0:00WARREN: This is an interview, March eighteenth, with Dr. King. All
right, sir. May I just plunge in and--
KING: --yes.
WARREN: Start with a topic and we'll explore it a little bit?
KING: All right.
WARREN: Do you see your father's role and your own role as historical
phases of the same process?
KING: Yes, I do. I think my father and I have worked together a great
deal in the last few years trying to grapple with the same problem,
and he was working in the area of civil rights before I was born, and
when I was just a kid and I grew up in the kind of atmosphere that had
a real civil rights concern. And I do think it's the--the same problem
that we are grappling with. It's the same historical process, and if,
if this is what you mean, I think so.
1:00
WARREN: That is, there are vast differences, of course, in techniques
and opportunities and climate of opinion, all of those million things
that are different from one generation to the other. But you see
this, see a continuity in the process, and not a, not a sharp division
between roles, yours and his?
KING: Yes, I see continuity. I, I don't think there's a sharp--there
are certainly minor differences, but I don't think there is any sharp
difference. I think basically the roles are the same. Now, I grant
you that at points my father did not come up under the discipline of
the nonviolent philosophy. He was not really trained in the nonviolent
discipline, but even without that, the problem was about the same,
and even though the methods may not have been consciously nonviolent,
they were certainly nonviolent in the sense that he never and never
2:00advocated violence as a way to solve the problems.
WARREN: Yes, yes. Those are phases then, shall we say, in a process.
What is the next phase one might envisage?
KING: You mean the next phase in terms of, of--
WARREN:--beyond, beyond the present leadership and the present issues
and the present problems.
KING: Um-hm.
WARREN: Is there a phase beyond the civil rights issues that are now on
the forefront? What is the next phase of, shall we say better--for the
lack of a better phrase--the negro movement?
KING: Um-hm.
WARREN: In a general sense?
KING: Yeah.
WARREN: What would be the next phase? Say, just, offhand saying your
father representing one phase, you another. Can you predict a, another
phase? Is that beginning to take shape already?
KING: Well, I think if there is a next phase it will be an extension of
3:00the present phase. My feeling is that we will really have to grapple
with ways and means to really bring about an integrated society.
Nonviolent direct action, working through the courts, and working
through legislative processes may be extremely helpful in bringing
about a desegregated society. But when we move into the realm of
actual integration which deals with mutual acceptance, a genuine
intergroup, interpersonal living, then it seems to me that other
methods will have to be used. And I think that the next phase will be
the phase that really grapples with the--the methods that must be used
4:00to bring about a thoroughly integrated society.
WARREN: In that phase, we can certainly see quite clearly
responsibilities that belong to the white man, and obligations.
KING: Um-hm.
WARREN: Now, what problems, responsibilities, and obligations would you
say the negro would have in this relationship in this third phase?
KING: Well, I would think this would be the phase, or the
responsibilities of the negro in this phase would be in the area what
Mahatma Gandhi used to refer to as "constructive work," his constructive
program, which is a program whereby the individuals work desperately to
improve their own conditions and their own standards. I think in this
phase, after the negro emerges in and from the desegregated society,
5:00then a great deal of time must be spent in improving standards which
lag behind to a large extent because of segregation--
WARREN: --yes--
KING: --discrimination, and the legacy of slavery. But it seems to me
that the negro will have to engage in a sort of operation bootstraps
in order to lift these standards. And I think by raising the, these
lagging standards, it will make it much more, well, I, I would say much
less difficult for him to move on into the integrated society.
WARREN: Have you followed the controversy between Irving Howe and Ralph
Ellison in Dissent on the new leader?
KING: No, I, I haven't.
WARREN: To fall into? It deals with this question of, say, a man like
Ralph, who is outside the, of the picket lines--
KING: --um-hm--
WARREN:--being called up short by a white liberal saying, 'You don't
6:00belong as an art writer: you (??) to be carrying on a protest.' Ralph's
reply was in, in short, 'You, Irving Howe, are another kind of Bilbo.
You want to put me in my place that you have picked out for me and not
let me be the kind of writer I want to be.'
KING: Um-hm. Um-hm.
WARREN: That's already (??) I'm as King an aspect of the third phase
which is now.
KING: Yes, I think so. I think that one has to recognize that this--
[telephone ringing]--could you hold?
[Pause in recording.]
KING: I've forgotten where I was.
WARREN: Well, I put out a question, but I think we'd--
KING: --uh-hm--
WARREN:--come to a point of pause there. Two weeks ago a prominent
newspaperman said to me--a Southerner by birth--"Thank God for Dr.
