Martin Luther King's Inspiring Language at Temple Israel of Hollywood

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

“Somehow the arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice.”

So said civil rights organizer Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in his “Sermon at Temple Israel of Hollywood” on February 26, 1965. Temple Israel of Hollywood was holding a fundraiser to support the Civil Rights movement. King laid out civil right’s moral foundation. A Reform Jewish synagogue, the Temple has been the spiritual home of Elizabeth Taylor, Sammy Davis, Jr., Edward G. Robinson, and Leonard Nimoy.

While introducing King, the Temple’s distinguished rabbi, Dr. Max Nussbaum, praised King as:

“The man who has changed the moral climate of America to a point by which our country and our nation will never be the same again.”

Long admired as the master of spiritual language, King employed a profound knowledge of philosophy and theology, a gift for choosing the exact word needed to relate his ideas to his audience, and passionate delivery. In this magnificent sermon, King’s aphorisms conveyed his moral ideas to his audience. An aphorism is a short, thought-provoking, memorable statement that reflects wise, careful insights. Aphorisms, like King’s statement about “the arc of the moral universe,” encourage the audience to reflect on important issues in deep, provocative ways. As the master of aphorism, King wove his moral points around a series of wise sayings. 

As we study King’s wise sayings, let us turn first to:

“Somehow the arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice.” 

The word somehow, a word that denies certainty, reaches instead toward the inexplicable: the arc of justice is spiritual, not scientific. King used that aphorism to organize a message of hope. King wound that aphorism around the traditional gospel song, “We Shall Overcome.” The song and the aphorism alike implied that justice might come slowly, but we can take it as a matter of faith that it cannot be stopped. He then quoted Thomas Carlisle that “No lie can live forever.” King continued that “With this faith we will be able to hue out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope.” He concluded the topic by quoting a hopeful prophecy from the biblical book of Job, “the morning stars will sing together and the sons of God will shout for joy.”

Another of King’s aphorisms reminded the audience to focus on moral ends:

“The great tragedy of life is that too often we allow the means by which we live to outdistance the ends for which we live.” [Italics added]

Developing that aphorism, King complained that “we have allowed our technology to outdistance our theology.” Our failure to recognize “the ends for which we live” had led the country, King insisted, onto a wrong moral path:

“Through our scientific genius we made of the world a neighborhood, but we failed through moral commitment to make of it a brotherhood, and so we’ve ended up with guided missiles and misguided men.” [Italics added] 

Temple Israel of Hollywood

That brilliant contrast between neighborhood and brotherhood accentuated the aphorism’s wisdom: that we must never forget the ends for which we live.

Martin Luther King, Jr.'s Speech, "Love, Law, and Civil Disobedience"

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

Recognizing that Americans value prosperity, but wishing to direct attention to the ethical realm, King introduced yet another moving aphorism:

“A great nation is a compassionate nation.”

That is, prosperity alone did not make a nation great. Neither, as King noted later in the speech, does military might. Instead, a compassionate nation, King insisted, must concern itself with people who are “smothering in an airtight cage of poverty in an affluent society.” A compassionate nation must, he continued, rise above what King then called “the mountain of indifference.” He insisted that we all live together “in a single garment of destiny.” (What a powerful metaphor!)

Metaphors in the Temple Israel of Hollywood Speech

Martin Luther King, Jr.'s Speech about Mountains

 
In the speech's most powerful passage, King laid out a series of aphorisms and metaphors that emphasized the centrality of love:

“I’m convinced that love is the only absolute ultimately; love is the highest good.”

King followed that statement with a powerful aphorism about love and religion:

“He who hates does not know God; he who hates has no knowledge of God.

That theme led King to describe love as “the supreme unifying principle of life.”

Driving that point home, King quoted Jesus from the Gospel of Matthew (22:37): “Love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, with all thy soul, with all thy strength, with all thy mind, and thy neighbor as thyself.” The Jewish congregation would, I think, have immediately noticed that Jesus was echoing Deuteronomy 6:5 from the Hebrew Scriptures.

As he neared his speech’s end, King warned the congregation that anyone who stands up for love or justice was certain to be branded with “bad names:”

“Some will be called reds and communists simply because they believe in the brotherhood of man.”

King’s prediction proved to be stunningly true. King’s brilliant aphorism about the “brotherhood of man” predicted the civil rights’ ongoing struggle with darkness. Such a profound warning! Indeed, even two generations later, we hear Erec Smith of the conservative Cato Institute stating that the idea of diversity, equality, and conclusion “draws from radical Marxist theory.”  That is, in my view, for every person who preaches love and community, we can always find someone else who gives wickedness the moral high ground.

Finally, let us hearken back to Rabbi Nussbaum’s introduction. King had indeed “changed the moral climate of America” to the end that the United States would “never be the same again.” Although we, as a nation, continue to struggle with civil rights - which conservatives are, once again, attacking in vicious fashion, King’s statements that public policy must follow a moral, religious code continue to resonate. His unforgettable statements echo through the years.

by William D. Harpine  

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Rhetorical Note: How does an aphorism differ from a slogan? I say that the difference lies in the human heart: an aphorism is a wise saying that leads people to reflect about what is right and wrong, good or bad, or wise or unwise. A slogan, in contrast, is a glib statement that discourages discussion.

Here are two simple examples. “The arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice” is an aphorism that helps us think about justice and divine guidance. King’s statement gave people hope as they struggled to overcome a segregated society. Also, it encourages us to reflect on our societal values. King’s aphorism contrasts with “My country, right or wrong,” which is merely a slogan. Its purpose is to shut down conversation: if we follow that slogan, its blind nationalism tells us to ignore public policy’s morality. We can better understand the distinction if we remember Captain Stephen Decatur’s original statement: “Our country! In her intercourse with foreign nations, may she always be in the right, and always successful, right or wrong.” Unlike the crude sloganeering of “my country right or wrong,” Decatur saw that a wise nation should act justly. Decatur’s full statement was not an aphorism (it was balance and contrast, a different kind of rhetorical figure), but the crude, morality-free slogan “my country right or wrong,” coldly stripped from Decatur's original context, mistakenly teaches that patriotism must erase our conscience. That reflects how a slogan is not an aphorism. 

Copyright ©2026 by William D. Harpine

Image of Martin Luther King, Jr.: US News & World Report, 

public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Image of Temple Israel of Hollywood, stevendamron, Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license, 

via Wikimedia Commons

Martin Luther King, Jr. Offered America a Choice

Martin Luther King, Jr.

“Perhaps a new spirit is rising among us.”

So said Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. as he spoke against the Vietnam War on April 4, 1967, at New York City’s Riverside Church. He showed that the Vietnam War was a blow to civil rights in the United States, that the war attacked racial justice just as surely as did racial oppression at home:

In his usual masterly fashion, King employed language to drive home a series of ideas, to impel the audience to make moral choices—not just one idea, but several ways to choose between good and evil. He connected the war with the United States' civil rights movement:

“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.”

