Address at the Religious Leaders Conference on 11 May 1959
Author:
King, Martin Luther, Jr. (Dexter Avenue Baptist Church)
Date:
May 11, 1959
Location:
Washington, D.C.
Genre:
Speech
Topic:
Martin Luther King, Jr. - Political and Social Views
In a 17 April 1959 letter, Vice President Richard Nixon invited King to a conference to discuss how religious leaders might support the President's Committee on Government Contracts “in advancing its program of elimination of discrimination in employment in government contracts.”1 Four hundred religious leaders representing twenty-two denominations attended the gathering at Washington’s Sheraton Park Hotel.2 In this published transcript of his remarks, King decries the “injurious effect” of discrimination upon black workers and declares that “to deny any group honest work and fair pay is not only immoral, it is almost murderous.” He calls on his fellow clergy to help “break the deadening silence which engulfs the well-meaning white people of the South” who fear to “speak or act in the absence of respected company.” King notes that “the Government alone has the power to establish the legal undergirding that can insure progress” and concludes by describing his dream of an America “where men do not argue that the color of a man’s skin determines the content of his character.”3 Two drafts of King's address vary significantly from this version, published in 1960.
I warmly welcome the opportunity to be with you on this occasion because the subject of our discussion has such profound implications of human and economic importance. I am sure that a group of such distinguished leaders of thought will be able to develop constructive and lasting proposals.4
Unfortunately, in our nation the moral determination to deal with the evil of discrimination has been neither deep enough nor consistent enough.5 There has been some progress, but even the most casual observer must admit that we are far from the Promised Land in the area of equal job opportunity.6 The tragic truth is that discrimination in employment is not only dominant throughout the South, but is shamefully widespread in the North, particularly in great urban communities which often pride themselves as liberal and progressive centers in government and economics.7
This discrimination in employment has resulted in an appalling gap between the living conditions of whites and members of minority groups.8
We need not look very far to see the injurious effect that discrimination in employment has upon the psychological and moral life of the victims. To deny any group honest work and fair pay is not only immoral, it is almost murderous. It is a deliberate strangulation of the physical and cultural development of the victims! Few practices are more detrimental to our national welfare than the discrimination with which the economic order is rife. Few practices are more thoroughly sinful.
The churchman who ministers to the poor or economically insecure section of the population knows well that morality is influenced by poverty. It is infinitely harder for hungry men with hungry children to respect the property of others than it is for the well-fed and the well-housed.9
But there is more than poverty which corrodes morality. When an individual is subjected to systematic humiliation, contempt and ridicule as an everyday feature of his life, it is hard for him to think of his tormentors as brothers.10 Moreover, under the incessant beating of effective propaganda drums, many members of minority groups become convinced of their inferiority.11 With the destruction of their self-respect there follows a loss of respect for others and a deterioration of moral values generally.12
This festering sore of discrimination also debilitates the white person. It so often victimizes him with a false sense of superiority, thus depriving him of genuine humility, honesty and love. It causes him to treat his brother as a means to an end, substituting an “I-It” relationship for the “I-Thou” relationship.13 At its lowest level, this evil results in brutality, and its most inhuman expression in lynchings, bombings, and outrageous terrorism.
It is clear from all of this that the problem of discrimination in employment is not merely a political issue; it is a profound moral issue. Since the Church is the guardian of the morals of the community, it cannot look with indifference upon this pressing problem. A religion true to its nature must always be concerned about man’s social conditions. Religion operates not only on the vertical plane but also on the horizontal. It seeks not only to integrate men with God, but to integrate men with men and each man with himself.
This means, at bottom, that true religion is a two-way road. On the one hand it seeks to change the souls of men, and thereby unite them with God; on the other hand it seeks to change the environmental conditions of men so that the soul will have a chance after it is changed. Any religion that professes to be concerned with the souls of men and is not concerned with the slums that damn them, the economic conditions that strangle them, and the social conditions that cripple them, is a spiritually moribund religion in need of new blood.14
This, therefore, becomes a grave challenge to the Church and to churchmen. To meet it, all churches must accept the obligation to create the moral climate in which fair employment practices are viewed positively and accepted willingly. We must utilize the vast resources of the churches and synagogues for the many educational functions they can employ, and for which they have highly developed skills, facilities and experience. However, to possess resources is worthless without the will to be effective. The time has come when the churches are needed by their people and their nation as never before. They, uniquely, can break the deadening silence which engulfs the well-meaning white people of the South.