King; he's our only hope." He was worrying about violence. Now, this
7:00is very often said by white people. Dr. Kenneth Clark has remarked
in print that your appeal to many white people is because you lull
them into some sense of security. And I hear, too, that there is
some resistance, automatic emotional resistance on the part of negroes
because they feel that your leadership has somehow given a, not
"sellout," but a sense of a soft line, a rapprochement that flatters
the white man's sense of security. Do you encounter this, and how do
you, how do you think about this? How do you feel about these things,
assuming they are true?
KING: Well, I don't agree with it. (laughs) Naturally. I think, first,
8:00one must understand what I'm talking about and what I'm trying to do
when I say "love" and that the love ethic must be at the center of this
struggle. I'm certainly not talking about an affectionate emotion.
I'm not talking about what the Greek language would refer to as
"Eros," or--
WARREN:--yes--
KING: --famile. I'm talking about something much deeper. And I think
there's a misunderstanding.
WARREN: But now how can this misunderstanding be cleared up? I know your
writings and I've heard you speak on, on that. But a misunderstanding
somehow remains among a large segment of negroes and among a large
segment of whites.
KING: Um-hm. Um-hm. Well, I don't think it can be cleared up for those
who refuse to look at the meaning of it. I've done it.
WARREN: I see.
KING: I've said it in print over and over again.
WARREN: Yes, you have. Yeah.
KING: But I do not think violence and hatred can solve this problem.
9:00
WARREN: Yes.
KING: I think they will end up creating many more social problems than
they solve, and I'm thinking of a very strong love. I'm not, I'm
thinking, I'm thinking of love in action and not something where you
say, "Love you enemies," and just leave it at that, but you love your
enemies to the point that you're willing to sit-in at a lunch counter
in order to help them find themselves. You're willing to go to jail.
WARREN: Yes.
KING: And I don't think anybody could consider this cowardice or even a
weak approach. So I think--
WARREN:--yes--
KING: --that many of these arguments come from, from those who have
gotten so caught up in bitterness that they cannot see the deep moral
issues involved. That you're--
WARREN:--or the white man, caught up in complacency.
KING: Yes.
WARREN: Refuses to understand it.
KING: Yes, I think so. I think both.
10:00
WARREN: Let me shove ahead since we're so pressed and I have--
KING: --um-hm. (laughs)
WARREN: Don't laugh. Speaking of bitterness and the pining (??) for
bitterness, let's take the Reconstruction of the South after the Civil
War as a, a tragic shoring up of all kinds of, of bitternesses and
unresolved problems. Myrdal in his big work gives what he considers
a sketch for what would have been a reasonable Reconstruction as
you, no doubt, recall. The first item he puts on his list would've
been compensation to slaveholders by the federal government for the
emancipated slaves. Second, expropriation of land held by Southern
planters with payment. Then the selling of land to both Negroes and
whites who were landless--
11:00
KING: --um-hm.
WARREN: Selling on a long-time basis and other factors. How do you
emotionally respond to this question of paying the Southern slaveholder
for the slaves emancipated by the Civil War, during the Civil War?
Do you find an emotional resistance to that? How do you, how do you
respond to that?
KING: Well, I don't find too much emotional resistance to it. I do feel
that the Reconstruction period was an unf--a tragic period at points
because many of the social problems we face today are here because
this period was not used properly. It wasn't planned properly and the
future wasn't looked at properly in dealing with the present situations
then. I don't, I don't know if this would have been a way of solving
the problem, but I don't have any emotional resistance to the idea if,
12:00if there was as much concern about seeing that the landless slaves and
the penniless slaves had some kind of compensation and something to
start with, maybe this plan would've worked all right because it would
have given both a sense of dignity, and maybe the bitterness that we
now face, still face at many points wouldn't be there because the start
would've been a little better.
WARREN: That undoubtedly is what Myrdal was, was driving at, this
hypothetical situation.
KING: Yeah.
WARREN: But I had discovered this, this question, giving Myrdal, who's
an objective foreign commentator.
KING: Um-hm.
WARREN: This passage sometimes evokes very violent responses from
negroes who are thoroughly acquainted with history, you know.
KING: Um-hm.
WARREN: People of cultivation and--
KING: --yeah--
WARREN:--and, and decent feelings, on the first two counts there will
13:00have violent emotional responses.
KING: Um-hm. Yeah. Well, mine is the same way. I'm not, I'm not saying
that I agree that this was the way to solve the problem, but I do feel
that after 244 years of slavery, certain patterns had developed in the
nation and certain attitudes had developed in the minds of people all
over the nation that everybody had to take some of the responsibility
for this sin committed. And consequently, in solving the problem, it
seems to me, maybe some things would have had to be done which may not
have represented everything that we would want to see, but it may have
saved us many of the bitter moments that we have now.
WARREN: You wouldn't have felt, then, that this somehow would've been
a betrayal of your dignity as a negro human being to have had this
14:00compensation paid? This is all hypothetical of course. But you would
not emotionally respond in that way?
KING: Well, I, I would think that the whole system, my, my revolt and my
emotional response is so much over the, the tragedy of the whole system
of slavery that I would revolt against that as much as over the fact
that slavery existed for all of these years, you see.
WARREN: Sure, sure. That's, that, that question is a, is a, is the
question behind it all?
KING: Yes. Yeah. But I don't, I don't absolutely feel that this
was a way to solve the problem, but yet I, I don't have this strong
emotional feeling of bitterness when I hear it suggested because we had
accumulated a social problem which had to be grappled with, and this
was merely a suggestion as one of the ways that it may have been dealt
15:00with and, and may have saved us some of the problems now. Whether it
would have, we don't know!
WARREN: We don't know. It's hypothetical.
KING: Yeah. That's right.
WARREN: But would it have been possible to implement it,
KING: Unless--
WARREN:--given a war psychology in '65 in the North is another question,
too.
KING: Is another, that's right. Exactly.
WARREN: Let me try something else, another general question. All
revolutions, as far as I know, in the past have had the tendency,
even the expressionist (??) tendency, to move toward a centralized
leadership--
KING: --um-hm--
WARREN:--to move toward a man who has both a power and symbolic function.
KING: Um-hm.
WARREN: Now you are stuck yourself in a very peculiar role by a series
of things, personal qualities and God knows what else, you know. But
still there is no , this revolution, if we call it one, does, is not
16:00following that pattern, though we see the tendency to focus on single
leadership. Can a revolution survive without this symbolic focus, even
if not without, even without a literal focus under single leadership?
KING: I think so.
WARREN: You, you know the question. I mean I'm might not, I'm not
putting it well, but you get what I'm driving at?
KING: Yes, I think, I think I do. I think a revolution can survive
without this single centralized leadership, but I do think there must
be centralized leadership in the sense that, say, in our struggle all
of the leaders coordinate their efforts, cooperate and, and at least
evince a degree of unity. And I think if we, say, if all of the major
leaders in this struggle were at, at war with each other, then I think
it would be very difficult to make this social revolution the kind of
17:00powerful revolution that it's proved to be. But the fact is that we
have had on the whole a unified leadership, although it hasn't been
just one person. And I think there can be a collective leadership.
Maybe some symbolize the struggle a little more than others, but I
think it's absolutely necessary for the leadership to be united in
order to make the revolution effective.
WARREN: There's a problem that many people now talk about, from now on
as more and more activity occurs in the big centers like Harlem and
Detroit and Chicago, desperate wondering as to whether any leadership
now visible or imaginable can control the random explosion that might
18:00come at any time--
KING: --um-hm--
WARREN:--the random violence,
KING: Yeah. Well--
WARREN:--that is stored; it's being stored up because we know it's
stored up.
KING: Um-hm. Yes.
WARREN: Is that the big central problem you all are facing now?
KING: Well, I think it's a, it's a real problem. And I think the only
answer to this problem is the degree to which the nation is able to
go; I should say the speed in which we move toward the solution of
the problem. The more progress we can have in race relations and the,
the more we move toward the goal of an integrated society, the more
we lift the hope, so to speak, of the masses of people. And it seems
to me that this will lessen the possibility of sporadic violence. On
the other hand, if we get setbacks and if something happens where the
19:00Civil Rights Bill is watered down, for instance, if the negro feels
that he can do nothing but move from one ghetto to another and one slum
to another, the despair and the disappointment will be so great that it
will be very difficult to keep the struggle disciplined and nonviolent.
So I think it will depend on the rate of progress and the speed, and
recognition on the part of the white leadership of, of the need to go
on and get this problem solved and solved in a hurry, and the need for
massive action programs to do it.
WARREN: Let me read a quotation from Mr. Galamison about the schools
and the boycott.
KING: Um-hm. Um-hm.
WARREN: "I would rather see it"--the public school system--"destroyed
than not conform to," and then an, "to his timetable of integration."
20:00And, "Maybe it has run its course, anyway,"--the public school system.
KING: Maybe it's? I didn't get the last part.
WARREN: "Maybe the public school system has run its course anyway."
KING: Oh, uh-hm.
WARREN: It's over.
KING: Um-hm.
WARREN: He'd rather see it destroyed than not conform to his prescribed
timetable--
KING: --um-hm--
WARREN:--for integration.