Just as African Americans were victimized in our own land, King reminded that “We are called to speak for the weak, for the voiceless.” Narrating the suffering of Vietnamese peasants during the war, King stated that, “These, too, are our brothers.”

That theme led King, step by step, to a trio of moral choices. At the end, King used parallel language to his speech with an emotional appeal. King’s trope offered the audience a choice between, on the one hand, the evils of the present day, or, on the other hand, a chance to choose a world of kindness and love. King’s trope showed the audience that, “If we make the right choice,” we could have one–or the other. 

Riverside Church

Rhetorical tropes like the ones in which King excelled are not just decorations, no, they symbolize our thoughts and structure our feelings. They are among a persuasive speaker’s best friends. As philosopher Ernst Cassirer explained, language creates and develops our concepts, our thinking, and our vision. We can neither think nor decide, he said, without processing language.

So, after reviewing the war’s injustices, King’s language linked choice, conflict, and justice. He quoted the poet James Russell Lowell: “Though the cause of evil prosper, yet ‘tis truth alone is strong.” The truth that King extolled was the need for the entire nation to make positive choices, to turn back from violence.

King reviewed the horrors of bombing, crop destruction, and civilian casualties. Indeed, recounting the war’s destruction, King noted that the violence left nothing behind but sadness and regret:

“Now there is little left to build on, save bitterness.”

And who bore responsibility? It was a choice, a decision to pursue violent solutions to Vietnam's problems. To drive that point home, King, always the master of speech conclusions, finally linked choices, universal moral principles, and world conflict into a chance to reform the world in a spirit of love:

“And if we will only make the right choice, we will be able to transform this pending cosmic elegy into a creative psalm of peace. If we will make the right choice, we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our world into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. If we will but make the right choice, we will be able to speed up the day, all over America and all over the world, when ‘justice will roll down like waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream.’”

The quotation was from the Bible, Amos 5:24. Each “If” started with the violent, chaotic choice—the choice of war and conflict—but then offered an alternate choice of justice and compassion. King contoured his string of parallel phrases into a vision of moral reform. His “If” statements offer a hypothetical list of what humanity could accomplish if we adopt universal (King said “cosmic”) choices.

Each of the three “If” statements offered a different answer. The first “If” statement offered us a chance to make “the right choice,” and, if we made the right choice, we could turn the “cosmic elegy into a creative psalm of peace.” An elegy, of course, is a funeral oration, and King ironically offered his audience a chance to choose life rather than reified cosmic death.

King’s next “If” statement offered an additional benefit of choice: that the world’s conflicts – “jangling discords” – into a “beautiful symphony” of universal love. His final “If” statement offered us – by which he meant the American people – a chance to make real the prophet Isaiah’s mythical world of justice. In that world, “justice will roll down like waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream.”

When we say “if,” we remind people that things can be different. The point that King’s powerful language made unmistakable is that these are choices. We can choose between a cosmic funeral or a song of peace. We can choose to turn world conflict into unity. If we make the right choices, we can “speed up the day, all over America and all over the world,” when the prophet’s judgment of future harmony becomes, not merely a supernatural gift from God, but a decision that we make as a human race.

Speech conclusions carry great power, for they give the listeners the last thoughts to carry away as a speaker leaves the stage. We might pay little attention to the middle of even the greatest speech, but everyone notices an outstanding introduction or conclusion. King’s conclusion challenged the nation to make the right choices.

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
https://harpine.blogspot.com/2021/01/the-law-cant-change-heart-but-it-can.html

This speech offered a choice with three spiritual and tangible outcomes. The threefold repetition, “If...choice, If...choice, If...choice,” underscores that evil is a choice, just as we have the chance to choose what is right. President John Kennedy had said, “here on earth, God’s work must truly be our own;” likewise, King said that whether we have peace or violence, cruelty or mercy, justice or injustice, was a choice. A decision. We can choose good things just as we can choose their opposites.

As a preacher, King gave America a chance to choose to live by God’s law of peace and righteousness. King’s lesson was that, not only are the world’s conflicts a choice, but the possibility of ending them was also a choice, a choice that we made by our own actions. To avoid a choice, however? That’s not an option. A university philosophy major himself, King surely knew Jean-Paul Sartre’s dictum that to refuse making a choice is still a choice. King offered a choice between what was evil, or what is good. Not war and violence foisted upon us, but war and violence that we choose. Just as Cassirer was an idealist of language use, so King was a moral idealist who used language to reshape our failing moral attitudes.

by William D. Harpine

About King's Last and Perhaps Greatest Speech:

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

Another speech using parallel language:

Rhetorical Flourishes in JB Pritzker's Speech against Militarizing Chicago

For a list of more posts about Martin Luther King, Jr.'s speaking career, search in the text box at the right.

    

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Research Note: I plowed through Cassirer’s The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms in graduate school. For people ambitious enough to give it a look, the work is still in print, and available in large research libraries. 

And, yes, my professors also had me read Sartre’s massive  Being and Nothingness. (I must have had far more endurance when I was young!) Whether Sartre was really an atheist or a messianic Jew is a matter that his biographers can debate. His philosophy’s prevailing morality is nonetheless unmistakable.

Rhetorical theorists for centuries have catalogued seemingly endless collections of rhetorical figures and tropes. Here is one nicely condensed list, compiled by Stanford University Lecturer Jonah Willihnganz.

Many thanks to AmericanRhetoric.com for publishing texts of this and many other great speeches.

Copyright © 2025 by William D. Harpine

Image of Martin Luther King, Jr: US News and World Report, released to public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Image of Riverside Church, photo by Bhuck, Creative Commons License, via Wikimedia Commons

How Did "I Have a Dream" Matter to My Neighbors in 1963?

Lincoln Memorial

On this date in history, August 28, 1963, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered his immortal speech, “I Have a Dream,” from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington DC. So many people have written and said so many things about this great speech. The speech was not really about a dream. King’s powerful images shook people’s hearts, but metaphors were not his point. His point was freedom. Let me back up and tell a story.

On August 29, 1963, the morning after the speech, I was an 11 (almost 12) year old boy waiting for the school bus on the corner a half-block from my house. The Lincoln Memorial was less than 20 miles from my parents’ almost new split-level. I was excited to start seventh grade at Sidney Lanier Intermediate. My biggest fear was to wonder how I would navigate the seemingly huge school.

The neighborhood was buzzing with commentary, not only about King’s speech, which disturbed and frightened almost everyone I knew, but also the massive demonstration on the Washington Mall. At the time, the crowd’s size and impatience dominated my neighbors’ thinking. Folks shook their heads at what they perceived to be a chaotic mess. And, indeed, my young friends at the bus stop shared in the excitement—and the concern. It is no secret that King terrified many white people. As should surprise no one, my neighborhood was (like almost all Virginia neighborhoods at the time) strictly segregated.

