MLK: The Other America

Mr. Bell, foreign members of the faculty and members of the student body of this great institution of learning, ladies and gentlemen, there are now several things that could be talked about before such a large, concerned and enlightened audience, there are so many problems facing you our nation and our world that one could just take off anywhere, but today I would like to talk mainly about racial problems and tomorrow I will have to rush out and go to New York to talk about Vietnam and I have been talking a lot about it. this week and weeks before, but I would like to use the

other

America as a topic to talk about this afternoon and I use this topic because there are literally two Americas, one America is beautiful for our situation and the innocence is that America is overflowing with the milk of prosperity and the honey of opportunities, this America is the habitat of millions of people who have food and material needs for their bodies, culture and education for their minds, and freedom and human dignity for their spirits.

In this America, millions of people experience every day and the opportunity to have life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness and all its dimensions and in this United States millions of young people grow up under the sunlight of opportunity, but tragically and unfortunately There is an

other

United States, this other United States has a daily ugliness. that constantly transforms the optimism of hope into the fatigue of despair in this United States. Millions of men starve to death for work. They walked the streets daily in search of jobs that do not exist in this United States. Millions of people find themselves living in rat-infested vermin camp slums.

Millions of people are poor and are perishing on a solitary island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity. In a sense, the greatest tragedy of this other America is what it does to the little children of this other America. They are forced to grow up with clouds of inferiority cultivating every day in their little mental skies and when we look at this other America we see it as a scene of ruined hopes and shattered dreams. Many people of various origins live in South America. Mexican-Americans some Puerto Ricans some Indians some are from other groups millions of them are Appalachian whites probably the largest group in this other America in proportion to its size in the population is the American black an American black is found living in a triple ghetto a ghetto of race a ghetto of poverty again is to deal with this problem to deal with this problem of the two Americans who seek to make America an indivisible nation with liberty and justice for all now let me say that the fight for the rights of the fight to make these two United States one United States is much harder today than it was five or ten years ago, fought about a decade or maybe 12 years ago, we have fought across the South in glorious struggles to get rid of legal segregation open. and all the humiliation that surrounded that segregation system, in a sense, this was a fight for decency, we couldn't go to a restaurant in many cases and order a hamburger or a cup of coffee, we couldn't use public places . transportation was segregated and we often had to sit in the back and inside Transportation Transportation within cities we often had to stand on empty seats because sections were reserved for whites only we did not have the right to vote in so many areas in the South and South The struggle was Dealing with these problems now, certainly, they were difficult problems, they were humiliating conditions and by the thousands we protested these conditions and made it clear that ultimately it was more honorable to accept prison vending experiences than to accept segregation and humiliation by Some of the Thousands of students and adults decided to sit at the segregated lunch counters to protest the conditions there.

When they were sitting at those lunch counters, they were actually defending the best of the American dream and trying to lead the entire nation back to those great Wells of democracy that the founding fathers delved into in formulating the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence , many things were gained as a result of these years of struggle in 1964. The Civil Rights bill was born after the Birmingham movement, which did much to summon the conscience of a large segment of the nation to appear before the court of morality on the whole issue of civil rights, after the Selma movement in 1965 we were able to get a voting rights bill, all of these things represented progress, but we must see that the fight today is much more difficult it is more difficult today because Now we are fighting for genuine equality and it is much easier to integrate a lunch counter than to guarantee a decent income and a good, solid job, it is much easier to guarantee the right to vote than to guarantee the right to live in decent sanitary housing conditions, It is much easier to integrate a public park than to make genuine, quality integrated education a reality, and that is why today we are fighting for something that says we demand genuine equality, it is not simply a fight against extremist behavior towards black people and I am convinced that many of the few people who supported us in the fight in the south are not willing to go to the end.

Now I came to see this in a very difficult and painful way. In Chicago over the last year, where I lived and worked, some of the people who quickly came to march with us in Selma and Birmingham were people who were active in Chicago and I realized that there were many people who were morally and even financially supportive of what we were doing. doing in Birmingham in Selma we were really outraged by the extremist behavior of Bull Connor and Jim Clark towards black people instead of believing in genuine equality for black people and I think this is what we need to see now and this is what makes the struggle is much more difficult, as a result of all this, we see that today there are many problems that are becoming more difficult.

