You may not be on strike. And they were telling me, now it doesn't matter now. And the next minute I felt something beating on my chest. Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. And our agenda calls for withdrawing economic support from you.". Somehow the preacher must be an Amos, and say, "Let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.". I'd received a visit and a letter from the Governor of New York, but I've forgotten what the letter said. Let us stand with a greater determination. But I wouldn't stop there. I had received one from the President and the Vice-President. And I see God working in this period of the twentieth century in a way that men, in some strange way, are responding--something is happening in our world. We don't need any bricks and bottles, we don't need any Molotov cocktails, we just need to go around to these stores, and to these massive industries in our country, and say, "God sent us by here, to say to you that you're not treating his children right. Not, "If I stop to help the sanitation workers, what will happen to all of the hours that I usually spend in my office every day and every week as a pastor?" The next day he was assassinated. “He had to help African-American people imagine themselves,” she says. We've got some difficult days ahead. Frankly I have never yet engaged in a direct action movement that was "well timed," according to the timetable of those who have not suffered unduly from the disease of segregation. I could not be silent in the face of such cruel manipulation of the poor.". The nation is sick. Somewhere I read of the freedom of speech. Our editors update and regularly refine this enormous body of information to bring you reliable information. They didn't get around to that. But there was another letter that came from a little girl, a young girl who was a student at the White Plains High School. If I had sneezed, I wouldn't have been down in Selma, Alabama, to see the great movement there. And I don't mind. We are masters in our nonviolent movement in disarming police forces; they don't know what to do. He kept the slaves fighting among themselves. I'm not asking you something that we don't do ourselves at SCLC. I can remember, I can remember when Negroes were just going around as Ralph has said, so often, scratching where they didn't itch, and laughing when they were not tickled. The words written about Martin Luther King Jr. during his too-short life and in the decades since his assassination on April 4, 1968, would be impossible to count. And you know what's beautiful to me, is to see all of these ministers of the Gospel. What was that? And I read that if you had sneezed, you would have died. ", By 1967, King had become a passionate opponent of the Vietnam War. If we were Baptist or some other denomination, we had been immersed. Or it's possible that they felt that the man on the ground was merely faking. Step Into History: Learn how to experience the 1963 March on Washington in virtual reality. Martin Luther King delivered this sermon on April 3, 1968, at the Bishop Charles Mason Temple in Memphis, Tennessee. But Jesus immediately pulled that question from mid-air, and placed it on a dangerous curve between Jerusalem and Jericho. We must come to see with the distinguished jurist of yesterday that "justice too long delayed is justice denied."". At times we say they were busy going to church meetings--an ecclesiastical gathering--and they had to get on down to Jerusalem so they wouldn't be late for their meeting. Now, I'm just happy that God has allowed me to live in this period, to see what is unfolding. I would even come up the early thirties, and see a man grappling with the problems of the bankruptcy of his nation. Never stop and forget that collectively, that means all of us together, collectively we are richer than all the nation in the world, with the exception of nine. You may not be on strike. I’ve never seen a student go to that section of the speech; people go right to ‘I have a dream’ and they don’t notice the threat.”, “We still have a choice today: nonviolent coexistence or violent coannihilation. It rings in the ear of every Negro with a piercing familiarity. And let us move on in these powerful days, these days of challenge to make America what it ought to be. I just want to do God's will. And we've come by here to ask you to make the first item on your agenda--fair treatment, where God's children are concerned. So we have been repeatedly faced with the cruel irony of watching Negro and white boys on TV screens as they kill and die together for a nation that has been unable to seat them together in the same schools. “I may not get there with you. At the time, King found himself jailed in Alabama after ignoring an injunction against protests in Birmingham. We were taking the black young men who had been crippled by our society and sending them eight thousand miles away to guarantee liberties in Southeast Asia which they had not found in southwest Georgia and East Harlem. We aren't engaged in any negative protest and in any negative arguments with anybody. I would even go by the way that the man for whom I'm named had his habitat. Now you know, we use our imagination a great deal to try to determine why the priest and the Levite didn't stop. But not only that, we've got to strengthen black institutions. I left Atlanta this morning, and as we got started on the plane, there were six of us, the pilot said over the public address system, "We are sorry for the delay, but we have Dr. Martin Luther King on the plane. -- I would take my mental flight by Egypt through, or rather across the Red Sea, through the wilderness on toward the promised land. When he learned of the honor, he announced that he would donate all of the prize money ($54,123) to the civil rights movement. Ralph Jackson, Billy Kiles; I could just go right on down the list, but time will not permit. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land. And I would see developments around there, through various emperors and leaders. “This is an unsettling moment. MLK BOOKSTORE. At points, he wanted to trick Jesus, and show him that he knew a little more than Jesus knew, and through this, throw him off base. We are choosing these companies because they haven't been fair in their hiring policies; and we are choosing them because they can begin the process of saying, they are going to support the needs and the rights of these men who are on strike. Because if I had sneezed, I wouldn't have been around here in 1960, when students all over the South started sitting-in at lunch counters. We must find new ways to speak for peace in Vietnam and justice throughout the developing world, a world that borders on our doors.”.