Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community? (King Legacy Book 2)

by Martin Luther King Jr.

fully and creatively

engaged with the living history of his time, a

King insisted on constantly raising and reflecting on the basic questions he posed in the first chapter of this work—“Where Are We?” and in the overall title of the book itself, Where do we go from Here: Chaos or Community? (Always present, of course, were the deepest questions of all: Who are we? Who are we meant to be?)

broken lives were crying out for new, humane possibilities in the midst of the wealthiest nation in the world.

“Negro violence” and to justify a “white backlash” against the continuing attempts of the freedom movement to move northward toward a more perfect union. (King wisely indentified the fashionable “backlash” as a continuing expression of an antidemocratic white racism that was as old as the nation itself.)

reminding Americans not only of the powerful obstacles in our histories, our institutions, and our hearts, but also calling our attention to the amazing hope

“disappointment with a federal administration that seems to be more concerned about winning an ill-considered war in Vietnam than about winning the war against poverty here at home.”

“We have left the realm of constitutional rights and we are entering the area of human rights.” He continued: “The Constitution assured the right to vote, but there is no such assurance of the right to adequate housing, or the right to an adequate income. [Or, the right to high-quality education and health care?] And yet in a nation which has a gross national product of $750 billion a year, it is morally right to insist that every person have a decent house, an adequate education and enough money to provide basic necessities for one’s family.” Here again he urged exploration of a “guaranteed annual income” for all who needed it.

Tom Paine’s radical vision of our capacity “to begin the world over again,” moving toward “the final goal” of “genuine intergroup and interpersonal living.” Indeed, he seemed deeply in sync with James Baldwin’s urgent call to us to “realize ourselves” as an

answer to the book’s subtitle was very clear: a deeply integrated, loving community rather than segregated chaos; hope rather than despair—raising up America and making the world over. While

I knew I was seeing a microcosm of the mankind of the future in this moment of luminous and genuine brotherhood.

He could tolerate humiliation and scorn, but now he armed himself with dignity and resistance and his adversary tasted the gall of defeat.

Social justice and progress are the absolute guarantors of riot prevention.

again be intimidated by the terror

I should have been reminded that disappointment produces despair and despair produces bitterness, and that the one thing certain about bitterness is its blindness. Bitterness has not the capacity to make the distinction between some and all.

A productive and happy life is not something that you find; it is something that you make.

First, those who managed the slaves had to maintain strict discipline. One master said, “Unconditional submission is the only footing upon which slavery should be placed.” Another said, “The slave must know that his master is to govern absolutely and he is to obey implicitly, that he is never, for a moment, to exercise either his will or judgment in opposition to a positive order.” Second, the masters felt that they had to implant in the bondsman a consciousness of personal inferiority. This sense of inferiority was deliberately extended to his past. The slaveowners were convinced that in order to control the Negroes, the slaves “had to feel that African ancestry tainted

them, that their color was a badge of degradation.” The third step in the training process was to awe the slaves with a sense of the masters’ enormous power. It was necessary, various owners said, “to make them stand in fear.” The fourth aspect was the attempt to “persuade the bondsman to take an interest in the master’s enterprise and to accept his standards of good conduct.” Thus the master’s criteria of what was good and true and beautiful were to be accepted unquestioningly by the slaves. The final step, according to Stampp’s documents, was “to impress Negroes with their helplessness: to create in them a habit of perfect dependence upon their masters.”

demand from him unconditional submission, impress upon him a sense of his innate inferiority, develop in him a paralyzing fear of white men, train him to adopt the master’s code of good behavior, and instill in him a sense of complete dependence. Out of the soil of slavery came the psychological roots of the Black Power cry. Anyone familiar with the Black Power movement recognizes that defiance of white authority and white power is a constant theme; the defiance almost becomes a kind of taunt. Underneath it, however, there is a legitimate concern that the Negro break away from “unconditional submission” and thereby assert his own selfhood.

As long as the mind is enslaved the body can never be free. Psychological freedom, a firm sense of self-esteem, is the most powerful weapon against the long night of physical slavery.

irrational fears as loss of preferred economic privilege, altered social status, intermarriage and adjustment to new situations.

The failure to pursue justice is not only a moral default. Without it social tensions will grow and the turbulence in the streets will persist despite disapproval or repressive action.

how responsible am I for the well-being of my fellows? To ignore evil is to become an accomplice to it.

committed to antipoverty programs. If

The word “decision,” like the word “incision,” involves the image of cutting. Incision means to cut in, decision means to cut off. When I make a decision, I cut off alternatives and make a choice. The

Incision decision

The immorality of segregation is that it is a selfishly contrived system which cuts off one’s capacity to deliberate, decide and respond.

The immoraliity od segregation is threefold

The ultimate solution to the race problem lies in the willingness of men to obey the unenforceable.

Ultimate solution cant force the unenforceable .

The American racial revolution has been a revolution to “get in” rather than to overthrow. We want a share in the American economy, the housing market, the educational system and the social opportunities.

Get in with the American economy .

and retreat into the dark shadows of passivity. Their sense of futility is deep, and in terms of their bitter experiences it is justified. They cannot perceive political action as a source of power. It will take patient and persistent effort to eradicate this mood, but the new consciousness of strength developed in a decade of stirring agitation can be utilized to channel constructive Negro activity into political life and eliminate the stagnation produced by an outdated and defensive paralysis.

Open section to read and write about passive defefeat and fatilist perspective and strength and Future life hopefulness

Jews progressed because they possessed a tradition of education combined with social and political action. The Jewish family enthroned education and sacrificed to get it. The result was far more than abstract learning. Uniting social action with educational competence, Jews became enormously effective in political life. Those Jews who became lawyers, businessmen, writers, entertainers, union leaders and medical men did not vanish

into the pursuits of their trade exclusively. They lived an active life in political circles, learning the techniques and arts of politics. Nor was it only the rich who were involved in social and political action. Millions of Jews for half a century remained relatively poor, but they were far from passive in social and political areas. They lived in homes in which politics was a household word. They were deeply involved in radical parties, liberal parties and conservative parties—they formed many of them. Very

few Jews sank into despair and escapism even when discrimination assailed the spirit and corroded initiative. Their life raft in the sea of discouragement was social action. Without overlooking the towering differences between the Negro and Jewish experiences, the lesson of Jewish mass involvement in social and political action and education is worthy of emulation. Negroes have already started on t...

But we will prevail because our need for progress is stronger than the ignorance forced upon us. If we realize how indispensable is responsible militant organization to our struggle, we will create it as we managed to create underground railroads, protest groups, self-help societies

We have allowed the means by which we live to outdistance the ends for which we live.