It's something that's often overlooked, but black people generally live in worse slums today than they did 20 or 25 years ago. In the north, schools are more segregated today than they were 20 or 25 years ago. were in 1954, when the Supreme Court's decision on desegregation was ruled economically: the Negro is worth worse today than he was 15 and 20 years ago, and therefore the unemployment rate among whites at one time was approximately the same as the unemployment rate among blacks, but today the unemployment rate among blacks is twice that of whites and the average income of blacks is today 50 percent less than that of whites and when we look We see these problems grow and develop every day and we see the fact that economically black people are facing a depression in their daily lives that is more staggering than the depression of the 1930s, the unemployment rate for the nation as a whole is about four percent; the statistics would say from the department of labor that among blacks it is about 8.4 percent, but these are the people who are in the labor market who still go to employment agencies to look for work and that is why the statistics can be calculated They can be obtained because in some way they are still in the labor market but there are hundreds of thousands of black people who have given up, they have lost, I hope they have come to feel that life is for them a long and desolate corridor with no exit sign and that is why They are no longer going to look for work.

There are those who would estimate that these people who are called the discouraged would be six to seven percent in the black community and that means that unemployment among blacks may well be 16 percent and among young blacks in some of our large urban areas it reaches 30 and 40 percent, so you can see what I mean when I say that in the black community. black community, which is a huge tragic and amazing depression that we face in our everyday lives, now the other thing that we have to see now that many of us didn't see very well for the last 10 years is racism.

It is still alive in American society in a much more widespread way than we believe and we must see racism for what it is, it is the myth of the superior and the inferior race, it is the false and tragic notion that a particular group, a race in particular, is responsible for all progress, all ideas and the entire flow of History and the theory that another group or another race is totally depraved, innately impure and innately inferior and ultimately racism is bad because its ultimate logic is genocide. Hitler was a sick man. and tragic man who took racism to its logical conclusion, ended up leading a nation to the point of killing about six million Jews and this is the tragedy of racism because its ultimate logic is genocide if you say I'm not good enough to live.

Next to it, if someone says I'm not good enough to eat in a restaurant or have a good decent job or go to school with them simply because of my race, they are consciously or subconsciously saying that I don't deserve to exist to use Here the philosophical analogy racism is not based on some empirical generalization, it is based rather on an ontological claim, it is not the claim that certain people are culturally backward, otherwise due to environmental conditions, it is the claim that the Being of a people is inferior and this is a great tragedy. I say that, as unpleasant as it is, we must honestly see and admit that racism is still deeply rooted.

All over America, still deeply rooted in the North, still deeply rooted in the South, and this leads me to say There is something about another discussion that we hear a lot and that is the so-called white reaction and I would like to tell you honestly that the white reaction is simply a new name for an old phenomenon, it is not something that arose simply because The cries of black power screams are because blacks participated in riots and what is, for example, the fact is that the state of California voted to eliminate a fair housing bill before someone shouted black power before anyone wrote in Watts, it may well be that the shouts of black power The power and the riots and Watson, the harlems in other areas are the consequences of the reaction white more than the cause of them.

What needs to be seen is that there has never been a single solid and determined monist commitment on the part of the vast majority of the population. white Americans the whole question of civil rights and the whole question of racial equality this is something that the truth compels all men of good will to admit it is said on the Statue of Liberty that the United States is the home of exiles We long to realize that the United States has been home to its white exiles from Europe, but has not shown the same kind of maternal attitude and concern for its black exiles from Africa, and it is not surprising that in a of their songs of sadness, the black could sing sometimes I feel like a child without a mother what a great distance what a great feeling of rejection caused people to emerge with such a metaphor as they looked at their lives what I am trying to convey is that our nation has constantly taken a positive step.

It advanced the issue of racial justice and equality, but time and again at the same time it took certain steps backwards and this has been the persistence of the so-called white reaction. In 1863, the black man was freed from physical slavery, but at the same time, the nation refused to give him land to make that freedom meaningful, and in that same period the United States was giving away millions of acres of land in the West and the Middle East. West, which meant that the United States was willing to support its white peasants in Europe with an economic flow that would make it possible to grow and develop and refused to give that economic floor to its black peasant, so to speak, which is why Frederick Douglass could say that emancipation for the black man was freedom from hunger, freedom from the winds, and freedom from the Kingdoms of Heaven. without ruses to cover his head, he continued saying that it was freedom without bread to eat freedom without land to farm it was freedom and famine at the same time but it does not end there in 1875 the nation passed a civil rights bill merged to implement it in 1964, The nation passed a weaker civil rights bill and even to this day that bill has not been fully implemented in all its dimensions, the nation announced a new day of concern for the poor, those affected by poverty , the disadvantaged and brought in an anti-poverty bill, but at the same time invested so little money in the program that it was hardly and remains a good skirmish against poverty.

