Martin Luther King, Jr.'s Speech about Mountains

Metaphors push people to see hidden insights, to uncover difficult truths, to investigate our own minds. As people, we can move away from old mountains and build mountains. People face challenges and sometimes abandon traditional evils. Speaking at Temple Israel Hollywood, a Reform Jewish synagogue, on February 26, 1965, Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. talked about the mountains we all face. In this sermon, King’s metaphor of mountains told us about challenges that the world faces, obstacles that humanity needs to overcome, magnificent goals to seek, and triumphs to achieve, as, King explained, people work toward a biblical Promised Land of love and justice. This magnificent speech presaged 1968’s triumphant culmination, “I Have Been to the Mountain Top.” 

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Martin Luther King, Jr. at the Mountaintop in Memphis, Tennessee: A Speech for the Ages

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Mount Sinai

A skilled rhetorician, King used the mountain metaphor to make one point after another. He posed moral challenges that still confront us, as too many Americans seek to turn back to the old mountains of oppression and indignity.

King’s thesis connected his powerful metaphor to the scriptural story of Israel escaping from Egypt, a story that reminded the congregation of their shared history of human bondage:

“Tonight I would like to have you think with me from the subject, Keep Moving from this Mountain. I would like to take your minds back many, many centuries into a familiar experience so significantly recorded in the sacred Scriptures. The Children of Israel had been reduced into the bondage of physical slavery.”

Let us look at all the twists King gave to the mountain metaphor.

First, mountains pose terrible obstacles, which must be faced and overcome. As they fled slavery in Egypt, the people of Israel, King said they:

“… had to realize that before they could get to the Promised Land, they had to face gigantic mountains and prodigious hilltops.”

This challenge divided the people into three camps. The first two groups feared the challenges:

“One group said in substance that ‘We would rather go back to Egypt.’ They preferred the flesh pots of Egypt to the challenges of the Promised Land. A second group that abhorred the idea of going back to Egypt, and yet they abhorred the idea of facing the difficulties of moving ahead to the Promised Land and they somehow wanted to remain stationary and choose the line of least resistance.”

The third group, however, after the Promised Land was spied out, decided, according to King, that the land would be a difficult goal to reach, but they could achieve it all the same:

“There was a third group…who admitted that there were giants in the land but who said, ‘We can possess the land.’”

That last group saw the challenges, but determined to overcome them:

“This group said in substance that ‘We will go on in spite of...,’ that ‘We will not allow anything to stop us,’ that ‘We will move on amid the difficulties, amid the trials, amid the tribulations.’”

By now, King was not just talking about physical mountains, but about dangers and conflicts that awaited the people. The metaphor had grown.

Second, King explained that people sometimes must stop climbing one mountain and turn to another:

“The first chapter of the book of Deuteronomy said, ‘Ye have been in this mountain long enough. Turn you and take your journey and go to the mount of the Amorites.’”

In King’s interpretation, God always wants us to look ahead, not behind. This means to face new and different mountains:

“Whenever God speaks, he says, ‘Move on from mountains of stagnant complacency and deadening pacifity.’ So this is the great challenge that always stands before men.”

Third, advancing on the Hebrew scriptures, King talked about mountains that America faced in his own time:

“Tonight, I would like to suggest some of the symbolic mountains that we have occupied long enough and that we must leave if we are to move on to the promised land of justice, peace, and brotherhood.”

Toward that end, King said that, instead of pursuing crass materialism and greed, we must aim at spiritual goals:

“We must move on to that mountain which says in substance, ‘What doth it profit a man to gain the whole world of means -- airplanes, televisions, electric lights -- and lose the end: the soul?’”

Moving toward the mountain that leads us to our souls? That might be the steepest of all climbs. We must, he said, move away from the “mountain of racial injustice:”

“Now the other mountain that we’ve occupied long enough, and certainly it is quite relevant to discuss this at this time when we think of brotherhood -- we’ve been in the mountain of racial injustice long enough. And now it is time for us to move on to that great and noble realm of justice and brotherhood.”

King then spun the globe to discuss world-wide injustice. He found yet another mountain that faced the world: “the mountain of indifference:

“And we’ve been in the mountain of indifference too long and ultimately we must be concerned about the least of these; we must be concerned about the poverty-stricken because our destinies are tied together.”

Nearing his sermon’s end, King said that we must leave “the mountain of violence and hatred.” He said that “violence is both impractical and immoral.” Indeed, he warned, “We’ve been in the mountain of violence and hatred too long.”

Returning to scriptural themes, King concluded by quoting the prophet Isaiah. The prophet said that every mountain must be leveled, and every plain must be raised. Metaphorically, everything evil that society praises must be laid down, and justice must rise, and only then will be see God’s glory:

“Every valley shall be exalted and every mountain and hill shall be made low. The rough places will be made plain and the crooked places straight, and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed and all flesh shall see it together.”

King’s metaphors pushed his audience to face deep, even frightening, moral challenges. He spoke of how people move away from old mountains; people build mountains; people face challenges, and, most important, how people can abandon traditional evils. In this speech, King challenged the world’s moral foundation (or lack thereof). Such powerful truths. Truths that emerged from the metaphor of mountains. Is it any wonder that so many people hated and feared the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.? For truth is the most terrifying threat of all.

Quotations from this speech are from AmericanRhetoric.com, an outstanding website established by my  former classmate, the late Martin J. Medhurst. Marty was one of the top scholars in the history of United States public speaking, and his remarkable contributions are deeply missed. 

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Earlier Posts about Martin Luther King, Jr.'s Rhetoric 

Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" Made Biblical Morality a Public Imperative

Martin Luther King, Jr.'s Speech, "Love, Law, and Civil Disobedience:" The Civil Rights Movement’s Philosophical Foundation

Did Donald Trump Turn Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. into a Conformist Right-Wing Fanatic? I Don’t Think So, but He Tried. Let’s Look at the Mount Rushmore Speech

"The Law Can't Change the Heart, but It Can Restrain the Heartless:" Martin Luther King, Jr.'s Speech about Church and the Struggle for Justice

For a complete list, enter "Martin Luther King" in the search box on the right. 

By William D. Harpine

Copyright © William D. Harpine

Image: photo by Mohammed Moussa, Creative Commons license, not edited