The Other America

Bill Quigley

14 Jan 2009

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The Other America

A
speech by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Dr. King delivered this speech at Stanford University
April 14, 1967

"It is a cruel jest to say to a
bootless man that he oughta lift himself by his own bootstraps."

Dean Napier, Mr. Bell; members of the faculty and
members of the student body of this great institution of learning; ladies and
gentlemen.

Now there are several things that one could talk
about before such a large, concerned, and enlightened audience. There are so
many problems facing our nation and our world, that one could
just take off anywhere. But today I would like to talk mainly about the race
problems since I'll have to rush right out and go to New York to talk about
Vietnam tomorrow, and I've been talking about it a great deal this week and
weeks before that.

But I'd like to use as a subject from which to speak
this afternoon, the Other America. And I use this subject because there are
literally two Americas. One America is beautiful for situation. And, in a
sense, this America is overflowing with the milk of prosperity and the honey of
opportunity. This America is the habitat of millions of people who have food
and material necessities for their bodies; and culture and education for their
minds; and freedom and human dignity for their spirits. In this America,
millions of people experience every day the opportunity of having life,
liberty, and the pursuit of happiness in all of their dimensions. And in this
America millions of young people grow up in the sunlight of opportunity.

But tragically and unfortunately, there is another
America. This other America has a daily ugliness about it that constantly
transforms the ebulliency of hope into the fatigue of despair. In this America
millions of work-starved men walk the streets daily in search for jobs that do
not exist. In this America millions of people find themselves living in
rat-infested, vermin-filled slums. In this America people are poor by the
millions. They find themselves perishing on a lonely island of poverty in the
midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity.

"It's much easier to integrate a lunch
counter than it is to guarantee a livable income and a good solid job.

In a sense, the greatest tragedy of this other
America is what it does to little children. Little children in this other
America are forced to grow up with clouds of inferiority forming every day in
their little mental skies. And as we look at this other America, we see it as
an arena of blasted hopes and shattered dreams. Many people of various backgrounds
live in this other America. Some are Mexican-Americans, some are Puerto Ricans,
some are Indians, some happen to be from other groups. Millions of them are
Appalachian whites. But probably the largest group in this other America in
proportion to its size in the population is the American Negro.

The American Negro finds himself living in a triple
ghetto. A ghetto of race, a ghetto of poverty, a ghetto of human misery. So
what we are seeking to do in the Civil Rights Movement is to deal with
this problem. To deal with this problem of the two Americas. We are seeking to
make America one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Now let me say that the struggle for Civil Rights and
the struggle to make these two Americas one America, is much more difficult
today than it was five or ten years ago. For about a decade or maybe twelve
years, we've struggled all across the South in glorious struggles to get rid of
legal, overt segregation and all of the humiliation that surrounded that system
of segregation.

In a sense this was a struggle for decency; we could
not go to a lunch counter in so many instances and get a hamburger or a cup of
coffee. We could not make use of public accommodations. Public transportation
was segregated, and often we had to sit in the back and within transportation--
transportation within cities -- we often had to stand over empty seats because
sections were reserved for whites only. We did not have the right to vote in so
many areas of the South. And the struggle was to deal with these problems.

And certainly they were difficult problems, they were
humiliating conditions. By the thousands we protested these conditions. We made
it clear that it was ultimately more honorable to accept jail cell experiences
than to accept segregation and humiliation. By the thousands students and
adults decided to sit in at segregated lunch counters to protest conditions
there. When they were sitting at those lunch counters they were in reality
standing up for the best in the American dream and seeking to take the whole
nation back to those great wells of democracy which were dug deep by the
Founding Fathers in the formulation of the Constitution and the Declaration of
Independence.

Many things were gained as a result of these years of
struggle. In 1964 the Civil Rights Bill came into being after the Birmingham
movement which did a great deal to subpoena the conscience of a large segment
of the nation to appear before the judgment seat of morality on the whole
question of Civil Rights. After the Selma movement in 1965 we were able to get
a Voting Rights Bill. And all of these things represented strides.

