Bearing the Cross: Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference

by David J. Garrow

This is the cross that we must bear for the freedom of our people. —MARTIN LUTHER KING

“Love is one of the pinnacle parts of the Christian faith. There is another side called justice. And justice is really love in calculation.”

“Passive resistance combined with freedom from hate is a power to be reckoned with,”

“I can see no conflict between our devotion to Jesus Christ and our present action. In fact I see a necessary relationship. If one is truly devoted to the religion of Jesus he will seek to rid the earth of social evils. The gospel is social as well as personal.”

“Disproportion of power in society is the real root of social injustice,” Niebuhr argued, and “economic power is more basic than political power.”

It is one of the greatest glories of America that we have the right of protest.

If we are arrested every day, if we are exploited every day, if we are trampled over every day, don’t ever let anyone pull you so low as to hate them.

the essence of nonviolence was a refusal to retaliate against evil, a refusal based on the realization that “the law of retaliation is the law of the multiplication of evil.”

The chief weapon in our fight for civil rights is the vote.

“The oppressor never voluntarily gives freedom to the oppressed.… Privileged classes never give up their privileges without strong resistance.… Freedom comes only through persistent revolt, through persistent agitation, through persistently rising up against the system of evil.”