What is the “bad check†that Dr. King says America has given to its African American citizens?
The Hungry Club Forum began equally a secret initiative of the Butler Street YMCA, in Atlanta. It was a place where sympathetic white politicians could meet out of the public center with local black leaders, who were excluded from many of the city'south borough organizations. King, an Atlanta native, addressed the lodge on May 10, 1967. He acknowledged that progress had been made in ceremonious rights, but warned that the "evils" of racism, poverty, and the Vietnam War endangered farther gains for black Americans.
Three major evils —the evil of racism, the evil of poverty, and the evil of state of war. These are the iii things that I want to deal with today. Now let us plow first to the evil of racism. There can exist no gainsaying of the fact that racism is still alive all over America. Racial injustice is still the Negro's brunt and America'due south shame. And we must face the difficult fact that many Americans would like to accept a nation which is a democracy for white Americans only simultaneously a dictatorship over black Americans. We must face the fact that we still have much to do in the area of race relations.
Now to exist sure at that place has been some progress, and I would not want to overlook that. We've seen that progress a peachy deal here in our Southland. Probably the greatest area of this progress has been the breakdown of legal segregation. And then the move in the S has profoundly shaken the unabridged edifice of segregation. And I am convinced that segregation is equally dead every bit a doornail in its legal sense, and the only thing uncertain about information technology at present is how costly some of the segregationists who however linger around volition make the funeral. And and then in that location has been progress. But we must not allow this progress to crusade united states to engage in a superficial, dangerous optimism. The institute of freedom has grown only a bud and non yet a bloom. And there is no area of our land that can boast of clean hands in the surface area of brotherhood. Every city confronts a serious problem. Now there are those who are trying to say now that the civil rights motion is dead. I submit to y'all that it is more alive today than ever before. What they neglect to realize is that nosotros are now in a transition menstruum. Nosotros are moving into a new phase of the struggle. For well now twelve years, the struggle was basically a struggle to end legal segregation. In a sense it was a struggle for decency. Information technology was a struggle to get rid of all of the humiliation and the syndrome of depravation surrounding the arrangement of legal segregation. And I need not remind you that those were glorious days. We cannot forget the days of Montgomery, when l thou Negroes decided that information technology was ultimately more honorable to walk the streets in dignity than to accept segregation inside, in humiliation. We will not forget the 1960 sit-in movement, when past the thousands students decided to sit down in at dejeuner counters, protesting humiliation and segregation. And when they decided to sit down at those counters, they were in reality standing upwards for the best in the American dream and carrying the whole nation dorsum to those great wells of democracy which were dug deep by the founding fathers in the formulation of the Constitution and the Announcement of Independence. We will not forget the Freedom Rides of sixty one, and the Birmingham Movement of threescore three, a movement which literally subpoenaed the censor of a large segment of the nation to appear earlier the judgement seat of morality on the whole question of civil rights. We will non forget Selma, when by the thousands we marched from that city to Montgomery to dramatize the fact that Negroes did not have the correct to vote. These were marvelous movements. Simply that catamenia is over now. And we are moving into a new phase.
And because nosotros are moving into this new stage, some people feel that the ceremonious rights movement is dead. The new phase is a struggle for genuine equality. It is not merely a struggle for decency now, it is not merely a struggle to get rid of the brutality of a Bull Connor and a Jim Clark. Information technology is at present a struggle for 18-carat equality on all levels, and this will be a much more difficult struggle. Yous meet, the gains in the offset period, or the first era of struggle, were obtained from the ability structure at bargain rates; it didn't cost the nation annihilation to integrate dejeuner counters. It didn't toll the nation anything to integrate hotels and motels. It didn't cost the nation a penny to guarantee the correct to vote. Now we are in a catamenia where it volition price the nation billions of dollars to get rid of poverty, to get rid of slums, to make quality integrated educational activity a reality. This is where we are now. Now we're going to lose some friends in this period. The allies who were with us in Selma volition not all stay with us during this period. We've got to sympathize what is happening. Now they ofttimes telephone call this the white backlash … It's simply a new name for an old phenomenon. The fact is that there has never been any single, solid, determined commitment on the function of the vast majority of white Americans to genuine equality for Negroes. There has ever been ambivalence … In 1863 the Negro was granted freedom from physical slavery through the Emancipation Announcement. Merely he was not given land to make that freedom meaningful. At the same time, our regime was giving abroad millions of acres of land in the Midwest and the West, which meant that the nation was willing to undergird its white peasants from Europe with an economical floor, while refusing to do it for its blackness peasants from Africa who were held in slavery two hundred and forty 4 years. And this is why Frederick Douglass would say that emancipation for the Negro was freedom to hunger, freedom to the winds and rains of sky, freedom without roofs to cover their heads. It was freedom without staff of life to eat, without land to cultivate. It was freedom and famine at the same time. And it is a phenomenon that the Negro has survived.
