As I listened to Ralph Abernathy and his eloquent and generous introduction and then thought

about myself, I wondered who he was talking about.

It's always good to have your closest friend and associate to say something good about

you, and Ralph Abernathy is the best friend that I have in the world.

I'm delighted to see each of you here tonight in spite of a storm warning.

You reveal that you are determined to go on anyhow.

Something is happening in Memphis, something is happening in our world.

And you know, if I were standing at the beginning of time with the possibility of taking a kind

of general and panoramic view of the whole of human history up to now, and the Almighty

said to me, "Martin Luther King, which age would you like to live in?"

I would take my mental flight by Egypt, and I would watch God's children in their magnificent

trek from the dark dungeons of Egypt through, or rather, across the Red Sea, through the

wilderness, on toward the Promised Land.

And in spite of its magnificence, I wouldn't stop there.

I would move on by Greece, and take my mind to Mount Olympus.

And I would see Plato, Aristotle, Socrates, Euripides, and Aristophanes assembled around

the Parthenon, and I would watch them around the Parthenon as they discussed the great

and eternal issues of reality.

But I wouldn't stop there.

I would go on even to the great heyday of the Roman Empire, and I would see developments

around there, through various emperors and leaders.

But I wouldn't stop there.

I would even come up to the day of the Renaissance and get a quick picture of all that the Renaissance

did for the cultural and aesthetic life of man.

But I wouldn't stop there.

I would even go by the way that the man for whom I'm named had his habitat, and I would

watch Martin Luther as he tacks his ninety-five theses on the door at the church of Wittenberg.

But I wouldn't stop there.

But I wouldn't stop there.

I would come on up even to 1863 and watch a vacillating president by the name of Abraham

Lincoln finally come to the conclusion that he had to sign the Emancipation Proclamation.

But I wouldn't stop there.

I would even come up to the early thirties and see a man grappling with the problems

of the bankruptcy of his nation, and come with an eloquent cry that "we have nothing

to fear but fear itself."

But I wouldn't stop there.

Strangely enough, I would turn to the Almighty and say, "If you allow me to live just a few

years in the second half of the twentieth century, I will be happy."

Now that's a strange statement to make because the world is all messed up.

The nation is sick, trouble is in the land, confusion all around.

That's a strange statement.

But I know, somehow, that only when it is dark enough can you see the stars.

And I see God working in this period of the twentieth century in a way that men in some

strange way are responding.

Something is happening in our world.

The masses of people are rising up.

And wherever they are assembled today, whether they are in Johannesburg, South Africa; Nairobi,

Kenya; Accra, Ghana; New York City; Atlanta, Georgia; Jackson, Mississippi; or Memphis,

Tennessee, the cry is always the same: "We want to be free."

And another reason 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.

And also, in the human rights revolution, if something isn't done and done in a hurry

to bring the colored peoples of the world out of their long years of poverty; their

long years of hurt and neglect, the whole world is doomed.

Now I'm just happy that God has allowed me to live in this period, to see what is unfolding.

And I'm happy that he's allowed me to be in Memphis.

I can remember, I can remember when Negroes were just going around, as Ralph has said

so often, scratching where they didn't itch and laughing when they were not tickled.

But that day is all over.

We mean business now and we are determined to gain our rightful place in God's world.

And that's all this whole thing is about.

We aren't engaged in any negative protest and in any negative arguments with anybody.

We are saying that we are determined to be men.

We are determined to be people.

We are saying, we are saying that we are God's children.

And if we are God's children, we don't have to live like we are forced to live.

Now what does all this mean in this great period of history?

It means that we've got to stay together.

We've got to stay together and maintain unity.

You know, whenever Pharaoh wanted to prolong the period of slavery in Egypt, he had a favorite,

favorite formula of doing it.

What was that?

He kept the slaves fighting among themselves.

But whenever the slaves get together, something happens in Pharaoh's court, and he cannot

hold the slaves in slavery.

When the slaves get together, that's the beginning of getting out of slavery.

Now let us maintain unity.

Secondly, let us keep the issues where they are.

The issue is injustice.

The issue is the refusal of Memphis to be fair and honest in its dealings with its public

servants, who happen to be sanitation workers.

Now we've got to keep attention on that.

That's always the problem with a little violence.

You know what happened the other day, and the press dealt only with the window breaking.

I read the articles.

They very seldom got around to mentioning the fact that 1,300 sanitation workers are

on strike, and that Memphis is not being fair to them, and that Mayor Loeb is in dire need

of a doctor.

They didn't get around to that.

Now we're going to march again, and we've got to march again, in order to put the issue

where it is supposed to be and force everybody to see that there are thirteen hundred of

God's children here suffering, sometimes going hungry, going through dark and dreary nights

wondering how this thing is going to come out.

That's the issue.

And we've got to say to the nation, we know how it's coming out.

