Address at Freedom Riders Rally at First Baptist Church

Author: King, Martin Luther, Jr.

Date: May 21, 1961

Location: Montgomery, Ala.

Genre: Speech

Topic: Freedom Rides

Nonviolence

Details

On 14 May two buses carrying thirteen freedom riders departed from Atlanta bus terminals for Alabama. One bus, carrying eight riders, was firebombed in Anniston, while the other five riders were attacked as they tried to enter the bus terminal in Birmingham.¹ Despite the violence, the freedom riders voted to soldier on and continue the next leg of the trip from Birmingham to Montgomery; however, they could not find a bus driver willing to take them. Realizing that it might be days before they could leave Birmingham, the riders decided to fly to New Orleans instead. A mob of angry whites greeted the riders at the airport, and the flight was eventually canceled after bomb threats. A day after first arriving in Birmingham, a majority of the riders reluctantly agreed to end the Freedom Ride.²

Diane Nash and students from the Nashville student movement vowed to resume the campaign and organized volunteers to participate. After some setbacks, the new group of freedom riders arrived in Montgomery on 20 May and was attacked by a mob of segregationists.³ King canceled his scheduled engagement at Dartmouth College and went to Montgomery to address a mass meeting in support of the freedom riders at Ralph Abernathy’s First Baptist Church.⁴ By the time the formal program began at 8:00 PM, a mob of several hundred surrounded the church, trapping freedom riders and their supporters inside and vandalizing automobiles and buildings.⁵ In the following draft of his speech, King declares the violence against protesters “comparable to the tragic days of Hitler’s Germany,” stressing that the “ultimate responsibility for the hideous action in Alabama” must “be placed at the doorsteps” of Alabama governor John Patterson. King urges his audience to heed the “magnificence” of the freedom riders’ nonviolent example and to “continue to be strong spiritual anvils that will wear out many a physical hammer.” No complete recording of King’s remarks are extant, but news coverage of the rally indicates King gave a version of this address.⁶

The words that I will utter tonight were written this morning as I flew at an altitude of 38,000 feet on a jet plane from New York to Atlanta, Georgia. As that giganic instrument stretched its wings through the air like an eagle and moved smoothly toward its destination, many thoughts ran through my mind. On the one hand I thought of how the technological developments of the United States had brought the nation and the world to an awe-inspiring threshold of the future. I thought of how our scientific genius had helped us to drawf the distance and place time in chains. I thought of how we had carved highways through the stratosphere, and how our jet planes had compressed in to minute distances that once took days. On the other hand I thought of that brutal mob in Alabama and the reign of terror that had engulfed Anniston, Birmingham and Montgomery. I thought of the tragic expressions of man’s inhumanity to man that still exist in certain sections of our country. I could not help being concerned about this glaring contrast, this tragic gulf. Through our scientific and technological developments we have lifted our heads to the skys and yet our feet are still firmly planted in the muck of barbarism and racial hatred. Indeed this is America’s chief moral dilemma. And unless the Nation grapples with this dilemma forthrightly and firmly, she will be relegated to a second rate power in the world. The price that America must pay for the continued oppression of the Negro is the price of its own destruction. America’s greatest defense against communism is to take the offense for justice, freedom, and human dignity.

The Freedom Ride grew out of a recognition of the American delimma and a desire to bring the nation to a realization of its noble dream. We are all deeply indebted to CORE for this creative idea. These courageous freedom riders have faced ugly and howling mobs in order to arouse the dozing conscience of the nation. Some of them are now hospitalized as a result of physical injury. They have accepted blows without retaliation. One day all of America will be proud of their achievements.

Over the past few days Alabama has been the scene of a literal reign of terror. It has sunk to a level of barbarity comparable to the tragic days of [Adolf] Hitler’s Germany.⁷

Now who is responsible for this dark night of terror in Alabama? Certainly the mob itself must be condemned. When people sink to such a low level of hatred and evil that they will beat unmercifully non-violent men and women, they should be apprehended and prosecuted on the basis of the crime they have committed.⁸ But the ultimate responsibility for the hideous action in Alabama last week must be placed at the doorsteps of the Governor of this State. His consistent preaching of defiance of the law, his vitriolic public pronouncements, and his irresponsible actions created the atmosphere in which violence could thrive.⁹ When the governor of a atate will urge people to defy the Law of the Land, and teach them to disrespect the Supreme Court, he is consciously and unconsciously aiding and abetting the forces of violence.

Among the many sobering lessons that we can learn from the events of the past week is that the deep South will not impose limits upon itself. The limits must be imposed from without. Unless the Federal Goernment acts forthrightly in the South to assure every citizen his constitutional rights, we will be plunged into a dark abyss of chaos. The federal government must not stand idly by while blood thirsty mobs beat non-violent students with impunity.

