“The Dilemma and the Challenge Facing the Negro Today,” Address Delivered at Zion Hill Baptist Church
Author: King, Martin Luther, Jr.
Date: June 17, 1962?
Location: Los Angeles, Calif.
Genre: Speech
Topic: Martin Luther King, Jr. - Political and Social Views
Details
At the end of a whirlwind speaking tour through Southern California, King addressed a packed audience on the challenges African Americans face in obtaining racial equality.1 Using a personal anecdote to demonstrate the effects of segregation, King admits struggling for words when his six-year-old daughter, Yolanda, asked to go to Funtown, a segregated amusement park in Atlanta.2 “I’d been speaking across the country, talking about segregation and discrimination” for years, King said, but “I didn’t know how to explain it.” With his wife at his side, King explains: “Yoki, even though you can’t go to Funtown, I want you to know that you are as good as anybody who goes into Funtown.”
Shifting his focus from the South to Los Angeles, King urges the audience to reject “token” integration, insisting that “we want all of our rights; we want them here; and we want all of them not next year, not next week, but we want them now, at this hour.” The ballot box, King says, is “one of the most significant steps” African Americans can take to rid the community of housing and employment discrimination and police brutality, an issue highlighted by the April murder of Los Angeles Nation of Islam (NOI) leader Ronald Stokes.3 In closing, King warns those who have become “psychologically” defeated not to turn to racial separatism: “Black supremacy is as dangerous as white supremacy.”4 He adds: “God is interested in the freedom of the whole human race and the creation of a society where all men will live together as brothers.” The following transcript is taken from an audio recording of the event.
I think this is the last public appearance that I will make on this brief visit to the state of California and the city of Los Angeles. And I want to say on this last public appearance something that I have been saying on platforms over the last two days—and this happens to be I think the tenth speech that I have made since I landed in Los Angeles last Friday afternoon. But I have said, as I have gone from platform to platform and the various areas of this community, that I always come to California with a great sense of belonging and a great sense of appreciation because I am sure that the state of California has given more financial and moral support to the Southern struggle in general and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in particular than any other state in the United States. [applause] We will remain eternally grateful to you for this, for this type of consistent rapport, support is of inestimable value for the continuance of our humble efforts. I want to thank these ministers of the gospel for the leadership that they are giving in this community at this significant hour, and I want to thank them for the support that they have given us in our work in the South. I want to thank Dr. Chambers, my good friend, for opening the doors of his church and making it possible for us to meet here this afternoon.5
There are many things I’m sure that one could say coming up from the Deep South, coming up from the front line of the struggle for freedom and justice in the South, but I would like to try to develop what I have to say this afternoon by using as a subject “The Dilemma and the Challenge Facing the Negro Today.” The dilemma and the challenge facing the Negro today. You will remember that it was in the year of 1619 when the first Negro slaves landed on the shores of this nation. They were brought here from the soils of Africa, and the Negro lived amid this system of slavery for 244 years. For all of these years, he was a thing to be used, not a person to be respected. And even after slavery ended, the Negro discovered that he was confronting a new type of slavery because racial segregation is nothing but slavery covered up with certain niceties of complexity. [Audience:] (Yeah, Yeah, Yes, Yeah) And so the Negro lived with physical slavery 244 years [whistle], and he has been a victim of racial segregation for almost one hundred years.
Now the Negro’s dilemma is this and it’s a serious dilemma. In spite of the fact that we have been victims of slavery for 244 years, in spite of the fact that we have lived with segregated conditions for one hundred years, the demands of history require that we be as productive, as resourceful, and as responsible as the people who never had these disadvantages. (Right, Yeah, Yeah, Right) Here we are, as a people, having experienced political domination, economic exploitation, segregation, and humiliation for well now 344 years, and yet the demands of history make it necessary for us to be as productive and as responsible as the people who never had these experiences. This is our dilemma. (Go on) He who gets behind in a race must forever remain behind or run faster than the man in front. (Go on) This is our dilemma. (Yeah, Yeah, Yeah)
But this dilemma is at one and the same time a great challenge. We are challenged to mobilize our resources and to mobilize all of the constructive forces that we can muster to make a creative contribution in the life of our nation. And I would like to suggest this afternoon some of the things that we must do to grapple with this dilemma and meet the challenge of the hour.
