In December of 1964 Martin Luther King made a speech in London — a speech which was largely lost to us until recently when a recording was discovered. You can listen to the entire speech on a recent Democracy Now episode (or read a transcript of the episode on which they played the recording) at the Democracy Now site.
In the first part of the speech, which I wrote about last Thursday, King talks about how we have come a long, long way in the struggle to achieve racial justice but still have a long, long way to go.
In the second part of the speech, which I wrote about on Friday, King detailed some of the progress made in what was then recent times — especially the passage of the 1964 civil rights act, “the most comprehensive civil rights bill ever recommended by any president of our great nation ”, noting that it was John F. Kennedy who spoke eloquently to the nation about the urgent need for this kind of legislation but was unable to get it passed and how it was Lyndon Johnson who managed to get the bill passed and signed it into law:
But President Lyndon Johnson got to work. He started calling congressmen and senators in and started meeting day in and day out with influential people in the country and making it clear that that bill had to pass, as a tribute to the late President Kennedy, but also as a tribute to the greatness of the country and as an expression of its dedication to the American dream. And it was that great day last summer that that bill came into being, and it was on July 2nd that Mr. Johnson signed that bill and it became the law of the land.
In today’s diary I’ll look at the third part of the speech, in which King addresses some of the arguments made by opponents of civil rights legislation.
In December 1964 the passage of the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964, which outlawed segregation in public places and banned employment discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex or national origin, was very much on people’s minds. But something else was very much on people’s minds as well:
We can never forget the fact that just this summer three civil rights workers were brutally murdered near Philadelphia, Mississippi. All of this reveals to us that we have not achieved the level of brotherhood ... that we need and that we must have in our nation. We still have a long, long way to go.
By following his celebration of Johnson’s work in getting the civil rights act passes with this reminder of the violence and hatred which still existed and was still all-too-real, King once again stated the recurring theme of this speech: We have come a long, long way, but we have a long, long way to go .
I mentioned voter registration and the fact that we have been able to add about 800,000 new registered voters in the last two or three years, the fact that it’s over two million now. I guess that sounded like real progress, and it does represent some progress. But let me give you the other side, and that is the fact that there are still more than 10 million Negroes living in the Southern part of the United States, and some six million of the Negroes living in the Southern part of the United States are of voting age, and yet only two million are registered. This means that four million remain unregistered, not merely because they are apathetic, not because they are complacent—this may be true of some few—but because all types of conniving methods are still being used to keep Negroes from becoming registered voters. Complex literacy tests are given, which make it almost impossible for anybody to pass the test, even if he has a Ph.D. degree in any field or a law degree from the best law schools of the world. And then actual economic reprisals are often taken out against Negroes who seek to register and vote in some of the Black Belt counties of Mississippi and Alabama and other places. Then, some are actually faced with physical violence, and sometimes physical death. This reveals that we have a great deal that must be done in this area.
Fifty-some years later, the particular types obstacles to Black voter registration and Black voting which were common in 1964 are largely gone but new obstacles to registration and voting have taken their place. One key difference is that in 1964 it was almost exclusively the former slave-holding states which were putting up these obstacles; now nationwide there are Republican-controlled states attempting to put into place measures to suppress registration and voting by voters likely to vote Democratic, especially Black and Hispanic voters.
I mentioned economic justice, and I am sure that that figure, $28 billion, sounded very large. That’s a lot of money. But then I must go on and give you the other side, if I am to be honest about the picture. That is a fact that 42 percent of the Negro families of the United States still earn less than $2,000 a year, while just 16 percent of the white families earn less than $2,000 a year; 21 percent of the Negro families of America earn less than $1,000 a year, while just 5 percent of the white families earn less than $1,000 a year. And then we face the fact that 88 percent of the Negro families of America earn less than $5,000 a year, while just 58 percent of the white families earn less than $5,000 a year.
So we can see that there is still a great gulf between the haves, so to speak, and the have-nots. And if America is to continue to grow and progress and develop and move on toward its greatness, this problem must be solved.
Fifty-two years later, the gulf betweens the haves and the have-nots was a major theme of speeches during the Democratic presidential primaries. The problem is still not solved, and we still have a long, long way to go.
