Legacy of a dream

you know when I say don't be afraid you know what I really mean don't even be afraid to die but I submit to you tonight that no man is free if he fears death but the minute you conquer the fear of death at that moment you free oh I've been hit so many times I'm immune we've got some difficult days ahead some begin to talk about the threats that were out or what would happen to me from some of our sick White Brothers well I don't know what will happen now but it really doesn't matter with me now because I've been to the Mountaintop and I've seen the promised land I may not get there with you but I want you to know tonight that we as a people will get to the promised land the next day April 4th 1968 Martin Luther King Jr was assassinated in Memphis Tennessee behold here cometh the dreamer let us slay him and we shall see what will become of his [Music] dreams from 1955 to 1968 Martin Luther King led a peaceful 20th century American Revolution in the short span of 13 years the nonviolent Civil Rights Movement which he headed changed the face of American society it United black people in organized nonviolent protest which exposed the evils of white [Music] racism segregation which had been a way of life for large parts of the nation was practically [Music] eliminated full Freedom was not one but more was accomplished in those 13 years than the previous 100 including the enactment of federal legislation to protect the rights of black [Music] citizens Wherever by clear and objective standards States and counties are using regulations or laws or tests to deny the right to vote then they will be struck down Martin Luther King's leadership of this March toward Freedom began in December 1955 in Montgomery Alabama in the heart of the the Deep South he was only 26 years old a recently ordained Baptist Minister who had been asked to lead a boycott of the city buses to protest segregated seating and mistreatment of black passengers are you ready for the question all in favor let it be known by standing on your feet that was the day that we started a bus protest which literally electrified the nation and that was a day when we decided that we were not going to take segregated buses any longer and you know when we planned the bus boycott we said if we could just get about 50 or 60% of the Negroes of Montgomery not to ride buses this would be an effective boycott I think that whole day we found eight Negroes on the buses and from that day on that boycott was more than 99 and 91% effective we have a legitimate protest and we feel also that one of the great glories of American democracy is that we have the right to protest for rights we will do it in an orderly fashion this is a nonviolent protest we are depending on moral and spiritual forces using the method of passive resistance I for one under the God will die before I'll yield one AG that kind of a [Applause] [Music] mov the diard segregationists and hooded hoodlums of the Klux Clan reacted more and more violently but the boycott was not broken murder bombing the jailing of Dr King none of these actions succeeded in weakening the determination of the black people of Montgomery we still Advocate nonviolence passive resistance and still uh determined to use the weapon of Love Are you again no for 13 months people continued to walk and ride in car pools never before had a black community in the South are banded together like this meanwhile the legal aspects of the case were being argued in the courts ultimately all the way to the supreme court this morning the long awaited mandate from the United States Supreme Court concerning BS segregation came to mum I he by the fire ruling handed down by the United States Supreme Court oring desegregation of public care this mandate Expresses in turn that a crystal clear that segregation in public transportation is both legally and sociologically invalid as long as I am president of the Alabama Public Service Commission I'm going to see that our segregation laws are upheld he neither could nor did and the year old boycott was called off it was a great victory for the young Minister and for the method of nonviolence it was also the of the civil rights movement in the South and led a few years later to the cyan and freedom rides of the early [Music] 1960s using nonviolent direct action mixed groups of whites and blacks mostly students challenged segregation on Interstate buses and places of public accommodation throughout the South the cids and freedom rides were a new version of an old and respected American tradition the right to protest for right and resulted in the first attempts at federal civil rights legislation the next Target of the Civil Rights Movement was Birmingham Alabama in 1963 the most segregated City in the nation and for blacks a place to die if you tried to be a person I will not rest until we are able to make this kind of witness in this city so that the power structure downtown will have to say we can't stop this movement and the only way to deal with it is to give these people what we owe them and what their god-given rights and their constitutional rights demand [Music] [Applause] nonviolent direct action meant a willingness to go to jail for one's beliefs in order to reveal to others the difficulties of obtaining Justice by committing acts of Civil Disobedience the nonviolent protesters Force the authorities to arrest [Music] them in Birmingham in the spring of 19 63 the jails were literally filled by these methods this according to Dr King marked the nonviolent movement Coming of Age the arrests made headlines across the country and were televised around the world you can never whip these birds if you don't keep you and them separate you've got to keep the White and the black SE birmingham's Police Commissioner Bull Connor put put nonviolent resistance to its severest test with his brutal treatment of the demonstrators the sickness and ugliness