I would like to say first that we must develop and maintain a sense of dignity and self-respect. (Yeah, Yeah, Yeah, Yeah) [applause] We must [applause], we must not allow anybody or any force to make us feel that we do not count. We must believe in our souls that we are somebody (Amen, Right), that we are significant (Yeah), that we are worthful. (Yeah) And we must walk the streets of life every day with this sense of dignity and this sense of somebody-ness. (Yeah, Yeah, Yeah) [applause]
Now, I know that this has often been difficult because we have lived with so many conditions that told us that we were nobody. (Yeah, Right) Segregation does this, and one of the things that the Supreme Court said in its decision of 1954 was that segregation generates a feeling of inferiority within the segregated.6 (That’s right) And this is what this system does. But every parent must remind his or her child, every minister of the gospel must remind his congregation (All right), every Negro must remind his neighbor, his brother, and his sister (Yeah) that we are God’s children (That’s right, That’s right, Amen), and that every man from a bass black to a treble white is significant on God’s keyboard (Yeah, Amen, Amen) that nobody is to make us feel that we are nobody.
This is what the old slave preacher used to do. He didn’t always have his grammar right. He had never heard of Plato and Aristotle. He would never have understood [Albert] Einstein’s theory of relativity. But he knew God, and he knew that the God that he worshiped (Yeah, Yeah, Amen) was not a God that would subject some of his children and exalt the others. (All right) And so he looked at his black brothers and sisters and said, “You ain’t no niggers. (No) You ain’t no slaves. But you’re God’s children.” (Yeah, That’s right, That’s right) And this gave them a new sense of dignity and a new sense of somebody-ness. And in the midst of the darkness of slavery, they had a bit of hope, as expressed, as is expressed in many of the beautiful spirituals that have come down to us. And we must continue to do this, to get over this idea that we do count. We must have this sense of dignity and this sense of self-respect.
I came to see something of what this system does to us more than ever before just a few weeks ago. God has blessed our home with three little children. We have a daughter six years old, a son, four, and another son, eighteen months.7 My little daughter loves to ride to the airport with me. She says to me so often, “Daddy, you just go over and over and over again.” [laughter] And so one of the ways she consoles herself in the fact that her daddy has to be away so much is to ride to the airport whenever I’m going in or coming back into town or going out of town, and she can do it if she isn’t in school. And as we pass on the expressway going to the airport in Atlanta, we pass by what is known as Funtown. Now this is an amusement center where little children go to play and where they go for recreation, something like Disneyland and something like the very fine amusement centers across the country for young people. And as we pass Funtown so often in the car, she would look over to me and say, “Daddy, I want to go to Funtown.”
Well, I could always evade the question when we were going by in the automobile because we were passing by and I could jump to another subject. And I didn’t want to have to tell my little daughter that she couldn’t go to Funtown because of the color of her skin. (That’s right) But then the other day, we were at home, and like most children, she likes to look at television, and she was looking at television, and they were advertising Funtown, and she ran downstairs and said, “Daddy, you know I’ve been telling you I want to go to Funtown, and they were just talking about Funtown on the television, and I want you to take me to Funtown.” And, oh, I stood there speechless. How could I explain to a little six-years-old girl that she couldn’t go to Funtown because she was colored? (Go ahead) I’d been speaking across the country, talking about segregation and discrimination, and I thought I could answer most of the questions that came up, but I was speechless for the moment. I didn’t know how to explain it.
Then I said to myself, I’ve got to face this problem once and for all. And I took her and called over—my wife was sitting on the other side of the table—and I took my little daughter and told her to have a seat on my knees. And she jumped up in my lap, and I looked at her, and I said, “Yolanda, we have a problem.” Said, “You know, some people don’t do the right things, and they are misguided. And so they have developed a system where white people go certain places and colored people go certain places.” And I said, “They have Funtown like that, so that they don’t allow colored children to go to Funtown.”
