On February 20, 1957, Martin Luther King, Jr. came to Peddie’s campus to speak to our students on the subject of race relations in the United States. The then 28-year-old minister spoke from the podium in Ayer Memorial Chapel without notes or a script. For the first time, we share these excerpts from that speech, originally published in the Trenton Evening Times. 

It is impossible to look out into the wide arena of American life without noticing a real crisis in race relations. Now this crisis has been precipitated on this one hand by the determined resistance of the reactionary elements in the South and to the Supreme Court’s momentous decision out-lawing segregation in the public schools. This resistance has often risen to ominous proportions. And as you well know, many states in the South have risen up in open defiance. 

The legislative halls of the South ring loud with such words as interposition and nullification. And also a modern version of the Ku Klux Klan has arisen in the form of so-called “respectable” white citizens council. The methods of this citizens council are the methods of intimidation to actual economic reprisals against Negroes and white persons of good will who dare take a stand for justice.

And so all of these forces have conjoined to make for massive resistance and the crisis has been precipitated on the other hand by the radical change in the Negro’s evaluation of himself. It is probably true to say that if the Negro continued to think of himself in inferior terms and patiently accepted injustice and exploitation, there would be no crisis in race relations. But it is at this very point that the change has come, for the Negro throughout America and throughout the South has a new sense of dignity and destiny, a new sense of self-respect.

Against Oppression

All of this means that the struggle will not soon disappear. It is sociologically and historically true that privileged classes do not give up their privileges without strong resistance. It is also sociologically and historically true that once oppressed people rise up against oppression there is no stopping point short of full freedom. And so realism impels us to admit that the struggle will continue until justice is a reality for oppressed and disinherited people all over the world. 

Now, I am delighted with the fact that the struggle will continue. The great question which confronts oppressed people all over the world is this: How will the struggle for justice be waged? I think that is the most significant question of our civilization.

It seems to me that if the oppressed people in general, and the American Negro in particular, falls victim to the dangerous philosophy of violence, unborn generations will be the recipients of a long and an endless reign of meaningless heritage of endless chaos. And so, violence is not the way.

There is another method, there is another way to achieve justice and we might refer to it as the method of non-violent resistance — the method of passive resistance or whatever word you choose to use. There is a way to achieve justice without violence. This method of non-violent resistance was made popular in our generation through the work of Mohandus K. Ghandi India, who used it to free his people from the domination of the British Empire and it seems to me that this is the method that oppressed people all over the world should use rather than the method of violence and tragic hatred.

At times, a non-violent resistor finds it necessary to indulge in boycott as merely a means to know that a boycott is not an end within itself. He realizes that a boycott is merely a means to awaken a sense of shame within the oppressor. But the end is reconciliation, the end is redemption, the end is to change and transform the soul of the oppressor. 

And so the aftermath of non-violent resistance is the creation of a better community wherein the aftermath of violence is the creation of tragic bitterness. Another thing that can be said about this method of non-violent resistance is that it attacks forces of evil rather than individuals who might be caught up in these forces. The non-violent resistor seeks to defeat evil rather rather than persons who may happen to be victimized with evil. And that is a great distinction. We have the evil deed rather than the person who happens to be evil.

As I like to say in Montgomery: “The tension here and the tension anywhere while we find races are confronting conditions of injustice, the tension is not so much between races, not between Negro people and white people, but the tension is at bottom between justice and injustice, between the forces of light and the forces of darkness, between the forces of good and the forces of evil.”

And so, if there is a victory, if there is a victory for the forces of integration in America, it will not be a victory for 16,000,000 Negroes, but it will be a victory for justice, a victory for truth, a victory for the forces of light. The aim must always be to defeat evil and not individuals who may happen to be caught up in the system of evil. Our aim in Montgomery and throughout the South is to defeat injustice and not persons who may happen to be unjust.

Creative Good Will

I realize that all talk about loving those who oppose you and loving those who are seeking to defeat you can be a sort of empty type of thing. We can be indulging in empty words, fi we do not understand what we mean by love at this point. When I think of love at this point, I am thinking of understanding good will toward all men. Not a sentimental type of love, not an affectionate type of love, but understanding, creative good will for all men.

This is a faith that will keep us going amid all the experiences of life. This, in brief, is the method of non-violent resistance, God grant that all men struggling for freedom and justice will reach out for this method, that they will never fall victim to the temptation of using the method of violence and indulging in hate campaigns and I predict that, if men and the oppressed peoples of the world will use this method of non-violence and will continue to struggle with love in their hearts and with understanding good will, in a few years we will be able to see a new world — a world in which men will be able to live together as brothers — a world in which men will have the dignity and worth of all human personality — a world in which men will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks — a world in which men will come to see the real meaning of God’s kingdom, and we will be able to live together as brothers — in the Fatherhood of God and the Brotherhood of man. This is altogether possible, and God grant that it will come through determination to work with understanding good will and love in our hearts and our determination with non-violent spirits.