Defending People

the tao of criminal-defense trial lawyering

The Uncashed Check

 

An annual tra­di­tion at Defend­ing Peo­ple, more impor­tant this year because King’s name will undoubt­edly be invoked today by the Pres­i­dent, who has spent the last four years send­ing the sons of for­mer slaves and the sons of for­mer slave own­ers to kill the sons of goatherds and poppy farm­ers and die in the desert moun­tains of Afghanistan.

The text:

I am happy to join with you today in what will go down in his­tory as the great­est demon­stra­tion for free­dom in the his­tory of our nation.

Five score years ago, a great Amer­i­can, in whose sym­bolic shadow we stand today, signed the Eman­ci­pa­tion Procla­ma­tion. This momen­tous decree came as a great bea­con light of hope to mil­lions of Negro slaves who had been seared in the flames of with­er­ing injus­tice. It came as a joy­ous day­break to end the long night of their captivity.

But one hun­dred years later, the Negro still is not free. One hun­dred years later, the life of the Negro is still sadly crip­pled by the man­a­cles of seg­re­ga­tion and the chains of dis­crim­i­na­tion. One hun­dred years later, the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of mate­r­ial pros­per­ity. One hun­dred years later, the Negro is still lan­guished in the cor­ners of Amer­i­can soci­ety and finds him­self an exile in his own land. And so we’ve come here today to dra­ma­tize a shame­ful condition.

In a sense we’ve come to our nation’s cap­i­tal to cash a check. When the archi­tects of our repub­lic wrote the mag­nif­i­cent words of the Con­sti­tu­tion and the Dec­la­ra­tion of Inde­pen­dence, they were sign­ing a promis­sory note to which every Amer­i­can was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men, yes, black men as well as white men, would be guar­an­teed the “unalien­able Rights” of “Life, Lib­erty and the pur­suit of Hap­pi­ness.” It is obvi­ous today that Amer­ica has defaulted on this promis­sory note, inso­far as her cit­i­zens of color are con­cerned. Instead of hon­or­ing this sacred oblig­a­tion, Amer­ica has given the Negro peo­ple a bad check, a check which has come back marked “insuf­fi­cient funds.”

But we refuse to believe that the bank of jus­tice is bank­rupt. We refuse to believe that there are insuf­fi­cient funds in the great vaults of oppor­tu­nity of this nation. And so, we’ve come to cash this check, a check that will give us upon demand the riches of free­dom and the secu­rity of justice.

We have also come to this hal­lowed spot to remind Amer­ica of the fierce urgency of Now. This is no time to engage in the lux­ury of cool­ing off or to take the tran­quil­iz­ing drug of grad­u­al­ism. Now is the time to make real the promises of democ­racy. Now is the time to rise from the dark and des­o­late val­ley of seg­re­ga­tion to the sun­lit path of racial jus­tice. Now is the time to lift our nation from the quick­sands of racial injus­tice to the solid rock of broth­er­hood. Now is the time to make jus­tice a real­ity for all of God’s children.

It would be fatal for the nation to over­look the urgency of the moment. This swel­ter­ing sum­mer of the Negro’s legit­i­mate dis­con­tent will not pass until there is an invig­o­rat­ing autumn of free­dom and equal­ity. Nine­teen sixty-three is not an end, but a begin­ning. And those who hope that the Negro needed to blow off steam and will now be con­tent will have a rude awak­en­ing if the nation returns to busi­ness as usual. And there will be nei­ther rest nor tran­quil­ity in Amer­ica until the Negro is granted his cit­i­zen­ship rights. The whirl­winds of revolt will con­tinue to shake the foun­da­tions of our nation until the bright day of jus­tice emerges.

But there is some­thing that I must say to my peo­ple, who stand on the warm thresh­old which leads into the palace of jus­tice: In the process of gain­ing our right­ful place, we must not be guilty of wrong­ful deeds. Let us not seek to sat­isfy our thirst for free­dom by drink­ing from the cup of bit­ter­ness and hatred. We must for­ever con­duct our strug­gle on the high plane of dig­nity and dis­ci­pline. We must not allow our cre­ative protest to degen­er­ate into phys­i­cal vio­lence. Again and again, we must rise to the majes­tic heights of meet­ing phys­i­cal force with soul force.

The mar­velous new mil­i­tancy which has engulfed the Negro com­mu­nity must not lead us to a dis­trust of all white peo­ple, for many of our white broth­ers, as evi­denced by their pres­ence here today, have come to real­ize that their des­tiny is tied up with our des­tiny. And they have come to real­ize that their free­dom is inex­tri­ca­bly bound to our freedom.

We can­not walk alone.

And as we walk, we must make the pledge that we shall always march ahead.

We can­not turn back.

