This appalling situation is probably 90 percent of the root cause of the Negro riots. Our police forces simply must develop an attitude of courtesy and respect for the ordinary citizen. When a culture begins to feel threatened by its own inadequacies, the majority of men tend to prop themselves up by artificial means, rather than dig down deep into their spiritual and cultural wellsprings. But, then more "bad new" occurs, and we begin to think, that, no: yes, things are really bad, or maybe worse than we believed. by. These words may have an unexpectedly optimistic ring at a time when pessimism is the prevailing mood. When you go beyond a relatively simple though serious problem such as police racism, however, you begin to get into all the complexities of the modern American economy. Millions of Americans are coming to see that we are fighting an immoral war that costs nearly 30 billion dollars a year, that we are perpetuating racism, that we are tolerating almost 40,000,000 poor during an overflowing material abundance. First published in 1986, "A Testament of Hope" remains the most comprehensive single-volume edition of the writings of Martin Luther King, Jr. I have come to hope that American Negroes can be a bridge between white civilization and the nonwhite nations of the world, because we have roots in both. But many white people in the past joined our movement with a kind of messianic faith that they were going to save the Negro and solve all of his problems very quickly. Americans who genuinely treasure our national ideals, who know they are still elusive dreams for all too many, should welcome the stirring of Negro demands. I must point out, in all honesty, however, that President Johnson has not been nearly so diligent in implementing the bills he has helped shepherd through Congress. The summer poverty programs, like most other Government projects, function well in some places and are totally ineffective in others. Top Tag’s. Millions of people have fought thousands of battles to enlarge my freedom; restricted as it still is, progress has been made. It seems glaringly obvious to me that the development of a humanitarian means of dealing with some of the social problems of the world—and the correlative revolution in American values that this will entail—is a much better way of protecting ourselves against the threat of violence than the military means we have chosen. The Negroes who rebelled against white liberals were trying to assert their own equality and to cast off the mantle of paternalism. These are our bright years of emergence; though they are painful ones, they cannot be avoided. They are shattering the complacency that allowed a multitude of social evils to accumulate. Document ID 080000-001 Document Date 1907-1908 Document Type Photo Status White schools are often just about as bad as black schools, and integrated schools sometimes tend to merge the problems of the two without solving either of them. Kennedy didn’t voluntarily submit a civil rights bill, nor did Lyndon Johnson. A good example of this problem is my home city of Atlanta, where the rapid-transit system has been laid out for the convenience of the white upper-middle-class suburbanites who commute to their jobs downtown. This pathetic incident is all too typical of the treatment received by Negroes in this country—not only physical brutality but brutal discrimination when a Negro tries to buy a house, and brutal violence against the Negro’s soul when he finds himself denied a job that he knows he is qualified for. The 842 other counties remain essentially just as they were before the march on Selma. Black men in positions of power in the business world would not be so unconscionable as to trade or traffic with the Union of South Africa, nor would they be so insensitive to the problems and needs of Latin America that they would continue the patterns of American exploitation that now prevail there. For the Negro, these issues were intensified. After 13 months in a veterans’ hospital, he went back to his home town of Attapulgus, Georgia. Even at this point, when he can readily summon popular support to end the bombing in Vietnam, he persists. The desegregation of public facilities cost nothing; neither did the election and appointment of a few black public officials. So there are some changes. A Summary of A Testament of Hope The Essentials Writings of Martin Luther King Jr. The price of progress would have been high enough at the best of times, but we are in an agonizing national crisis because a complex of profound problems has intersected in an explosive mixture. The past is strewn with the ruins of the empires of tyranny, and each is a monument not merely to man’s blunders but to his capacity to overcome them. And one of these roads to escape will be a more equitable sharing of political power between Negroes and whites. It is possible for me to falter, but I am profoundly secure in my knowledge that God loves us; He has not worked out a design for our failure. Yet Negroes continue to live with racism every day. A Testament of Hope by Martin Luther King Jr., December 7, 1990, HarperOne edition, Paperback in English This fact has not been fully grasped, because most of the gains of the past decade were obtained at bargain rates. Most of the white people who were working with us in 1962 and 1963 are still with us. View: 907. There are fewer and fewer jobs for the culturally and educationally deprived; thus does present-day poverty feed upon and perpetuate itself. 