In a city like Chicago, where we are working in the slums now, the Negro population is about 27-28 percent. Massive resistance has given way in the South to a kind of sophisticated kind of resistance embodied in tokenism. One week later President Johnson delivered a speech, which has become known as his “We Shall Overcome” speech, urging congress to ensure the voting rights of black Americans. It is always a very rich and rewarding experience when I can take a brief break from the day-to-day demands of our struggle for freedom and human dignity and discuss the issues involved in that struggle with college and university students and concerned people of goodwill all over the country and all over the world. He paused, and then he said, "And we shall overcome." Threaten our children and bomb our churches and our homes and, as difficult as it is, we will still love you. Since 1619, the Negro has come a long, long way in re-evaluating his own intrinsic worth. He was merely a depersonalized cog in a vast plantation machine. Were I so tall as to reach from pole to pole or grasp the ocean with a span, I must be measured by my soul. In cities like Detroit, the Negro is 28 percent of the population and 72 percent of the unemployed. The fact is that this kind of tokenism is much more subtle and can be much more depressing to the victims of the tokenism than all-out resistance. Members of Congress interrupted Johnson’s speech with applause some 40 times. They contend that only time can solve the problem. There are three words in Greek for love. Somehow, we’ve lived with it at its best and been able to look into the face of our most violent opponent and say we will match your capacity to inflict suffering with our capacity to endure suffering. It is necessary to develop massive training programs. Pray for them that despitefully use you.” And through such maladjustment, we will be able to emerge from the bleak and desolate midnight of man’s inhumanity to man into the bright and glittering daybreak of freedom and justice. If one is working for the goal of an integrated society, then he must seek to work with integration as a fact as he moves toward that. There is a bit of urgency about it. As a man whose roots go deeply into Southern soil, I know how agonizing racial feelings are. This comes to be a sort of romantic love. To the distinguished president of Southern Methodist University, Dr. Tate, members of the faculty and members of the student body, ladies and gentlemen. Now it is a fact that we have come a long, long way, but it isn’t the whole truth. I can say to you this afternoon that things are different all over the South as a result of the 1965 Voting Rights Bill. Twenty percent of the Negro families earn less than $1,000 a year, while less than 5 percent of the white families earn less than $1,000 per year. The annual income of the Negro is now more than $30 billion a year, which is more than all the exports of the United States and more than the national budget of Canada. The famed “We Shall Overcome… Inspired by the words and action of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., “We Shall Overcome” is a joyful celebration of music from across the African American music traditions that electrified generations of civil rights activists and defenders with interwoven spoken word from Dr. King’s recorded speeches. I know how difficult it is to reshape the attitudes and the structure of our society. It seems to be a fact of life that men cannot continue to do wrong without eventually reaching out for some thin rationalization to cloth an obvious wrong in the beautiful garments of righteousness. And I’m so happy he didn’t say like your enemies. The problem is becoming more serious today because of automation and cybernation. It is my contention that there is an answer to that myth and that is that time is neutral. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered this speech at the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C., on March 31st, 1968, just four days before his death. It is a strange notion there is some miraculous quality in the very flow of time that tends to heal all ills. I would like to say a few words about this philosophy that we hear about, since it has been the undergirding philosophy of our whole movement. Then came his minor premise: God, as everybody knows, is not a Negro. Throughout slavery, the Negro was treated in a very inhuman fashion. First it would mean making a relatively short speech and that would be a magnificent accomplishment for a Baptist preacher. Bless them that curse you. The mind is the standard of the man. And so there is a need constantly for positive, forthright, creative legislation to solve the problem of racial injustice. Pinback button featuring Martin Luther King Jr. Martin Luther King, Jr., wife Coretta Scott King, and their daughter Yolanda, Eliot Elisofon Photographic Archives, African Art, Assistant Secretary for Communications and External Affairs. It is the ring and cry of modern child psychology and certainly we all want to avoid the maladjusted life. This is friendship. Love is understanding creative goodwill for all men. Then one brother had probably read the logic of the great philosopher Aristotle. Many came to feel that perhaps they were less than human. Then the Greek language come out with another word. And so the plea facing us today is to move on that additional distance that we have to go with understanding, with a concern for brotherhood, with the removal of all prejudices, with an understanding that all of God’s children are significant. And so the