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Discovering Martin Luther King Jr.
Author: Raine    Date: 01/20/2014 14:56:20

This is the only known recording of this event. It was released today from the New York State Museum.



On September 12, 1962, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. gave a speech at the Park Sheraton Hotel in New York City to honor the Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation on the eve of its centennial anniversary. At a dinner organized by New York's Civil War Centennial Commission, Dr. King spoke on the importance of the Emancipation Proclamation in American history, arguing that the document proved that government could be a powerful force for social justice. He urged Governor Nelson A. Rockefeller and President John F. Kennedy to hasten integration and progress towards full civil rights.

You can read the transcript here.

We are at one of history’s awesome crossroads. Our technological creativity is almost boundless. We can build machines that think. We can dot the landscape with houses and super- highways teeming with cars. We can now even destroy our whole planet with the nuclear weapons we alone possess. We have wrought distance and place time in chains. And our guided ballistic missiles have carved highways through the stratosphere. In short we have the capacity to re-build our whole planet, filling it with luxury – or we are capable of destroying it totally. The shocking issue of our age is that no one can confidentially say which we will do. Whether we will survive indeed depends upon whether we build moral values as fast and extensively as we construct material things. The struggle for civil rights is rooted in moral values. As we pursue our goals everywhere, everyone will benefit from the moral awakening our movement compels. We must all maintain faith in the future, and believe that the American dream can and will become a reality. This is my faith. I know that dark days still lie ahead. Gigantic mountains of opposition will still stand before us. We will encounter new setbacks, and some will still have to suffer persecution. But Valley Forge was followed by Yorktown. The persecution of Christians in ancient Rome was efficient and thorough, and yet it resulted in total failure.

There is something in this universe which justifies Carlisle in saying, “No lie can live forever.” And there is something in this universe which justifies William Cullen Bryant in saying, “Truth crushed to earth will rise again.” And this is the faith that will carry us on. And with this faith we will be able to adjourn the councils of despair, and bring new light into the dark chambers of pessimism. And we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. This is the faith that will help us solve the problem. We have a long, long way to go before it is solved. But all of us can at least think of the fact that we have made some strides.

And so I close by quoting the words of an old Negro slave preacher who didn’t quite have his grammar right but uttered words of great symbolic profundity and they were uttered in the form of a prayer: “Lord, we ain’t what we oughta be. We ain’t what we want to be. We ain’t what we gonna be. But, thank God, we ain’t what we wuz.”


http://www.nysm.nysed.gov/mlk/images/mlk-spread1.jpg


It's an amazing thing to read.

&
Raine
 

54 comments (Latest Comment: 01/21/2014 01:48:52 by TriSec)
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