Martin L. King Speech Bank

Several months ago the affiliate here in Birmingham asked us to be on call to engage in a nonviolent direct-action program if such were deemed necessary.

First Amendment rnrnUS ConstitutionrnBill of RightsrnAmendment IrnCongress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

In any nonviolent campaign there are four basic steps: collection of the facts to determine whether injustices exist; negotiation; self-purification; and direct action.

It is expressed in the various black nationalist groups that are springing up across the nation, the largest and best-known being Elijah Muhammad's Muslim movement.

Segregation, to use the terminology of the Jewish philosopher Martin Buber, substitutes an "I-it" relationship for an "I-thou" relationship and ends up relegating persons to the status of things.

We have some eighty-five affiliated organizations across the South, and one of them is the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights.

Was not Martin Luther an extremist: "Here I stand; I cannot do otherwise, so help me God." And John Bunyan: "I will stay in jail to the end of my days before I make a butchery of my conscience."

Paul Tillich has said that sin is separation.

St. Augustine rnrnAurelius Augustine; St. Augustine of Hippo (354–430) was a Christian theologian, and a bishop in North Africa.

Individuals may see the moral light and voluntarily give up their unjust posture; but, as Reinhold Niebuhr has reminded us, groups tend to be more immoral than individuals.

On the 4th of May 1961, the Freedom Riders left Washington, D.C., in two buses and headed to Virginia.

To put it in the terms of St. Thomas Aquinas: An unjust law is a human law that is not rooted in eternal law and natural law.

It is one of the primary tactics of nonviolent resistance.

We should never forget that everything Adolf Hitler did in Germany was "legal" and everything the Hungarian freedom fighters did in Hungary was "illegal."

St. Paul the Apostle (born A.D. 10, died A.D. 67) rnrnEarly in his life he was a enemy of the Christian church and worked to eradicate Christianity.

When I was suddenly catapulted into the leadership of the bus protest in Montgomery, Alabama, a few years ago, I felt we would be supported by the white church.

It is unfortunate that demonstrations are taking place in Birmingham, but it is even more unfortunate that the city's white power structure left the Negro community with no alternative.

By their effort and example they brought an end to such ancient evils as infanticide and gladiatorial contests.

Ku Klux Klanner rnrnKu Klux Klan (KKK) is the name of several past and present organizations in the United States that have advocated white supremacy, anti-Semitism, racism, homophobia, anti-Communism and nativism.

Just as Socrates felt that it was necessary to create a tension in the mind so that individuals could rise from the bondage of myths and half-truths to the unfettered realm of creative analysis and objective appraisal, so must we see the need for nonviolent gadflies to create the kind of tension in society that will help men rise from the dark depths of prejudice and racism to the majestic heights of understanding and brotherhood.

Bus protests in Montogomery, Alabama rnrnSparked by the arrest of Rosa Parks on 1 December 1955, the Montgomery bus boycott was an eleven-month mass protest that ended with the U.S. Supreme Court ruling that public bus segregation is unconstitutional.

SCLC differed from organizations such as the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in that it operated as an umbrella organization of affiliates.

He was a staunch segregationist who opposed James Meredith\'s attempt to integrate the University of Mississippi.

Henry David Thoreau developed the modern theory behind this practice in his 1849 essay Resistance to Civil Government.

Was not Amos an extremist for justice: "Let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream."

In our own nation, the Boston Tea Party represented a massive act of civil disobedience.

These ideas helped to inspire the Protestant Reformation and changed the course of Western civilization.

But though I was initially disappointed at being categorized as an extremist, as I continued to think about the matter I gradually gained a measure of satisfaction from the label.

Since we so diligently urge people to obey the Supreme Court's decision of 1954 outlawing segregation in the public schools, at first glance it may seem rather paradoxical for us consciously to break laws.

The Warren Court handed down a (9-0) decision that made racial segregation a violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.

Although eventually successful in securing an Interstate Commerce Commission ban on segregation in all facilities under their jurisdiction.

One day the South will know that when these disinherited children of God sat down at lunch counters, they were in reality standing up for what is best in the American dream and for the most sacred values in our Judaeo-Christian heritage, thereby bringing our nation back to those great wells of democracy which were dug deep by the founding fathers in their formulation of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence.