“I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. This is why right, temporarily defeated, is stronger than evil triumphant.”
“I knew that I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos, without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world: my own government.”
“The time has come for an all-out world war against poverty. The rich nations must use their vast resources of wealth to develop the underdeveloped, school the unschooled, and feed the unfed. Ultimately, a great nation is a compassionate nation.” #MLK#MLKDay#CorettaScottKing
“The way of acquiescence leads to moral and spiritual suicide. The way of violence leads to bitterness in the survivors and brutality in the destroyers. But the way of nonviolence leads to redemption and the creation of the beloved community.”
“I refuse to accept the view that mankind is so tragically bound to the starless midnight of racism and war that the bright daybreak of peace and brotherhood can never become a reality…I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word.”
“We adopt the means of nonviolence because our end is a community at peace with itself. We will try to persuade with our words, but if our words fail, we will try to persuade with our acts.”
“Nothing could be more tragic than for men to live in these revolutionary times and fail to achieve the new attitudes and the new mental outlooks that the new situation demands.”
"I suggest that the philosophy and strategy of nonviolence become immediately a subject for study for serious experimentation in every field of human conflict, by no means excluding the relations between nations.”
Tomorrow, there will be people tweeting about my father and #MLKDay who are complicit in, complacent about and/or a part of cultivating some form of injustice.
That’s to be expected, and not just regarding voting legislation.
There will be people who are complicit in bombing children tweeting.
There will be people who are complacent about poverty tweeting.
There will be people who cultivate the Prison Industrial Complex tweeting.
And so on.
Let’s not get caught up in that tomorrow.
Please take some time to study what my father taught about the Triple Evils of Racism, Militarism, and Poverty (Extreme Materialism).
And what he taught about the Beloved Community and Nonviolence.
He wasn’t assassinated because he said he wanted his children to be judged “by the content of their character.”
He was gunned down because he was courageous and strategically working to dismantle racism, poverty and militarism.
He was speaking truth to power about the Vietnam War, about economic injustice + racial injustice, about ‘The Other America’ (), about the violence of the U.S. government.
Today, people who don’t want the truth shared about these things are using one quote (from a speech that my father gave about injustice and his dream that we’ve eradicated injustice, including racism) to ban honest history, under the guise of banning CRT.
A thread of quotes from my father’s last book, ‘Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community?’, in which he shares at length about racism. The Beloved Community was his ultimate goal, but he believed that we had be honest about and eradicate racism to get there. #MLK#MLKonRacism
“The white backlash of today is rooted in the same problem that has characterized America ever since the black man landed in chains on the shores of this nation.” #MLK#MLKonRacism
“The white backlash is an expression of the same vacillations, the same search for rationalizations, the same lack of commitment that have always characterized white America on the question of race.” #MLK#MLKonRacism
Can I ask some questions pertaining to our humanity?
Ok, good. Thank you.
The footage of what happened with Ma’Khia didn’t/won’t prevent me from asking how she could still be with us...Why isn’t every human asking this humane question?
I care about EVERYONE I saw in that footage. Given this nation’s treatment of Black people, I am prone to question, Does Ma’Khia’s death demonstrate more of that treatment?
Why do we have to continue to explain this question vs. more white people joining in eradicating racism?
Have you asked why excuses are right on the tip of many tongues (maybe including yours) when police kill a Black person for any reason?
How can we make true public safety a reality for Black and brown people?
My father’s final speech, given the evening before he was assassinated, 53 years ago today.
“I may not get there with you.”
‘I’ve Been To The Mountaintop’ #MLK
April 3, 1968 (the evening before he was assassinated)
Full speech:
“Now the other thing we'll have to do is this: always anchor our external direct action with the power of economic withdrawal...We don't have to argue with anybody. We don't have to curse and go around acting bad with our words. We don't need any bricks and bottles.” #Mountaintop