We know through painful experience that
freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor;
it must be
demanded by the oppressed. Frankly, I have never yet engaged in a
direct-action movement that was “well timed” according to the
timetable of those who have not suffered unduly from the disease of
segregation. For years now I have heard the word “wait.” It rings
in the ear of every Negro with a piercing familiarity. This “wait”
has almost always meant “never.” It has been a tranquilizing
thalidomide, relieving the emotional stress for a moment, only to
give birth to an
ill-formed infant of frustration. We must come to
see with the distinguished jurist of yesterday that “
justice too long delayed is justice denied.” We have waited for more than three
hundred and forty years for our God-given and constitutional rights.
The nations of Asia and Africa are moving with jet-like speed toward
the goal of political independence, and
we still creep at
horse-and-buggy pace toward the gaining of a cup of coffee at a lunch
counter. I guess it is easy for those who have never felt the
stinging darts of segregation to say “wait.” But
when you have
seen vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers
at will and drown
your sisters and brothers
at whim;
when you have seen hate-filled
policemen
curse, kick,
brutalize, and even
kill your
black brothers
and sisters with impunity;
when you see the vast majority of your
twenty million Negro brothers smothering in an airtight cage of
poverty in the midst of an affluent society;
when you suddenly
find
your tongue twisted and your speech stammering as you seek to explain
to your six-year-old daughter why she cannot go to the public
amusement park that has just been advertised on television,
and see
tears welling up in her little eyes when she is told that Funtown is
closed to colored children,
and see the depressing clouds of
inferiority begin to form in her little mental sky,
and see her begin
to distort her little personality by unconsciously developing a
bitterness toward white people;
when you have to concoct an answer
for a five-year-old son asking in agonizing pathos, “Daddy, why do
white people treat colored people so mean?”;
when you take a
cross-country drive and find it necessary to sleep night after night
in the
uncomfortable corners of your automobile because no motel will
accept you;
when you are humiliated day in and day out by nagging
signs reading “white” and “colored”;
when your first name becomes “nigger” and
your middle name
becomes “boy” (however old you are) and
your last name becomes
“John,” and
when your wife and mother are never given the
respected title “Mrs.”;
when you are harried by day and haunted
by night by the fact that you are a Negro, living constantly at
tiptoe stance, never knowing what to expect next, and plagued with
inner fears and outer resentments;
when you are forever fighting a
degenerating sense of “nobodyness” — then you will
understand why we find it difficult to wait. There comes a time when
the cup of endurance runs over and men are no longer willing to be
plunged into an abyss of injustice where they experience the
bleakness of corroding despair. I hope, sirs, you can understand our
legitimate and unavoidable impatience.