KING: And you, you're asking what about?
WARREN: How, how do you respond to, to that statement?
KING: Well, I don't think the public school system has run its course,
far from it. And I don't think that we should think in terms of the
destruction of the system. I--I tend to feel that we can rectify
the system by constantly bringing this issue to the forefront of the
conscience of the nation or of our communities. I think the school
boycott idea is a very good one. I think it's one of the creative
ways to dramatize an intolerable condition. But I wouldn't go to the
21:00point of saying that I would like to see the school system destroyed.
I think what he is probably getting at is that as long as you have
inferior and segregated school systems, you, you aren't getting a
quality education for anybody whether it's negro or white. I agree
with the Supreme Court at this point that separate facilities are
inherently unequal, and somehow the segregated gets a false sense of
inferiority because of these very separate facilities. So the--
WARREN:--that's--I'm sorry, please.
KING: No, I was just going to say, so that I would, I would say that
the real need is to fight hard to get the system rectified and not to
destroy the public schools.
WARREN: Let's take a case like this. (??) with any polemical intent,
you see. It's just a question of the kind of problem.
KING: Sure. Yeah.
WARREN: Let's take Washington, DC or New York City if things go as
22:00they're now going, with a concentration of negro population in the
cities--
KING: --um-hm--
WARREN:--and almost a vast majority of public school students then being
negroes.
KING: Um-hm.
WARREN: How can you integrate, say, Washington DC, if you have 95
percent or 90 percent of the schools, your public schools, are negro?
Where do you get the white kids to integrate them with?
KING: Well, you--
WARREN:--what could be done there?
KING: --you have two problems here. One is the fact that this problem
will never be ultimately solved until the housing problem is solved.
As long as there is residential segregation and as long as the whites
in the central city run to the suburbs and leave these core areas, you
do have a real problem. Now the only way that it can be dealt with
in the transition while we are trying to solve the problem of housing
discrimination through various means is to, to transfer students from
23:00one district to another, the busing system.
WARREN: Suppose they don't have it. Suppose Washington DC as a total
unit has only, say, 85 percentage of its negro students in the, up to
the eighth grade or the twelfth grade or whatever it would be. Where
do you get the white students to bus in? Can you go to Virginia or West
Virginia to get them?
KING: Well, in a case like that you do have a real problem. I think it,
it's a, I guess the Washington situation is almost unique because many
of these people live in Virginia and Maryland and even in other states,
and that makes the problem even more difficult.
WARREN: What about New York, way, the way it's moving, you, the problem
is becoming that way in New York.
KING: Yeah, but there, on the whole people are still in New York City.
I mean they're, sometimes they're in, say, Westchester County. They
maybe in, in the Queens, some area of the Queens, but, but still I, I
24:00could see it working a little better--
WARREN:--a little better--
KING: --in a situation like that.
WARREN: But the problem is we're dealing with a prin-, as a principle,
where you can, can see situations where it's insoluble transfer.
KING: Yeah. Well, I agree with you.
WARREN: Then what do we do?
KING: I agree that, that the problem will not be ultimately solved.
There are these insoluble situations where we have to, we, we, we have
to, we have to see that problem solved in, in the run of history when
we get housing integration on a broad level. And I think that this is
an area where we must work as hard, you know, to solve the problem of
residential segregation as we do to integrate the schools. However,
where, wherever schools can be integrated through the busing method,
and where it won't be just a, a terrible inconvenience, I think it
ought to be done because I think the inconveniences of a segregated
25:00education are much greater than the inconveniences of busing students
so that they can get an integrated quality education.
WARREN: Are you referring to white and negro students both, in this
matter of--
KING: --that's right--
WARREN:--of inconvenience? Both are being short-changed, as it were?
KING: That's right. Oh, yes. Yes, exactly.
WARREN: It's not just the negro being given a chance to be with a white
child or going to a better school, it's the question of the white
child's own relationship to himself and to negroes, too?
KING: That's right. In other words, my, I feel that when a white child
goes to school only with white children, unconsciously that child
grows up in many instances devoid of a world perspective. There is
an unconscious provincialism, and it can develop into an unconscious
26:00superiority complex just as a negro develops an unconscious inferiority
complex. And it seems to me that one must, that our society must
come to see that this whole question of, of integration is not merely
a matter of quantity, having the same this and that in terms of a
building or a desk or this, but it's a matter of quality. It's, if I
can't communicate with a man, I'm not equal to him. It's not only a
matter of mathematics; it's a matter of psychology and philosophy.
WARREN: Well, he isn't equal to you either if he can't communicate with
you.
KING: Exactly. It's the same, the same thing.
