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Facing the Challenge of a New Age by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
The following is an excerpt of Dr. King’s address to the First Annual Institute on Non-Violence and Social Change.
We have also seen the old order in our own nation, in the form of segregation and discrimination. We know something of the long history of this old order in America. It had its beginning in the year 1619 when the first Negro slaves landed on the shores of this nation. They were brought here from the soils of Africa. And unlike the Pilgrim Father who landed at Plymouth a year later, they were brought here against their wills. Throughout slavery the Negro was treated in a very inhuman fashion. He was a thing to be used, not a person to be respected. He was merely a depersonalized cog in the vast plantation machine. The famous Dred Scott Decision of 1857 well illustrates the status of the Negro during slavery. In this decision the Supreme Court of the United States said, in substance, that the Negro is not a citizen of the United States; he is merely property subject to the dictates of his owner. Then came 1896. It was in this year that the Supreme Court of this nation, through the Plessy v. Ferguson decision, established the doctrine of separate-but-equal as the law of the land. Through this decision segregation gained legal and moral sanction. The end result of the Plessy doctrine was that it led to a strict enforcement of the “separate,” with hardly the slightest attempt to abide by the “equal.” So the Plessy doctrine ended up making for tragic inequalities and ungodly exploitation.
Living under these conditions, many Negroes came to the point of losing faith in themselves. They came to feel that perhaps they were less than human. The great tragedy of physical slavery was that it led to mental slavery. So long as the Negro maintained this subservient attitude and accepted this “place” assigned to him, a sort of racial peace existed. But it was an uneasy peace in which the Negro was forced patiently to accept insult, injustice and exploitation. It was a negative peace. True peace is not merely the absence of some negative force—tension, confusion, or war; it is the present of some positive force—justice, good will and brotherhood. And so the peace which existed between the races was a negative peace devoid of any positive and lasting quality.
Then something happened to the Negro. Circumstances made it necessary for him to travel more. His rural plantation background was gradually being supplanted by migration to urban an industrial communities. His economic life was gradually rising to decisive proportions. His cultural life was gradually rising through the steady decline of crippling illiteracy. All of these factors conjoined to cause the Negro to take a new look at himself. Negro masses began to reevaluate themselves. The Negro came to feel that he was somebody. His religion revealed to him that God loves all of His children, and that every man, from the bass black to a treble white, is significant on God’s keyboard…
Along with the emergence of a “New Negro,” with a new sense of dignity and destiny, came that memorable decision of May 17, 1954. In this decision the Supreme Court of this nation unanimously affirmed that the old Plessy doctrine must go. This decision came as a legal and sociological death blow to an evil that had occupied the throne of American life for several decades. It affirmed in no uncertain terms that separate facilities are inherently unequal and that to segregate a child because of his race is to deny him equal protection of the law. With the coming of this great decision we could gradually see the old order of segregation and discrimination passing away, and the new order of freedom and justice coming into being. Let nobody fool you, all of the loud noises that you hear today from the legislative halls of the South in terms of “interposition” and “nullification,” and of outlawing the NAACP are merely the death groans from a dying system. The old order is passing away, and the new order is coming into being. We are witnessing in our day the birth of a new age, with a new structure of freedom and justice. CONTINUE...
Readers, This week, we’ll continue to come to terms with integration and segregation in light of Dr. King’s words. On the one hand, he like most leaders of the 1960s knew of the economic power of blacks and encouraged the community to strengthen itself by building our own establishments and investing in each others’ businesses. In addition, Dr. King warned the community that if we did not integrate, we would struggle. One can argue that at the time, even as it is today, the all-black schools lacked resources afforded to the white schools. But then I think of the Freedom Schools in which black children were taught self-empowerment and self-improvement. Did those schools have more resources or did they teach more relevant (to the students’ lives) information? This makes me think of, of course, black orchestras. What we may take from Dr. King’s message is that since we do not live in a society that treats all of its citizens fairly, justly or equal, our best chance at securing “equal protection of the law” is to integrate. And therein lays the problem—how do we support our own if our own is not integrated and therefore not protected? Is that a wise investment? The reason I ask is simply this: many of our more seasoned performers can tell you stories (some horror) of their days as early integrationist in orchestras. They faced discriminations that those in same-race orchestras would not have to endure. However, they also received many opportunities that others did not such as higher pay for better instruments, legible music and more variety therein, the opportunity to tour different countries… these were the privileges provided all in the group. But what does that have to do with community? How is this integration of one or maybe two helpful to others? The economic power, the reason that this fictional orchestra aforementioned was able to receive better pay, better quality manuscripts, international tourism, etc, is a basic notion that people support organizations/institutions who support and accept them. So if we want “equal protection of the law” for our organizations so that we do not have to endure the discrimination of integration but reap the benefits of the freedoms awarded integration, we must find a way to make segregation look like integration. More on this thought later… But feel free to share your thoughts. |
