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Thank you very kindly, my friends. As I listened to Ralph Abernathy and his eloquent and generous introduction and then thought about myself, I wondered who he was talking about. It's always good to have your closest friend and associate to say something good about you. And Ralph Abernathy is the best friend that I have in the world. I'm delighted to see each of you here tonight in spite of a storm warning. You reveal that you are determined to go on anyhow. Something is happening in Memphis; something is happening in our world. And you know, if I were standing at the beginning of time, with the possibility of taking a kind of general and panoramic view of the whole of human history up to now, and the Almighty said to me, "Martin Luther King, which age would you like to live in?" I would take my mental flight by Egypt and I would watch God's children in their magnificent trek from the dark dungeons of Egypt through, or rather across the Red Sea, through the wilderness on toward the promised land. And in spite of its magnificence, I wouldn't stop there. I would move on by Greece and take my mind to Mount Olympus. And I would see Plato, Aristotle, Socrates, Euripides and Aristophanes assembled around the Parthenon. And I would watch them around the Parthenon as they discussed the great and eternal issues of reality. But I wouldn't stop there.I would go on, even to the great heyday of the Roman Empire. And I would see developments around there, through various emperors and leaders. But I wouldn't stop there. I would even come up to the day of the Renaissance, and get a quick picture of all that the Renaissance did for the cultural and aesthetic life of man. But I wouldn't stop there. I would even go by the way that the man for whom I am named had his habitat. And I would watch Martin Luther as he tacked his ninety-five theses on the door at the church of Wittenberg. But I wouldn't stop there. I would come on up even to 1863, and watch a vacillating President by the name of Abraham Lincoln finally come to the conclusion that he had to sign the Emancipation Proclamation. But I wouldn't stop there.I would even come up to the early thirties, and see a man grappling with the problems of the bankruptcy of his nation. And come with an eloquent cry that we have nothing to fear but "fear itself." But I wouldn't stop there. Strangely enough, I would turn to the Almighty, and say, "If you allow me to live just a few years in the second half of the 20th century, I will be happy." Now that's a strange statement to make, because the world is all messed up. The nation is sick. Trouble is in the land; confusion all around. That's a strange statement. But I know, somehow, that only when it is dark enough can you see the stars. And I see God working in this period of the twentieth century in a way that men, in some strange way, are responding. Something is happening in our world. The masses of people are rising up. And wherever they are assembled today, whether they are in Johannesburg, South Africa; Nairobi, Kenya; Accra, Ghana; New York City; Atlanta, Georgia; Jackson, Mississippi; or Memphis, Tennessee -- the cry is always the same: "We want to be free." And another reason that I'm happy to live in this period is that we have been forced to a point where we are going to have to grapple with the problems that men have been trying to grapple with through history, but the demands didn't force them to do it. Survival demands that we grapple with them. Men, for years now, have been talking about war and peace. But now, no longer can they just talk about it. It is no longer a choice between violence and nonviolence in this world; it's nonviolence or nonexistence. That is where we are today.And also in the human rights revolution, if something isn't done, and done in a hurry, to bring the colored peoples of the world out of their long years of poverty, their long years of hurt and neglect, the whole world is doomed. Now, I'm just happy that God has allowed me to live in this period to see what is unfolding. And I'm happy that He's allowed me to be in Memphis. I can remember -- I can remember when Negroes were just going around as Ralph has said, so often, scratching where they didn't itch, and laughing when they were not tickled. But that day is all over. We mean business now, and we are determined to gain our rightful place in God's world.And that's all this whole thing is about. We aren't engaged in any negative protest and in any negative arguments with anybody. We are saying that we are determined to be men. We are determined to be people. We are saying -- We are saying that we are God's children. And that we are God's children, we don't have to live like we are forced to live. Now, what does all of this mean in this great period of history? It means that we've got to stay together. We've got to stay together and maintain unity. You know, whenever Pharaoh wanted to prolong the period of slavery in Egypt, he had a favorite, favorite formula for doing it. What was that? He kept the slaves fighting among themselves. But whenever the slaves get together, something happens in Pharaoh's court, and he cannot hold the slaves in slavery. When the slaves get together, that's the beginning of getting out of slavery. Now let us maintain unity.Secondly, let us keep the issues where they are. The issue is injustice. The issue is the refusal of Memphis to be fair and honest in its dealings with its public servants, who happen to be sanitation workers. Now, we've got to keep attention on that. That's always the problem with a little violence. You know what happened the other day, and the press dealt only with the window-breaking. I read the articles. They very seldom got around to mentioning the fact that one thousand, three hundred sanitation workers are on strike, and that Memphis is not being fair to them, and that Mayor Loeb is in dire need of a doctor. They didn't get around to that. Now we're going to march again, and we've got to march again, in order to put the issue where it is supposed to be -- and force everybody to see that there are thirteen hundred of God's children here suffering, sometimes going hungry, going through dark and dreary nights wondering how this thing is going to come out. That's the issue. And we've got to say to the nation: We know how it's coming out. For when people get caught up with that which is right and they are willing to sacrifice for it, there is no stopping point short of victory. We aren't