‘I’ve Been to the Mountaintop’

‘I’ve Been to the Mountaintop’

Thank you very kindly, my friends. As I listened to Ralph Abernathy
in his eloquent and generous introduction and then thought about myself,
I wondered who he was talking about. It’s always good to have your
closest friend and associate say something good about you. And Ralph is
the best friend that I have in the world. I’m delighted to see each of
you here tonight in spite of a storm warning. You reveal that you are
determined to go on anyhow.

Something is happening in Memphis;
something is happening in our world. And you know, if I were standing at
the beginning of time, with the possibility of taking a kind of general
and panoramic view of the whole human history up to now, and the
Almighty said to me, “Martin Luther King, which age would you like to
live in?” – I would take my mental flight by Egypt and I would watch
God’s children in their magnificent trek from the dark dungeons of Egypt
through, or rather across the Red Sea, through the wilderness on toward
the promised land. And in spite of its magnificence, I wouldn’t stop
there. I would move on by Greece, and take my mind to Mount Olympus. And
I would see Plato, Aristotle, Socrates, Euripides and Aristophanes
assembled around the Parthenon. And I would watch them around the
Parthenon as they discussed the great and eternal issues of reality. But
I wouldn’t stop there.

I would go on, even to the great heyday of
the Roman Empire. And I would see developments around there, through
various emperors and leaders. But I wouldn’t stop there. I would even
come up to the day of the Renaissance, and get a quick picture of all
that the Renaissance did for the cultural and aesthetic life of man. But
I wouldn’t stop there. I would even go by the way that the man for whom
I’m named had his habitat. And I would watch Martin Luther as he tacked
his ninety-five theses on the door at the church of Wittenberg.

But
I wouldn’t stop there. I would come on up even to 1863, and watch a
vacillating president by the name of Abraham Lincoln finally come to the
conclusion that he had to sign the Emancipation Proclamation. But I
wouldn’t stop there.

I would even come up to the early thirties,
and see a man grappling with the problems of the bankruptcy of his
nation. And come with an eloquent cry that we have nothing to fear but
fear itself.

But I wouldn’t stop there. Strangely enough, I would
turn to the Almighty, and say, “If you allow me to live just a few years
in the second half of the 20th century, I will be happy.” Now that’s a
strange statement to make, because the world is all messed up. The
nation is sick. Trouble is in the land; confusion all around. That’s a
strange statement. But I know, somehow, that only when it is dark enough
can you see the stars. And I see God working in this period of the
twentieth century in a way that men, in some strange way, are responding
– something is happening in our world. The masses of people are rising
up. And wherever they are assembled today, whether they are in
Johannesburg, South Africa; Nairobi, Kenya; Accra, Ghana; New York City;
Atlanta, Georgia; Jackson, Mississippi; or Memphis, Tennessee – the cry
is always the same – “We want to be free.”

And another reason
that I’m happy to live in this period is that we have been forced to a
point where we’re going to have to grapple with the problems that men
have been trying to grapple with through history, but the demand didn’t
force them to do it. Survival demands that we grapple with them. Men,
for years now, have been talking about war and peace. But now, no longer
can they just talk about it. It is no longer a choice between violence
and nonviolence in this world; it’s nonviolence or nonexistence! That is
where we are today.

And also in the human rights revolution, if
something isn’t done, and done in a hurry, to bring the colored peoples
of the world out of their long years of poverty, their long years of
hurt and neglect, the whole world is doomed. Now, I’m just happy that
God has allowed me to live in this period, to see what is unfolding. And
I’m happy that He’s allowed me to be in Memphis.

I can remember, I
can remember when Negroes were just going around as Ralph has said, so
often, scratching where they didn’t itch, and laughing when they were
not tickled. But that day is all over. We mean business now, and we are
determined to gain our rightful place in God’s world.

