The Negro has many pent up resentments and latent frustrations, and he must release them. So let him march; let him make prayer pilgrimages to the ci… - Martin Luther King Jr.

Find a voice in a whisper.

And now it is time for us to move on to that great and noble realm of justice and brotherhood. That is the great struggle taking place in our nation today. It isn't a struggle just based on a lot of noise; it is a struggle to save the soul of our nation for no nation can rise to its full moral maturity so long as it subjects a segment of its citizenry on the basis of race or color. And somehow we must come to see more than ever before that racial injustice is a cancer in the body politic which must be removed before our moral health can be realized. Racial segregation must be seen for what it is — and that is an evil system, a new form of slavery covered up with certain niceties of complexity. [...] Segregation is evil because it relegates persons to the status of things. [...] And segregation is evil because it stigmatizes the segregated as an untouchable in a caste system. We've been in the mountain of segregation long enough and it is time for all men of goodwill to say now, "We are through with segregation now, henceforth, and forever more."

It is no longer a choice between violence and non-violence; it is either non-violence or non-existence. The alternative to disarmament, the alternative to suspension of nuclear tests, the alternative to strengthening the United Nations and disarming the whole world may well be a civilization plunged into the abyss of annihilation. I never intend to become adjusted to the madness of militarism, and maybe the great need of our nation and our world today is for a society of the creative maladjusted, men and women who will be as maladjusted as the prophet Amos, who in the midst of the injustices of his day, could cry out in words that echo across the centuries, "Let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream." As maladjusted as Abraham Lincoln, who had the vision to see that this nation could not exist half slave and half free. As maladjusted as Thomas Jefferson, who in the midst of an age amazingly adjusted to slavery could cry out in words lifted to cosmic proportions, "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal. As maladjusted as Jesus of Nazareth, who in the midst of the fascinating and intricate military machinery of the Roman Empire could cry out, "He who lives by the sword will perish by the sword," and also, "Love your enemies; bless them that curse you, pray for them that do spitefully use you." And I believe that such maladjustment will help us emerge from the bleak and desolate midnight of man's inhumanity to man into the bright and glittering daybreak of freedom and justice. And then we will be able to go that additional distance, and we will speed up the day when all of God's children, white men and black men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands right here in America and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, "Free at last, free at last! Thank God Almighty we are free at last!"