Statement and Related Comments of Martin Luther King Jr.

Given to the Subcommittee on Executive Reorganization, Committee on Government Operations

US Senate, Washington D.C

Thursday December 15, 1966 The Subcommittee met, pursuant to recess, at 10 a.m., in room 318, Old Senate Office Building, Senator Abram Ribicoff

(chairman) presiding. Present: Senators Ribicoff and Kennedy (New York). Also Present: Jerome Sonosky, staff director

and general counsel; Esther Newberg, chief clerk; Robert Wager, assistant counsel; Paul Danaceau and Richard Bowen,

professional staff members, Subcommittee on Executive Reorganization; James R. Calloway, chief clerk and staff

director, and Eli E. Nobleman, professional staff member, Committee on Government Operations.

Senator Ribicoff: The Committee will be in order. The closing and final witness in this series of 3 weeks is the

Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. We welcome you to the subcommittee Dr. King. Wont you proceed as you will, sir?

STATEENT OF REVEREND MARTIN LUTHER KING JR., PRESIDENT, SOUTHERN CHRISTIAN LEADERSHIP

CONFERENCE (SCLC); ACCOMPANIED BY THE REVERENT ANDREW J. YOUNG, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR,

SOUTHERN CHRISTIAN LEADERSHIP CONFERENCE; AND THE REVEREND WALTER E. FAUNTROY,

DIRECTOR, WASHINGTON BUREAU, SOUTHERN CHRISTIAN LEADERSHIP CONFERENCE

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.: Thank you very kindly Senator Ribicoff. Let me say how very delighted I am to

be here, and I am deeply grateful for the opportunity to testify on some of the vital issues facing our Nation

today.

I come before you in dual role, for the serious problems before your subcommittee affect me in two

ways. As an American citizen, I share the concern for restoring health to our cities and urban areas they are becoming the dominant face of our Nation.

But as an American Negro, I am specifically and passionately concerned with the racial ghettos of our

cities for the ghetto exists at the very core of, and is both a part and a cause of our cities sickness. CONFUSION OF COMMITMENT

The new era of abundance finds us not only with proliferating ghettos, but it finds us enmeshed in confused

commitments and distorted values. Our confusion can be illustrated by an unanswered question. Are we more

concerned with the size, power, and wealth of our society, or with creating a more just society? The failure to

pursue justice is not only a moral default. Without it, social tensions will grow and the recurring turbulence in

the streets will persist despite disapproval or repressive action. Even more, a withered sense of justice in an

expanding society leads to corruption of the lives of all Americans. All too many of those who live in affluent

America ignore those who exist in poor America. In doing so, the affluent Americans will eventually have to

face themselves with the question that Eichmann chose to ignore; how responsible am I for the well-being of

my fellows? To ignore evil is to become an accomplice to it.

THE URBAN POOR

Is there evil in America today? In the sense of the systematic physical extermination of a people but in the sense

of the destruction of hope, after the raising of expectations, the forced separation of the poor, whether black or

white, from the rest of society, the confinement to poverty and squalor of millions of Americans. To be born a

Negro in an American city, for most of us, means to be under the main stratum of our society to be underemployed, or unemployed, or underpaid; to be undereducated and ill housed; to face illness and perhaps

death, under cared for; to face a life of little hope, entrapped by both color and need.

American cities are not the City of God not the City of Man. They contain the residues of exploitation,

of waste, of neglect, of indifference. The poor and the discriminated huddle in the big cities the poorhouses of the welfare state while affluent America displays its new gadgets in the crisp homes of suburbia. Will we move to provide a moral balance in American life and give priority to the disinherited? Or shall we continue our

token attention?

Despite the shift from agriculture to industry and the decline in the share of national income going to

rent, interest, and dividends, the share of the economic pie going to the bottom 20 percent of American families

has not changed since World War II. This is because of increasing inequality in wages, the heavy incidence of

unemployment among Negroes and other minority groups and the failure of social security and welfare

payments to keep up with the rising demands of society.

The rising affluence of America has benefited the better-off more than the poor and discriminated. Our

income record is acceptable only if we wish to tolerate a society in which the richest fifth of the population is 10

times as rich as the poorest fifth, and in which the average Negro earns half as much as his white counterpart.

EDUCATIONAL PROBLEMS IN CITY SCHOOLS

In education, the picture is also tragic. In big cities the school achievement of Negroes and other disadvantaged

groups has lagged far behind that of middle-class populations and there has been an actual decline of

achievement among the disadvantaged with the passage of the school years.

The problems of education in the early school years pursue the student in the later years. Less than 5

percent of all college students are Negro, even though Negroes are more than 11 percent of the college age

population. College education increasingly becomes the key to a secure decent, well-paid job. It is not enough

to aim for reducing dropouts among the poor the school experience must be made hospitable and effective enough so that the discriminated youngsters go on to college.

The problems of education in the early school years pursue the student in the later years. Less than 5

percent of all college students are Negro, even though Negroes are more than 11 percent of the college age

population. College education increasingly becomes the key to a secure, decent, well-paid job. It is not enough

to aim for reducing dropouts among the poor the school experience must be made hospitable and effective enough so that the discriminated youngsters go on to college.

GOALS ARE TOO LOW

The sorry record of income, public service, education, indicates that we are not doing enough. A major reason

for our failures is that we aim too low. Our goal is not to bring the discriminated up to a limited, particular level,

but to reduce the gap between them and the rest of American society. As standards of life rise for affluent

Americans, we cannot peg the poor at the old levels of subsistence. For example, the $3,000 poverty line, set too low to begin with, must not only be adjusted for changes in the cost of living which in any case tend to underestimate the more rapid increase in the costs of the poor in the present inflationary period but for changes in the average standard of living of all America. We are dealing with issues of inequality, of relative

standing. This is true whether we have in mind the conditions of cities in relation to suburbs, or the poor in

relation to the rest of society.

One explanation of the poor educational results of Negro and other center city children alleges that there

is something basically wrong with the educational capacities of these children. But how can we be confident of

this when we have not given these youth an equal opportunity at a decent education?

SUMMARY OF THE METROPOLITAN STUDIES PROGRAM

Consider these facts from the important investigation of the Metropolitan studies program of Syracuse

University. In 1962, suburbs spent $145 more per pupil than did the central cities. Even more disturbing is the

sad fact that in 1957 the differences in educational expenditures between big city and suburb were very small;

since then, the disparities have grown. Furthermore, the cities are discriminated against the suburbs receive $40 more per pupil in State aid than did the cities. As the Carnegie Quarterly, fall 1966, summarizes the study;

The point is that the nation is devoting many more resources to educating suburban children than city children. We are spending more money to educate the children of

the well-off than the children of the poor, even though the educational needs of poor

children are far greater than those of affluent children.

Clearly, the Carnegie summary is accurate in stating that;

To achieve the substance rather than merely the theoretical form of equal educational opportunity requires the application of unequal resources; more, rather

than less to the students from poor homes.

The values of the marketplace supersede the goals of social justice. We narrowly define economic cost and

ignore social costs, as with the air pollution of the city. We rely on the unseen hand of economic growth to do

the task of social justice. The theme of efficiency overwhelms the need for equity. REBALANCE NATIONAL PRIORITIES

We need a rebalancing of our national priorities. As the Carnegie Quarterly issue that I have quoted declares

A great deal of {money} is spent in this country everyday, for education and for housing freeways, war, national parks, liquor, cosmetics, advertising, and a lot of

other things.

It is a question of the allocation of money, which means the establishing of priorities.

Instead of joyfully committing ourselves to the war on poverty, a grudging parsimonious allocation of

resources is measured out as if we feared to overkill. In contrast, the exploration of space engages not only our

enthusiasm but our patriotism. Developing it as a global race, we have intensified its inherent drama and

brought its adventure into every living room, nursery, shop and office. No such fervor nor exhilaration attends

the war on poverty. There is impatience with its problems, indifference toward its progress, and pronounced

hostility toward its errors. Without denying the value of scientific endeavor, there is a striking absurdity in

committing billions to reach the moon where no people live, and from which none presently can benefit, while

the densely populated slums are allocated miniscule appropriations. With the continuation of these strange

values in a few years we can be assured that we will set a man on the moon and with an adequate telescope he

will be able to see the slum on earth with their intensified congestion, decay, and turbulence. On what scale of

values is this, a program of progress?