And the distance we still need to go becomes even more depressingly clear when what King talked about next is viewed in light of what is happening today:
Now, this economic problem is getting more serious because of many forces alive in our world and in our nation. For many years, Negroes were denied adequate educational opportunities. For many years, Negroes were even denied apprenticeship training. And so, the forces of labor and industry so often discriminated against Negroes. And this meant that the Negro ended up being limited, by and large, to unskilled and semi-skilled labor.
Now, because of the forces of automation and cybernation, these are the jobs that are now passing away. And so, the Negro wakes up in a city like Detroit, Michigan, and discovers that he is 28 percent of the population and about 72 percent of the unemployed. Now, in order to grapple with that problem, our federal government will have to develop massive retraining programs, massive public works programs, so that automation can be a blessing, as it must be to our society, and not a curse.
Then the other thing when we think of this economic problem, we must think of the fact that there is nothing more dangerous than to build a society with a segment in that society which feels that it has no stake in the society, and nothing more dangerous than to build a society with a number of people who see life as little more than a long and desolate corridor with no exit sign. They end up with despair because they have no jobs, because they can’t educate their children, because they can’t live in a nice home, because they can’t have adequate health facilities.
We always hear of the various reasons why and the various myths concerning integration and why integration shouldn’t come into being. Those people who argue against integration at this point often say, "Well, if you integrate the public schools, for instance, you will pull the white race back a generation." And they like to talk about the cultural lag in the Negro community. And then they go on to say, "Now, you know, the Negro is a criminal, and he has the highest crime rate in any city that you can find in the United States." And the arguments go on ad infinitum why integration shouldn’t come into being.
Sound familiar? In the aftermath of the 1964 election there was hope and excitement that this kind of attitude, so common at the time, was fading, and that the government was working to help. In the aftermath of the 2016 election there is good reason to fear that this kind of attitude is still very much around that the new administration is working to further it.
But I think there’s an answer to that, and that is that if there is cultural lag in the Negro community—and there certainly is—this lag is there because of segregation and discrimination. It’s there because of long years of slavery and segregation. Criminal responses are not racial, but environmental. Poverty, economic deprivation, social isolation and all of these things breed crime, whatever the racial group may be. And it is a torturous logic to use the tragic results of racial segregation as an argument for the continuation of it. It is necessary to go back. And so it is necessary to see this and to go all out to make economic justice a reality all over our nation.
Unfortunately the new administration seems more committed to making economic injustice a reality all over our nation.
I mentioned that racial segregation is about dead in the United States, but it’s still with us. We are about past the day of legal segregation. We have about ended de jure segregation, where the laws of the nation or of a particular state can uphold it, because of the civil rights bill and the Supreme Court’s decision and other things. We have passed the day when the Negro can’t eat at a lunch counter, with the exception of a few isolated situations, or where the Negro can’t check in a motel or hotel. We are fastly passing that day.
But there is another form of segregation coming up. It is coming up through housing discrimination, joblessness and the de facto segregation in the public schools. And so the ghettoized conditions that exist make for many problems, and it makes for a hardcore, de facto segregation that we must grapple with on a day-to-day basis. And so, this is the problem that we face, and this is a problem that we are forced to deal with.
And we are going to deal with it in a determined way. I am absolutely convinced that segregation is on its deathbed, and those who represent it, whether they be in the United States or whether they be in London, England, the system is on its deathbed.
But certainly, we all know that if democracy is to live in any nation, segregation must die. And as I’ve tried to say all over America, we’ve got to get rid of segregation not merely because it will help our image—it certainly will help our image in the world. We’ve got to get rid of segregation not merely because it will appeal to Asian and African people—and this certainly will be helpful, this is important. But in the final analysis, racial discrimination must be uprooted from American society and from every society, because it is morally wrong. So it is necessary to go all out and develop massive action programs to get rid of racial segregation.
In 1964 there was a large and growing sense of agreement with what King was saying about racial discrimination being morally wrong — an amazing change in the ten years since 1954, when so many Americans accepted that segregation was how things had been, how they were, and how they should remain, that segregation was the natural order of things.
Following the 2016 elections there is, sadly, a growing number of people who again feel that segregation of different racial or ethnic groups is the natural order, who feel that American was, is, and should remain a White nation, and this time it’s they who control the White House.