And that’s
all this whole thing is about. We aren’t engaged in any negative protest
and in any negative arguments with anybody. We are saying that we are
determined to be men. We are determined to be people. We are saying that
we are God’s children. And that we don’t have to live like we are
forced to live.

Now, what does all of this mean in this great
period of history? It means that we’ve got to stay together. We’ve got
to stay together and maintain unity. You know, whenever Pharaoh wanted
to prolong the period of slavery in Egypt, he had a favorite, favorite
formula for doing it. What was that? He kept the slaves fighting among
themselves. But whenever the slaves get together, something happens in
Pharaoh’s court, and he cannot hold the slaves in slavery. When the
slaves get together, that’s the beginning of getting out of slavery. Now
let us maintain unity.

Secondly, let us keep the issues where
they are. The issue is injustice. The issue is the refusal of Memphis to
be fair and honest in its dealings with its public servants who happen
to be sanitation workers. Now, we’ve got to keep attention on that.
That’s always the problem with a little violence. You know what happened
the other day, and the press dealt only with the window-breaking. I
read the articles. They very seldom got around to mentioning the fact
that one thousand, three hundred sanitation workers were on strike, and
that Memphis is not being fair to them, and that Mayor Loeb is in dire
need of a doctor. They didn’t get around to that.

Now we’re going
to march again, and we’ve got to march again, in order to put the issue
where it is supposed to be – and force everybody to see that there are
thirteen hundred of God’s children here suffering, sometimes going
hungry, going through dark and dreary nights wondering how this thing is
going to come out. That’s the issue. And we’ve got to say to the
nation: we know how it’s coming out. For when people get caught up with
that which is right and they are willing to sacrifice for it, there is
no stopping point short of victory!

We aren’t going to let any
mace stop us. We are masters in our nonviolent movement in disarming
police forces; they don’t know what to do, I’ve seen them so often. I
remember in Birmingham, Alabama, when we were in that majestic struggle
there, we would move out of the 16th Street Baptist Church day after
day; by the hundreds we would move out. And Bull Connor would tell them
to send the dogs forth, and they did come; but we just went before the
dogs singing, “Ain’t gonna let nobody turn me around.” Bull Connor next
would say, “Turn the fire hoses on.” And as I said to you the other
night, Bull Connor didn’t know history. He knew a kind of physics that
somehow didn’t relate to the transphysics that we knew about. And that
was the fact that there was a certain kind of fire that no water could
put out. And we went before the fire hoses; we had known water. If we
were Baptist or some other denomination, we had been immersed. If we
were Methodist, and some others, we had been sprinkled, but we knew
water. That couldn’t stop us.

And we just went on before the dogs
and we would look at them; and we’d go on before the water hoses and we
would look at it, and we’d just go on singing, “Over my head I see
freedom in the air.” And then we would be thrown in the paddy wagons,
and sometimes we were stacked in there like sardines in a can. And they
would throw us in, and old Bull would say, “Take them off,” and they
did; and we would just go on in the paddy wagon singing, “We Shall
Overcome.” And every now and then we’d get in the jail, and we’d see the
jailers looking through the windows being moved by our prayers, and
being moved by our words and our songs. And there was a power there
which Bull Connor couldn’t adjust to; and so we ended up transforming
Bull into a steer, and we won our struggle in Birmingham.

Now
we’ve got to go on in Memphis just like that. I call upon you to be with
us when we go out Monday. Now about injunctions: We have an injunction
and we’re going into court tomorrow morning to fight this illegal,
unconstitutional injunction. All we say to America is, “Be true to what
you said on paper.” If I lived in China or even Russia, or any
totalitarian country, maybe I could understand some of these illegal
injunctions. Maybe I could understand the denial of certain basic First
Amendment privileges, because they hadn’t committed themselves to that
over there. But somewhere I read of the freedom of assembly. Somewhere I
read of the freedom of speech. Somewhere I read of the freedom of the
press. Somewhere I read that the greatness of America is the right to
protest for right. And so just as I say we aren’t going to let any dogs
or water hoses turn us around, we aren’t going to let any injunction
turn us around. We are going on.

