| MMLK MARCH IN SACRAMENTO JANUARY 21, 2008 | |
| "Our only hope today lies in our ability to recapture the revolutionary spirit and go out into a sometimes hostile world declaring eternal hostility to poverty, racism, and militarism. With this powerful commitment we shall boldly challenge the status quo and unjust mores, and thereby speed the day when "every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made low; the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough places plain." --MLK/"Beyond Vietnam" (1967) |
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"When we let freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, "Free at last! free at last! thank God Almighty, we are free at last!"--Martin Luther King, Jr. "I Have A Dream" (1963). |
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| "I have a dream that my four children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character." --MLK/"I Have A Dream" (1963). |
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| "We've got to see it through. And when we have our march, you need to be there. If it means leaving work, if it means leaving school -- be there. Be concerned about your brother. You may not be on strike. But either we go up together, or we go down together."--MLK/"I Have A Dream" (1963). |
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| "In 1957, when
a group of us formed the Southern Christian Leadership Conference,
we chose as our motto: "To save the soul of America." We
were convinced that we could not limit our vision to certain rights
for black people, but instead affirmed the conviction that America
would never be free or saved from itself until the descendants of
its slaves were loosed completely from the shackles they still wear.
In a way we were agreeing with Langston Hughes, that black bard of
Harlem, who had written earlier: O, yes, I say it plain, America never was America to me, And yet I swear this oath? America will be!" MLK/"Beyond Vietnam" (1967). |
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| "A true revolution
of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty
and wealth. With righteous indignation, it will look across the seas
and see individual capitalists of the West investing huge sums of
money in Asia, Africa, and South America, only to take the profits
out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries, and
say: "This is not just." It will look at our alliance with
the landed gentry of South America and say: "This is not just."
The Western arrogance of feeling that it has everything to teach others
and nothing to learn from them is not just" --MLK "Beyond
Vietnam" (1967). |
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| "And another reason that I'm happy to live in this period is that we have been forced to a point where we are going to have to grapple with the problems that men have been trying to grapple with through history, but the demands didn't force them to do it. Survival demands that we grapple with them. Men, for years now, have been talking about war and peace. But now, no longer can they just talk about it. It is no longer a choice between violence and nonviolence in this world; it's nonviolence or nonexistence. That is where we are today."--MLK/"I've Been to the Mountaintop" (1968). |