But we must see that the struggle today is much more
difficult. It's more difficult today because we are struggling now for genuine
equality. And it's much easier to integrate a lunch counter than it is to
guarantee a livable income and a good solid job. It's much easier to guarantee
the right to vote than it is to guarantee the right to live in sanitary, decent
housing conditions. It is much easier to integrate a public park than it is to
make genuine, quality, integrated education a reality. And so today we are
struggling for something which says we demand genuine equality.

"Today the unemployment rate among
Negroes is twice that of Whites."

It's not merely a struggle against extremist behavior
toward Negroes. And I'm convinced that many of the very people who supported us
in the struggle in the South are not willing to go all the way now. I came to
see this in a very difficult and painful way in Chicago the last year where
I've lived and worked. Some of the people who came quickly to march with us in
Selma and Birmingham weren't active around Chicago. And I came to see that so
many people who supported morally and even financially what we were doing in
Birmingham and Selma, were really outraged against the extremist behavior of
Bull Connor and Jim Clark toward Negroes, rather than believing in genuine
equality for Negroes. And I think this is what we've gotta see now, and this is
what makes the struggle much more difficult.

And so as a result of all of this, we see many
problems existing today that are growing more difficult. It's something that is
often overlooked, but Negroes generally live in worse slums today than 20 or 25
years ago. In the North schools are more segregated today than they were in
1954 when the Supreme Court's decision on desegregation was rendered.
Economically the Negro is worse off today than he was 15 and 20 years ago. And
so the unemployment rate among Whites at one time was about the same as the
unemployment rate among Negroes. But today the unemployment rate among Negroes
is twice that of Whites. And the average income of the Negro is today 50% less
than Whites.

As we look at these problems we see them growing and
developing every day. And we see the fact that the Negro economically is facing
a depression in his everyday life that is more staggering than the depression
of the 30's. The unemployment rate of the nation as a whole is about 4%.
Statistics would say from the Labor Department that among Negroes it's about
8.4%. But these are the persons who are in the labor market, who still go to
employment agencies to seek jobs, and so they can be calculated. The statistics
can be gotten because they are still somehow in the labor market.

But there are hundreds of thousands of Negroes who
have given up. They've lost hope. They've come to feel that life is a long and
desolate corridor for them with no Exit sign, and so they no longer go to look
for a job. There are those who would estimate that these persons, who are
called the Discouraged Persons, these 6 or 7% in the Negro community, that
means that unemployment among Negroes may well be 16%. Among Negro youth in
some of our larger urban areas it goes to 30 and 40%. So you can see what I
mean when I say that, in the Negro community, that is a major, tragic and
staggering depression that we face in our everyday lives.

Now the other thing that we've gotta come to see now
that many of us didn't see too well during the last ten years -- that is that
racism is still alive in American society, and much more wide-spread than we
realized. And we must see racism for what it is. It is a myth of the superior
and the inferior race. It is the false and tragic notion that one particular
group, one particular race is responsible for all of the progress, all of the
insights in the total flow of history. And the theory that another group or
another race is totally depraved, innately impure, and innately inferior.

In the final analysis, racism is evil because its
ultimate logic is genocide. Hitler was a sick and tragic man who carried racism
to its logical conclusion. And he ended up leading a nation to the point of
killing about 6 million Jews. This is the tragedy of racism because its
ultimate logic is genocide. If one says that I am not good enough to live next
door to him, if one says that I am not good enough to eat at a lunch counter,
or to have a good, decent job, or to go to school with him merely because of my
race, he is saying consciously or unconsciously that I do not deserve to exist.
To use a philosophical analogy here, racism is not based on some empirical
generalization; it is based rather on an ontological affirmation. It is not the
assertion that certain people are behind culturally or otherwise because of
environmental conditions. It is the affirmation that the very being of a people
is inferior. And this is the great tragedy of it.

I submit that however unpleasant it is
we must honestly see and admit that racism is still deeply rooted all over
America. It is still deeply rooted in the North, and it's still deeply rooted
in the South.

"Racism is evil because its ultimate
logic is genocide."

And this leads me to say something about another
discussion that we hear a great deal, and that is the so-called "white
backlash." I would like to honestly say to you that the white backlash is
merely a new name for an old phenomenon. It's not something that just came into
being because shouts of Black Power, or because Negroes engaged in riots in
Watts, for instance. The fact is that the state of California voted a Fair
Housing bill out of existence before anybody shouted Black Power, or before
anybody rioted in Watts.

It may well be that shouts of Black Power and riots
in Watts and the Harlems and the other areas, are the consequences of the white
backlash rather than the cause of them.

What it is necessary to see is that there has never
been a single solid monistic determined commitment on the part of the vast
majority of white Americans on the whole question of Civil Rights and on the
whole question of racial equality. This is something that truth impels all men
of good will to admit.

It is said on the Statue of Liberty that America is a
home of exiles. It doesn't take us long to realize that America has been the
home of its white exiles from Europe. But it has not evinced the same kind of
maternal care and concern for its black exiles from Africa. It is no wonder
that in one of his sorrow songs, the Negro could sing out "Sometimes I
feel like a motherless child." What great estrangement, what great sense
of rejection caused a people to emerge with such a metaphor as they looked over
their lives.

What I'm trying to get across is that our nation has
constantly taken a positive step forward on the question of racial justice and
racial equality. But over and over again at the same time, it made certain
backward steps. And this has been the persistence of the so-called white
backlash. In 1863 the Negro was freed from the bondage of physical slavery. But
at the same time, the nation refused to give him land to make that freedom
meaningful. And at that same period America was giving millions of acres of
land in the West and the Midwest, which meant that America was willing to undergird
its white peasants from Europe with an economic floor that would make it
possible to grow and develop, and refused to give that economic floor to its
black peasants, so to speak.

This is why Frederick Douglas could say that
emancipation for the Negro was freedom to hunger, freedom to the winds and
rains of heaven, freedom without roofs to cover their heads. He went on to say
that it was freedom without bread to eat, freedom without land to cultivate. It
was freedom and famine at the same time. But it does not stop there.

In 1875 the nation passed a Civil
Rights Bill and refused to enforce it. In 1964 the nation passed a weaker Civil
Rights Bill and even to this day, that bill has not been totally enforced in
all of its dimensions. The nation heralded a new day of concern for the poor,
for the poverty stricken, for the disadvantaged. And brought into being a
Poverty Bill and at the same time it put such little money into the program
that it was hardly, and still remains hardly, a good skirmish against poverty.
White politicians in suburbs talk eloquently against open housing, and in the
same breath contend that they are not racist. And all of this, and all of these
things tell us that America has been backlashing on the whole question of basic
constitutional and God-given rights for Negroes and other disadvantaged groups
for more than 300 years.

"The white backlash is merely a new
name for an old phenomenon."

So these conditions, existence of widespread poverty,
of slums, and of tragic conditions in schools and other areas of life, all of
these things have brought about a great deal of despair, and a great deal of
desperation. A great deal of disappointment and even bitterness in the Negro
communities. And today all of our cities confront huge problems. All of our
cities are potentially powder kegs as a result of the continued existence of
these conditions. Many in moments of anger, many in moments of deep bitterness
engage in riots.

Let me say as I've always said, and I will always
continue to say, that riots are socially destructive and self-defeating. I'm
still convinced that nonviolence is the most potent weapon available to
oppressed people in their struggle for freedom and justice. I feel that
violence will only create more social problems than they will solve. That in a
real sense it is impractical for the Negro to even think of mounting a violent
revolution in the United States. So I will continue to condemn riots, and
continue to say to my brothers and sisters that this is not the way. And continue
to affirm that there is another way.

But at the same time, it is as necessary for me to be
as vigorous in condemning the conditions which cause persons to feel that they
must engage in riotous activities as it is for me to condemn riots. I think
America must see that riots do not develop out of thin air. Certain conditions
continue to exist in our society which must be condemned as vigorously as we
condemn riots. But in the final analysis, a riot is the language of the
unheard.

And what is it that America has failed to hear? It
has failed to hear that the plight of the Negro poor has worsened over the last
few years. It has failed to hear that the promises of freedom and justice have
not been met. And it has failed to hear that large segments of white society
are more concerned about tranquility and the status quo than about justice,
equality, and humanity. And so in a real sense our nation's summers of riots
are caused by our nation's winters of delay. And as long as America postpones
justice, we stand in the position of having these recurrences of violence and
riots over and over again. Social justice and progress are the absolute
guarantors of riot prevention.

