In his own words: Martin Luther King Jr.

Martin Luther King Jr. Day is a federal holiday held on the third Monday of January. It celebrates the life and achievements of King, an influential American civil rights leader. In 1957 he was elected president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, an organization formed to provide new leadership for the now burgeoning civil rights movement. The ideals for this organization he took from Christianity; its operational techniques from Gandhi. Between 1957 and 1968, King led a massive protest in Birmingham, Alabama, that caught the attention of the entire world, providing what he called a coalition of conscience and inspiring his “Letter from a Birmingham Jail,” a manifesto of the Negro revolution; he planned the drives in Alabama for the registration of Negroes as voters; he directed the peaceful march on Washington, D.C., of 250,000 people to whom he delivered his address, “I Have a Dream;” he conferred with President John F. Kennedy and campaigned for President Lyndon B. Johnson; he was arrested upwards of 20 times and assaulted at least four times; he was awarded five honorary degrees; was named Man of the Year by Time magazine in 1963; and became not only the symbolic leader of American blacks but also a world figure. At the age of 35, Martin Luther King Jr. was the youngest man to have received the Nobel Peace Prize. When notified of his selection, he announced that he would turn over the prize money of $54,123 to the furtherance of the civil rights movement. On the evening of April 4, 1968, while standing on the balcony of his motel room in Memphis, Tennessee, where he was to lead a protest march in sympathy with striking garbage workers of that city, King was assassinated. Source: nobelprize.org In the 11-year period between 1957 and 1968, King traveled more than six million miles and spoke more than 2,500 hundred times, appearing wherever there was injustice, protest, and action; and meanwhile he wrote five books as well as numerous articles. Here are just some of the topics he addressed in his sermons, speeches and interviews: A genuine leader is not a searcher for consensus but a molder of consensus. A lie cannot live. A man can’t ride your back unless it’s bent. A man who won’t die for something is not fit to live. A nation or civilization that continues to produce soft-minded men purchases its own spiritual death on the installment plan. A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual doom. A right delayed is a right denied. A riot is the language of the unheard. All labor that uplifts humanity has dignity and importance and should be undertaken with painstaking excellence. Almost always, the creative dedicated minority has made the world better. An individual has not started living until he can rise above the narrow confines of his individualistic concerns to the broader concerns of all humanity. Change does not roll in on the wheels of inevitability, but comes through continuous struggle. And so we must straighten our backs and work for our freedom. A man can’t ride you unless your back is bent. Everything that we see is a shadow cast by that which we do not see. Faith is taking the first step even when you don’t see the whole staircase. Have we not come to such an impasse in the modern world that we must love our enemies - or else? The chain reaction of evil - hate begetting hate, wars producing more wars - must be broken, or else we shall be plunged into the dark abyss of annihilation. History will have to record that the greatest tragedy of this period of social transition was not the strident clamor of the bad people, but the appalling silence of the good people. I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character. I look to a day when people will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character. I want to be the white man’s brother, not his brother-in-law. It may be true that the law cannot make a man love me, but it can keep him from lynching me, and I think that’s pretty important. Life’s most persistent and urgent question is, ‘What are you doing for others?’ Never forget that everything Hitler did in Germany was legal. Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity. Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power. We have guided missiles and misguided men. Science investigates, religion interprets. Science gives man knowledge which is power, religion gives man wisdom which is control. Seeing is not always believing. That old law about ‘an eye for an eye’ leaves everybody blind. The time is always right to do the right thing. The first question which the priest and the Levite asked was: “If I stop to help this man, what will happen to me?” But... the good Samaritan reversed the question: “If I do not stop to help this man, what will happen to him?” The function of education is to teach one to think intensively and to think critically. Intelligence plus character - that is the goal of true education. The hottest place in Hell is reserved for those who remain neutral in times of great moral conflict. The Negro needs the white man to free him from his fears. The white man needs the Negro to free him from his guilt. The time is always right to do what is right. We may have all come on different ships, but we’re in the same boat now. When you are right, you cannot be too radical; when you are wrong, you cannot be too conservative. In the End, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.