And then I looked at her at that point because I didn’t want her to develop a sense of bitterness. I didn’t want her to grow up with a sense of hatred and bitterness in her heart, and so I had to rush on and say, “But now, all white people aren’t like this. There are some white people right here in Atlanta who would like for you to go to Funtown, and there are some all over the country who are right on this issue. (Yeah, That’s right) And still, there are those who have been misguided.” (Yeah) And then I looked down into her eyes, and I said to her at that point, and I saw tears flowing from her eyes at that point, I said, “Yoki, even though you can’t go to Funtown, I want you to know that you are as good as anybody who goes into Funtown. (Yes) [applause] And I want you to know, Yoki, that some of us are working hard every day to get Funtown open and to get many other places open. And I say to you that in the not too distant future, Funtown and every other town will be open to all of God’s children [applause] because we’re going to work for it.” (Yes) [applause]
I only give this illustration to say that it is often difficult for us to have this sense of dignity and this self-respect because we live every day with a system glaring us in the face, saying you are less than, you are not equal to. But in the midst of that we must know that we do count, that we are somebody. (Yes, Yes) And we must be able to cry out, even if it’s unconsciously, with the eloquent poet:
Fleecy locks and black complexion
Cannot forfeit nature’s claim;
Skin may differ, but affection
Dwells in black and white the same. (Yeah, Yeah)
Were I so tall as to reach the pole
Or to grasp the ocean at a span,
I must be measured by my soul,
The mind is the standard of the man.8 (Right)
We must believe this (Yeah) [applause], and we must live by this. [applause]
Now, another thing that we must do is something that I’ve mentioned to you before. I know I’ve mentioned it in California before. If we are going to grapple with this dilemma and at the same time meet the challenge, we must work hard and with determination to achieve excellence (That’s right) in our various fields of endeavor. (That’s right) Doors are opening now that were not opened in the past. We were just speaking about, Dr. Chambers was just mentioning the fact that even here in your city hall, new opportunities have opened within the last few months.9 And this will be even greater all over the United States: doors will be opening that have not been opened in the past to Negroes. And the great challenge that we face is to be ready to enter these doors when they open. (Yeah, That’s right, Amen) [applause] Ralph Waldo Emerson [applause], Ralph Waldo Emerson said in a lecture back in 1871 that if a man can write a better book or preach a better sermon or make a better mousetrap than his neighbor, even if he builds his house in the woods, the world will make a beaten path to his door.10 (Yeah, Amen) This will become increasingly true. That means that we’re going to have to work hard. We’re going to have to burn the midnight oil sometimes. We’re going to have to take advantage of new opportunities.
But we must set out to do our life’s work so well that nobody could do it better. (That’s right, That’s right) We must set out to do a good job. (Yes) And we must not seek merely to do a good Negro job. If you are setting out to be merely a good Negro doctor or a good Negro lawyer, a good Negro teacher, a good Negro preacher or a good Negro skilled laborer, a good Negro barber, a good Negro beautician, you have already flunked your matriculation exam for entrance into the university of integration. (That’s right) [applause] We must get ready. [applause]
We must set out to do a good job (Amen) and to do that job so well that the living, the dead, or the unborn couldn’t do it better. (That’s right, Yeah) As I’ve said so often, if it falls your lot to be a street sweeper (Yes), go on out and sweep streets like Michelangelo carved marble (Yes), sweep streets like Raphael painted pictures (That’s it), sweep streets like Beethoven composed music, and like Shakespeare wrote poetry. (That’s right) Sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will have to pause and say, “Here lived a great street sweeper who swept his job well.”11 [applause] This is it. [applause] If you can’t be a pine on the top of the hill, be a scrub in the valley, but be the best little scrub on the side of the rill. (Yeah) Be a bush if you can’t be a tree. (Yes) If you can’t be a highway, just be a trail. (Yes) If you can’t be the sun, be a star (Preach), for it isn’t by size that you win or you fail—be the best of whatever you are.12 [applause] (Yes, That’s it) And if we will do this, we will grapple with our dilemma (Yes sir), and we will meet the challenge of this hour. (I hope)
I would like to suggest another thing. We must develop and maintain a keen sensitivity to the social evils of the world today. (Yeah) There are three major social evils alive in our world today. One is the evil of war, the other is the evil of economic injustice, and the third is the evil of racial injustice. My friends, this afternoon let me say to you that we must never adjust to war. Somehow, deep down in our hearts, something should tell us that there’s something wrong with war. (Yes sir, Amen) War is wrong because it ends up stacking up national debts higher than mountains of gold. (Yes sir, Yes sir) War is wrong because it fills our nations with widows and orphans. (Yes sir) War is wrong because it sends men home maimed and mutilated. (Yes sir, Yes sir) War is wrong because it sends men home psychologically deranged and mentally handicapped. (Yes, Yes sir, That’s true) And God has reminded us over and over again through Jesus Christ that man is too precious to die on the battlefields of the world. And I don’t know about you, but I will never cease reminding this nation and the world that war is wrong. (Yes sir, Yes, Yes sir, Amen) And in a day when Sputniks and Explorers are dashing through outer space, and guided ballistic missiles are carving highways of death through the stratosphere (Yes), no nation can win a war. (Amen) It is no longer a choice between violence and nonviolence; it is either nonviolence or nonexistence. (That’s right) And the alternative to disarmament, the alternative to suspension of nuclear tests, the alternative to strengthening the United Nations and thereby disarming the whole world may well be a civilization plunged into the abyss of annihilation. And I never intend to adjust myself to war. [applause] War is evil. [applause]
Then there is the problem of economic injustice. All over this world, this problem is still alive. It grows out of exploitation. It grows out of taking necessities from the masses to give luxuries to the classes. (That’s true, Right) And I never intend to adjust myself to this. Just last Sunday, I was at the table, the breakfast table with my children and my wife, and after the prayer, I had my usual devotional message with the children and the family, and I said some things that I don’t think they quite understood because they are too young. They did not understand the conditions existing in the world. And I looked across that table and I said, “Yolanda and Marty and Dexter, you are having breakfast this morning, you’re getting ready to eat a nice breakfast. But I want to remind you, and I want you to know that millions of people all over this world went to bed hungry last night. (Yes, That’s true, All right) People in this very nation that you live in will not have a breakfast this morning. But I want you to know that those people are your brothers and your sisters. (Yeah, Absolutely) And I’m going to work, do what I can, to see that you have the proper meals, and I’m going to work to see that you get your education. But I want you to realize that, as you get your education, that there are millions of people who did not have the privilege and the opportunity to get an education, and they are your brothers and your sisters. (Yes) And never get so high that you forget them. [applause] I want you to know that.” [applause]
And I will never adjust myself to economic injustice. (Yes sir, Yes sir) I will never adjust myself to the fact that some people can live in inordinate superfluous wealth while others live in abject, deadening poverty. (That’s right) And I don’t believe God intended it that way. (No) One tenth of 1 percent of the population of this nation controls more than 50 percent of the wealth, and I will say this afternoon or this evening without any hesitation, that there is something wrong with a system where some people can wallow in wealth and others do not have the basic necessities of life. (That’s it) [applause] I’ll say that. (Preach) [applause] And Communism is not the answer to this problem (No it isn’t), for Communism is based on an ethical relativism, a metaphysical materialism, a totalitarianism, and a denial of human freedom which I could never accept. But we can work within the framework of our democracy to make for a better distribution [applause] of wealth. [applause]
Wyatt talked about our trip down in Mississippi.13 And I walked around, in the cotton fields and around the villages in that state, down in what is known as the Delta of Mississippi, and I met hundreds and thousands of people who earn less than seven hundred dollars a year. And I said to myself, “God doesn’t like this. (No indeed) And God didn’t mean for it to be like this.” When I was in India some few years ago, I saw with my own eyes millions of people sleeping on the sidewalks at night.14 They had no beds to sleep in, no houses to go in, and I said to myself, “God doesn’t like this.” (No, No) And I started thinking of the fact that right here in America, we spend more than a million dollars a day to store surplus food. (Yes) And I said to myself, I know where we can store that food free of charge (Yes sir): in the wrinkled stomachs of the millions of people in Asia and Africa, in South America, and in our own nation who go to bed hungry at night. (Yes sir) [applause] And maybe we’ve spent far too much [applause], maybe we’ve spent far too much of our national budget establishing military bases around the world (Yes) rather than bases of genuine concern and understanding.15 (All right)
All I am saying, my friends, is this: that all life is interrelated. (Yeah) We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. And whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly. (Yeah) And no individual in this world can feel that he is divorced or separated from any other individual. We are all tied together. And we must be concerned about economic injustice wherever we see it. (Yeah)
