Lost Martin Luther King Speech Discovered

Retired engineer and Bethel College (Kansas) alum Randy Harmison has found reel-to-reel tape of a speech given by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in 1960. The speech, thought to have been lost forever, was played from newly restored audio at a Bethel College ceremony yesterday. NPR had the story, including a few brief audio excerpts:

Lost King Speech To Be Heard After 50 Years

Dr. King also gave this speech, titled The Future of Integration, in October 1964 at Oberlin College and again in January 1968 at Kansas State less than three months before Dr. King’s assassination. I would love to compare the three speeches changes he made between deliveries.

An American Prophet

The full audio of this speech isn’t available yet, but we do have a few excerpts transcribed by Bethel senior Aimee Siebert, with emphasis added by me.

Dr. King’s words are still tragically relevant today (I’m looking at you, President Obama.), especially as we continue to watch the Prop 8 trial unfold.

In order to give a meaningful analysis of the future, it is often necessary to get a clear picture of the past. In order to know where we are going, we must know from whence we have come. …

It seems to be a fact of life that human beings cannot continue to do wrong without eventually reaching out for some thin rationalization to clothe an obvious wrong in the beautiful garments of righteousness.…

The Bible and religion not properly interpreted can be used as instruments to crystallize the status quo. …

The important thing about a man is not his specificity but his fundamentum, not the texture of his hair or the color of his skin, but the texture and quality of his soul. …

[I]f moderation means slowing up in the move for justice and capitulating to the undemocratic practices of the guardians of the deadening status quo, then moderation is a tragic vice which all men of good will must condemn. …

Now I must make it clear that we must not do this – we must not make freedom and justice a reality in the United States – merely to compete with communism. Freedom and justice are ethical demands of the universe. And so it must be done not merely because it is diplomatically expedient, but because it is morally compelling. …

What we so often find in the North is a sort of quasi-liberalism based on the principle of looking objectively on all sides. And it is a liberalism that is so involved in looking on all sides that it fails to get committed to either side. It is a liberalism that is so objectively analytical that it fails to get subjectively committed. It is a liberalism that is neither hot nor cold but lukewarm. …

One of the tragedies of the South at this moment is that we are seeking to live in monologue rather than dialogue. We just aren’t talking with each other. Men hate each other because they fear each other. They fear each other because they are separated from each other, and they don’t know each other and they don’t know each other because they can’t communicate with each other. …

Thank God we’re beginning now to shake the lethargy from our eyes and our souls and we’re coming to see that if we’re to be followers of Jesus Christ and the great ethical insights of the prophets of old, that we must take a stand, because this issue at bottom is a moral issue. There is something in the New Testament reminding us that we are made in the image of God … we are all one in Christ Jesus. And these things running the gamut of the Gospel must one day cause Christians everywhere to take a stand against the evils of segregation and discrimination. …

The Negro must work passionately and unrelentingly for first-class citizenship, but we must never use second-class methods to gain them. Our aim must never be to defeat or to humiliate the white man, but to win his friendship and understanding. And by following through with this method of nonviolence and this way of love, I believe that we can assist in bringing the third period to its fulfillment. …

Agape is more than eros, it is more than phileo, it is understanding, creative, redemptive good will for all men. It is a spontaneous love that expects nothing in return. Theologians would say that it is the love of God operating in the human heart. And so when we rise to love on this level, we love men not because we like them, not because their ways appeal to us, but we love them because God loves them. And we come to the point that we love the person who does the evil deed, while hating the deed that the person does. I think this is what Jesus meant when he [said] “Love your enemies.” And I’m glad he didn’t say “Like your enemies.” … Jesus is saying in substance that you must love those persons that you find it difficult to like because love is greater than like. … And it seems to me that it is this type of love that can serve as a guiding principle in this struggle for freedom and in this struggle for human dignity.