The MLK “I Have a Dream” speech is usually thrashed about on or near MLK Day. I prefer the “Letter from Birmingham Jail”, myself.
Anyone else?
What that letter lacks in the charisma and style of “I Have a Dream”, I think it makes up for in sheer brilliance.
He makes the statement that he has no tolerance for people that that prefer a negative peace (a state of little or no tension) to a positive peace (which is a state of righteousness and and justice). That really struck me as quite a genius thing to notice, because so many people don’t realize the importance of that huge difference, which may seem at first glance to be a subtle difference.
I think I agree with you that it was the better ‘speech’.
Both wonderful speeches. I also like Give Us the Ballot.
An excerpt:
Give us the ballot, and we will no longer have to worry the federal government about our basic rights.
Give us the ballot (Yes), and we will no longer plead to the federal government for passage of an anti-lynching law; we will by the power of our vote write the law on the statute books of the South (All right) and bring an end to the dastardly acts of the hooded perpetrators of violence.
Give us the ballot (Give us the ballot), and we will transform the salient misdeeds of bloodthirsty mobs (Yeah) into the calculated good deeds of orderly citizens.
Give us the ballot (Give us the ballot), and we will fill our legislative halls with men of goodwill (All right now) and send to the sacred halls of Congress men who will not sign a “Southern Manifesto” because of their devotion to the manifesto of justice. (Tell 'em about it)
Give us the ballot (Yeah), and we will place judges on the benches of the South who will do justly and love mercy (Yeah), and we will place at the head of the southern states governors who will, who have felt not only the tang of the human, but the glow of the Divine.
Give us the ballot (Yes), and we will quietly and nonviolently, without rancor or bitterness, implement the Supreme Court’s decision of May seventeenth, 1954. (That’s right)
Yeah. That does have a nice rhythm, doesn’t it? I mean, just reading it, it does. I had never come across that before. Thanks for that.
Delivered the night before his death:
*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!*
I like his Nobel Prize speech. I keep a copy of it that I post on my door at work because (until this year) we didn’t get the day off. The part I post is this: