Martin Luther King, Jr. - Political and Social Views

In this address to executives of the Home Mission Societies of Christian Friends, sponsored by the American Baptist Assembly, King responds to the question “How will the oppressed peoples of the world wage their struggle against the forces of injustice?” Dismissing the use of violence as “both impractical and immoral,” he endorses the method of nonviolent protest. This “mentally and spiritually aggressive” technique not only avoids “external physical violence” but also “seeks to avoid internal violence [to the] spirit.

A week prior to delivering this sermon at his church, King had given a similar version at Andrew Rankin Memorial Chapel in Washington, D. C., at the conclusion of Howard University School of Religion’s Forty-first Annual Convocation.¹ Using Matthew 5:43-45 as his text, King emphasizes that “hate for hate only intensifies the existence of hate and evil in the universe. . . . The strong person is the person who can cut off the chain of hate, the chain of evil. . . .

King delivered this sermon from Dexter’s pulpit the day before his trial for violating Alabama’s anti-boycott law.¹ He begins this handwritten outline by recounting that, after Autherine Lucy's expulsion from the University of Alabama, many celebrated the relative quiet that followed days of rioting at the University.

In his second of two addresses during the annual meeting of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the U.S.A., King charges that “all too many ministers are still silent while evil rages.”¹ He calls on church leaders to be “maladjusted” to social injustice and asserts that “the aftermath of nonviolence is the creation of the beloved community, while the aftermath of violence is tragic bitterness.” The following text is taken from an audio recording of the event at St.

In a November letter King invited local pastors and their congregations to the December institute marking the second anniversary of the MIA.

King answers questions from students and faculty in Cornell University’s Straight Memorial Room on 13 November 1960 after delivering “The Dimensions of a Complete Life” at Sage Chapel.¹ Excerpts from the session were published the following month in Dialogue, a Cornell student publication.

Prinz, who met King at the May 1958 American Jewish Congress convention, requests support for his efforts to persuade the president to convene a conference on integration.¹ In a 1 December reply, Maude Ballou explained that King had recently wired Eisenhower with a similar request.²

Dr. Martin Luther King
309 South Jackson Street
Montgomery, Alabama

Dear Dr. King:

In mid-1957 King joined the National Committee of the American Committee on Africa.¹ Later that year he agreed to serve on the International Sponsoring Committee for a day of protest against South Africa’s apartheid government, which the American Committee on Africa had initiated.² On behalf of this effort, King and United States chairman James A.

In a 1 October letter Bowles, former U.S. ambassador to India, continued his efforts to persuade King to visit India: “A visit on your part . . .

Faced with a growing number of offers to produce books and films about the bus boycott, King hired the New York literary agency of Marie Rodell and Joan Daves, Inc. to assist in negotiating contracts.¹ In this letter Daves reports settling a contract with Harper & Brothers for the manuscript of what would be King’s first book, Stride Toward Freedom.