For when people get caught up with that which is right and they are willing to sacrifice

for it, there is no stopping point short of victory.

We aren't going to let any mace stop us.

We are masters in our nonviolent movement in disarming police forces.

They don't know what to do.

I've seen them so often.

I remember in Birmingham, Alabama, when we were in that majestic struggle there, we would

move out of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church day after day.

By the hundreds we would move out, and Bull Connor would tell them to send the dogs forth,

and they did come.

But we just went before the dogs singing, "Ain't gonna let nobody turn me around."

Bull Connor next would say, "Turn the fire hoses on."

And as I said to you the other night, Bull Connor didn't know history.

He knew a kind of physics that somehow didn't relate to the trans-physics that we knew about.

And that was the fact that there was a certain kind of fire that no water could put out.

And we went before the fire hoses.

We had known water.

If we were Baptist or some other denominations, we had been immersed.

If we were Methodist or some others, we had been sprinkled.

But we knew water.

That couldn't stop us.

And we just went on before the dogs and we would look at them, and we'd go on before

the water hoses and we would look at it.

And we'd just go on singing, "Over my head, I see freedom in the air."

And then we would be thrown into paddy wagons, and sometimes we were stacked in there like

sardines in a can.

And they would throw us in, and old Bull would say, "Take 'em off."

And they did, and we would just go on in the paddy wagon singing, "We Shall Overcome."

And every now and then we'd get in jail, and we'd see the jailers looking through the windows

being moved by our prayers and being moved by our words and our songs.

And there was a power there which Bull Connor couldn't adjust to, and so we ended up transforming

Bull into a steer, and we on our struggle in Birmingham.

Now we've got to go on in Memphis just like that.

I call upon you to be with us when we go out Monday.

Now about injunctions.

We have an injunction and we're going into court tomorrow morning to fight this illegal,

unconstitutional injunction.

All we say to America is to be true to what you said on paper.

If I lived in China or even Russia, or any totalitarian country, maybe I could understand

some of these illegal injunctions.

Maybe I could understand the denial of certain basic First Amendment privileges, because

they haven't committed themselves to that over there.

But somewhere I read of the freedom of assembly.

Somewhere I read of the freedom of speech.

Somewhere I read of the freedom of press.

Somewhere I read that the greatness of America is the right to protest for right.

And so just as I say we aren't going to let any dogs or water hoses turn us around, we

aren't going to let any injunction turn us around.

We are going on.

We need all of you.

You know, what's beautiful to me is to see all of these ministers of the Gospel.

It's a marvelous picture.

Who is it that is supposed to articulate the longings and aspirations of the people more

than the preacher?

Somewhere the preacher must have a kind of fire shut up in his bones, and whenever injustice

is around he must tell it.

Somehow the preacher must be an Amos, who said, "When God Speaks, who can but prophesy?"

Again with Amos, "Let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream."

Somehow the preacher must say with Jesus, "The spirit of the Lord is upon me, because

He hath anointed me, and He's anointed me to deal with the problems of the poor."

And I want to commend the preachers, under the leadership of these noble men: James Lawson,

one who has been in this struggle for many years.

He's been to jail for struggling; he's been kicked out of Vanderbilt University for this

struggling; but he's still going on, fighting for the rights of his people.

Reverend Ralph Jackson, Billy Kyles; I could just go right on down the list, but time will

not permit.

But I want to thank all of them, and I want you to thank them because so often preachers

aren't concerned about anything but themselves.

And I'm always happy to see a relevant ministry.

It's all right to talk about long white robes over yonder, in all of its symbolism, but

ultimately people want some suits and dresses and shoes to wear down here.

It's all right to talk about streets flowing with milk and honey, but God has commanded

us to be concerned about the slums down here and His children who can't eat three square

meals a day.

It's all right to talk about the new Jerusalem, but one day God's preacher must talk about

the new New York, the new Atlanta, the new Philadelphia, the new Los Angeles, the new

Memphis, Tennessee.

This is what we have to do.

Now the other thing we'll have to do is this: always anchor our external direct action with

the power of economic withdrawal.

Now we are poor people, individually we are poor when you compare us with white society

in America.

We are poor.

Never stop and forget that collectively, that means all of us together, collectively we

are richer than all the nations in the world, with the exception of nine.

Did you ever think about that?

After you leave the United States, Soviet Russia, Great Britain, West Germany, France,

and I could name the others, the American Negro collectively is richer than most nations

of the world.

We have an annual income of more than thirty billion dollars a year, which is more than

all of the exports of the United States and more than the national budget of Canada.

Did you know that?

That's power right there, if we know how to pool it.

We don't have to argue with anybody.

We don't have to curse and go around acting bad with our words.

We don't need any bricks and bottles; we don't need any Molotov cocktails.

We just need to go around to these stores, and to these massive industries in our country