THE WASTE OF WAR

In still another area the expenditure of resources knows no restraints here, out abundance is fully recognized and enthusiastically squandered. This is the waste of war. While the antipoverty program is cautiously initiated,

zealously supervised, and evaluated for immediate results, billions are liberally expended for ill-considered

warfare. The recently revealed misestimate the war budget amounts to #10 billion for a single year. The error

alone is more than five times the amount committed to antipoverty programs.

The security we profess to seek in foreign adventures, we will lose in our decaying cities. The bombs in

Vietnam explode at home they destroy the hopes and possibilities for a decent America. Beyond the advantage of diverting huge resources for constructive social goals, ending the war would

give impetus to significant disarmament agreements. With the resources accruing from termination of the war,

arms race, and excessive space races the elimination of all poverty could become an immediate national reality.

At present the war on poverty is not even a battle, it is scarcely a skirmish.

Poverty, urban problems, and social progress generally are ignored when the guns of war become a

national obsession. When it is not our security that is at stake, but questionable and vague commitments to

reactionary regimes, values disintegrate into foolish and adolescent slogans.

The chaos of the cities, the persistence of poverty, the degenerating of our national prestige throughout

the world, are compelling arguments for achieving peace agreements.

AFFIRMATIVE EFFORTS TO ELIMINATE POVERTY NEEDED

It is essential to prevent the blight of poverty by assuring jobs and income for all. Chronic poverty destroys

capacities. Small efforts later to alleviate the plight of the poor are insufficient to restore abilities and repair

damage. We need a conscious and strong policy to prevent poverty.

We do much too little to assure decent, secure employment. And then we castigate the unemployment

and underemployment for being misfits and neer-do-wells. We still assume that unemployment usually results from personal defects; our solutions, therefore, largely tend to be personal and individual. We need to take quite

a different view of the causes and cures of the economic misfortunes of the Negro and the poor and to aim at

establishing income security.

NEW APPROACHES TO EMPLOYMENT

The general economic expansion of recent years has benefited relatively little the Negro, the poor, and the

unskilled. Indeed, with respect to Negro youth, the appalling facts disclose that the more prosperity rises, the

faster do they sink. In October of 1965 the unemployment rate for nonwhite youth was 16.7 percent. A year

later it was 19.7 percent. While unemployment for Negro youth rose by almost 20 percent in 1 year, for white

youth, it declined from 8.9 percent to 8.5 percent. We need an intensive and passionate effort to adapt

employment for the neglected who are forced to the end of the employment line and whose number seldom

comes up.

We need a vast expansion of public services and facilities alone the line suggested by the freedom

budget of A. Philip Randolph, with assurances that construction employment will deliberately aim at the hiring

of the poor and Negroes. Beyond that, we need human service employment so that nonprofessionals can help

provide the desperately needed services in the ghetto of education and social welfare. And there must be

channels built so that nonprofessionals can be upgraded into full professionals. We must avoid a new color line

of black nonprofessionals. We must avoid a new color line of black nonprofessionals and white professionals.

Universities should adapt to the needs of nonprofessionals and develop second chances at credentials.

JOB TRAINING IS NOT ENOUGH

The cry has been for training. But there has not been any guarantee of employment for those trained. All too frequently, training has been a cruel hoax on the poor and Negroes, as the trained are not placed on jobs and are

shifted to other training programs or allowed to drift in the limbo of the irregular marginal economy which

provides a shadow substance for all too many. Private employers have not adequately accepted their social

responsibility to hire Negroes. The emphasis should not be on creaming the high-skilled Negroes, but on developing the low skilled. Employers should be subsidized to need the barrier to the secure economy. The

employment programs should be built around the idea of employment first training later. The alienation of many youth is the other side of societys neglect of and anger at them. While they are not reported in the statistics of the unemployed, they are casualties of the indifferent society. They are rootless

in the big society. We pay attention to them only when their anger explodes. Their summers of violence follow

the winters of our neglect. Sprinklers on fire hydrants may cool the hot pavements of the city streets but not the

anger of our neglected youth.

RAISE MINIMUM WAGES

Thirty percent of poor families are headed by individuals who work full time. A decent income from work

should be assured all Americans. We act slowly to put an adequate floor under wages because we believe that

there is a rational, economic basis for the wages that people receive. Yet the spread of wages for different jobs

is much greater in the United States than in other western countries. We tend to accept these differences in

rewards as either natural or necessary, but economists assure me that it is very difficult to account for wage

differences in a systematic manner. Nevertheless, critics of a higher minimum wage are always raising the

specter of the destruction of jobs. So far, this has not happened perhaps because we have moved so slowly to raise the minimum wage floor. To raise minimum wages to levels that would enable a man to support his family

with dignity might result in the loss of some jobs. It is my feeling that the jobs that would disappear would be

worth losing. One decent job in the family might be more salutary than two or three marginal ones. We are not

asking that everyone be made rich by congressional action we are, however, maintaining that even within accepted boundaries, we can do more by way of equitable income distribution.

For the past years we have sought to reduce poverty at discount prices and we have at best created a

creaking, unstable structure.

A multiplicity of legislative enactments have addressed themselves to facets of racial discrimination and

poverty without abolishing either of them. Many of us who have led movements for those reforms have

centered our criticism on their narrow scope. We have proposed larger and broader programs in the same

general direction in the hope that if the net is made larger it would embrace more.

However, we may not have reached a point at which a change of direction toward a new concept holds a

surer promise of solution.

INDIRECT, PIECEMEAL ATTACK ON POVERTY INADEQUATE

Our past thinking has proceeded from a premise that poverty is a consequence of multiple evils; lack of

education restricting job opportunities; poor housing which stultified home life and suppressed initiative; fragile

family relationships which distorted personality development. The logic of this approach suggested that each of

these causes be attacked, one by one. Hence, a housing program to transform living conditions, improved

educational facilities to furnish tools for better job opportunities, and family counseling to create better personal

adjustments were designed. In combination, these measures were intended to remove the causes of poverty.

While none of these remedies in itself is unsound, all have a fatal disadvantage the programs have never proceeded on a coordinated basis or at similar rates of development. Housing measure fluctuated at the whims

of legislative bodies. They have been piecemeal. Educational reforms have been even more sluggish and

entangled in bureaucratic stalling and economy-dominated decisions. Family assistance stagnated in neglect and

then suddenly was discovered to be the central issue on the basis of hasty and superficial studies. At no time has

a total coordinated and fully adequate program been conceived, and as a consequence, fragmentary and

spasmodic reforms have failed to reach the needs of the poor.

In addition to absence of coordination and sufficiency, the programs of the past all have another

common characteristic they are indirect. Each seeks to solve poverty by first solving another condition. KING SUPPORTS GUARANTEED ANNUAL INCOME

I am convinced that the simplest approach will prove to be the most revolutionary the solution to poverty is to abolish it directly by a now rather widely discussed measure the guaranteed annual income. Earlier in this century this proposal would have been greeted with thunderous ridicule and denunciation

as destructive of initiative and responsibility.

At that time, poverty was considered the measure of the individuals abilities and talents. In the simplistic thinking of that day the absence of worldly goods indicated a want of industrious habits and moral

fiber.

We have come a long way in our understanding of human motivation and of the blind operation of our

economic system. Now we rather widely acknowledge that dislocations in the market operation of our economy

and the prevalence of discrimination thrust people into idleness and bind them in constant or frequent

unemployment against their will. The poor are less often dismissed from our conscience today by branding

them as despised and incompetent. We now also know that no matter how dynamically the economy develops

and expands it does not eliminate all poverty.

EXPAND CONSUMER MARKET

We have come to the point where we must make the non-producer a consumer or we will find ourselves

drowning in a sea of consumer goods. We have so energetically mastered production that we now must give

attention to distribution.

