Democracy Now! Audio - Democracy Now! 2026-01-19 Monday

Episode Date: January 19, 2026

MLK Day Special: Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in His Own Words

New York, this is Democracy Now. I knew that I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today, my own government. Today, a Democracy Now special, Dr. Martin Luther King, in his own words. We hear excerpts of two historic speeches, beyond Vietnam, and I've been, into the mountaintop from the night before he was assassinated in 1968. We've got some difficult days ahead, but it really doesn't matter with me now.

Martin Luther King for the hour coming up. This is Democracy Now, DemocracyNow.org, the Warren Peace Report. I'm Amy Goodman. Today is a federal holiday that honors Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. He was born January 15, 1929. He was assassinated April 4, 1968, at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee. He was just 39 years old. While Dr. King is primarily remembered as a civil rights leader, he also champion the cause of the poor,

organizing the poor people's campaign to address issues of economic justice. And Dr. King was a fierce critic of U.S. foreign policy and the Vietnam War. Beyond Vietnam was the speech he delivered at New York's Riverside Church on April 4, 1967, a year to the day before he was assassinated. In it, Dr. King called the United States the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today. Life magazine called the speech demagogic slander that sounded like a script for Radio Hanoi. The Washington Post said King, quote, diminished his usefulness to be. to his cause, his country, his people, unquote. Well, today we let you decide.

We play an excerpt of Dr. King's speech beyond Vietnam. After 1954, they watched us conspire with DM to prevent elections which could have surely brought Ho Chi men to power over to United Vietnam, and they realize they had been betrayed again. when we ask why they do not leap to negotiate, these things must be remembered. Also, it must be clear that the leaders of Hanoa

considered the presence of American troops in support of the DM regime to have been the initial military breach of the Genevaan agreements concerning foreign troops, and they remind us that they did not begin to send troops in large numbers and even supplies into the South, until American forces had moved into the tens of thousands. And nor remembers how our leaders refused to tell us the truth about the earlier North Vietnamese overtures for peace, how the President claimed that none existed when they had clearly been made.

Hocci men has watched as America has spoken of peace and built up its forces. And now he has surely heard the increasing international rumors of American plans for an invasion of the North. He knows a bombing and shelling and mining we are doing a part of traditional pre-invasion strategy. Perhaps only his sense of humor and of irony can say, him when he hears the most powerful nation of the world speaking of aggression as it drops thousands of bombs on a poor weak nation more than 800 or other 8,000 miles away from its shores. At this point I should make it clear that while I have tried in these last few minutes to give a voice to the voiceless in Vietnam and to understand the arguments of those,

who are called enemy, I am as deeply concerned about our own troops there as anything else. For it occurs to me that what we are submitting them to in Vietnam is not simply the brutalizing process that goes on in any war where armies face each other and seek to destroy. We are adding cynicism to the process of death, for they must know after the short period there, that none of the things we claim to be fighting for are really involved. Before long, they must know that their government has sent them into a struggle among Vietnamese, and the more sophisticated surely realize that we are on the side of the wealthy and the secure while we create a hell for the poor.

Somehow this madness must cease. we must stop now I speak as a child of God and brother to the suffering poor of Vietnam I speak for those whose land is being laid waste whose homes are being destroyed

whose culture is being subverted I speak for the poor of America who are paying the double price of smashed hopes at home and dealt death and corruption in Vietnam. I speak as a citizen of the world, for the world as it stands aghast at the path we have taken.

I speak as one who loves America to the leaders of our own nation. The great initiative in this war is ours. The initiative to stop it must be ours. This is the message of the great Buddhist leaders of Vietnam. Recently, one of them wrote these words, and I quote, each day the war goes on, the hatred increases in the heart of the Vietnamese and in the hearts of those of humanitarian instinct.

The Americans are forcing even their friends into becoming their enemies. It is curious that the Americans, who calculate so carefully, on the possibilities of military victory, do not realize that in the process, they incurring deep psychological and political defeat. The image of America will never again be the image of revolution, freedom and democracy, but the image of violence and militarism, unquote,

if we continue, there will be no doubt in my mind and in the mind of the world that we have no honorable intentions in Vietnam. If we do not stop our war against the people of Vietnam immediately, the world will be left with no other alternative than to see this as some horrible,

clumsy and deadly game we have decided to play. The world now demands a maturity of America that we may not be able to achieve. It demands that we admit that we have been wrong from the beginning of our adventure in Vietnam, that we have been detrimental to the life of the Vietnamese people.