The familiar cry of state rights will certainly come up at this time. The South will argue that Federal intervention is an invasion of the Rights of States. We must answer this argument by making it clear that we too believe in State Rights. We are committed to Jeffersonian democracy and would not want to see a complete centralization of government. But although States must have Rights, no State must have the right to do wrong. We must not allow state wrongs to exist under the banner of State Rights. To deny individuals the right to vote through threats, intimidations and other insidious methods is not a State Right, But a State Wrong. To trample over a people with the iron feet of economic exploitation is not a State Right, but a State Wrong. To keep a group of people confined to nasty slums and dirty hovels is not a State Right, but a State Wrong. To confine certain citizens to segregated schools and deprive them of an equal education is a State Wrong moving under the guise of a State Right. To allow hooded perpetrators of violence and vicious mobs to beat, kick and even kill people who only want to be free is a State Wrong without one scintilla of right. We are for State Rights when they are Right.

The other familiar cry that we will hear is that freedom riders, the federal government and no other agency can force integration upon the South. Morals, they argue, cannot be legislated.

To this we must answer it may be true that morals cannot be legislated, but behavior can be regulated. It may be true that laws and federal action cannot change bad internal attitudes, but they can control the external effects of those internal attitudes. The law may not be able to make a man love me, but it can keep him from lynching me. The fact is that the habits, if not the hearts of men have been, and are being changed everyday by federal action.

The recent developments in Alabama should challenge us more than ever before to delve deeper into the struggle for freedom in this State. There must be a full scale non-violent assault on the system of segregation in Alabama. In a few days I will call a meeting of the executive board of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference to map plans for a massive campaign to end segregation in Alabama.¹⁰ This will include an intensified voter registration drive, a determined effort to integrate the public schools, lunch counters, public parks, theaters etc. In short, we will seek to mobilize thousands of people, committed to the method of non-violence, who will physically identify themselves with the struggle to end segregation in Alabama. We will present our physical bodies as instruments to defeat the unjust system.

We cannot in all good conscience sit complacently while Alabama has no respect for law and order and while it continues to impose upon the Negro the most inhuman form of oppression. We must stand up now not for ourselves alone, but in order to carry our nation back to those great wells of democracy which were dug deep by the founding fathers in the formulation of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence. If Alabama continues to follow its present course of defiance, lawlessness, and Hitlerism, the image of the United States will be irreparable scarred and the results may be fatal in terms of our national survival.

As I close may I strongly urge you to continue to follow the path of non-violence. The freedom riders have given us a magnificence example of strong courageous action devoid violence. This I am convinced is our most creative way to break loose for the paralyzing shackles of segregation. As we intensify our efforts in Alabama, Mississippi, and the deep South generally, we will face difficult days. Angry passions of the opposition will be aroused. Honesty impells me to admit that we are in for a season of suffering. I pray that recognizing the necessity of suffering we will make of it a virtue. To suffer in a righteous cause is to grow to our humanity’s full stature. If only to save ourselves, we need the vision to see the ordeals of this generation as the opportunity to transform ourselves and American society.

So in the days ahead let us not sink into the quicksands of violence; rather let us stand on the high ground of love and non-injury. Let us continue to be strong spiritual amvils that will wear out many a physical hammer.

^1. “Buses of ‘Freedom Riders’ Burned and Stoned in South,” New York Herald Tribune, 15 May 1961; “Bus is Burned, Young Negro Beaten in Separate Alabama Race Clashes,” Washington Post, 15 May 1961; and Genevieve Hughes, “Freedom Ride Report,” 15 May 1961.

^2. “Bi-Racial Group Cancels Bus Trip,” New York Times, 16 May 1961; James Peck, Freedom Ride (New York: Grove Press, 1962), pp. 100–101. Justice Department official John Seigenthaler arranged for a flight to take the riders to New Orleans in time for the 17 May rally to commemorate the seventh anniversary of the Brown decision (Seigenthaler, Interview with William Finger and Jim Tramel, 24, 26 December 1974; Simeon Booker, “Jet Team Braves Mob Action 4 Times within 2-Day Period,” Jet, 1 June 1961).

^3. The new group left Nashville on 17 May for Montgomery, and upon their arrival in Birmingham, they were arrested by commissioner of public safety Theophilus Eugene “Bull” Connor. Late the following evening, Connor and the other policemen drove the riders to the Tennessee-Alabama border and ordered them out of the car. The next morning riders were picked up by sit-in leader Leo Lillard, who immediately drove them back to Birmingham by car (John Lewis and Michael D’Orso, Walking with the Wind: A Memoir of the Movement [New York: Harcourt Brace & Company, 1998], pp. 147–154; Howard Zinn, SNCC: The New Abolitionists [Boston: Beacon Press, 1964], pp. 44–45). After intense negotiations between the Kennedy administration and local and state officials in Montgomery, the riders left Birmingham on 20 May under heavy guard provided by local and state police. Although FBI officials had alerted Montgomery police of the group’s planned arrival, local officials arrived at the bus station too late to protect the riders (Memo to Byron R. White, 20 May 1961). Montgomery police commissioner L. B. Sullivan explained the delay, saying “we have no intention of standing guard for a bunch of troublemakers coming into our city and making trouble” (“Freedom Riders Attacked by Whites in Montgomery,” New York Times, 21 May 1961). Seigenthaler and freedom riders John Lewis, William Barbee, and Jim Zwerg were among at least twenty people injured by the mob (“Freedom Riders Attacked by Whites in Montgomery,” 21 May 1961; Don Martin, “U.S. Official Is Knocked Unconscious,” Washington Post, 21 May 1961).