For the most part, my friends and their parents were not racists in any of the usual senses, at least not as white people understood racism in 1963. My schoolmates were nice kids who grew up in loving homes. They did not seethe with ill will. They were not angry.

Yet, one of my bus-stop companions asked, with disgust in his voice, “What do they want?” My best friend, Duncan, calmly replied, “They want their freedom.” I was never so proud to know him. Duncan grew up in a conservative home, much more conservative than my own, but he understood human dignity with a wisdom that belied his youth, his crewcut, and his traditional Oxford shirt. Somehow, I had never before understood civil rights with such simplicity, such clarity.

No one responded. Not even me. Awkward silence continued until the bus showed up a few minutes later. It was a learning moment for me, maybe for all of us. Yes, the clips of King’s speech on the news the night before thrilled the ears. In the long run, however, it is the audience, not the speaker, that makes a speech successful. What message did the audience need to hear? “They want their freedom.”

Dreaming was King’s metaphor, but it was not his main point. No, instead, his point was freedom. His thrilling conclusion talked about the centuries-long struggle for freedom:

“And when this happens, and when we allow freedom to ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of 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, we are free at last!”

Did the struggle for freedom end in victory? On the one hand, yes. Congress soon passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. On the other hand, no. It seems that every few weeks in 2022 we hear about a police officer shooting an unarmed Black person. Mistakenly thinking that the struggle for civil rights was over, the United States Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act. Even the freest nation is never more than one election from tyranny. King’s message: People want their freedom.


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

Three Warnings about Political Action From Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “I Have a Dream Speech”


P.S. Of course, as times change, we notice that King didn’t mention freedom for women: “black men and white men.”

Image: National Park Service

America Is a Dream? Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Independence Day Speech

Declaration of Independence

On July 4, 1965, Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. gave his audience an Independence Day dream. Americans have heard two kinds of 4th of July speeches. The first kind is unapologetically patriotic. These speakers assume that the nation is already perfect. However, the second kind challenges us, if I might echo the preamble to the United States’ Constitution, to become more perfect. Echoing his “I Have a Dream” speech of two years earlier, King compared America to a dream. He led his audience from the past’s revolutionary ideals to a future in which those ideals would come to life.

When I was a child, a patriotic speech invariably preceded the Fourth of July fireworks. The speaker discussed patriotism and war heroes, carefully quoting something or other that Thomas Jefferson said. In contrast, King gave the other kind of 4th of July speech. King asked the United States of America to live up to its revolutionary values. So, the first kind of 4th of July speech praises the United States as a perfect beacon of light. The second kind gives us ideals for which we can choose to strive.

To establish the values to which our nation strives, King quoted the Declaration of Independence:

“We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”

King then emphasized the Declaration of Independence’s inclusive values. He noted that Jefferson did not say “all white men,” but instead said “all men.” King added that Jefferson did not say “all gentiles,” nor did he say “all Protestants.” (Many of us today would agree that Jefferson should have said “all persons” instead of “all men.”)

Jim Crow still dominated large swaths of the United States’ 1965 political landscape. King’s 4th of July speech argued that the Declaration of Independence stated an ideal, not an accomplished fact. It stated, King said, a dream. Indeed, the United States itself was a dream:

“I would like to discuss some of the problems that we confront in the world today, and some of the problems that we confront in our own nation by using as a subject The American Dream. I choose this subject because America is essentially a dream.”

Continuing, King reminded his audience that human rights are not the government’s gift. Instead, they are basic rights that heaven grants to all of us. The United States’ founding ideal was to recognize everyone’s fundamental worth:

“It says that each individual has certain inherent rights that are neither derived from or conferred by the state. They are gifts from the hands of the almighty God. Very seldom, if ever, in the history of the world has a socio-political document expressed in such profound, eloquent, and unequivocal language, the dignity and the worth of human personality.”

No, the United States of 1965 did not recognize everyone’s rights. In 1965, most public schools and institutions were de facto segregated. Even today, in 2022, many people justly question whether women, poor persons, and ethnic minorities enjoy equal rights. However, can the dream become true? King had devoted his rhetorical life to a dream: equal opportunity for everyone.

Maybe the “more perfect union” gives us an ideal that we can strive for it but never reach, something like a physics problem. To the end of his life, however, King expressed his deep faith that United States could fulfill the dream. In a torrent of metaphors, he spoke of an emerging freedom:

“And so, with this faith in the future, we will be able to adjourn the counsels of the staff, rise from the fatigue of darkness, to the buoyancy of hope. And we will be able to bring into being this new society and realize the American dream.”

Ending, King repeated the same hymn verse that concluded “I Have a Dream:”

“Free at last, free at last, thank God almighty, we are free at last!”

Yes, on the one hand, we have heard 4th of July speeches that praised American freedom as unquestionable fact. How dare you question America! On the other hand, King’s searing language promised that the dream of American liberty of which Jefferson spoke would become real. King cited the past but looked to the future. If one loses hope, what could our values possibly mean?

In more recent years, 4th of July speeches have all but disappeared. To all my fellow Americans, happy Independence Day! Enjoy your fireworks and your hot dogs, but never forget our ideals.

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Frederick Douglass’ 1852 Fourth of July Speech and the Christian Right

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

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

Thanks once again to rev.com for creating these historically vital transcripts.

Were the Canadian Truckers Treated Worse than Martin Luther King, Jr? Jonathan Turley Made a Ridiculous Argument

Let’s talk about word games. Politically-minded people learn to say things that are literally true but completely misleading. Back in the 1960s, pop psychologists called this “speaking Martian.” Fox News legal analyst Jonathan Turley got on Fox News the other day to complain about what he thought was the horrible mistreatment of the demonstrators at the Canadian truckers blockade. Protesters had obstructed several border crossings. The police ticketed and sometimes towed the trucks for illegal parking. The more recalcitrant protestors were threatened with arrest. No one beat them with rubber hoses or baseball bats. The police did not burn their trucks. The protesters did not disappear to the back room of a jail, never to be seen again. Horrified that the police had suppressed the demonstrations, Turley told a Fox News reporter:

“By this rationale, they could have cracked down on the Civil Rights movement. They could have arrested Martin Luther King.”

You can well imagine how Twitter users responded. Martin Luther King, Jr. was, of course, arrested many times – sometimes brutally. He was not sipping tea in a diner when he wrote his famous “Letter from Birmingham Jail.” King repeatedly acknowledged that people who engage in civil disobedience should willingly accept legal punishment. In his famous “I Have a Dream,” King said:

“With this faith we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day.” (Italics added)

Even Fox News has posted a complete transcript of “I Have a Dream.” Has Turley ever read that famous speech? Or listened to it? Okay, well, that’s fine. Even famous lawyers make mistakes. Unfortunately, instead of admitting his error, Turley doubled down with this tweet:

“Not to feed the trolls, but I never said that Dr. King was not arrested. I said that the Canadian policy could be used to arrest MLK for the same acts of civil disobedience. The point is that such acts of civil disobedience are not viewed as ‘terrorism’ or ‘insurrection.’...”

