The Birth of a New Nation
by Martin Luther King, Jr.
Montgomery, Alabama
April 7, 1957
I
want to preach this morning from the subject, "The Birth of a New
Nation." And I would like to use as a basis for our thinking together a
story that has long since been stenciled on the mental sheets of
succeeding generations. It is the story of the Exodus, the story of the
flight of the Hebrew people from the bondage of Egypt, through the
wilderness, and finally to the Promised Land. It’s a beautiful story. I
had the privilege the other night of seeing the story in movie terms in
New York City, entitled "The Ten Commandments," and I came to see it in
all of its beauty -- the struggle of Moses, the struggle of his devoted
followers as they sought to get out of Egypt. And they finally moved on
to the wilderness and toward the Promised Land. This is something of the
story of every people struggling for freedom. It is the first story of
man’s explicit quest for freedom. And it demonstrates the stages that
seem to inevitably follow the quest for freedom.
Prior to March the sixth, 1957, there existed a country known as the Gold
Coast. This country was a colony of the British Empire. This country
was situated in that vast continent known as Africa. I’m sure you know a
great deal about Africa, that continent with some two hundred million
people and it extends and covers a great deal of territory. There are
many familiar names associated with Africa that you would probably
remember, and there are some countries in Africa that many people never
realize. For instance, Egypt is in Africa. And there is that vast area
of North Africa with Egypt and Ethiopia, with Tunisia and Algeria and
Morocco and Libya. Then you might move to South Africa and you think of that extensive territory known as the Union of South Africa.
There is that capital city Johannesburg that you read so much about
these days. Then there is central Africa with places like Rhodesia and
the Belgian Congo. And then there is East Africa with places like Kenya
and Tanganyika, and places like Uganda and other very powerful countries
right there. And then you move over to West Africa, where you find the
French West Africa and Nigeria, and Liberia and Sierra Leone and places
like that. And it is in this spot, in this section of Africa, that we
find the Gold Coast, there in West Africa.
You also know that for
years and for centuries, Africa has been one of the most exploited
continents in the history of the world. It’s been the "Dark Continent."
It’s been the continent that has suffered all of the pain and the
affliction that could be mustered up by other nations. And it is that
continent which has experienced slavery, which has experienced all of
the lowest standards that we can think about, and its been brought into
being by the exploitation inflicted upon it by other nations.
And this country, the Gold
Coast, was a part of this extensive continent known as Africa. It’s a
little country there in West Africa about ninety-one thousand miles in
area, with a population of about five million people, a little more than
four and a half million. And it stands there with its capital city,
Accra. For years the Gold Coast was exploited and dominated and trampled
over. The first European settlers came in there about 1444, the
Portuguese, and they started legitimate trade with the people in the Gold Coast. They started dealing with them with their gold,
and in turn they gave them guns and ammunition and gunpowder and that
type of thing. Well, pretty soon America was discovered a few years
later in the fourteen hundreds, and then the British West Indies. And
all of these growing discoveries brought about the slave trade. You
remember it started in America in 1619.
And there was a big
scramble for power in Africa. With the growth of the slave trade, there
came into Africa, into the Gold
Coast in particular, not only the Portuguese but also the Swedes and
the Danes and the Dutch and the British. And all of these nations
competed with each other to win the power of the Gold Coast so that they
could exploit these people for commercial reasons and sell them into
slavery.
Finally, in 1850, Britain won out, and she gained
possession of the total territorial expansion of the Gold Coast. From
1850 to 1957, March sixth, the Gold
Coast was a colony of the British Empire. And as a colony she suffered
all of the injustices, all of the exploitation, all of the humiliation
that comes as a result of colonialism. But like all slavery, like all
domination, like all exploitation, it came to the point that the people
got tired of it.
And that seems to be the long story of history.
There seems to be a throbbing desire, there seems to be an internal
desire for freedom within the soul of every man. And it’s there -- it
might not break forth in the beginning, but eventually it breaks out Men
realize that freedom is something basic, and to rob a man of his
freedom is to take from him the essential basis of his manhood. To take
from him his freedom is to rob him of something of God’s image. To
paraphrase the words of
Shakespeare’s Othello: Who steals my purse steals trash; ‘tis something,
nothing; twas mine, ‘tis his, has been the slave of thousands; but he
who filches from me my freedom robs me of that which not enriches him,
but makes me poor indeed.
