Martin Luther King, Jr. On NBC's Meet the Press (1965) | Archives | NBC News

I'm Ned Brooks, inviting you to Meet the Press Meet the Press America's aerial

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conference and the winner of every major award in its field is a public affairs presentation from NBC News. Our guest today on Meet the Press is Dr. Martin Luther King Jr, who led the civil rights march from Selma to Montgomery Alabama Dr. King, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, is chair of the leadership conference Southern Christian. He is in San Francisco, where he delivered a sermon this morning for Bishop Pike at Grace Cathedral. Our panel. of reporters is in Washington DC and now we will have the first question from Lawrence C.

Spivac, permanent member of the Meet the Press panel, Dr. King, former President Truman was quoted by AP saying that the march from Selma and this was his La word was nonsense and can accomplish nothing except attract arrest now that there have been two murders, many beatings, and a federal troop expenditure of approximately $300,000. Would you say that what the March achieved was worth that cost? Well, first I would say that the march was not stupid at all, I think the march did more to dramatize the dignities of the IND and the injustices that black people continue to face in the state of Alabama and many other sections of the south, more than anything else, believe.

It was the most powerful and dramatic civil rights protest that has ever taken place in the South and I think it well justifies the cost that we have put on it now, of course, we are sorry that a death occurred immediately after the march and I. I am sure that all Goodwill people are outraged and deeply saddened as a result of Ms. Luo's death, but after all, we know that in a non-violent movement these possibilities exist and we continue with the faith that UNM deserved suffering as Redeemer. Dr. King, I think the rally was largely about getting your voting rights passed.

If it were necessary for that purpose, are you not going to receive that bill? Wouldn't you have received it, whether it went well or not? However, in the voting rights bill we must recognize that there are other very tragic conditions in the state of Alabama that are as humiliating as they are degrading and as unjust as the denial of the right to vote, namely, police brutality, and we marched into the state of uh, the capital of Alabama to protest the long night of brutality, the constant murders that continued to occur in that state because, after all, under Governor Wallace's administration, uh, there have been 10 people murdered and murdered and nothing has been done about it.

There have been untold bombings of homes and churches again, nothing has been done about it overall and we were marching there to protest these brutalities, these U murders and all the things that go along with them, as well as to win the right to vote so it was a double march intended to try to rectify the conditions of Alabama and expose the evils that are deeply involved in that state now Dr. King, you have had your great demonstration and Governor Looy Collins, head of the community relations service, He hoped there would be a respite from the protests in Alabama to give the state a chance to resolve some of the problems.

Do you think there should be a respite in Alabama? Well, here again with the murder of Mrs. Leo the day before the following night. the march uh, I don't see how there can be a respite uh, this is a state in which Contin continues to deal with human life as if it were nothing, this is a state that continues to make murder a kind of pleasant pastime and one that grants respectability. to the resistance and the defiance of the law uh this is a state that continues to do all the things that are contrary to our Democratic Creed at least the political power structures of the state and in light of this it seems to me that it will be necessary to continue demonstrating until these conditions are removed.

We do not believe in manifesting for the sake of manifesting. We don't have manifestation fever, but we do feel that as the conditions of injustice and man's inhumanity to man seep into that state. Demonstrations would be necessary to bring these issues to the surface and raise them before the conscience of the nation. So, as I understand it, Dr. King, you see no end to the current protests in either Alabama or other sections of the country. uh no, I don't believe in the indiscriminate use of demonstrations, but I think that as long as we have problems with us we are going to have demonstrations and I think that immediately we must face the fact that Alabama has I don't agree with your conscience, there are too many people of Goodwi and I think there are a lot of Goodwi whites and very decent white people in Alabama, but they have abdicated their responsibility to the governor, Sheriff Clarks and Bull Conners and for this reason we feel that we have a moral obligation to keep these issues before the public, before the American conscience, before the mainstream of our nation, for someone to do something about it and protests have proven to be the best way to do that.

This Dr. King, could you list for us the remaining barriers that you believe must be destroyed before you and your followers stop these protests and give the South a chance to catch up? Yes, first, there must be an agreement on the part of the United Kingdom. political power structure of the South to guarantee the right to vote without hindrance. This must be done with zeal and it must be done in good faith and this means removing all obstacles, including the pole tax, now that there are some states in the hardcore South and other sections of the South that still have the pole tax in the state elections and we believe this should be eliminated;

Secondly, we face the problem of brutality by sheriffs and other police forces and other law enforcement agents and we feel that sooner the demonstrations can stop. Something must be done to put an end to this type of unnecessary abuse of police power and what we see as outright police brutality. Thirdly, I would like to say that if our protests are to stop, there must be some equality in terms of dealing with the problem of poverty, we have a poverty bill that has been nobly initiated by the president of our nation and Congress, but in the South very often black people are denied the opportunity to be part of these programs, they are not denied the possibility. the opportunity to be a part of your administration and we believe that if we want to stop the protests, our blacks need to be incorporated into the core structure of the entire poverty program and then along with that, I think it is a great need for all local government agencies They must show that they are in line with Law and Order.