The first part of what Turley said in that tweet was, of course, literally true. He never specifically said the exact words that “Dr. King was not arrested.” He had, however, said that “they could have cracked down on the Civil Rights movement.” He showed no awareness of history, no awareness that the Civil Rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s had been brutally suppressed. No listener could miss what Turley meant. And, Turley did say, “They could have arrested Martin Luther King.” No one who was aware that King had, in fact, been arrested – dozens of times – would have said that. Additionally, Turley’s claim that King’s work was “not viewed as ‘terrorism’ or ‘insurrection’” is dubious. King wrote his "Letter from Birmingham Jail" only after a group of White pastors accused him of inciting “hatred and violence.”

The idea of speaking Martian is to say things that are literally true but completely deceiving. And so, in my opinion, Turley was speaking Martian. Turley said something that was literally true but indescribably absurd. As best I can tell from browsing social media, Turley’s conservative fans are deliriously happy with his ridiculous denial.

Just think – with Black History Month 2022 halfway done – too many conservatives take advantage of every opportunity to show how little they know about Black history. While hordes of parents try to shout down anyone who wants to teach Black history to their children, people like Turley (who, by his impressive credentials, should be well-educated) demonstrate that the American public knows all too little about Black history. Or, for that matter, about any history. Since the whole idea of being a conservative is to learn from the past, ignorance of history defeats the point. Doesn’t it?

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Earlier Post: Martin Luther King's Speech “Love, Law, and Civil Disobedience:” The Radical Tradition

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Historical Note: If you want to read about the brutal way that police treated the Freedom Riders during the Civil Rights movement, check this link. If you would like to learn about Martin Luther King, Jr.’s many arrests, here is an excellent summary.

Word of Rhetorical Advice: There is an old saying that, when you are digging yourself into a hole, stop digging. Turley might want to think about that. 

“Somebody Must Have Sense Enough to Dim the Lights:” Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Sermon about the Power of Love

Strength comes from love.

In November 1957, Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. gave a sermon at Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama. His theme was Jesus Christ’s commandment to “love your enemies.” King applied that moral precept to the growing Civil Rights movement, insisting that hate must be met with love, and violence with peace. King laid out many of the themes that would come to mark the movement. He warned that hate endangered everyone. He advocated nonviolent resistance and called for the Western democracies to uphold their noble values. Centrally, he insisted on an attitude of compassion and love toward one’s enemies. His sermon delved deeply into Christian theology and political theory. His practical application – the philosophy of civil disobedience – would arise from moral imperatives.

King’s proposition must seem like a massive paradox: for he taught that true strength comes from love and goodness, never from violence and hatred.

King’s eloquence and depth of thought belies the fact that, defying his physician’s orders, he dragged himself out of a sickbed to give this speech. Like most good preachers, he based his sermon on a text, in this case, Matthew 5:43-45 from the Bible.

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“Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbour, and hate thine enemy. But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you; That ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven: for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust.”

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King felt that his argument was not only moral, but practical. To King, love overpowers hate by its very nature. He explained that by “love,” he meant what the ancient Greeks called agape, which is unselfish love. Such unconditional love often runs against our impulses. Instead, our impulses often drive us to respond harshly when someone wrongs us. This inclination, King told the congregation, only makes things worse:

“Hate for hate only intensifies the existence of hate and evil in the universe. If I hit you and you hit me and I hit you back and you hit me back and go on, you see, that goes on ad infinitum. It just never ends.”

King told a story about when he and his brother were driving across Tennessee. The other drivers were not dimming their lights. King’s brother threatened to shine his brights at the next car. But King protested that this could only cause an accident:

“Somebody must have sense enough to dim the lights, and that is the trouble, isn’t it? That as all of the civilizations of the world move up the highway of history, so many civilizations, having looked at other civilizations that refused to dim the lights, and they decided to refuse to dim theirs.”

That simple analogy led King to a powerful point. If nations respond to anger with more anger, if people respond to hate with more hate, we enter the down-ramp to mutual destruction. That is why King insisted that hate must be confronted with love. Hate does not defeat hate. That never works, he said. Instead, love was the universe’s greatest power:

“Somewhere, somebody must have some sense. Men must see that force begets force, hate begets hate, toughness begets toughness. And it is all a descending spiral, ultimately ending in destruction for all and everybody. Somebody must have sense enough and morality enough to cut off the chain of hate and the chain of evil in the universe. And you do that by love.”

African Americans in the 1950s suffered from horrible injustices. Especially in the states of the former Confederacy, African Americans lacked the most basic rights that other people took for granted. They could not stay in nice hotels or even drink at a cold water fountain. Laws excluded them from the best schools. A Black person in the South registered to vote only at the risk of her life. Emmitt Till had been lynched a scant two years before King’s sermon, and the Mississippi Burning murders awaited the future. By no stretch of the imagination was United States of 1957 a free country for African Americans.

Fannie Lou Hamer’s Voting Rights Speech, "Sick and Tired of Being Sick and Tired"

Yet, King insisted that monstrous injustices must be met by love.

King’s sermon gives us much to think about in 2022. Recently, people have been going to school board meetings, screaming in rage to stop their children from learning Black history. King’s message would be to confront such hatred with love, not anger.

Similarly, when people in 2022 give in to fear and vote for the angriest, meanest politician because they think that person is strong, do they not contradict King’s teaching? And was King not right? Strong leaders like Napoleon, Hitler, and Stalin did not keep their people safe. Did they?

King’s speech taught a powerful lesson. Isn’t that the best reason to give a speech? And will we listen to his lesson? Can we, as a nation, as a human species, learn that love truly is more powerful than hate? Or will we succumb to fear and ignorance? Can Christian believers find the courage to love their enemies? Not to give in to evil; that’s not what King meant, but to love their enemies? To face down evil with good? Many years later, King said that, “the arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice.” Can people summon the courage to believe that this is true?

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Martin Luther King, Jr. Said, "The Law Can't Change the Heart, but It Can Restrain the Heartless"

Martin Luther King, Jr.'s Speech, "Love, Law, and Civil Disobedience"

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

Rabbi Cahana's Sermon about the Summer of Love: Is Love the Answer to Nazism?

