I received an email today, from someone who was looking for the source of a quote. The source turned out to be
Martin Luther King, Jr.'s acceptance speech for the 1964 Nobel Peace Prize.
As I read the speech, I found that King's words speak to me today. Thanksgiving this year is bittersweet. I cherish and am thankful for my family, my friends and immediate community... but I find myself angry and depressed by what this country has become.
It is so easy to dwell on the negatives, to lose hope that America can find redemption from war, torture, the blatant disregard for those in need, for the erosion of freedoms and liberties which I once took for granted.
Then I stumbled onto the words of one of history's great optimists...
As King took the stage to accept this prize, he recited a litany of evil which had occured the day before. Firehoses, dogs, and death in Birmingham; people beaten for daring to think that they could vote in Mississipi; 40 churches burned or bombed because they sided against the racism and segregation of America in 1964.
And yet this man, who knew all to well the purgatory and despair of being black in America, accepted the award with a graciousness and hope which is hard to imagine.
I accept this award today with an abiding faith in America and an audacious faith in the future of mankind. I refuse to accept despair as the final response to the ambiguities of history. I refuse to accept the idea that the "isness" of man's present nature makes him morally incapable of reaching up for the eternal "oughtness" that forever confronts him. I refuse to accept the idea that man is mere flotsom and jetsom in the river of life unable to influence the unfolding events which surround him. I refuse to accept the view that mankind is so tragically bound to the starless midnight of racism and war that the bright daybreak of peace and brotherhood can never become a reality.
I refuse to accept the cynical notion that nation after nation must spiral down a militaristic stairway into the hell of thermonuclear destruction. I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. This is why right temporarily defeated is stronger than evil triumphant. I believe that even amid today's motor bursts and whining bullets, there is still hope for a brighter tomorrow. I believe that wounded justice, lying prostrate on the blood-flowing streets of our nations, can be lifted from this dust of shame to reign supreme among the children of men. I have the audacity to believe that peoples everywhere can have three meals a day for their bodies, education and culture for their minds, and dignity, equality and freedom for their spirits. I believe that what self-centered men have torn down men other-centered can build up. I still believe that one day mankind will bow before the altars of God and be crowned triumphant over war and bloodshed, and nonviolent redemptive good will proclaimed the rule of the land. "And the lion and the lamb shall lie down together and every man shall sit under his own vine and fig tree and none shall be afraid." I still believe that We Shall overcome!
King saw the future that I want to believe in. These words found me today, on Thanksgiving, on a day when I needed a reminder that that "what self-centered men have torn down men [and women] other-centered can build up"
Today I am thankful for visionaries like Martin Luther King, Jr., whose vision of the future glows ever brighter in the darkness.
-ab