There are those who are ask­ing the devo­tees of civil rights, “When will you be sat­is­fied?” We can never be sat­is­fied as long as the Negro is the vic­tim of the unspeak­able hor­rors of police bru­tal­ity. We can never be sat­is­fied as long as our bod­ies, heavy with the fatigue of travel, can­not gain lodg­ing in the motels of the high­ways and the hotels of the cities. We can­not be sat­is­fied as long as the negro’s basic mobil­ity is from a smaller ghetto to a larger one. We can never be sat­is­fied as long as our chil­dren are stripped of their self-hood and robbed of their dig­nity by signs stat­ing: “For Whites Only.” We can­not be sat­is­fied as long as a Negro in Mis­sis­sippi can­not vote and a Negro in New York believes he has noth­ing for which to vote. No, no, we are not sat­is­fied, and we will not be sat­is­fied until “jus­tice rolls down like waters, and right­eous­ness like a mighty stream.”¹

I am not unmind­ful that some of you have come here out of great tri­als and tribu­la­tions. Some of you have come fresh from nar­row jail cells. And some of you have come from areas where your quest — quest for free­dom left you bat­tered by the storms of per­se­cu­tion and stag­gered by the winds of police bru­tal­ity. You have been the vet­er­ans of cre­ative suf­fer­ing. Con­tinue to work with the faith that unearned suf­fer­ing is redemp­tive. Go back to Mis­sis­sippi, go back to Alabama, go back to South Car­olina, go back to Geor­gia, go back to Louisiana, go back to the slums and ghet­tos of our north­ern cities, know­ing that some­how this sit­u­a­tion can and will be changed.

Let us not wal­low in the val­ley of despair, I say to you today, my friends.

And so even though we face the dif­fi­cul­ties of today and tomor­row, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the Amer­i­can dream.

I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true mean­ing of its creed: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are cre­ated equal.”

I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Geor­gia, the sons of for­mer slaves and the sons of for­mer slave own­ers will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.

I have a dream that one day even the state of Mis­sis­sippi, a state swel­ter­ing with the heat of injus­tice, swel­ter­ing with the heat of oppres­sion, will be trans­formed into an oasis of free­dom and justice.

I have a dream that my four lit­tle chil­dren will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the con­tent of their character.

I have a dream today!

I have a dream that one day, down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its gov­er­nor hav­ing his lips drip­ping with the words of “inter­po­si­tion” and “nul­li­fi­ca­tion” — one day right there in Alabama lit­tle black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with lit­tle white boys and white girls as sis­ters and brothers.

I have a dream today!

I have a dream that one day every val­ley shall be exalted, and every hill and moun­tain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight; “and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed and all flesh shall see it together.“2

This is our hope, and this is the faith that I go back to the South with.

With this faith, we will be able to hew out of the moun­tain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith, we will be able to trans­form the jan­gling dis­cords of our nation into a beau­ti­ful sym­phony of broth­er­hood. With this faith, we will be able to work together, to pray together, to strug­gle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for free­dom together, know­ing that we will be free one day.

And this will be the day — this will be the day when all of God’s chil­dren will be able to sing with new meaning:

    My coun­try ’tis of thee, sweet land of lib­erty, of thee I sing.

    Land where my fathers died, land of the Pilgrim’s pride,

    From every moun­tain­side, let free­dom ring!

And if Amer­ica is to be a great nation, this must become true.

And so let free­dom ring from the prodi­gious hill­tops of New Hampshire.

    Let free­dom ring from the mighty moun­tains of New York.

    Let free­dom ring from the height­en­ing Alleghe­nies of Pennsylvania.

    Let free­dom ring from the snow-capped Rock­ies of Colorado.

    Let free­dom ring from the cur­va­ceous slopes of California.

But not only that:

    Let free­dom ring from Stone Moun­tain of Georgia.

    Let free­dom ring from Look­out Moun­tain of Tennessee.

    Let free­dom ring from every hill and mole­hill of Mississippi.

    From every moun­tain­side, let free­dom ring.

And when this hap­pens, when we allow free­dom ring, when we let it ring from every vil­lage and every ham­let, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God’s chil­dren, black men and white men, Jews and Gen­tiles, Protes­tants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual:

                Free at last! Free at last!

                Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!

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This entry was posted by on Monday, January 21st, 2013 at 5:00 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

About The Author

Mark Bennett got his letter of marque from the Supreme Court of Texas in May 1995. He is famous for having no sense of humor when it comes to totalitarianism.

Comments

2 Responses to “The Uncashed Check”

  1. Nancy Knox-Bierman says:
    21 January 2013 at 10:09 am

    Thanks, Mark.

    Reply
  2. Robb Fickman says:
    21 January 2013 at 10:12 am

    Mark– thank you for pub­lish­ing Dr. Kings speech. It is one of the best speeches ever given & it was just over 16 min­utes long. Robb

    Reply

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