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            John Lewis.  “Religion and Human Rights: A Final Appeal to the Church,” May 3, 1968.

            Occasion: Speech given at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, TN.

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Religion and Human Rights: A Final Appeal to the Church

1

This past winter of our discontent has given way to a more ambivalent season.  For this year, the dogwood and the azaleas have brought with them blood and terror--our leader has been martyred; our people have been shot in the streets of America by American officials; our soldiers die in vain; the unhappy people of Vietnam suffer yet another season of death and flames; the cities burn; and the people are hungry.  American policy, at home and abroad, has left a trail of anguish and despair.

2

The whole world is a cauldron, the contents of which have begun to boil.  We have seen all humanity aroused.  The patient billion people of the Far East, the long-suffering exploited and colonized people of color throughout the world, the underfed, the underpaid, the poor and the alienated youth in this country are all on the march for justice, freedom, and the realization of human dignity.

3

And so, it seemed to me, because of my background and my firm conviction, that these desperate people of God should make one last plea to the Church of God: If I may presume to stand today as a surrogate for these people and if you are prepared to represent the living Church, then this last plea can be made in good conscience--if only as part of the ritual social death.

4

Social death?  Yes, that, literally.  For I am convinced that the greatest threat to this country is from within--in spite of the stockpile of bombs and missiles, in spite of the bombast and hypocrisy of politicians in the international arena, in spite of the insane urgings of national pride to which we have given rein in our dealings with the oppressed of the world.  For neither bombs nor bombast nor madness can harm a society which has already chosen to commit suicide.  We have the power to rage for a new order of peace and justice in the world, but we lack the will.  And without the will to exercise that power, the power itself will wither.  Our great institutions and organizations will fall into decay and the Republic will die--largely unmourned.

5

The judgment of the Almighty God is upon all of us, Black and white, Catholics, Protestants and Jews.  Woe unto a nation that prefers to wage war on the peasants of Vietnam rather than on racism, poverty, disease and misery in the rural South, in the ghettos of the cities, in the Indian reservations and in the migrant labor camps.  Woe unto the political leaders who listen to the voices of expediency and act in the interests of a Great Consensus, rather than do what is right.  Woe unto the churches and religious institutions of America that spend millions of dollars on beautiful churches and educational buildings and send missionaries thousands of miles abroad rather than cast their lot with the hopeless and starving people in their own communities.  “Judgment, thou has fled to brutish beast, and men have lost their reason.”

6

In 1619, a year before the arrival of the Mayflower, a Dutch vessel bound for the West Indies stopped at Jamestown, Virginia and exchanged twenty Africans for food for the ship’s crew.  This act was the beginning of a stream of hideous events in the history of the so-called New World which would make necessary, 350 years later, renewed demands for justice, freedom, equality and the realization of human dignity.

7

When this call for freedom arose, neither the political nor religious institutions in America responded positively.

For many years both organized religion and the body politic have been suffering from a split personality, for neither had the courage nor the will to translate their words, creeds, and doctrine into action as they relate to the problems of injustice and inequality.  We must recognize the fact that even today organized religion in America is still bowing to a segregated and racist culture.  It is what Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. called “a tail light rather than a head light,” a follower rather than a leader.  For any student of sociology or religion this should raise the question of whether our churches and religious institutions merely reflect the culture, or whether our culture is a reflection of our religious values.

8

The Black man lived in this nation for 250 years as a slave and then for more than 100 years as an impoverished, oppressed, and exploited second-class citizen, while generation after generation of white American Christians have rejected and ignored him as being inferior or subhuman.  In 1955 when Rosa Parks, a proud Black woman in Montgomery, Alabama, refused to surrender her seat on a city bus to a white man, she was saying in a dramatic way, with 50,000 other Black people who refused to ride segregated buses, that the Black man will not be ignored, he will not be rejected, he will not continue life as a thing rather than a person.  The hundreds and thousands of young Black students who rose up across the South and threw their bodies in the nonviolent sit-in movement of 1960 were saying, we will not be rejected.  The sharecroppers, tenant farmers, maids, old women and young children who have marched through the Black Belt of Alabama, the Delta of Mississippi and throughout the country for the right to vote, to eat at a lunch counter or in a restaurant, to get a job and a decent home were also saying, “we will not be ignored or rejected.”

9

Black people have been and still are the most and, at the same time, least visible segment of the American population.  Visible not only because of the system of slavery and segregation that has excluded us and set us apart in a cage of humiliation and exploitation, but also because of color.  Invisible because those who look refuse to see and understand us.  During the past few years all forms of action and protest on the part of Black people, whether emotionally spontaneous or formally organized, have been attempts to make ourselves and our plight visible.

10

Fourteen years ago this month--fourteen years ago--the Supreme Court of the United States handed down its decision in the case of Brown vs. Board of Education.  No one judicial order in our history offered greater scope for social progress and greater opportunity for meaningful moral decision.  For many, today, that hope is destroyed, that opportunity wasted.  In greater numbers than ever before, Black children are attending segregated schools and the quality of education they are receiving is on the decline.

