth. It is that time is neutral. It canbe used either constricti#ely or destructi#ely. I must honestly say toyou tonight that I feel that the forces of ill will in our nation, theetreme rightists of our nation, the forces committed to negati#e endsof our nation ha#e used time much more e?ecti#ely than the forces of


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goodwill. And it may well be that we will ha#e repent in this generationnot merely for the #itriolic words and the #iolent actions of the badpeople who would bomb a church in 8irmingham, Ala., but for theappalling silence of the good people who sit around and say, ;6ait ontime.; $omewhere we must see that human progress ne#er rolls in on

the wheels of ine#itability. It comes through the tireless e?orts and thepersistent wor! of dedicated indi#iduals willing to be cowor!ers with7/3 >air7mployment /ractices 3ommission bill5 there is a need for e#ery stateto ha#e a strong housing law outlawing discrimination in housing, and Ithin!, with this !ind of legislati#e thrust, we can see many, manychanges in the future and this will help us a great deal to go this

additional distance to ma!e %ustice a reality.

ow along with all of this, it would be necessary to continue what werefer to as direct action against in%ustice, where indi#iduals are willingto present their #ery bodies and their #ery li#es in order to rectify thesocial e#ils that may engulf the community. And this is what we ha#eseen across the past few years, powerful direct action programs thatha#e brought about many changes all o#er the $outh and all o#er the


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nited $tates. And, of course, I belie#e that this direct action programmust be undergirded with a creati#e philosophy and a powerfulmethod, namely the method of non#iolent resistance.

ow, I'd li!e to ta!e a few minutes %ust to say a few words about

non#iolence since it has been at the center of our struggle and hasbeen the basic philosophical system that has undergirded our struggle,so to spea!. &ay I say that I am still absolutely con#inced thatnon#iolence is a most potent weapon a#ailable to oppressed people intheir struggle for %ustice and human dignity. It has a way of disarmingthe opponent. It eposes his moral defenses. It wea!ens his moraleand at the same time it wor!s on his conscience, and he %ust doesn't!now how to handle it. If he doesn't beat you, wonderful. If he beatsyou, you'll de#elop the 9uiet courage of accepting blows withoutretaliating. If he doesn't put you in %ail, wonderful5 nobody with anysense lo#es to go to %ail. 8ut if he puts you in %ail, you go in that %ail and

transform it from a dungeon of shame to a ha#en of freedom andhuman dignity. 7#en if he tries to !ill you, you de#elop the innercon#iction that there are some things so dear, some things so precious,some things so eternally true that they are worth dying for, and if aman has not disco#ered something that he will die for, he isn't t toli#e. -his is what the non#iolent discipline says, and I submit to you thise#ening that there is power here and there is something here that canchange social situations.

-here is another thing about non#iolence5 it gi#es one ways to struggleto secure moral ends through moral means. Ene of the great debates

of history, mainly through philosophical circles, has been o#er thewhole 9uestion of ends and means. -here ha#e always been those whoargue that the end %usties the means. -his is where non#iolencewould brea! with their idea that the end %usties the means because inthe real sense, the end is preeistent in the means. -he meansrepresents the ideal and the ma!ing and the end in process. In the longrun of history, destructi#e means cannot bring about constructi#eends, and it is a mar#elous thing to ha#e a method of struggle whichsays that means and ends must cohere. -he means that we use to getto the noble end of integration and brotherhood must be as pure as theend that we see!.

-hat is another thing about non#iolence5 when one is true to it in itsessence and true to it in its most genuine epression, that is that thelo#e ethic stands at the center. In other words, it becomes possible tostruggle against an un%ust system and yet maintain an attitude ofacti#e good will toward the perpetrators of that un%ust system. owwhen I get to this point people always 9uestion me5 they begin to say,;6hat in the world do you mean How can you lo#e people who are


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oppressing you and are see!ing to destroy you and who would use to#iolence to bloc! your %ust and legitimate aspirations; I always ha#eto stop and try to eplain what I mean at this point, because when Ital! about lo#e I'm not tal!ing about emotional bosh5 I'm not tal!ingabout a wea! sentimental, a?ectionate emotion. I'm tal!ing about

something much deeper. It would be nonsense for me or anybody tostand up and lo#e their #iolent oppressors in an a?ectionate sense.

>ortunately the


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attitude, that will help us rise from dar! yesterdays to bright and nobletomorrows.

I thin! it will help those of us who ha#e been on the oppressed endemerging with the right attitude. 6e will not see! to rise from a

position of disad#antage to one of ad#antage, thereby sub#erting%ustice. 6e will not see! to substitute one tyranny for another. 6e will!now that a doctrine of blac! supremacy is as dangerous as thedoctrine of white supremacy, and that


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$o it may well be that our world is in dire need of a new organi4ation,the International Association for the Ad#ancement of 3reati#e&alad%ustment, men and women who will be as malad%usted as theprophet Amos, who in the midst of the in%ustices of his day, could cryout in words that echo across the centuries, ;=et %ustice roll down li!e

waters and righteousness li!e a mighty stream;5 as malad%usted asAbraham =incoln, who had the #ision to see that this nation could notsur#i#e half sla#e and half free5 as malad%usted as -homas Je?erson,who in the midst an age ama4ingly ad%usted to sla#ery, could etchacross the pages of history words lifted to cosmic proportions, ;6e holdthese truths to be self"e#ident, that all men are created e9ual, thatthey are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights , andamong these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness;5 asmalad%usted as Jesus 3hrist, who could say to the men and womenaround the hills of


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o#ercome. 8efore the #ictory is won, some will be called bad names,some will be called Geds and 3ommunists because they belie#e in thebrotherhood of man, but we shall o#ercome. 8efore the #ictory is won,some more may ha#e to face physical death, but if physical death isthe price that some must pay to free their children and their white

brothers from an eternal psychological death and eternal death of thespirit, then nothing can be more redempti#e. (es, we shall o#ercome,because the arc of the moral uni#erse is long but it bends toward%ustice.

6e shall o#ercome because 3arlyle is right, no lie can li#e fore#er. 6eshall o#ercome because 6illiam 3ullen 8ryant is right, truth crushed toearth will rise again. 6e shall o#ercome because there is something inthe #ery structure of the cosmos that %usties James Gussell =owell insaying, ;-ruth fore#er on the sca?old, wrong fore#er on the throne, yetthat sca?old sways the future, and behind the dim un!nown standeth

martin luther king's 1965 speech at penn state

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