non-violent method says that it is possible to seek to secure moral ends through moral means. We Shall Overcome, my most popular Civil Rights play on TeachersPayTeachers, re-enacts the Birmingham Children’s Crusade. Agape is more than romantic or aesthetic love. Memphis Commercial Appeal. Do to us what you will and we will still love you. On March 15, 1965, President Johnson delivered this speech in response to recent events in Selma, Alabama, where civil rights protesters had been brutally beaten on “Bloody Sunday.” His speech inspired the U.S. Congress to pass key legislation that protected voting rights for African Americans. And so in a real sense, we have come a long, long way. And I said to myself if these small countries in our world can solve these problems, certainly the United States with a national gross product this year of more than $700 billion can solve the problems so that nobody will have to live with poverty. Many many patterns came into being, many conniving methods to keep the Negro from being a registered voter but other forces were at work so that by 1948 the number of registered Negro voters in the South had leaped to 750,000. I never intend to adjust myself to segregation and discrimination. If he doesn’t beat you, wonderful. You will remember that it was in the year 1619 that the first Negro slaves landed on the shores of this nation. This is Philia. There are still pockets of resistance but fortunately major communities have complied. five little known facts about Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. –Dr. We will not seek to substitute one tyranny for another, thereby subverting justice. And you just keep on marching and standing up for what is right. You certainly can’t be telling us to love these people who are oppressing us and who are killing our children and who are bombing our churches. Martin Luther King was watching the speech at the home of a family in Selma with some of his aides, none of … This was the kind of reasoning that prevailed. And then it goes right on down the line in other areas. There’s another thing about this method. We have moved through the wilderness of legal segregation and now we stand on the borderland of integration and I am convinced the system of segregation is on its deathbed today and the only thing uncertain about it is how costly the diehards and the extreme segregationists will make the funeral. If we are to solve the problem ultimately, every person must rise to the majestic heights of being obedient to the unenforceable. I guess with the many philosophical differences I that have with communism, one of the greatest is found right here. When it is true to its nature, it says that it is possible to live true to the love effort. It would be a marvelous thing if speakers all over our nation could talk about this problem in terms of a problem that once existed but that no longer has existence. It had it’s beginning in 1896 when the Supreme Court of our nation rendered a decision known as the Plessy vs Ferguson decision, which established the doctrine of separate but equal as the law of the land. God is not interested merely in the freedom of black men and brown men and yellow men, but God is interested in the freedom of the whole human race and the creation of a society where all men will live together as brothers. I can say to you that things are different all over the South as a result of the Civil Rights Bill of 1964. This is the kind of love you have for your roommate and those people that you get along with very well and that you go out with. --Martin Luther King, Jr. in his Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech (10 Dec, 1964) Print. And we shall overcome. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. We shall overcome because the arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice. It has become the theme song: We Shall Overcome. This sounds big. But we all know what happened as a result of the Plessy doctrine. National Museum of African American History and Culture, Poster for SCLC reading "Injustice Anywhere...a threat to Justice Everywhere". We get a few Negroes in formerly all-white schools and say we have integrated schools. Martin Luther King Jr., “Remaining Awake Through a Great Revolution.” Speech given at the National Cathedral, March 31, 1968. Martin Luther King Jr., “Remaining Awake Through a Great Revolution.” Speech given at the National Cathedral, March 31, 1968. Martin Luther King, Jr. We Shall Overcome book. But a century has passed, more than a hundred years since the Negro was freed. After examining the legal body of segregation, the Supreme Court pronounced it constitutionally dead on May 17 of that year. And so this is what we try to do. Laura Testino. We Shall Overcome by Martin Luther King, Jr.. We Shall Overcome was inspired by a hymn, "I'll Overcome Some Day," derived from Galatians 6:9, written by Charles Albert Tindley and published in 1900. But probably more than anything else or in any other area, we’ve seen the walls of legal segregation gradually crumble in our day and in our age. Negro masses all over began to re-evaluate themselves. Now let us notice first that we have come a long, long way and in order to illustrate this a bit of history is necessary. If we are to have a truly integrated society, it will never develop through tokenism. Before Thomas Jefferson etched across the pages of history the words I just quoted, we were here. And so if one is working for a just society, he should use just methods in bringing about that society. "We shall overcome!" At the turn of the century, there