11

The unhappy economic situation of America’s Black masses stubbornly resists corrective efforts.  The possibility of free social intercourse between the races, on mutually acceptable terms, seems further away than ever. 

12

On every front, Black people see their problems growing less amenable to solution within the framework of our present institutions.  Daily, more Black people conclude that racial hatred, social discrimination and economic exploitation are inherent in American society and that Black people are the colonialized subjects of this racist, stratified imperialistic White America.

13

Yes, centuries of slavery and generations of segregation, unsuccessful negotiations mixed with broken promises, ghetto and slum conditions have forced us now and will continue to force Black people to take to the streets of every city and town of this nation to press their demands.  In a real sense, Black people have come to understand the full meaning and significance of what Frederick Douglas had to say in 1857:  “If there is no struggle, there is no progress.  Those who profess to favor freedom and yet deprecate agitation are men who want crops without ploughing up the ground, they want rain without thunder and lightning, they want the ocean without the roar of its mighty waters.  The struggle may be a moral one or it may be a physical one and it may be both moral and physical, but it must be a struggle.  Power concedes nothing without a demand-it never has and it never will.”

14

The events of the past few years and especially the past months should have made it clear to all of us that American society is infected with the disease of violence and racism.  To disagree or dissent can mean intimidation, harassment, economic reprisals, bombings, and outright murder.

15

After a recent workshop on the “Role of Violence in Social Change,” a group of United Presbyterians issued a statement which said in part that “violence in our land has been and is congenital, inherent in our social processes and apparent in the destruction of property and the degradation of life.  This we term systematic violence.  Rarely has the church disagreed with such violence.  From the attempts at genocide against the Indians in our earliest days until our present disregard for the poor, the church has sustained violence.  Even now, the majority of Christians support the nation’s violence in Vietnam while roundly condemning the violence of the embittered in the urban ghettos.”  Last summer after the riots, Senator Robert Kennedy spoke of the relations between the violence in our cities and violence abroad when he said, "If we as a nation say that it is justified in killing thousands and thousands of people 12,000 miles from our own country, then it becomes a rather more acceptable instrument for change within the United States itself.”

16

The tragic and violent death of Martin Luther King, Jr., a man of peace and love and great compassion, created a barrier for this country.  Martin King more than any other figure of our time was able to bring people together to do good--black and white, Protestants, Catholics and Jews, rich and poor.  His weapon was truth.  His method was non-violence.  His goal was the “beloved community” a community at peace with itself.  Martin King had the power to move the hearts and souls of men, black, brown, yellow and white.  He used the gentle teachings and tools of Christ and Ghandi.  He was so black and so American.  Yet most white Americans never knew Martin King in life.  He was strange--radical--and too advanced for most white Americans.  He was speaking a strange language, the philosophy of non-violence and passive resistance.  A nation conceived and born in violence could not deal with a prophet of love and non-violence, so it destroyed him.

17

All of the civil rights groups are still here.  However, Dr. King had an authority and commanded a following far beyond the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, which he headed, and all of the other civil rights groups together.  His death is forcing further polarization in the black community.  Some leaders in the black community will use the assassination of Dr. King to justify the use of violence.  Others in the black community will take the position that the death of Dr. King calls for rededication and new determination to continue the struggle without violence.  If the nation can carry through the type of “Freedom Budget” that Dr. King envisioned, the leadership of those who advocate peaceful and non-violent means will be strengthened.  If the country fails to respond to these modest demands, then the leadership of those who say “all is lost, we must destroy or burn the country”, is strengthened.

18

The American people must decide through the election of Congressmen and the President whether or not we shall continue to build two nations--one white, and one black.

19

Four years ago, this nation promised to fight a war to the death against poverty.  Today, a foreign war has destroyed that promise, if it was ever meant.  Every day in Vietnam monies are spent that more than equal the yearly allocation for fighting poverty in Atlanta, Georgia.

20

Every day in Vietnam, bombs are dropped or planes hot down that could, if translated into dollars for the poor, build homes, provide jobs, offer hope to the hopeless. 

21

Every day in Vietnam this nation wages a struggle against self-determination, a struggle not yet resolved for residents of the Black Belt South or for the millions who live in the ghettos of our big cities.

22

We have colonialized Vietnam and we have colonialized our black poor.  Dr. Kenneth Clark has written: “The dark ghettos are social, political, educational--and above all else—economic colonies.  Their inhabitants are subject people, victims of the greed, cruelty, insensitivity and fear of their masters.”

23

Colonies at home and colonies abroad; that is the legacy of inaction and indifference.  Those are the dues non-Christian Christians will have to pay.

24

We must have a speedy end to this terrible, illegal and immoral war in Vietnam.  The war is interfering psychologically and politically with progressive action within our political instrumentalties.  Many members of Congress are using the war as an excuse for doing nothing at home.