30 ‘Aktuelles im Zeugnis der Zwölf Väter’ in: Studien zu den Testamenten der Zwölf Patriarchen (Berlin, 1969), 96. People are often surprised to learn that I am an optimist. He was so much more than a monolithic figure of the Civil Rights movement. But it isn’t just a lack of work; it’s also a lack of meaningful work. American Negroes have greater economic potential than most of the nations—perhaps even more than all of the nations—of Africa. In fact, both told us at one time that such legislation was impossible. They know how often I have been jailed, how frequently the days and nights have been filled with frustration and sorrow, how bitter and dangerous are my adversaries. We will eventually achieve this, but it is going to be much more difficult for us than for any other minority. America must change because 23,000,000 black citizens will no longer live supinely in a wretched past. This credit has accrued to Lyndon Johnson and John Kennedy only because it was during their Administrations that Negroes began doing more for themselves. When something positive is done, however, when constructive action follows a riot, a rioter’s despair is allayed and he is forced to re-evaluate America and to consider whether some good might eventually come from our society after all. White America must recognize that justice for black people cannot be achieved without radical changes in the structure of our society. And the negative thinking in this area voiced by many whites does not help the situation. Martin Luther King Jr. (1929-1968), civil rights leader and recipient of the Nobel Prize for Peace, inspired and sustained the struggle for freedom, nonviolence, interracial brotherhood, and social justice. This dissent is America’s hope. Inferior education, poor housing, unemployment, inadequate health care—each is a bitter component of the oppression that has been our heritage. I am not sad that black Americans are rebelling; this was not only inevitable but eminently desirable. The January 1969 issue of Playboy contained a symposium: The Decent Society ("11 contributors have done no less than create a blueprint for change throughout every important aspect of American life"), and a memoriam for MLK & RFK. We have confronted the racist policemen of the South and demanded reforms in the police departments. But we have seen a better and more constrictive cleansing process in our nonviolent demonstrations. Justice for black people will not flow into society merely from court decisions nor from fountains of political oratory. In fact, the average white high school dropout makes as much as, if not more than, the average Negro college graduate. One of the incongruities of this situation is the fact that such a large number of the soldiers in the Armed Forces in Vietnam—especially the front-line soldiers who are actually doing the fighting—are Negroes. What these white people do not realize is that the Negroes who riot have given up on America. I still wouldn’t want to do away with it, though, even in Chicago. He had no friends in the courts of the powerful. Buy Book From Amazon . The Newark riots, for example, could certainly have been prevented by a more aggressive political involvement on the part of that city’s Negroes. August 15, 2019 Coleman M says: This is the blueprint for changing the world through nonviolence and love: "It is an honor to face jail for a just cause." We will see more Negro mayors in major cities in the next ten years, but this is not the ultimate answer. The first speech I looked at was Love, Law, and Civil Disobedience.This speech was giving at the annual meeting of Fellowship of the Concerned. This book, which is edited by James Melvin Washington is made up of speeches and letters written by Martin Luther King Jr. The difference, in large measure, is one of citizen participation; that is the key to success or failure. Americans as a whole feel threatened by communism on one hand and, on the other, by the rising tide of aspirations among the undeveloped nations. Yet despite the widening of our stride, history is racing forward so rapidly that the Negro’s inherited and imposed disadvantages slow him down to an infuriating crawl. ISBN: 0060646918. Negroes are even the decisive balance of power in the elections in Georgia, South Carolina and Virginia. George Wallace is certainly an exception, and Lester Maddox is a sociological fossil. We have put an end to racial segregation in the South; we have brought about the beginnings of reform in the political system; and, as incongruous as it may seem, a Negro is probably safer in most Southern cities than he is in the cities of the North. The same is true of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, which provides for Federal referees to monitor the registration of voters in counties where Negroes have systematically been denied the right to vote. The Negro today cannot escape from his ghetto in the way that Irish, Italian, Jewish and Polish immigrants escaped from their ghettos 50 years ago. And from that point on, I no longer needed a gun nor have I been afraid. In fact, American Negroes have greater collective buying power than Canada, greater than all four of the Scandinavian countries combined. There is also the violence of having to live in a community and pay higher consumer prices for goods or higher rent for equivalent housing than are charged in the white areas of the city. In fact, most of our concrete accomplishments have been limited largely to the South. This is not a nation of venal people. Before 1964, things were getting better economically for the Negro; but after that year, things began to take a turn for the worse. Page: 736. The great revolutionary leader died before victory was fully achieved. It has seemed amazingly devoid of statesmanship; and when creative statesmanship wanes, irrational militarism increases. We have confronted the Southern racist power structure and we have elected Negro and liberal white candidates through much of the South in the past ten years. In society at large, abrasion between the races is far more evident—but the hostility was always there. It reveals systemic rather than superficial flaws and suggests that radical reconstruction of society itself is the real issue to be faced. As the human rights movement becomes more confident and aggressive, more nonviolently active, many of these emotional and intellectual problems will be resolved in the heat of battle, and we will not ask what is our