White politicians and suburbanites speak eloquently against open housing while maintaining that they are Now it's not racist, all of this and all of these things tell us that America has been responding to the whole question of basic constitutional rights and granted by God for blacks and other disadvantaged groups for over 300 years, so these conditions affect widespread poverty systems ofslums and tragic conditions in schools and in areas of life, all of these things have caused great despair, great desperation, great disappointment and even bitterness in black communities today, all of our cities face enormous problems. of our cities are potentially tinderboxes as a result of the continued existence of these conditions, many in moments of anger, many and moments of deep bitterness engage in riots and let me say, as I have always said and will always continue to say, that riots are socially destructive and counterproductive.

I am still convinced that nonviolence is the most powerful weapon available to oppress people in their fight for freedom and justice. I feel that violence will only create more social problems than it will solve in a real world. In this sense, it is not practical for black people to even think about mounting a violent revolution in the United States, so I will continue to condemn the riots and I will continue to tell my brothers and sisters that this is not the way. I will continue to affirm that there is another way, but at the same time it is necessary for me to be as vigorous in condemning the conditions that make people feel that they must participate in riotous activities, as it is necessary for me to condemn riots.

I think the United States needs to make sure that riots don't develop from CNN. Certain conditions continue to exist in our society that must be condemned with the same energy. how we condemn riots but, ultimately, a riot is the language of the unheard, what has America not heard? It has not heard that the situation of poor black people has worsened in recent years, no He has heard that the situation of poor black people has worsened in recent years. The promises of freedom and justice have not been fulfilled and it has not been heard that large segments of White Society are more concerned with tranquility in the status quo than with justice, equality and humanity, etc., in the real sense of our nation.

Summers of unrest are caused by our nation's winters of delays and as long as America postpones Justice we will be in the position of having these recurrences of violence and unrest again and again, social justice and progress are the absolute guarantors of riot prevention. Now let me continue by saying that if we are to deal with all the problems that I have talked about, we must get America to the point where we have one indivisible nation with liberty and justice for all, there are certain things that we must do, the work that we have to do. ahead must be enormous and The positive thing is that we must develop mass action programs throughout the United States of America to be able to address the problems that I have mentioned now.

To develop these mass action programs we have to get rid of one or two false notions that continue. In our society there is the notion that only time can solve the problem of racial injustice. I'm sure you've heard this idea. It is almost the notion that there is something in Vera, the very flow of time that will miraculously cure all ills. and I have heard this over and over again, there are people, and often they are sincere people, who tell black people and their allies in the white community that we need to slow down and be kind and patient and continue to pray and within 100 and 200 years. the problem will solve itself because with time you can solve the problem well.

I think that's one answer to that myth and that is that time is neutral, it can be used constructively or destructively and I am absolutely convinced that the forces of evil. will in our nation the extremely righteous of our nation have often used time much more effectively than the forces of good will and it may well be that we will have to repent in this generation not only for the vitriolic words of evil people and the violent . actions of bad people, if it were not for the appalling silence and indifference of good people who sit back and say: wait until time, somewhere we must come to see that social progress never advances on the wheels of inevitability, It is achieved through tireless efforts and persistent work. of dedicated people and without this hard work, time itself becomes an ally of the primitive forces of social stagnation and that is why we must help time and we must realize that it is always the right time to do the right thing, not like another notion that spreads everywhere.

In the south, in the north, in California, and throughout our nation there is a notion that legislation cannot solve the problem, it cannot do anything in this area and those who project this argument maintain that the situation must be changed. hawk and that hearts cannot be changed through legislation now. I would be the first to say that there is a real need for many changes of heart in our country and I believe in changing hearts. I preach about it. I believe in the need for conversion and many instances and regeneration to use theological terms and I would be the first to say that if the racial problem in the United States is to be solved, the white person must treat black people well not only because the law does so.

