Martin Luther King memorial services at the University of Iowa, April 5, 1968

Speaker 1: “Woe to those who are at ease in Zion and to those who feel secure on the Mountain of Samaria. Woe to those who lie upon beds of ivory and stretch themselves upon their couches and eat lambs from the flock and calves from the midst of the stall, but are not grieved over the ruin of Joseph. I hate, I despise your feast and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies. Even though you offer me your burnt offerings and cereal offerings, I will not accept them. And the peace offerings of your fatted beasts, I will not look upon. Take away from me the noise of your songs. To the melody of your harps, I will not listen, but let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like an everlasting stream.”. Speaker 1: ♪ (organ playing hymnal music, singing) ♪♪ Speaker 2: The first selection I would like to read is from the book, Why We Can't Wait by Martin Luther King. And I'd like to read the editorial comment about the book before reading its introduction. “Martin Luther King has made himself the unchallenged voice of the Negro people and the disquieting conscience of the whites. That voice in turn has infused the Negroes with the fiber that gives their revolution its stature.” Speaker 2: And now, I will read the words of Martin Luther King himself. “It is the beginning of the year of our Lord 1963. I see a young Negro boy. He is sitting on a stoop in front of a vermin-infested apartment house in Harlem. The stench of garbage is in the halls. The drunks, the jobless, the junkies are shadow figures of his everyday world. The boy goes to a school attended mostly by Negro students with a scattering of Puerto Ricans. His father is one of the jobless. His mother is a sleep-in domestic, working for a family on Long Island. Speaker 2: I see a young Negro girl. She is sitting on the stoop of a rickety wooden one-family house in Birmingham. Some visitors would call it a shack. It needs paint badly and the patched-up roof appears in danger of caving in. Half a dozen small children in various stages of undress are scampering about the house. The girl is forced to play the role of their mother. She can no longer attend the all-Negro school in her neighborhood because her mother died only recently after a car accident. Neighbors say if the ambulance hadn't come so late to take her to the all-Negro hospital the mother might still be alive. The girl's father is a porter in a downtown department store. He will always be a porter for there are no promotions for the Negro in this store, where every counter serves him except the one that sells hot dogs and orange juice. Speaker 2: This boy and girl, separated by stretching miles, are wondering, why does misery constantly haunt the Negro? In some distant past, had their forebears done some tragic injury to the nation, and was the curse of punishment upon the Black race? Had they shirked in their duty as patriots, betrayed their country, denied their national birthright? Had they refused to defend their land against a foreign foe? Not all of history is recorded in the books supplied to school children in Harlem or Birmingham. Yet this boy and this girl know something of the part of history which has been censored by the white writers and purchasers of board-of-education books. They know that Negroes were with George Washington at Valley Forge. They know that the first American to shed blood in the revolution which freed his country from British oppression was a Black seaman named Crispus Attucks. The boy's Sunday school teacher has told him that one of the team who designed the capital of their nation, Washington, D. C., was a Negro, Benjamin Banneker. Speaker 2: Once the girl had heard a speaker, invited to her school during Negro History Week. This speaker told how, for 200 years, without wages, Black people, brought to this land in slave ships and in chains, had drained the swamps, built the homes, made cotton king and helped, on whip-lashed backs, to lift this nation from colonial obscurity to commanding influence in domestic commerce and world trade. Speaker 2: Wherever there was hard work, dirty work, dangerous work, in the mines, on the docks, in the blistering foundries, Negroes had done more than their share. The pale history books in Harlem and Birmingham told how the nation had fought a war over slavery. Abraham Lincoln had signed a document that would come to be known as the Emancipation Proclamation. The war had been won but not a just peace. Equality had never arrived. Equality was 100 years late. Speaker 2: The boy and girl knew more than history. They knew something about current events. They knew that African nations had burst the bonds of colonialism. They knew that a great-great grandson of Crispus Attucks might be ruled out of some restricted, all-white restaurant in some restricted, all-white section of a southern town, his United States Marines uniform notwithstanding. They knew that Negroes living in the capital of their own nation were confined to ghettos and could not always get a job for which they were qualified. They knew that white supremacists had defied the Supreme Court and that northern governors had attempted to interpose themselves between the people and the highest law of the land. They knew that, for years, their own lawyers had won great victories in the courts which were not being translated into reality. Speaker 2: They were seeing on television, hearing from the radio, reading