Everywhere, the white Southerner who deplores the evils of discrimination and segregation complains that, to speak honestly, or to employ Negroes, or to work side-by-side with them, will incur community hostility and scorn. He fears to speak or act in the absence of respected company. No one fills this need so perfectly as the clergyman. If he speaks out not once, not guardedly, but with the firm and eloquent confidence that truth provides, a small stream of support will grow gradually to a mighty river. I have said many times that I have faith that millions of white Southerners want to end the dying order of discrimination. They need spiritual leadership and guidance. The churches must provide it because they possess it, and have the moral duty to do it. If they fail, history will record that, in this tumultuous era of change, the churches were unable or unwilling to furnish moral leadership. This would be a grave indictment, and must not be the judgment for our age.15
While the churches have a moral responsibility to create an atmosphere conducive to fair employment, the Government alone has the power to establish the legal undergirding that can insure progress.16 We appreciate that the Government has made some moves in this direction.17 We rejoice that Federal Government contracts clearly define the principle of non-discrimination.18 Now it is our task to support the government in its responsibility to enforce compliance with the law.
As churchmen, we naturally would prefer that men would voluntarily comply with the requirements of such contracts, but no one knows better than we do the problems and limitations of maintaining order and moral growth merely by means of persuasion and convincement. Love and persuasion are virtues that are basic and essential, but they must forever be complimented byjustice and moral coercion.19 Without love,justice becomes cold and empty; without justice, love become sentimental and empty. We must come to see that justice is love, correcting and controlling all that stands against love.
Precisely because we cannot endure in love or justice the erosion and demoralization to minority groups that spring from discrimination in employment, the Church must be the first segment in the nation to stand firmly, not merely for the enunciation of the moral principle of non-discrimination, but it must also encourage and stand behind the Government when it carries out its obligation in refusing or withdrawing Federal contracts from those employers who do not in fact live up to the letter and spirit of the non-discrimination clause.
The Church must have the courage and the resoluteness to support the Government when it determines to make examples of industries in dramatically cancelling large contracts where the principle of brotherhood is violated. For, in refusing to operate strictly within the framework of the contract, employers violate and degrade human personality—and our most sacred trust.
Beyond this, there is a major job for all of us to tackle. We must work for the enactment of Federal and State fair employment practices laws. The existence of such F.E.P.C. laws, at state and national levels, is not merely for economic benefit of minority groups. Such laws are essential if our nation is to maintain its economic growth and prosperity.20
I cannot close without stressing the responsibility laid upon leaders of minority groups to stimulate their youth to prepare themselves for better jobs. Doors are opening now that were not opened in the past, and the great challenge facing minority groups is to be ready to enter these doors as they open. No greater tragedy can befall minority groups at this hour than to allow new opportunities to emerge, without the concomitant preparedness and readiness to meet them.
Ralph Waldo Emerson said in a lecture back in 1891 that “if a man can write a better book, or preach a better sermon, or make a better mousetrap than his neighbor, even if he builds his house in the woods the world will make a beaten path to his door.”21Certainly this has not always been true. But we have reason to believe that, because of the shape of the world today and the fact that we cannot afford the luxury of an anemic democracy, this affirmation will become increasingly true. So we must strongly urge our youth to achieve excellence in their various fields of endeavor.
Throughout this talk I have spoken repeatedly of the need for action in the area of job discrimination. The words are not spoken lightly. I am not unmindful of the price that those must pay who act. It will often be high in inconvenience and unpopularity. But we must not allow anything to prevent us from making the ideal of brotherhood a reality. We cannot be a sheltered group of detached spectators, chanting and singing on sequestered corners, in a world that is being threatened by the forces of evil. We must work assiduously, and with determined boldness, to remove from the body politic this cancerous disease of discrimination, which is preventing our democratic and Christian health from being realized. Then and only then will we be able to bring into full realization the dream of our American democracy—a dream yet unfulfilled. A dream of equality of opportunity, of privilege and property widely distributed; a dream of a land where men will not take necessities from the many to give luxuries to the few; a dream of a land where men do not argue that the color of a man’s skin determines the content of his character, where they recognize that the basic thing about a man is not his specificity but his fundamentum; a dream of a place where all our gifts and resources are held, not for ourselves alone, but as instruments of service for the rest of humanity; the dream of a country where every man will respect the dignity and worth of all human personality, and men will dare to live together as brothers—that is the dream. Whenever it is fulfilled we will emerge from the bleak and desolate midnight of man’s inhumanity to man into the bright and glowing daybreak of freedom and justice for all of God’s children.
Comments
Post a Comment