The Autobiography of Martin Luther King, Jr.

by Martin Luther King Jr.

She tried to explain the divided system of the South—the segregated schools, restaurants, theaters, housing; the white and colored signs on drinking fountains, waiting rooms, lavatories—as a social condition rather than a natural order.

We cannot have an enlightened democracy with one great group living in ignorance. We cannot have a healthy nation with one-tenth of the people ill-nourished, sick, harboring germs of disease which recognize no color lines—obey no Jim Crow laws. We cannot have a nation orderly and sound with one group so ground down and thwarted that it is almost forced into unsocial attitudes and crime. We cannot be truly Christian people so long as we flout the central teachings of Jesus: brotherly love and the Golden Rule. We cannot come to full prosperity with one great group so ill-delayed that it cannot buy goods. So as we gird ourselves to defend democracy from foreign attack, let us see to it that increasingly at home we give fair play and free opportunity for all people. Today thirteen million black sons and daughters of our forefathers continue the fight for the translation of the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments from writing on the printed page to an actuality. We believe with them that “if freedom is good for any it is good for all,” that we may conquer Southern armies by the sword, but it is another thing to conquer Southern hate, that if the franchise is given to Negroes, they will be vigilant and defend, even with their arms, the ark of federal liberty from treason and destruction by her enemies.

noncooperation with evil is as much a moral obligation as is cooperation with good.

often find when decent treatment for the Negro is urged, a certain class of people hurry to raise the scarecrow of social mingling and inter-marriage. These questions have nothing to do with the case. And most people who kick up this kind of dust know that it is simple dust to obscure the real question of rights and opportunities. It is fair to remember that almost the total of race mixture in America has come, not at Negro initiative, but by the acts of those very white men who talk loudest of race purity. We aren’t eager to marry white girls, and we would like to have our own girls left alone by both white toughs and white aristocrats. We want and are entitled to the basic rights and opportunities of American citizens: The right to earn a living at work for which we are fitted by training and ability; equal opportunities in education, health, recreation, and similar public services; the right to vote; equality before the law; some of the same courtesy and good manners that we ourselves bring to all human relations. Letter to the Editor, Atlanta Constitution, August 6, 1946

I feel that preaching is one of the most vital needs of our society, if it is used correctly. There is a great paradox in preaching: on the one hand it may be very helpful and on the other it may be very pernicious. It is my opinion that sincerity is not enough for the preaching ministry. The minister must be both sincere and intelligent…. I also think that the minister should possess profundity of conviction. We have too many minsters in the pulpit who are great spellbinders and too few who possess spiritual power.

Above all, I see the preaching ministry as a dual process. On the one hand I must attempt to change the soul of individuals so that their societies may be changed. On the other I must attempt to change the societies so that the individual soul will have a change. Therefore, I must be concerned about unemployment, slums, and economic insecurity. I am a profound advocate of the social gospel.

Constructive ends can never give absolute moral justification to destructive means, because in the final analysis the end is preexistent in the means.

To deprive man of freedom is to relegate him to the status of a thing, rather than elevate him to the status of a person.

Man must never be treated as a means to the end of the state, but always as an end within himself.

We are prone to judge success by the index of our salaries or the size of our automobiles, rather than by the quality of our service and relationship to humanity. Thus capitalism can lead to a practical materialism that is as pernicious as the materialism taught by communism.

Historically capitalism failed to see the truth in collective enterprise and Marxism failed to see the truth in individual enterprise.

The more I thought about human nature, the more I saw how our tragic inclination for sin causes us to use our minds to rationalize our actions.

Reason, devoid of the purifying power of faith, can never free itself from distortions and rationalizations.

My study of Gandhi convinced me that true pacifism is not nonresistance to evil, but nonviolent resistance to evil.

True pacifism is not unrealistic submission to evil power, as Niebuhr contends. It is rather a courageous confrontation of evil by the power of love, in the faith that it is better to be the recipient of violence than the inflicter of it, since the latter only multiplies the existence of violence and bitterness in the universe, while the former may develop a sense of shame in the opponent, and thereby bring about a transformation and change of heart.

The thing that we need in the world today, is a group of men and women who will stand up for right and be opposed to wrong, wherever it is. A group of people who have come to see that some things are wrong, whether they’re never caught up with. Some things are right, whether nobody sees you doing them or not.

Carlyle in saying, “No lie can live forever.”

