MLK Talks 'New Phase' Of Civil Rights Struggle, 11 Months Before His Assassination | NBC News

three civil rights king von ocher roll 27:36 dr. King this church is as good a place as any to go back over your commitment to the civil rights movement well you went out from here into University and then you went to Montgomery Alabama and started the bus boycotts there what was the philosophy of the civil rights movement as you saw it then more than ten years ago well I would say then the philosophy was that we must go all out to use legal and nonviolent methods to gain full citizenship rights for the Negro people of

our country of course that particular struggle and that philosophy is centered on breaking down all of the barriers of legal segregation so I would say that in that period the basic thrust for the gaining of citizenship rights for Negroes was to end the humiliation surrounding the whole system of legal segregation dr. king was there something peculiar to the place where you started and the kind of people you attracted I mean by that there was a strong attachment on the part of your parishioners in Montgomery to the church they were older people weren't they yes I

would say by and large they were older people who participated in the boycott because they were the ones using the bus bus more than anybody else and Montgomery was a community predominantly Church Senate so that it was very easy to get to the vast majority of Negroes because they were in some way connected with a church in the community in addition to your commitment to the idea of non-violence wasn't it also the only thing you could do the white community having the monopoly on once that if you had tried violence they would have met it

with violence it was the only device open to you wasn't it well I put it another way that morally I was led to non-violence because I felt that it was the best moral way to deal with the problem we were seeking to establish a just society and it was my feeling then and it is my feeling now that violence is certainly much more socially destructive and it creates many more social problems than it solves so I was led to non-violence for deep moral reasons now there is no doubt about the fact that in our struggle

in Montgomery and all over the United States for that matter non-violence is also practically sound it would just be impractical for the Negro to turn to violence he has neither the instruments now the techniques of violence we about ten or eleven percent of the total population of the nation and I would say we about one-tenth of one percent of the firepower so it would just be totally impractical and unwise and unrealistic for the Negro to think of violence well I saw this in the beginning and Montgomery but this wasn't the basic reason that I turned

to non-violence and that I believed in it as a philosophy I turned to it because I felt that it was the morally excellent way to deal with the problem of racial injustice in our country is there something about non-violence that made it and I used that in the past tense that made it more useful amongst other Negroes than the ghetto Negroes of the north I would say there's anything that makes it more useful to southern Negroes I think it is true that we've had more nonviolent movements in the south because the problem for many years

was more crystallized and in a sense more visible in the south we didn't have many civil rights activities on a massive scale in the north until three or four years ago so I would say that we just haven't had a chance to experiment on a broad scale with non-violence in the northern ghetto I have the feeling that non-violence is as applicable and workable in the northern ghetto as it is in the South now there's a larger job there the frustrations at points are much deeper the bitterness is deeper and I think that's because in the

South we can see pockets of progress here and there we've really made some strides that are very visible and every southern Negro knows that he can do things today that he couldn't do four or five years ago where and in the North the Negro sees on their retrogress and he doesn't find it as easy to get his vision centered on his target the target of opposition as he does in the south consequently this is made for despair and it men appoint cynicism a feeling that you can't win and it simply means that we've got to

develop in the mouth a massive job of organization and mobilizing forces and resources to deal with the problem and there have been ghettos of the north just as we've done it in the south when the south particularly in Alabama you had visible villains Jim Clark Bull Connor cattle prods police dogs but in the North you don't have those visible villains isn't it hard to get your people aroused and directed it's something that isn't visible well that's exactly right and this is what I was saying when I said it's harder to see your target in the

South in the nonviolent movement we were aided always the whole by the brutality of our opponent it isn't the same way in the north the other thing is that you don't have legal segregation in the north as you do in the south so it is much more difficult to get people to see exactly what you're doing but it isn't an impossible job it's it's a hard it's a tedious job at times to get people to be aroused from their apathetic slumbers but I still feel that Negroes in the north can be motivated just as they

were motivated in the south and I think it's time goes on with the growing economic deprivation in the Negro community it will even be easier because people will come deceive and not only is something wrong in general but something is wrong in particular in their own economic and housing situations what is it I mean how do you find it it's very subtle in the north is it not it's subtle but it's becoming much more visible anybody can see that the schools are more segregated in the north today than they were in 1954 when the Supreme