Now let me go on to say that if we are to deal with
all of the problems that I've talked about, and if we are to bring America to
the point that we have one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for
all, there are certain things that we must do. The job ahead must be massive
and positive. We must develop massive action programs all over the United
States of America in order to deal with the problems that I have mentioned.

Now in order to develop these massive action programs
we've got to get rid of one or two false notions that continue to exist in our
society. One is the notion that only time can solve the problem of racial
injustice. I'm sure you've heard this idea. It is the notion almost that there
is something in the very flow of time that will miraculously cure all evils.
And I've heard this over and over again. There are those, and they are often
sincere people, who say to Negroes and their allies in the white community,
that we should slow up and just be nice and patient and continue to pray, and
in a hundred or two hundred years the problem will work itself out because only
time can solve the problem.

I think there is an answer to that
myth. And it is that time is neutral. It can be used either constructively or
destructively. And I'm absolutely convinced that the forces of ill-will in our
nation, the extreme rightists in our nation, have often used time much more
effectively than the forces of good will. And it may well be that we will have
to repent in this generation not merely for the vitriolic words of the bad
people and the violent actions of the bad people, but for the appalling silence
and indifference of the good people who sit around and say wait on time.
Somewhere we must come to see that social progress never rolls in on the wheels
of inevitability. It comes through the tireless efforts and the persistent work
of dedicated individuals. And without this hard work time itself becomes an
ally of the primitive forces of social stagnation. And so we must help time,
and we must realize that the time is always ripe to do right.

"All of our cities are potentially
powder kegs."

Now there is another notion that gets out, it's
around everywhere. It's in the South, it's in the North, it's in California,
and all over our nation. It's the notion that ,legislation can't solve the
problem; it can't do anything in this area. And those who project this argument
contend that you've got to change the heart and that you can't change the heart
through legislation.

Now I would be the first one to say that there is
real need for a lot of heart-changing in our country. And I believe in changing
the heart. I preach about it. I believe in the need for conversion in many
instances, and regeneration, to use theological terms. And I would be the first
to say that if the race problem in America is to be solved, the white person
must treat the Negro right, not merely because the law says it, but, because
it's natural, because it's right, and because the Negro is his brother. And so
I realize that if we are to have a truly integrated society, men and women will
have to rise to the majestic heights of being obedient to the unenforceable.

But after saying this, let me say another thing which
gives the other side, and that is that although it may be true that morality
cannot be legislated, behavior can be regulated. Even though it may be true
that the law cannot change the heart, it can restrain the heartless. Even
though it may be true that the law cannot make a man love me, it can restrain
him from lynching me. And I think that's pretty important also. And so while
the law may not change the hearts of men, it can and it does change the habits
of men. And when you begin to change the habits of men, pretty soon the
attitudes will be changed; pretty soon the hearts will be changed. And I'm
convinced that we still need strong civil rights legislation. And there is a
bill before Congress right now to have a national or federal Open Housing Bill.
A federal law declaring discrimination in housing unconstitutional.

And also a bill to made the administration of justice
real all over our country. Now nobody can doubt the need for this. Nobody can
doubt the need if he thinks about the fact that since 1963 some 50 Negroes and
white civil rights workers have been brutally murdered in the state of
Mississippi alone, and not a single person has been convicted for these
dastardly crimes. There have been some indictments but no one has been
convicted. And so there is a need for a federal law dealing with the whole
question of the administration of justice.

There is a need for fair housing laws all over our
country. And it is tragic indeed that Congress last year allowed this bill to
die. And when that bill died in Congress, a bit of democracy died, a bit of our
commitment to justice died. If it happens again in this session of Congress, a
greater degree of our commitment to democratic principles will die. And I can
see no more dangerous trend in our country than the constant developing of
predominantly Negro central cities ringed by white suburbs. This is only
inviting social disaster. And the only way this problem will be solved is by
the nation taking a strong stand, and by state governments taking a strong
stand against housing segregation and against discrimination in all of these
areas.