in the newspapers that this was the 100th birthday of their freedom. But freedom had a dull ring, a mocking emptiness, when in their times, in the short life span of this boy and girl buses had stopped rolling in Montgomery, sit-inners were jailed and beaten, freedom writers were brutalized and mobbed, dogs' fangs were bared in Birmingham. And in Brooklyn, New York, there were certain kinds of construction jobs for whites only. It was the summer of 1963. Was emancipation a fact? Was freedom a farce? Speaker 2: The boy in Harlem stood up. The girl in Birmingham arose. Separated by stretching miles, both of them squared their shoulders and lifted their eyes toward heaven. Across the miles they joined hands, and took a firm, forward step. It was a step that rocked the richest, most powerful nation to its foundations. This is the story of that boy and girl. This is the story of Why We Can't Wait.” Speaker 3: I would like to bring you the words of Dr. Martin Luther King from one of his earliest published writings, Stride Toward Freedom and from one of his last. Speaker 3: Speaking of the Montgomery movement, the bus boycott he says, “Since the philosophy of nonviolence played such a positive role in the Montgomery Movement, it may be wise to turn to a brief discussion of some basic aspects of this philosophy. Speaker 3: First, it must be emphasized that nonviolent resistance is not a method for cowards; it does resist. If one uses these method because he is afraid or merely because he lacks the instruments of violence, he is not truly nonviolent. This is why Gandhi often said that if cowardice is the only alternative to violence, it is better to fight. He made this statement conscious of the fact that there is always another alternative, no individual or group need submit to any wrong, nor need they use violence to right the wrong. There is the way of nonviolent resistance. This is ultimately the way of the strong man. It is not a method of stagnant passivity. The phrase ‘passive resistance’ often gives the false impression that this is a sort of ‘do-nothing method’ in which the resister quietly and passively accepts evil. But nothing is further from the truth. For while the nonviolent resister is passive in the sense that he is not physically aggressive toward his opponent, his mind and emotions are always active, constantly seeking to persuade his opponent that he is wrong. The method is passive physically, but strongly active spiritually. It is not passive non-resistance to evil, it is active nonviolent resistance to evil. Speaker 3: A second basic fact that characterizes nonviolence is that it does not seek to defeat or humiliate the opponent, but to win his friendship and understanding. The nonviolent resister must often express his protest through non-cooperation or boycotts, but he realizes that these are not ends in themselves, they are merely means to awaken a sense of moral shame in the opponent. The end is redemption and reconciliation. The aftermath of nonviolence is the creation of the beloved community, while the aftermath of violence is tragic bitterness. Speaker 3: A third characteristic of this method is that the attack is directed against forces of evil rather than against persons who happen to be doing the evil. It is evil that the nonviolent resister seeks to defeat, not the persons victimized by evil. If he is opposing racial injustice, the nonviolent resister has the vision to see that the basic tension is not between races. As I like to say to the people in Montgomery, the tension in this city is not between white people and Negro people. The tension is, at bottom, between justice and injustice, between the forces of light and the forces of darkness. And if there is a victory, it will be a victory not merely for 50,000 Negroes, but a victory for justice and the forces of light. We are out to defeat injustice and not white persons who may be unjust. Speaker 3: A fourth point that characterizes nonviolent resistance is a willingness to accept suffering without retaliation, to accept blows from the opponent without striking back. ‘Rivers of blood may have to flow before we gain our freedom, but it must be our blood,’ Gandhi said to his countrymen. The nonviolent resister is willing to accept violence if necessary, but never to inflict it. He does not seek to dodge jail. If going to jail is necessary, he enters it as a bridegroom enters the bride's chamber. Speaker 3: One may well ask, ‘What is the nonviolent resister's justification for this ordeal to which he invites men, for this mass political application of the ancient doctrine of turning the other cheek?’ The answer is found in the realization that unearned suffering is redemptive. Suffering, the nonviolent resister realizes, has tremendous educational and transforming possibilities. ‘Things of fundamental importance to people are not secured by reason alone, but have to be purchased with their suffering,’ said Gandhi. He continues. ‘Suffering is infinitely more powerful than the law of the jungle for converting the opponent and opening his ears which are otherwise shut to the voice of reason.’ Speaker 3: A fifth point concerning nonviolent resistance is that it avoids not only external physical violence but also internal violence of spirit. The nonviolent resister not only refuses to shoot his opponent but he also refuses to hate him. At the center of nonviolence stands the principle of love. The nonviolent resister would contend that in the struggle for human dignity, the oppressed people of the world must not succumb to the temptation of becoming bitter or indulging in hate campaigns. To retaliate in kind would do nothing but intensify the existence of hate in the universe. Along the way of life, someone must have sense enough and morality enough to cut off the chains of hate. This can only be done by projecting the ethic of love to the center of our lives.” Speaker 3: One of his latest writings appeared in March and says, “America owes a great debt as a result of the injustices of the past. Whatever we want to call it, a massive plan, a Bill of Rights for the disadvantaged, a freedom budget is all right, but it's going to take at least $20 billion a year over the next 10 years. If the nation would only do that, we could eradicate slums, we could get rid of poverty. And the beautiful thing about it would be that after we got rid of poverty for the Black man, it will uplift the whole society. I'm concerned not only about the poverty of the Negro, but of the American Indians, the Puerto Ricans, the Mexican Americans and the Appalachian whites. By solving the problem of poverty for the Black man, the problem of poverty for every person that is poverty-stricken in this nation will be solved. America has the resources. Speaker 3: In the civil rights' struggle, we have to gear our effort toward bringing this kind of program into being by putting pressure on to the powers that be. What worries me so much is the question whether our nation has the will. Certainly we could do it. In 1967, we had a gross national product of $780 billion yet 42 million people are poverty-stricken. The resources are here, but the will is not. Yet our national administration is more concerned about winning what I consider an unjust war in Vietnam than winning the war against poverty right here at home. We spend approximately $500,000 to kill an enemy soldier in Vietnam while we spend only $35 a year for every individual that is considered poverty-stricken in the so-called war against poverty that isn't even a good scrimmage against poverty. It is the tragic mix-up of priority. Speaker 3: I have opposed the Vietnam War for many years. It ignores the Geneva Accord. That war has left our nation morally and physically isolated in the world. There isn't a major ally of the United States that would dare send troops to Vietnam. We find ourselves morally isolated. Our allies in peace and war are not with us in this. The only friends we have in this war are the client nations like Thailand, Taiwan, and South Korea. The war strengthens the military industrial complex against which even President Eisenhower solemnly warned us. The war brings us closer to a nuclear confrontation. It puts us in the position of being against the self-determination of the Vietnamese people. That leaves us in the position that Senator Fulbright has called, ‘the arrogance of power.’ The senators and the congressmen from the southern states and from the southwest vote joyously to send billions of dollars to Vietnam, but yet these same senators and congressmen also vote against a fair housing bill to make it possible for a Negro veteran from Vietnam to live any place where he wants to live when he comes back home. Speaker 3: Somebody said to me not so very long ago, ‘Dr. King, don't you think that you are going to have to stop talking against the administration's policies because it will hurt the budget of your organization, and many people who once respected you will stop respecting you and you'll lose allies in the Civil Rights Movement? Don't you think you will have to start agreeing with our government policy?’ And I had to look into the eyes of that person and say, ‘I'm sorry sir, but you don't know me. I'm not a consensus leader. I do not determine what is right and wrong by looking at the budget of my organization or by taking a Gallup poll of the majority of the opinion.’ Ultimately, a genuine leader is not a searcher for consensus, but a molder of consensus. On such positions, cowardice asks the question, is it safe? Expediency asks the question, is it politic? Vanity asks the question, is it popular? But conscience asks the question, is it right? Speaker 3: There comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe nor politic nor popular, but must take it because conscience tells him that it must be right. If we are to move towards a truly integrated society, then it will be necessary for a white and Black Americans to realize that their destinies are tied together. Whether we like it or not, culturally, biologically, and otherwise, every white person is a little bit Negro and every Negro is a little bit white. Our language, our music all material prosperity, and even our food are an amalgam of Black and white. There will be no separate Black path to power and fulfillment that does not intersect white roots. There can be no separate white path to power and fulfillment short of social disaster that does not recognize the necessity of sharing that power with Black aspirations for freedom and human dignity. Speaker 3: In this interrelated, pluralistic society, we are all caught in an inescapable network of mutuality. John Donne was right when he said, ‘No man is an island.’ Any man's death diminishes me because I am involved in mankind. I haven't lost faith even though the days ahead are still difficult, the problems are very real, some of them are very frustrating. I still have faith in the future and I will not yield to the politics of despair. Our goal is freedom and I feel relieved that somehow we'll get there because however much she strays away from it, the goal of America is freedom. Abused and scorned as we may be as a people, our destiny is tied up with 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. Speaker 3: For more than two centuries, our forebears labored here without wages. They made cotton king and they built the houses 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. If the inexpressible cruelties of slavery couldn't stop us, neither will the opposition that we now face, including the opposition of the so-called white backlash. Speaker 3: I can still sing, We Shall Overcome. We shall overcome because the arc of the moral universe is long, and 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 pressed to earth, shall 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.’ Speaker 3: With this faith, we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair the stone of hope. With this faith, we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our cities to a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. We will be able to speed up the day when people all over this nation, white man and Black man, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, ‘Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!’” Speaker 1: Martin Luther King was given life on this planet in 1929 by the Living God. Thank God he was given life as a Black man and thank God that he lived his life as a man of faith for words like those which you have heard, emerge only from the soul of a man who has put his roots down deep into the substance of life as it is given by God, who has faced the mystery of all things and who has come up with his eyes wide open. It was years later that he strolled onto the stage of this life with full human consciousness and perhaps felt very much like the Prophet Micah for he was a prophet himself. Speaker 1: “Woe is me! For I have become as when the summer fruit has been gathered, as when the vintage has been gleaned, where there is no cluster to eat, no first-ripe fig which my soul desires. The godly man has perished from the earth, and there is none upright among men. They all lie in wait for blood and each hunts his brother with a net. Their hands are upon what is evil to do it diligently. The prince and the judge asked for a bribe. And the great man utters the evil desire of his soul. Thus, they weave it together. The best of them is like a brier, the most upright of them a thorn head. The day of their watchman, of their punishment has come. Now, their confusion is at hand. Put no trust in a neighbor, have no confidence in a friend, guard the doors of your mouth from her who lies in your bosom. For the son treats the father with contempt, the daughter rises against her mother, the daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law, and a man's enemies are the men at his own house or nation.” And yet like Micah, he was a man who went on to say, “But as for me, I will look to the Lord. I will wait for the God of my salvation. My God will hear me.” Speaker 1: He took for his life hero, Gandhi. He took for his life model the man Jesus, the Christ. A man who himself strode on to the stage of history in a little town of Nazareth. As was his custom on the Sabbath day, he went to the synagogue and he stood up to read and there was given to him the book of the Prophet Isaiah. He opened that book and found a place where it was written, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord.” And the one after who Martin Luther King modeled his life closed the book and gave it back to the attendant and sat down, and the eyes of all in that synagogue were fixed on him and he began to say to them, “This day, that scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.” He leaned up close to the master whom he followed. He listened far more diligently than most in our time have listened and he learned from this man, and he learned well. Speaker 1: “You have heard that it was said, ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.’ But I say to you, do not resist one who is evil. And if anyone strikes you on the cheek, turn to him the other also. And if anyone would sue you and take your coat, let him have your cloak as well. And if anyone forces you to go one mile, go with him two miles. Give to him who begs from you and do not refuse him who would borrow from you. You have heard it said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in Heaven, for he makes his son rise on the evil and on the good and sends rain on the just and on the unjust. Speaker 1: For if you love those who love you, what reward have you? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? And if you salute only your brethren, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same? You therefore, you must be perfect, even as your Father in Heaven is perfect. For this is the message which you have heard from the very beginning, that we should love one another and not be like Cain who was of the evil one and murdered his brother. And why did he murder him? Because his own deeds were evil and his brothers, righteous. Speaker 1: Do not wonder, brethren, that the world hates you. We know that we have passed out of death into life because we love the brethren. And he who does not love remains in death. Anyone who hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him. By this, we know love. That he laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren. But if anyone has