As the problem clarifies itself it can be seen that our emphasis should shift from exclusive attention to

putting people to work over to enabling people to consume. When they are placed in this position, we can then

examine how to use their creative energies for the social good.

The order of priorities is thus changed. If we directly abolish poverty by guaranteeing an income, we

will have dealt with out primary problem. Then we will need to be concerned that the potential of the individual

is not wanted and devise the type of work for him that enriches the society by enlarging its scope of culture,

improving its health, along with other constructive activity. In the 19th

century Henry George anticipation this

state of affairs when he wrote:

The fact is that work which improves the condition of mankind, the work which extends knowledge and increases power and enriches literature and elevates thought

is not done to secure a living. It is not the work of slaves, driven to their task either by

lash of a master or by animal necessities. It is the work of men who perform it for its

own sake and not that they may get more to eat or drink or wear or display. In a state

of society where want is abolished, work of this sort could be enormously increased.

EFFECT OF ELIMINATING POVERTY

We are likely to find that the problems of housing and education, instead of preceding the elimination of

poverty, will themselves be affected if poverty is first abolished. The poor transformed into purchasers will do a

great deal on their own to alter housing decay. Even Negroes, who have a double disability, will have a greater

effect on discrimination when they have the additional weapon of cash to use in their flight.

Beyond these advantages, a host of positive psychological changes inevitably will result from

widespread economic security. The dignity of the individual will flourish when he knows he has the means to

seek self-improvement, and the assurance that his income is stable and certain. Personal conflicts between

husband, wife, and children will diminish when the unjust measurement of human worth of a scale of dollars is

eliminated.

I think it is evident that this proposal is not a civil rights program. The program suggested will benefit all the poor, and three-fourths of them are white. I hope that both Negro and white will act in coalition to effect

this change because their combined strength will be necessary to overcome the fierce opposition we must

realistically anticipate.

John Kenneth Galbraith has estimated that $20 billion a year would effect a guaranteed annual income

which he describes as

Not much more than we will spend the next fiscal year to rescue freedom and democracy and religious liberty as these are defined by experts in Vietnam.

The curse of poverty has no jurisdiction in our age. It is asocial, cruel, and blind as the practice of cannibalism

at the dawn of civilization when men ate each other because they had not yet learned how to take food from the

soil or to consume the abundant animal life around them. The time has come for us to civilize ourselves by the

total, direct, and immediate abolition of poverty.

STRUGGLE FOR EQUALITY CANNOT BE IGNORED

As important as it is to improve the economic plight of the city dweller, we must not ignore that the struggle for

equality is also a moral and political act. The aim is not only to improve the economic situation of the poor, but

to provide the conditions for dignity and the exercise of rights. Economic improvement despite its importance,

without full citizenship rights can be a bribe to the excluded rather than a gateway to the free society.

To be poor and Negro in America is to be powerless in some places prevented from voting; or equally empty, having a choice of candidates who care little for the discriminated; and in most places, to be governed

by police, housing authorities, welfare departments, without rights and redress.

The anger in the streets results from the discriminateds powerlessness at city hall, and a sense that those with power are passive and uncaring.

We are not listening to the language of the city streets the themes of anger and power tell us of the feelings of impotence to change difficult circumstances, the pledges broken, societys neglect of great misery and the absence of rights.

ATTAINING SENSE OF PERSONAL DIGNITY

A very considerable part of the efforts of the past decades has been devoted by Negroes, particularly in the

South, to attaining a sense of dignity. For us enduring the sacrifices of beatings, jailings, and even death was

acceptable merely to have access to public accommodations. To sit at a lunch country or occupy the front seat

of a bus had no effect on our material standard of living, but in removing a caste stigma, it revolutionized our

psychology and elevated the spiritual content of our being. Instinctively, we struck out for dignity first because

personal degradation as an inferior human being was even more keenly felt than material privation.

But dignity is also corroded by poverty, no matter how poetically we invest the humble with simple

graces and charm. No worker can maintain his morale or sustain his spirit if in the marketplace his capacities

are declared to be workless to society. The Negro is no longer ashamed that he is black he should never have permitted himself to accept the absurd concept that white is more virtuous than black, but he was crushed by the

propaganda that superiority had a pale countenance. That day is fast coming to an end. However, in his seatch

for human dignity he is handicapped by the stigma of poverty in a society whose measure of value revolves

about money. If the society changes its concepts by placing the responsibility on its system, not on the

individual, and guarantees secure employment or guaranteed income, dignity will come within the reach of all.

For Negroes the goal on which they have placed the highest priority, which the emancipation from slavery was

intended to assure, will finally be attained.

WHAT ARE THE RIGHTS OF CITIZENS?

With the expansion of government and private bureaucracy, and the growing complexity of society as a whole,

the question of what are the rights of citizens becomes increasingly crucial. The concepts of the past are

inadequate for the new forms of property and of pressures which affect individuals today. We are slowly

hacking out the rights of the citizen in relation to the police and the judicial system. Rights to a grievance

procedure against the arbitrary actions of police, welfare, and public housing officials are slowly developing;

the idea of an ombudsman is growing. These are all indications of the great need for protecting the citizens

against the power of the state. In the ghettos, the bureaucracies are becoming as oppressive as sweatshop

employers or absentee landlords.

But the issues of powerlessness extend beyond the right to grievance and redress. The maximum feasible participation provision of the Economic Opportunity Act has struck a responsive chord among ghetto residents who seek to be involved in the decisions which affect them in social welfare, employment, education,

and training.

PARTICIPATION IN COMMUNITY DECISION-MAKING

Today, we seek the issue as involvement of the poor, but the issue is much larger and affects all Americans. For the poor are forging new forms of rights in relation to the welfare state which are important for all

Americans, not only the poor and Negro. What is the citizens right of participation in the decisions which so directly affect his community are these decisions to be made by professional elites are self-appointed power figures, or political bureaucrats with only occasional ratification by the electorate? The effort to develop more

sensitive, responsive and responsible Government agencies is difficult, but it is an important move for all

Americans.

In this matter, as in others, Negroes are the voice of conscience and necessity. In the field of education,

Negroes have forced open the question of inadequate education for all poor Americans, white and Negro. In

doing this, they have developed pressure on our educational systems to improve the education of all youth,

affluent as well as poor. Similarly, by raising the question of grievance and rights in the welfare state, Negroes

are opening up issues that will benefit everyone.

EXPERIENCES IN CHICAGO

As I move toward the conclusion of my testimony, allow me to give a few of my personal experiences in one of

the gigantic cities of our Nation. For the past year I have been living and working in the Negro ghettos in

Chicago. There, the problems of poverty and despair are more than an academic exercise. The phone rings daily

with stories of the most drastic forms of mans inhumanity to man and I find myself fighting a daily battle against the depression and hopelessness which the heart of our cities pumps into the spiritual bloodstream of our

lives.

This is truly an island of poverty in the midst of an ocean of plenty, for now Chicago boasts the highest

per capita income of any city in the world, but you would never believe it looking out of the windows of an

apartment in Lawndale. From this vantage point you see only hundreds of children playing in the streets and

when you talk with them you see the light of intelligence glowing in their beautiful dark eyes, but then you

realize that this is an overwhelming joy growing out of the fact that someone has stopped to say hello. Too soon

you see the evidence of the overcrowded classroom and the years of emotional deprivation; the clothes which

are too skimpy to protect them from the Chicago wind; the hopes and dreams which are already being deferred.

Last summer, our own children lived with us there, and it was only a few days before we became aware

of the difference in their behavior. Their little tempers often flared; they sometimes reverted to almost infantile

behavior. And as the riot raged around them outside, I realized that the crowded flat in which we lived was

about to produce an emotional explosion in my own family. It was just too hot, too crowded, too devoid of

creative forms of recreation, or just space enough in the neighborhood to run off the energy of childhood

without running into busy traffic-laden streets. And I understood anew the emotional pressures which make of

the ghetto an emotional pressure crooker.

