We must not allow our creative protest to degenerate into physical violence. We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline. Throughline Bayard Rustin: The Man Behind the March on Washington (2021) This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism. We have also come to his hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of now. And so we've come to cash this check, a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and the security of justice. We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check, a check which has come back marked insufficient funds.īut we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. This note was a promise that all men - yes, Black men as well as white men - would be guaranteed the unalienable rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. In a sense we've come to our nation's capital to cash a check.Ĭode Switch The Power Of Martin Luther King Jr.'s Anger And so we've come here today to dramatize a shameful condition. One hundred years later the Negro is still languished in the corners of American society and finds himself in exile in his own land. One hundred years later, the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity. One hundred years later, the life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination. It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of their captivity.īut 100 years later, the Negro still is not free. This momentous decree came as a great beacon light of hope to millions of Negro slaves who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice. Martin Luther King Jr.: Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand today, signed the Emancipation Proclamation. National Archives/Hulton Archive via Getty Images and other civil rights leaders gather before a rally at the Lincoln Memorial on Aug.

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