We have waited for more than 340 years for our constitutional and God-given rights. The nations of Asia and Africa are moving with jetlike speed toward gaining political independence, but we stiff creep at horse-and-buggy pace toward gaining a cup of coffee at a lunch counter. Perhaps it is easy for those who have never felt the stinging dark of segregation to say, "Wait." But when you have seen vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers at will and drown your sisters and brothers at whim; when you have seen hate-filled policemen curse, kick and even kill your black brothers and sisters; when you see the vast majority of your twenty million Negro brothers smothering in an airtight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society; when you suddenly find your tongue twisted and your speech stammering as you seek to explain to your six-year-old daughter why she can't go to the public amusement park that has just been advertised on television, and see tears welling up in her eyes when she is told that Funtown is closed to colored children, and see ominous clouds of inferiority beginning to form in her little mental sky, and see her beginning to distort her personality by developing an unconscious bitterness toward white people; when you have to concoct an answer for a five-year-old son who is asking: "Daddy, why do white people treat colored people so mean?"; when you take a cross-county drive and find it necessary to sleep night after night in the uncomfortable corners of your automobile because no motel will accept you; when you are humiliated day in and day out by nagging signs reading "white" and "colored"; when your first name becomes "n-gger," your middle name becomes "boy" (however old you are) and your last name becomes "John," and your wife and mother are never given the respected title "Mrs."; when you are harried by day and haunted by night by the fact that you are a Negro, living constantly at tiptoe stance, never quite knowing what to expect next, and are plagued with inner fears and outer resentments; when you no forever fighting a degenerating sense of "nobodiness" then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait. There comes a time when the cup of endurance runs over, and men are no longer willing to be plunged into the abyss of despair. I hope, sirs, you can understand our legitimate and unavoidable impatience.
I'm sitting in downtown Birmingham as I type and it would be easy for me to type something that made it sound like I'm ashamed of what happened here in the decade before my birth, but I'm not ashamed. I'm proud that my home was the battle ground where eventually 'right' won over 'wrong'.
Yes, I'm white and from Birmingham, AL and I occasionally work in places like Selma where so much history was made. It makes me proud of the black
and white people that stood up for 'the right' during those years and refused to let fear stop what was so important to accomplish.
From everything I have ever heard, there were people on both sides of the racial fence that did such great things and there were also those on both sides of that racial divide that hurt progress through their actions. However, to me, MLK's legacy is not one of black overcoming white, but rather one of 'right' overcoming 'wrong'. He untited people that were wise enough to listen. This is why today we are so much closer to having an equal playing field, regardless of those, both black and white, that continue to perpetuate hateful feelings that divide people. Nobody can deny how positive MLK's influence has been on equal rights not only in this country, but throughout the world.