We need all of you. And you know
what’s beautiful to me, is to see all of these ministers of the Gospel.
It’s a marvelous picture. Who is it that is supposed to articulate the
longings and aspirations of the people more than the preacher? Somehow
the preacher must have a kind of fire shut up in his bones and whenever
injustice is around, he must tell it. Somehow the preacher must be an
Amos, and say, “When God speaks, who can but prophesy?” Again, with
Amos, “Let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like a mighty
stream.” Somehow, the preacher must say with Jesus, “The spirit of the
Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to deal with the problems
of the poor.”

And I want to commend the preachers, under the
leadership of these noble men: James Lawson, one who has been in this
struggle for many years; he’s been to jail for struggling; he’s been
kicked out of Vanderbilt University for this struggle, but he’s still
going on, fighting for the rights of his people. Rev. Ralph Jackson,
Billy Kiles; I could just go right on down the list, but time will not
permit. But I want to thank all of them. And I want you to thank them,
because so often, preachers aren’t concerned about anything but
themselves. And I’m always happy to see a relevant ministry.

It’s
all right to talk about “long white robes over yonder,” in all of its
symbolism. But ultimately people want some suits and dresses and shoes
to wear down here! It’s all right to talk about “streets flowing with
milk and honey,” but God has commanded us to be concerned about the
slums down here, and his children who can’t eat three square meals a
day. It’s all right to talk about the new Jerusalem, but one day, God’s
preachers must talk about the new New York, the new Atlanta, the new
Philadelphia, the new Los Angeles, the new Memphis, Tennessee. This is
what we have to do.

Now the other thing we’ll have to do is this:
Always anchor our external direct action with the power of economic
withdrawal. Now, we are poor people. Individually, we are poor when you
compare us with white society in America. We are poor. Never stop and
forget that collectively – that means all of us together – collectively
we are richer than all the nations in the world, with the exception of
nine. Did you ever think about that? After you leave the United States,
Soviet Russia, Great Britain, West Germany, France, and I could name the
others, the American Negro collectively is richer than most nations of
the world. We have an annual income of more than thirty billion dollars a
year, which is more than all of the exports of the United States, and
more than the national budget of Canada. Did you know that? That’s power
right there, if we know how to pool it.

We don’t have to argue
with anybody. We don’t have to curse and go around acting bad with our
words. We don’t need any bricks and bottles. We don’t need any Molotov
cocktails. We just need to go around to these stores, and to these
massive industries in our country, and say, “God sent us by here, to say
to you that you’re not treating his children right. And we’ve come by
here to ask you to make the first item on your agenda fair treatment,
where God’s children are concerned. Now, if you are not prepared to do
that, we do have an agenda that we must follow. And our agenda calls for
withdrawing economic support from you.”

And so, as a result of
this, we are asking you tonight, to go out and tell your neighbors not
to buy Coca-Cola in Memphis. Go by and tell them not to buy Sealtest
milk. Tell them not to buy – what is the other bread? – Wonder Bread.
And what is the other bread company, Jesse? Tell them not to buy Hart’s
bread. As Jesse Jackson has said, up to now, only the garbage men have
been feeling pain; now we must kind of redistribute the pain. We are
choosing these companies because they haven’t been fair in their hiring
policies; and we are choosing them because they can begin the process of
saying they are going to support the needs and the rights of these men
who are on strike. And then they can move on downtown and tell Mayor
Loeb to do what is right.

But not only that, we’ve got to
strengthen black institutions. I call upon you to take your money out of
the banks downtown and deposit your money in Tri-State Bank-we want a
“bank-in” movement in Memphis. So go by the savings and loan
association. I’m not asking you something we don’t do ourselves at SCLC.
Judge Hooks and others will tell you that we have an account here in
the savings and loan association from the Southern Christian Leadership
Conference. We’re telling you to follow what we’re doing. Put your money
there. You have six or seven black insurance companies in the city of
Memphis. Take out your insurance there. We want to have an
“insurance-in.”

