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MLK SPEAKS AT DEXTER AVENUE BAPTIST
CHURCH - 1957
The Birth of a New Nation
 |
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 6, 1957, there existed a country
known as the Gold Coast. This country was a
colony of the British Empire. And 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 that have 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, for men
realize that freedom is something basic. 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; 't is something,
nothing;
'T was mine, 't is his, and has been slave
to thousands;
But he that filches from me my freedom*
Robs me of that which not enriches him
And makes me poor indeed.
[In Act III, Scene 3, Othello actually reads
"But he that filches from me my good name"]
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 try 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 Atchimoto 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, for 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 came, 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. And 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. 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.
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, but 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 had 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. And 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, December 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
which 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. And
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.
And 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 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 has 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 you. 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. 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 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.
Now 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 then 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 it 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 aftermaths of
violence 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. And 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 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.
And 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 a 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. Somehow the
forces of justice stand on the side of the
universe, so 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 as 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 into 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. And 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 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 grant
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
mountain top 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.
More History
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