All of these things are necessary before we can stop the manifestation. We'll come back with me to

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and more questions for our guest, Dr. Martin Luther King. Jr, first this message, now back to Meet the Press. Please remember that our panel's questions do not necessarily reflect their own views. Here is your moderator, Ned Brooks, resuming our interview. Our guest today on Meet the Press is Dr. Martin Luther King Jr, who is in San Francisco on our panel of reporters in Washington GC just met Lawrence Spivac. Our other reporters today are Tom Wicker of the New York Times, James J.

Kilpatrick of the Richmond News Leader and John Chancellor of NBC News. We will continue with the questions now. Mr. Wicker, Dr. King, you said a moment ago that Alabama was a state that gives respectability to resistance and defiance of the law and you mentioned law enforcement by local agencies in the South as one of the cardinal objectives that must We were still loo

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, on March 9, you led the second march on Montgomery in violation of a federal order not to march, you said that order was unjust and John Lewis, one of your colleagues, said that blacks had the constitutional right to receive a March court order or not.

The court order now was that, in keeping with the spirit of non-violence and moderation that has always characterized your movement, could you explain your reasoning in defying the court order that day? Well, first let me say two things to that Mr. Wicker. defying a court order that particular day I consulted with my attorneys before the march and they told me that they felt it was an invalid order and that it would not be that I would be in contempt of court for violating the court order if I led the march to the point of having a moral conflict with the state police at the point where people were brutalized on Sunday, so I still don't consider that to break a court order or break what I consider an unjust act.

The law, on the other hand, I must be honest enough to say that I believe there are two types of laws, one is a just law and the other is an unjust law. I think we all have moral obligations to obey just laws, on the other hand. On the other hand, I believe we have moral obligations to disobey unjust laws because non-cooperation with evil is as much a moral obligation as cooperation with good. I think the distinction here is that when one breaks the law that his conscience tells him is unjust, he must do so. openly he must do it with joy he must do it with love he must do it civilly not unitedly and he must do it with the willingness to accept the penalty and any man who breaks the law that his conscience tells him is unjust and voluntarily accepts the penalty staying in jail to wake up The community's awareness of the injustice of the law is at that time to express the highest respect for the law.

Well, I can sympathize with a lot of that, but it seems to me that you get into a very difficult situation here where one man's conscience is in fact above the conscience of the society that has invoked a law. How are we going to enforce the law when a doctrine is preached so that a man's conscience tells him what? the law is unjust when the conscience of other men does not tell them that I believe that you apply it and I believe that you solve it by not allowing anak to develop. I don't believe in defying the law like many segregationists do.

I don't believe in evading the law like many of the segregationists do, the fact is that most of the segregationists and racists I see are not willing to suffer enough for their beliefs in segregation and are not willing to go to jail, I believe that the main norm because what guides the situation is the will to accept the penalty and I do not believe that any society can call an individual who breaks the law and voluntarily accepts the penalty irresponsible if his conscience tells him that that law is unjust and I think this is a long tradition in our society a long tradition in biblical history uh medek uh uh and Abednego violated an unjust law and they did it because they had to be faithful to a higher moral law the early Christians practiced civil disobedience in a way superb academic freedom would not be a reality today if it had not been for Socrates and if it had not been for Socrates' willingness to practice Civil Disobedience and I would say that in our own history there is nothing that expresses a massive Civil Disobedience more than the Boston Tea part and yet, We give this to our young people and students as part of our nation's great tradition, so I think we are in good company when we violate unjust laws and I think those who are willing to doing it and accepting the penalty are those. which are part of the salvation of the nation Mr.

Kilpatrick in drawing your distinctions between just laws and unjust laws Dr. King, do you distinguish between statutory laws such as a local ordinance requiring segregation and law enacted by a court in the form of a law? court order, uh, yes, I distinguish between these, it depends on Mr. Kilpatrick depending on the court that makes the decision, and it depends on the situation, that cannot be a gain in saying the fact that many of the state courts in They actually misuse and abuse them. the judicial process and here I would make a distinction between a decision that comes from a state court that is committed to preserving segregation and a federal court that is committed to realizing the basic, underlying truths of the Constitution as the distinguished juries had done.

He said that justice delayed too long is justice denied and we have seen courts that have delayed justice and in the process denied justice, so I would make a distinction here, but I think the situation is one that needs to be taken into consideration. In your book you described the Supreme Court's opinion in school segregation cases as just law, if you remember, suppose that the Supreme Court were to decide in some particular case against the interests of the protesters, as the court almost decided in January in the Cox case. So, would you consider such an opinion of the Supreme Court as an unjust law that must be disobeyed?

Well, that's a pretty dubious question, Mr. Kilpatrick. I would have to face it when the time comes or when we face that in our society, I feel that the Supreme Court has made a decision that it will never overturn, on the other hand, I could say that one has to understand what I mean by a fair law, I think that a law is just, it agrees with the moral law, and I believe that a law is unjust and is not in harmony with the moral laws of the universe,So the Supreme Court in the past has been unfair, wasn't that the case in those cases in our history when it upheld segregation?

