Nation: VISIONS OF THE PROMISED LAND

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FEW American orators, black or white, could match I the sonorous, soul-stirring resonances of Martin Luther King Jr. From his early sermons to his letter from a Birmingham jail, from the epic address at the Lincoln Memorial during the 1963 March on Washington to his acceptance speech at the Nobel ceremonies, King's rhetoric rang richly with both the ageless cadences of Negro spirituals and the moral immediacy of the civil rights struggle. His voice was for his time and beyond.

Highlights:

·ON NONVIOLENCE (from Birmingham jail, 1963): 1 your statement, you asserted that our actions, even though peaceful, must be condemned because they precipitate violence. Isn't this like condemning the robbed man because his possession of money precipitated the evil act of robbery? Isn't this like condemning Jesus because his unique God-consciousness and never-ceasing devotion to God's will precipitated the evil act of the Crucifixion?

· ECONOMIC EQUALITY (1965): What good does it do to be able to eat at a lunch counter if you can't buy a hamburger?

·ON THE NEGRO IN AMERICA (from Birmingham jail, 1963): Before the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth, we were here. Before the pen of Jefferson etched across the pages of history the majestic words of the Declaration of Independence, we were here. If the inexpressible cruelties of slavery could not stop us, the opposition we now face will surely fail. We will win our freedom because the sacred heritage of our nation and the eternal will of God are embodied in our echoing demands.

·ON NONCONFORMITY (1963): This hour in history needs a dedicated circle of transformed nonconformists. Dangerous passions of pride, hatred and selfishness are enthroned in our lives; truth lies prostrate on the rugged hills of nameless Calvaries. The saving of our world from pending doom will come, not through the complacent adjustment of the conforming majority, but through the creative maladjustment of a nonconforming minority. I confess that I never intend to become adjusted to the evils of segregation and the crippling effects of discrimination, to the moral degeneracy of religious bigotry and the corroding effects of narrow sectarianism, to economic conditions that deprive men of work and food, and to the insanities of militarism and the self-defeating effects of physical violence.

·ON BLACK POWER (1967): Today's despair is a poor chisel to carve out tomorrow's justice. Black Power is an implicit and often explicit belief in black separatism. Yet behind Black Power's legitimate and necessary concern for group unity and black identity lies the belief that there can be a separate black road to power and fulfillment. Few ideas are more unrealistic. There is no salvation for the Negro through isolation.

·ON MARCHING FOR CIVIL RIGHTS (Selma to Montgomery, 1965): Like an idea whose time has come, not even the marching of mighty armies can halt us. We are moving to the land of freedom. Let us march to the realization of the American dream. Let us march on segregated housing. Let us march on segregated schools.

Let us march on poverty. Let us march on ballot boxes, march on ballot boxes until race baiters disappear from the political arena, until the Wallaces of our nation trem ble away in silence. My people, my people, listen! The battle is in our hands.