ECONOMIC EXPLOITATION OF THE POOR

But beyond the heat and the despair and the crowds, there exists a pattern of economic exploitation and personal

humiliation which can only be defined as our system of slavery in the 20th

century. My neighbors pay more rent

for these substandard slums than whites do for modern apartments. The median rent in Lawndale is $90 per

month without utilities, usually without heat and only the most spasmodic janitorial services. While in the white

suburbs of South Deering, Gage Park, and Belmont-Cragen, median rents are less than $80 per month.

The situation is much the same for consumer goods, purchase prices on homes, and a wide variety of

services. We can only conclude that Negroes are poor also because they are forced to pay a color tax. This color

tax is especially severe when it is applied to lending and banking institutions. Negroes are forced to pay

exorbitant interest rates when they can secure loans. It is almost impossible to secure traditional types of home

loans and mortgages, so houses must be purchased on contract.

SUCCESS IS OFTEN CUT SHORT

Finally, when a man is able to make his way through this maze of handicaps to get one foot out of the jungle of

poverty, he is subject to the whims of power and bureaucracy among the political and economic giants of the

city, which move on impersonally and crush the little flower of success which has just begun to bloom.

One case which illustrates this is that of the community of Englewood in Chicago. Englewood is 85

percent Negro. It is a community which is made up of persons who have worked and saved to become

homeowners. One gentleman with whom we have worked is a redcap at the railroad station. Somehow he was

able to purchase a home on the inflated Negro housing market for $17,000. Now the urban renewal authority

has claimed his house along with 600 others, not because they are deteriorated or substandard, but because the

shopping center wants additional parking space. The house was appraised, not at the inflated Negro rater that he

paid some years earlier, but at the normal housing market cost of $14,000.

These families have appealed to the local office of urban renewal, the national office, and even taken the

case into Federal courts, but the city continues to acquire land and evict families, returning them back to the

tenements with no voice or hope of redress. All attempts to offer alternative proposals such as double decking

present parking were ignored graphically demonstrating the voicelessness, the powerlessness, and the hopelessness of the Negroes plight under this pattern of domestic colonialism. This depersonalized manipulation of persons as though they were things is as much responsible for the

perpetuation of grief and misery in our cities as is the absence of wealth and national resources.

THE NEGRO IN AMERICA

And so being a Negro in America is not at all a comfortable existence. It means being a part of the company of

the bruised, battered, the scared, and the defeated. It means smothering in an airtight cage of poverty in the

midst of an affluent society. Being a Negro in America often means being lynched at will, and brutalized at

whim. It means trying to smile when you want to cry. It means trying to hold on to physical life amid constant

psychological death. It means the pain of watching your little children grow up with clouds of inferiority being

formed in their mental skies. It means seeking to answer a 6-year-old son with twisted tongue and inarticulate

speech when he say; Daddy why do white people treat us so mean? Being a Negro in America means listening to suburban politicians talk eloquently against open housing, and in the same breath argue that they are

not racists. It means being harried by day and haunted by night by a nagging sense of nobodyness, and constantly fighting to be saved from the drain of bitterness. It means the ache and anguish of living in a

situation where hopes unborn have died. In a real sense, one of the great problems of our cities in the racial

injustice is still the Negroes burden and Americas shame. TIME LIMIT FOR SOLUTION OF PROBLEMS

In summing up, it is important to appreciate that discussion of problems of inequality is meaningless unless a

time dimension is given to programs for solution. The Great Society is a phrase so long as no date is set for the

achievement of its promises. It is disquieting to note that President Johnson in his message to Congress on the

demonstration cities program stated;

If we can begin now the planning from which action will flow, the hopes of the 20th century will become the realities of the 21st.

On this timetable, many Negroes not yet born and virtually all now alive will not experience equality. The

virtue and patience will become a vice if it accepts so leisurely an approach to social change.

I am not under any illusions that the mere detailing of defaults and the listing of some solutions will lead

to swift remedial action. Administrations under Democratic and Republican leadership, both, have inconsistent

records. Whether the causes for delays and retreats are attributable to war diversions or the threats of white

backlash, the attainment of security and equality for Negroes has not yet become a serious and irrevocable

national purpose. I doubt that there ever was a sincere and unshakable commitment to this end. I do not doubt

the existence of good will and many good people, but I am convinced their program carried them only to a

commitment to end extremist conduct toward Negroes and gradually to introduce limited reforms. I do not

believe they will be prepared to go the whole distance unless an organized Negro demand convinces them that

no lesser alternative is possible.

Negroes, therefore, have a responsibility to act with greater vigor and frequency than during the past

decade. They will have to act on various fronts and in a variety of ways.

BROAD PROGRAM OF CHANGE ORGANIZED

My organization, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, with this outlook, joined other Chicago-based

groups unite and solidly organize the slum dwellers in a broad program of change. In a limited period we have

made some notable progress.

Without here analyzing our results, our conclusion is already inescapable. It will be necessary to form on

a national scale some type of union of slum dwellers. The common problems and opportunities require a quality

of leadership and organization that is rooted in the slums and designs the techniques of struggles uniquely suited

for action there.

The decay of the cities is not a Negro problem alone, but no one is more seriously involved than ne. It is

projected that in a few years more than 10 of our major cities will have a Negro majority. Political control will

be available and if Negroes exercise it, I hope it will not be under circumstanced of deepened decay and chaos.

IMMEDIATE COOPERATION CALLED FOR

Certainly Negroes cannot wait until they inherit political leadership of congested, restless, and bankrupt cities.

They cannot wait because too many would wait in abject poverty and squalor. They cannot wait because they

have a responsibility as citizens to avert catastrophe. They cannot wait because over 90 percent of the Negro

population are now city dwellers, and have nowhere else to go. It may well become the Negroes supreme duty to rescue himself by saving the sinking cities of the Nation. They will not do it alone, but they will not permit it

to be done without them. This should be a basis for constructive collaboration between white and Negro,

government and citizen, not in some distant time, but in the immediate present with all its emergencies that

urgently call for creative statesmanship, risks of radical action, and confidence that the bonds uniting humanity

are stronger than the hostilities separating them.

Thank you.

BIRMINGHAM STRUGGLE

Senator Ribicoff: Dr. King, thank you very much for a most moving and powerful statement. In 1963, all

America and all the world watched your struggle in Birmingham. I think that the world was trying to see who

would be the first to break and become violent.

Looking back at those days, when violence, police dogs, and hoses were released against you and your

followers, and the die was cast for civil rights. Television brought it into the homes of every American,

irrespective of his social, economic, and personal feelings. You could see the basic unfairness. More than

anything else, that assured the passage of the civil rights legislation, started by President Kennedy and

continued by President Johnson.

In these hearings, we have gone into the causes of violence, both from an actual and theoretical point of

view. People who have lived with it, who have felt it, psychiatrists, sociologists, psychologists, have given their

interpretation.

ADVANTAGES OF NONVIOLENCE

Senator Ribicoff: I dont suppose we really can discuss the problems of violence unless we also understand the impact and successes of nonviolence. I think America has come to equate, in recent months, the problems of the

civil rights movement and violence, and yet you are a man of peace. You are a winner of the Nobel Peace Prize.

You have proved the efficacy and the success of self-restraint and discipline which you have exercised and

preached all your life. I wonder whether you would give us the benefit of your point of view as to the

advantages of nonviolence over violence to achieve the end that you seek here, and which you have so

eloquently set fourth today.

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.: Well, I think, Senator Ribicoff, that nonviolence is really the only ultimate

answer to the dilemma which we confront in this country. I have made that palpably clear on many occasions,

and I am still convinced, after many experiences and many disappointments, that nonviolence is the most potent

weapon available to the Negro in his struggle for freedom and human dignity.

I think it has many advantages; It has a way of disarming the opponent. It exposes his moral defenses; it

weakens his morale, and at the same time it works on his conscience. So I think in a practical sense it is the

most sound way, and it has advantages that violence could never have.

The fact is that there are many extremist evil forces in our country that would rejoice in our turning to

violence on a massive scale, because they would use this as an opportunity to wipe out many Negroes, and

many innocent Negroes at that.

