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Birth of
a New Nation speech by Martin Luther King
I want to preach this morning from the subject, "The Birth of a New Nation."
And I would like to use as a basis for our thinking together a story that
has long since been stencilled on the mental sheets of succeeding
generations. It is the story of the Exodus, the story of the flight of the
Hebrew people from the bondage of Egypt, through the wilderness, and finally
to the Promised Land. It’s a beautiful story. I had the privilege the other
night of seeing the story in movie terms in New York City, entitled "The Ten
Commandments," and I came to see it in all of its beauty - the struggle of
Moses, the struggle of his devoted followers as they sought to get out of
Egypt. And they finally moved on to the wilderness and toward the Promised
Land. This is something of the story of every people struggling for freedom.
It is the first story of man’s explicit quest for freedom. And it
demonstrates the stages that seem to inevitably follow the quest for
freedom.
Prior to March the sixth, 1957, there existed a country known as the Gold
Coast. This country was a colony of the British Empire. This country was
situated in that vast continent known as Africa. I’m sure you know a great
deal about Africa, that continent with some two hundred million people and
it extends and covers a great deal of territory. There are many familiar
names associated with Africa that you would probably remember, and there are
some countries in Africa that many people never realize. For instance, Egypt
is in Africa. And there is that vast area of North Africa with Egypt and
Ethiopia, with Tunisia and Algeria and Morocco and Libya. Then you might
move to South Africa and you think of that extensive territory known as the
Union of South Africa. There is that capital city Johannesburg that you read
so much about these days. Then there is central Africa with places like
Rhodesia and the Belgian Congo. And then there is East Africa with places
like Kenya and Tanganyika, and places like Uganda and other very powerful
countries right there. And then you move over to West Africa, where you find
the French West Africa and Nigeria, and Liberia and Sierra Leone and places
like that. And it is in this spot, in this section of Africa, that we find
the Gold Coast, there in West Africa.
You also know that for years and for centuries, Africa has been one of the
most exploited continents in the history of the world. It’s been the "Dark
Continent." It’s been the continent that has suffered all of the pain and
the affliction that could be mustered up by other nations. And it is that
continent which has experienced slavery, which has experienced all of the
lowest standards that we can think about, and its been brought into being by
the exploitation inflicted upon it by other nations.
And this country, the Gold Coast, was a part of this extensive continent
known as Africa. It’s a little country there in West Africa about ninety-one
thousand miles in area, with a population of about five million people, a
little more than four and a half million. And it stands there with its
capital city, Accra. For years the Gold Coast was exploited and dominated
and trampled over. The first European settlers came in there about 1444, the
Portuguese, and they started legitimate trade with the people in the Gold
Coast. They started dealing with them with their gold, and in turn they gave
them guns and ammunition and gunpowder and that type of thing. Well, pretty
soon America was discovered a few years later in the fourteen hundreds, and
then the British West Indies. And all of these growing discoveries brought
about the slave trade. You remember it started in America in 1619.
And there was a big scramble for power in Africa. With the growth of the
slave trade, there came into Africa, into the Gold Coast in particular, not
only the Portuguese but also the Swedes and the Danes and the Dutch and the
British. And all of these nations competed with each other to win the power
of the Gold Coast so that they could exploit these people for commercial
reasons and sell them into slavery.
Finally, in 1850, Britain won out, and she gained possession of the total
territorial expansion of the Gold Coast. From 1850 to 1957, March sixth, the
Gold Coast was a colony of the British Empire. And as a colony she suffered
all of the injustices, all of the exploitation, all of the humiliation that
comes as a result of colonialism. But like all slavery, like all domination,
like all exploitation, it came to the point that the people got tired of
it.
And that seems to be the long story of history. There seems to be a
throbbing desire, there seems to be an internal desire for freedom within
the soul of every man. And it’s there - it might not break forth in the
beginning, but eventually it breaks out Men realize that freedom is
something basic, and to rob a man of his freedom is to take from him the
essential basis of his manhood. To take from him his freedom is to rob him
of something of God’s image. To paraphrase the words of Shakespeare’s
Othello: Who steals my purse steals trash; ‘tis something, nothing; twas
mine, ‘tis his, has been the slave of thousands; but he who filches from me
my freedom robs me of that which not enriches him, but makes me poor indeed.
There is something in the soul that cries out for freedom. There is
something deep down within the very soul of man that reaches out for Canaan.