The situation is one in which we must be ready to turn sharply from our present ways. In order to atone for our sins and errors in Vietnam, we should take the individual, initiative in bringing a halt to this tragic war, set a date that we will remove all foreign troops from Vietnam in accordance with the 1954 Geneva Agreement. Part of our ongoing commitment might well express itself in an offer to grant asylum to any Vietnamese who fears

for his life under the new regime which included the Liberation Front. Then we must make what reparations we can for the damage we have done. We must provide the medical aid that is badly needed, making it available in this country if necessary. Meanwhile, we in the churches and synagogues have a continuing task while we urge our government to disengage itself from a disgraceful commitment. We must continue to raise our voices and our lives. If our nation, we should, persists in its perverse ways in Vietnam. We must be prepared to match actions with words by seeking out every creative method of protest possible. These are the times for real choices and not false ones. We are at the moment when our lives must be placed on the line if our nation is to survive its own

folly. Every man of humane convictions must decide on the protest that best suits his convictions, but we must all protest. Now, that is something seductively tempting about stopping there and sending us all off on what in some circles has become a popular crusade against a war in Vietnam. I say we must enter that struggle, but I wish to go on now to say something even more disturbing. The war in Vietnam is but a symptom of a far deeper malady within the American spirit, and if we ignore this sobering reality, we will find ourselves organizing clergy and layman concern committees for the next generation. They will be concerned about Guatemala and Peru.

They will be concerned about Thailand and Cambodia. They will be concerned about Mozambique in South Africa. We will be marching for these and a dozen other names and attending rallies without end unless there is a significant and profound change in American life and policy. So such thoughts take us beyond Vietnam, but not beyond our calling. as sons of the living God. In 1957, a sensitive American official overseas said that it seemed to him that our nation was on the wrong side of a world revolution.

During the past 10 years, we have seen emerge a pattern of suppression, which has now justified the presence of U.S. military advisors in Venezuela, Venezuela. This need to maintain social stability for our investments accounts for the counter-revolutionary action of American forces in Guatemala. It tells why American helicopters are being used against guerrillas in Cambodia and why American napalm and green beret forces have already been active against rebels in Peru. It is with such activity in mind that the words of the late John F.K. Kennedy come back to haunt us five years ago, he said, those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable. Increasingly by choice or by accident, this is the role our nation has taken, the role of those who make peaceful revolution impossible by refusing to give up the privileges and the pleasures that come to. from the immense profits of overseas investments.

I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin the shift from a thing-oriented society to a person-oriented society. when machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered. A true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and justice of many of our past and present policies. On the one hand, we are called to play the Good Samaritan on Life's roadside, but that will be only an initial act. One day we must come to see that the whole Jericho Road must be transformed, so that men and women will not be constantly beaten and robbed as they make their journey on Life's Highway.

True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring. A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth. With righteous indignation, it will look across the seas and see individual capitalists of the West, investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa, and South America, only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries and say this is not just. It will look at our alliance with the landed gentry of South America and say,

this is not just. The Western arrogance of feeling that it has everything to teach others and nothing to learn from them is not just. A true revolution of values will lay hand on the world order and say of war. This way of settling differences is not just. This business of burning human beings with napalm of filling our nation's homes with orphans and widows of injecting poisonous drugs of hate

into the veins of people's normally humane. ascending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically derain cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice, and love. A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death. America, the riches and the riches and the world. and most powerful nation in the world can well lead the way in this revolution of values. That is nothing except a tragic death wish to prevent us from reordering our priorities

so that the pursuit of peace will take precedence over the pursuit of war. Dr. Martin Luther King, April 4, 1967 at Riverside Church in New York, explaining why he opposed the war, in Vietnam. We'll come back to his speech in a minute. Praise to Jackson. Take my hand, precious Lord, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s favorite song. This is Democracy Now, Democracy Now.org, the Warren Peace Report. I'm Amy Goodman. As we return to Dr. Martin Luther King's speech beyond Vietnam, he gave this speech April 4, 1967, a year to the day before he was assassinated. He was speaking at Riverside Church in New York. These are revolutionary times, all over the globe. Men are revolting against old systems of