were very few Negroes registered to vote in the South. And for more than two centuries our forbearers labored here without wages. So the Negro can now consciously cry out with the eloquent cohort; Fellata looks and black complexion cannot forfeit nature’s claim. And so I can sing anew, “We shall overcome” and we shall overcome because Carlyle is right, “No lie can live forever.” We shall overcome because William Cullen Bryant is right, “Truth crushed to earth will rise again.” We shall overcome because … If he beats you, you develop a quiet courage of accepting blows without retaliating. This reveals to us that changes are taking place. We will not seek to rise from a position of disadvantage to one of advantage. I’m not talking about some sentimental or affectionate feeling. Slaves in the fields would sing, 'I'll be all right someday.' So this brother decided to put his argument of the inferiority of the Negro in the framework of an Aristotelian syllogism. Free at last. You know he’s that way because his culture has so patterned things that he’s grown up thinking that he’s superior and Negroes are inferior. Even religion was used, or I should say misused, to crystalize the patterns of the status quo and to justify the system of slavery. I have nothing against changing the heart. All of this is as a result of the Negro vote and that vote will do a great deal to make it possible for qualified Negroes to be elected. But as you look at Mr. Clark you know he’s that way because somebody taught him that. But fortunately lynchings have about ceased today, which reveals we’ve made strides. “We Shall Overcome” | Martin Luther King, Jr. January 15, 2021 “We Shall Overcome” | Martin Luther King, Jr. Rev. We’ve come a long, long way since 1896. And I believe also that it is true that if we are to solve the problem ultimately, the white person must see the Negro as his brother. Yet the Negro is almost 70 percent of the unemployed. I know there are those who would say the days of demonstrations are over. There must be a kind of divine discontent. î Lord before this victory is won some will have to get thrown in jail some more but we shall over come. We must help time and we must realize the time is always right to do right. They have confronted the situation where Negroes could not vote and so they went along with things as they were and never stood up against the evils that deep down in their hearts they wanted to stand up against. Without this hard work, time itself becomes an ally of the primitive forces of social stagnation and irrational emotionalism. In the final analysis, racial injustice must be uprooted from American society because it is morally wrong. 15376 reads. And then in the Greek language talks about Philia, which is a kind of intimate affection between personal friends. You know there are certain technical words in every academic discipline which soon become stereotypes and clichés. And we shall overcome. Yet that scaffold sways the future and behind them unknown stands God within the shadows keeping watch above his own. But be assured we will wear you down with all the lashings that we suffer. Forty-one percent of the Negro families of our country still earn less than $2,000 a year, while just 17 percent of the white families learn less than $2,000 a year. These are the jobs that are passing away today with the impact of automation and it is making for great unemployment. I was in Sweden and Norway some months ago. It will need the support of people of goodwill in the South. We shall overcome because James Russell Lowell is right: Truth forever on the scaffold, wrong forever on the throne, yet that scaffold sways the future and behind the dim unknown standeth God within the shadows keeping watch above his own. With His faith, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God’s children all over this nation, black men and white men, Protestants and Catholics, Jews and gentiles, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual “Free at last. Now I join … And I close with a personal faith and that is the glowing faith in the future that I believe somehow we will solve this problem however difficult, however much opposition we have. “We Shall Overcome” was launched as the anthem of the American Civil Rights movement in August of 1963. MLK's famed 'We Shall Overcome' speech returns to Tennessee roots, finds home at U of M . First, I’d like to say that nonviolence, I am convinced, is the most potent weapon available to oppressed people in that struggle for freedom and human dignity. It is the word maladjusted. In the economic area, we’ve seen some changes and so the average employed Negro, and I am stressing employed because later I will talk about unemployment, but the average employed Negro earns four times more than the average Negro wage earner of 10 years ago. We must get rid of one or two myths that are constantly disseminated. And our victory will be a double victory. One is what I refer to as the myth of time. And so the challenge in the days ahead is to work passionately and unrelentingly for the solution to the problem and to go that additional distance necessary to make justice a reality for all people. We need only turn on our televisions and open our newspapers and look around our community. Now I need not dwell on this point. There are still communities that are using various schemes and methods to keep the Negro from becoming a registered voter in large numbers, and so these patterns are used and there is a need in those areas for more federal registrars. 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