He says but because it is natural. because it is right and because the black is your brother and that is why I realize that if we want to have a truly integrated society, men and women will have to rise to the majestic heights of being obedient to the inapplicable, but after saying this, let me say something else. What the other side gives is that although it may be true that morality cannot be legislated, behavior can be regulated although it may be true that the law cannot change the heart, it can curb harshness, although it may be true that the law cannot change the heart.

I can't make a man love me, it can stop him from lynching me and I think that's very important too, so while the law can't change men's hearts, it can and does change men's habits, and When you start changing men's habits, very soon attitudes will change, very soon Hops will change now. I am convinced that we still need strong civil rights legislation and there is a bill before Congress right now to have a national federal open housing bill, a federal law declaring discrimination in housing is unconstitutional and also a bill to make the administration of justice real throughout our country, now no one can doubt the need for this, no one can doubt the need if you think about the fact that since 1963 some 58 black and white civil rights workers have been brutally murdered in the state of Mississippi alone, not a single person has been convicted of these dastardly crimes, there have been some accusations, but no one has been convicted, so the whole question of the administration of justice is necessary, it is necessary our justice housing laws across our country and it's really tragic that last year Congress allowed this bill to die and that bill died in Congress a little bit of democracy died a little bit of our commitment to Justice will die if this is happening again in this section of the greater Congress Our degree of commitment to democratic principles will die and I see no more dangerous trend in our country than the continued development of predominantly black central cities surrounded by white suburbs.

This only invites social disaster. The only way to solve this problem is through the nation taking a strong stance by the state governments taking a firm stance against housing segregation and against discrimination in all these areas now there is another thing I would like to mention while I talk about the Mass Action Program, time will not allow me to go into specific programmatic actions to integrate degrees, but we must realize now that the black cannot solve the problems alone. There again there are those who always tell black people why don't you do something for yourself why don't you elevate your own efforts and we hear this over and over again now certainly there are many things that we must do for ourselves and that only we can do for ourselves we must certainly develop a sense of dignity and self-respect that no one else can give us a sense of manhood a sense of personality a sense of not being ashamed of our heritage not being ashamed of our color it was wrong and it was tragic and he grew up but He allowed himself to be ashamed of the fact that he was black or to be ashamed of the fact that his ancestral home was Africa and therefore there is much that the Negro can do to develop self-respect, there is much that the Negro must do and can do to accumulate political and economic power within their own community and using their own resources and so we must do certain things for ourselves, but this should not deny the fact and cause a nation to overlook the fact that the black cannot solve the problem by itself.

A man was on the plane with me a few weeks ago and he came and talked to me and told me that one problem, Dr. King, that I see with what you all are doing is that every time I see you and other black people you are protesting and They don't, they're not doing anything for themselves and he went on to tell me. He told me that he was very poor at one time and that he was able to get ahead by doing something for himself, why don't you teach people? He said they should live for themselves and then went on to say that other groups face disadvantages.

The Irish, the Italians and he followed the line and I told him that it does not help the black, it only deepens his frustration in the face of sensitive and sentient people by telling him that other ethnic groups that emigrated or were immigrants to this country that is a hundred A few years ago it I got over it and he came here about 344 years ago and I reminded him that black people came to this country involuntarily in chains. While others came voluntarily, I reminded him that no other racial group has ever been a slave on American soil.

I continued to remind him that the other problem we have faced over the years is that society placed the stigma of the color of black on the color of his skin because he was black, the doors were close to him. that they weren't closed to other groups and I'm going to tell people that you should pull yourself up by your bootstraps, but it's a cruel joke to tell a useless man that he should pull yourself up by your bootstraps the fact is millions of blacks as a result From centuries of denial and neglect they have been left without resources and find themselves as impoverished foreigners in this opulent society and that is much that society can and must do if the black man is to obtain economic security.

What you need now is one of the answers, it seems to me, is a guaranteed annual income, a guaranteed minimum income for all people and for all families in our country, it seems to me, it seems to me that the Civil Rights Movement must now begin to organize for annual income. guaranteed to begin to organize people throughout our country mobilize forces so that we can draw the attention of our nation to this need and this which I believe will go a long way to addressing the economic problem of black people and the economic problem Now that many other poor people face our nation, I said I wasn't going to talk about Vietnam, but I can't give a speech without mentioning some of the problems we face there because I think this world has taken attention away from civil rights.