Now I would like to mention one or two ideas that circulate in our society—and they probably circulate in your society and all over the world—that keep us from developing the kind of action programs necessary to get rid of discrimination and segregation. One is what I refer to as the myth of time. There are those individuals who argue that only time can solve the problem of racial injustice in the United States, in South Africa or anywhere else; you’ve got to wait on time. And I know they’ve said to us so often in the States and to our allies in the white community, "Just be nice and be patient and continue to pray, and in 100 or 200 years the problem will work itself out."
We have heard and we have lived with the myth of time. The only answer that I can give to that myth is that time is neutral. It can be used either constructively or destructively. And I must honestly say to you that I’m convinced that the forces of ill will have often used time much more effectively than the forces of goodwill. And we may have to repent in this generation, not merely for the vitriolic words and the violent actions of the bad people, but for the appalling silence and indifference of the good people who sit around saying, "Wait on time."
And somewhere along the way it is necessary to see that human progress never rolls in on the wheels of inevitability. It comes through the tireless efforts and the persistent work of dedicated individuals who are willing to be co-workers with God. And without this hard work, time itself becomes an ally of the primitive forces of social stagnation. And so we must help time, and we must realize that the time is always ripe to do right. This is so vital, and this is so necessary.
Here, King is echoing what he wrote a year earlier in his famed Letter From Birmingham Jail: “Human progress never rolls in on wheels of inevitability; it comes through the tireless efforts of men willing to be co workers with God, and without this hard work, time itself becomes an ally of the forces of social stagnation. We must use time creatively, in the knowledge that the time is always ripe to do right. Now is the time to make real the promise of democracy and transform our pending national elegy into a creative psalm of brotherhood. Now is the time to lift our national policy from the quicksand of racial injustice to the solid rock of human dignity.”
Now, the other myth that gets around a great deal in our nation and, I’m sure, in other nations of the world is the idea that you can’t solve the problems in the realm of human relations through legislation; you can’t solve the housing problem and the job problem and all of these other problems through legislation; you’ve got to change the heart.
We had a presidential candidate just recently who spoke about this a great deal. And I think Mr. Goldwater sincerely believed that you couldn’t [achieve] anything through legislation, because he voted against everything in the Senate, including the civil rights bill. And he said all over the nation throughout the election that we don’t need legislation, that legislation can’t deal with this problem. But he was nice enough to say that you’ve got to change the heart.
Martin Luther King was not a Democrat. (Nor was he a Republican, despite false claims which various right-wing echo chambers and Republican propagandists have circulated in recent years.) King deliberately refused to register with either party in order to be better able to speak to members of both.
But in the 1964 presidential election campaign he was very much in support of Lyndon Johnson and very much opposed to Barry Goldwater. (After the election he called Johnson’s victory over Goldwater “one of America’s finest hours ”.)
Goldwater was a strong opponent of civil rights legislation. More than that, he was a strong opponent of government taking almost any action to try to end discrimination and to end the many racial injustices which were prevalent in much of American life. And in these next paragraphs King explains very well why the conservative arguments about this were wrong:
Now I want to at least go halfway with Brother Goldwater at that point. I think he’s right. If we’re going to get this problem solved in America and all over the world, ultimately, people must change their hearts where they have prejudices. If we are going to solve the problems facing mankind, I would be the first to say that every white person must look down deep within and remove every prejudice that may be there, and come to see that the Negro, and the colored peoples, generally, must be treated right, not merely because the law says it, but because it is right and because it is natural. I agree with this 100 percent. And I’m sure that if the problem is to be solved, ultimately, men must be obedient not merely to that which can be enforced by the law, but they must rise to the majestic heights of being obedient to the unenforceable.
But after saying all of that, I must go on to the other side. This is where I must leave Mr. Goldwater and others who believe that legislation has no place. It may be true that you can’t legislate integration, but you can legislate desegregation. It may be true that morality cannot be legislated, but behavior can be regulated. It may be true that the law can’t change the heart, but it can restrain the heartless. It may be true that the law can’t make a man love me, but it can restrain him from lynching me. And I think that’s pretty important also.
I think that’s very-well expressed and is a thought well worth reflecting on, so I’m going to take a break here.
I’ll be back tomorrow with the fourth and final part of this speech, in which King speaks very powerfully about nonviolence and about the South African struggle against apartheid from which he drew inspiration.