Quote of the Day

Everybody has the Blues.  Everybody longs for meaning.  Everybody needs to love and be loved.  Everybody needs to clap hands and be happy ... In music, especially this broad category called Jazz, there is a stepping stone towards all of these.

-- Martin Luther King, Jr.

Quote of the Day

The Blues tell the story of life's difficulties, and if you think for a moment, you will realize that they take the hardest realities of life and put them into music, only to come out with some new hope or sense of triumph.

-- Martin Luther King, Jr.

Quote of the Day

Jazz speaks for life ... This is triumphant music.

-- Martin Luther King, Jr.

Quote of the Day

I must confess that over the last few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate.  I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to "order" than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: "I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action."

-- Martin Luther King, Jr.

Quote of the Day

Social justice and progress are the absolute guarantors of riot prevention.

-- Martin Luther King, Jr.

Quote of the Day

And as long as America postpones justice, we stand in the position of having these recurrences of violence and riots over and over again.

-- Martin Luther King, Jr.

Quote of the Day

But in the final analysis, a riot is the language of the unheard.  And what is it that America has failed to hear?  It has failed to hear that the plight of the Negro poor has worsened over the last few years.  It has failed to hear that the promises of freedom and justice have not been met.  And it has failed to hear that large segments of white society are more concerned about tranquility and the status quo than about justice, equality, and humanity.  And so in a real sense our nation's summers of riots are caused by our nation's winters of delay.

-- Martin Luther King, Jr.

Quote of the Day

... I think America must see that riots do not develop out of thin air.  Certain conditions continue to exist in our society which must be condemned as vigorously as we condemn riots.

-- Martin Luther King, Jr.

Quote of the Day

A riot is the language of the unheard.

-- Martin Luther King, Jr.

Quote of the Day

"You'll never know how easy you and Jackie and [Larry] Doby and Campy [Roy Campanella] made it for me to do my job by what you did on the baseball field," Martin Luther King, Jr. said to baseball superstar Don Newcombe a few weeks before King was assassinated in Memphis in 1968.  Newcombe was humbled.  "Imagine, here is Martin getting beaten with billy clubs, bitten by dogs and thrown in jail, and he says we made his job easier."

-- Michael Eric Dyson, What Truth Sounds Like, p. 251

Quote of the Day

Just two weeks before his death, (Martin Luther King, Jr.) announced, with a broken heart, "Yes, it is true...America is a racist country."  That is why King is important to this generation, to this time, to this nation, to our people.  He spoke the truth that we have yet to fully acknowledge.

-- Michael Eric Dyson, Tears We Cannot Stop, p. 40

Quote of the Day

Either you give the Negro his God-given rights and his freedom or you face the fact of continual social disruption and chaos.  America, which will you choose?

-- Martin Luther King, Jr.

Quote of the Day

There is a great deal of difference between nonresistance to evil and nonviolent resistance.

-- Martin Luther King Jr.

Quote of the Day

Human progress is neither automatic nor inevitable... Every step toward the goal of justice requires sacrifice, suffering, and struggle; the tireless exertions and passionate concern of dedicated individuals.

-- Martin Luther King Jr.

Quote of the Day

Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.

-- Martin Luther King Jr.

Martin Luther King Jr.:

Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.

Martin Luther King Jr.:

An individual has not started living until he can rise above the narrow confines of his individualistic concerns to the broader concerns of all humanity.

Martin Luther King Jr.:

The church at times has preserved that which is immoral and unethical.  Called to combat social evils, it has remained silent behind stained-glass windows....  How often the church has been an echo rather than a voice, a taillight behind the Supreme Court rather than a headlight guiding men progressively and decisively to higher levels of understanding.

Martin Luther King Jr.:

Almost always, the creative dedicated minority has made the world better.

Martin Luther King Jr.:

There is some good in the worst of us and some evil in the best of us. When we discover this, we are less prone to hate our enemies.