In December of 1964 Martin Luther King made a speech in London — a speech which was largely lost to us until recently when a recording was discovered. You can listen to the entire speech on a recent Democracy Now episode (or read a transcript of the episode on which they played the recording) at the Democracy Now site.
In the first part of the speech, which I wrote about last Thursday, King talks about how we have come a long, long way in the struggle to achieve racial justice but still have a long, long way to go.
In the second part of the speech, which I wrote about on Friday, King detailed some of the progress made in what was then recent times — especially the passage of the 1964 civil rights act, “the most comprehensive civil rights bill ever recommended by any president of our great nation ”, noting that it was John F. Kennedy who spoke eloquently to the nation about the urgent need for this kind of legislation but was unable to get it passed and how it was Lyndon Johnson who managed to get the bill passed and signed it into law:
But President Lyndon Johnson got to work. He started calling congressmen and senators in and started meeting day in and day out with influential people in the country and making it clear that that bill had to pass, as a tribute to the late President Kennedy, but also as a tribute to the greatness of the country and as an expression of its dedication to the American dream. And it was that great day last summer that that bill came into being, and it was on July 2nd that Mr. Johnson signed that bill and it became the law of the land.
In today’s diary I’ll look at the third part of the speech, in which King addresses some of the arguments made by opponents of civil rights legislation.