And the third evil in our world is the evil of racial injustice. (All right) We know about this evil, for we have lived with it for all too many years. We knew about it during the days of slavery, when even the Supreme Court back in 1857 said in the Dred Scott decision that the Negro wasn’t a citizen of the United States; he was merely property, subject to the dictates of his owner. It went on to say that the Negro had no rights that the white man was bound to respect.16 We have known about racial injustice. We have known about it through the brutality and viciousness of lynching mobs. We’ve known about it through the voice of a little Emmett C. Till, crying from the mad waters of Mississippi. We’ve known about it (Yeah, All right) through the screaming voice of a little Mack C. Parker being pulled through the streets of Mississippi and taken and lynched.17 We’ve known about it (Yeah, That’s true) because we’ve heard the voice of an old Negro woman, after shopping all day in a downtown store in a Southern city, going up to get a little coffee to drink and a hamburger to eat, only to be told that we don’t serve niggers here. We’ve heard about it (Yes, Yeah, Yes) even in Los Angeles, California. We’ve heard about it in housing discrimination and in employment discrimination. [applause] We’ve heard about it. [applause] (Good Lord, Go on) And I can only say to you this evening, let us never rest (Yeah, No) and be content until all of the walls of segregation and discrimination are torn down. (Yeah, Yes) [applause] And we must make it clear [applause], we must make it clear that we are determined to be free. (Yeah)
We don’t need to utter but three words to tell this nation what we are talking about. They aren’t big words; you don’t need to have a great vocabulary to utter them. You don’t need to have a philosophical bent to grasp them. (No) They are three little words, but we want to let the world know that these words describe what we mean and what we are determined to do about racial injustice. One is the word “all.” We don’t want some of our rights. (That’s right, Come on now) We don’t want a few token handouts here and there. We want (Yeah, Amen) all of our rights. (Amen) [applause] The other word is “here.” There are some people who say that we need to go back to Africa (Yes sir, Yes sir, Yes sir), and then there are some others who tell Negroes in the South to leave the South: you can’t be free, so get out. But down in Alabama and Mississippi and Georgia and South Carolina, we are saying something else now. (Yes sir, Yes sir) We want all of our rights, and we want all of our rights here in Alabama and Mississippi [applause] and South Carolina. (Yeah) [applause] And then there’s a third word; it is the word “now.” [laughter, applause] We are not willing to wait a hundred years for our rights. We are not willing to wait fifty years for what is ours (That’s right, Yes sir) on the basis of the Constitution of this United States and the authority of God himself. (Yes sir, That’s it, All right) No, we are not willing to wait another twenty-five years for our rights. (Yes sir, Yes sir) We can hear voices telling us to slow up. We can hear voices telling us to cool off. (Yes sir) Our only answer in calm, patient term must be that we have cooled off too long, and if we keep cooling off we’ll end up in a deep freeze.18 [laughter, applause] We must go on and say [applause], “Know what we are saying to this nation is that we want all of our rights; we want them here; and we want all of them not next year (Yes), not next week (Yes), but we want them now [applause], at this hour.” [applause] This is what we are saying. [applause]
We must work through the courts, through legislation, through the ballot. This is what we’ve been talking about over these last few meetings: the necessity of registering and the necessity of voting. And this is one of the most significant steps that the Negro can take at this hour (That’s right, That’s right): going to the ballot box. (That’s right) And many of the conditions that exist right here in Los Angeles will be changed. (That’s right, Amen) They tell me that you have a problem of pollut—of police brutality here in Los Angeles. [applause] One of the ways of this problem will be rectified and dealt with is to go out with a determined effort to get the ballot so that you can say to the political leaders of this city, “We are determined that this particular chief of police or this particular person will have to go because (Right) they have not committed [applause] themselves to democracy.” (Yeah) [applause]
These are the things we face, and we must develop a determination. But I would like to give you a warning signal. I’ve tried to talk in militant terms for the last few minutes, but in the midst of this militancy, let us always realize that we don’t have to hate as we try to straighten this situation (No) out. (That’s right, Go ahead) Let us always [applause] realize that we don’t have to become bitter as we try to straighten this situation out. (No, Go ahead, Right) And oh, my friends if there is any one thing that I would like for you to remember this evening, it is the fact that somebody must have some sense in this world. (Yeah) Somebody must have sense enough to meet hate with love. (Yes) Somebody must have sense enough to meet physical force with soul force. (Yes sir, Yes sir, Yes sir, Yes sir) If we will but try this way, we will be able to change these conditions and yet at the same time win the hearts and souls of those who have kept these conditions alive. (Yes, Yes) [applause]
And I know the temptation. [applause] I know the temptation which comes to all of us. We’ve been trampled over so long. (Lord, Jesus) I know the temptation that comes to all of us. We’ve seen the viciousness of lynching mob with our own eyes. We’ve seen police brutality in our own lives. We are still the last hired and the first fired. (Yeah, That’s right) So many doors are closed in our faces and that is a temptation for us to end up bitterness, with bitterness. And I understand these people who have ended up in despair.