There is something in the soul that
cries out for freedom. There is something deep down within the very soul
of man that reaches out for Canaan. Men cannot be satisfied with Egypt.
They tried to adjust to it for awhile. Many men have vested interests
in Egypt, and they are slow to leave. Egypt makes it profitable to them;
some people profit by Egypt. The vast majority, the masses of people
never profit by Egypt, and they are never content with it. And
eventually they rise up and begin to cry out for Canaan’s land.
And so these people got tired. It had a long history. As far back as 1844, the chiefs themselves of the Gold
Coast rose up and came together and revolted against the British Empire
and the other powers that were in existence at that time dominating the
Gold Coast. They revolted, saying that they wanted to govern
themselves. But these powers clamped down on them, and the British said
that we will not let you go.
About 1909, a young man was born on
the twelfth of September. History didn’t know at that time what that
young man had in his mind. His mother and father, illiterate, not a part
of the powerful tribal life of Africa, not chiefs at all, but humble
people. And that boy grew up. He went to school at Achimota for a while
in Africa, and then he finished there with honors and decided to work
his way to America. And he landed to America one day with about fifty
dollars in his pocket in terms of pounds, getting ready to get an
education. And he went down to Pennsylvania, to Lincoln University. He
started studying there, and he started reading the great insights of the
philosophers, he started reading the great insights of the ages. And he
finished there and took his theological degree there and preached awhile around Philadelphia and other areas as he was in the country. And went over to the University
of Pennsylvania and took up a masters there in philosophy and
sociology. All the years that he stood in America, he was poor, he had
to work hard. He says in his autobiography how he worked as a bellhop in
hotels, as a dishwasher, and during the summer how he worked as a
waiter trying to struggle through school.
"I want to go back
home. I want to go back to West Africa, the land of my people, my native
land There is some work to be done there." He got a ship and went to London and stopped for a while by London School of Economy and picked up another degree there. Then while in London,
he started thinking about Pan-Africanism and the problem of how to free
his people from colonialism. For as he said, he always realized that
colonialism was made for domination and for exploitation. It was made to
keep a certain group down and exploit that group economically for the
advantage of another. He studied and thought about all of this, and one
day he decided to go back to Africa.
He got to Africa and he was
immediately elected the executive secretary of the United Party of the
Gold Coast. And he worked hard, and he started getting a following. And
the people in this party, the old, the people who had had their hands on
the plow for a long time, thought he was pushing a little too fast, and
they got a little jealous of his influence. and so finally he had to
break from the United Party of the Gold Coast, and in 1949 he organized
the Convention People’s Party. It was this party that started out
working for the independence of the Gold Coast. He started out in a
humble way, urging his people to unite for freedom and urging the
officials of the British Empire to give them freedom. They were slow to
respond, but the masses of people were with him, and they had united to
become the most powerful and influential party that had ever been
organized in that section of Africa.
He started writing. And his
companions with him, and many of them started writing so much that the
officials got afraid, and they put them in jail. And Nkrumah himself was
finally placed in jail for several years because he was a seditious
man, he was an agitator. He was imprisoned on the basis of sedition, and
he was placed there to stay in prison for many years. But he had
inspired some people outside of prison. They got together just a few
months after he’d been in prison and elected him the prime minister
while he was in prison. For awhile the British officials tried to keep
him there, and Gbedemah says -- one of his close associates, the
Minister of Finance, Mr. Gbedemah -- said that that night the people
were getting ready to go down to the jail and get him out. But Gbedemah
said, "This isn’t the way; we can’t do it like this. Violence will break
out and we will defeat our purpose." But the British Empire saw that
they had better let him out. And in a few hours Kwame Nkrumah was out of
jail, the prime minister of the Gold Coast. He was placed there for
fifteen years but he only served eight or nine months, and now he comes
out the Prime Minister of the Gold Coast.
And this was the
struggling that had been going on for years. It was now coming to the
point that this little nation was moving toward its independence. Then
came the continual agitation, the continual resistance, so that the
British Empire saw that it could no longer rule the Gold Coast. And they
agreed that on the sixth of March, 1957, they would release this
nation. This nation would no longer be a colony of the British Empire,
that this nation would be a sovereign nation within the British
Commonwealth. All of this was because of the persistent protest, the
continual agitation on the part of Prime Minister Kwame Nkrumah and the
other leaders who worked along with him and the masses of people who
were willing to follow.