It has strengthened the forces of reaction in our country and brought the military industrial complex to the fore and even President Eisenhower warned us against it at one point, above all, it is destroying human lives, the lives of thousands of our nation's promising young people. . the lives of boys and girls in Vietnam, one of the biggest things that this war is doing to us in terms of civil rights is that it allows the Great Society to be torn down on the battlefields of Vietnam every day and I present it this afternoon . that we can end poverty in the United States our nation has the resources to do so a gross national product of the United States will increase to a staggering 8,007 this year we have the resources that the question is where does the nation have the will and I submit that yes we can get 5 billion dollars a year to fight a reckless war in Vietnam and 20 billion dollars to put a man on the moon, our nation can spend billions of dollars and on its own two feet here on Earth, let me say Another thing that is more in the realm of the spirit, I suppose, is that if we are to continue in the days to come and make true Brotherhood a reality, it is necessary that we realize more than ever that the Destinies of the Black and the Men of struggle are united now there are still many people who do not realize this, the race still does not realize this, but it is a fact now that blacks and whites are united and we need each other, the black needs the white man to save him from his fear the white man needs the black to save him from his guilt we are united in many ways our language our music our cultural patterns our material prosperity and even our food in an amalgam of black and white so there is no there may be a separate black path to power and fulfillment that does not cross the rootswhites there can be no separate white path to power and fulfillment a subtle social disaster does not recognize the need to share that power with blacks aspirations of freedom and justice that we must achieve Now let's see that integration is not simply something romantic or aesthetic in which color is simply added to a predominantly white steel power structure.

Integration must also be seen in political terms, where there is shared power, where black and white men share power together, build a great new nation in a real sense, we are all caught in an inescapable web of reciprocity united in a single Garment of the Destiny John Don put it years ago in graphic terms no man is an island in time itself every man is a part of the mainland of the main and continues towards the end saying that the death of any man diminishes me because I am involved in humanity Therefore, never sin by knowing for whom the bell tolls, this is for you and therefore everyone in the same situation will mean the salvation of the black man. the salvation of the white man and the destruction of the life and continued progress of the Negro will be the destruction of the continued progress of the nation.

Now let me finally say that we have difficult days ahead, but I have not despaired in any way, I maintain. Hope despite Hope and I have talked about the difficulties and how difficult the problems will be as we face them, but I want to end by saying this afternoon that I still have faith in the future and I still believe that these problems can be solved. resolved and that is why I will not join anyone who says that we cannot yet develop a coalition of conscience. I realize and understand the discontent in The Agony and the disappointment and even bitterness of those who feel that white people cannot be trusted in America and I would be the first to say that too many are still guided by the racist ethos , but I remain convinced that there are still many white people of Good Will and I am happy to say that I see them every day in the generation of students who value democratic principles and justice above principle and who will stick to the cause of justice, the cause of civil rights, and the cause of peace over the next few days, so I refuse to despair.

I believe we are going to achieve our freedom. because no matter how far America strays from the ideals of justice, America's goal is. No matter how much we are abused and despised for freedom, our fate is tied to the fate of America before the Pilgrim Fathers landed in Plymouth. we were here before Jefferson was etched on the pages of History The majestic words of the Declaration of Independence we were here before the beautiful The words of The Star-Spangled Banner were written we were here and for more than two centuries our ancestors They worked here without wages they made king of cotton they built their masters' houses in the midst of the most humiliating and oppressive conditions and yet out of a bottomless Vitality they continue to grow and develop and I say that if the inexpressible cruelties of slavery do not could stop us, the opposition we now face, including the so-called white reaction, will surely fail, we will win our freedom because both the sacred nation of Havana and the eternal will of the almighty God are embodied in our resounding demands and that is why I can still sing we will conquer we will conquer the cost of the moral universe is long but it leans towards justice we will conquer because Carlisle is right no lie can live forever we will conquer because William called Bryant is the correct truth Christian will rise he will conquer because James Russell Lowell is the correct truth Forever in the wrong scaffold forever on the throne, yet that scaffold influences the future with me we will be able to carve from the mount of Despair a stone of Hope this faith we will be able to transform the tinkling discords of our nation into a beautiful Symphony of Brotherhood with this faith we will be able to hasten the day when all the children of God, black men and white men Jews and Gentiles Protestants and Catholics will be able to join hands and live together as brothers and sisters throughout this great nation that will be a great day that will be a great tomorrow in the word sure they will speak symbolically that will be the day when the morning stars will sing together and the children of God will shout for joy, thank you foreigner