I understand why there are some who have been a little misguided, and they’ve ended up feeling that the problem can’t be solved within, and so they talk about racial separation rather than racial integration. I understand their response. I have analyzed it psychologically, and I understand it. But in spite of the fact that I understand it I must say to them in patient terms that that isn’t the way. (No it isn’t) I must say to them in patient terms that black supremacy is as dangerous as white supremacy. (Yeah) [applause] And God is not interested merely [applause], and God is not interested merely in the freedom of black men and brown men and yellow men (Yes sir, Yes sir), but God is interested in the freedom of the whole human race (Yeah) and the creation [applause] of a society where all men will live together as (Yes) brothers. (That’s it)
No, we need not hate. (Yes sir) We need not use violence. (Yes sir) There is another way (Yes sir, Yes sir), a way as old as the insights of Jesus of Nazareth (Go on, Go on, Go on) and as modern as the techniques of Mohandas K. Gandhi. (Go on) There is another way (Yes sir, Well), a way as old as Jesus saying, “Love your enemies (Yeah, Watch out), bless them that curse you (Yes, Yeah), pray for them that despitefully use you.”19 (Yeah, Yeah, Yes sir) And as modern as Gandhi saying through Thoreau, “Noncooperation with evil is as much a moral obligation as is cooperation with good.”20 (That’s right)
There is another way (Yes sir), a way as old as Jesus saying, “Turn the other cheek.” (Yes, Yes) And when he said that, he realized that turning the other cheek might bring suffering sometimes.21 (Yes he did, Yeah) He realized that it may get some home bombed sometimes. (All right) He realized that it may get you stabbed sometimes.22 (Right) He realized that it may get you scarred up sometimes. (Yeah) But he was saying in substance that it is better to go through life with a scarred-up body (Yes) than a scarred-up soul. (Yeah) [applause]
There is another way. [applause] This is what we’ve got to see. [applause] (Preach) And oh, there is a power in this way. (That’s right, Yeah) And if we will follow this way, we will be the participants in a great building process (That’s right) that will make America a new nation. (That’s right, Yes) And we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. This is our challenge. (That’s right) This is the way we must grapple with this dilemma (Yes sir), and we will be a great people. (Yes)
And let us have faith in the future. I know it’s dark sometimes. And I know all of us begin to ask, “How long will we have to live (Go on) with this system?” (Yes sir now) I know all of us are asking, “How long will prejudice blind the visions of men (Yes) and darken their understanding and drive bright-eyed wisdom from her sacred throne? When will wounded justice lying prostrate on the streets of our cities be lifted from this dust of shame to reign supreme among the children of men? Yes, when will the radiant star of hope be plunged against the nocturnal bosom of this lonely night (Well) and pluck from weary souls the manacles of death and the chains of fear? (How long) How long will justice be crucified (Yeah, All right, Preach, Well) and truth buried, how long?” (How long) I can only answer this evening, “Not long.” (Oh, That’s right, Not long)
There’s a little song that we sing in our movement down in the South; I don’t know if you’ve heard it, but it has become the theme song. “We shall overcome (Yeah, That’s right), we shall overcome. Deep in my heart, I do believe (Yeah) we shall overcome.” (Yeah, Yes sir, That’s it) Though I joined hands so often with students and others behind jail bars singing it—“We shall overcome.” (Yes sir, Yeah) Sometimes, we’ve had tears in our eyes when we joined together to sing it (Well), but we still decided to sing it, we shall overcome. (Yes, That’s it, Yes) And oh, before this victory is won some will have to get thrown in jail some more, but we shall overcome. (Yes) Don’t worry about us. Before the victory’s won, some of us will lose jobs, but we shall overcome. (Oh, That’s right, Yes) Before the victory’s won, even some will have to face physical death. (Yes) But if physical death is the price that some must pay (Yes) to free their children from a permanent psychological death (Yes), then nothing shall be more redemptive—we shall overcome. (That’s right, Yes) Before the victory’s won, some will be misunderstood and called bad names and dismissed as rabble-rousers and agitators, but we shall overcome (Yes sir, That’s right), and I’ll tell you why.
