1.OR GOD IS Marching on! - 25 March 1965
Online listening
Let us therefore continue our triumphant march (Uh huh) to the realization of the American dream. (Yes, sir) Let us march on segregated housing (Yes, sir) until every ghetto or social and economic depression dissolves, and Negroes and whites live side by side in decent, safe, and sanitary housing. (Yes, sir) Let us march on segregated schools (Let us march, Tell it) until every vestige of segregated and inferior education becomes a thing of the past, and Negroes and whites Study side-by-side in the solidly-herating context of the classroom.
LET US March ON Poverty (Let Us March) Until No American Parent Has To Skip A Meal So That Their Children May Eat. (Yes, SIR) March ON Pover (Let Us March) UnTil No Starved Man Walks The Streets Our Cities and towns (Yes, sir) in search of jobs that do not exist. (Yes, sir) Let us march on poverty (Let us march) until wrinkled stomachs in Mississippi are filled, (that's right) and the idle industries of Appalachia are realized And Revitalized, And Broken Lives in Sweltering Gheettos Are Mended and Remolded.
LET US March On Ballot Boxes, (Let's March) March On Ballot Boxes UnTil Race-Baitrs Disappear from The Political Arena.
LET US March On Ballot Boxes Until The Salient MISDEEDS OF BLOODTHIRSTY MOBS (YES, SIR) Will Be Transformed Into The Calculated Goods of Orderly Citizens. (Speak, Doctor)
Let us March on Ballot Boxes (Let US March) Until The Wallace OF Our NATION TREMBLE AWAY IN SILENCE.
Let Us March ON Ballot Boxes (Let Us March) UnTil We send tour City Councils (Yes, SIR), State Legislatures, (Yes, SIR) and the United States Congress, (Yes, SIR) MEN WHO WILL NOT FEAR TO DO justly, love mercy, and walk humbly with thy God.Let us march on ballot boxes (Let us march. March) until brotherhood becomes more than a meaningless word in an opening prayer, but the order of the day on every legislative agenda.
LET US March On Ballot Boxes (YES) Until All Over ALABAMA GOD'S CHILDREN WILL BE ABLE TO WALK The Earth in Decency and Honor.
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I came to Say to you this Afternoon, HOWEVER DIFFICULT The Moment, (Yes, SIR) HOWEVER FRUSTRANTING THE HOUR, IT WILL NOT BE Long, (NO SIR) Because "Truth Crushed to Earth Will Rise Again" (Yes, SIR)
How long? NOT Long, (Yes, SIR) Because "No Lie CAN Live Forever." (Yes, SIR)
How long? NOT Long, (All right. How long) Because "You Shall Reap What You Sow." (Yes, SIR)
How long? (How long?) Not long: (not long)
Truth Forever on the scaffold, (Speak)
Wrong Forever on The Throne, (Yes, SIR)
Yet That Scaffold Sways The Future, (Yes, SIR)
And, Behind the Dim Unknown,
Standeth God with the shadow,
Keeping Watch Above His Own.
How long? NOT LONG, BECAUSE The Arc of The MORAL Universe Is Long, But It Bends Toward Justice (Yes, SIR)
How long? Not long, (not long) Because:
Mine Eyes Have Seen The glory of the coming of the lord; (yes, sir)
He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath is store; (yes)
He Has Loosed The Fateful Lightning of His Terrible Swift Sword; (Yes, SIR)
His Truth Is Marching on. (Yes, SIR)
He Has Sounded Forth The Trumpet That Shall Never Call Retreat; (Speak, SIR)
He is sifting out the hearts of men before his judgment seat. (That's Right) O, Be Swift, My Soul, To Answer Him! Be jubilant my feed!
Our god is march. (YEAH)
Glory, Hallelujah! (Yes, SIR) Glory, Hallelujah! (All Right)
2. "Give US THE BALLOT," Address At the Prayer Pilgrimage for Freedom - 17 May 1957
Online listening
We must realize that we are grappling with the most weighty social problem of this nation, and in grappling with such a complex problem there is no place for misguided emotionalism. (All right, That's right) We must work passionately and unrelentingly for the goal of freedom, but we must be sure that our hands are clean in the struggle. We must never struggle with falsehood, hate, or malice. We must never become bitter. I know how we feel sometime. There is the danger that those of us who have been forced so long to stand amid the tragic midnight of oppression-those of us who have been trampled over, those of us who have been kicked about-there is the danger that we will become bitter. But if we will become bitter and indulge In Hate Campaigns, The New Order Which IS Emerging Will Be Nothing But A Duplication of The Old Order. (Yeah, That's All Right) ...
There is something in this universe (Yes, Yes) which justifies Carlyle in saying: ". No lie can live forever" (All right) There is something in this universe which justifies William Cullen Bryant in saying: "Truth crushed to earth will rise "(YES. All right) There IS Something in this Universe (Watch yourself) Which Justifies James Russell Lowell in Saying:
Truth Forever on the scaffold,
Wrong Forever on the throne. (Oh yeah)
Yet That Scaffold Sways The Future,
AND BEHIND THE DIM UNKNOWN
Stands God (All Right), Keeping Watch Above His Own. (Yeah, Yes)
.
Give us the ballot (Yes) and we will no longer plead to the federal government for passage of an anti-lynching law; we will by the power of our vote write the law on the statute books of the South (All right) and bring An end to the dateardly acts of the hooded perpetrators of violence.
Give US The Ballot (Give US THE Ballot), And We Will Transform The Salient MISDEEDS OF BLOODTHIRSTY MOBS (YEAH) INTO The Calculated Good Deeds of Orderly Citizens.
Give us the ballot (Give us the ballot), and we will fill our legislative halls with men of goodwill (All right now) and send to the sacred halls of Congress men who will not sign a "Southern Manifesto" because of their devotion to "TELL 'EM About IT)
Give us the ballot (Yeah), and we will place judges on the benches of the south who will do justly and love mercy (Yeah), and we will place at the head of the southern states governors who have felt not only the tang of THE HUMAN, But the blowy of the divine.
Give US THE Ballot (Yes), And We Will Quietly and Nonviolently, WITHOUT RANCOR OR BITERNESS, IMPLEMENT The Supreme Court's Decision of May Seventeneth, 1954. (That's Right)
3.Speech at Great March on DETROIT - 23 June 1963
Online listening
And so we must say, now is the time to make real the promises of democracy. Now is the time to transform this pending national elegy into a creative psalm of brotherhood. Now is the time to lift our nation. [Applause] Now is the Time to Lift Our nation from the Quicks Of Racial Injustice to the Solid Rock of Racial Justice. Now is the time. NOW is the time. [Applause] (now. Now) ...
And so this social revolution taking place can be summarized in three little words. They are not big words. One does not need an extensive vocabulary to understand them. They are the words "all," "here," and "now." We Want All of Our Rights, We Want Themie, And We Want Them NOW. [Applause] [Recording Interrupted]
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[Applause] realizing that injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. And we've got to come to see that the problem of racial injustice is a national problem. No community in this country can boast of clean hands in the area of brotherhood. Now in the North it's different in that it does not have the legal sanction that it has in the South But it has its subtle and hidden forms and it exists in three areas:. in the area of employment discrimination, in the area of housing discrimination, and in the area of de facto segregation in the public schools. and we must come to see that de facto segregation in the North is just as injurious as the actual segregation in the South. [Applause] and so if you want to help US in Alabama and Mississippi and over the South, do all this you can to get rid of the problem.