exploitation and oppression, and out of the wounds of a frail world, new systems of justice and equality of being born. The shirtless and barefoot people of the land arising up as never before. The people who set in darkness have seen a great light. We in the West must support these revolutions. It is a sad fact that because of comfort, complacency, a morbid fear of communism, and our proneness to adjust to injustice, the Western nations that initiated so much of the revolutionary spirit of the modern world

have now become the arch anti-revolutionaries. This has driven many to feel that only Marxism has a revolutionary spirit. Therefore, communism is a judgment against our failure to make

democracy real and follow through on the revolutions that we initiated. Our only hope today lies in our ability to recapture the revolutionary spirit and go out into a sometimes hostile world, declaring eternal hostility to poverty, racism and militarism. With this powerful commitment, we shall boldly challenge the status quo

and unjust mores, and thereby speed the day when every valley shall be exalted, and every mounting and heel shall be made low, and the crooked shall be made straight, and the crooked shall be made straight and the rough places plain. A genuine revolution of values means in the final analysis that our loyalties must become ecumenical rather than sectional. Every nation must now develop an overriding loyalty to mankind as a whole in order to preserve the best in their individual societies. This call for a worldwide fellowship that lifts neighborly concerned beyond one's tribe, race, class, and nation, is in reality a call for an all-embracing and unconditional love for all mankind. This off-misunderstood, this oft-misinterpreted concepts so readily dismissed by the, the niches of the world as a weak and cowardly force has now become an absolute necessity

for the survival of man. When I speak of love, I'm not speaking of some sentimental and weak response. I'm not speaking of that force which is just emotional bosh. I'm speaking of that force which all of the great religions have seen as the supreme unifying principle of life, Love is somehow the key that unlocks the door which leads to ultimate reality. This Hindu, Muslim, Christian, Jewish, Buddhist belief about ultimate reality is beautifully summed up in the first epistle of St. John. Let us love one another, for love is God. And everyone that loveth is born of God and knoweth God.

He that loveth not, knoweth not God. God is love. If we love one another, God dwelleth in us, and his love is perfected in us. Let us hope that this spirit will become the order of the day. We can no longer afford to worship the God of hate. A bow before the altered of retaliation. The oceans of history are made turbulent by the ever-rising tides of hate. History is cluttered with the records of nations and individuals that pursued this self-defeating path of hate. As Arnold Tornby says, love is the ultimate force that makes for the saving choice of life

and good against the damning choice of death and evil. Therefore, the first hope in our inventory must be the hope that love is going to have the last word unquote we are now faced with the fact my friends that tomorrow is today we are confronted with the fierce urgency of now in this unfolding conundrum of life and history that is such a thing as being too late procrastination is still the thief of time Life often leaves us standing bare, naked, and dejected, with a lost opportunity. The tide in the affairs of men does not remain at flooded ebbs. We may crowd desperately for time to pause in her passage,

but time is adamant to every plea and rushes on. Over the bleached bones and jumble residues of numerous civilizations are written the pathetic words too late. That is an invisible book of life that faithfully records our vigilance or our neglect. Omar Kayam is right to move in finger rights and having writ moves on. We still have a choice today.

Nonviolent coexistence, a violent co-inolation. We must move past indecision to action. We must find new ways to speak for peace in Vietnam and justice throughout the developing world, a world that borders on our doors. If we do not act, we shall surely be dragged down the long, dark and shameful corridors of time, reserved for those who possess power without compassion, might without morality, and strength without sight,

Now let us begin. Now let us rededicate ourselves to the long and bitter but beautiful struggle for a new world. This is the calling of the sons of God and our brothers wait eagerly for our response. Shall we say the odds are too great? Shall we tell them the struggle is too hard? will our message be that the forces of American life militate against their rival as full men and we send our deepest regrets or will there be another message of longing of hope of solidarity with their yearnings

of commitment to their cause whatever the cost the choice is ours and though we might prefer it otherwise we must choose in this crucial moment of human history. As that noble bart of yesterday, James Russell Lowell eloquently stated, once to every man and nation comes a moment to decide in the strife of truth and falsehood for the good or evil side, some great cause, God's new Messiah,

often eats the gloom of blight, and the choice goes by forever twixt that darkness and that light, though the cause of evil prosper, yet tis truth alone is strong, though her portion be the scaffold, and upon the throne be wrong, yet that scaffold sways the future,

and behind the dim unknown standeth God, within the shadow, keeping watch above his own. And if we will only make the right choice, we will be able to transform this pending cosmic elegy into a creative psalm of peace. If we will make the right choice, we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our world into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood,

if we will but make the right choice, choice, we will be able to speed up the day all over America and all over the world when justice will roll down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., April 4, 1967, speaking at Riverside Church in New York, explaining why he opposed the war in Vietnam. The speech he delivered exactly a year to the day before he was assassinated at the Lorraine motel in Memphis, Tennessee, April 4, 1968. The night before he died, Dr. King delivered his last major address. He was in Memphis to support striking sanitation workers as he built momentum for a

poor people's march on Washington. This is some of Dr. King's last speech. I've been to the mountaintop. And you know, if I were standing at the beginning of time with the possibility of taking a kind of general and panoramic view of the whole of human history up to now, and the Almighty said to me, Martin Luther King, which age would you like to live in? I would take my mental flight by Egypt. And I would watch God's children. in their magnificent trek from the dark dungeons of Egypt

through or rather to cross the Red Sea through the wilderness on toward the promised land and in spite of its magnificence I wouldn't stop there. I would move on by Greece and take my mind to Mount Olympus. and I would see Plato, Aristotle, Socrates, Euripides, and Aristophanes, a symbol around the Pothanon. I would watch them around the Pothanon as they discussed the great and eternal issues of reality,

but I wouldn't stop there. I would go on even to the great heyday of the Roman Empire. And I would see. developments around there through various emperors and leaders. But I wouldn't stop there. I would even come up to the day of the Renaissance and get a quick picture of all that the Renaissance did for the cultural and aesthetic life of man, but I wouldn't stop there. I would even go by the way that the man for whom I named had his habitat.

and I would watch Martin Luther as he taxed his 95 theses on the door at the Church of Wittenberg, but I wouldn't stop there. I would come on up even to 1863 and watch a vacillating president by the name of Abraham Lincoln finally come to the conclusion that he had to sign the Emancipation Proclamation,

but I wouldn't stop there. I would even come up to the early third. and see a man grappling with the problems of the bankruptcy of his nation and come with an eloquent cry that we have nothing to fear but fear itself, but I wouldn't stop there. Strangely enough, I would turn to the Almighty and say, if you allow me to live just a few years in the second half of the 20th century, I will be happy. Now, that's a strange statement to make because the world is all messed up. The nation is sick. Trouble is in the land, confusion all around. That's a strange statement. But I know somehow that only when it is dark enough can you see

the star. And I see God working in the world. this period of the 20th century and 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 the symbol today whether they are in Johannesburg, South Africa, Nairobi, Kenya, across Ghana, New York,

City, Atlanta, Georgia, Jackson, Mississippi, or Memphis, Tennessee, the cry is always the same. We want to be free. 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 the choice between violence and non-violence in this world is non-violence or non-existence. That is where we are today. the human rights revolution is 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. 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.

I can remember when Negroes were just going around, as Ralph has said, so often scratching where they didn't itch and laughing when they were not tickled. But that day is all over. in business now and we are determined to gain our rightful place in God's world. And that's all this whole thing is about. We aren't engaged in any negative protest and in any negative arguments with anybody. We are saying that we are determined to be men. We are determined to be people.

We are saying we are. saying, and we are God's children, we don't have to live like we are forced to live. Now, what does all of this mean in this great period of history? It means that we've got to stay together. We've got to stay together and maintain unity. You know, whenever Pharaoh wanted to prolong the period of slavery in Egypt, he had a favorite, favorite, formula for doing it. What was that? He kept the slaves fighting among themselves. But whenever the slaves get together, something happens in Pharaoh's court, and he cannot hold the slaves in slavery. When the slaves get together, that's the beginning of getting out of slavery.

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., April 3rd, 1968, the night before he was assassinated. We'll come back to the speech in Memphis, Tennessee in a minute. But he had seen the mountain top, not stuck. Nina Simone singing, why the king of love is dead. This is Democracy Now, Democracy Now.org, the war and peace report. I'm Amy Goodman. As we continue with Dr. Martin Luther King's speech the night before he was assassinated, It was April 3rd, 1968, a rainy night in Memphis, Tennessee.