neighbor’s color but whether he is a brother in the pursuit of racial justice. In our efforts to dispel this atmosphere of violence in this country, we cannot afford to overlook the root cause of the riots. Nonviolence. But the American economy today is radically different. Together, these many documents offer insights into the life and philosophy of a giant of the civil rights movement in the United States. One of the most basic of these realities was pointed out by the President’s Riot Commission, which observed that the nature of the American economy in the late 19th and early 20th Centuries made is possible for the European immigrants of that time to escape from poverty. It hardly needs to be said that solutions to these critical problems are overwhelmingly urgent. All-black organizations are a reflection of that alienation—but they are only a contemporary way station on the road to freedom. Yet the largest part of white America is still poisoned by racism, which is as native to our soil as pine trees, sagebrush and buffalo grass. The anarchy of unplanned city growth was destined to confound our confidence. This green off-hand frill of item level 61 goes in the "Held In Off-hand" slot. 1991. The comfortable, the entrenched, the privileged cannot continue to tremble at the prospect of change in the status quo. 5. They still had a sense of inferiority; and not until they were bolstered by the presence of our staff and given reassurance of their political power and the rightness of their cause and the justness of their grievances were they able and willing to sit down and talk to the police chief and the city manager about the conditions that had produced the riot. I’m sure that most whites felt that with the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, all race problems were automatically solved. His words and deeds continue to shape the … He sees in the military uniform a symbol of dignity that has long been denied him by society. It said right would triumph. A Testament of Hope von King, Martin Luther - Jetzt online bestellen portofrei schnell zuverlässig kein Mindestbestellwert individuelle Rechnung 20 Millionen Titel frankenstein depression night perseverance south park overpopulation human rights discourse community argumentative translation fsu penn state university marijuana advertisement analysis profile. And white people are sadly unaware how routinely and frequently this occurs. How can you expect anything but disillusionment and bitterness? Men of the white West, whether or not they like it, have grown up in a racist culture, and their thinking is colored by that fact. But I think a great many white liberals outside S.C.L.C. When we replace the rabidly segregationist chairman of the Armed Services Committee with a man of good will, when our ambassadors reflect a creative and wholesome interracial background, rather than a culture heritage that is a conglomeration of Texas and Georgia politics, then we will be able to bring about a qualitative difference in the nature of American foreign policy. Each will require billions of dollars to correct. This content was created by a Daily Kos Community member. Naïve and unsophisticated though we may be, the poor and despised of the 20th Century will revolutionize this era. Jesus of Nazareth wrote no books; he owned no property to endow him with influence. But the Negro community cannot win this victory alone; indeed, it would be an empty victory even if the Negroes could win it alone. Another theory to justify violent revolution is that rioting enables Negroes to overcome their fear of the white man. Integration is meaningless without the sharing of power. I think most Americans know in their hearts that their country has been terribly wrong in its dealings with other peoples around the world. America seems to have reached this point. A Testament of Hope Summary and Analysis. They are a product of this period of identity crisis and directionless confusion. A Negro who has finished high school often watches his white classmates go out into the job market and earn $100 a week, while he, because he is black, is expected to work for $40 a week. Sign the petition: TRUMP MUST IMMEDIATELY CONCEDE and Congress must ensure he steps down. He often sees the Army as an avenue for educational opportunities and job training. Their voice is still a minority; but united with millions of black protesting voices, it has become a sound of distant thunder increasing in volume with the gathering of storm clouds. Man has the capacity to do right as well as wrong, and his history is a path upward, not downward. We don’t need to look for help from some power outside the boundaries of our country, except in the sense of sympathy and identification. Actually, it’s my guess that the statistics are very, very conservative in this area. Part 5 Historic essays: letter from Birmingham City Jail (1963); black power defined (1965); a testament of hope (1968). Virtually every riot has begun from some police action. When I speak of integration, I don’t mean a romantic mixing of colors, I mean a real sharing of power and responsibility. Category: Religion. President Johnson did respond realistically to the signs of the times and used his skills as a legislator to get bills through Congress that other men might not have gotten through. Still, when doubts emerge, we can remember that only yesterday Negroes were not only grossly exploited but negated as human beings. In the year that marks the 40th anniversary of the victory of the Vietnamese people, let us read the last will and testament of Ho Chi Minh. Search Pages. Free 2-day shipping. This book brings together essays, speeches, sermons, interviews, and excerpts from King's books. (1958); the burning truth in the South (1960); an address before the National Press Club (1962)_; the case against "tokenism": (1962); bold design for a new South (1963); the ethical demands for integration (1963); behind the Selma march (1965). New York is already spending