Men cannot be satisfied with Egypt. They tried to adjust to it for awhile.
Many men have vested interests in Egypt, and they are slow to leave. Egypt
makes it profitable to them; some people profit by Egypt. The vast majority,
the masses of people never profit by Egypt, and they are never content with
it. And eventually they rise up and begin to cry out for Canaan’s land.
And so these people got tired. It had a long history. As far back as 1844,
the chiefs themselves of the Gold Coast rose up and came together and
revolted against the British Empire and the other powers that were in
existence at that time dominating the Gold Coast. They revolted, saying that
they wanted to govern themselves. But these powers clamped down on them, and
the British said that we will not let you go.
About 1909, a young man was born on the twelfth of September. History didn’t
know at that time what that young man had in his mind. His mother and
father, illiterate, not a part of the powerful tribal life of Africa, not
chiefs at all, but humble people. And that boy grew up. He went to school at
Achimota for a while in Africa, and then he finished there with honours and
decided to work his way to America. And he landed to America one day with
about fifty dollars in his pocket in terms of pounds, getting ready to get
an education. And he went down to Pennsylvania, to Lincoln University. He
started studying there, and he started reading the great insights of the
philosophers, he started reading the great insights of the ages. And he
finished there and took his theological degree there and preached awhile
around Philadelphia and other areas as he was in the country. And went over
to the University of Pennsylvania and took up a masters there in philosophy
and sociology. All the years that he stood in America, he was poor, he had
to work hard. He says in his autobiography how he worked as a bellhop in
hotels, as a dishwasher, and during the summer how he worked as a waiter
trying to struggle through school.
"I want to go back home. I want to go back to West Africa, the land of my
people, my native land There is some work to be done there." He got a ship
and went to London and stopped for a while by London School of Economy and
picked up another degree there. Then while in London, he started thinking
about Pan-Africanism and the problem of how to free his people from
colonialism. For as he said, he always realized that colonialism was made
for domination and for exploitation. It was made to keep a certain group
down and exploit that group economically for the advantage of another. He
studied and thought about all of this, and one day he decided to go back to
Africa.
He got to Africa and he was immediately elected the executive secretary of
the United Party of the Gold Coast. And he worked hard, and he started
getting a following. And the people in this party, the old, the people who
had had their hands on the plow for a long time, thought he was pushing a
little too fast, and they got a little jealous of his influence. and so
finally he had to break from the United Party of the Gold Coast, and in 1949
he organized the Convention People’s Party. It was this party that started
out working for the independence of the Gold Coast. He started out in a
humble way, urging his people to unite for freedom and urging the officials
of the British Empire to give them freedom. They were slow to respond, but
the masses of people were with him, and they had united to become the most
powerful and influential party that had ever been organized in that section
of Africa.
He started writing. And his companions with him, and many of them started
writing so much that the officials got afraid, and they put them in jail.
And Nkrumah himself was finally placed in jail for several years because he
was a seditious man, he was an agitator. He was imprisoned on the basis of
sedition, and he was placed there to stay in prison for many years. But he
had inspired some people outside of prison. They got together just a few
months after he’d been in prison and elected him the prime minister while he
was in prison. For awhile the British officials tried to keep him there, and
Gbedemah says - one of his close associates, the Minister of Finance, Mr.
Gbedemah - said that that night the people were getting ready to go down to
the jail and get him out. But Gbedemah said, "This isn’t the way; we can’t
do it like this. Violence will break out and we will defeat our purpose."
But the British Empire saw that they had better let him out. And in a few
hours Kwame Nkrumah was out of jail, the prime minister of the Gold Coast.
He was placed there for fifteen years but he only served eight or nine
months, and now he comes out the Prime Minister of the Gold Coast.
And this was the struggling that had been going on for years. It was now
coming to the point that this little nation was moving toward its
independence. Then came the continual agitation, the continual resistance,
so that the British Empire saw that it could no longer rule the Gold Coast.
And they agreed that on the sixth of March, 1957, they would release this
nation. This nation would no longer be a colony of the British Empire, that
this nation would be a sovereign nation within the British Commonwealth. All
of this was because of the persistent protest, the continual agitation on
the part of Prime Minister Kwame Nkrumah and the other leaders who worked
along with him and the masses of people who were willing to follow.
