Nonviolence

In this sermon, versions of which King had preached as early as 1954, King laments that “too many of our white brothers are concerned merely about the length of life rather than the breadth of life.”¹ He suggests that with reordered priorities “the jangling discords of the South would be transformed into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood.” King’s theme and content reflect the influence of abolitionist minister Phillips Brooks’s sermon “The Symmetry of Life.”

The typed program for SCLC’s annual conference featured these comments.

Baker updates King and Abernathy on plans for a Conference to assess the state of the student movement and to coordinate desegregation efforts.¹ She reports on a conversation she had with Glenn Smiley and Douglas Moore, who “agreed that the meeting should be youth centered, and that the adults attending would serve in an advisory capacity, and should mutually agree to ‘speak only when asked to do so.’”

In this typed draft of his address, King asserts that “there need be no essential conflict” between the Urban League's efforts to help “the Negro adjust to urban living” and the need for “more militant civil rights organizations” to present a “frontal attack on the system of segregation.” He advises that “the NAACP’er must not look upon the Urban Leaguer as a quiet conservative and the Urban Leaguer must not look upon the NAACP’er as a militant troublemaker.

In this Founder’s Day address at Spelman College, King identifies four symbolic mountains—relativism, materialism, segregation, and violence—that must be overcome “if we are to go forward in our world and if civilization is to survive.” He also criticizes the “profit-making and profit-getting aspects of capitalism” and warns of the danger of being “more concerned about making a living than making a life.” This speech was published in the May issue of the Spelman Messenger.¹

In this interview for U.S.

King lauds Attorney General Rogers for advocating the integration of a Huntsville, Alabama, elementary school that excluded the children of black military personnel.¹ Acting Assistant Attorney General Joseph M. F. Ryan thanked King on Rogers's behalf.² The Huntsville schools remained segregated until 1963.

During a Carnegie Hall birthday celebration for Randolph, King praised the black leader’s refusal “to sell his race for a mess of pottage.”¹ This handwritten outline may have framed King’s remarks, which directly preceded an address by Randolph announcing plans for protests at the Democratic and Republican national conventions.²

In 1958 King wrote the foreword to a CORE pamphlet on school integration.¹ The following year, CORE officials arranged for King, a member of the organization's advisory committee, to write this introduction to a follow-up booklet, detailing the group’s activities and strategies for ending segregation.²

On 1 December Teek-Frank wrote King about her interest in Gandhian nonviolence and asked him for his opinion on whether China should be admitted to the United Nations.¹

Mrs. Ingeborg Teek-Frank
30 Fifth Avenue
New York 11, New York

Dear Mrs. Frank: