by Martin Luther King, Jr.
Some years ago a
famous novelist died. Among his papers was found a list of
suggested plots for future stories, the most prominently
underscored being this one. A widely separated family
inherits a house in which they have to live together.
This is the great new problem of mankind. We have inherited
a large house, a great world house in which we
have to live together&emdash;black and white, Easterner and
Westerner, Gentile and Jew, Catholic and Protestant, Moslem
and Hindu&emdash;a family unduly separated in ideas,
culture, and interest, who, because we can never again live
apart, must learn somehow to live with each other in
peace. However deeply
American Negroes are caught in the struggle to be at last at
home in our homeland of the United States, we cannot ignore
the larger world house in which we are also dwellers.
Equality with whites will not solve the problems of either
whites or Negroes if it means equality in a world society
stricken by poverty and in a universe doomed to extinction
by war. Human beings,
searching a century ago as now for better understanding, had
no television, no radios, no telephones, and no motion
pictures through which to communicate. Medical science had
not yet discovered the wonder drugs to end many dread
plagues and diseases. One hundred years ago military men had
not yet developed the terrifying weapons of warfare that we
know today&emdash;not the bomber, an airborne fortress
raining down death; nor napalm, that burner of all things
and flesh in its path. A century ago there were no
skyscraping building to kiss the stars and no gargantuan
bridges to span the waters. Science had not yet peered into
the unfathomable ranges of interstellar space, not had it
penetrated oceanic depths. All these new inventions, these
new ideas, these sometimes fascinating and sometimes
frightening developments came later. Most of them have come
within the past sixty years, sometimes with agonizing
slowness, more characteristically with bewildering speed,
but always with enormous significance for our future. The years ahead
will see a continuation of the same dramatic developments.
Physical science will carve new highways through the
stratosphere. In the few years astronauts and cosmonauts
will probably walk comfortably across the uncertain pathways
of the moon. In two or three years it will be possible,
because of the new supersonic jets, to fly from New York to
London in two and one-half house. In the years ahead medical
science will greatly prolong the lives of men by finding a
cure for cancer and deadly heart ailments. Automation and
cybernation will make it possible for working people to have
undreamed-of amounts of leisure time. All this is a dazzling
picture of the furniture, the workshop, the spacious rooms,
the new decorations, and the architectural pattern of the
large world house in which we are living. Along with the
scientific and technological revolution, we have also
witnessed a worldwide freedom revolution over the last few
decades. The present upsurge of the Negro people of the
United States grows out of a deep and passionate
determination to make freedom and equality a reality
here and now. In one sense the civil
rights movement in the United States is a special American
phenomenon which must be understood in the light of American
history and dealt with in terms of the American situation.
But on another and more important level, what is happening
in the United States today is a significant part of a world
development. We live in a day,
said the philosopher Alfred North Whitehead, when
civilization is shifting its basic outlook; a major turning
point in history where the presuppositions on which society
is structured are being analyzed, sharply challenged, and
profoundly changed. What we are seeing now is a
freedom explosion, the realization of an idea whose
time has come, to use Victor Hugos phase. The
deep rumbling of discontent that we hear today is the
thunder of disinherited masses, rising from dungeons of
oppression to the bright hills of freedom. In one majestic
chorus the rising masses are singing, in the words of our
freedom song, Aint gonna let nobody turn us
around. All over the world like a ever, freedom is
spreading in the widest liberation movement in history. The
great masses of people are determined to end the
exploitation of their races and lands. They are awake and
moving toward their goal like a tidal wave. You can hear
them rumbling in every village street, on the docks, in the
houses, among the students, in the churches, and at
political meetings. For several centuries the direction of
history flowed from the nations and societies of Western
Europe out into the rest of the world in
conquests of various sorts. That period, the era
of colonialism, is at an end. East is moving West. The earth
is being redistributed. Yes, we are shifting our basic
outlooks. These developments
should not surprise any student of history. Oppressed people
cannot remain oppressed forever. The yearning for freedom
eventually manifests itself. The Bible tells the thrilling
story of how Moses stood in Pharaohs court centuries
ago and cried, Let my people go. This was an
opening chapter in a continuing story. The present struggle
in the United States is a later chapter in the same story.
Something within has reminded the Negro of his birthright of
freedom, and something without has reminded him that it can
be gained. Consciously or unconsciously, he has been caught
up by the spirit of the times, and with his black brothers
of Africa and his brown and yellow brothers in Asia, South
America, and the Caribbean, the United States Negro is
moving with a sense of great urgency toward the promised
land of racial justice. Nothing could be
more tragic than for men to live in these revolutionary
times and fail to achieve the new attitudes and the new
mental outlooks that the new situation demands. In
Washington Irvings familiar story of Rip Van Winkle,
the one thing that we usually remember is that Rip slept
twenty years. There is another important point, however,
that is almost always overlooked. It was the sign on the inn
in the little town on the Hudson from which Rip departed and
scaled the mountain for his long sleep. When he went up, the
sign had a picture of King George III of England. When he
came down, twenty years later, the sign had a picture of
George Washington. As he looked at the picture of the first
President of the United States, Rip was confused, flustered,
and lost. He knew not who Washington was. The most striking
thing about this story is not that Rip slept twenty years,
but that he slept through a revolution that would alter the
course of human history. One of the great
liabilities of history is that all too many people fail to
remain awake through great periods of social change. Every
society has its protectors of the status quo and its
fraternities of the indifferent who are notorious for
sleeping through revolutions. But today our very survival
depends on our ability to stay awake, to adjust to new
ideas, to remain vigilant, and to face the challenge of
change. The large house in which we live demands that we
transform this worldwide neighborhood into a worldwide
brotherhood. Together, we must learn to live as brothers or
together we will be forced to perish as fools. We must work
passionately and indefatigably to bridge the gulf between
our scientific progress and out moral progress. One of the
great problems of mankind is that we suffer from poverty of
the spirit which stands in glaring contrast to our
scientific and technological abundance. The richer we have
become materially, the poorer we have become morally and
spiritually
. Our hope for creative living in this world house that we have inherited lies in our ability to reestablish the moral ends of our lives in personal character and social justice. Without this spiritual and moral reawakening we shall destroy ourselves in the misuse of our own instruments. |
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