The ending of this speech is legendary, you can listen here. I couldnt find audio of the earlier portion (this was a 2 hr speech to the SCLC) that reads like this: Now, we got to get this thing right. What is needed is a realization that power without love is reckless and abusive, and that love without power is sentimental and anemic. (Yes) Power at its best [applause], power at its best is love (Yes) implementing the demands of justice, and justice at its best is love correcting everything that stands against love. (Speak) And this is what we must see as we move on. Now what has happened is that weve had it wrong and mixed up in our country, and this has led Negro Americans in the past to seek their goals through love and moral suasion devoid of power, and white Americans to seek their goals through power devoid of love and conscience. It is leading a few extremists today to advocate for Negroes the same destructive and conscienceless power that they have justly abhorred in whites. It is precisely this collision of immoral power with powerless morality which constitutes the major crisis of our times. (Yes) Now we must develop progress, or rather, a program—and I cant stay on this long—that will drive the nation to a guaranteed annual income. Now, early in the century this proposal would have been greeted with ridicule and denunciation as destructive of initiative and responsibility. At that time economic status was considered the measure of the individuals abilities and talents. And in the thinking of that day, the absence of worldly goods indicated a want of industrious habits and moral fiber. Weve come a long way in our understanding of human motivation and of the blind operation of our economic system. Now we realize that dislocations in the market operation of our economy and the prevalence of discrimination thrust people into idleness and bind them in constant or frequent unemployment against their will. The poor are less often dismissed, I hope, from our conscience today by being branded as inferior and incompetent. We also know that no matter how dynamically the economy develops and expands, it does not eliminate all poverty. Heres the full text and includes some genius observations about violent revolution and how it would never have worked in the United States. He underscores the moral and practical justification for non-violent resistence, and then famously said that he chooses to love because hate is to great a burden to bear. mlk-kpp01.stanford.edu/index.php/encyclopedia/documentsentry/where_do_we_go_from_here_delivered_at_the_11th_annual_sclc_convention/ Thank you to my hero and the greatest American of the twentieth century.
Posted on: Mon, 19 Jan 2015 18:23:21 +0000
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