February 8, 2024
Troy D. Smith
“Dr. King’s Words on Conscience, Action, and Courage -True
As Ever”
My MLK Day speech was canceled for snow, so -for Black History
Month- I am presenting it here. I begin with a lengthy quote from a Dr. King speech
in 1968:
“We are coming to ask America to be true to the huge promissory
note that it signed years ago. And we are coming to engage in dramatic
nonviolent action, to call attention to the gulf between promise and
fulfillment; to make the invisible visible. Why do we do it this way? We do it
this way because it is our experience that the nation doesn’t move around
questions of genuine equality …until it is confronted massively, dramatically
in terms of direct action.
“Great documents are here to tell us something should be done...
Nothing has been done. And I submit that nothing will be done until people of
goodwill put their bodies and their souls in motion. And it will be the kind of
soul force brought into being as a result of this confrontation that I believe
will make the difference.
“One day we will have to stand before the God of
history and we will talk in terms of things we’ve done… I’m
not a consensus leader. I do not determine what is right and wrong by looking
at the budget…. I’ve not taken a sort of Gallup Poll of the majority opinion.
Ultimately a genuine leader is not a searcher for consensus, but a molder of
consensus. On some positions, cowardice asks the question, is it expedient? And
then expedience comes along and asks the question, is it politic? Vanity asks
the question, is it popular? Conscience asks the question, is it right? There
comes a time when one must take the position that is neither safe nor politic
nor popular, but he must do it because conscience tells him it is right.
“We shall overcome because the arc of the moral universe is long,
but it bends toward justice. We shall overcome because Carlyle is right—'No lie
can live forever.’ We shall overcome because William Cullen Bryant is right—'Truth,
crushed to earth, will rise again.’ We shall overcome because James Russell
Lowell is right—as we were singing earlier today, ‘behind the dim unknown
stands God, Within the shadow keeping watch above his own.’ “With this faith we
will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair the stone of hope… we will
be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful
symphony of brotherhood.”
END QUOTE.
My summary: We have to take action on what our conscience tells us
is right. For 55 years Americans have been asking themselves: what would I have
done if I had been around during the civil rights movement? And answering
themselves: I know I would have stood up for what’s right.
Would you? What are you doing today? Because the civil rights
movement is not over. The civil rights movement is not then. IT IS NOW. We are living in a very inexpedient and impolitic
time for speakers of truth about history. And for that matter, about the
present. We live in a political climate where it has become dangerous to speak
truth.
What are you going to do? Because dangerous as it might seem, no
one is siccing attack dogs on you, or cracking your skull with nightsticks, or
shooting you down in the street. So what excuse do we have?
Truth, crushed to earth, will rise again. Are we going to hide in
a bed of comfortable lies, or are we going to rise up with the truth? Are we
going to stand, with a clean conscience, before “the God of history”, or are we
going to kneel before a god of lies?
There comes a time when one must take the position that is neither
safe nor politic nor popular… and that time is now.
We shall overcome.
--Troy D.
Smith, a White County native, is a novelist and a history professor at
Tennessee Tech and serves on the executive committee of the Tennessee
Democratic Party and the board of the Tennessee chapter of AIM (American Indian
Movement)-Indian Territory. His words do not necessarily represent TTU.
Buy the book A Liberal Dose: Communiques from the Holler by Troy D. Smith HERE
You can find all previous entries in this weekly column HERE
A list of other historical essays that have appeared on this blog can be found HERE
Author's website: www.troyduanesmith.com
The author's historical lectures on youtube can be found HERE
Amen Troy. Thanks. /Ron S
ReplyDelete