VIOLENCE IS IMPRACTICAL

The other thing is, from a practical point of view, we cant win a violent campaign. It is absolutely unrealistic to think of the Negro, being 10 percent of the population, winning a violent campaign in the United States. All that

it can do is to create temporary confusion here and there, and the riots of our cities have demonstrated that the

Negro ends up on the losing end in terms of life, in terms of psychological damage, and everything else so that violence is certainly impractical in our struggle.

MORAL ADVANTAGE MOST SIGNIFICANT

I think the higher advantage is a moral one, and in the final analysis this is why I am committed to it. I dont think we can ever create the beloved community through violence. Violence may murder a murderer, but it

cant murder murder. Violence may kill a liar, but it cant establish truth. Violence may murder a dishonest man, but it cant murder dishonesty and we can go right down the line. Violence may murder a hater, but it cant murder hate. And the ultimate question is what we seek to establish in society. My dream is that we will establish a society of justice, of brotherhood, of love, of peace and

understanding, and we cant establish it through violence. It just turns out that violence creates many more social problems than it solves, and the old eye-for-an-eye philosophy ends up leaving everybody blind.

KING CONDEMNS CONDITIONS CAUSING VIOLENCE

On the other hand, I must always, in condemning violence and in pointing out the advantages of nonviolence,

condemn as strongly the conditions which cause individuals to turn to violence in a misguided sense, and I think

we must see that the persistence of poverty and some of the conditions that I sought to outline earlier in our

society create the atmosphere for the kind of despair, the kind of agony, the kind of desperation that lead to this

kind misguided action.

Riots in the final analysis turn out to be the language of the unheard, and what is it that America has

failed to hear? I think at so many points we fault to hear that the economic plight of the Negro poor has

worsened over the last 15 or 20 years.

It has failed to hear that the great promises of freedom and human dignity have not been met, and it has

failed to hear, I think, the large segments of white society are more concerned about the tranquility and the

status quo than about justice and humanity. And I think it is very necessary to say that as we condemn violence,

and I will continue to work against violence and riots with all my might, that it is just as important to work

passionately and unrelentingly to get rid of the conditions that bring violence into being.

NEW STAGE OF CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT

Senator Ribicoff: Do I sense from your statement, Dr. King, your feeling that the civil rights movement has

entered a different stage? Your beginning stage on basic constitutional guarantees for everyone is now to be

channeled to a recognition that the problems you must seek are basically economic and social.

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.: Yes, that is correct, Senator Ribicoff. I think that it is necessary to see at this

point that the issues which we confront are the hard-core economic issues. For about a decade we worked on

public accommodations and the right to vote, and as I said earlier, it was necessary to do this in order to remove

a stigma, in order to remove the humiliation of a caste system.

But now we are moving into an area where we must demand basic reforms that will deal with these

basic economic issues, the whole problem of housing and education, and I think we have got to see that this is

much harder.

It was easier to integrate public facilities, it was easier to gain the right to vote, because it didnt cost the Nation anything, and the fact is that we are dealing with issues now that will call for something of a

restructuring of the architecture of American society. It is going to cost the Nation something.

ECONOMIC RESTRUCTURING OF AMERICA

We cant talk about the economic problem that the Negro confronts without talking about billions of dollars. We cant end slums in the final analysis without seeing the necessity to take profit out of slums. We cant deal with the school situation in the final analysis without seeing that we are not only talking about integrated

education, but we are talking about quality education, which means that millions of dollars, additional dollars,

will have to be spent to improve the whole educational system of America. More money will have to be spent

per pupil in all of our public schools.

So we are now dealing with issues in the civil rights movement that are more than civil rights issues.

They are human rights issues. And they are issues that are difficult because they not always clearly stated in the

Constitution. The Constitution guarantees the right to vote, but it does not necessarily state that a man has the

right to live in a decent house, that a man has the right to have an adequate income. We are dealing with issues

now that are not spelled out as clearly in the Constitution as the denial of the right to vote or as the denial of

access to public accommodations.

Senator Ribicoff: Dr. King, practically every survey that I personally have seen indicates that when you ask the

Negro in America to identify the one man who considers his leader, who he would recognize and admire, you,

Dr. King, are ranked astronomically higher than any other man in this Nation. Yet, is there a problem for a

leader of your caliber and your philosophy when you come up against the term black power? ANALYSIS OF BLACK POWER

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.: Well, I think this would go into my definition of black power to a degree, and my

analysis of what the whole black power cry means.

I have said over and over again that I think this is a very unfortunate slogan. I think it is an unfortunate

use of words, mainly because it gives the wrong connotation, and I think every leader has to be concerned about

semantics. Every word has not only a denotative meaning, which is the actual meaning, but a connotative

meaning, which can have many emotional overtones, and it really turns out to be what people feel that it means,

and I think that the slogan is unfortunate because it does give the wrong connotations.

Now I have no problem with the concept of black power, if by that concept we mean the amassing of

political and economic power to achieve our legitimate and justifiable goals. I think everybody recognized that

the great problem that the Negro confronts in the ghetto is that he is powerless, and that he must transform this

powerlessness into positive and creative power. So I think this is very legitimate concept.

The other thing is that through the scars of history, Negroes have often been ashamed of their heritage,

so if black power means an appreciation for heritage, of racial pride, not being ashamed being black, then I

think this is virtuous rather than a vice.

BLACK SEPARATISM IS NO SOLUTION

But on the other hand, when a slogan black power falls on unsophisticated ears, it can mean much more than this. It really means Get whitey; it can really mean turning to violence to get this power, and it can really mean a kind of black separatism, and nothing could be more unrealistic, certainly unsound for the Negro, to

think there is a salvation in isolation. There is no solution to our problem without a creative alliance of Negroes

and whites in this country, and if black power gives the idea of a kind of black force over here consolidated

against a white force over here, I think it is unfortunate. We must enlist consciences in the struggle for justice,

and not racial groups. And so black and white together, we must seek to overcome in this country.

The other thing that is so basic it seems to me is to see that power is the right use of strength, and if we

think of any kind of power in the wrong way, then it becomes abused power, and Lord Action, becomes

imminently correct that Power tends to corrupt; absolute power corrupts absolutely. So that when I discuss power, I always think of the right use of strength, and as we seek power, which

we must have, if we are to go forward, it must not be a power colored black or white, but a kind of human

power that makes for the good and abundant life for all of Gods children. SCHOOL DESEGREGATION IN PREDOMINANTLY NEGRO CITIES

Senator Ribicoff: Dr. King, there is no one who has been more in the forefront than you in fighting the

problems of segregation, education, and housing. Now we come up to a very practical problem. We have the

problem, as you point out, that in a short period, the 10 major American cities will have a large majority of

Negroes. In Washington, for example, about 90 percent of the children who go to public schools are Negro.

How do you desegregate a school system when you have nine Negro students to every one white?

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.: Yes, this is a tough problem, and yet I think it is a problem that can be solved I am convinced of that if we develop the plans, if we develop the program, if we develop the timetable for change.

THE HOUSING PROBLEM

Now one aspect of the problem is the housing problem. I can see no more dangerous development in our Nation

than the constant building of predominantly Negro central cities, ringed by white suburbs. This means that an

aggressive, vigorous powerful program must be initiated to bring an end to housing discrimination and to make

open cities a reality. It cant only be done by passing fair housing bills within States. This is one important aspect of it, and every State ought to have this, the Federal Government ought to have it, and it is unfortunate

that that bill didnt pass in the last session of Congress. But it must go beyond this to the point of planned action, the building of new towns if necessary, to deal

with the density problem, and in these new towns to make for racial balance.

It means maybe a temporary benevolent quota whereby we go out consciously to integrate communities.

I think this is one way to deal with the school problem. It has to be done through the housing problem.

INTEGRATE WITHIN SCHOOL SYSTEMS

I think the other way is to work on integration within the school system on various levels even before we get

thorough housing integration or open cities. This has been done in some cities through busing students, and I

think it is necessary to do this. I would prefer the convenience of housing students from one school district to

another to the inconvenience of having students grow up without the experience and the reality of being able to

study and grow up together with children of other races in pluralistic society. I think this is a part of the learning

process, and it is criminal for white kids, for instance, to grow up in a world that is two-thirds colored and go to

school only with white children. They are being ill-trained. It is totally unrealistic and it is unfair to those

children, and it is unfair also to Negro children not to give them an opportunity, in a Nation that is a pluralistic

Nation, with many people of different backgrounds nationally and racially, not to be able to communicate with

them. This is a part of the educational process.

