This Interview with Dr. King Doesn’t Get Much Air Time

Listen to this interview in full. King also addressed his often sanitized speech from the March on Washington, called for a revolution of values in America; implicating racism, economic exploitation including poverty, and militarism as three “inextricably” linked evils in society that blocked the way to progress.

Eleven months later, King was assassinated.

“Many of the people who supported us in Selma and Birmingham, were really outraged about the extremist behavior toward negroes. But they were not at that moment, and they are not now, committed to genuine equality for negroes.

It’s much easier to integrate a lunch counter than it is to guarantee an annual income, for instance, to get rid of poverty for negroes and all poor people. It’s much easier to integrate a bus than it is to make genuine integration a reality and quality education a reality in our schools. It’s much easier to integrate even a public park than it is to get rid of slums and I think we are in a new era, a new phase for the struggle, where we have moved from the struggle for decency which characterized our struggle for ten or twelve years, to a struggle for genuine equality.

And this is where we’re getting the resistance because there was never any intention to go this far.

I must confess the vast majority of White Americans will go but so far. It’s a kind of installment plan for equality. And they are always looking for an excuse but to go but so far.”

–Dr. Martin Luther King Jr

Ubuntu,

From Aspiring Humanitarian, Relando Thompkins-Jones

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