So that day finally came. It was a great
day. The week ahead was a great week. They had been preparing for this
day for many years, and now it was here. People coming in from all over
the world. They had started getting in by the second of March. Seventy
nations represented to come to say to this new nation: "We greet you,
and we give you our moral support. We hope for you God’s guidance as you
move now into the realm of independence." From America itself more than
a hundred persons: the press, the diplomatic guests, and the prime
minister’s guests. And oh, it was a beautiful experience to see some of
the leading persons on the scene of civil rights in America on hand to
say, "Greetings to you," as this new nation was born. Look over, to my
right is Adam Powell, to my left is Charles Diggs, to my right again is
Ralph Bunche. To the other side is Her Majesty’s First Minister of
Jamaica, Manning, Ambassador Jones of Liberia. All of these people from
America, Mordecai Johnson, Horace Mann Bond, all of these people just
going over to say, "We want to greet you and we want you to know that
you have our moral support as you grow." Then you look out and see the
vice-president of the United States, you see A. Philip Randolph, you see
all of the people who have stood in the forefront of the struggle for
civil rights over the years, coming over to Africa to say, "We bid you
Godspeed." This was a great day not only for Nkrumah, but for the whole
of the Gold Coast.
Then came Tuesday, [March] the fifth, many
events leading up to it. That night we walked into the closing of
Parliament -- the closing of the old Parliament, the old Parliament,
which was presided over by the British Empire. The old Parliament which
designated colonialism and imperialism. Now that Parliament is closing.
That was a great sight and a great picture and a great scene. We sat
there that night, just about five hundred able to get in there. People,
thousands and thousands of people waiting outside, just about five
hundred in there, and we were fortunate enough to be sitting there at
that moment as guests of the prime minister. At that hour we noticed
Prime Minister Nkrumah walking in with all of his ministers, with his
justices of the Supreme Court of the Gold Coast, and with all of the
people of the Convention People’s Party, the leaders of that party.
Nkrumah came up to make his closing speech to the old Gold Coast. There
was something old now passing away.
The thing that impressed me
more than anything else that night was the fact that when Nkrumah walked
in, and his other ministers who had been in prison with him, they
didn’t come in with the crowns and all of the garments of kings, but
they walked in with prison caps and the coats that they had lived with
for all of the months that they had been in prison. Nkrumah stood up and
made his closing speech to Parliament with the little cap that he wore
in prison for several months and the coat that he wore in prison for
several months, and all of his ministers round about him. That was a
great hour. An old Parliament passing away.
And then at twelve
o’clock that night we walked out. As we walked out we noticed all over
the polo grounds almost a half-a-million people. They had waited for
this hour and this moment for years. As we walked out of the door and
looked at that beautiful building, we looked up to the top of it and
there was a little flag that had been flowing around the sky for many
years. It was the Union Jack flag of the Gold Coast, the British flag,
you see. But at twelve o’clock that night we saw a little flag coming
down, and another flag went up. The old Union Jack flag came down, and
the new flag of Ghana went up. This was a new nation now, a new nation
being born.
And when Prime Minister Nkrumah stood up before his
people out in the polo ground and said, "We are no longer a British
colony. We are a free, sovereign people," all over that vast throng of
people we could see tears. And I stood there thinking about so many
things. Before I knew it, I started weeping. I was crying for joy. And I
knew about all of the struggles, and all of the pain, and all of the
agony that these people had gone through for this moment.
After
Nkrumah had made that final speech, it was about twelve-thirty now. And
we walked away. And we could hear little children six years old and old
people eighty and ninety years old walking the streets of Accra crying,
"Freedom! Freedom!" They couldn’t say it in the sense that we’d say it
-- many of them don’t speak English too well -- but they had their
accents and it could ring out, "Free-doom!" They were crying it in a
sense that they had never heard it before, and I could hear that old
Negro spiritual once more crying out:
Free at last! Free at last!
Great God Almighty, I’m free at last!
They
were experiencing that in their very souls. And everywhere we turned,
we could hear it ringing out from the housetops. We could hear it from
every corner, every nook and crook of the community: "Freedom! Freedom!"
This was the birth of a new nation. This was the breaking aloose from
Egypt.