I think there are laws that have emerged. that I considered it unfair and I believe that the moral conscience of the nation considered it unfair. This doesn't mean that the people who made the decision were unfair people or that they were bad people, it just meant that at that particular moment they didn't have the foresight. to see what we say in 1896, Justin Holland saw that they differed among themselves, while the majority of Jews made a decision separate but equal to the law of the land, which was a Justin Holland who said that time that the constitution is colorblind. and issued a dissenting opinion that has now become the majority opinion of our country Dr.

Dr. King, we have reports from Atlanta that indicate that he will recommend to the country's unions a nationwide work stoppage to maintain the plight of the blacks of Alabama before the country. Can you give us some details about this plan? Mr. Chancellor, I believe that conditions in Alabama have degenerated to such a low level of social disruption and such a low level of man's inhumanity to man that the entire conscience of the nation must rise up and commit itself to some kind of program of firm action. and creative. That will bring the business leaders and decent people of Alabama to the point of putting pressure on Governor Wallace and other officials responsible for this reign of terror.

I left Alabama last week after the March feeling that we had done It was a big fool and we certainly did in March and maybe we would see a brighter day across the state of Alabama, but the fact is that Governor Wallace He refused to see those who had a petition to present and not long after, Mrs. L thought. was brutally shot down in a car on Highway 80. This is just another example of something we have been facing in the state of Alabama for several years, which is why I believe it is necessary for the nation to stand up and engage in a massive recall program economy of the state of Alabama, to put it another way, I think the time has come for all the people at Goodwill to join in an economic boycott of Alabama product, so in a few days I plan to call on the unions to refuse to transport or use Alabama products.

I hope to ask all Americans to refuse to buy products from Alabama and I hope to ask the Secretary of the Treasury of the United States to withdraw all federal funds that he has deposited in Alabama. Banks and finally, I believe it is necessary to ask all federal agencies, in accordance with the civil rights bill of 1964, to withdraw support from a society that has refused to protect life and the right to vote Mr. .SP Dr. King columnists Evans and Novak I recently accused moderate black leaders, including you, of being afraid to point out the extent of communist infiltration in the Civil Rights Movement.

Have communists infiltrated the movement? I certainly don't believe that, Mr. Spivac, and I would like to strongly deny that I have no evidence for such an allegation and I could say that in our bylaws we certainly Inc and the NAACP and Core and Snik and the Urban League and all the civil rights organizations make it clear that communists cannot not be in official positions and cannot be in the membership. Beyond this, I think you could say that the philosophical foundations of our movement would make communism impossible and have communists in foreign territory because our movement has been based and It is still based on a philosophy of non-violence.

The AP reported the other day that a photograph of him taken in 1957 at an interracial school in Tennessee is plastered all over signs in Alabama with the legend Martin Luther King at a communist training school. Could you tell us if that was a communist training school? what you were doing there, well number one, I don't think it was a communist training school, in fact I know it wasn't the Highlander Folk School that was referenced in that particular article. It was a school that was a pioneer in bringing together blacks and whites. together at a time when it was very unpopular to train them for leadership throughout the South and I think they did an able job in doing so.

This school was supported by some of the great Americans like Ellena Roosevelt, Ryan Hol neba har Golding and many others I could name secondly, the fact is I never attended the school, as far as training goes I was there about an hour in 1957 or 8. I went to deliver an extra dress for the 25th anniversary of the Highlander Folk School. I arrived about 15 minutes before spea

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. I spoke for about 45 minutes and then left immediately after my speech and I think that's a pretty short period to be trained. Mr. Wicker, Dr. King, your movement has been distinguished by its nonviolent approach.

But its people are under great pressure in many cases. How deeply do you fear the eruption of black violence in pursuit of black rights? I feel like we will continue to have a nonviolent movement and we will continue to find the vast majority of black people. committed to nonviolence at least as the best tactical approach and from a pragmatic point of view is the best strategy to address the problem of racial injustice. However, realism prompts me to admit that when there is justice and the pursuit of justice, violence disappears and where there is injustice and frustration, the chances of violence are greater and I would like to strongly emphasize the point that the more The more we can achieve victories through nonviolence, the more it will be possible to maintain nonviolent discipline at the center of the movement, but the more we will find individuals facing conditions of frustration, conditions of disappointment and seething despair as a result of the slow pace of things and the lack The more conditions change, the more likely violence will interfere.

Sorry, but I see our time is up thank you very much Dr. King for being with us on Meet the Press I'll be back with you in just a minute first this message next week on Meet the Press Our guest will be another headline figure in the

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now this is Ned Brooks saying goodbye to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr and Meet the Press joins us every Sunday for the breaking

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as the country's top reporters ask challenging questions of world leaders at the Airborne Press Conference Meet the Press America. A hero's welcome is planned in New York.

City for Virgil Gri and John Young NBC News will cover this event starting tomorrow at noon, 11 a.m. Central time and 9:00 a.m. Pacific time. Now stay tuned for profiles and grit as Tom Bosley stars as Nebraska Senator George W Narus next on NBC. Lee Dayton speaking Meet the Press has been an NBC News public affairs feature and airs live from KR TV in San Francisco and Washington DC.