This document is ‘Stride Toward Freedom’ by Martin Luther King Jr., published in 1958. It explores the philosophy of nonviolent resistance in the civil rights movement, discussing the responses of oppressed people to injustice. The text emphasizes the importance of moral action and community in the struggle for equality.
Stride Toward Freedom by Martin Luther King Jr.
Background –In the 1950s, the civil rights movement focused its efforts on overturning the
so-called Jim Crow laws, the segregation laws that kept African Americans from equal
participation in public life. In 1954, the Supreme Court issued its decision in the landmark
case Brown v. Board of Education. In this decision, the court declared that “separate but
equal” education, a central provision of segregationist policy, was inherently
discriminatory. Buoyed by this win, civil rights activists began to challenge Jim Crow
through other forms of peaceful protest, such as the year-long mass boycott of segregated
buses in Montgomery, Alabama, beginning in 1955. In, Stride Toward Freedom, published
in 1958, a confident and optimistic King describes the philosophy behind the successful
boycott.
Oppressed people deal with their oppression in three characteristic ways. One way is
acquiescence: The oppressed resign themselves to their doom. They tacitly adjust themselves to
oppression, and thereby become conditioned to it. In every movement toward freedom some of
the oppressed prefer to remain oppressed. Almost 2,800 years ago Moses set out to lead the
children of Israel from the slavery of Egypt to the freedom of the promised land.
1
He soon
discovered that slaves do not always welcome their deliverers. They become accustomed to
being slaves. They would rather gear those ills they have, as Shakespeare pointed out, than flee
to others that they know not of.
2
They prefer the “fleshpots of Egypt”
3
to the ordeals of
emancipation.
There is such a thing as the freedom of exhaustion. Some people are so worn down by
the yoke of oppression that they give up. A few years ago in the slum areas of Atlanta, a Negro
guitarist used to sign almost daily: “Been down so long that down don’t bother me.” This is the
type of negative freedom and resignation that often engulfs the life of the oppressed.
But this is not the way out. To accept passively an unjust system is to cooperate with that
system; thereby the oppressed become as evil as the oppressor. Non-cooperation with evil is as
much a moral obligation as is cooperation with good. The oppressed must never allow the
conscience of the oppressor to slumber. Religion reminds every man that he is his brother’s
keeper.
4
To accept injustice or segregation passively is to say to the oppressor that his actions
are morally right. It is a way of allowing his conscience to fall asleep. At this moment the
1. promised land: the land of Canaan, promised by God in the Bible (Genesis 12:1-3, 7) to
Abraham’s descendants.
2. bear those ills…know not of: an allusion to a line in Act3, Scene 1, of Hamlet by William
Shakespeare.
3. prefer the “fleshpots of Egypt”: an allusion to a line in the book of Exodus in the Bible. As
Moses was leading the Israelites out of Egypt, some of them grumbled and wished they had
stayed there.
4. his brother’s keeper: In the book of Genesis, after Cain killed his brother Abel, he denied
knowing Abel’s whereabouts by asking, “Am I my brother’s keeper?” In general, the saying
refers to a reluctance to accept responsibility for others.
oppressed fails to be his brother’s keeper. So acquiescence, while often the easier way, is not the
moral way. It is the way of the coward. The Negro cannot win the respect of his oppressor by
acquiescing; he merely increases the oppressor’s arrogance and contempt. Acquiescence is
interpreted as proof of the Negro’s inferiority. The negro cannot win the respect of the white
people of the south or the peoples of the world if he is willing to sell the future of his children for
his personal and immediate comfort and safety.
A second way that oppressed people sometimes deal with oppression is to resort to
physical violence and corroding hatred. Violence often brings about momentary results. Nations
have frequently won their independence in battle. But in spite of temporary victories, violence
never brings permanent peace. It solves no social problem, it merely creates new nd more
complicated ones.
