King: "it's nonviolence or nonexistence"

On this holiday honoring Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., over and over we will see his famous "I Have a Dream" speech.

While I do love that speech, I have always had a closer connection to his "I've Been to the Mountaintop" speech that he delivered to striking sanitation workers in Memphis, Tennessee, the night before he was killed.



I understand why the excerpt at the end of the "Mountaintop" speech is played over and over again - it can make the hair stand up on the back of a person's neck with its intensity and foreboding.

But my favorite part of that speech is closer to the beginning when King discusses why he is happy to live during such troubling times.

“ … I know, somehow, that only when it is dark enough can you see the stars. And I see God working in this period of the twentieth century in a way that men in some strange way are responding. Something is happening in our world. The masses of people are rising up. And wherever they are assembled today, whether they are in Johannesburg, South Africa; Nairobi, Kenya; Accra, Ghana; New York City; Atlanta, Georgia; Jackson, Mississippi; or Memphis, Tennessee, the cry is always the same: 'We want to be free.'

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

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

And with the swearing-in of the nation's first African-American president tomorrow, I'm sure King would have been happy to live in this period too. Ever mindful of the fact that the struggle continues - for human rights, civil rights, peaceful co-existence, existence.