073: Martin Luther King - The Three Evils of Society

Episode Cover Photo Attribution - Bob Fitch Photography Archive, © Stanford University Libraries

https://purl.stanford.edu/bc967hk3892 

The Three Evils of Society - Transcript

Delivered at the National Conference on New Politics, August 31, 1967.  

Mr. Chairman, friends and brothers in this first gathering of the National Conference on New Politics. Ladiesand gentlemen. . .can you hear me in the back? (No)

I don’t know if the Klan is in here tonight or not with allthe troubles we’re having with these microphones. Seldom if ever. . . .has. . . .we’re still working with it.

As I was about to say, seldom if ever has such a diverse and truly ecumenical gathering convened under the egis of politics in our nation, and I want to commend the leadership of the National Conference on NewPolitics for all of the great work that they have done in making this significant convention possible. Indeed byour very nature we affirm that something new is taking place on the American political horizon. We have comehere from the dusty plantations of the Deep South and the depressing ghettos of the North. We have come fromthe great universities and the flourishing suburbs. We have come from Appalachian poverty and from consciousstricken wealth. But we have come. And we have come here because we share a common concern for the moralhealth of our nation. We have come because our eyes have seen through the superficial glory and glitter of our society and observed the coming of judgment. Like the prophet of old, we have read the handwriting on the wall. We have seen our nation weighed in the balance of history and found wanting. We have come because wesee this as a dark hour in the affairs of men.For most of us this is a new mood. We are traditionally the idealists. We are the marchers fromMississippi and Selma and Washington, who staked our lives on the American Dream during the first half of this decade. Many assembled here campaigned lasciviously for Lyndon Johnson in 1964 because we could notstand ideally by and watch our nation contaminated by the 18th Century policies of Goldwaterism. We were thehardcore activists who were willing to believe that Southerners could be reconstructed in the constitutionalimage. We were the dreamers of a dream – that dark yesterdays of mans inhumanity to man would soon betransformed into bright tomorrows of justice. Now it is hard to escape, the disillusionment and betrayal. Our hopes have been blasted and our dreams have been shattered. The promise of a Great Society was shipwreckedoff the coast of Asia, on the dreadful peninsula of Vietnam. The poor, black and white, are still perishing on alonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity. What happens to a dream deferred?It leads to bewildering frustration and corroding bitterness.I came to see this in a personal experience here in Chicago last summer. In all the speaking I have donein the United States before varied audiences, including some hostile whites, the only time I have ever been booed was one night in our regular weekly mass meetings by some angry young men of our movement. Now Iwent home that night with an ugly feeling. Selfishly I thought of my suffering and sacrifices over the last twelveyears. Why would they boo one so close to them? But as I lay awake thinking. I finally came to myself. And Icould not for the life of me have less impatience and understanding for those young men. For twelve years, I amothers like me, have held out radiant promises of progress. I had preached to them about my dream. I hadlectured to them about, the not to distant day when they would have freedom, all here, now. I had urged them tohave faith in America and in white society. Their hopes had soared. They were now booing me because they feltthat we were unable to deliver on our promises. They were booing because we had urged them to have faith in people who had too often proved to be unfaithful. They were now hostile because they were watching the dreamthat they had so readily accepted, turn into a frustrating nightmare. This situation is all the more ominous, inview of the rising expectations of men the world over. The deep rumblings that we hear today, the rumblings of discontent, is the thunder of disinherited masses rising from dungeons of oppressions to the bright hills of freedom. All over the world like a fever, freedom is spreading in the widest liberation movement in history. Thegreat masses of people are determined to end the exploitation of their races and lands. And in one majestic chorus they are singing in the worlds of our freedom song, “ain’t gonna let nobody turn us around”.

And so the collision course is set. The people cry for freedom and the congress attempts to legislaterepression. Millions, yes billions, are appropriated for