WARREN: It cuts both ways (??).
KING: It cuts both ways, exactly.
WARREN: Let me ask a question that lies behind part of this, I think, at
least for some people it lies behind it.
KING: Um-hm.
WARREN: DuBois many years ago spoke about this, wrote about this, the
split or the possible split in the negro psyche. The negro pulled, on
27:00one hand, toward almost a mystique of African heritage, or at least the
special negro cultural heritage here, to the mystique of blackness, to
all of this. On the other hand the pull toward Western European Judaic-
Christian American cultural heritage, with the penalty there, or the
price or what, of being absorbed away from the other cultural heritage,
even having the blood integrity lost entirely, possibly, in the end?
KING: Um-hm. Um-hm.
WARREN: The sense of some betrayal somehow hidden in here? Does this
problem present itself to you as a real problem, as a real issue, or
not?
KING: Well, it's a real issue, and I think it, it has made for a good
deal of frustration in the negro community, and people have tried
to solve it through various methods. One has been to try to reject
28:00psychologically the, anything that reminds you of your heritage, you
know, and, and this is particularly true of the negro middle-class, the
desire to reject anything that reminds you of Africa, anything that,
really anything that reminds you of the masses of negroes, and then
trying to identify with the white majority, the white middle-class.
And so often what happens is that this individual finds himself caught
out in the middle with no cultural roots because he's rejected by so
many of the white middle-class, and he's out here right in the middle
with no cultural roots and he ends up as E. Franklin Frazier says in
a book "unconsciously hating himself" when he tries to compensate for
29:00this through conspicuous consumption. So it, there's no doubt about
the fact that this has been a problem, but I don't think it has to
be. I think one can live in American society with a certain cultural
heritage, whether it's an African heritage or other, European, what,
what have you, and still absorb a great deal of this culture. There
is always cultural assimilation. This is not an unusual thing; it's
a very natural thing. And I think that we've got to come to see this.
The negro is an American. We, we, we know nothing about Africa,
although our roots are there in terms of our forbearers. But I mean as
far as the average Negro today, he knows nothing about Africa. And I
think he's got to face the fact that he is an American, his culture is
basically American, and one becomes adjusted to this when he realizes
30:00what, what he is. He's got to know what he is. Our destiny is tied up
with the destiny of America.
WARREN: Some anthropologists and sociologists say that the American
negro is more like the old American, the old New Englander or the old
Southerner, like any other kind of American.
KING: Um-hm.
WARREN: Does this make sense to you?
KING: I think so. I think, I think they're probably quite correct there.
WARREN: Did you read Faulkner's Intruder in the Dust, that novel fifteen
years ago?
KING: No, I didn't. I know of the novel--
WARREN:--yes, of course--
KING: --very well but I didn't read it.
WARREN: He has a passage there where he talks of somehow--and in a very
cryptic way--of a homogeneity in the South involving both the Southern
white man and the Southern negro as having some homogeneity against,
some rapport against an outside order of society.
KING: I'm not sure I understand what he means. Do you?
WARREN: Well, nobody's quite sure what it means.
KING: Um-hm.
WARREN: But that somehow, let's pose the question another way. A young
31:00lady at Howard, who's a very brilliant girl and stands high in law
school and has been on a lot of picket lines and jails, too, she's,
can do other things, said to me a few months ago, she had great hope
for a settlement in the South because of a common history between the,
the white man and the negro. And she said being on the land over this
period of time has given some human recognition, even at (??).
KING: Um-hm.
WARREN: That the possibility of a rapprochement, an understanding in the
end. She said, "I'm frightened by Harlem or Detroit. I don't see the
possibility of the human communication." She was raised on a farm in
Virginia, she said. She didn't say (??) involved here. Now, she is
not in a sense soft, you see. She's been in jails, you see? Does this
32:00make any sense?
KING: Well, I think that this may be some truth here. I feel, for
instance, that in the South you have a sort of contact between negroes
and whites, an individual contact, that you don't have in the North,
for instance. Now, this now is mainly a paternalistic thing, you know.
It's a law of servantry--
WARREN:--or a billyclub.
KING: Yes.
[Tape 1 ends; tape 2 begins.]
WARREN: This is tape 2 of the interview with Dr. King. Continue.
[Pause in recording.]
WARREN: Let me ask you this. Can we go--
[Pause in recording.]
WARREN: We can, all right. Good. That's great. What about the meaning
of "Freedom Now," the slogan "Freedom Now?" We know the historical
process is never now, and it's never absolute.
33:00
KING: Um-hm.
WARREN: What about the relation between the historical process and the
slogan?