of racism was exposed to the entire nation and to the rest of the world as well by newspaper and television reports of his use of police dogs in high pressure fire we must say to our White Brothers All Over the father will try to keep us down we will meet your physical Force with soul for we will not hate you and yet we cannot in all good conscience obey your evil laws yes but we will wear you down by our capacity to serer in winning the victory we will not only win our freedom we will show appeal to your heart and your conscience that we will win you in the process Birmingham marked another victory in the campaign to break down social segregation in the South but equally important it aroused the conscience of much of fight America and brought recognition and support for the accomplishment of Dr King and his nonviolent movement from people throughout the world I have the great honor on behalf of the Nobel committee to hand over to you the insia of the Nobel Peace Prize Martin Luther King was one of the earliest public figures to oppose United States participation in the Vietnam War his outspoken efforts for the withdrawal of American forces often made him the target of furious criticism even by other civil rights leaders it was a difficult time for the man who called the moral leader of his generation for those who say to me stick to civil rights I have another answer and that is that I fought too long and too hard now against segregated public accommodations to end up segregating my moral concern Injustice anywhere is a threat to Justice everywhere economic Injustice was another kind of Injustice before his death Dr King had begun to build a coalition of the underprivileged of various ethnic groups the Poor People's campaign to fight for economic equality it is my hope that power for poor people will really mean having the ability and the aggressiveness to make the power structure of this nation say yes when they may be desirous of saying no we will get together and be together black people Mexican amans American Indians Puerto Ricans Appalachian whites all working together to solve the problem of poverty we're getting ready to demand jobs and income we are tired of working fulltime jobs for part-time income all right all right we are tired of living in rund down dilapidated rat infested shacks and slim we are tired of our children all right having to attend overcrowded inferior schools and we are tired of our men not being able to be men because all they can't find [Applause] work 1,300 sanitation workers on strike and Memphis is not being fair to them we've got to mod again in order to put the issue where it is supposed to be we have this illegal unconstitutional injunction all we say to America is be true to what you said on paper because somewhere I read of the freedom of assembly somewhere I read of the freedom of speech somewhere I read of the freedom of press somewhere I read that the greatness of America is the right to protest for right we have the right to protest for right the right to protest for right since Montgomery a constant refrain of the Civil Rights Movement the bance and we will no longer have to worry the federal government about our basic rights give us the B Martin Luther King had always known that the right to protest for right rested on the most basic Democratic right of all the right to vote we will by the power of our as early as May 195 7 after the successful conclusion of the Montgomery Bus Boycott Dr King helped to organize the prayer pilgrimage for Freedom some 37,000 people mostly churchgoing blacks had assembled in Washington to voice their demands for full citizenship the Supreme Court decision of May 17th 1954 but it was to be eight more years before the realization of their demands and the passage of federal legislation guarant in the right to vote until then black people throughout the South were forcibly prevented from registering and making them stand in the raid keep them from registering to vote and we will register to vote because as citizens of these United States we have the right to do it you can turn your back on me but you cannot turn your back upon the idea of Justice you can turn your back now and you can keep the club in your hand but you cannot beat down justice and so in August of 1963 6 years after the first pilgrimage to Washington another larger demonstration took place in the nation's capital people all kinds of people aroused by the police dogs and fire hoses of Birmingham were exercising their right to protest for right the 1963 March on Washington was the greatest mass demonstration in the history of the nation and it was Martin Luther King who underscored the urgency of the demands of the more than 200,000 people assembled in front of the Lincoln Memorial with his powerful appeal to the entire nation 5 score years ago a great American in whose symbolic shatter We Stand today signed the Emancipation Proclamation but 100 years later the Negro still is not free will come to this Hall spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of now now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate Valley of segregation to the sunlet path of racial Justice there will be neither rest nor Tranquility in America until the Negro has granted his citizenship rights I still have a dream America was stirred by the ringing words of Dr King but just a few months later in Selma Alabama black people were still segregated and still prevented from registering to [Music] vote again nonviolent direct action was exposing the evils of racism to the entire world the right to protest for right took the form of a 50m March from Selma to the state capital of Montgomery this March intends to keep off the highway we will be marching on the shoulder of the road and will not in any way be interfering with the pursuit of traffic to be detrimental to your safety to continue this March and I'm saying that this is an