Now these are some practical things we can do. We
begin the process of building a greater economic base. And at the same
time, we are putting pressure where it really hurts. I ask you to follow
through here.

Now, let me say as I move to my conclusion that
we’ve got to give ourselves to this struggle until the end. Nothing
would be more tragic than to stop at this point, in Memphis. We’ve got
to see it through. And when we have our march, you need to be there. If
it means leaving work, if it means leaving school, be there. Be
concerned about your brother. You may not be on strike. But either we go
up together, or we go down together.

Let us develop a kind of
dangerous unselfishness. One day a man came to Jesus; and he wanted to
raise some questions about some vital matters in life. At points, he
wanted to trick Jesus, and show him that he knew a little more than
Jesus knew, and throw him off base. Now that question could have easily
ended up in a philosophical and theological debate. But Jesus
immediately pulled that question from mid-air, and placed it on a
dangerous curve between Jerusalem and Jericho. And he talked about a
certain man, who fell among thieves. You remember that a Levite and a
priest passed by on the other side. They didn’t stop to help him. And
finally a man of another race came by. He got down from his beast,
decided not to be compassionate by proxy. But he got down with him,
administering first aid, and helped the man in need. Jesus ended up
saying, this was the good man, this was the great man, because he had
the capacity to project the “I” into the “thou,” and to be concerned
about his brother. Now you know, we use our imagination a great deal to
try to determine why the priest and the Levite didn’t stop. At times we
say they were busy going to a church meeting – an ecclesiastical
gathering – and they had to get on down to Jerusalem so they wouldn’t be
late for their meeting. At other times we would speculate that there
was a religious law that “One who was engaged in religious ceremonials
was not to touch a human body twenty-four hours before the ceremony.”
And every now and then we begin to wonder whether maybe they were not
going down to Jerusalem, or down to Jericho, rather to organize a
“Jericho Road Improvement Association.” That’s a possibility. Maybe they
felt that it was better to deal with the problem from the causal root,
rather than to get bogged down with an individual effort.

But I’m
going to tell you what my imagination tells me. It’s possible that those
men were afraid. You see, the Jericho road is a dangerous road. I
remember when Mrs. King and I were first in Jerusalem. We rented a car
and drove from Jerusalem down to Jericho. And as soon as we got on that
road, I said to my wife, “I can see why Jesus used this as the setting
for his parable.” It’s a winding, meandering road. It’s really conducive
for ambushing. You start out in Jerusalem, which is about 1,200 miles,
or rather 1,200 feet, above sea level.

And by the time you get
down to Jericho, fifteen or twenty minutes later, you’re about 2,200
feet below sea level. That’s a dangerous road. In the days of Jesus it
came to be known as the “Bloody Pass.” And you know, it’s possible that
the priest and the Levite looked over that man on the ground and
wondered if the robbers were still around. Or it’s possible that they
felt that the man on the ground was merely faking. And he was acting
like he had been robbed and hurt, in order to seize them over there,
lure them there for quick and easy seizure. And so the first question
that the Levite asked was, “If I stop to help this man, what will happen
to me?” But then the Good Samaritan came by. And he reversed the
question: “If I do not stop to help this man, what will happen to him?”

That’s
the question before you tonight. Not, “If I stop to help the sanitation
workers, what will happen to my job?” Not, “If I stop to help the
sanitation workers what will happen to all of the hours that I usually
spend in my office every day and every week as a pastor?” The question
is not, “If I stop to help this man in need, what will happen to me?”
The question is, “If I do not stop to help the sanitation workers, what
will happen to them?” That’s the question.

Let us rise up tonight
with a greater readiness. Let us stand with a greater determination. And
let us move on in these powerful days, these days of challenge to make
America what it ought to be. We have an opportunity to make America a
better nation. And I want to thank God, once more, for allowing me to be
here with you.

You know, several years ago, I was in New York
City autographing the first book that I had written. And while sitting
there autographing books, a demented black woman came up. The only
question I heard from her was, “Are you Martin Luther King?” And I was
looking down writing, and I said yes. And the next minute I felt
something beating on my chest. Before I knew it I had been stabbed by
this demented woman. I was rushed to Harlem Hospital. It was a dark
Saturday afternoon. And that blade had gone through, and the X-rays
revealed that the tip of the blade was on the edge of my aorta, the main
artery. And once that’s punctured, you drown in your own blood – that’s
the end of you.

It came out in the New York Times the next
morning, that if I had merely sneezed, I would have died. Well, about
four days later, they allowed me, after the operation, after my chest
had been opened, and the blade had been taken out, to move around in the
wheelchair in the hospital. They allowed me to read some of the mail
that came in, and from all over the states, and the world, kind letters
came in. I read a few, but one of them I will never forget. I had
received one from the President and the Vice President. I’ve forgotten
what those telegrams said. I’d received a visit and a letter from the
Governor of New York, but I’ve forgotten what the letter said. But there
was another letter that came from a little girl, a young girl who was a
student at the White Plains High School. And I looked at that letter,
and I’ll never forget it. It said simply, “Dear Dr. King: I am a
ninth-grade student at the White Plains High School.” She said, “While
it should not matter, I would like to mention that I am a white girl. I
read in the paper of your misfortune, and of your suffering. And I read
that if you had sneezed, you would have died. And I’m simply writing you
to say that I’m so happy that you didn’t sneeze.”

And I want to
say tonight, I want to say that I too am happy that I didn’t sneeze.
Because if I had sneezed, I wouldn’t have been around here in 1960, when
students all over the South started sitting-in at lunch counters. And I
knew that as they were sitting in, they were really standing up for the
best in the American dream. And taking the whole nation back to those
great wells of democracy which were dug deep by the Founding Fathers in
the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. If I had sneezed, I
wouldn’t have been around here in 1961 when we decided to take a ride
for freedom and ended segregation in interstate travel. If I had
sneezed, I wouldn’t have been around here in 1962, when Negroes in
Albany, Georgia, decided to straighten their backs up. And whenever men
and women straighten their backs up, they are going somewhere, because a
man can’t ride your back unless it is bent! If I had sneezed, I
wouldn’t have been here in 1963, when the black people of Birmingham,
Alabama, aroused the conscience of this nation, and brought into being
the Civil Rights Bill. If I had sneezed, I wouldn’t have had a chance
later that year, in August, to try to tell America about a dream that I
had had. If I had sneezed, I wouldn’t have been down in Selma, Alabama,
to see the great movement there. If I had sneezed, I wouldn’t have been
in Memphis to see the community rally around those brothers and sisters
who are suffering. I’m so happy that I didn’t sneeze.

And they
were telling me, now it doesn’t matter now. It really doesn’t matter
what happens now. I left Atlanta this morning, and as we got started on
the plane, there were six of us, the pilot said over the public address
system, “We are sorry for the delay, but we have Dr. Martin Luther King
on the plane. And to be sure that all of the bags were checked, and to
be sure that nothing would be wrong on the plane, we had to check out
everything carefully. And we’ve had the plane protected and guarded all
night.”

And then I got to Memphis. And some began to say the
threats, or talk about the threats that were out. What would happen to
me from some of our sick white brothers?

Well, I don’t know what
will happen now. We’ve got some difficult days ahead. But it really
doesn’t matter with me now. Because I’ve been to the mountaintop. And I
don’t mind. Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity
has its place. But I’m not concerned about that now. I just want to do
God’s will. And He’s allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I’ve
looked over. And I’ve seen the promised land. I may not get there with
you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to
the promised land! So I’m happy, tonight. I’m not worried about
anything. I’m not fearing any man. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the
coming of the Lord!