Dr. King's Nobel Peace Prize Acceptance Speech

[CrimsonTide4]

Martin Luther King's
Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech

December 10, 1964
Oslo, Norway

I accept the Nobel Prize for Peace at a moment when twenty-two
million Negroes of the United States of America are engaged in a
creative battle to end the long night of racial injustice. I accept
this award in behalf of a civil rights movement which is moving with
determination and a majestic scorn for risk and danger to establish a
reign of freedom and a rule of justice.

I am mindful that only yesterday in Birmingham, Alabama, our
children, crying out for brotherhood, were answered with fire hoses,
snarling dogs and even death. I am mindful that only yesterday in
Philadelphia, Mississippi, young people seeing to secure the right to
vote were brutalized and murdered. And only yesterday more than 40
houses of worship in the State of Mississippi alone were bombed or
burned because they offered a sanctuary to those who would not accept
segregation.

I am mindful that debilitating and grinding poverty afflicts my
people and chains them to the lowest rung of the economic ladder.

Therefore, I must ask why this prize is awarded to a movement which
is beleaguered and committed to unrelenting struggle; to a movement
which has not won the very peace and brotherhood which is the essence
of the Nobel Prize.

After contemplation, I conclude that this award which I receive on
behalf of that movement is profound recognition that nonviolence is
the answer to the crucial political and moral question of our time --
the need for man to overcome oppression and violence without
resorting to violence and oppression.

Civilization and violence are antithetical concepts. Negroes of the
United States, following the people of India, have demonstrated that
nonviolence is not sterile passivity, but a powerful moral force
which makes for social transformation. Sooner or later all the people
of the world will have to discover a way to live together in peace,
and thereby transform this pending cosmic elegy into a creative psalm
of brotherhood.

If this is to be achieved, man must evolve for all human conflict a
method which rejects revenge, aggression and retaliation. The
foundation of such a method is love. The tortuous road which has led
from Montgomery, Alabama, to Oslo bears witness to this truth. This
is a road over which millions of Negroes are traveling to find a new
sense of dignity.

This same road has opened for all Americans a new ear of progress and
hope. It has led to a new Civil Rights bill, and it will, I am
convinced, be widened and lengthened into a superhighway of justice
as Negro and white men in increasing numbers create alliances to
overcome their common problems.

I accept this award today with an abiding faith in America and an
audacious faith in the future of mankind. I refuse to accept despair
as the final response to the ambiguities of history. I refuse to
accept the idea that the "isness" of man's present nature makes him
morally incapable of reaching up for the eternal "oughtness" that
forever confronts him.

I refuse to accept the idea that man is mere flotsom and jetsom in
the river of life unable to influence the unfolding events which
surround him. I refuse to accept the view that mankind is so
tragically bound to the starless midnight of racism and war that the
bright daybreak of peace and brotherhood can never become a reality.

I refuse to accept the cynical notion that nation after nation must
spiral down a militaristic stairway into the hell of thermonuclear
destruction. I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will
have the final word in reality. This is why right temporarily
defeated is stronger than evil triumphant.

I believe that even amid today's motor bursts and whining bullets,
there is still hope for a brighter tomorrow. I believe that wounded
justice, lying prostrate on the blood-flowing streets of our nations,
can be lifted from this dust of shame to reign supreme among the
children of men.

I have the audacity to believe that peoples everywhere can have three
meals a day for their bodies, education and culture for their minds,
and dignity, equality and freedom for their spirits. I believe that
what self-centered men have torn down, men other-centered can build
up. I still believe that one day mankind will bow before the altars
of God and be crowned triumphant over war and bloodshed, and
nonviolent redemptive goodwill will proclaim the rule of the land.

"And the lion and the lamb shall lie down together and every man
shall sit under his own vine and fig tree and none shall be afraid."

I still believe that we shall overcome.

This faith can give us courage to face the uncertainties of the
future. It will give our tired feet new strength as we continue our
forward stride toward the city of freedom. When our days become
dreary with low-hovering clouds and our nights become darker than a
thousand midnights, we will know that we are living in the creative
turmoil of a genuine civilization struggling to be born.

Today I come to Oslo as a trustee, inspired and with renewed
dedication to humanity. I accept this prize on behalf of all men who
love peace and brotherhood. I say I come as a trustee, for in the
depths of my heart I am aware that this prize is much more than an
honor to me personally.

Every time I take a flight I am always mindful of the man people who
make a successful journey possible -- the known pilots and the
unknown ground crew.

So you honor the dedicated pilots of our struggle who have sat at the
controls as the freedom movement soared into orbit. You honor, once
again, Chief (Albert) Luthuli of South Africa, whose struggles with
and for his people, are still met with the most brutal _expression of
man's inhumanity to man.

You honor the ground crew without whose labor and sacrifices the jet
flights to freedom could never have left the earth.

Most of these people will never make the headlines and their names
will not appear in Who's Who. Yet when years have rolled past and
when the blazing light of truth is focused on this marvelous age in
which we live -- men and women will know and children will be taught
that we have a finer land, a better people, a more noble civilization
-- because these humble children of God were willing to suffer for
righteousness' sake.

I think Alfred Nobel would know what I mean when I say that I accept
this award in the spirit of a curator of some precious heirloom which
he holds in trust for its true owners -- all those to whom beauty is
truth and truth beauty -- and in whose eyes the beauty of genuine
brotherhood and peace is more precious than diamonds or silver or
gold.

MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR.

[TonyB06]

Good stuff, CT4.

Thanks for posting it.