So I would think that as we go on, the long-range, determined program of making housing integration a

reality, we must try to achieve racial balance in our schools as much as possible through some of the methods

suggested by educators; the busing system, educational parks and other ideas.

SHORT-TERM SOLUTIONS

Senator Ribicoff: But I am bothered by a very practical consideration. You rightly say that your programs will

only bring benefit to the people of the 21st century. That wont help youngsters and people at the present time.

Facts are facts, and they are hard, that the whites with children do move out of the central cities. You cant make people move back if they dont want to move back. People in Washington with children keep moving to Virginia and Maryland. You have a very practical problem. Under these circumstances, do you continue

fighting for desegregated schools that you cant desegregate because of the numbers, or do you focus on quality schools to help give Negroes the education will be their access to economic achievement and better lives?

You are talking about I think the phrase is yours green power against black power build up the economics. Historically, what brought the Irish, the Italians, the Jews and all the others out the ghettos is

that they did raise their economic power? They were able through income to move into the middle class.

BUILD ECONOMIC POWER OF NEGROES

Senator Ribicoff: You, Mr. Randolph, and many others, have pointed out time and time again, that the basic

objectives were jobs and raising the economic power of the Negro. Now this isnt going to happen tomorrow. It isnt going to happen the day after tomorrow, but I think it is going to happen. It must happen. But what do we do in the meanwhile? Do we just fight the battle of desegregation or while that battle is

being fought, do we improve the quality of education and housing where it is, so the people dont get dragged down in a vortex over a fight for self-respect and philosophy and equality, and at the same time lose something

absolutely necessary for their own advancement?

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.: Yes

Senator Ribicoff: This is a practical Problem that I think we ought to wrestle with.

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.: Yes

Senator Ribicoff: I would like to get your point of view on that.

TWO-PRONGED APPROACH RECOMMENDED

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.: Well, I think the answer is right there, Senator. I am convinced that the approach

here must be a both ends approach, rather than an either or. Certainly, we cant give up on the dream and the goal of a truly integrated society and integrated public school system. On the other hand, we have got to be

realistic enough to know that all of our schools are not going to be integrated in the next month of in the next

year for that matter. So we cannot hold up on improving the quality of those schools as we continue to work for

better economic conditions and as we continue to work for open housing that will ultimately solve the problem.

I think Dr. Conant has pointed out very well that the whole public education system continues to operate

on 19th

century methods in the midst of 20th

century challenges, and that most of our schools are devoid of

quality, and I think we have got to work all over our country to life the quality of the schools, and this means

lifting the quality of the ghetto schools even more, because they are lower down on the scale.

Now this does not mean that we give up integration of schools. We continue to work for that. And it

becomes a both end approach, and in the final analysis we reach the ultimate goal, but in the process we do not neglect those who are in the segregated ghetto schools. The same thing is true of housing, and this is how

we try to do it in Chicago.

INTEGRATED HOUSING IS ESSENTIAL

On the one hand, we have had vigorous, turbulent campaigns to make Chicago an open city, and we feel that

this is absolutely necessary, to open the city, to open the housing market so that anybody can buy and rent a

house of his choose. Now we have struggled for this. We have suffered in the process of trying to dramatize the

issue through our marches into all-white areas that denied us access to houses and real estate agents who would

not allow us to see the listings.

On the other hand, we have worked as vigorously in our program in Chicago to organize tenants, to

organize persons who live in the ghetto, because we know that in spite of a marvelous open housing agreement

on paper that we reached in Chicago, open housing is not going to be a reality in Chicago in the next year of

two. We know that. No matter how much good faith we have operative, we know that it is going to take time to

really open the city and we cannot neglect those who live in the ghetto communities in the process.

So in the meantime we are organizing these communities where the people begin to become concerned

enough about their own destinies that they participate in programs that will rebuild those communities through a

program which says in substance that it must be a renewal program for, by and with the people, something

similar to what Senator Kennedy announced that he is doing with others, and initiating in Bedford-Stuyvesant what Reverent Fauntroy, my aide, is doing right here in Washington in the Shaw area, so that we dont give up on the people caught in ghetto situations because we are working for open housing. We do both,

simultaneously, and I think this is the only way that we can reach the ultimate goal.

EFFECT OF NEGRO GEHHTO LIFE ON CHILDREN

Senator Ribicoff: Your description of your experience with your own children was very moving. If I may ask,

what are the ages of your children?

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.: Well we have a daughter 10 years old, and a son 9 years old, another son 6 years

old , and a daughter 4 years old.

Senator Ribicoff: When does this corrosive effect take place with children? Senator Kennedy, in the earlier

part of these hearings, said when he visited the slums of New York, children between the ages of 6 and 12

showed a light in their eyes, a happiness, a liveliness, and a sense of well-being in their outlook; but at the age

of 12 somehow there was a change.

When do children realize they face a difference and a problem because they are living in a Negro slum?

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.: I think it comes very early. I am sure that it comes maybe at a different time in

the South than maybe in the North. In the South for so many years, as you know, we were denied access to

public accommodations. We had a system of complete legal segregation, so kids came to an awareness of

discrimination and segregation much earlier at some points because there was such a glaring denial, something

that you could see. It was structuralized to the point that everybody could see it.

FUN TOWN WAS SEGREGATED

My own children came to it at a very early age. I remember at the age of 5 we used to hear on the television all

the time advertisements concerning an amusement park known as Fun Town in Atlanta, and my daughter would

constantly ask me to take her to Fun Town, and at that time it was segregated, as most of the other facilities

across the South, and I always tried to dodge the question. I dont quite know how to answer it. I talk a great deal around the country about segregation, speaking about the issues, and yet I suddenly found myself very

inarticulate and almost devoid of words, trying to explain why she couldnt go to Fun Town. And she kept raising the question, and finally, one day I had to answer it, and I never will forget that I took her on my knee

and started explaining that she couldnt go to Fund Town because she was colored and because of the conditions, and I tried to explain in a simple way that she would understand the system of segregation that had

existed so long. And there she sat in tears trying to understand really why she couldnt go, and I made it clear to her in my humble way that some of us were trying to fight to rectify these conditions and make it possible for

her to go to Fun Town.

I had a very interesting experience about 4 or 5, a few years after that, when she said to me I was in jail in Albany, Ga., after demonstrations that we had had there, and her mother said to her that I was there to

help the people to end segregation and to make it possible for Negroes to go to these various places, and she

sent me a message and she said Well tell Daddy to stay in jail until I can go to Fund Town. Well, fortunately she can go to Fun Town now, but I bring that out to say that it came to her at that early age of 5, because of a

denial that she faced, and all of the children as they grew up face the same thing, wondering why they couldnt stop to get a hamburger at the hamburger stand.

EFFECT IN NORTHERN SLUMS

In the North it comes in other ways. It may come in the experience of rat-infested apartment, where this

children realizes for some strange reason that rats and roaches are around. He realizes that he doesnt have adequate recreational facilities, and he looks at television, he looks at other conditions and sees the affluence of

the total society, and yet sees none of these things around the community, and I imagine even in those

situations, the experiences become very real at an earl age, 6 or 7, and then as they grow older, to 10 and 12, the

experiences become even deeper and more vivid in their lives.

Senator Ribicoff: I have some more questions, but I want to give Senator Kennedy an opportunity.

ACCEPTANCE OF NONVIOLENCE IN THE SOUTH

Senator Kennedy: First, Dr. King, on the matter that was brought up earlier by Senator Ribicoff on the

question of violence and nonviolence, why do you think that the concept of nonviolence has been more

acceptable and accepted in the southern part of the United States in the civil rights effort than it has been in the

North?