Court rendered its decision declaring segregation unconstitutional anybody can look around the ghetto and see the ghetto schools are predominantly segregated and devoid of quality anyone who moves through a major ghetto of our country will see the housing conditions people don't have to be reminded that they are forced to live in slums and many instances and they often rat-infested vermin feel slums and they didn't too hard to see the exploitation that the Negro confronting the ghetto where he is forced to pay more for less and constantly trying to make ends meet but because of either no

job as a result of unemployment our job that is so economically unprofitable that the person can make I mean and I think they see all of these things and more and more they are coming to see them because before the people of the North were looking to the south and they supported the struggles of the south now they are coming to see that their problems are very real and they've got organized to grapple with them was there something hypocritical about the fact that the South existed in the North could point the finger and then when

the civil rights acts were passed in the early 60s you couldn't point the finger anymore well there was no doubt about the hypocrisy of large segments of the nation on the whole question of racial equality I think the best example is that many of the senators from the north and the West and congressmen generally who voted for civil rights legislation in 6 to 4 and even 6 to 5 of the voting rights bill refused last year to vote for civil rights legislation because it dealt with an issue applicable to the north the whole housing question

and this it seems to me was the greatest expression of the hypocrisy of many of our citizens and many of the senators and congressmen of the nul but isn't that part of the dilemma now that people knew that Negroes were being being denied what was guaranteed to them by the Constitution by the fact that they were citizens of this country then when they were given those rights do you feel the white community said well we've given them all that we have now it's up to them well I think the dilemma is much deeper and I

think one during this period of transition has to be very honest with America and honesty impels me to admit that America has broad races elements still alive racism is still existing in American society in many areas of the society northern South and the other thing is that there has never been a single solid determined commitment of large segments of white camara America on the whole question of racial equality I think we have to see that vacillation has always existed ambivalence has always existed and this to me is the so-called white backlash is merely a new

name for an old phenomenon I see the white backlash is a continuation of the same ambivalence and vacillation of white america and the whole question of racial justice that existed since the founding of our nation I think the other thing that we must see at this time is that many of the people who supported us in Selma in Birmingham were really outraged about the extremist behavior toward Negroes but they were not at that moment and they are not now committed to genuine equality for Negroes it's much easier to integrate a lunch counter than it is

to guarantee an annual income for instance to get rid of poverty for Negroes and all poor people it's much easier to integrate a bus than it is to make genuine integration of reality and quality education a reality in our schools it's much easier to integrate even a public park than it is to get rid of slums and I think we are in a new era a new phase of the struggle where we have moved from a struggle for decency which characterized our struggle for 10 or 12 years to a struggle for genuine equality and this

is where we are getting the resistance because there was never any intention to go this fall people were reacting to Bull Connor and to Jim Clarke rather than acting in good faith for the realization of genuine equality do you think white people in this country and I'm talking about non segregationist people devoid or thinking they're devoid of racism do you have any idea of what they want the Negro to be in America well it depends on the level that we are talking here because I think you have to make a distinction between the people who

are genuinely and absolutely committed in the white community on the question of of racial equality and I must confess that I think they are a very small minority I think the vast majority of white Americans will go but so far it's a kind of installment plan for equality and they always looking for an excuse to go but so far why are they looking for the excuse what is it about the Negro I mean every other group that came as an immigrant somehow not easily but somehow got around it is it just the fact that Negroes

are black that's a part of it and growing that grows out of something else you can't thing if I anything without de personalizing that something if you use something as a means to an end at that moment you make it a thing and you de personal eyes it the fact is that the Negro was a slave in this country for 244 years that act that was a willful thing that was done de Negro was brought he and changed treated in very human fashion and this led to the thing if occasion of the Negro so he

was not looked upon as a person he was not looked upon as a human being with the same status and worth as other human beings and the other thing is that human beings cannot continue to do wrong without eventually rationalizing that wrong so slavery was justified morally biologically theoretically if scientifically everything else and it seems to me that white America must see that no other ethnic group has been a slave on American soil that is one thing other immigrant groups have had to face the other thing is that the color became a stigma American Society

made the Negroes color a stigma and that can never be overlooked so I think these things absolutely necessary the other thing is that America freed the slaves in nineteen I'm in 1863 through the Emancipation Proclamation of Abraham Lincoln but gave the slaves no land nothing in reality and as a matter of fact to get started on at the same time America was giving away millions of acres of land in the West and the Midwest which meant that there was a willingness to give the white peasants from Europe an economic base and yet it refused to

give its black peasants from Africa who came here involuntarily in Chains and had worked free for 244 years any kind of economic base and so emancipation for the Negro was really freedom to hung it was freedom to the winds and rains of heaven it was freedom without food heed a land to cultivate and therefore was freedom and famine at the same time and when white Americans tell the Negro to lift himself by his own bootstraps they don't owe they don't look over the legacy of slavery and segregation I believe we ought to do all we

can and seek to lift ourselves by our bootstraps but it's a cruel jest to say to a bootless man that he ought to lift himself by his own bootstraps and many negroes by the thousands and millions have been left bootless as a result of all of these years of oppression and as a result of a society that deliberately made his color of stigma and something worthless and degrading apart from wanting to live better which all of us want to do to raise one's children in a better way to be better does the Negro in America

know what he wants to be I'm convinced that almost every Negro in this country other than those who have been so scarred by the system that they've become pathological in the process and we all have to battle with pathology nobody really knows what it means to be a negro unless one can really experience it and I know we all have to battle with this constant drain of a feeling of nobody nice but in spite of this I think the vast majority of Negroes in this country know that they want to be people they want to