this world's goods and sees his brother in need and yet closes his heart against him, how does God's love abide in him? Little children, let us not love in word or speech but in deed and in truth. And this is love perfected with us that we may have confidence for the day of judgment because as He is so we are in this world. There is no fear in love, but perfect love cast out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and he who fears is not perfected in love. If anyone says, ‘I love God’ and hates his brother, he is a liar. For he who does not his brother whom he has seen, cannot love God whom he has not seen. And this commandment we have from him, that he who loves God should love his brother also.” And they took him out and they crucified him. Speaker 2: As we Gather in this service of memorial for a fallen leader in the cause of justice and peace in the nation and in the world, let us pray to the Lord. All: Lord, hear our prayer. Speaker 2: Eternal God, we who live in trouble days give thanks and praise thee for the man who has been given to us for a time, Martin Luther King. A man whose courage was expressed as he put faith in action. A man whose example set reconciliation as the way between race and grace. A man whose concern walks the streets with common people to inspire them. A man whose quality of moral leadership gave inspiration to the church. A man whose dream is held to be for all of us. A man whose faith feared not even death. We give thee thanks. Let us pray to the Lord. All: Lord, hear our prayer. Speaker 2: That Mrs. King and the family upon whom is laid this heavy burden of sorrow, may not grieve as those who have no hope, but in their tears be comforted and turn to thee, the God of all consolation. Let us pray to the Lord. All: Lord, hear our prayer. Speaker 2: Oh God, we confess our sin. We confess that we are a people who falls short of our ideals, who mouth the words of freedom and justice for all and yet miss those high ideals as we practice segregation and discrimination. Who mouth the words of land of opportunity and yet have robbed some of the people of our land of an equal or fair share in the abundance that is here. Forgive us for our intentional evil done to fellow men, for our easy tolerance of the evil of others, for our apathy and turning aside from the concern that we should have for our brother. We pray, our Father, for the cause of peace and justice and brotherhood among men for which Martin Luther King gave his life. Grant that this cause may now be strengthened in our nation, in the hearts of our cities, in the halls of our Congress and State houses and communities, in our churches and homes, and in ourselves. Let us pray to the Lord. All: Lord, hear our prayer. Speaker 2: That the cruel lesson of this tragic death be a powerful prod to the conscience of America. That by a renewed and greater effort, we as a nation may move forward in policy and law to guarantee that dignity and equal rights of every human being. Let us pray to the Lord. All: Lord, hear our prayer. Speaker 5: (spaeking off microphone) Our Father, we come [inaudible]. Speaker 2: Let us pray to the Lord. All: Lord, hear our prayer. Speaker 2: We pray that men of all faiths may unite in the common cause of justice and peace for our nation and all the world. Hear our prayer. All: Amen. Speaker 1: As a churchman, I find it most impossible in this memorial moment not to be drawn very deeply into Martin Luther King's own convictions concerning the future of America and the future of our world. Well, let us never forget, Dr. King was a man of God, completely committed to all persons as children of one father. Therefore, it would be both deplorable and a forthright denial of all he believed and lived and died for if we were to permit this present tragedy to drive us toward deeper racial division and disintegration. Speaker 1: His rejection of violence and his allegiance to the power of love compel us to re-examine ourselves and the whole human situation. All men are created and intended to dwell together in unity in a community of mutual caring, Martin Luther King not only believe this will all his heart and soul and mind and strength, he gave his life in sacrificial support of this truth. The most fitting memorial therefore is to dedicate ourselves more fully and fearlessly to the realization of a genuine brotherhood, blind to color because it is bound together by the cords of reciprocal love and mutual dignity. So where do we go from here? Let me limit myself to just the question of the church. Speaker 1: First of all, the church must radically review its reason for being and its relation to the world. Dr. King was first foremost and always a churchman, a servant of God armed with aggressive love in behalf of all men. In this hour of sorrow and shame, we must see how the church can in no way escape involvement in the socio-economic structures and struggles of our society. Dr. King reveals that we are the true and living church. We are actively engaged both as an institution and as individual persons in the battle for justice and goodness and truth in the actual arena of this naughty world. Speaker 1: There's a phony ring to any claim that seeks to save men's souls and ignores the social conditions in which men live. But the prior corollary of this is equally imperative. If we are to be the vital force in helping move society toward brotherhood and peace, we must set our own house in order. The church must candidly confess their own sins, her two great contribution and promotion of a racial caste system within her own family. To be the conscience of the state, the church must cast off its own yolk of segregation quickly, completely, truly. Becoming a community of Christ in which there is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, but all are one. Speaker 1: But a further caution and counsel of Dr. King's is extremely important and extremely pertinent to the church, he believed with an extravagant passion that a Christlike God is in control of human destiny, and that this makes mandatory the single weapon for overcoming evil with good, love. To quote in his own words, “Something in the very nature of the universe assists goodness in its perennial struggle with evil. As we struggle to defeat the forces of evil, the God of the universe struggles with us. Evil dies on the seashore, not merely because of man's endless struggle against it, but because of God's power to defeat it.” This unshakable confidence in God led him to believe that in our American struggle for freedom and justice, we are seeing the death of evil. The church is uniquely challenged to share this unflinching faith with the world, and also to insist and to give evidence by its own social actions that the only instrument for a human improvement is the weapon of love. Speaker 1: Here again the words of Martin Luther King, “In a world depending on force, coercive tyranny, and bloody violence, you are challenged to follow the way of love. You will then discover that unarmed love is the most powerful force in the world.” Speaker 1: In the midnight darkness of this present hour, we need to dedicate ourselves anew we, within the church, to the invincible power of love, which alone overcomes evil with good through the conversion of the enemy into a friend. Speaker 1: Let me close with this clarion call of hope and responsible action in which Dr. King reveals the very ground of his own hope and that which was the heartbeat for his own action. In spite of the tensions and uncertainties of this present period, something profoundly meaningful is taking place. Old systems of exploitation and oppression are passing away. New systems of justice and equality are being born. Therefore, I am not yet discouraged about the future. Every crisis has both its dangers and its opportunities. It can spell either salvation or doom. In a dark, confused world, the Kingdom of God may yet rain in the hearts of men. Speaker 6: Where do we go from here? A succinct answer would be up. There is no direction for us as Americans to take but an upward and outward direction. On this occasion, we have collected ourselves to express grief. But in the process, let us think if it's possible of the joy which might be derived through this occasion. We see in our midst symbols of hope and symbols of triumph. We do not necessarily have to look back, look to Mr. King for these symbols of hope and triumph. We may look forward though things to which he aspired. Speaker 6: It has been said at different points during the afternoon that there were dreams that inspired Mr. King. I feel that those of us in the ray of God, we also have a dream. A dream which will enable us to overcome this tragedy, this mock, which has been imposed on the American scene. How would we accomplish this? I have but one suggestion. We may accomplish this by attempting to achieve a coalition between government and business. And in the process of forming this coalition, I think you and we as moderates will have to take the full ground and let our voices be heard. Speaker 6: One of the factors which we see as giving rise to some support to this tragedy rest with the idea that the moderates, well-meaning moderates have not expressed themselves. America has to address herself to a new resolve. That resolve will have to be articulated on the pot of moderates. These moderates during this time of crisis will have to be white moderates. Fortunately or unfortunately, I admit this. We are confronted with a crisis. We hate listening to what has been heard since noon today and even last night, but it's most crucial now, of what's happening in Washington D.C., Miami, Memphis, New Orleans, and over all of the nation. And some preventive measures have got to take place. And I say, it's the responsibility of the American people, the American public, this concerned but reserved moderate segment of the population to focus on the problem, redefine the problem if necessary, and be heard, be heard, be heard, you might be cursed. Speaker 7: Last night, about 11:00 o'clock, I listened as I am sure many of you did, to an interview with Roy Wilkins who was asked, “Who will take Martin Luther King's place?” And the answer which Mr. Wilkins gave was it seemed to me that the only answer which could be given, that the leadership, the place of leadership filled by Dr. King could be taken not by any one person, Black or white, but the leadership would have to come from Black and white. Because the only leadership was that which he reflected, the leadership of human conscience. Speaker 7: Wednesday morning at the mayor's prayer breakfast sponsored by the Junior Chamber of Commerce, Dr. [George Farrell] of the School of Religion in a brief and inspiring talk, noted in a way which is today, 48 hours later, prophetic, that in this last half century of human experience, the change which has become such a cliche to all of us has been so fantastic that we have lost all concept of it. The change in speed from that of a