Wednesday morning the official opening of Parliament was
held. There again we were able to get on the inside. There Nkrumah made
his new speech. And now the prime minister of the Gold Coast with no
superior, with all of the power that MacMillan of England has, with all
of the power that Nehru of India has -- now a free nation, now the prime
minister of a sovereign nation. The Duchess of Kent walked in, the
Duchess of Kent, who represented the Queen of England, no longer had
authority now. She was just a passing visitor now. The night before, she
was the official leader and spokesman for the Queen, thereby the power
behind the throne of the Gold Coast. But now it’s Ghana. It’s a new
nation now, and she’s just an official visitor like M. L. King and Ralph
Bunche and Coretta King and everybody else, because this is a new
nation. A new Ghana has come into being.
And now Nkrumah stands
the leader of that great nation. And when he drives out, the people
standing around the streets of the city after Parliament is open, cry
out: "All hail, Nkrumah!" The name of Nkrumah crowning around the whole
city, everybody crying this name, because they knew he had suffered for
them, he had sacrificed for them, he’d gone to jail for them. This was
the birth of a new nation. This nation was now out of Egypt and had
crossed the Red Sea.
Now it will confront its wilderness. Like
any breaking aloose from Egypt, there is a wilderness ahead. There is a
problem of adjustment. Nkrumah realizes that. There is always this
wilderness standing before him. For instance, it’s a one-crop country,
cocoa mainly. Sixty percent of the cocoa of the world comes from the
Gold Coast, or from Ghana. And, in order to make the economic system
more stable, it will be necessary to industrialize. Cocoa is too
fluctuating to base a whole economy on that, so there is the necessity
of industrializing. Nkrumah said to me that one of the first things that
he will do is to work toward industrialization. And also he plans to
work toward the whole problem of increasing the cultural standards of
the community. Still ninety percent of the people are illiterate, and it
is necessary to lift the whole cultural standard of the community in
order to make it possible to stand up in the free world.
Yes,
there is a wilderness ahead, though it is my hope that even people from
America will go to Africa as immigrants, right there to the Gold Coast,
and lend their technical assistance, for there is great need and there
are rich opportunities there. Right now is the time that American
Negroes can lend their technical assistance to a growing new nation. I
was very happy to see already people who have moved in and making good.
The son of the late president of Bennett College, Dr. Jones, is there,
who started an insurance company and making good, going to the top. A
doctor from Brooklyn, New York, had just come in that week and his wife
is also a dentist, and they are living there now, going in there and
working, and the people love them. There will be hundreds and thousands
of people, I’m sure, going over to make for the growth of this new
nation. And Nkrumah made it very clear to me that he would welcome any
persons coming there as immigrants and to live there. Now don’t think
that because they have five million people the nation can’t grow, that
that’s a small nation to be overlooked. Never forget the fact that when
America was born in 1776, when it received its independence from the
British Empire, there were fewer, less than four million people in
America, and today it’s more than a hundred and sixty million. So never
underestimate a people because it’s small now. America was smaller than
Ghana when it was born.
There is a great day ahead. The future is on its side. It’s going now through the wilderness, but the Promised Land is ahead.
And
I want to take just a few more minutes as I close to say three or four
things that this reminds us of and things that it says to us -- things
that we must never forget as we ourselves find ourselves breaking aloose
from an evil Egypt, trying to move through the wilderness toward the
promised land of cultural integration. Ghana has something to say to us.
It says to us first that the oppressor never voluntarily gives freedom
to the oppressed. You have to work for it. And if Nkrumah and the people
of the Gold Coast had not stood up persistently, revolting against the
system, it would still be a colony of the British Empire. Freedom is
never given to anybody, for the oppressor has you in domination because
he plans to keep you there, and he never voluntarily gives it up. And
that is where the strong resistance comes. Privileged classes never give
up their privileges without strong resistance.
So don’t go out
this morning with any illusions. Don’t go back into your homes and
around Montgomery thinking that the Montgomery City Commission and that
all of the forces in the leadership of the South will eventually work
out this thing for Negroes, it’s going to work out; it’s going to roll
in on the wheels of inevitability. If we wait for it to work itself out,
it will never be worked out. Freedom only comes through persistent
revolt, through persistent agitation, through persistently rising up
against the system of evil. The bus protest is just the beginning. Buses
are integrated in Montgomery, but that is just the beginning. And don’t
sit down and do nothing now because the buses are integrated, because,
if you stop now, we will be in the dungeons of segregation and
discrimination for another hundred years, and our children and our
children’s children will suffer all of the bondage that we have lived
under for years. It never comes voluntarily. We’ve got to keep on
keeping on in order to gain freedom. It never comes like that. It would
be fortunate if the people in power had sense enough to go on and give
up, but they don’t do it like that. It is not done voluntarily, but it
is done through the pressure that comes about from people who are
oppressed.