We shall overcome because the arc of the moral universe is long (Yes), but it bends toward justice. (All right) We shall overcome because Carlyle is right: “No lie can live forever.”23 (Yes sir, Yeah) We shall overcome because William Cullen Bryant is right (Yes sir, Come on): “Truth crushed to earth, will rise again.”24 (Come on, Yes sir, That’s right) We shall overcome because James Russell Lowell is right: “Truth forever on the scaffold/Wrong forever on the throne/Yet that scaffold sways the future, and, behind the dim unknown/Standeth God within the shadow (Come on), keeping watch above his own.”25 (That’s right) We shall overcome because (Preach) the Bible is right (Preach): “You shall reap what you sow.”26 (Yes, Come on) We shall overcome. (That’s right) Deep in my heart, I do believe (Yes) we shall overcome. (Yes) And with this faith (Well) we will go out and adjourn the councils of despair (Yeah, Yes sir) and bring new light into the dark chambers of pessimism. (Yes) And we will be able to rise from the fatigue of despair to the buoyancy of hope, and this will be a great America. We will be the participants in making it so. And so as I leave you this evening, I say, “Walk together children. Don’t you get weary. [applause] There’s a great camp meeting in the Promised Land.”27 (Yeah) [applause]
1. The tour was cosponsored by the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) and the Western Christian Leadership Conference. King arrived in Los Angeles on 15 June and departed the morning of 19 June. California governor Edmund G. Brown, Los Angeles mayor Sam Yorty, and Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors member Kenneth Hahn declared Sunday, 17 June 1962, “Freedom Sunday.” King’s address at Zion Hill climaxed a busy schedule, which included four addresses, one of which was before a large crowd gathered at Bovard Auditorium on the University of Southern California campus (“King Gives Progress Formula: Reveals 3 Simple ‘Wants,’” Los Angeles Sentinel, 21 June 1962).
2. Funtown opened in 1961. Rather than admit an interracial group of teens, the amusement park temporarily closed in June 1963 (Dick Hebert, “Funtown Is Closed by Integration Bid,” Atlanta Constitution, 17 June 1963). During the last half of 1963, Funtown desegregated, and King took his daughter Yolanda to the park: “Pleasantly, word came to me later that Funtown had quietly desegregated, so I took Yolanda. A number of white persons there asked, ‘Aren’t you Dr. King, and isn’t this your daughter?’ I said we were, and she heard them say how glad they were to see us there” (Quoted in Alex Haley, “Playboy Interview: Martin Luther King,” Playboy 12 [January 1965]: 65–68, 70–74, 76–78).
3. On 28 April, Los Angeles police clashed with members of the NOI, resulting in the shooting death of NOI secretary Ronald Stokes and injuries to six other NOI members and three police officers. As a result of the violence, nine NOI members were arraigned on assault charges. The local NAACP and other black leaders claimed that the murder was an act of police brutality and joined the NOI in calling for the removal of chief of police William Parker, who had previously been accused of bias against minorities. Malcolm X, minister of Mosque No. 7 in New York, said in a press conference at the Statler Hilton in Los Angeles on 4 May that the Muslims were unarmed and that the police were guilty of murder. The following day, Stokes was buried (Bill Becker, “Cultists on Coast Denounce Police,” New York Times, 6 May 1962; “Muslim Leader Accuses Police of Murder,” Los Angeles Times, 5 May 1962; “Black Muslims Conduct Rites for Riot Victim,” Los Angeles Times, 6 May 1962).
4. Just two days before King spoke at Zion Hill, a reporter asked him his thoughts on the “Black Muslim religion.” King said: “First I must make it palpably clear that the Black Muslim movement must be distinguished from the religion of Islam, one of the great religions of the world. The Muslim movement, headed by Mr. Muhammed, is not a religion per se. To be sure, it has some religious reference taken from the religion of Islam, but it is primarily a socio-economic movement in a religious frame of reference. Now as far as my attitude towards the Black Muslim movement; I have said many times before, we ought not be so concerned with what they represent, but we must consider the forces and conditions that brought the Muslim movement into existence.” King’s reply disturbed Muslim entertainers Talib Dawud and Dakota Stanton, who felt King’s statement condemned Islam. In an effort to ward off additional misunderstandings, SCLC sent out a press release with King’s entire statement about Black Muslims (SCLC, Press release, Wyatt Tee Walker clarifies statement of Martin Luther King, Jr. regarding Black Muslims, 22 June 1962).
5. Reverend T. M. Chambers (1895–1977) was pastor of Zion Hill Baptist Church and president of the Progressive National Baptist Convention.
6. In Brown v. Board of Education (1954), the Supreme Court unanimously concluded that “to separate [children] from others of similar age and qualifications solely because of their race generates a feeling of inferiority as to their status in the community that may affect their hearts and minds in a way unlikely ever to be undone.”