Now there's another thing that I'd like to mention as
I talk about the massive action program and time will not permit me to go into
specific programmatic action to any great degree. But it must be realized now
that the Negro cannot solve the problems by himself. There again, there are
those who always say to Negroes, "Why don't you do something for yourself?
Why don't you lift yourselves by your own bootstraps?" And we hear this
over and over again.

Now certainly there are many things that we must do
for ourselves and that only we can do for ourselves. Certainly we must develop
within a sense of dignity and self respect that nobody else can give us. A
sense of manhood, a sense of personhood, a sense of not being ashamed of our
heritage, not being ashamed of our color. It was wrong and tragic of the Negro
ever to allow himself to be ashamed of the fact that he was black, or ashamed
of the fact that his home, ancestral home was Africa. And so there is a great
deal that the Negro can do to develop self-respect. There is a great deal that
the Negro must do and can do to amass political and economic power within his
own community and by using his own resources. And so we must do certain things
for ourselves but this must not negate the fact, and cause the nation to
overlook the fact, that the Negro cannot solve the problem himself.

A man was on the plane with me some
weeks ago and he came and talked with me and he said, "The problem, Dr.
King, that I see with what you all are doing is that every time I see you and
other Negroes, you're protesting and you aren't doing anything for yourselves."
And he went on to tell me that he was very poor at one time, and he was able to
make it by doing something for himself. "Why don't you teach your
people," he said, "to lift themselves by their own bootstraps?"
And then he went on to say other groups faced disadvantages, the Irish, the
Italians, and he went down the line.

"I can see no more dangerous trend in
our country than the constant developing of predominantly Negro central cities
ringed by white suburbs."

And I said to him that it does not help the Negro, it
only deepens his frustration, upon feeling insensitive people to say to him
that other ethnic groups who migrated or were immigrants to this country less
than a hundred years ago or so, have gotten beyond him and he came here some
344 years ago. And I went on to remind him that the Negro came to this country
involuntarily in chains, while others came voluntarily. I went on to remind him
that no other racial group has been a slave on American soil. I went on to
remind him that the other problem that we have faced over the years is that
this society placed a stigma on the color of the Negro, on the color of his
skin because he was black. Doors were closed to him that were not closed to
other groups. And I finally said to him that it's a nice thing to say to people
that you oughta lift yourself by your own bootstraps, but it is a cruel jest to
say to a bootless man that he oughta lift himself by his own bootstraps. And
the fact is that millions of Negroes, as a result of centuries of denial and neglect,
have been left bootless. And they find themselves impoverished aliens in this
affluent society. And there is a great deal that the society can and must do if
the Negro is to gain the economic security that he needs.

Now one of the answers it seems to me, is a
guaranteed annual income, a guaranteed minimum income for all people, and for
all families of our country. It seems to me that the Civil Rights Movement must
now begin to organize for the guaranteed annual income. Begin to organize
people all over our country, and mobilize forces so that we can bring to the
attention of our nation this need, and this something which I believe will go a
long long way toward dealing with the Negro's economic problem and the economic
problem which many other poor people confront in our nation.

Now I said I wasn't gonna talk about Vietnam, but I
can't make a speech without

mentioning some of the problems that we face there
because I think this war has diverted attention from civil rights. It has
strengthened the forces of reaction in our country and has brought to the
forefront the military industrial complex that even President Eisenhower warned
us against at one time. And above all, it is destroying human lives. It's
destroying the lives of thousands of the young promising men of our nation.
It's destroying the lives of little boys and little girls in Vietnam. But one
of the greatest things that this war is doing to us in civil rights is that it
is allowing the Great Society to be shot down on the battlefields of Vietnam
every day.

And I submit this afternoon that we can end poverty
in the United States. Our nation has the resources to do it. The National Gross
Product of America will rise to the astounding figure of some $780 billion this
year. We have the resources. The question is whether our nation has the will,
and I submit that if we can spend $35 billion a year to fight an ill-considered
war in Vietnam, and $20 billion to put a man on the moon, our nation can spend
billions of dollars to put God's children on their own two feet right here on
earth.