unlawful assembly that March will not continue tro here advance toward the group see that they dispersed we must let the nation know and we must let the world know and it is necessary to protest this three full evil the problem of the denial of the right to vote the police brutality we continue to face and faed in its most vicious form last Sunday then the attempt to block First Amendment privilege we have the right to walk the highway we have the right to walk to Montgomery if our feet can get us there let us bow their pray and Fa and black and white people and now the eyes of the whole nation and much of the world were focused on the Tiny Town of Selma Alabama to ensure the safety of the Marchers federal troops were called into service by President Lyndon Johnson these forces should be adequate to assure the rights of American citizens pursuant to a federal court order to walk peaceably and safely without injury our loss of life from Selma to Montgomery Alabama pick up and lay him down right right pick them up and lay them down right right pick them up and lay them down right I think the greatest victory of this period was not in terms of an external factor or an external development but it was something internal the real victory was what this period did to the psyche of the black man the greatness of this period was that we armed ourselves with dignity and self-respect greatness of this period was that we straighten our backs up and a man can't ride your back unless it's bent last Sunday more than 8,000 of us started on a mighty walk from from Selma Alabama they told us we wouldn't get here there were those who said that we would get here only over their dead body well talk talk all the world today knows that we are here and we are standing before the forces of power in the state of Alabama saying we ain't going to let nobody turn us around Selma marked the turning point in the struggle to secure the ballot 5 months after the Marchers reached Montgomery the most important civil rights legislation in a century the Voting Rights Act of 1965 was signed into law I have a dream behold here cometh the dreamer bance and we will no longer have to wor the federal government about our I still have a dream it is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream B we will fild our legislated one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its Creed let us slay him and we shall see what will become of his dreams I think that we've made tremendous strides toward uh the realization of Martin's dream perhaps the greatest games that we've made have been in the area of getting the masses of people to realize their potential as citizens of this country by registering and voting you this is your 45 up to this point we think that's a very good show if you get people in office who are going to be responsive to the needs of the individuals that they represent then they are going to they're going to make sure that the resources of our government are used to benefit the people we are now in the process of conducting a voter registration campaign to educate people to an understanding of that one ballot that each individual possesses and certainly the mther King Center we'll be continuing this until we get the vast potential that is there involved in uh exercising this very Elementary right because I believe very firmly that we cannot hope to fully achieve uh our freedom and uh be full citizens of our society until we exercise fully the right to vote well we got the boot that we go put to NBC just declared Hatcher as a winner in 1968 when Martin Luther King was assassinated there were only a th000 black elected officials in the entire nation today 6 years later there are more than 3,000 I'm one of them I'm Andrew Young congressman from the fifth congressional district of Georgia representing the city of Atlanta my preparation for politics and my previous experience was somewhat different from that of most of my colleagues but in a way I did receive a lot of it around many of the County cour houses of the south in Selma for instance and that's me in St Augustine Florida today I'm in Washington I'm attempting to do some of the things that would help continue the legacy of Martin Luther King and I I'm wondering does the Department of Agriculture have uh any concerns about uh helping the price of food at home for the American Consumer yes Mr Young we're still a long way from achieving the dream of Martin Luther King and it's hard for high school students to realize just how far we've come you in 1962 you were so it was kind of hard to remember what was going on did you ever have any experience of being turned away from anything because you were black U not really I had a mil altitude when I was like 10 and 12 I I was I go in there and I look at this you know how you go in the store and people say hey can I help you there why I said no you know you think I'm still something you know I just jumped on right away but I think I change why were you so mean it ran through my St you know I heard the mouth say the white man I forget you a white man is you know wor start that so I took it but now I know I'm in the world and they're all right they're cool best friends of white I represent a district which is 62% white and 38% black that's a long way from Montgomery but what you find out is that poor whites and poor blacks have a lot in common I mean my dedication is not just to blacks my dedication is to anybody in this Society uh that has not had an opportunity to enjoy all of the rights and privileges of the society that's what Martin Luther King was about I have a dream today I say to you today my friend Let Freedom rain when we let it rain from every village and every Hamlet from every state and every city we will be able to speed up that day when all the God's children black men and white men 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 [Music] [Music] [Music] is St