If there had not been a Gandhi in India with all of
his noble followers, India would have never been free. If there had not
been an Nkrumah and his followers in Ghana, Ghana would still be a
British colony. If there had not been abolitionists in America, both
Negro and white, we might still stand today in the dungeons of slavery.
And then because there have been, in every period, there are always
those people in every period of human history who don’t mind getting
their necks cut off, who don’t mind being persecuted and discriminated
and kicked about, because they know that freedom is never given out, but
it comes through the persistent and the continual agitation and revolt
on the part of those who are caught in the system. Ghana teaches us
that.
It says to us another thing. It reminds us of the fact that
a nation or a people can break aloose from oppression without violence.
Nkrumah says in the first two pages of his autobiography, which was
published on the sixth of March -- a great book which you ought to read
-- he said that he had studied the social systems of social philosophers
and he started studying the life of Gandhi and his techniques. And he
said that in the beginning he could not see how they could ever get
aloose from colonialism without armed revolt, without armies and
ammunition, rising up. Then he says after he continued to study Gandhi
and continued to study this technique, he came to see that the only way
was through nonviolent positive action. And he called his program
"positive action." And it’s a beautiful thing, isn’t it? That here is a
nation that is now free, and it is free without rising up with arms and
with ammunition. It is free through nonviolent means. Because of that
the British Empire will not have the bitterness for Ghana that she has
for China, so to speak. Because of that, when the British Empire leaves
Ghana, she leaves with a different attitude than she would have left
with if she had been driven out by armies. We’ve got to revolt in such a
way that after revolt is over we can live with people as their brothers
and their sisters. Our aim must never be to defeat them or humiliate
them.
On the night of the State Ball, standing up talking with
some people, Mordecai Johnson called my attention to the fact that Prime
Minister Kwame Nkrumah was there dancing with the Duchess of Kent. And I
said, "Isn’t this something? Here is the once-serf, the once-slave, now
dancing with the lord on an equal plane." And that is done because
there is no bitterness. These two nations will be able to live together
and work together because the breaking aloose was through nonviolence
and not through violence.
The aftermath of nonviolence is the
creation of the beloved community. The aftermath of nonviolence is
redemption. The aftermath of nonviolence is reconciliation. The
aftermath of violence however, are emptiness and bitterness. This is the
thing I’m concerned about. Let us fight passionately and unrelentingly
for the goals of justice and peace, but let’s be sure that our hands are
clean in this struggle. Let us never fight with falsehood and violence
and hate and malice, but always fight with love, so that, when the day
comes that the walls of segregation have completely crumbled in
Montgomery. that we will be able to live with people as their brothers
and sisters.
Oh, my friends, our aim must be not to defeat Mr.
Engelhardt, not to defeat Mr. Sellers and Mr. Gayle and Mr. Parks. Our
aim must be to defeat the evil that’s in them. But our aim must be to
win the friendship of Mr. Gayle and Mr. Sellers and Mr. Engelhardt. We
must come to the point of seeing that our ultimate aim is to live with
all men as brothers and sisters under God and not be their enemies or
anything that goes with that type of relationship. And this is one thing
that Ghana teaches us: that you can break aloose from evil through
nonviolence, through a lack of bitterness. Nkrumah says in his book:
"When I came out of prison, I was not bitter toward Britain. I came out
merely with the determination to free my people from the colonialism and
imperialism that had been inflicted upon them by the British. But I
came out with no bitterness." And, because of that, this world will be a
better place in which to live.
There’s another thing that Ghana
reminds us. I’m coming to the conclusion now. Ghana reminds us that
freedom never comes on a silver platter. It’s never easy. Ghana reminds
us that whenever you break out of Egypt, you better get ready for stiff
backs. You better get ready for some homes to be bombed. You better get
ready for some churches to be bombed. You better get ready for a lot of
nasty things to be said about you, because you're getting out of Egypt,
and, whenever you break aloose from Egypt, the initial response of the
Egyptian is bitterness. It never comes with ease. It comes only through
the hardness and persistence of life. Ghana reminds us of that. You
better get ready to go to prison. When I looked out and saw the prime
minister there with his prison cap on that night, that reminded me of
that fact, that freedom never comes easy. It comes through hard labor
and it comes through toil. It comes through hours of despair and
disappointment.