So that day finally came. It was a great day. The week ahead was a great
week. They had been preparing for this day for many years, and now it was
here. People coming in from all over the world. They had started getting in
by the second of March. Seventy nations represented to come to say to this
new nation: "We greet you, and we give you our moral support. We hope for
you God’s guidance as you move now into the realm of independence." From
America itself more than a hundred persons: the press, the diplomatic
guests, and the prime minister’s guests. And oh, it was a beautiful
experience to see some of the leading persons on the scene of civil rights
in America on hand to say, "Greetings to you," as this new nation was born.
Look over, to my right is Adam Powell, to my left is Charles Diggs, to my
right again is Ralph Bunche. To the other side is Her Majesty’s First
Minister of Jamaica, Manning, Ambassador Jones of Liberia. All of these
people from America, Mordecai Johnson, Horace Mann Bond, all of these people
just going over to say, "We want to greet you and we want you to know that
you have our moral support as you grow." Then you look out and see the
vice-president of the United States, you see A. Philip Randolph, you see all
of the people who have stood in the forefront of the struggle for civil
rights over the years, coming over to Africa to say, "We bid you Godspeed."
This was a great day not only for Nkrumah, but for the whole of the Gold
Coast.
Then came Tuesday, [March] the fifth, many events leading up to it. That
night we walked into the closing of Parliament - the closing of the old
Parliament, the old Parliament, which was presided over by the British
Empire. The old Parliament which designated colonialism and imperialism. Now
that Parliament is closing. That was a great sight and a great picture and a
great scene. We sat there that night, just about five hundred able to get in
there. People, thousands and thousands of people waiting outside, just about
five hundred in there, and we were fortunate enough to be sitting there at
that moment as guests of the prime minister. At that hour we noticed Prime
Minister Nkrumah walking in with all of his ministers, with his justices of
the Supreme Court of the Gold Coast, and with all of the people of the
Convention People’s Party, the leaders of that party. Nkrumah came up to
make his closing speech to the old Gold Coast. There was something old now
passing away.
The thing that impressed me more than anything else that night was the fact
that when Nkrumah walked in, and his other ministers who had been in prison
with him, they didn’t come in with the crowns and all of the garments of
kings, but they walked in with prison caps and the coats that they had lived
with for all of the months that they had been in prison. Nkrumah stood up
and made his closing speech to Parliament with the little cap that he wore
in prison for several months and the coat that he wore in prison for several
months, and all of his ministers round about him. That was a great hour. An
old Parliament passing away.
And then at twelve o’clock that night we walked out. As we walked out we
noticed all over the polo grounds almost a half-a-million people. They had
waited for this hour and this moment for years. As we walked out of the door
and looked at that beautiful building, we looked up to the top of it and
there was a little flag that had been flowing around the sky for many years.
It was the Union Jack flag of the Gold Coast, the British flag, you see. But
at twelve o’clock that night we saw a little flag coming down, and another
flag went up. The old Union Jack flag came down, and the new flag of Ghana
went up. This was a new nation now, a new nation being born.
And when Prime Minister Nkrumah stood up before his people out in the polo
ground and said, "We are no longer a British colony. We are a free,
sovereign people," all over that vast throng of people we could see tears.
And I stood there thinking about so many things. Before I knew it, I started
weeping. I was crying for joy. And I knew about all of the struggles, and
all of the pain, and all of the agony that these people had gone through for
this moment.
After Nkrumah had made that final speech, it was about twelve-thirty now.
And we walked away. And we could hear little children six years old and old
people eighty and ninety years old walking the streets of Accra crying,
"Freedom! Freedom!" They couldn’t say it in the sense that we’d say it -
many of them don’t speak English too well - but they had their accents and
it could ring out, "Free-doom!" They were crying it in a sense that they had
never heard it before, and I could hear that old Negro spiritual once more
crying out:
Free at last! Free at last!
Great God Almighty, I’m free at last!
They were experiencing that in their very souls. And everywhere we turned,
we could hear it ringing out from the housetops. We could hear it from every
corner, every nook and crook of the community: "Freedom! Freedom!" This was
the birth of a new nation. This was the breaking aloose from Egypt.
Wednesday morning the official opening of Parliament was held. There again
we were able to get on the inside. There Nkrumah made his new speech. And
now the prime minister of the Gold Coast with no superior, with all of the
power that MacMillan of England has, with all of the power that Nehru of
India has - now a free nation, now the prime minister of a sovereign nation.