We aren't going to let any may stop us. We are masters in our nonviolent movement in disarming police forces. They don't know what to do. I've seen them so often. I remember in Birmingham, Alabama. And we were in that majestic struggle there. We would move out of the 16th Street Baptist Church day after day. By the hundreds, we would move out, and Bull Connor would tell them to send the dogs for.

And they did come, but we just went before the dogs singing, ain't going to let nobody turn me around. O'Connor next would say, turn the fire hoses on. And as I said to you the other night, Bull Connor didn't know history. He knew a kind of physics that somehow didn't relate to the transphysics that we knew about. And that was the fact that there was a certain kind of fire that no water could put out. And we went before the fire hoses. We had known water.

If we were Baptist or some other denominations, we had been immersed. If we were Methodist and some others, we had been sprinkled. but we knew water. That couldn't stop us. And we just went on before the dogs, and we would look at them, and we'd go on before the water hoses, and we would look at it.

And we'd just go on singing over my head, I see freedom in there. And then we would be throwing into paddy wagons, and sometimes we were stacked in there like soddeens in a can. They would throw us in, and old bull would say, take them off. and they did and we were just gone in the paddy wagon singing we shall overcome and every now and then we get in jail and we see the jailers looking through the windows being moved by a prayer and being moved by our words in our song and there was the power there which bull connor couldn't adjust to and so we ended up transforming bull into a steel

And we want our struggle in Birmingham. Now let me say as I move to my conclusion, that we've got to give ourselves to this struggle until the end. Nothing would be more tragic than to stop at this point in Memphis. We've got to see it through. When we have our march, you need to be there. If it means leaving work, if it means leaving school, be there. Be concerned about your brother.

You may not be on track. But either we go up together or we go down together. Let us develop a kind of dangerous unselfishness. One day a man came to Jesus and he wanted to raise some questions about some vital matters of life. At points he wanted to trick Jesus and show him

that he knew a little more than Jesus knew and throw him off base. Now that question could have easily ended up in a philosophical and theological debate. But Jesus immediately pulled that question from mid-air and placed it on a dangerous curve between Jerusalem and Jericho. He talked about a certain man who fell among thieves. You remember that a Levite And a priest Passed by on the other side

They didn't stop to help him Finally a man of another race came by He got down from his beast Decided not to be compassionate by proxy But he got down with him Administered first aid And helped the man in need Jesus ended up saying

This was the good man This was the great man Because he had had the capacity to project the eye into the vow and to be concerned about his brother. Now, you know, we use our imagination a great deal to try to determine why the priest and the Levite didn't stop. At times, we say they were busy going to a church meeting, an ecclesiastical gathering, and they had to get on down to Jerusalem so they wouldn't be late for their meeting.

At other times, we would speculate that there was a religious law that one who was engaged in religious ceremonial was not to touch a human body 24 hours before the ceremony. And every nine then we began to wonder whether maybe they were not going down to Jerusalem, down to Jericho rather to Jericho, rather to organize. a Jericho Road Improvement Association. That's the possibility. Maybe they felt that it was better to deal with the problem from the causal root rather than to get bogged down with an individual effect. But I'm going to tell you what my imagination tells me. It's possible that those men were afraid.

You see, the Jericho Road is a dangerous road. That's right. I remember when Mrs. King and I were first in Jerusalem. We rented a card and drove from Jerusalem down to Jericho. And as soon as we got on that road, I said to my wife, I can see why Jesus used this as the setting for his parable. It's a winding, meandering road. It's really conducive for ambushing.

You start out in Jerusalem, which is about 12, 1,200 miles, or rather 1,200 feet above sea level. And by the time you get down to Jericho, 15 or 20 minutes later, you are about 2,200 feet below sea level. That's a dangerous road. In the days of Jesus, it came to be known as the bloody paths. And you know it's possible that the priest and the Levite looked over that man on the ground

and wondered if the robbers were still around or as possible that they felt that the man on the ground was merely faking and he was acting like he had been robbed and hurt in order to seize them over there, love them there for quick and easy seizure. And so the first question that the priest, asked, the first question that the Levite asked was, if I stopped to help this man, what will happen to me? But then the Good Samaritan came by, and he reversed the question. If I do not

stop to help this man, what will happen to him? That's the question before you tonight. Not if I stop to help the sanitation workers, what will happen to my job. Not if I stop to help the sanitation workers, what will happen to all of the hours that I usually spend in my office every day and every week as a pastor. The question is not if I stop to help this man in need, what will happen to me? The question is, if I do not stop to help the sanitation workers, what will happen to them? That's the question. You know, several years ago I was in New York City, autographing the first book that I had written.

And while sitting there autographing books, a demented black woman came up. The only question I heard from her was, you, Martin Luther King, and I was looking down writing, and I said yes. The next minute I felt something beating on my chest. Before I knew it, I had been scared. stab by this demented woman.

I was rushed to Harlem Hospital. It was a dark Saturday afternoon. That blade had gone through, and the x-rays revealed that the tip of the blade was on the edge of my e-order, the main artery. And once that's punctured, you drowned in your own blood. That's the end of you. It came out.

in the New York Times the next morning that if I had merely sneezed, I would have died. Well, about four days later, they allowed me after the operation. After my chest had been open and the blade had been taken out, to move around into wheelchair and the hospital, they allowed me to read some of the mail that came in, and from all over the states and the world, kind letters came in. I read a few but one of them

I will never forget I had received one from the president and the vice president I've forgotten what those telegrams said I'd received a visit and a letter from the governor of New York but I've forgotten what that

letter said but there was another letter that came from a little girl a young girl who was a student at the White Plains High School. And I looked at that letter, and I'll never forget it. It said, simply, dear Dr. King, I am a ninth grade student at the White Plains High School.

She said, while it should not matter, I would like to mention that I'm a white girl, I read in the paper of your misfortune and of your suffer. and I read that if you had sneezed you would have died. I'm simply writing you to say that I'm so happy that you didn't sneeze. And I want to say tonight, I want to say tonight that I too am happy that I didn't sneeze because of I had sneezed. I wouldn't have been around here in 1960.

When students all over the south started sitting in at lunch town. in at lunchtowners. And I knew that as they were sitting in, they were really standing up for the best in the American dream and taking the whole nation back to those great wells of democracy, which were dug deep by the founding fathers in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution if I had sneezed. I wouldn't have been around here in 1961 when we decided to take a ride for freedom and end its segregation in interstate. state travel. If I had sneezed, I wouldn't have been around here in 1962. The Negroes in all been at Georgia decided to straighten their backs up. And whenever men and women straighten their

backs up, they are going somewhere because a man can't ride your back unless it is bent. If I had sneezed, I wouldn't have been here in 1963. The black people of Birmingham, Alabama aroused a conscience of this nation and brought into being the Civil Rights Bill if I had sneezed. I wouldn't have had a chance later that year in August to try to tell America about a dream that I had had.

If I had sneezed, I wouldn't have been down in Selma, Alabama, to see the Greta movement there if I had sneezed. I wouldn't have been. in Memphis to see a community rally around those brothers and sisters who are suffering. I'm so happy that I didn't sneeze. And they were telling me, now it doesn't matter now.

It really doesn't matter what happens now. I left Atlanta this morning, and as we got started on the plane, that was six of us. The pilot said over the public address system, we're sorry for the delay. But we have Dr. Martin Luther King on the plane. And to be sure that all of the bags were checked, and to be sure that nothing would be wrong on the plane, we had to check out everything carefully. and we've had the plane protected and guarded all night

and then I got into Memphis and some began to say the threats I talk about the threats that were out or what would happen to me from some of our sick white brothers I don't know what will happen now

we've got some difficult days ahead not concerned about promise land Dr. Martin Luther King, speaking April 3rd, 1968. Within 24 hours, he would be dead, assassinated on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel, April 4th, 1968. Today is the federal holiday that honors him. That does it for our show. Democracy Now is produced by Mike Burke, Dina Guzder, Nermin-Shea, Carla Wills, Tammy Warnoff, Libby, Sam Alcoff, John Hamilton, Robbie Karen, Hannie Mousud, Cherina Nudura, Taymari, Astrudio, Adriano Contreras, and Maria Tarasena. Philippo and Miguel Negera are engineers. Special thanks to Becca Staley, Julie Crosby, Miriam Barnard, Hugh Grant, David Prude, Vesta Goddars, and Carl Markser, and to our camera crew, John Randolph, Karen Krug Meadows, Anna Ozbeck, and Matt Ely. I'm Amy Goodman. Thanks so much for joining us.