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P.S.: Dexter Avenue Baptist Church is now on the National Register of Historic Places

Martin Luther King's Speech “Love, Law, and Civil Disobedience:” The Radical Tradition

Martin Luther King, Jr., whose national holiday we celebrate today, gave his most influential speech on November 16, 1961. This speech is called “Love, Law, and Civil Disobedience.” Like many speakers before and since, King showed that his seemingly radical ideas rested on strong traditions and historical precedents. He showed that people stand in an ancient tradition when they break unjust laws.


A Thoughtful Speech

The speech, which he presented to a group of student civil rights workers, did not rise to the heights of thrilling oratorical excellence for which King was remembered. So, why do I say that it was influential? That’s because “Love, Law, and Civil Disobedience” was a carefully reasoned speech that shaped, justified, and explained the principle of nonviolent resistance to racial oppression. This speech, now largely forgotten, guided the Civil Rights movement. That movement would reach its climax three years later, during the Birmingham demonstrations, with the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the now-gutted Voting Rights Act of 1965 soon to follow.

In my previous post, I explained how this speech laid out the Civil Rights’ movement’s philosophical and moral foundation. The speech also justified the principle of nonviolent resistance to unjust laws. While King’s philosophical foundation relied heavily on Christian theology, his principle of nonviolent resistance owed more to Mohandas Gandhi and New England transcendentalism. Like many speakers before and since, King showed that his seemingly radical ideas rested on strong traditions and historical precedents.

Radicals, like King, seek social change. Conservatives look to tradition. Paradoxically, King combined the two opposing ideas. His agenda, which called for sweeping social and legal change, were considered radical in 1961. They would still be considered radical in 2022.

Yet, King’s astute persuasive tactic helped make his methods seem – well, not radical at all. By tying nonviolent resistance to history and tradition, King implied that his movement’s actions were traditional. More than that, however, he turned his critics’ arguments against them. It was they and not King, who rejected tradition – the tradition of civil disobedience. This was King’s subtext.


The History of Civil Disobedience

To begin with, King started with Greek philosophy. “There is nothing new about this,” King insisted. Indeed, he said that “We go back and read the Apology and the Crito, and you see Socrates practicing civil disobedience.” King also appealed to religious tradition, pointing out that early Christians also refused to obey unjust laws:

“The early Christians practiced civil disobedience in a superb manner, to a point where they were willing to be thrown to the lions. They were willing to face all kinds of suffering in order to stand up for what they knew was right even though they knew it was against the laws of the Roman Empire.”

How many conservative Christians have thought about that? About a time when the very act of worshipping as a Christian was civil disobedience? Not stopping there, King reminded the students that the United States of America has a long history of civil disobedience. He mentioned the Boston Tea Party and the work of pre-Civil War abolitionists:

“And even let us come up to America. Our nation in a sense came into being through a massive act of civil disobedience, for the Boston Tea Party was nothing but a massive act of civil disobedience. Those who stood up against the slave laws, the abolitionists, by and large practiced civil disobedience.”

The point here? Few of King’s opponents in 1961 would try to say that slavery was just. The abolitionists, who were the radicals of the 1850s, worked against the monstrous laws that perpetuated slavery. History now admires them. They became heroes – to later generations – by helping slaves to escape. However, they were heroes only because they broke the law. That obvious fact gave King a powerful historical and moral precedent.

There is, however, the other side. Are laws not supposed to be the guardians of public order and morality? Are we doing the right thing when we follow the law? Sometimes, King said, we are not.

 

What Is Legal Isn’t Always Right

In other words, that something is legal does not, in King’s philosophy, mean that it is right. Indeed, the law might require you to do something wrong. That was a radical concept – it is hard to imagine a more radical idea – and yet King’s logic seems inescapable. Throughout large parts of the United States in 1961, racial discrimination and oppression were actually required by law. Did that make it right? Was it right for people to obey such laws?

King offered a powerful rebuttal, founded on history and yet tied to the present day. King insisted that actions are not always righteous just because they are legal. He asked people to rise above popular morality and legal principles. He said that we should instead live by conscience. That is a difficult challenge, to which few of us ever rise.

For example, King reminded the students that Nazi Germany applied the force of law to commit acts of stunning evil. Evil people created Nazi law for evil purposes. King called for his workers to have the courage to reject legal but monstrous evil like Hitler’s:

“We must never forget that everything that Hitler did in Germany was ‘legal.’ It was illegal to aid and comfort a Jew, in the days of Hitler's Germany. But I believe that if I had the same attitude then as I have now I would publicly aid and comfort my Jewish brothers in Germany if Hitler were alive today calling this an illegal process.”

King also reminded the students that the Union of South Africa was, in 1961, a white supremacist nation. In South Africa, racial justice was actually a crime. King expressed support for the resistance that Black-majority leaders offered against South Africa’s cruel, but legal, regime:

“If I lived in South Africa today in the midst of the white supremacy law in South Africa, I would join Chief Luthuli and others in saying, break these unjust laws.”

For, yes indeed, apartheid (which was legally required racial oppression) was enshrined in South African law. Yet, it was obviously wicked and unjust.

What Is Legal? What Is Right?   

These examples led King to a powerful but daring conclusion. He insisted that the students in his audience, who were organizing nonviolent resistance, actually represented tradition. That claim utterly conflicted with conventional attitudes. Yet, King gave his opponents a chance to ask themselves some hard questions. Would they have supported Hitler? South African apartheid was legal. But was it right? King put his opponents in difficult position. Were they prepared to defend some of the century’s most horrible laws? Were they prepared to defend oppression in the United States?

Two years later, King would write his famous “Letter from a Birmingham Jail.” That letter, which I recommend in the highest terms, laid out, in much more detail, the same historical and philosophical principles that King had already explained in “Love, Law, and Civil Disobedience.” King’s speech made nonviolent resistance into a moral obligation. King tied civil disobedience to tradition, while rejecting unjust laws. And it was in this now-forgotten speech that King laid out the philosophy that guided the Civil Rights movement for years to come. 

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Related Public Speaking Posts: 

Read First Post about King's speech: 

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

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

French President Macron Reminds the USA of Its Traditions

Rabbi Michael Z. Cahana’s Sermon about the Summer of Love: Is Love the Answer to Nazism?

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Research Note: Radicals often look for ways to tie their ideas to tradition. In his award-winning book, The Prophetic Tradition and Radical Rhetoric in America, Professor James Darsey shows how radical speakers often quote the Hebrew prophets.

Was “Love, Law, and Civil Disobedience” totally neglected? No, not entirely. It was reprinted in several editions of an advanced communication textbook, Contemporary American Speeches, which was co-edited by my professor Richard L. Johannesen.

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

What does it mean to be good? How do we resist evil? Where should we put our faith: in goodness, or in violence? Martin Luther King, Jr.’s carefully-reasoned speech, “Love, Law, and Civil Disobedience,” delivered to a group of civil rights workers, laid out the Civil Rights Movement’s profound values. King’s carefully-reasoned exposition gave the movement its philosophical underpinning. Drawing on his academic background in Christian theology, South Asian philosophy, and New England transcendentalism, King did not merely guide his workers. More importantly, he called the United States to its better nature.