The Duchess of Kent walked in, the Duchess of Kent, who represented the
Queen of England, no longer had authority now. She was just a passing
visitor now. The night before, she was the official leader and spokesman for
the Queen, thereby the power behind the throne of the Gold Coast. But now
it’s Ghana. It’s a new nation now, and she’s just an official visitor like
M. L. King and Ralph Bunche and Coretta King and everybody else, because
this is a new nation. A new Ghana has come into being.
And now Nkrumah stands the leader of that great nation. And when he drives
out, the people standing around the streets of the city after Parliament is
open, cry out: "All hail, Nkrumah!" The name of Nkrumah crowning around the
whole city, everybody crying this name, because they knew he had suffered
for them, he had sacrificed for them, he’d gone to jail for them. This was
the birth of a new nation. This nation was now out of Egypt and had crossed
the Red Sea.
Now it will confront its wilderness. Like any breaking loose from Egypt,
there is a wilderness ahead. There is a problem of adjustment. Nkrumah
realizes that. There is always this wilderness standing before him. For
instance, it’s a one-crop country, cocoa mainly. Sixty percent of the cocoa
of the world comes from the Gold Coast, or from Ghana. And, in order to make
the economic system more stable, it will be necessary to industrialize.
Cocoa is too fluctuating to base a whole economy on that, so there is the
necessity of industrializing. Nkrumah said to me that one of the first
things that he will do is to work toward industrialization. And also he
plans to work toward the whole problem of increasing the cultural standards
of the community. Still ninety percent of the people are illiterate, and it
is necessary to lift the whole cultural standard of the community in order
to make it possible to stand up in the free world.
Yes, there is a wilderness ahead, though it is my hope that even people from
America will go to Africa as immigrants, right there to the Gold Coast, and
lend their technical assistance, for there is great need and there are rich
opportunities there. Right now is the time that American Negroes can lend
their technical assistance to a growing new nation. I was very happy to see
already people who have moved in and making good. The son of the late
president of Bennett College, Dr. Jones, is there, who started an insurance
company and making good, going to the top. A doctor from Brooklyn, New York,
had just come in that week and his wife is also a dentist, and they are
living there now, going in there and working, and the people love them.
There will be hundreds and thousands of people, I’m sure, going over to make
for the growth of this new nation. And Nkrumah made it very clear to me that
he would welcome any persons coming there as immigrants and to live there.
Now don’t think that because they have five million people the nation can’t
grow, that that’s a small nation to be overlooked. Never forget the fact
that when America was born in 1776, when it received its independence from
the British Empire, there were fewer, less than four million people in
America, and today it’s more than a hundred and sixty million. So never
underestimate a people because it’s small now. America was smaller than
Ghana when it was born.
There is a great day ahead. The future is on its side. It’s going now
through the wilderness, but the Promised Land is ahead.
And I want to take just a few more minutes as I close to say three or four
things that this reminds us of and things that it says to us - things that
we must never forget as we ourselves find ourselves breaking loose from an
evil Egypt, trying to move through the wilderness toward the promised land
of cultural integration. Ghana has something to say to us. It says to us
first that the oppressor never voluntarily gives freedom to the oppressed.
You have to work for it. And if Nkrumah and the people of the Gold Coast had
not stood up persistently, revolting against the system, it would still be a
colony of the British Empire. Freedom is never given to anybody, for the
oppressor has you in domination because he plans to keep you there, and he
never voluntarily gives it up. And that is where the strong resistance
comes. Privileged classes never give up their privileges without strong
resistance.
So don’t go out this morning with any illusions. Don’t go back into your
homes and around Montgomery thinking that the Montgomery City Commission and
that all of the forces in the leadership of the South will eventually work
out this thing for Negroes, it’s going to work out; it’s going to roll in on
the wheels of inevitability. If we wait for it to work itself out, it will
never be worked out. Freedom only comes through persistent revolt, through
persistent agitation, through persistently rising up against the system of
evil. The bus protest is just the beginning. Buses are integrated in
Montgomery, but that is just the beginning. And don’t sit down and do
nothing now because the buses are integrated, because, if you stop now, we
will be in the dungeons of segregation and discrimination for another
hundred years, and our children and our children’s children will suffer all
of the bondage that we have lived under for years. It never comes
voluntarily. We’ve got to keep on keeping on in order to gain freedom. It
never comes like that. It would be fortunate if the people in power had
sense enough to go on and give up, but they don’t do it like that. It is not
done voluntarily, but it is done through the pressure that comes about from
people who are oppressed.