That’s the way it goes. There is no crown
without a cross. I wish we could get to Easter without going to Good
Friday, but history tells us that we got to go by Good Friday before we
can get to Easter. That’s the long story of freedom, isn’t it? Before
you get to Canaan, you’ve got a Red Sea to confront. You have a hardened
heart of a pharaoh to confront. You have the prodigious hilltops of
evil in the wilderness to confront. And,even when you get up to the
Promised Land, you have giants in the land. The beautiful thing about it
is that there are a few people who’ve been over in the land. They have
spied enough to say, "Even though the giants are there we can possess
the land, because we got the internal fiber to stand up amid anything
that we have to face."
The road to freedom is a difficult, hard
road. It always makes for temporary setbacks. And those people who tell
you today that there is more tension in Montgomery than there has ever
been are telling you right. Whenever you get out of Egypt, you always
confront a little tension, you always confront a little temporary
setback. If you didn’t confront that you’d never get out. You must
remember that the tensionless period that we like to think of was the
period when the Negro was complacently adjusted to segregation,
discrimination, insult, and exploitation. And the period of tension is
the period when the Negro has decided to rise up and break aloose from
that. And this is the peace that we are seeking: not an old negative
obnoxious peace which is merely the absence of tension, but a positive,
lasting peace, which is the presence of brotherhood and justice. And it
is never brought about without this temporary period of tension. The
road to freedom is difficult.
But finally Ghana tells us that
the forces of the universe are on the side of justice. That’s what it
tells us, now. You can interpret Ghana any kind of way you want to, but
Ghana tells me that the forces of the universe are on the side of
justice. That night when I saw that old flag coming down and the new
flag coming up, I saw something else. That wasn’t just an Ephemeral,
evanescent event appearing on the stage of history, but it was an event
with eternal meaning, for it symbolizes something. That thing symbolized
to me that an old order is passing away and a new order is coming into
being. An old order of colonialism, of segregation, of discrimination is
passing away now, and a new order of justice and freedom and goodwill
is being born. That’s what it said: that somehow the forces of justice
stand on the side of the universe, and that you can’t ultimately trample
over God’s children and profit by it.
I want to come back to
Montgomery now, but I must stop by London for a moment, for London
reminds me of something. I never will forget the day we went into
London. The next day we started moving around this great city, the only
city in the world that is almost as large as New York City. Over eight
million people in London, about eight million, three hundred thousand;
New York about eight million, five hundred thousand. London larger in
area than New York, though. Standing in London is an amazing picture.
And I never will forget the experience I had, the thoughts that came to
my mind. We went to Buckingham Palace, and I looked there at all of
Britain, at all of the pomp and circumstance of royalty. And I thought
about all of the queens and kings that had passed through here. Look at
the beauty of the changing of the guards and all of the guards with
their beautiful horses. It’s a beautiful sight. Move on from there and
go over to Parliament. Move into the House of Lords and the House of
Commons. There with all of its beauty standing up before the world is
one of the most beautiful sights in the world.
Then I remember,
we went on over to Westminster Abbey. And I thought about several things
when we went in this great church, this great cathedral, the center of
the Church of England. We walked around and went to the tombs of the
kings and queens buried there. Most of the kings and queens of England
are buried right there in the Westminster Abbey. And I walked around. On
the one hand I enjoyed and appreciated the great gothic architecture of
that massive cathedral. I stood there in awe thinking about the
greatness of God and man’s feeble attempt to reach up for God. And I
thought something else -- I thought about the Church of England.
My
mind went back to Buckingham Palace, and I said that this is the symbol
of a dying system. There was a day that the queens and kings of England
could boast that the sun never sets on the British Empire, a day when
she occupied the greater portion of Australia, the greater portion of
Canada. There was a day when she ruled most of China, most of Africa,
and all of India. I started thinking about this empire. I started
thinking about the fact that she ruled over India one day. Mahatma
Gandhi stood there at every hand, trying to get the freedom of his
people, and they never bowed to it. They never, they decided that they
were going to stand up and hold India in humiliation and in colonialism
many, many years. I remember we passed by Ten Downing Street. That’s the
place where the prime minister of England lives. And I remember that a
few years ago a man lived there by the name of Winston Churchill. One
day he stood up before the world and said, "I did not become his
Majesty’s First Minister to preside over the liquidation of the British
Empire." And I thought about the fact that a few weeks ago a man by the
name of Anthony Eden lived there. And out of all of his knowledge of the
Middle East, he decided to rise up and march his armies with the forces
of Israel and France into Egypt, and there they confronted their doom,
because they were revolting against world opinion. Egypt, a little
country; Egypt, a country with no military power. They could have easily
defeated Egypt, but they did not realize that they were fighting more
than Egypt. They were attacking world opinion; they were fighting the
whole Asian-African bloc, which is the bloc that now thinks and moves
and determines the course of the history of the world.