7. King refers to his daughter, Yolanda Denise, and his sons, Martin Luther III and Dexter Scott.
8. For the first four lines, cf. “The Negro’s Complaint” (1788) by William Cowper, and for the remaining lines, cf. “False Greatness,” Horae Lyricae (1706) by Isaac Watts.
9. Thanks largely to strong support in predominantly black districts, Samuel W. Yorty defeated incumbent C. Norris Poulson in the 1961 Los Angeles mayoral election (Carlton Williams, “Switch in Vote Trends Noted in City Election,” Los Angeles Times, 9 June 1961). In the year following his election, Yorty named six African Americans to the city commission and made public statements decrying racial discrimination in the city’s fire department, the hiring of city employees, and housing (“Poll Reveals Why Negoes Backed Yorty,” Los Angeles Sentinel, 24 August 1961; “Fire Dept. Bias Out—Yorty,” Los Angeles Sentinel, 21 December 1961; “Mayor Pushes Probe of City Job Bias, Upgrading,” Los Angeles Sentinel, 22 March 1962; “Mayor Backs Fair Housing,” Los Angeles Sentinel, 19 April 1962).
10. The source of this quotation, generally attributed to Emerson, is uncertain (see note 6, “Mother’s Day in Montgomery,” 18 May 1956, in Papers 3:266).
11. King once attributed this quotation to Morehouse College president Benjamin Mays (see King, “Facing the Challenge of a New Age,” Address Delivered at NAACP Emancipation Day Rally, 1 January 1957, in Papers 4:79).
12. King paraphrases Douglas Malloch’s poem “Be the Best of Whatever You Are” (1926).
13. Wyatt Tee Walker accompanied King on his trip to California. On 7–9 February 1962, King visited the Mississippi Delta region on a People to People tour. For more on the trip, see King, “People in Action: Pathos and Hope,” 3 March 1962, pp. 419–421 in this volume.
14. King toured India from 9 February–17 March 1959. For more on his trip to India, see Introduction in Papers 5:2–12.
15. King made a similar statement in “The Three Dimensions of a Complete Life” at the Unitarian Church of Germantown on 11 December 1960 (in Papers 5:577).
16. Dred Scott v. Sandford, 60 U.S. 393 (1857).
17. Till, at age fourteen, was murdered in August 1955 for allegedly whistling at a white woman, while Mack Charles Parker was abducted from jail and murdered in April 1959. For more on Parker’s murder, see King to James P. Coleman, 25 April 1959, in Papers 5:190–191.
18. In response to Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy’s request for a cooling off period, CORE executive director James Farmer said: “We’ve had 100 years to cool off and we’re in a deep freeze now” (“Acid Tossed in Face of Freedom Fighter,” Baltimore Afro-American, 12 August 1961).
19. Cf. Matthew 5:44.
20. Cf. M. K. Gandhi, Satyagraha (Ahmadabad: Navajivan Publishing House, 1951), p. 165: “Non-co-operation with evil is as much a duty as co-operation with good”; see also Gandhi, “The Poet’s Anxiety,” Young India, 1 June 1921. In a 12 October 1929 letter to English writer and reformer Henry S. Salt, Gandhi wrote: “My first introduction to Thoreau’s writings was I think in 1907 or later when I was in the thick of passive resistance struggle. A friend sent me Thoreau’s essay on civil disobedience. It left a deep impression upon me” (Gandhi, The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, vol. 41 [Ahmadabad, Navajivan Press, 1970]).
21. Cf. Matthew 5:39.
22. King’s home in Montgomery, Alabama, was bombed on 30 January 1956 (see Introduction in Papers 3:10–11). The following year, segregationists attempted a second bombing of his home, but it failed (see Introduction in Papers 4:6–7). On 20 September 1958 King was stabbed by a mentally deranged woman while signing copies of Stride Toward Freedom in a Harlem department store (see Introduction in Papers 4:34–35).
23. Cf. Thomas Carlyle, The French Revolution (1837), vol. 1, book 6, chap. 3.
24. Cf. William Cullen Bryant, “The Battlefield” (1839), stanza 9.
25. James Russell Lowell, “The Present Crisis” (1844), stanza 8. King’s phrasing closely resembles a sermon by Harry Emerson Fosdick (see note 14, “The Meaning of Easter,” Sermon Delivered at Ebenezer Baptist Church, 22 April 1962, p. 445 in this volume).
26. Cf. Galatians 6:7.
27. King quotes from the spiritual “There’s a Great Camp Meeting.”
Source: MLKEC-INP, Martin Luther King, Jr. Estate Collection.