KING: Yes. Well, I think the slogan is a good one, and I think it--it
really means that the negro has reached the point of feeling that he
should have freedom now. Now, I don't think there's any illusion in
the mind of anybody about the fact that you've got to observe historical
process, you've got to think about the fact that this structural change
cannot come overnight. But we must work at it and we must try to deal
with it with such an urgency that we do have, we are challenged by the,
the need for it now. And, and I think this is more of a challenge to
34:00work and realize the urgency of the moment than it is a belief that you
can really get freedom within, within such a short period.
WARREN: I sat with a group of students some months ago and asked if it's
a question of social process.
KING: Um-hm.
WARREN: And a very bright boy, a senior in a good college, said, "I
understand about social process, in time," he said, "but I can't bear
to bring myself to say it."
KING: Um-hm.
WARREN: Closed his eyes and--
KING: --yeah, well, I find it is a problem. And we have lived so long
with this idea with people saying it takes time and wait on time,
that I find it very difficult to, to adjust to this. I mean, I, I
35:00get annoyed almost when I hear it, although I know it takes time. But
the people that use this argument have been people so often who, who
really didn't want the change to come, and gradualism for them meant a
do nothing-ism, you know, and the standstill-ism, so that it has been a
revolt, I think, against the idea of a feeling on the part of some that
you can just sit around and wait on time when actually time is neutral.
It can be used either constructively or destructively.
WARREN: But some words have become symbolically charged with feelings
where they can't even be used, where they mean the same thing as other
words.
KING: Yes. Yes, exactly.
WARREN: Like the word "gradual" has become emotionally charged,
symbolically charged--
KING: --that's right.
WARREN: So the word can't be used.
36:00
KING: That's right. Exactly.
WARREN: When you say "historical process," it's--it's, the word's been
cleaned though it means the same thing.
KING: It means the same identical thing, but all of the emotions, you
know, surrounding gradual, gradualism, that, and--and this whole thing
of waiting on time, it--it brings about an initial resentment from,
from the negro and his allies in the white community.
WARREN: Now, speaking of symbolisms like that, symbolic charging and
other ends of (??) things, I was talking a few weeks ago with a very,
very able negro attorney, and he suddenly said, "I live in a society"--
he's a very violent, bitter man.
KING: Um-hm.
WARREN: But very able--"I live in a society where all the symbolism of
the poetry I read, the, the Bible I read, is charged with the white
37:00man's values. God's white robes," you know, a--
KING: --um-hm--
WARREN:--white light of hope, you know, all of the, which I, which are
an affront to me." And he said, "I find myself schooling myself now to
resist all the symbolism and invert it for myself."
KING: Um-hm. Um-hm. Yeah. Well, I think this is, many negroes go
through this and, and I think now probably more than ever before.
My only hope is that this kind of reaction will not take us right
back where we, you know, into the same thing we're trying to get out.
There's always a danger that an oppressed group will seek to rise
from the position of disadvantage to one of advantage, you see, thereby
subverting justice, so that you end up substituting one tyranny for
38:00another. Now, I think our danger is that we can get so bitter that
we revolt against everything white, and this becomes a very dangerous
thing because it, it can lead to the kind of philosophy that you get
in the black nationalist movements, and the kind of philosophy that
ends up preaching black supremacy as a mean, as a way of counteracting
white supremacy. And I just think this is a, this would be bad for
our total society. But I can well understand the kind of, of, the kind
of impatience and the psychological conditions that lead to this kind
of reaction.
WARREN: It's there.
KING: Yeah.
WARREN: There's a special thing about this revolution that makes it
unlike, as far as I can tell, any other. All previous revolutions have
39:00aimed at the liquidation of a class or a regime.
KING: Yes. Yes.
WARREN: This one does not aim at liquidation of a class or a regime.
KING: Um-hm. That's right. It's--
WARREN:--it's aimed at something else.
KING: It's a revolution.
WARREN: How, how would you define that aim then?
KING: Well, I would say that this is a revolution to get in. It's
very interesting. I think you're quite right that most revolutions,
almost all revolutions, have been centered on destroying something, you
see, and that's been the center. When in this revolution, the whole
quest is for the negro to get into the mainstream of American life.
He's, it's a revolution calling upon the nation to live up to what is
40:00already there in an id-, in an idealistic sense, I mean in all of its
creeds and all of its basic affirmations, but it's never lived up to
it. So I think this is the difference. It is a revolution of rising
expectations, and it is a revolution not to liquidate the structure of
America, but a revolution to get into the mainstream of American life.
WARREN: A revolution to liquidate an idea, is that it?
KING: That's right, to liquidate an idea which is out of harmony with
the basic idea of the nation.