If there had not been a Gandhi in India with all of his noble followers,
India would have never been free. If there had not been an Nkrumah and his
followers in Ghana, Ghana would still be a British colony. If there had not
been abolitionists in America, both Negro and white, we might still stand
today in the dungeons of slavery. And then because there have been, in every
period, there are always those people in every period of human history who
don’t mind getting their necks cut off, who don’t mind being persecuted and
discriminated and kicked about, because they know that freedom is never
given out, but it comes through the persistent and the continual agitation
and revolt on the part of those who are caught in the system. Ghana teaches
us that.
It says to us another thing. It reminds us of the fact that a nation or a
people can break aloose from oppression without violence. Nkrumah says in
the first two pages of his autobiography, which was published on the sixth
of March - a great book which you ought to read - he said that he had
studied the social systems of social philosophers and he started studying
the life of Gandhi and his techniques. And he said that in the beginning he
could not see how they could ever get loose from colonialism without armed
revolt, without armies and ammunition, rising up. Then he says after he
continued to study Gandhi and continued to study this technique, he came to
see that the only way was through non-violent positive action. And he called
his program "positive action." And it’s a beautiful thing, isn’t it? That
here is a nation that is now free, and it is free without rising up with
arms and with ammunition. It is free through non-violent means. Because of
that the British Empire will not have the bitterness for Ghana that she has
for China, so to speak. Because of that, when the British Empire leaves
Ghana, she leaves with a different attitude than she would have left with if
she had been driven out by armies. We’ve got to revolt in such a way that
after revolt is over we can live with people as their brothers and their
sisters. Our aim must never be to defeat them or humiliate them.
On the night of the State Ball, standing up talking with some people,
Mordecai Johnson called my attention to the fact that Prime Minister Kwame
Nkrumah was there dancing with the Duchess of Kent. And I said, "Isn’t this
something? Here is the once-serf, the once-slave, now dancing with the lord
on an equal plane." And that is done because there is no bitterness. These
two nations will be able to live together and work together because the
breaking loose was through non-violence and not through violence.
The aftermath of non-violence is the creation of the beloved community. The
aftermath of non-violence is redemption. The aftermath of non-violence is
reconciliation. The aftermath of violence however, are emptiness and
bitterness. This is the thing I’m concerned about. Let us fight passionately
and unrelentingly for the goals of justice and peace, but let’s be sure that
our hands are clean in this struggle. Let us never fight with falsehood and
violence and hate and malice, but always fight with love, so that, when the
day comes that the walls of segregation have completely crumbled in
Montgomery. that we will be able to live with people as their brothers and
sisters.
Oh, my friends, our aim must be not to defeat Mr. Engelhardt, not to defeat
Mr. Sellers and Mr. Gayle and Mr. Parks. Our aim must be to defeat the evil
that’s in them. But our aim must be to win the friendship of Mr. Gayle and
Mr. Sellers and Mr. Engelhardt. We must come to the point of seeing that our
ultimate aim is to live with all men as brothers and sisters under God and
not be their enemies or anything that goes with that type of relationship.
And this is one thing that Ghana teaches us: that you can break loose from
evil through non-violence, through a lack of bitterness. Nkrumah says in his
book: "When I came out of prison, I was not bitter toward Britain. I came
out merely with the determination to free my people from the colonialism and
imperialism that had been inflicted upon them by the British. But I came out
with no bitterness." And, because of that, this world will be a better place
in which to live.
There’s another thing that Ghana reminds us. I’m coming to the conclusion
now. Ghana reminds us that freedom never comes on a silver platter. It’s
never easy. Ghana reminds us that whenever you break out of Egypt, you
better get ready for stiff backs. You better get ready for some homes to be
bombed. You better get ready for some churches to be bombed. You better get
ready for a lot of nasty things to be said about you, because you're getting
out of Egypt, and, whenever you break loose from Egypt, the initial response
of the Egyptian is bitterness. It never comes with ease. It comes only
through the hardness and persistence of life. Ghana reminds us of that. You
better get ready to go to prison. When I looked out and saw the prime
minister there with his prison cap on that night, that reminded me of that
fact, that freedom never comes easy. It comes through hard labour and it
comes through toil. It comes through hours of despair and disappointment.
