To commemorate Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s birthday, I am going to quote from one of his famous speeches. The full text of the speech may be found in an anthology titled A Testament of Hope, edited by James M. Washington. I will quote a speech that he delivered to the AFL-CIO on December 11, 1961 called “If the Negro Wins, Labor Wins.”
In this speech, Dr. King shows how closely allied are the labor movement and the movement for civil rights. He shows how the hopes and dreams of working people who have organized into unions for their collective benefit are the same as the hopes and dreams of black people. He called on the labor movement to rid itself of the last vestiges of discrimination within its own ranks and to become partners in fighting for the American dream on behalf of all Americans.
The words of Dr. King are astonishingly relevant today. I urge you to read the entire text, which you may find online at various archives. You will be impressed not only by Dr. King’s moral intensity and eloquence, but by the range of his philosophical and historical references. In retrospect, it is startling that some people at the time denounced him as a militant and did their best to ignore him and marginalize him. His critics have long been forgotten. He will be remembered forever as a true American prophet.
Dr. King said:
Less than a century ago the laborer had no rights, little or no respect, and led a life which was socially submerged and barren.
He was hired and fired by economic despots whose power over him decreed his life or death. The children of workers had no childhood and no future. They, too, worked for pennies an hour and by the time they reached their teens they were wornout old men, devoid of spirit, devoid of hope and devoid of self-respect….
American industry organized work into sweatshops and proclaimed the right of capital to act without restraints and without conscience.
Victor Hugo, literary genius of that day, commented bitterly that there was always more misery in the lower classes than there was humanity in the upper classes. The inspiring answer to this intolerable and dehumanizing existence was economic organization through trade unions. The worker became determined not to wait for charitable impulses to grow in his employer. He constructed the means by which a fairer sharing of the fruits of his toil had to be given to him or the wheels of industry, which he alone turned, would halt and wealth for no one would be available.
This revolution within industry was fought mercilessly by those who blindly believed their right to uncontrolled profits was a law of the universe, and that without the maintenance of the old order catastrophe faced the nation.
History is a great teacher. Now, everyone knows that the labor movement did not diminish the strength of the nation but enlarged it. By raising the living standards of millions, labor miraculously created a market for industry and lifted the whole nation to undreamed of levels of production. Those who today attack labor forget these simple truths, but history remembers them…
Negroes are almost entirely a working people. There are pitifully few Negro millionaires and few Negro employers. Our needs are identical with labor’s needs: decent wages, fair working conditions, livable housing, old age security, health and welfare measures, conditions in which families can grow, have education for their children and respect in the community. That is why Negroes support labor’s demands and fight laws which curb labor. That is why the labor-hater and the labor-baiter is virtually always a twin-headed creature spewing anti-Negro epithets from one mouth and anti-labor propaganda from the other mouth….
And as we struggle to make racial and economic justice a reality, let us maintain faith in the future. We will confront difficulties and frustrating moments in the struggle to make justice a reality, but we must believe somehow that these problems can be solved….
I am convinced that we shall overcome because the arc of the universe is long but it bends toward justice. We shall overcome because Carlyle is right when he says, “No lie can live forever.” We shall overcome because William Cullen Bryant is right when he says, “Truth crushed to earth will rise again”…
And so if we will go out with this faith and with this determination to solve these problems, we will bring into being that new day and that new America….Yes, this will be 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 all over this nation and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, “Free At Last, Free At Last, Thank God Almighty, We Are Free At Last.”
“I am convinced that we shall overcome because the arc of the universe is long but it bends toward justice.”
I love this quote. I hope he is right. I was listening to another of his speeches yesterday in my car, “Where do we From Here?” What struck me was his emphasis on love as the only answer to people’s problems, and how darkness can’t dispel darkness, only light can. Each of us has to go out and be the light for our own family, school, community. Even a single candle can make a difference in a dark room. That is how we can get the arc to bend to justice, each of us doing what we know is right, living an example of light and love for others to follow.
I too hope he’s right, but then I read this this morning on Eric Zorn’s blog: http://blogs.chicagotribune.com/news_columnists_ezorn/2013/01/entitlement-reform-report.html#comments
Just how low are we going to go before we start “bending the arc” back the other way?
Wow, that is disturbing. I hope the arc starts turning soon. It seems like we keep going lower and lower. There’s a line from a U2 song, “God, Part II” that goes “The rich stay healthy, the sick stay poor.” I think it was written about third world countries, how sad that it applies to the US, too.
It will be very hard to bend the arc back when it’s been been bent the wrong way for so long. How long?
The crowd that leads the charterite/privatizer movement was mentioned in the first line of Billie Holiday’s GOD BLESS THE CHILD: “Them that’s got shall have Them that’s not shall lose So the Bible says and it still is news.”
That’s us in the second line. But judgment day is coming. And it won’t be a pleasant time for the camels who can’t pass through the eye of a needle. *Note to those who swallow whole the eduhype of the Rheephormistas: read the book mentioned in the third line. Then you’ll understand the reference.*
🙂
“. . . how darkness can’t dispel darkness, only light can.” Wasn’t it Darth Cheney who said that we needed to embrace the “dark side” when it cam to dealing with “terrorists” (and I put that in quotes because as we know one man’s terrorist is another’s freedom fighter).
The bull in the china shop, now as it was in 1967 when MLK came out most forcefully against the folly that was Vietnam, is our over reliance on the “dark side”, that is, war and violence as a solution to the supposed “terrorism problem”. My favorite speech and the one that for sure sealed his fate is the Riverside Church Speech of 1967 “Beyond Vietnam, A Time to Break Silence”. Read it here: http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article2564.htm . Substitute “terrorism” for communism and Iraq/Afghanistan/Pakistan/Yemen/Somalia for Vietnam and the speech would be current.