more on its special summer programs than on its year-round poverty efforts, but these are only tentative and emergency steps toward a truly meaningful and permanent solution. But history confirmed his unwavering confidence that it would come. He is vibrantly on the move; he is forcing change, rather than waiting for it in pathetic futility. Any night on any street corner in any Negro ghetto of the country, a nervous policeman can start a riot simply by being impolite or by expressing racial prejudice. There is something stirring us to action — demanding that we trade confusion and bewilderment for a fight for change that only hope and radical optimism can sustain. On these grounds, I must indict the Johnson Administration. Part 2 Philosophy - social - integration: "our struggle" (1956); walk for freedom (1956); the current crisis in race relations (1958); who speaks for the South? And I think that this has led, as Senator Fulbright has said, to such a strengthening of the military-industrial complex of this country that the President now finds himself almost totally trapped by it. A Testament of Hope contains Martin Luther King, Jr.'s essential thoughts on nonviolence, social policy, integration, black nationalism, the ethics of love and hope, and more. They know that life in the city ghetto of life in the rural South almost certainly means jail or death or humiliation. A Testament of Hope The Essential Writings of Martin Luther King Jr. Book Details: A Testament of Hope PDF: The Essential Writings and Speeches of Martin Luther King, Jr. When Rome began to disintegrate from within, it turned to a strengthening of the military establishment, rather than to a correction of the corruption within the society. Even a white mayor such as John Lindsay of New York simply does not have the money and resources to deal with the problems of his city. Our moral values and our spiritual confidence sink, even as our material wealth ascends. Voters decided: Joe Biden will be the next President of the United States! The President’s Riot Commission recommended that funds for summer programs aimed at young Negroes should be increased. I remember that was true when our staff went into Rochester, New York, after the riot of 1964. Document Date 1/1969 Genre In indicting white America for its ingrained and tenacious racism, I am using the term “white” to describe the majority, not all who are white. A Testament of Hope: The Essential Writings and Speeches of Martin Luther King, Jr. is a compilation of writings and speeches from the life of Martin Luther King from his rise to prominence during the 1956 Birmingham, Alabama, bus boycott to an interview given just ten days before his assassination in 1968 and articles published shortly after. I think this problem became most evident when young men and women from elite Northern universities came down to Mississippi to work with the black students at Tougaloo and Rust colleges, who were not quite as articulate, didn’t type quite as fast and were not as sophisticated. And according to a recent Department of Labor statistical report, 24.8 percent of Negro youth are currently unemployed, a statistic that does not include the drifters who avoid the census takers. Relations today are different only in the sense that Negroes are expressing the feelings that were so long muted. Although American Negroes could, if they were in decision-making positions, give aid and encouragement to the underprivileged and disenfranchised people in other lands, I don’t think it can work the other way around. A Testament of Hope is indispensible for a complete understanding of MLK Jr. the man. I can foresee the Negro vote becoming consistently the decisive vote in national elections. So, although in one sense we are neither, in another sense we are both Americans and Africans. Were he a white lawyer, I have no doubt that he would be in a $100,000 job with a major corporation or heading his own independent firm. to. It shines in the long tradition of American ideals that began with courageous minutemen in New England, that continued in the Abolitionist movement, that re-emerged in the Populist revolt and, decades later, that burst fourth to elect Franklin Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy. I have been particularly impressed by the fact that even in the state of Mississippi, where the FBI did a significant training job with the Mississippi police, the police are much more courteous to Negroes than they are in Chicago or New York. Everyone underestimated the amount of violence and rage Negroes were suppressing and the vast amount of bigotry the white majority was disguising. Intelligent men of good will everywhere must see this as their task and contribute to its support. Justice so long deferred has accumulated interest and its cost for this society will be substantial in financial as well as human terms. Of far more significance is the fact that we have learned that the integration of schools does not necessarily solve the inadequacy of schools. Words. All these human-relations problems are complex and related, and it’s very difficult to assign priorities—especially as long as the Vietnam War continues. Spiritually, Negroes identify understandable with Africa, an identification that is rooted largely in our color; but all of us are a part of the white-American world, too. When I decided that, as a teacher of the philosophy of nonviolence, I couldn’t keep a gun, I came face to face with the question of death and I dealt with it. We are doing the same thing in this country and the result will probably be the same—unless, and here I admit to a bit of chauvinism, the black man in America can provide a new soul force for all Americans, a new expression of the American dream that need not be realized at the expense of other men around the world, but a dream of opportunity and life that can be shared with the rest of the world. Ultimately, there is a larger force at work. Addressing the COVID-19 pandemic, economic