That’s the way it goes. There is no crown without a cross. I wish we could
get to Easter without going to Good Friday, but history tells us that we got
to go by Good Friday before we can get to Easter. That’s the long story of
freedom, isn’t it? Before you get to Canaan, you’ve got a Red Sea to
confront. You have a hardened heart of a pharaoh to confront. You have the
prodigious hilltops of evil in the wilderness to confront. And, even when
you get up to the Promised Land, you have giants in the land. The beautiful
thing about it is that there are a few people who’ve been over in the land.
They have spied enough to say, "Even though the giants are there we can
possess the land, because we got the internal fibre to stand up amid
anything that we have to face."
The road to freedom is a difficult, hard road. It always makes for temporary
setbacks. And those people who tell you today that there is more tension in
Montgomery than there has ever been are telling you right. Whenever you get
out of Egypt, you always confront a little tension, you always confront a
little temporary setback. If you didn’t confront that you’d never get out.
You must remember that the tensionless period that we like to think of was
the period when the Negro was complacently adjusted to segregation,
discrimination, insult, and exploitation. And the period of tension is the
period when the Negro has decided to rise up and break loose from that. And
this is the peace that we are seeking: not an old negative obnoxious peace
which is merely the absence of tension, but a positive, lasting peace, which
is the presence of brotherhood and justice. And it is never brought about
without this temporary period of tension. The road to freedom is difficult.
But finally Ghana tells us that the forces of the universe are on the side
of justice. That’s what it tells us, now. You can interpret Ghana any kind
of way you want to, but Ghana tells me that the forces of the universe are
on the side of justice. That night when I saw that old flag coming down and
the new flag coming up, I saw something else. That wasn’t just an Ephemeral,
evanescent event appearing on the stage of history, but it was an event with
eternal meaning, for it symbolizes something. That thing symbolized to me
that an old order is passing away and a new order is coming into being. An
old order of colonialism, of segregation, of discrimination is passing away
now, and a new order of justice and freedom and goodwill is being born.
That’s what it said: that somehow the forces of justice stand on the side of
the universe, and that you can’t ultimately trample over God’s children and
profit by it.
I want to come back to Montgomery now, but I must stop by London for a
moment, for London reminds me of something. I never will forget the day we
went into London. The next day we started moving around this great city, the
only city in the world that is almost as large as New York City. Over eight
million people in London, about eight million, three hundred thousand; New
York about eight million, five hundred thousand. London larger in area than
New York, though. Standing in London is an amazing picture. And I never will
forget the experience I had, the thoughts that came to my mind. We went to
Buckingham Palace, and I looked there at all of Britain, at all of the pomp
and circumstance of royalty. And I thought about all of the queens and kings
that had passed through here. Look at the beauty of the changing of the
guards and all of the guards with their beautiful horses. It’s a beautiful
sight. Move on from there and go over to Parliament. Move into the House of
Lords and the House of Commons. There with all of its beauty standing up
before the world is one of the most beautiful sights in the world.
Then I remember, we went on over to Westminster Abbey. And I thought about
several things when we went in this great church, this great cathedral, the
centre of the Church of England. We walked around and went to the tombs of
the kings and queens buried there. Most of the kings and queens of England
are buried right there in the Westminster Abbey. And I walked around. On the
one hand I enjoyed and appreciated the great gothic architecture of that
massive cathedral. I stood there in awe thinking about the greatness of God
and man’s feeble attempt to reach up for God. And I thought something else -
I thought about the Church of England.
My mind went back to Buckingham Palace, and I said that this is the symbol
of a dying system. There was a day that the queens and kings of England
could boast that the sun never sets on the British Empire, a day when she
occupied the greater portion of Australia, the greater portion of Canada.
There was a day when she ruled most of China, most of Africa, and all of
India. I started thinking about this empire. I started thinking about the
fact that she ruled over India one day. Mahatma Gandhi stood there at every
hand, trying to get the freedom of his people, and they never bowed to it.
They never, they decided that they were going to stand up and hold India in
humiliation and in colonialism many, many years. I remember we passed by Ten
Downing Street. That’s the place where the prime minister of England lives.
