As is the tradition here at unevenkiel, I've selected a few passages from the speeches and writings of Martin Luther King, Jr., as my way of celebrating the holiday weekend.  With an eye on the inauguration and the connections between Dr. King and the election of an African American president, this year's selections are from an essay entitled "A Testament of Hope."  Written in 1968 and published posthumously, the essay explains why, in spite of the increasing violence and militarism in the African American community and the lingering war in Vietnam, Dr. King remained an optimist.  Enjoy!

Previous Dr. King selections:  2006    2007    2008

On the current state (1968) of African Americans and prospects for the future…

“Lack of education, the dislocation of recent urbanization and the hardening of white resistance loom as such tormenting roadblocks that the goal sometimes appears not as a fixed point in the future but as a receding point never to be reached.  Still, when doubts emerge, we can remember that only yesterday Negroes were not only grossly exploited but negated as human beings.  They were invisible in their misery.  But the sullen and silent slave of 110 years ago, an object of scorn at worst or of pity at best, is today’s angry man.  He is vibrantly on the move; he is forcing change, rather than waiting for it in pathetic futility.  In less than two decades, he has roared out of slumber to change so many of his life’s conditions that he may yet find the means to accelerate his march forward and overtake the racing locomotive of history.”

On the rioting recently occurring in African American communities...

"The riots in Negro ghettos have been, in one sense, merely another expression of the growing climate of violence in America.  When a culture begins to feel threatened by its own inadequacies, the majority of men tend to prop themselves up by artificial means, rather than dig down deep into their spiritual and cultural wellsprings.  America seems to have reached this point...When Rome began to disintegrate from within, it turned to a strengthening of the military establishment rather than to a correction of the corruption within the society.  We are doing the same thing in this country and the result will probably be the same -- unless, and here I admit to a bit of chauvinism, the black man in America can provide a new soul force for all Americans, a new expression of the American dream that need not be realized at the expense of other men around the world, but a dream of opportunity and life that can be shared with the rest of the world.  It seems glaringly obvious to me that the development of a humanitarian means of dealing with some of the social problems of the world -- and the correlative revolution in American values that this will entail -- is a much better way of protecting ourselves against the threat of violence than the military means we have chosen."

On the election of African America mayors...

"The election of Negro mayors in some of the nation's larger cities has had a tremendous psychological impact upon the Negro.  It has shown him that he has the potential to participate in the determination of his own destiny -- and that of society.  We will see more..."

On why he remains an optimist…

(The civil rights protests of the past and the black militarism of the present has caused, for some, an internal disquiet)  “An insistent question defied evasion: Was security for some being purchased at the price of degradation for others?  Everything in our traditions said this kind of injustice was the system of the past or of other nations.  And yet there it was, abroad in our own land.  Thus was born – particularly in the young generation – a spirit of dissent that ranged from superficial disavowal of the old values to total commitment to wholesale, drastic and immediate social reform.  Yet all of it was dissent.  Their voice is still a minority; but united with millions of black protesting voices, it has become a sound of distant thunder increasing in volume with the gathering of storm clouds.  This dissent is America’s hope.  It shines in the long tradition of American ideals that began with courageous minutemen in New England, that continued in the abolitionist movement, that re-emerged in the populist revolt decades later, that burst forth to elect Franklin Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy.  Today’s dissenters tell the complacent majority that the time has come when further evasion of social responsibility in a turbulent world will court disaster and death.  America has not yet changed because so many think it need not change, but this is the illusion of the damned.  America must change…”