Violence as a way of achieving racial justice is both impractical and immoral. It is
impractical because it is a descending spiral ending in destruction for all. The old law of an eye
for an eye
5
leaves everybody blind. It is immoral because it seeks to humiliate the opponent
rather than win his understanding; it seeks to annihilate rather than to covert. Violence is
immoral because it thrives on hatred rather than love. It destroys community and makes
brotherhood impossible. It leaves society in monologue rather than dialogue. Violence ends by
defeating itself. It creates bitterness in the survivors and brutality in the destroyers. A voice
echoes through time saying to every potential Peter, “Put up your sword.”
6
History is cluttered
with the wreckage of nations that failed to follow this command.
If the American Negro and other victims of oppression succumb to the temptation of
using violence in the struggle for freedom, future generations will be the recipients of a desolate
night of bitterness, and our chief legacy to them will be an endless reign of meaningless chaos.
Violence is not the way.
The third way open to oppressed people in their quest for freedom is the way of
nonviolent resistance. Like the synthesis in Hegelian philosophy,
7
the principle of nonviolent
resistance seeks to reconcile the truths of two opposites-Acquiescence and violence –while
avoiding the extremes and immoralities of both. The nonviolent resister agrees with the person
who acquiesces that one should not be physically aggressive toward his opponent but he balance
the equation by agreeing with the person of violence that evil must be resisted. He avoids the
nonresistance of the former and the violent resistance of the latter. With nonviolent resistance,
no individual or group need submit to any wrong, nor need anyone resort to violence in order to
right a wrong.
It seems to me that this is the method that must guide the actions of the Negro in the
present crisis in race relations. Through nonviolent resistance the Negro will be able to rise to
the noble height of opposing the unjust system while loving the perpetrators of the system. The
5. an eye for an eye: an allusion to Exodus 21:23-25: “You shall give life for life, eye for
eye…”
6. Peter…sword”: When Jesus’ disciple Peter drew his sword to try to protect Jesus, Jesus
condemned his use of violence.
7. Hegelian (hā-gā'lē-ə-n) philosophy: the philosophy of Georg Hegel (1770-1831), which
proposed that each situation has an opposite and that both extremes will eventually be
reconciled.
Negro must work passionately and unrelentingly for full stature as a citizen, but he must not use
inferior methods to gain it. He must never come to terms with falsehood, malice, hate, or
destruction.
Nonviolent resistance makes it possible for the Negro to remain in the Sough and struggle
for his rights. The Negro’s problem will not be solved by running away. He cannot listen to the
glib suggestion of those who would urge him to migrate en masse to other sections of the
country. By grasping his great opportunity in the South he can make a lasting contribution to the
moral strength of the nation and set a sublime example of courage for generation yet unborn.
By nonviolent resistance, the Negro can also enlist all men of good will in his struggle for
equality. The problem is not a purely racial one, with Negroes set against whites. In the end, it
is not a struggle between people at all, but a tension between justice and injustice. Nonviolent
resistance is not aimed against oppressors but against oppression. Under its banner consciences,
not racial groups, are enlisted.
If the Negro is to achieve the goal of integration, he must organize himself into a militant
and nonviolent mass movement. All three elements are indispensable. The movement for
equality and justice can only be a success if it has both a mass and militant character; the barriers
to be overcome require both. Nonviolence is an imperative in order to bring about ultimate
community.
A mass movement of a militant quality that is not at the same time committed to
nonviolence tends to generate conflict, which in turn breeds anarchy. The support of the
participants and the sympathy of the uncommitted are both inhibited by the threat that bloodshed
will engulf the community. This reaction in turn encourages the opposition to threaten and resort
to force. When, however, the mass movement repudiates violence while moving resolutely
toward its goal, its opponents are revealed as the instigators and practitioners of violence if it
occurs. Then public support is magnetically attracted to the advocates of nonviolence, while
those who employ violence are literally disarmed by overwhelming sentiment against their stand.
End of Document
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