William Cullen Bryant in saying, “Truth, crushed to earth, will rise again.”

James Russell Lowell in saying, “Truth forever on the scaffold, Wrong forever on the throne. With that scaffold sways the future. Behind the dim unknown stands God, Within the shadow keeping watch above his own.”

biblical writer in saying, “You shall reap what you sow.”

So today capitalism has out-lived its usefulness. It has brought about a system that takes necessities from the masses to give luxuries to the classes.

“Keep Martin Luther King in the background and God in the foreground and everything will be all right. Remember you are a channel of the gospel and not the source.”

The congregation was receptive, and I left with the feeling that God had used me well.

faced a new and sobering dilemma: how could I make a speech that would be militant enough to keep my people aroused to positive action and yet moderate enough to keep this fervor within controllable and Christian bounds? I knew that many of the Negro people were victims of bitterness that could easily rise to flood proportions. What could I say to keep them courageous and prepared for positive action and yet devoid of hate and resentment? Could the militant and the moderate be combined in a single speech?

Along the way of life, someone must have sense enough and morality enough to cut off the chain of hate and evil. The greatest way to do that is through love. I believe firmly that love is a transforming power than can lift a whole community to new horizons of fair play, goodwill, and justice.

I had gone to the meeting with a great illusion. I had believed that the privileged would give up their privileges on request.

There are those who would try to make of this a hate campaign. This is not war between the white and the Negro but a conflict between justice and injustice. This is bigger than the Negro race revolting against the white. We are seeking to improve not the Negro of Montgomery but the whole of Montgomery.

noncooperation with evil is just as much a moral duty as is cooperation with good.

I have always felt that ultimately along the way of life an individual must stand up and be counted and be willing to face the consequences whatever they are. And if he is filled with fear he cannot do it. My great prayer is always for God to save me from the paralysis of crippling fear, because I think when a person lives with the fears of the consequences for his personal life he can never do anything in terms of lifting the whole of humanity and solving many of the social problems which we confront in every age and every generation.

Disappointment, sorrow, and despair are born at midnight, but morning follows.

In mass meeting after mass meeting we stressed nonviolence.

“we must not take this as a victory over the white man, but as a victory for justice and democracy.”

“we must not go back on the buses and push people around unnecessarily, boasting of our rights. We must simply si...

We must respond to the decision with an understanding of those who have oppressed us and with an appreciation of the new adjustments that the court order poses for them.

We must act in such a way as to make possible a coming together of white people and colored people on the basis of a real harmony of interests and understanding. We seek an integration based on mutual respect.

This is the time that we must evince calm dignity and wise restraint. Emotions must not run wild. Violence must not come from any of us, for if we become victimized with violent intents, we will have walked in vain, and our twelve months of glori...

“I would rather die and go to hell than sit behind a nigger.”

O God, help me to see that where I stand today, I stand because others helped me to stand there and because the forces of history projected me there.”

Give us the ballot and we will no longer plead to the federal government for passage of an anti-lynching law; we will by the power of our vote write the law on the statute books of the South and bring an end to the dastardly acts of the hooded perpetrators of violence.

If the executive and legislative branches of the government were as concerned about the protection of our citizenship rights as the federal courts have been, then the transition from a segregated to an integrated society would be infinitely smoother.

These men so often have a high blood pressure of words and an anemia of deeds.

“Be still and know that I am God. And if you don’t stop, if you don’t straighten up, if you don’t stop exploiting people, I’m going to rise up and break the backbone of your power. And your power will be no more!”

“I prefer self-government with danger to servitude with tranquility.”

It demonstrated to me that a climate of hatred and bitterness so permeated areas of our nation that inevitably deeds of extreme violence must erupt. I saw its wider social significance.

The lack of restraint upon violence in our society along with the defiance of law by men in high places cannot but result in an atmosphere which engenders desperate deeds.

the Amniabad ashram and stood there at the point where Gandhi started his walk of 218 miles to a place called Bambi.

Errata Ahmedabad and Dandi

down in the river and brought

Errata Sea not river

Our ultimate aim was not to defeat or humiliate the white man but to win his friendship and understanding. We had a moral obligation to remind him that segregation is wrong. We protested with the ultimate aim of being reconciled with our white brothers.

For many months during the election campaign, my close friends urged me to declare my support for John Kennedy.

It substituted the tyranny of black supremacy for the tyranny of white supremacy.