25

Are the religious institutions going to continue to play the game as usual?  This church has a mandate and a moral obligation to provide the American people with necessary leadership.  The time for passing well-prepared resolutions and statements is of the past.  Now is the time for action.  No church or religious institution should keep a penny in a bank where Black people cannot get a loan to buy a home.  No church should spend another dime to place a store in a building or lay a pipe unless some Black men are working in that job.  No church or religious institution should maintain a single classroom where Black students are denied admission.  If necessary, the church must be prepared to provide full scholarship for poor Black students.  The funds, buildings, investments, buying power, and prestige of the church and religious must be used to aid the cause of justice and equality.  The time may well come when we will have to use the method of non-violent direct action such as picketing, boycott and kneel-ins against the churches (and religious institutions).  Leaders of the church must understand that they have no immunity from the hostility and rage that it is sweeping this country.  Church and religious buildings will burn just as quickly as white owned neighborhood stores and there are young Black in every slum and ghetto angry enough to strike the match.

26

In 1965, Professor Joseph Fitcher of Harvard Divinity School wrote, “Better than any other institution, organized religion ought to understand the terms of the struggle for racial freedom and equality.  Religious-minded people ought to grasp more readily than others such concepts as reparation for wrong doing, reconciliation of the estranged, resolution for improvement, commitment to values, firm purpose of amendment, fellowship and brotherhood, love and justice.  The slogan of the civil rights movement, “freedom now,” had a great significance to ancient Jews in bondage, to the early Christians in pagan Rome, to the Catholics in the English persecutions.  If the historical analogy between religious liberty and racial liberty is so close, one wonders why the churches delayed so long before entering the civil rights movement.”

27

In a real sense, churches are guilty of aiding and abetting the system of racism that has engulfed every corner of the American society.  None of us are innocent.

28

Some churches and religious institutions will put you out if you smoke or drink.  Now smoking and drinking may be injurious to the health but racism is injurious to the spirit.

29

Repentance is more than sorrow.  We must also turn around and go in the opposite direction.  It is not enough to be sorry about the death of Dr. King.  It is not enough to cry.  It is not enough to go through a period of agony.  You have to do something--you must act.  When the Great Teacher met the rich young ruler, he told him to go out and sell what he had and give it to the poor.  We can no longer just think right but we must do right.

30

During the past decade those of us involved in the non-violent struggle have been able to forgive and understand those who have been most hostile and violent towards us.  Yes, we have been able to forgive those who bombed our homes, burned our churches, killed our children and assassinated our leaders.  I have seen civil rights workers and indigenous people whom we were trying to help with their heads cracked open by nightsticks, lying in the streets weeping from tear gas, calling helplessly for medical aid.  I have seen old women and young children, who were involved in peaceful non-violent demonstrations in an attempt to gain their rights, run down by policemen on horses, beaten back by fire hoses, and chased by police dogs, and still were able to forgive, understand and at the same time sing “Ain’t going to let nobody turn me around.”  I have been harassed, beaten and locked in jail forty times for participating in peaceful non-violent protests against segregation and racial discrimination, but I must say that I still believe in the philosophy and discipline of non-violence.  I call upon all of you as leaders of the church and religious institutions to understand and help others the fires of frustration and bitterness that are burning the black community.  I have tired to say on many occasions that we are not struggling against people, but against a vicious and evil system that must be destroyed before it destroys all of us.  Those of us who believe in the non-violent method, a more creative way, are saying that the struggle in which we are involved is not a struggle between black and white, but one between the forces of division and the forces of reconciliation, the forces of hate and the forces of love.  Means and ends are inseparable.  The means by which we struggle must be consistent with the ends we seek.

31

A combination of all people of good will is needed to create an open society, a community at peace with itself where justice and freedom exist for all the people.

32

We must combine to create a community where human rights, are, in reality, more important than property rights, where a television set in a ghetto furniture store is not more important than human life, where no one is shot for taking six cans of beer.

33

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., in an address before the annual meeting of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference last August spoke to this question when he said: “The policy makers of the white society have caused the darkness; they created discrimination, they created slums; they perpetuated unemployment, ignorance and poverty.  It is incontestable and deplorable that Negroes have committed crimes but they are derivative crimes.  They are born of the greater crimes of the white society.  When we ask Negroes to abide by the law, let us do declare that the white man does not abide by the law in the ghettos.  Day in and day out he violates welfare laws to deprive the poor of their meager allotments, he flagrantly violates building codes and regulations; his police make a mockery of laws; he violates laws of equal employment and education and the provisions for civil services.  The slums are the handiwork of a vicious system of the white society, Negroes live in them, but they do not make them any more than a prisoner makes a prison.”

34

It is in these comments that we find the ultimate justification for a plea to the white church in America.  For, if the church has any real claim to moral leadership, it must speak out clearly and in unity.  It must act forcefully and quickly.  For Dr. King placed the responsibility and assigned the guilt incontestably.  White America is morally responsible; therefore the church is morally responsible.  All of this was pointed out a century ago by Victor Hugo, when he wrote: “If the soul is left in darkness, sins will be committed.  The guilty one is not he who commits sins, but he who causes the darkness.”