well-being, and health care were top priorities during the November election.... Sign the petition to U.S. governors and state election officials: You must continue to count EVERY vote. Part 7 Books: "Stride Towards Freedom" (1958); "The Strength to Love" (1963); "Why We Can't Wait" (1964). There were slaves when it was written; there were still slaves when it was adopted; and to this day, black Americans have not life, liberty nor the privilege of pursuing happiness, and millions of poor white Americans are in economic bondage that is scarcely less oppressive. After all, no other minority has been a constantly, brutally and deliberately exploited. And so, by comparison, military service is really the lesser risk. The Negro knows it, because he works in the white man’s house as a cook or a gardener. Acts chapter 7, Acts chapter 7. But the sullen and silent slave of 110 years ago, an object of scorn at worst or of pity at best, is today’s angry man. What is unique to this period is our inability to arrange an order of priorities that promises solutions that are decent and just. An exhaustive collection of the speeches, writings, and interviews with the Nobel Prize-winning activist. Martin Luther King Jr. published in. Unfortunately, many white people think that we merely “reward” a rioter by taking positive action to better his situation. Black men have slammed the door shut on a past of deadening passivity. In these trying circumstances, the black revolution is much more than a struggle for the rights of Negroes. Everything in our traditions said this kind of injustice was the system of the past or of other nations. Yet very few cities have really faced up to this problem and tried to do something about it. Publisher: Harper Collins. I believe there is an important place in our struggle for white liberals and I hope that their present estrangement from our movement is only temporary. Author: Martin Luther King. I think that the place to start, however, is in the area of human relations, and especially in the area of community-police relations. Author King, Martin Luther, Jr. Place Written Chicago, Ill. Obviously, something desperately needs to be done to correct this. If we don’t, our society will crumble. Except for the Reconstruction years, they have never in their long history on American soil struggled with such creativity and courage for their freedom. Conditions and needs vary greatly in different sections of the country. Dr. King's final essay, A Testament of Hope was also published posthumously in this issue for the first time. DARKNESS CANNOT DRIVE OUT DARKNESS: ONLY LIGHT CAN DO THAT. I think it is significant that there are no Federal referees at all in the home districts of the most powerful Southern Senators—particularly Senators Russell, Eastland and Talmadge. 17 and I Peter 3. The fact that most white people do not comprehend this situation—which prevails in the North as well as in the South—is due largely to the press, which molds the opinions of the white community. [1] Today it's available here. There are now even Negro deputy sheriffs in such black-belt areas as Dallas County, Alabama. In the larger sense, police must cease being occupation troops in the ghetto and start protecting its residents. But the changes are basically in the social and political areas; the problems we now face—providing jobs, better housing and better education for the poor throughout the country—will require money for their solution, a fact that makes those solutions all the more difficult. A Testament of Hope. The Great Society has become a victim of the war. But when the door began to close on the few avenues of progress, then hopeless despair began to set in. Martin Luther King Jr. was a deeply religious man and his belief guided his work. (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication. A Testament of Hope - King Jr., Martin Luther. Hier sollte eine Beschreibung angezeigt werden, diese Seite lässt dies jedoch nicht zu. I don’t think there is a single major insurance company that hires Negro lawyers. I honestly feel that a man without racial blinders—or, even better, a man with personal experience of racial discrimination—would be in a a much better position to make policy decisions and to conduct negotiations with the underprivileged and emerging nations of the world (or even with Castro, for that matter) than would an Eisenhower or a Dulles. It is a quest reward from The Restless Souls. The kind of house a man lives in, along with the quality of his employment, determines, to a large degree, the quality of his family life. Ultimately, there is a larger force at work. The book consists of 57 selections from King's books, essays,sermons, speeches, and interviews, all of which work to give a broad picture of the thinking and accomplishments of this great American civil rights leader. They have no comprehension of the strength that comes from faith in God and man. Many of them go into the Army risking death, in order that they might have a few of the human possibilities of life. We must simply fight at both the local and the national levels to gain as much community control as possible over the poverty program. For much of the fervent idealism of the white liberals has been supplemented recently by a dispassionate recognition of some of the cold realities of the struggle for that justice. Negro soldiers returning from World War One were met with race riots, job discrimination and continuation of the bigotry that they had experienced before. There is only one possible explanation for this situation, and that is the racist blindness of city planners. Many whites who concede that Negroes should have equal access to public facilities and the untrammeled right to vote cannot understand that we do not intend to remain in the basement of the economic structure; they cannot understand why a porter or a housemaid would dare dream of a day when his work will be more useful, more remunerative and a pathway to rising opportunity.