Dr. King 20160118

The non-violent resistance movements led by Dr. King were revolutionary.  He was a revolutionary.  We should not forget or reduce him to a vessel of convenience.  Maybe his brand of Christianity threaded with the political weapons of Gandhi allowed the white-powers in America to make a federal holiday for him more palatable then a more straight forward speaker on black-genocide in less commercial-friendly men like Malcom X or James Baldwin, but he was no less a man focused on direct action, change, and combat.  To the revolutionaries, the protestors, the strikers, the freedom fighters…

These are some quotes from the man; in honor of that revolutionary spirit

“The enlightened white southerner, who for years has preached gradualism, now sees that even the slow approach finally has revolutionary implications.  Placing straws on a camel’s back, no matter how slowly, is dangerous.  This realization has immobilized the liberals and most of the white church leads.  They have no answer for dealing with or absorbing violence.  They end in begging for retreat, lest “things get out of hand and lead to violence.”

“We do not wish to triumph over the white community.  That would only result in transferring those now on the bottom to the top.  But, if we can live up to nonviolence in though and deed, there will emerge an interracial society based on freedom for all.”

“The common point in all existentialism, whether it is atheistic or theistic, is that man’s existential situation is a state of estrangement from his essential nature.  In their revolt against Hegel’s existentialism, all existentialists contend that the world is fragmented.  History is a series of unreconciled conflicts and man’s existence is filled with anxiety and threatened with meaninglessness.”

“The first time I was seated behind a curtain in a dining car I felt as if the curtain had been dropped on my selfhood.”

“In any nonviolent campaign there are four basic steps: (1) collection of the facts to determine whether injustices are alive, (2) negotiation, (3) self-purification, and (4) direct action.  We have gone through all of these steps in Birmingham.  There can be no gainsaying of the fact that racial injustice engulfs this community.”

“We can never forget that everything Hitler did in Germany was legal and everything the Hungarian freedom fighters did in Hungary was illegal.”

“I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that he Negro’s great stumbling block in the stride toward freedom is not the White Citizens Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate who is more devoted to “order” than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says, “I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I can’t agree with your methods of direct action”; who paternalistically feels that he can set the timetable for another man’s freedom; who lives by the myth of time and who constantly advised the Negro to wait until a “more convenient season.” Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will.  Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.”

“The rich must not ignore the poor because both rich and poor are tied in a single garment of destiny.  All life is interrelated, and all men are interdependent.  The agony of the poor diminishes the rich, and the salvation of the poor enlarges the rich.  We are inevitably our brothers’ keeper because of the interrelated structure of reality.”