Let me say another thing that's more
in the realm of the spirit I guess, that is that if we are to go on in the days
ahead and make true brotherhood a reality, it is necessary for us to realize
more than ever before, that the destinies of the Negro and the white man are
tied together. Now there are still a lot of people who don't realize this. The
racists still don't realize this. But it is a fact now that Negroes and whites
are tied together, and we need each other. The Negro needs the white man to
save him from his fear. The white man needs the Negro to save him from his
guilt. We are tied together in so many ways; our language, our music, our
cultural patterns, our material prosperity, and even our food are an amalgam of
black and white.

"Now one of the answers it seems to me,
is a guaranteed annual income, a guaranteed minimum income for all people, and
for all families of our country."

And so there can be no separate black path to power
and fulfillment that does not intersect white groups. There can be no separate
white path to power and fulfillment short of social disaster. It does not
recognize the need of sharing that power with black aspirations for freedom and
justice. We must come to see now that integration is not merely a romantic or
aesthetic something where you merely add color to a still predominantly white
power structure. Integration must be seen also in political terms where there
is shared power, where black men and white men share power together to build a
new and a great nation.

In a real sense, we're all caught in an inescapable
network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. John Donne placed it
years ago in graphic terms, "No man is an island entire of itself. Every
man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main." And he goes on
toward the end to say, "Any man's death diminishes me because I'm involved
in mankind. Therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls. It tolls for
thee." And so we are all in the same situation: the salvation of the Negro
will mean the salvation of the white man. And the destruction of the life and
of the ongoing progress of the Negro will be the destruction of the ongoing
progress of the nation.

Now let me say finally that we have
difficulties ahead but I haven't despaired. Somehow I maintain hope in spite of
hope. And I've talked about the difficulties and how hard the problems will be
as we tackle them. But I want to close by saying this afternoon, that I still
have faith in the future. And I still believe that these problems can be
solved. And so I will not join anyone who will say that we still can't develop
a coalition of conscience.

"One of the greatest things that this
war is doing to us in civil rights is that it is allowing the Great Society to
be shot down on the battlefields of Vietnam every day."

I realize and understand the discontent and the agony
and the disappointment and even the bitterness of those who feel that whites in
America cannot be trusted. And I would be the first to say that there are all
too many who are still guided by the racist ethos. And I am still convinced
that there are still many white persons of good will. And I'm happy to say that
I see them every day in the student generation who cherish democratic principles
and justice above principle, and who will stick with the cause of justice and
the cause of civil rights and the cause of peace throughout the days ahead. And
so I refuse to despair. I think we're gonna achieve our freedom because however
much America strays away from the ideals of justice, the goal of America is
freedom.

Abused and scorned though we may be, our destiny is
tied up in the destiny of America. Before the pilgrim fathers landed at
Plymouth we were here. Before Jefferson etched across the pages of history the
majestic words of the Declaration of Independence, we were here. Before the
beautiful words of the Star Spangled Banner were written, we were here. For
more than two centuries, our forbearers labored here without wages. They made
cotton king. They built the homes of their masters in the midst of the most
humiliating and oppressive conditions. And yet out of a bottomless vitality,
they continued to grow and develop.

And I say that if the inexpressible cruelties of
slavery couldn't stop us, the opposition that we now face, including the
so-called white backlash, will surely fail. We're gonna win our freedom because
both the sacred heritage of our nation and the eternal will of the Almighty God
are embodied in our echoing demands.

And so I can still sing "We Shall
Overcome." We shall overcome because the arc of the moral universe is long
but it bends toward justice. We shall overcome because Carlyle is right,
"no lie can live forever." We shall overcome because William Cullen
Bryant is right, "truth crushed to earth will rise again." We shall
overcome because James Russell Lowell is right, "Truth forever on the
scaffold, Wrong forever on the throne - Yet that scaffold sways the
future."

With this faith, we will be able to hew out of the
mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith, we will be able to
transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of
brotherhood. With this faith, we will be able to speed up the day when all of
God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and
Catholics, will be able to join hands and live together as brothers and
sisters, all over this great nation. That will be a great day, that will be a
great tomorrow. In the words of the Scripture, to speak symbolically, that will
be the day when the morning stars will sing together and the sons of God will
shout for joy.

Thank you.

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