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.: I think for two reasons, Senator Kennedy. No. 1, a non-violence has been

religiously oriented in many of its expressions in the whole nonviolence movement. We have made it clear that

insights of nonviolence came not only from the operational technique of Mohandas K. Gandhi of India, but also

from the spirit of Jesus Christ, and the ethical insights of the Prophets, so that it has been given a kind of

spiritual undergirding, and it just so happens that the South is probably a little more church-oriented, and I

would imagine, although I dont have the statistics on this; that Negroes in the South probably go to a church, and a larger percentage are more church oriented, whereas this is not necessarily true in some of the larger cities

of the North.

I think a second point is that because of this religious orientation, the so-called black nationalist groups

have not been able to get off the ground in the south, so that nonviolence has been a part of the nomenclature of

the movement in the South for all of these years without to much opposition to it from vocal groups standing on

the street corners saying that it is invalid and that it is meaningless, where in all of our northern communities we

do have groups openly advocating violence.

Now I think another point which may be as important as the other two, and that is that Negroes in the

South have been able to see pockets of progress.

Senator Kennedy: Yes

POCKETS OF PROGRESS RAISE HOPES OF SOUTHERN NEGROES

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.: You know that you couldnt go to the University of George 5 years ago. Negroes can go now. You know you couldnt go to the theaters, in the motels, in the restaurants and all 3 or 4 years ago. You can go now. You can see pockets of progress all across the South, and this has kept alive, kept burning the

lamp of hope a little more in the South than in the North, and nonviolence always works better in a climate of

hope, and it always works better in a climate where justice is a tangible and overt reality, so that at least on

certain levels this doesnt mean that we have solved anywhere near all of the problems of the South at least precisely because the system is so open in the South, because segregation was legal, so structured, the Negro

has been able to see pockets of progress, where in the North the Negro has only been able to see retrogress other

than the middle class. Te masses of the middle class know that conditions today are worse than they were in all

of these areas, and the frustration is deeper because the target isnt as easy to find. You know in the South because you can see it, it is legal, where in the North you know something is wrong, but you cant always point to what it is and why it is that way, and this deepens the despair and frustration, and violence always feeds on

despair and futility, a sense of futility and frustration which you find I think to greater extent in the North than

in the South.

NEW DIRECTION OF CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT

Senator Kennedy: I think that statement is very helpful because there has been a change since 1963. We have

had much more violence than before. You have had really the direction and the leadership of the Civil Rights

Movement, and the violence has taken place in the North, and I think we are better equipped to deal with it if we

know what some of the underlying problems are.

You were out in Watts I know shortly after the riots. The deterioration that has taken place there in the

relationship of the young Negro particularly to his church, is true really all across the United States in the

Ghettos. I think the point you have made is extremely useful and helpful, and also the idea, the fact that some

progress, some idea of a future for the young Negroes, that Negroes in the ghetto, has to be held out to them or

otherwise they are going to turn in another direction.

LACK OF NEGRO LEADERSHIP IN NORTHERN CITIES

Senator Kennedy: The second part of what I would like to ask you about is why you dont feel there has been more development of Negro leadership at the local level, perhaps the city level in the Negro ghettos, whether it

is in New York or Chicago or Los Angeles or Philadelphia or Watts or wherever it might be. Why dont you feel that there has been development of Negro leadership in those areas?

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.: I think it has been mainly the fact that for so many years the movement was

dramatized and localized in the South I mean the Civil Rights Movement now that all of the attention was turned there. Everyone turned their attention there for not only the people who were in it in the South, but

people in the North, and they often overlooked the existence of the problem in their own communities

LEADERSHIP EMERGIES DURING CRISIS SITUATIONS

Leadership always grows up in either crisis situations, situations where people realize that there is a demand for

positive programs and actions, and I think many Negroes in the North were, on the one hand, brain-washed

about the nonexistence of the problem, and on the other hand, forgot the existence of the problem because they

had kind of got away, and this can happen to middle-class people in any group, and I am sure there are some

members of the Negro middle class who somehow floated or were able to swim out of the muddy waters and

moved into the fresh water, and they forgot the stench of the backwaters. For this reason, the concern may not

have been there.

And then so often the masses of people, not being able to quite analyze it during those years, were

apathetic and complaisant, and I think it took not only the struggle in the South but other conditions to remind

Negroes in these areas that the problems were as serious as they were. I think the leadership failed to emerge

precisely because there was not a realization of the depths of dimensions of the problem which existed in these

communities, but the minute the realization came into being, developments took place, and I predict that as time

unfolds, more significant leadership will begin to develop in all of our northern communities.

KING FORESEES A PROMISING FUTUE

Senator Kennedy: You are optimistic about the future then in this field?

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.: Yes, I am quite optimistic about the future. I think we are just in one of those

periods that is somewhat inevitable in a social revolution. You have your moment of progression and your

moment of recession. Every revolution brings into being the counterrevolution, and I think we have some

aspects of the counterrevolution alive now, but as I look to the future, I think we have the resources and the

possible mobilization of conscience not only to solve these problems, but to solve them in the right way.

YOUNG NEGROES ALIENATED BY UNFULFILLED EXPECTATIONS

Senator Kennedy: When we had Philip Randolph testifying before the committee, and also Roy Wilkins and

some of the other leaders of the various civil rights movement in the United States, they talked about the

alienation of the young Negro, the difficulty that even they had in communicating with him at the present time.

Would you discus that a little bit for us? Would you discuss what you think the attitude of the young Negro is to

the Negro leadership and the civil rights leadership and toward society generally and toward the government,

whether it be city or Federal?

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.: Yes

Senator Kennedy: Do you think, first, it is a major problem?

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.: I think it is a real problem, and I think we have got to deal with it and I think we

can deal with it. In the past most of the revolutions of history have been based on hope and hate, the hope

element growing as a result of the rising expectations of the people for freedom, and the hate element growing

out of the business and the violence toward the perpetrators of the old order. Now, I think the different thing

about the social revolution taking place in America for all of these years, with the exception of the riots, we

maintained the hope element of the revolution, but brought in a new dimension of nonviolence which Gandhi

brought in India, so that we maintained the hope element but attached to that the nonviolent element.

Now, the problem is that when you increase the hopes of people and the hopes are not fulfilled and the

expectations are high, and they are not fulfilled, then the element of violence comes into being. That nonviolent

or love element is often transformed into a hate element, and it goes back to the old kind of revolution.

Now, in any revolution you have to have slogans. You talk about, a few years ago I started talking about

all here and now, and you have got to have slogans in order to get people aroused about their conditions and to

give them the enthusiasm to go forward.

BITTERNESS AIMED AT PERPETRATORS OF HOPE

Now, the fact is that we all knew that we werent going to get all of the here and now, and what happened, it seems to me, was that we raised the hopes tremendously but were not able, because of apathetic action on the

part of various agencies and forces of good will, we were not able to really produce the dreams and the results

inherent in that hope. And again in any revolution, bitterness is turned not only toward the individuals who were

the perpetrators of the old order, but often as much toward the individuals who arouse the hope toward the

leaders who brought the hope element into being. It is usually a temporary thing, but it is a very natural

development in any period.

So that we as leaders lifted the hope. We had to do it. It was a fine thing to do. But we were not able to

produce the promises, and it led to blasted hopes, and I think many of the young people are in this state of

experiencing blasted hopes and shattered dreams. And so they center their attacks and their anger in many

instances on the very persons in leadership positions who brought the hope into being.

Now, I dont think that this alienation is permanent, and I for one will never give up on seeking to bridge the gulf, because I think this is absolutely necessary, and if our movement is to be vibrant, if it is to be

programmatically sound, we have go to have the following and the support of young people, and we have got to

demonstrate that nonviolence is the best answer, and for this reason, we in SCLC are beginning to conduct

workshops in nonviolence and the power of nonviolence and social change, not only in the south where we have

done it so long, but also in northern communities, centering a great deal of this on the young people.

GHETTO RESIDENTS ARE NOT UNDERSTOOD

Senator Kennedy: Dr. King, do you think that the degree of alienation among the youth is understood outside

the ghetto?

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.: You mean understood by---

Senator Kennedy: Those who live outside the ghetto.