My favorite MLK speech.
This should be read and discussed in all American schools so as to see the hypocritical, aggressive, imperialist nature of this country.
To many schools put up the officially sanctioned, warm and fuzzy MLK quotes: “I have a dream” “Free at last” etc.
Some colleagues of mine have gone further and added his more uncomfortable quotes from Riverside like:
“We as a nation, must undergo a radical revolution of values”
“These are revolutionary times”
“War is not the answer”
Awesome! His words definitely ring true today! This gives me hope.
Thank you for this post, Dr. Ravitch.
A story. From the back of my car a conversation between my six year old grandsons.
One with brown skin and the other (as he calls it) blonde skin. Cousins who adore and love each other like brothers and I adore them more then all the stars in the heavens and beyond. One cousin to the other “You know without Martin Luther King a long time
ago we could not play together because I have brown skin and you have blonde skin?” the other cousin “You mean then kids couldn’t play together because they looked different?” “Yes! “Boy! I’m glad for Martin Luther King and us!”
All I could do was smile and think back to those Civil Rights Years and tears came to my
eyes! Tears for the pain, suffering, and sacrifice endured by so many. Tears of joy
for my precious grandson’s and the joy of their having the conversation and the love
of each other and fun of playing with one another. Boy! I’m glad for Dr. Martin Luther
King, Jr., and all who loudly came forth for the sake of the children and the future.
Today the oath will be given to the President of these United States, his second
mandate and approval by The People, he reflects the likeness of both my grandson’s
and their aspirations and dreams. God Bless America!
Excellent anecdote! Thanks!
Thank you Diane, for reminded us if MLK greatness and foresight.
Dr. Jose Gabriel Maldonado
Executive Director PRO Educacion y Ambiente http://www.proea.org 917 328-5463 Skype: sparisomaatomarium
Workers continue the fight for their rights today under a system designed to protect the employer at all costs & with a government closely aligned with those employers.
Dr.Kings words are as important today as they were all those years ago.
It seems like we move forward, then back. All these years later, and still we have to fight for our rights. Too bad we can’t be more enlightened. This is a good reminder of how vigilant we all must be in protecting our rights.
Also, this:
In a public statement released today, more than sixty educators and researchers, including some of the most well-respected figures in the field of education, pledged support for the boycott of the Measures of Academic Progress (MAP) test initiated by the teachers at Garfield High School in Seattle, calling the action a “blow against the overuse and misuse of standardized tests.” Among the signers of the statement are former US Assistant Secretary of Education Diane Ravitch, Chicago Teachers Union President Karen Lewis, author Jonathan Kozol and professor Nancy Carlsson-Paige. While the MAP test is used exclusively for rating teachers, “the test’s developers (the Northwest Evaluation Association) have noted the inappropriateness of using tests for such evaluations” the educators wrote.
“We’ve had more than a decade of standardized testing,” Ravitch said, “and now we need to admit that it’s not helping.” She added: “By signing this statement, I hope to amplify the voices of teachers who are saying ‘enough is enough’.”
“On Martin Luther King Day, we celebrate people who are willing to take personal risks to act according to their conscience,” Lewis said. “The teachers at Garfield High School are taking a stand for all of us.”
An important visionary leader who had an enormous influence on Dr. King, both for his stance on non-violence and on economic and labor issues, was Bayard Rustin. A beautiful documentary about him, Brother Outsider, will be broadcast on PBS 2/3/13. More info here: http://rustin.org
Thank you for remembering Bayard Rustin. He was a dear friend to me and my family.
A “Letter from a Birmingham Jail”, dated April 16, 1963, was one of MLK’s greatest piece of writing in which he responded to 8 white Alabama clergymen’s statement, titled “A Call for Unity”.
With the push for unjust reforms, created by politicians and supporters of charter schools, the nation’s public schools of minorities are feeling and seeing the “separate and unequal” education in their schools.
MLK, had he been alive today, would most likely write another open letter telling everyone, especially the politicians, how our children across the nation are harshly attacked by these reformers’ unjust policies that severely affect schools and children’s education.
In the letter, MLK wrote, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. Never again can we afford to live with the narrow, provincial “outside agitator” idea. Anyone who lives inside the United States can never be considered an outsider anywhere within its bounds.”
We can’t ever assume that public schools in another state, being destroyed by unjust reforms, will not affect public schools in our own community. Our nation’s public schools and its communities have “inescapable network of mutuality”. MLK’s words still ring true today and tomorrow.
MLK would bow his head in shame seeing that there’s injustice everywhere.
here’s my comment to NEA blather about MLK:
When we analyze the in-the-classroom, exact day to day improvements made by “Democratic” ed deformers over the last 5 and 10 years, how can we not see that, just like the broken clock which is right 2 times a day, the improvements have been slight?
Most of the “improvements” have been expanding the number of 6 figure a year snouts drinking at the trough of Pubic Education, and expanding the bubble test targets on the backs of teachers, principals, and on site school workers.
King was fighting for the improvement in the day to day lives of people. The union which takes my money isn’t fighting for us working stiffs because it is fixated on salon style speeches without action, on meaningless meetings, on appeasing the lies of the Arnes and of the Rhees and of their payma$ter$ in Gate$-Ill-Vain-ia.
Your invocations of King make sense to me ONLY in the most Orwellian use of doublethink.
opps – that is NEA facebook blather.