King did not give his speech with the overall public in mind. He delivered this speech on November 16, 1961 in Atlanta, Georgia to a student group called the Fellowship of the Concerned. He did not instruct them about movement tactics. Instead, he delved into the morality on which the movement rested. That moral foundation is King’s eternal legacy.

Although most remembered for fiery heights of eloquence like his “Mountaintop” and “I Have a Dream” speeches, King also guided his movement with deep moral arguments. In “Love, Law, and Civil Disobedience,” King began with the idea that people are capable of great goodness. King also showed that it is never right to cooperate with evil, just as, in contrast, we should have boundless faith a future of justice. Let us look at each of those ideas in turn.


Are People Basically Good?

King’s first profound insight was that human beings are good. That insight was remarkable because the United States was, at the time, dominated by appalling racial wickedness. A few months earlier, a crowd of white people had fire-bombed a bus full of the Freedom Riders, viciously beating the men and women as they escaped.

Let us remember that, in 1961, racial discrimination was still the law of the land, particularly in the states of the former Confederacy. In my home state of Virginia, interracial marriage was still a serious crime. Not until I started my Master of Arts degree at Northern Illinois University did I attend an integrated school. (My high schools and undergraduate college enrolled only one or two token minority students.) The Supreme Court ruling in the case of Brown versus the Board of Education was merely a document on paper. It made little difference to education. John Birch Society stickers plastered my middle-class neighborhood.

Many people imagine that chain gangs are a relic of the distant past, but I often witnessed this horror as an adolescent in the 1960s. There were no body cams to bring justice to the victims of police brutality. Rural areas of the Deep South were still, for all practical purposes, police states. African-Americans who went to the voting booth feared for their lives, and people who were arrested and taken to southern jails were often never seen again. Lynching continued openly as late as 1981, when the Ku Klux Klan hanged Michael Donald in Mobile, Alabama. And, yet, King insisted that people are capable of great goodness. His ultimate point, his foundation, was to assume that the Civil Rights movement could appeal to kindness rather than hate. Love could replace anger. King explained it like this:

“I think this is what Jesus meant when he said, ‘love your enemies.’ I’m very happy that he didn’t say ‘like your enemies.’ because it is very difficult to like someone bombing your home; it is pretty difficult to like somebody threatening your children; it is difficult to like congressmen who spend all of their time trying to defeat civil rights. But Jesus says love them, and love is greater than like. Love is understanding, redemptive, creative, goodwill for all men. And it is this whole ethic of love which is the idea standing at the basis of the student movement.”

And he summed it up with this simple message of hope:

“There is within human nature an amazing potential for goodness.”

Are violence and hate the only ways to defeat our enemies? If so, King’s philosophy of civil disobedience comes to nothing. If we reach our opponents’ hearts, he suggested, people could hope for a better future.


Do Not Cooperate with Evil

Yet, King made another point, which was not to cooperate with evil. This principle applied to the movement’s followers, just as it applied to the racists and politicians who perpetuated evil. He did not say to “resist evil,” which we hear more often. Instead, he reached more deeply. He told his followers not to acquiesce to evil:

“It is as much a moral obligation to refuse to cooperate with evil as it is to cooperate with good. Noncooperation with evil is as much a moral obligation as the cooperation with good.”

My late mother, who loved to read history books, often commented that people like Hitler and Stalin could only come to power if a great number of people helped them. Even more so, of course, it is so easy to go along with injustices. Martin Luther King, Jr. warned the students to avoid that temptation.

It is from that principle, that we should not cooperate with evil, that led King to the idea that not to give in to unjust laws, such as Jim Crow laws and legalized racial discrimination. While conservatives value social order above all else, King asked the students to value morality above all else.


And Have Faith in the Future

Many people, in 1961 and 2022 alike, prefer to glory in a mythical past. Instead, King offered hope for a better future. The Christian concept of “faith” can equally be translated as “trust.” Thus, King asked the students to hope, expect, and, most of all, work for, a better future:

“This movement is a movement based on faith in the future. It is a movement based on a philosophy, the possibility of the future bringing into being something real and meaningful. It is a movement based on hope.”

The message of American conservativism is, obviously enough, that we don’t need to solve our problems if we pretend we don’t have any. Yet, never mentioning his opponents’ philosophy, King’s speech did not merely ask the students to recognize the horrors that racism had brought to the United States. He also asked them to hope and work toward a better day when justice could triumph:

“With this faith in the future, with this determined struggle, we will be able to emerge from bleak and desolate midnight of man’s inhumanity to man, into the bright and glittering daybreak of freedom and justice.”

In a later post, I’ll talk about this speech’s justification for civil disobedience. For now, however, let us remember that King’s speech showed faith in humanity’s goodness. He reminded his workers never to cooperate with evil. Still, while recognizing evil, he expressed profound faith – profound trust – that they could work toward a glorious future of just peace and human kindness. He presaged the vision that he would express two years later from the Lincoln Memorial, “With this faith, we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood.” As the United States somewhat reluctantly celebrates Martin Luther King, Jr. during this three-day holiday weekend, is his work finished? I think not. Should we still remember to deny cooperation with evil? I think yes. Do we still need to remember King’s message of love, hope, and faith? Obviously, we do.

Part of King’s genius is that he rarely bothered to refute the fallacious arguments that conservative racists made against him. Instead, he offered a powerful vision. That vision overcame whatever venom or false promises his opponents might talk about. He did not condemn his opponents; instead, he offered them a chance to reform. He did not fact-check the liars; he overwhelmed them with moral power. With the resurgence of brazen Jim Crow laws across the South, we still need his lesson today.

Peace to all.

 
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Other Posts about Martin Luther King's Speeches:

“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

Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” Made Biblical Morality a Public Imperative

Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “Give Us the Ballot” Speech Drew on Uplifting Christian Concepts

Three Warnings about Political Action From Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “I Have a Dream Speech”

On today’s date, August 28, 1963, Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., delivered his most famous speech – “I Have a Dream” – from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington DC. This speech’s inspiring language commands our attention, but must not overlook King’s equally inspiring life lessons. The press often considered King to be a moderate civil rights leader. Nevertheless, in “I Have a Dream,” he gave three warnings.

When we remember King’s eloquent language – “I have a dream today” – we are reminded that dreams matter. King was, all the same, not a pie-in-the-sky dreamer. He was a pragmatic leader who understood how to face challenges. The three lessons that he slipped into his speech –  to avoid gradualism, to recognize the United States’ vast potential, and to shun despair – mean as much today as they did in 1963.

