for the first time in the Oval Office with their father the President
our nation will be blessed.
Perry
perry.gregg@post.harvard.edu
[Extract of speech from MLK 3 April 1968]
"Thank you very kindly, my friends. As I listened to Ralph Abernathy
and his eloquent and generous introduction and then thought about
myself, I wondered who he was talking about. It's always good to have
your closest friend and associate to say something good about you. And
Ralph Abernathy is the best friend that I have in the world. I'm
delighted to see each of you here tonight in spite of a storm warning.
You reveal that you are determined to go on anyhow.
Something is happening in Memphis; something is happening in our
world. And you know, if I were standing at the beginning of time, with
the possibility of taking a kind of general and panoramic view of the
whole of human history up to now, and the Almighty said to me, "Martin
Luther King, which age would you like to live in?" I would take my
mental flight by Egypt and I would watch God's children in their
magnificent trek from the dark dungeons of Egypt through, or rather
across the Red Sea, through the wilderness on toward the promised
land. And in spite of its magnificence, I wouldn't stop there.
I would move on by Greece and take my mind to Mount Olympus. And I
would see Plato, Aristotle, Socrates, Euripides and Aristophanes
assembled around the Parthenon. And I would watch them around the
Parthenon as they discussed the great and eternal issues of reality.
But I wouldn't stop there.
I would go on, even to the great heyday of the Roman Empire. And I
would see developments around there, through various emperors and
leaders. But I wouldn't stop there.
I would even come up to the day of the Renaissance, and get a quick
picture of all that the Renaissance did for the cultural and aesthetic
life of man. But I wouldn't stop there.
I would even go by the way that the man for whom I am named had his
habitat. And I would watch Martin Luther as he tacked his ninety-five
theses on the door at the church of Wittenberg. But I wouldn't stop
there.
I would come on up even to 1863, and watch a vacillating President by
the name of Abraham Lincoln finally come to the conclusion that he had
to sign the Emancipation Proclamation. But I wouldn't stop there.
I would even come up to the early thirties, and see a man grappling
with the problems of the bankruptcy of his nation. And come with an
eloquent cry that we have nothing to fear but "fear itself." But I
wouldn't stop there.
Strangely enough, I would turn to the Almighty, and say, "If you allow
me to live just a few years in the second half of the 20th century, I
will be happy."
Now that's a strange statement to make, because the world is all
messed up. The nation is sick. Trouble is in the land; confusion all
around. That's a strange statement. But I know, somehow, that only
when it is dark enough can you see the stars. And I see God working in
this period of the twentieth century in a way that men, in some
strange way, are responding.
Something is happening in our world. The masses of people are rising
up. And wherever they are assembled today, whether they are in
Johannesburg, South Africa; Nairobi, Kenya; Accra, Ghana; New York
City; Atlanta, Georgia; Jackson, Mississippi; or Memphis, Tennessee --
the cry is always the same: "We want to be free." "
...
http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/mlkivebeentothemountaintop.htm