WARREN: It's a new kind of revolution.
KING: It's, yes, it's, it's a revolution, it is a new kind of revolution.
WARREN: Now, let me say it and you can say it correct or, revise--
KING: --yeah. I, I'll get it. I got it. Yeah.
WARREN: Correct or revise this. The problem may be, is this your
problem and, and people like yourself, to define this revolution in the
41:00new terms to contain the element of hate and liquidation and exploit
the element of hope? All of it is based on hope and hate together.
(??) They're the dynamics--
KING: --um-hm--
WARREN:--in the revel of--
KING: --um-hm--
WARREN:--change, revolutionary change.
KING: Um-hm. Um-hm.
WARREN: (??) You want to drive one horse, not two, unless you want to
kill one of the horses.
KING: Yes. Yes. And you are saying, now, you, you're saying that--
WARREN:--hate's a great dynamic in a revolution.
KING: Yes. Yes, but what you're saying is that in this revolution, you
don't, you don't have this?
WARREN: You have it psychologically, sure.
KING: Yes.
WARREN: That's human.
KING: I, yeah.
WARREN: The hate element is there.
KING: Um-hm.
WARREN: But it's a question of containing that.
KING: Yeah.
WARREN: Or converting it to something else--
KING: --yes--
WARREN:--because there's no legitimate object for it.
KING: Um-hm. Um-hm.
WARREN: It can't (??) liquidation.
42:00
KING: Yes. Yes. Well, I think you're quite right, and I think that
this is a part of the job of the leadership in this revolution,
you know, to keep that hope alive, and yet keep this, this kind of,
I guess, the word hate here. The best way I would call it is to
keep the, the best way to put it is to keep the kind of righteous
indignation alive, or the kind of healthy discontent alive, that will
keep the revolution moving on because we don't--
WARREN:--without the personal focus?
KING: Without the personal. Yes, I think that's right.
WARREN: Is that it?
KING: That's right.
WARREN: Let me ask you one, one more question. How do you interpret the
assaults on you in Harlem?
KING: That, you mean--
WARREN:--the two assaults, yeah--
KING: --the two, the--
WARREN:--yes, yes.
KING: The stabbing and the--
WARREN:--two, stabbing and the, the throwing of things. These two
experiences must have been ghastly shocking, of course, to anybody--
43:00
KING: --um-hm.
WARREN: But as a special extra shock in--
KING: --yes--
WARREN:--your case.
KING: Yes. Yeah. Well, the first one, I, I don't know if we'll ever
know what the cause or basis was because here you had a demented mind
who really didn't know why she was doing it. I, I really don't, really
don't think, it may be that she had been around some of the meetings of
these groups in Harlem, black nationalist groups, that have me all the
time as a favorite object of scorn--
WARREN:--yes--
KING: --and hearing this over and over again, she, she may have
responded to it when I came to Harlem. Or it may be that she was just
so confused that she would've done this to anybody whose name was in
the news. We, we'll never know. But now on the other one where they
threw eggs at--
WARREN:--yes--
KING: --eggs at a car, I think that was really a, a result of the black
44:00nationalist groups, and a feeling, you know, they've heard all of these
things about my being soft and my talking about love the white man all
the time, and I, I think a real feeling that, that, that this kind of
approach is far from, it, it's a cowardly approach. And they transfer
that bitterness toward the white man to me because they began to see, I
mean, they began to fear that I'm saying love this person that they have
such a bitter attitude toward. I think it's, I think it grows right
out of that. In fact Malcolm X had a meeting the day before and he had
talked about me a great deal and said, told them that I would be there
the next night and said, "Now, you all are to go over there and let old
45:00King know what you think about him." And he had said a great deal about
nonviolence, criticizing nonviolence, and saying that I approved of
negro men and women being bitten by dogs and the fire hoses, and I say,
say go on and not defend yourself. So I think this kind of response
grew out of the build up and the, all of the talk about my being a sort
of polished Uncle Tom. I mean this is the kind of thing they say in
those groups. Now my feeling has always been, again, that they have
never understood what I've said, I'm, I'm saying--
WARREN:--same old story?
KING: Because, yeah, they confuse, they don't see that there's a great
deal of a difference between nonresistance to evil and nonviolent
resistance. And certainly I'm not saying that you sit down and
46:00patiently accept injustice. I'm talking about a very strong force,
where you stand up with all your might against an evil system, and you,
you, you are not a coward. You, you, you are resisting, but you've
come to see that tactically as well as morally, it is better to be
nonviolent. I can't see anything but, even if one would, didn't want
to deal with the moral questions, it would just be impractical for the
negro to talk about making his struggle a violent one.