In the face of timidity, King warned his audience against moderation. In the face of conservatism, he warned against thinking small. In the face of liberal discouragement, he warned against pessimism. King directed these life lessons at the civil rights workers of 1963. All the same, what made his speech timeless was that his lessons are timeless. 

King's warnings resonate today. Civil rights are a never-ending struggle. Even today, conservative legislators at the state and national level struggle to make voting more difficult or protest the results of the 2020 election. So, let's look at King's three warnings. 

First Warning, Against Moderation

Minorities, who carry a history of enslavement, Jim Crow laws, and police brutality, are often told to be grateful for gradual change. And, truly, gradual improvement always trumps no improvement. Yet, with the civil rights movement in full swing, King told the massive crowd that it was time to move forward:

“This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism.”

In this speech, King similarly also talked about “the fierce urgency of now.” King’s language compelled action: “fierce urgency,” opposed to a “tranquilizing drug.” This was language of power, strength, of immediacy. The time for action was now, not later. Timing is everything.

As we all know, oppressors often promise that liberation will come, but not quite today. Maybe later. So, King said that today was the day. Now was the time. Instead of “cooling off,” civil rights workers needed to push forward for justice. An ancient principle of rhetoric tells us that a speech must be given at the right time. King told his audience that 1963 was the right time to act. He warned them not to wait.

A year after King’s great speech, conservative firebrand Barry Goldwater would tell the Republican National Convention that: “Moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.” That was truer than Goldwater knew.


Second Lesson, Plenty for Everyone

Not only however, did King say that we should avoid gradualism, but also there was no need to be gradual. He insisted that United States had plenty for everyone. His point was that the land of opportunity could fulfill its promises:

“We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation.”

King’s point was that people think that the nation has exhausted its wealth and cannot afford to share opportunities. This is because so often – too often – people think small. We are afraid to win the big prize because we fear that we will lose the little one. We think that we will lose if we share with someone else. Too often, we fear that every exchange means that one person wins and another fails. King instead made the point that America offered “great vaults of opportunity.” There was enough for everyone.

We can remember that lesson today, can we not? A simple glance at the map shows that the poorest states in America have the most conservative state governments. The five poorest states are West Virginia, Mississippi, Arkansas, Louisiana, New Mexico, and Alabama. All but New Mexico has a Republican legislature. When we clutch to what little we have, we fail to reach for greatness. The fallacy of gradualism lies in fear. The fallacy of conservativism is to deny the very existence of opportunity. So no, the nation did not lack potential in 1963, and it does not have “insufficient funds” today. What we lack, too often, would be concern for others, confidence in the future, and willingness to change.

King did not, however, endorse the “prosperity gospel” that is so enamored by many conservatives. He did not say that great riches awaited anyone who had faith. That kind of thinking lacks depth. Instead, King spoke for opportunity and justice. He spoke for urgency.


Third Warning, Avoid Despair

Radicalism poses a great temptation, however. If we fail to achieve everything we want, at the moment we wanted, we think that we have failed. We hear this today from liberal firebrands. Too often, we let failures discourage us. Indeed, in 1963, African Americans faced horrible challenges, especially in the South. King understood that gloom could become a self-fulfilling prophecy:

“Let us not wallow in the valley of despair, I say to you today, my friends.”

King spoke before the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and before the Voting Rights Act of 1965. “I Have a Dream” was surely one of the many forces that led to those important laws. In 1963, he warned against despair. By 1965, important, long-promised legislation had been enacted. At the same time, injustice, timidity, and despair are the constant enemies of progress. King warned us against all three. King saw that the faint of heart could not succeed. His movement needed to recognize opportunity and seize the moment. Like all great speakers, he taught a timeless lesson. 

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Barry Goldwater on Extremism

John Kelley Did Not Speak at the Right Time 

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

"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

In November 1964, Martin Luther King, Jr. spoke to the Methodist Student Leadership Conference in Lincoln Nebraska. He proclaimed that “while the law may not be able to change the hearts of men, it does change the habits of men. And when you begin to change the habits of men, pretty soon their attitudes will be changed and their hearts will be changed.” King called for churches to stand for social justice, and in more than just words. King called for legislative action. “There is nothing more tragic," King said, “than to sleep through a revolution.”

King talked about the important role that the Christian church plays in advancing human rights. In a lesson that we should, but often do not, remember, King emphasized that churches should stand foursquare behind social justice. Yet, then, as today, churches too often go the wrong way. Injustice did not disappear in 1964, and King’s words are as true today as they were back then.

Yesterday was Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, and it was temporarily heartening to hear right-wing politicians and church leaders say that they honored Dr. King’s legacy. They can prove their sincerity when they have a chance to support the John L. Lewis Voting Rights Act. Will they back up their words with action?

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

In this important but long-forgotten speech, King noted that church leaders and religious councils often made “noble pronouncements” about civil rights and social justice. All the same, he lamented that those pronouncements “filtered down all too slowly in some situations to local congregations.” He complained that “the Church is the most segregated major institution in America.” (As it is today, in 2021.) The church, he warned, has a long way to go to meet its own ideals. Church members often sing the old hymn, “In Christ there is no East or West,” he said, and yet, as they sing it, “we stand in the most segregated hour of America.”

And, nevertheless, King knew that cynics too often lament that it is not possible to impose noble values on people. Acknowledging that this is often true, King’s response was a model of incisive and ethical clarity. We cannot legislate how people feel, but we can legislate against bad actions:

“It may be true that morality cannot be legislated, but behavior can be regulated. It may be true that the law can’t change the heart, but it can restrain the heartless. It may be true that the law can’t make a man love me, but it can restrain him from lynching me and I think that’s pretty important also.”

We, today, must remember these oppositions. Too often, conservatives dismiss efforts to impose morality as “political correctness.” Indeed, they often sneer at political correctness as if they have a perfect right to say and do evil things and yet escape criticism.

For example, today, people refuse to wear a coronavirus mask because of their freedom, and yet feel free to spread disease to innocent people. Still, although people’s attitudes might not change, the law can force them to wear a mask. We can’t force people to believe that Black lives matter, but we can pass laws to protect Black lives.

That is the language of today. In the language of 1964, King refuted a similar kind of thinking. Indeed, he expressed his hope that, if people are forced to behave better, their hearts may eventually soften. Thus, King argued that the Christian church should and can properly support laws to encourage justice. He praised churches for their role in encouraging the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which had just been enacted when he gave this speech:

“And so it is the role of the Church to support meaningful legislation. And I am happy to say that, as we were struggling to get the civil rights bill through, we had the support of so many elements and segments of the Church community all across this nation.”

Continuing his speech, King underlined the role of Christian churches in making society better. By appealing to the conscience, Christian churches can improve our communities. He said:

“And I am convinced that the civil rights bill is a reality today because the religious forces of our nation were willing to join with the civil rights organizations and the other forces of goodwill. And it was this coalition of conscience that brought it about and this kind of coalition of conscience must continue, if our problems are to be solved.”