fast horse to that of an astronaut being blasted into orbit. The change throughout our human experience. The change but in one area, man himself. And he underscored the reality that here the problem was not that of human advance and acceleration, but of a return. A return among all of us to the example, the prototype of the Man of Nazareth. Speaker 7: The death of Dr. King is a tragic symbol of human self-denial of the highest of all human goals, the brotherhood of men. The meaning full tribute, which can be paid to his memory lies in the greater depth of devotion and commitment to that ideal among people of this community and of every community in our country. Speaker 8: The program says, “Where Do We Go From Here?” And I guess that's another way of saying, what do we do next? What do we do now? I can't answer for you, but I suggest that we acknowledge the shame of yesterday, of Thursday evening, and that we shoulder this burden that belongs to us and that we keep on keeping on with renewed dedication. And when the time for mourning ceases as it always must, then we as individuals will determine by our own acts just how much this man's acts meant to us. I suggest to you that the measure of his dedication will not be found in how much we miss him and how much we miss his work nor in the number of years in which his memory stays with us, and we remember Dr. Luther King. Speaker 8: I suggest that we should recognize that Dr. Martin Luther King's effectiveness will be measured by the degree to which we as Christian Americans respond to the causes for which he worked so long and so hard. And yesterday, so totally. If we can salvage any good whatever from this tragic and senseless loss, it must be our commitment to see his work continued. May God help us in this endeavor. Speaker 9: I'm a latecomer to your program and therefore not listed on your program. My name is [Everett Frost] and I'm a student at the University, and I speak to you out of my grief as a believer in nonviolence for the last hours and for my apprehension at the future as an activist. Speaker 9: We stand in the darkening shadow of sorrow the death of this great man. We hold him the light by which he lived. We hold it in perfectly, betraying it for our own ends even as we affirm it. And in our betrayal, we are all his assassins. Speaker 9: Lyndon Baines Johnson says, “I ask every citizen to reject the blind violence that struck Dr. King who lived by nonviolence.” Let us remember that his fiery hand unleashes a blind violence in Vietnam that is without precedent and without moral justification. The mayors of every major city across this country have emphasized Martin Luther King's commitment to nonviolence, hoping that their words will restrain the suffering and angry people both Black and white in the ghettos. Speaker 9: Let us remember that they stand ready to enforce that nonviolence on somebody else, with police and riot clubs and armored personnel carriers and even troops if necessary. The militants of this land, so justly angry, exert their people to vengeance. Let us remember that their inverted racism against the white man is indistinguishable from the racism under which they suffer. The heat without light will never build a community in which we can all live. Speaker 9: As we remember Dr. Martin Luther King's commitment to nonviolence, let us not forget his affirmation of non-cooperation to an unjust system and to the authorities that maintain it. Let us remember that he was not murdered for his nonviolent principles, but that he was murdered because he took his principles into the streets of America. Let us also remember that when he went to the streets, he went nonviolently, believing the only in that human way could a system of life be woven out of the fibers of the system of death in which we now live. Speaker 9: Finally, let us remember that as I use his devotion to love, to point in accusing fingers at others who betray it, I too betray it. May we learn the wisdom of the poet Blake as we go out of here who said, “Mutual forgiveness of each vice, these are the gates of paradise.” So as we go out of here, we can build the land of which Martin Luther King dreamed. Speaker 10: None of us is really worthy to speak or to sing the words which lie before us and yet I dare to invite you to say and to sing them with me as a confession of our hope, as a pledge of our commitment, as an affirmation of that which we, with God's help, intend to do and to become. Let us stand. Speaker 10: “I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed. We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal. I have a dream that one day out in the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood. I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight, and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together. This is our hope.”. Speaker 10, All: ♪ (singing, We Shall Ovecome) We shall overcome, we shall overcome, We shall overcome someday; Oh, deep in my heart, I do believe, We shall overcome someday. We'll walk hand in hand, we'll walk hand in hand, We'll walk hand in hand someday; Oh, deep in my heart, I do believe, We'll walk hand in hand someday. We are not afraid, we are not afraid, We are not afraid today; Oh, deep in my heart, I do believe, We are not afraid today. The truth shall make us free, the truth shall make us free, The truth shall make us free someday; We shall overcome, we shall overcome, We shall overcome someday; Oh, deep in my heart, I do believe... ♪♪