WARREN: On that point, the, this Brinkley survey and the Post survey in
Harlem came up with an astonishing fact, that a large percentage of the
population of Harlem do not think of a negro as being a minority.
KING: Is that so?
WARREN: Don't even know it.
KING: They don't even--
WARREN: --that even though it's factually been done.
KING: Yeah.
WARREN: And other, others feel it, emotionally don't feel it because
they see so few white people around.
KING: This is a, that's right; they never go out of Harlem.
47:00
WARREN: So, the tactical appeal doesn't apply to them.
KING: Um-hm. Yeah.
WARREN: They say, "We're the majority."
KING: Yeah. That's right. That's right. I think that's--
WARREN:--that's dangerous fact, isn't it?
KING: Right. That's a dangerous fact, yes. And you see many people in
Harlem never go out of Harlem. I mean they'd never even been downtown.
And you can see how this bitterness can accumulate. Here you see
people crowded and hovered up in ghettos and slums with no hope, you
see. They, they, they see no way out. If they could, you know, look
down a long corridor and see an exit sign, they would feel a little
better, but they, they see no sense of hope. And it, it's, it's very
easy for one talking about violence and hatred for the white man to
appeal to them. And, and I have never thought of this, but I think
this, this is quite true, that if, even if you talk to them about
48:00nonviolence from a tactical point of view, they can't quite see it
because they don't even know they're outnumbered--
WARREN:--that's right--
KING: --you see.
WARREN: Emotionally, they can't grasp it.
KING: That's right. They can't grab it.
WARREN: Let me ask one more question. When you were assaulted, and
it's very hard, I know, to reconstruct one's own feelings, what did
you feel? What were your first actual reactions at the moment they
threw the, well, say the eggs and so forth, say that, that, not the mad
woman, but the, the other. Can you reconstruct that?
KING: Well, I--
WARREN:--was it significant to you in a, in an emotional way what you
went through in that moment?
KING: Yes, I remember my feelings very well. I, at, at first this was
a very, I guess I had a, a very depressing response because I realized
49:00that these were my own people, these were negroes throwing eggs at me.
And I guess you do go through those moments when you begin to think
about what you're going through and the sacrifices and suffering that
you face as a result of the movement, and yet your own people don't
have an understanding and are seeking, not even an appreciation, and
seeking to destroy your image at every point. But then it was very
interesting. I went right into church and I spoke and I started
thinking not so much about myself but about the very people, the
society that made people respond like this. It was so interesting how
I was able very quickly to get my mind off of myself and feeling sorry
50:00for myself and feeling rejected, and I started including them into the
orbit of my thinking that it's not enough to condemn them for doing
this, this, engaging in this act, but what about the society and what
about the conditions that are still alive which made people act like
this? And I got up and spoke and mentioned this, and the people were
almost, they didn't, I told them about the experience because many of
them in the church didn't know about it and I got up and told them, and
they were, they didn't quite know how to respond when I said, I told
them what happened and I said, "But, you know, the thing that concerns
me is not so much the, those young men. I feel sorry for them. I'm
concerned about the fact that maybe all of us have contributed to this
by not working harder to get rid of the conditions, the poverty, the
51:00social isolation, and all of the conditions that cause individuals to
respond like this.
WARREN: I've attended some of your meetings; I was at Bridgeport two
weeks ago.
KING: Oh, you were?
WARREN: Yes. And I was struck by one fact. It was a total middle-class
audience, wasn't it? Middle-class?
KING: Yeah, I think it was, by and large.
WARREN: Middle-class audience.
KING: Yes. Yes.
WARREN: By and large that.
KING: Um-hm.
WARREN: Now you have, I've never seen, except in that context I never see
you in a situation where you're dealing with a mass audience, you see--
KING: --um-hm--
WARREN:--of, of the uneducated and the poorly educated and the poor.
KING: Um-hm. Um-hm.
WARREN: I should like to see that some time at one--
KING: --oh, yes--
WARREN:--of these gatherings.
KING: Yes. Well, I--
WARREN:--I know you have--
KING: --I do it a great deal--
WARREN:--these types of experiences. I know you do.
KING: Yes. Yes.
WARREN: But if you ever have,
KING: Even when I'm going, sometimes when we're in a city having
a direct action program, I will go into poolrooms and many of the
taverns, and just have a session there where I speak to groups.
52:00
WARREN: I know that's true. Friends of mine have been with you to see
you do it.
KING: Um-hm.
WARREN: So I know it happens.
KING: Yes.
WARREN: I'd just like to see that some time--
[Tape 2 ends.]
[End of interview.]
