radical Martin Luther King quotes

Quoting MLK doesn't make you non-racist. But if you're going to quote him, "well, I want to get the language right tonight.”

[unquotedmlk]

“I don’t want peace. 1) If peace means accepting second-class citizenship, I don’t want it. 2) If peace means keeping my mouth shut in the midst of injustice and evil, I don’t want it. 3) If peace means being complacently adjusted to a deadening status quo, I don’t want peace. 4) If peace means a willingness to be exploited economically, dominated politically, humiliated and segregated, I don’t want peace. So in a passive, non-violent manner, we must revolt against this peace.”

— Rev. Doc. Martin Luther King, Jr. “When Peace Becomes Obnoxious.” 29 March 1956. Louisville, Ky. (via unquotedmlk)

[unquotedmlk]

MLK didn't want your peace.

[unquotedmlk]

“You deplore the demonstrations taking place in Birmingham. But your statement, I am sorry to say, fails to express a similar concern for the conditions that brought about the demonstrations. I am sure that none of you would want to rest content with the superficial kind of social analysis that deals merely with effects and does not grapple with underlying causes. It is unfortunate that demonstrations are taking place in Birmingham, but it is even more unfortunate that the city’s white power structure left the Negro community with no alternative.”

— Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. “Letter from a Birmingham Jail.” Letter. (1963)

[unquotedmlk]

“You deplore the demonstrations taking place in Birmingham. But your statement, I am sorry to say, fails to express a similar concern for the conditions that brought about the demonstrations. I am sure that none of you would want to rest content with the superficial kind of social analysis that deals merely with effects and does not grapple with underlying causes. It is unfortunate that demonstrations are taking place in Birmingham, but it is even more unfortunate that the city’s white power structure left the Negro community with no alternative.”

— Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. “Letter from a Birmingham Jail.” Letter. (1963)

[unquotedmlk]

“Whites, it must frankly be said, are not putting in a similar mass effort to reeducate themselves out of their racial ignorance. It is an aspect of their sense of superiority that the white people of America believe they have so little to learn. The reality of substantial investment to assist Negroes into the twentieth century, adjusting to Negro neighbors and genuine school integration, is still a nightmare for all too many white Americans. White America would have liked to believe that in the past ten years a mechanism had somehow been created that needed only orderly and smooth tending for the painless accomplishment of change. Yet this is precisely what has not been achieved. [….] These are the deepest causes for contemporary abrasions between the races. Loose and easy language about equality, resonant resolutions about brotherhood fall pleasantly on the ear, but for the Negro there is a credibility gap he cannot overlook. He remembers that with each modest advance the white population promptly raises the argument that the Negro has come far enough. Each step forward accents an ever-present tendency to backlash.”

— Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. “Where Do We Go From Here?: Where Are We?” (via unquotedmlk)

[unquotedmlk]

“The Western arrogance of feeling that it has everything to teach others and nothing to learn from them is not just. A true revolution of values will lay hands on the world order and say of war, “This way of settling differences is not just.” This business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation’s homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into the veins of peoples normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice, and love. A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.”

— Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. “Why I am Opposed to the War in Vietnam.” Sermon. (1967)

[unquotedmlk]

“You deplore the demonstrations taking place in Birmingham. But your statement, I am sorry to say, fails to express a similar concern for the conditions that brought about the demonstrations. I am sure that none of you would want to rest content with the superficial kind of social analysis that deals merely with effects and does not grapple with underlying causes. It is unfortunate that demonstrations are taking place in Birmingham, but it is even more unfortunate that the city’s white power structure left the Negro community with no alternative.”

— Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. “Letter from a Birmingham Jail.” Letter. (1963)

[unquotedmlk]

It's been 100 days and 75 years.

[unquotedmlk]

“You may well ask: “Why direct action? Why sit ins, marches and so forth? Isn’t negotiation a better path?” You are quite right in calling for negotiation. Nonviolent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and foster such a tension that a community which has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue. It seeks so to dramatize the issue that it can no longer be ignored. My citing the creation of tension as part of the work of the nonviolent resister may sound rather shocking. But I must confess that I am not afraid of the word “tension.” I have earnestly opposed violent tension, but there is a type of constructive, nonviolent tension which is necessary for growth. Just as Socrates felt that it was necessary to create a tension in the mind so that individuals could rise from the bondage of myths and half truths to the unfettered realm of creative analysis and objective appraisal, so must we see the need for nonviolent gadflies to create the kind of tension in society that will help men rise from the dark depths of prejudice and racism to the majestic heights of understanding and brotherhood. The purpose of our direct action program is to create a situation so crisis packed that it will inevitably open the door to negotiation.”

— Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. “Letter from a Birmingham Jail.” Letter. (1963)

[unquotedmlk]

“We should never forget that everything Adolf Hitler did in Germany was “legal” and everything the Hungarian freedom fighters did in Hungary was “illegal.” It was “illegal” to aid and comfort a Jew in Hitler’s Germany. Even so, I am sure that, had I lived in Germany at the time, I would have aided and comforted my Jewish brothers. If today I lived in a Communist country where certain principles dear to the Christian faith are suppressed, I would openly advocate disobeying that country’s antireligious laws.”

— Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. “Letter from a Birmingham Jail.” Letter. (1963)

[unquotedmlk]

“We’ve got to camp in – put our tents in front of the White House …We’ve got to make it know that until our problem is solved, America may have many, many days but they will be full of trouble. There will be no rest, there will be no tranquility in this country until the nation comes to terms with our problem.”

— Martin Luther King, Jr.

[fullpraxisnow]

“If it may be said of the slavery era that the white man took the world and gave the Negro Jesus, then it may be said of the Reconstruction era that the southern aristocracy took the world and gave the poor white man Jim Crow. He gave him Jim Crow. And when his wrinkled stomach cried out for the food that his empty pockets could not provide, he ate Jim Crow, a psychological bird that told him that no matter how bad off he was, at least he was a white man, better than the black man… And when his undernourished children cried out for the necessities that his low wages could not provide, he showed them the Jim Crow signs on the buses and in the stores, on the streets and in the public buildings. And his children, too, learned to feed upon Jim Crow, their last outpost of psychological oblivion.”

– Martin Luther King, Jr. | Address at the Conclusion of the Selma to Montgomery March, 1965

[unquotedmlk]

Whites, it must frankly be said, are not putting in a similar mass effort to reeducate themselves out of their racial ignorance. It is an aspect of their sense of superiority that the white people of America believe they have so little to learn. The reality of substantial investment to assist Negroes into the twentieth century, adjusting to Negro neighbors and genuine school integration, is still a nightmare for all too many white Americans. White America would have liked to believe that in the past ten years a mechanism had somehow been created that needed only orderly and smooth tending for the painless accomplishment of change. Yet this is precisely what has not been achieved. [….] These are the deepest causes for contemporary abrasions between the races. Loose and easy language about equality, resonant resolutions about brotherhood fall pleasantly on the ear, but for the Negro there is a credibility gap he cannot overlook. He remembers that with each modest advance the white population promptly raises the argument that the Negro has come far enough. Each step forward accents an ever-present tendency to backlash.

Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. “Where Do We Go From Here?: Where Are We?” (via unquotedmlk)

[unquotedmlk]

One day the whole Jericho Road must be transformed so that men and women will not be beaten and robbed as they make their journey through life. True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar; it understands that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring.

Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. “Where Do We Go From Here?” (via unquotedmlk)

[unquotedmlk]

I am now convinced that the simplest approach will prove to be the most effective—the solution to poverty is to abolish it directly by a now widely discussed measure: the guaranteed income.

Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (via unquotedmlk)

[unquotedmlk]

We’ve got to camp in – put our tents in front of the White House …We’ve got to make it know that until our problem is solved, America may have many, many days but they will be full of trouble. There will be no rest, there will be no tranquility in this country until the nation comes to terms with our problem.

Martin Luther King, Jr. (via unquotedmlk)

[unquotedmlk]

The evils of capitalism are as real as the evils of militarism and evils of racism.

Dr. Martin Luther King, Speech to SCLC Board. March 30, 1967. (via unquotedmlk)

[unquotedmlk]

[I]t is a cruel jest to say to a bootless man that he ought to lift himself by his own bootstraps.

Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. “Remaining Awake Through a Great Revolution.” March 31 1968. (via unquotedmlk)

[autostraddle]

If you can shoot Martin [Luther King Jr.], you can shoot all of us. And there’s nothing in your record to indicate you won’t, or anything that would prevent you from doing it. That will be the beginning of the end, if you do, and that knowledge will be all that will hold your hand. Because one no longer believes, you see—I don’t any longer believe, and not many black people in this country can afford to believe— any longer a word you say. I don’t believe in the morality of this people at all. I don’t believe you do the right thing because you think it’s the right thing. I think you may be forced to do it because it will be the expedient thing. Which is good enough.

James Baldwin in Esquire Magazine (1968), via the #BlackLivesMatter reading list (via autostraddle)