For all the honors done to him today, Martin Luther King, Jr. was extraordinarily unpopular during his own lifetime. To resist powerful forces of injustice requires great courage, and rewards often come slowly.

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

The old hymn to which King referred, “In Christ There Is No East or West,” is loosely based on a Bible verse, Galatians 3:28 – “there is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” The biblical imperative is that all of us are equal. Are the Christian churches of today teaching this important lesson? Living by this lesson? 

Speeches Show That There Are Two Different Christianities

So, it is fine as far as it goes, to honor Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. by tweeting his praise. Truly, however, as King showed in this thoughtful speech, we can also honor justice, and King, by passing legislation. When too many police officers feel free to kill black men for the crime of waving a cell phone, and when the President of the United States orders teargas to be sprayed around a church so he can wave a Bible that he has never read, then, yes, we need to remember King’s ideas, not just his birthday. We need to honor him with public action, not just empty words.



Scripture quotation from the Revised Standard Version of the Bible, copyright © 1946, 1952, and 1971 the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Once again, thanks to the good people at AmericanRhetoric.com, led by my former graduate school classmate Martin J. Medhurst, for publishing an accurate transcript of King's speech.

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

In his July 3, 2020 Mount Rushmore speech, President Donald Trump complained about mob rule and the destruction of history: “Our nation is witnessing a merciless campaign to wipe out our history, defame our heroes, erase our values, and indoctrinate our children.” To support his frightening warning, Trump cited – drumroll! – nonviolent protestor Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Co-opting King’s message to mean the exact opposite of what King said, Trump turned a vision of unity and justice into division, driven by the hidebound refusal to change.

We learn history by studying the past. Trump, however, reversed the past while pretending to revere our heritage

Trump’s speech brought demonstrations by Lakota complaining that the government had stolen Mount Rushmore from them. The event featured strict anti-social distancing policies during the coronavirus pandemic (the chairs were zip-tied together). Trump's rambling speech threw out right-wing tropes faster than a jai alai player flings balls.

Trump Cited Martin Luther King, Jr.

But the press overlooked that Trump, who recently tweeted a video of a man shouting “White Power,” called on the spirit of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. to endorse his ideas. He did so by referring to King's famous "I Have a Dream." Trump's brazen rhetorical move highlighted his goal to block social change at all costs.

Trump said:

“They would tear down the principles that propelled the abolition of slavery in America and, ultimately, around the world, ending an evil institution that had plagued humanity for thousands and thousands of years. Our opponents would tear apart the very documents that Martin Luther King used to express his dream, and the ideas that were the foundation of the righteous movement for Civil Rights. They would tear down the beliefs, culture, and identity that have made America the most vibrant and tolerant society in the history of the Earth.”

Shortly after, Trump misleadingly pretended that King endorsed America's foundational values:

“We must demand that our children are taught once again to see America as did Reverend Martin Luther King, when he said that the Founders had signed “a promissory note” to every future generation. Dr. King saw that the mission of justice required us to fully embrace our founding ideals. Those ideals are so important to us — the founding ideals. He called on his fellow citizens not to rip down their heritage, but to live up to their heritage. (Applause.)”

That is, of course, nothing like what King said. Trump is incorrect. So, let's now look at King's own words. 

Link: Martin Luther King's "I Have Been to the Mountaintop:" A Speech for the Ages

But Trump Missed King’s Point

 King did not endorse America’s social order; instead, he called on the nation to change and live up to its founding ideals. This is what he said in the “I Have a Dream” speech passage to which Trump referred:

“When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men, yes, black men as well as white men, would be guaranteed the ‘unalienable Rights’ of ‘Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.’ It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note, insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check, a check which has come back marked ‘insufficient funds.”

So, King did not say to lay down and accept how things were; he called on the nation to offer the human rights that the Declaration of Independence promised. Instead, King wanted us to ask, how could we have social order if we lacked justice? Indeed, King’s famous speech discussed issues that could have been torn from 2020’s headlines:

“We can never be satisfied as long as the Negro is the victim of the unspeakable horrors of police brutality.”

Quoting the prophet Isaiah, King said:

“We cannot be satisfied as long as a Negro in Mississippi cannot vote and a Negro in New York believes he has nothing for which to vote. No, no, we are not satisfied, and we will not be satisfied until ‘justice rolls down like waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream.’”

Despite King's hope, stories of police brutality still fill the news in 2020 and send protesters into the streets. Trump recently tweeted that a Black Lives Matter leader favored "Treason, Sedition, Insurrection." And we still find conservative politicians, including in my home state of Texas, working with all their might to make it hard for minorities to cast their ballots. Former Department of Justice voting rights prosecutor Justin Levitt recently said that, “The reversals in Texas voter ID and redistricting should be scandalous.” I testify from my own experience that obtaining a Texas ID is a nightmarish experience. Trump was not trying to fulfill King's vision; on the contrary, Trump wanted to overturn it. Yet, Trump twisted King's words to support his own views.

Link: Martin Luther King's "Give Us the Ballot" Used Christian Concepts

No, King did not tell people to accept the status quo. On the contrary, in his “Letter from a Birmingham City Jail,” he asked, what were White churchgoers thinking when the “bruised and weary Negro men and women decided to rise from the dark dungeons of complacency to the bright hills of creative protest?" He said “creative protest.” Not submission.


A Clash of Values

Yet, in his Mount Rushmore speech, Trump said not one word about voting rights or police brutality, instead complaining about “angry mobs” who protested racism. Instead of speaking for justice, Trump complained about a “left-wing cultural revolution” that “is designed to overthrow the American Revolution.” Unlike King, Trump made social stability, not justice, his prime value. According To Trump's speech,

“The radical ideology attacking our country advances under the banner of social justice. But in truth, it would demolish both justice and society.”

Which shall be the United States of America’s central value? Justice, or social order? A true conservative, Trump asserted that we can have no justice without social order. But King denied that we could enjoy social order if we lacked justice. While praising history in his Mount Rushmore speech, Trump made a bold excursion into historical unreality. He reversed King's values along the way. 

Technical note: Prosopopoeia is a classic rhetorical trope in which a speaker pretends to be speaking for someone else. This works best when the speaker pretends to be speaking for someone who is dead, like Martin Luther King, Jr., who cannot complain about being misquoted. Other examples might be, “your grandfather would turn over in his grave,” or “our Founding Fathers would never want to tear down a statue.” We often call upon revered figures to support our own ludicrous ideas. It always sounds traditional. This is what Trump did when he cited, twisted, and misquoted Martin Luther King, Jr.

Prosopopoeia” is a Greek word that means “personality.”

Thanks to my graduate school classmate Martin Medhurst and his intrepid team at AmericanRhetoric.com for publishing a definitive text of King's speech.

Image: National Park Service