In 1875 the nation passed a civil rights nib, and refused to enforce it. In 1964, the nation passed a weaker civil rights bill and even to this day has failed to enforce information technology in all of its dimensions. In 1954 the Supreme Courtroom rendered a decision outlawing segregation in the public schools. And even to this twenty-four hours in the deep Southward, less than five per cent of the Negro students are attending integrated schools. Nosotros haven't even made one per cent progress a twelvemonth. If it continues at this rate, it volition take another ninety seven years to integrate the schools of the S and of our nation …
Now let us be sure that we will have to keep the pressure alive. We've never fabricated any proceeds in ceremonious rights without constant, persistent, legal and non-vehement force per unit area. Don't let anybody brand you experience that the problem volition work itself out …
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The second evil that I want to deal with is the evil of poverty. Like a monstrous octopus it spreads its nagging prehensile tentacles into cities and hamlets and villages all over our nation. Some 40 million of our brothers and sisters are poverty stricken, unable to proceeds the basic necessities of life. And then often we allow them to become invisible because our lodge's so affluent that nosotros don't run into the poor. Some of them are Mexican Americans. Some of them are Indians. Some are Puerto Ricans. Some are Appalachian whites. The vast majority are Negroes in proportion to their size in the population … Now at that place is zero new most poverty. It's been with the states for years and centuries. What is new at this point though, is that we now have the resource, nosotros at present have the skills, we now have the techniques to get rid of poverty. And the question is whether our nation has the volition …
At present I want to deal with the tertiary evil that constitutes the dilemma of our nation and the globe. And that is the evil of war. Somehow these three evils are tied together. The triple evils of racism, economical exploitation, and militarism. The corking trouble and the dandy challenge facing mankind today is to become rid of state of war … Nosotros accept left ourselves as a nation morally and politically isolated in the globe. Nosotros accept greatly strengthened the forces of reaction in America, and excited violence and hatred amid our own people. We accept diverted attention from ceremonious rights. During a period of war, when a nation becomes obsessed with the guns of state of war, social programs inevitably suffer. People become insensitive to pain and agony in their own midst …
Now I know that there are people who are confused nigh the war and they say to me and anybody who speaks out against it, "You shouldn't be speaking out. You're a civil rights leader, and the two bug should non be joined together." Well … the two issues are tied together. And I'g going to keep them together. Oh my friends, it'due south good for united states to fight for integrated lunch counters, and for integrated schools. And I'm going to continue to exercise that. Just wouldn't it be absurd to be talking virtually integrated schools without being concerned about the survival of a world in which to be integrated …
For those who are telling me to proceed my rima oris shut, I can't exercise that. I'grand against segregation at lunch counters, and I'm not going to segregate my moral concerns. And we must know on some positions, cowardice asks the question, "Is information technology condom?" Expediency asks the question, "Is information technology politic?" Vanity asks the question, "Is it pop?" But conscience asks the question, "Is information technology right?" And there're times when y'all must take a stand that is neither safe nor politic nor popular, simply you must do it because it is right.
This article is an extract of a speech originally titled "America's Main Moral Dilemma." © 1967 Dr. Martin Luther Male monarch Jr, © renewed 1995 Coretta Scott King. All works past Martin Luther Male monarch Jr. have been reprinted by arrangement with the Heirs to the Estate of Martin Luther Male monarch Jr., care of Writers House equally amanuensis for the proprietor, New York, New York.
Source: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/02/martin-luther-king-hungry-club-forum/552533/
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