I thought
of many things. I thought of the fact that the British Empire exploited
India. Think about it! A nation with four hundred million people and
the British exploited them so much that out of a population of four
hundred million, three hundred and fifty million made an annual income
of less than fifty dollars a year. Twenty-five of that had to be used
for taxes and the other things of life. I thought about dark Africa, and
how the people there, if they can make a hundred dollars a year they
are living very well, they think. Two shillings a day -- one shilling is
fourteen cents, two shillings, twenty-eight cents -- that’s a good
wage. That’s because of the domination of the British Empire.
All
of these things came to my mind, and when I stood there in Westminster
Abbey with all of its beauty, and I thought about all of the beautiful
hymns and anthems that the people would go in there to sing. And yet the
Church of England never took a stand against this system.The Church of
England sanctioned it The Church of England gave it moral stature. All
of the exploitation perpetuated by the British Empire was sanctioned by
the Church of England.
But something else came to my mind: God
comes in the picture even when the Church won’t take a stand. God has
injected a principle in this universe. God has said that all men must
respect the dignity and worth of all human personality, "And if you
don’t do that, I will take charge." It seems this morning that I can
hear God speaking. I can hear him speaking throughout the universe,
saying, "Be still and know that I am God. And if you don’t stop, if you
don’t straighten up, if you don’t stop exploiting people, I’m going to
rise up and break the backbone of your power. And your power will be no
more!"
And the power of Great Britain is no more. I looked at
France. I looked at Britain. And I thought about the Britain that could
boast, "The sun never sets on our great Empire." And I said now she had
gone to the level that the sun hardly rises on the British Empire --
because it was based on exploitation, because the God of the universe
eventually takes a stand.
And I say to you this morning, my
friends, rise up and know that, as you struggle for justice, you do not
struggle alone, but God struggles with you. And He is working every day.
Somehow I can look out, I can look out across the seas and across the
universe, and cry out, "Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of
the Lord. He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are
stored." Then I think about it, because His truth is marching on, and I
can sing another chorus: "Hallelujah, glory hallelujah! His truth is
marching on." Then I can hear Isaiah again, because it has profound
meaning to me, that somehow, "Every valley shall be exalted, and every
hill shall be made low; the crooked places shall be made straight, and
the rough places plain; and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and
all flesh shall see it together."
That’s the beauty of this
thing: all flesh shall see it together. Not some from the heights of
Park Street and others from the dungeons of slum areas. Not some from
the pinnacles of the British Empire and some from the dark deserts of
Africa. Not some from inordinate, superfluous wealth and others from
abject, deadening poverty. Not some white and not some black, not some
yellow and not some brown, but all flesh shall see it together. They
shall see it from Montgomery. They shall see it from New York. They
shall see it from Ghana. They shall see it from China.
For I can
look out and see a great number, as John saw, marching into the great
eternity, because God is working in this world, and at this hour, and at
this moment. And God grants that we will get on board and start
marching with God, because we got orders now to break down the bondage
and the walls of colonialism, exploitation, and imperialism, to break
them down to the point that no man will trample over another man, but
that all men will respect the dignity and worth of all human
personality. And then we will be in Canaan’s freedom land.
Moses
might not get to see Canaan, but his children will see it. He even got
to the mountaintop enough to see it and that assured him that it was
coming. But the beauty of the thing is that there’s always a Joshua to
take up his work and take the children on in. And it’s there waiting
with its milk and honey, and with all of the bountiful beauty that God
has in store for His children. Oh, what exceedingly marvelous things God
has in store for us. Grant that we will follow Him enough to gain them.
O God, our gracious Heavenly Father, help us to see the
insights that come from this new nation. Help us to follow Thee and all
of Thy creative works in this world, and that somehow we will discover
that we are made to live together as brothers And that it will come in
this generation: the day when all men will recognize the fatherhood of
God and the brotherhood of man.
Amen.
