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September 19 - October 10, 2020
these insults only on account of their race. “First and foremost we are American citizens,”
King spoke and contrasted the MIA to the segregationist White Citizens Councils. “We are for truth and justice, they are for injustice; we believe in love and fair play, they believe in hate and inequality; we work with the tools of love, not the weapons of violence.”
Rauschenbusch, a social reformer who held pastorates in New York City, had argued that religion must be relevant to real world problems
Niebuhr’s more persuasive realism, however, showed him “the complexity of human motives and the reality of sin on every level of man’s existence.”
debating Rauschenbusch and Niebuhr
An active stance, not a passive one, must be adopted in the face of injustice.
“The balanced Christian,” King stated, “must be both loving and realistic …
“the law of retaliation is the law of the multiplication of evil.”
“While I will fight him to get out from under his subjugation, I will also try to understand him and I will not try to defeat him,”
the aspersions.
He particularly stressed the idea of “jail, not bail” and described his own 1958 decision to serve time rather than pay a fine for his arrest at the Montgomery courthouse.
Nonviolence could not be simply a tool of persuasion for convincing southern whites of the evilness of segregation, it had to be a political strategy, a means by which the movement could defeat the forces of evil by rallying greater support to its own side.
failure to respect the dignity and worth of all human personality.”
We who engage in nonviolent direct action are not the creators of tension. We merely bring to the surface the hidden tension that is already alive.
“Just listening to him speak gave you the courage to go on.”
“the emptiness of traditional liberalism.”
most serious issues facing the movement were economic problems of class rather than race,
black ghetto dwellers were disillusioned with both white liberals and the black middle class.
“Constitutional rights was the subject of the fight in the South. In the North, human rights is more the question.
King’s best bet for improving ghetto housing would be to move from building to building.
it won as much because of the mistakes of our opponents.
“issues that relate to the privileged as over against the underprivileged.”
“if we directly abolish poverty by guaranteeing an income, we will have dealt with our primary problem.”
one coordinated project aimed at “assuring jobs and income for all” and “equitable income distribution.”
Our emphasis should shift from exclusive attention to putting people to work over to enabling people to consume.
We are not interested in being integrated into this value structure. Power must be relocated,