be men they want equality period it just boils down to that and we haven't been able to be people we haven't been men because of all of the conditions that we've lived with and the syndrome of deprivation surrounding conditions rather than housing in the economic area or in schools in the vicious credit practices that we face in the ghetto and all of the problems of closed doors and constant defeats but in spite of all this I think we all know basically that we want to be men we want to be persons judged not on the

basis of the color of our skin but on the basis of the content of our character but you know that many young Negroes don't want anything that smacks of the American white middle class but do they want something that smacks of whatever is the black middle class or do they just not want bourgeois values which after all the basis of this democracy well I think we have to see what they are saying I would be the first to agree that integration does not mean giving up everything that has an afro-american taint so to speak a

background I think there are certain unique things within any culture and certain cultural patterns that when you get to the process of amalgamation can really lift the whole culture and it seems to me that integration at its best is the opportunity to participate in the beauty of diversity I think the other thing that we've got to see is that these young people are saying that there must be a revolution of values in our country as Jimmy Baldwin said on one occasion what advantage is there in being integrated into a burning house and I feel that

there is a need for a revolution of values in America because some of the values that presently exists are certainly out of line with the values and the idealistic structure that brought our nation into being unfortunately we haven't been true to these own ideals and many of the values of so called white middle-class scientist society of values that need to be reviewed and re-evaluated and in a real sense they need to be changed so I think the young people in the Negro community who were raising these questions are raising some very profound questions about our

total society in other words they are saying that there must be a restructuring of the architecture of our society where values are concerned and with this I would agree with so in the quest for integration I think we can offer our whole nation something because there are three evils in our nation it's not only racism but economic exploitation of poverty would be one and then militarism and I think in a sense and in a very real sense these three are tied inextricably together and we aren't going to get rid of one without getting rid of

the other we you stood in the Lincoln Memorial that day in August 63 and you said I had a dream did that dream envision that you could see a war in Asia preventing the federal government doing for the needless preventing the society doing for the Negroes of that what you think had to be done no I didn't envision that then I must confess that that period was a great period of hope for me and I'm sure many others all across the nation many of the Negroes who had about lost hope saw a solid decade of

progress in the south and in 1954 which was I mean six to four nineteen six to three nine years after the Supreme Court's decision to be in the march on Washington meant a great deal it was a high moment a great watershed moment but I must confess that that dream that I had that day has a many points turned into a nightmare now I'm not one to lose hope I keep on hoping I still have faith in the future but I've had to analyze many things over the last few years and I would say over

the last few months I've gone through a lot of souls such an in agonizing moments and I've come to see that we have many more difficult days ahead and some of the old optimism was a little superficial and now it must be tempered with a solid realism and I think the realistic fact is that we still have a long long way to go and that we are involved in a war on Asian soil which if not checked and stop and pause in the very soul of our nation dr. King even if there had not been

a war in Asia would you still not have had this nightmare insofar as the Negro movement for equality then touched on two things that the white community holds sacred their children and the property oh I have no doubt that we would have been encountered great difficulties great problems of resistance if the war had not been in existence so that I'm not going to say that all of our problems will be solved at the war in Vietnam has ended but I do say that the wall makes it infinitely more difficult to deal with these problems when

a nation becomes obsessed with the guns of war it loses its social perspective and programs of social uplift suffer this is just a fact of history so that we do face many more difficulties as a result of the war it's much more difficult to really arouse the conscience during a time of war notice the other day some weeks ago a Negro was shot down in Chicago and it was a clear case of police brutality that was on page 30 of the paper but on page one at the top was 708 a Vietcong kill that is

something about a war like this that makes people insensitive it dulls the conscience it strengthens the forces of reaction and it brings into being bitterness and hatred and violence and it's strengthen the military-industrial complex of our country and it's made our job much more difficult because I think we can go along with some programs if we didn't have this war on our hands that would cause people to adjust to new developments just as they did in the south they said they'd never ride the bus with us blood would flow in the streets they wouldn't go

to school and all of these things but when people came to see that they had to do it because the law insisted they finally adjusted and I think white people all over this country will adjust once the nation makes it clear that in schools and housing we've got to learn to live together as brothers I think the biggest problem now is that we got our gains over the last 12 years at bargain rates so to speak didn't cost the nation anything in fact it helped the economic side of the nation to integrate lunch counters and

public accommodations it didn't cost the nation anything to get the right to vote establish and now we are confronting issues that cannot be solved without costing the nation billions of dollars now I think this is where we are getting our greatest resistance they may put it on many other things but we can't get rid of slums and poverty without a cost in donation something hey NBC News viewers thanks for checking out our YouTube channel subscribe by clicking on that button down here and click on any of the videos over here to watch the latest interviews

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