And I remember that a few years ago a man lived there by the name of Winston
Churchill. One day he stood up before the world and said, "I did not become
his Majesty’s First Minister to preside over the liquidation of the British
Empire." And I thought about the fact that a few weeks ago a man by the name
of Anthony Eden lived there. And out of all of his knowledge of the Middle
East, he decided to rise up and march his armies with the forces of Israel
and France into Egypt, and there they confronted their doom, because they
were revolting against world opinion. Egypt, a little country; Egypt, a
country with no military power. They could have easily defeated Egypt, but
they did not realize that they were fighting more than Egypt. They were
attacking world opinion; they were fighting the whole Asian-African bloc,
which is the bloc that now thinks and moves and determines the course of the
history of the world.
I thought of many things. I thought of the fact that the British Empire
exploited India. Think about it! A nation with four hundred million people
and the British exploited them so much that out of a population of four
hundred million, three hundred and fifty million made an annual income of
less than fifty dollars a year. Twenty-five of that had to be used for taxes
and the other things of life. I thought about dark Africa, and how the
people there, if they can make a hundred dollars a year they are living very
well, they think. Two shillings a day - one shilling is fourteen cents, two
shillings, twenty-eight cents - that’s a good wage. That’s because of the
domination of the British Empire.
All of these things came to my mind, and when I stood there in Westminster
Abbey with all of its beauty, and I thought about all of the beautiful hymns
and anthems that the people would go in there to sing. And yet the Church of
England never took a stand against this system. The Church of England
sanctioned it The Church of England gave it moral stature. All of the
exploitation perpetuated by the British Empire was sanctioned by the Church
of England.
But something else came to my mind: God comes in the picture even when the
Church won’t take a stand. God has injected a principle in this universe.
God has said that all men must respect the dignity and worth of all human
personality, "And if you don’t do that, I will take charge." It seems this
morning that I can hear God speaking. I can hear him speaking throughout the
universe, saying, "Be still and know that I am God. And if you don’t stop,
if you don’t straighten up, if you don’t stop exploiting people, I’m going
to rise up and break the backbone of your power. And your power will be no
more!"
And the power of Great Britain is no more. I looked at France. I looked at
Britain. And I thought about the Britain that could boast, "The sun never
sets on our great Empire." And I said now she had gone to the level that the
sun hardly rises on the British Empire - because it was based on
exploitation, because the God of the universe eventually takes a stand.
And I say to you this morning, my friends, rise up and know that, as you
struggle for justice, you do not struggle alone, but God struggles with you.
And He is working every day. Somehow I can look out, I can look out across
the seas and across the universe, and cry out, "Mine eyes have seen the
glory of the coming of the Lord. He is trampling out the vintage where the
grapes of wrath are stored." Then I think about it, because His truth is
marching on, and I can sing another chorus: "Hallelujah, glory hallelujah!
His truth is marching on." Then I can hear Isaiah again, because it has
profound meaning to me, that somehow, "Every valley shall be exalted, and
every hill shall be made low; the crooked places shall be made straight, and
the rough places plain; and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all
flesh shall see it together."
That’s the beauty of this thing: all flesh shall see it together. Not some
from the heights of Park Street and others from the dungeons of slum areas.
Not some from the pinnacles of the British Empire and some from the dark
deserts of Africa. Not some from inordinate, superfluous wealth and others
from abject, deadening poverty. Not some white and not some black, not some
yellow and not some brown, but all flesh shall see it together. They shall
see it from Montgomery. They shall see it from New York. They shall see it
from Ghana. They shall see it from China.
For I can look out and see a great number, as John saw, marching into the
great eternity, because God is working in this world, and at this hour, and
at this moment. And God grants that we will get on board and start marching
with God, because we got orders now to break down the bondage and the walls
of colonialism, exploitation, and imperialism, to break them down to the
point that no man will trample over another man, but that all men will
respect the dignity and worth of all human personality. And then we will be
in Canaan’s freedom land.
Moses might not get to see Canaan, but his children will see it. He even got
to the mountaintop enough to see it and that assured him that it was coming.
But the beauty of the thing is that there’s always a Joshua to take up his
work and take the children on in. And it’s there waiting with its milk and
honey, and with all of the bountiful beauty that God has in store for His
children. Oh, what exceedingly marvellous things God has in store for us.
Grant that we will follow Him enough to gain them.
O God, our gracious Heavenly Father, help us to see the insights that come
from this new nation. Help us to follow Thee and all of Thy creative works
in this world, and that somehow we will discover that we are made to live
together as brothers And that it will come in this generation: the day when
all men will recognize the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man.
Amen.
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