^4. “Dr. King Cancels Visits at College, Returns to South for Race Crisis; Tension Increases in Montgomery,” The Dartmouth, 22 May 1961. The mass meeting was sponsored by the Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA) and included addresses by King, S. S. Seay, and James Farmer (MIA, Program, “Salutes the ‘freedom riders,’” 21 May 1961).

^5. “Rampaging Mob Stirs Governor into Action,” Montgomery Advertiser, 22 May 1961; Stuart H. Loory, “Marshals’ Tear Gas Stops Mob of 1,000 at a Negro Church,” New York Herald Tribune, 22 May 1961.

^6. “Rampaging Mob Stirs Governor into Action,” 22 May 1961; “Stop Violence, Tensions, President Kennedy Urges,” Atlanta Daily World, 23 May 1961.

^7. After the riders were attacked in Alabama, King sent telegrams to Governor Patterson and Attorney General Kennedy, denouncing “the disgraceful and unprovoked violence … inflicted upon interstate passengers and the failure of law enforcement officials to give adequate protection reeks of Hitlerism” (SCLC, Press release, “Freedom riders attacked in Alabama,” 15 May 1961).

^8. Birmingham and Montgomery police arrested several men for their role in the bus bombing and mob violence. The Justice Department charged ten men for bombing the bus in Anniston: Frank Tolbert, 54; Frank B. Johnson, 42; Dalton L. Roberts, 42; Kenneth Adams, 41; William Chappell, 40; Jerome Byron Couch, 25; Jerry Willingham, 23; Jerry Ronald Eason, 23; Cecil L. Lewallyn, 22; and Roger Dale Couch, 19. Eight of the ten men went on trial in October 1961, but the trial ended in a hung jury. Before the men could be tried again, six plead guilty and received a year of probation. One of the men, Roger Dale Couch, was already in jail on a burglary conviction and was sentenced to a year and a day to be served concurrently with his burglary sentence. Of the remaining four men, Roberts was arrested but not indicted by a grand jury, Adams and Tolbert were freed for lack of evidence, and Lewallyn was indicted by a federal Grand Jury, but he was never tried because of severe injuries sustained in an automobile accident in August 1961 (“Bus Burning Trial Tomorrow,” Birmingham Post-Herald, 30 October 1961; Tommy Hill, “Jury Weighs Bus Burning at Anniston,” Birmingham News, 3 November 1961; “Six Guilty in Bus Burning,” Birmingham News, 16 January 1962). Six men were arrested for the violence at the Trailways bus station in Birmingham: Jesse Thomas Faggard, 48; Jesse H. Thompson, 47; Melvin Dove, 40; Herschel W. Acker, 30; Howard Thurston Edwards, 32; and Jesse Oliver Faggard, 20. Jesse Thomas Faggard, Thompson, Dove, and Jesse Oliver Faggard were sentenced to thirty days in jail and fined twenty-five dollars, and Edwards and Acker were acquitted (“Three Get Jail Terms in City Race Riot Case,” Birmingham News, 13 July 1961; “Defendant Acquitted Here in Racial Violence Case,” Birmingham News, 29 November 1961; Lou Isaacson, “Jury Here Clears Suspect in Beating,” Birmingham News, 14 September 1961). Claude Henley, 37, was charged with assault and battery for the attack on two reporters at the Greyhound bus station in Montgomery. Henley, convicted, was ordered to pay a hundred dollar fine (“Arrest in Montgomery,” New York Times, 24 May 1961; “Henley Pays Fine following ‘Freedom Rider’ Clash Here,” Montgomery Advertiser, 13 February 1962).

^9. On 17 May, Patterson threatened future freedom riders with arrest and said, “we can’t act as nursemaids to agitators. They’ll stay at home when they learn nobody is there to protect them. The state of Alabama can’t guarantee safety of fools, and that’s what they are” (Bob Ingram, “Patterson Vows Arrest for Integration Testers,” Montgomery Advertiser, 18 May 1961).

^10. On 26 May 1961 King and eight others, including Gordon Carey, Kelly Miller Smith, Metz Robbins, Constance Curry, Edward King, Len Holt, A. D. King, and James Wood, gathered at Ebenezer to discuss ways to “intensify the Freedom Ride so that national public attention can be brought to examine the denial of legal rights of interstate travellers.” At the meeting, the group organized the Freedom Ride Coordinating Committee, which consisted of four members: Gordon Carey of CORE; Wyatt Tee Walker of SCLC; Diane Nash of the Nashville Christian Leadership Council; and Edward King of SNCC. The committee assumed responsibility for recruiting freedom riders, scheduling and coordinating trips, and raising funds for transportation and legal costs (James R. Wood, SCLC, Report on meeting of the Freedom Ride Coordinating Committee, 26 May 1961).

Source: MLKJP-GAMK, Martin Luther King, Jr. Papers (Series I–IV), Martin Luther King, Jr., Center for Nonviolent Social Change, Inc., Atlanta, Ga.