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.: I dont think so. Well, the problem of the ghetto, as you know, Senator Kennedy, is that ghetto dwellers are so often invisible. Their thoughts are unknown and their words are unheard and their

feelings are unfelt, and I think all too many persons who live outside of the ghetto are unaware of the deep

despair and the deep frustration and the deep sense of alienation that many ghetto dwellers felt, and that many

of the young people who were caught up in the problems of the ghetto and all of the pathologies of the ghetto to

feel and experience everyday.

KING LISTS PRIORITY PROGRAMS

Senator Kennedy: That would be my judgment as well. Could you tell us, in specific terms, what you would like

to see accomplished in the ghetto, what tour program is in the ghetto, what your priorities are in the effort that

you are making at the present time? Then I have one final question for you.

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.: Yes, I think it is a threefold problem, and I guess in a sense, because of the

gigantic nature of the struggle and the hugeness of the problems that we face, we have to work on many fronts

simultaneously rather than just one. At least in Chicago we felt this way, and we are trying to work in three

areas.

OPEN HOUSING

One is to see that the open housing agreement that we reached is thoroughly implemented because we know that

as long as the Negro is hemmed in, he will be exploited. It is a fact of life that when society segregates a

minority, it inevitably discriminates against that minority. So we are working on that.

ECONOMIC ISSUES ARE BASIC

But we see the economic issues, I tried to say in my statement, as probably the basic issue. If we work on all of

these other things and do nothing about the economic problem that the Negro is confronting, we would be

working against ourselves, and it is one thing to make it possible for a Negro to eat a hamburger in a lunch

counter in the South, but it doesnt mean a thing if he doesnt have the money to purchase it. It is one thing for us to get motels and hotels open for all people, but it doesnt mean a thing if a man doesnt ear enough money to take a vacation or he doesnt earn enough money to take his wife to dine.

We can talk about integrated housing, but if a man doesnt earn enough money to buy a decent house in a neighborhood that is integrated, it wont mean anything. So we see the economic problem as very basic. For this reason we feel the necessity of a program to organize the underemployed, which we are seeking to do, as

well as to organize welfare workers so that through this kind of organization, we can build the power unites that

can seek to bring the Nation to the point of seeing the necessity for a guaranteed minimum wage.

SELF HELP PROGRAMS FOR GHETTO DWELLERS

And then along with our economic program, we are working to organize tenants within the slums to get rid of

slums, and along with getting rid of slums, to build cooperatives, to build condominiums, to build their own

communities. They take an active concern in building it, so that they participate in the rebuilding of their own

communities and making the decisions as to how those communities are to be rebuilt.

We have been able to start out with credits of $4.5 million from HUD to begin the process of building

cooperatives on the west side of Chicago, and in one area on the south side; and so along with open housing, we

are seeking to organize ghetto dwellers so that in the process of organizing, they will take a greater concern in

the activities surrounding their lives.

Senator Kennedy: Of course, I know more about New York City than the other cities in the State of New York

and some of the other cities across the country. I see very little I know what you have done in Chicago I see very little in any of these cities, particularly among the young people, but among others as well, any

identification with any national civil rights organization or really any national leader. They have great respect

for you, as the chairman says, and respect for some of the others as well. But I dont see any identification with any of the national organizations and the national leaders as to what they want to accomplish in the ghetto or

the fact that any of these organizations are really doing a great deal to alleviate the problems that they are

facing. Do you think the impression that I have correct?

CIVIL RIGHTS AT GRASSROOTS LEVELS

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.: I think that is quite true. However, I think the problem itself presents a challenge.

The fact is that the civil rights movement has too often been middle-class oriented, and that it has not moved to

the grassroots levels of our communities. I find that people, whether they are young or old, unite around

programs, and once you present a positive program to people where they feel that change can come, programs

of impact, they will unite around it. So I think the great challenge facing the civil rights movement is to move

into these areas to organize and gain identity with ghetto dwellers and young people in the ghetto. This is one of

the reasons why I felt that in moving to work in Chicago and to be there 4 days a week, that I would live in the

very heart of the ghetto, in the heart of the slums of Chicago, so that in some sense I would not only experience

what my brothers and sister experience in living conditions, but I would be able to live with them, and this is

one of the things that we are trying to do just desperately. In a big city like Chicago it is hard to do it overnight,

but I think that all of the civil rights organizations must work more to organize the grassroots levels of our

communities.

LACK OF IDENTIFICATION WITH NATIONAL GROUPS

Senator Kennedy: I am less familiar with Chicago except what I have read in the newspapers and I know the

effort that you have made there, but just from my experience in some of these cities, I find, first, that there isnt the strong philosophy against violence, and I think you have described the reasons for the. There is also no

identification or association with any particular leader or with any particular organization, and there is a

strong alienation.

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.: That is right.

Senator Kennedy: From society and from the government, and a lack of understanding also by the people who

live outside of the ghetto to this very bitter condition that exists there.

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.: That is right.

Senator Kennedy: I am just extremely concerned, as I should think everybody must be.

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.: Yes

Senator Kennedy: As to what that combination of factors is going to lead to in the United States

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.: Yes; it presents all of us with a great responsibility to do everything possible to

reach this segment of the population. I think what we see in all of our ghetto is a revolt on the part of the

underprivileged who as you say are leaderless, unorganized, and prone to violence.

Senator Kennedy: And many of the so-called self-proclaimed leaders of the civil rights organizations dont live in the ghetto.

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.: That is exactly right.

Senator Kennedy: They have moved outside the ghettos, except for yourself, Philip Randolph, and several

others. They come down and talk about what the situation is, but as far as their identification or association

with the people there, it just does not exist.

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.: Yes.

FAILURE TO FACE PROBLEMS WOULD HAVE DAMAGING RESULTS

Senator Kennedy: I just think that you as a Negro leader, for those of us who are in the Senate and for ordinary

citizens, that it becomes a more explosive problem rather than moving in the other direction.

Let me ask you finally, as a part of that, what you think the effect is going to be in the United States, if

we do not do more in dealing with these problems from a Federal level and from a local level, for Negro

leaders and white leaders, if we dont do more than we have done say over the period of the last 5 years? What do you think the effect is going to be in this country over the period of the next 5?

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.: Well, Senator Kennedy, I think it will be very serious. I think it will be damaging

to our whole Nation, to its image. I think it will keep us in constant confusion in the United States.

I am absolutely convinced that many people who even at this point still maintain hope will be driven to

hopeless positions or hopelessness if they do not see some changes and see changes soon.

The interesting thing about the ghetto is that it is not the monolithic group that so many people think.

People talk about the ghetto in so many instances as if there are only bars in the ghetto. There are churches in

the ghetto. There is not only hopelessness in the ghetto, but there is hope and the amazing thing is that so many

people in our ghettos have maintained hope amid the most hopeless conditions. I would say at least percent. I

think maybe 10 percent have been so terribly scarred and have become so pathological that they not only

respond to violence but almost anything else, but the interesting thing is that the 90 percent somehow refuse to

riot. The 90 percent somehow refuse to take dope. The 90 percent somehow refuse to engage in immoral

activities that they are driven to because of hopeless circumstances. This is often overlooked.

NONVIOLENT VICTORIES MUST BE WON

The thing that concerns me is that if something isnt done soon and in a hurry, we are going to begin to lose people in that 90 percent, and this can lead to all kinds of disruption in our society. I am not one to predict

violence because I hate violence, and I know that sometimes the prediction of violence can be an unconscious

invitation to it. But let me assure you that I would never invite violence. I know it is not only wrong morally but

it creates many more social problems than it solves, and it will not be able to solve the problems that we face.

But I am absolutely convinced that if the intolerable conditions which Negroes confront in the ghettos of our

Nation are not dealt with and removed, and removed with haste, we are going to find ourselves facing many

more dark nights of social disruption and many more people will be driven to the nihilistic conclusion that

society is so evil that it doesnt intend to solve the problem, and they will just seek to create disruption for disruptions sake, and those of us who believe in and advocate nonviolence will find more and more our words falling on deaf ears.

The fact is that the leaders who try to preach nonviolence and work through the democratic process have

not been given enough victories, and only when we are given victories, only when we are able to say that

changes have taken place will we be able