MLK in Cambridge

Martin Luther King Jr's written & spoken words

These excerpts are from the 2025 MLK DAY Welcome Gathering at Central Square Church, Cambridge.

Click on the title to learn more and read the full text. (note: there is no link for “Strength to Love”) 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
From a 1958 Sermon titled Unfulfilled Hopes

“. . [T]oday brings us face to face with one of the most persistent realities in human experience. Very few people are privileged to live life with all of their dreams realized and all of their hopes fulfilled. Who has not had to face the agony of blasted hopes and shattered dreams…

. . .the question that I want to try to grapple with [today] is this: what do you do when you find your dreams unrealized, your hopes unfulfilled, and you see no basic solution in your environment to the problem that you are facing? How do you deal with it?

Some people deal with this problem, as you well know, by getting caught up in the response of bitterness. …

[Others] may withdraw completely into themselves. . . .
There is another way, which I think is a more creative way. And that is, it involves the exercise of a great and dynamic will. This is the individual who stands up in his circumstances and stands up amid the problem, faces the fact that his hopes are unfulfilled.. . He says that I have one thing left and that is the power of the will. And I refuse to be stopped. I’ll stand up amid life and the circumstances of life. Every now and then it will beat me, push me to this side or that side, but I will stand up to it. I will not be stopped.”

From the sermon Three Dimensions of A Complete Life contained in the 1963 collection “Strength to Love

“ . . . every man must decide whether he will walk in the light of creative altruism or the darkness of destructive selfishness. This is the judgment. Life’s most persistent and urgent question is, “What are you doing for others?””

“I refuse to accept despair as the final response to the ambiguities of history.
I refuse to accept the idea that the “isness” of man’s present nature makes him morally incapable of reaching up for the eternal “oughtness” that forever confronts him.

I refuse to accept the idea that man is mere flotsam and jetsam in the river of life, unable to influence the unfolding events which surround him.

I refuse to accept the view that mankind is so tragically bound to the starless midnight of racism and war that the bright daybreak of peace and brotherhood can never become a reality.” …

I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. … I have the audacity to believe that peoples everywhere can have three meals a day for their bodies, education and culture for their minds, and dignity, equality and freedom for their spirits.”

“ . . . Among the moral imperatives of our time, we are challenged to work all over the world with unshakable determination to wipe out the last vestiges of racism. . .(pg 183)

…Another grave problem that must be solved if we are to live creatively in our world house is that of poverty on an international scale. . . .(pg 187)

There is nothing new about poverty. What is new, however, is that we now have the resources to get rid of it. … Today, therefore, the question on the agenda must read: why should there be hunger and privation in any land, in any city, at any table, when man has the resources and the scientific know-how to provide all mankind with the basic necessities of life? … There is no deficit in human resources; the deficit is in human will. …

. . .We are now faced with the fact that tomorrow is today. We are confronted with the fierce urgency of now. In this unfolding conundrum of life and history there is such a thing as being too late. Procrastination is still the thief of time. Life often leaves us standing bare, naked and dejected with a lost opportunity. …”(pg 202)

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