some interesting quotes from a frequently ignored speech by Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. (4 April 1967)

needless to say, this is a side of King's political opinions that is not highly publicized. I thought it was interesting. i know, quite a different type of posting than usual.

"Even when pressed by the demands of inner truth, men do not easily assume the task of opposing their government's policy...Nor does the human spirit move without great difficulty against all the apathy of conformist thought within one's own bosom and in the surrounding world..."

"Some of us who have already begun to break the silence of the night have found that the calling to speak is often a vocation of agony, but we must speak."

"I come to this platform tonight to make a passionate plea to my beloved nation."

"I knew that America would never invest the necessary funds or energies in rehabilitation of its poor so long as adventures like Vietnam continued to draw men and skills and money like some demonic destructive suction tube"

"So we have been repeatedly faced with the cruel irony of watching Negro and white boys on TV screens as they kill and die together for a nation that has been unable to seat them together in the same schools"

"I knew that I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today -- my own government. For the sake of those boys, for the sake of this government, for the sake of hundreds of thousands trembling under our violence, I cannot be silent."

"When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights, are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered."

"True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring."


his speech was not well-liked. conspiracy theory holds that he was assassinated on that date a year later (April 4th 1968) because of his views.

no comment....

any and all comments or responses are welcome at dabele@wm.edu