going to let any mace stop us. We are masters in our nonviolent movement in disarming police forces; they don't know what to do. I've seen them so often. I remember in Birmingham, Alabama, when we were in that majestic struggle there, we would move out of the 16th Street Baptist Church day after day; by the hundreds we would move out. And Bull Connor would tell them to send the dogs forth, and they did come; but we just went before the dogs singing, "Ain't gonna let nobody turn me around." Bull Connor next would say, "Turn the fire hoses on." And as I said to you the other night, Bull Connor didn't know history. He knew a kind of physics that somehow didn't relate to the transphysics that we knew about. And that was the fact that there was a certain kind of fire that no water could put out. And we went before the fire hoses; we had known water. If we were Baptist or some other denominations, we had been immersed. If we were Methodist, and some others, we had been sprinkled, but we knew water. That couldn't stop us. And we just went on before the dogs and we would look at them; and we'd go on before the water hoses and we would look at it, and we'd just go on singing "Over my head I see freedom in the air." And then we would be thrown in the paddy wagons, and sometimes we were stacked in there like sardines in a can. And they would throw us in, and old Bull would say, "Take 'em off," and they did; and we would just go in the paddy wagon singing, "We Shall Overcome." And every now and then we'd get in jail, and we'd see the jailers looking through the windows being moved by our prayers, and being moved by our words and our songs. And there was a power there which Bull Connor couldn't adjust to; and so we ended up transforming Bull into a steer, and we won our struggle in Birmingham. Now we've got to go on in Memphis just like that. I call upon you to be with us when we go out Monday. Now about injunctions: We have an injunction and we're going into court tomorrow morning to fight this illegal, unconstitutional injunction. All we say to America is, "Be true to what you said on paper." If I lived in China or even Russia, or any totalitarian country, maybe I could understand some of these illegal injunctions. Maybe I could understand the denial of certain basic First Amendment privileges, because they hadn't committed themselves to that over there. But somewhere I read of the freedom of assembly. Somewhere I read of the freedom of speech. Somewhere I read of the freedom of press. Somewhere I read that the greatness of America is the right to protest for right. 1   And so just as I say, we aren't going to let dogs or water hoses turn us around, we aren't going to let any injunction turn us around. We are going on.We need all of you. And you know what's beautiful to me is to see all of these ministers of the Gospel. It's a marvelous picture. Who is it that is supposed to articulate the longings and aspirations of the people more than the preacher? Somehow the preacher must have a kind of fire shut up in his bones. And whenever injustice is around he tell it. Somehow the preacher must be an Amos, and saith, "When God speaks who can but prophesy?" Again with Amos, "Let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream." Somehow the preacher must say with Jesus, "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me," and he's anointed me to deal with the problems of the poor." And I want to commend the preachers, under the leadership of these noble men: James Lawson, one who has been in this struggle for many years; he's been to jail for struggling; he's been kicked out of Vanderbilt University for this struggle, but he's still going on, fighting for the rights of his people. Reverend Ralph Jackson, Billy Kiles; I could just go right on down the list, but time will not permit. But I want to thank all of them. And I want you to thank them, because so often, preachers aren't concerned about anything but themselves. And I'm always happy to see a relevant ministry. It's all right to talk about "long white robes over yonder," in all of its symbolism. But ultimately people want some suits and dresses and shoes to wear down here! It's all right to talk about "streets flowing with milk and honey," but God has commanded us to be concerned about the slums down here, and his children who can't eat three square meals a day. It's all right to talk about the new Jerusalem, but one day, God's preacher must talk about the new New York, the new Atlanta, the new Philadelphia, the new Los Angeles, the new Memphis, Tennessee. This is what we have to do. Now the other thing we'll have to do is this: Always anchor our external direct action with the power of economic withdrawal. Now, we are poor people. Individually, we are poor when you compare us with white society in America. We are poor. Never stop and forget that collectively -- that means all of us together -- collectively we are richer than all the nations in the world, with the exception of nine. Did you ever think about that? After you leave the United States, Soviet Russia, Great Britain, West Germany, France, and I could name the others, the American Negro collectively is richer than most nations of the world. We have an annual income of more than thirty billion dollars a year, which is more than all of the exports of the United States, and more than the national budget of Canada. Did you know that? That's power right there, if we know how to pool it. We don't have to argue with anybody. We don't have to curse and go around acting bad with our words. We don't need any bricks and bottles. We don't need any Molotov cocktails. We just need to go around to these stores, and to these massive industries in our country, and say, "God sent us by here, to say to you that you're not treating his children right. And we've come by here to ask you to make the first item on your agenda fair treatment, where God's children are concerned. Now, if you are not prepared to do that, we do have an agenda that we must follow. And our agenda calls for withdrawing economic support from you." And so, as a result of this, we are asking you tonight, to go out and tell your neighbors not to buy Coca-Cola in Memphis. Go by and tell them not to buy Sealtest milk. Tell them not to buy -- what is the other bread? -- Wonder Bread. And what is the other bread company, Jesse? Tell them not to buy Hart's bread. As Jesse Jackson has said, up to now, only the garbage men have been feeling pain; now we must kind of redistribute the pain. We are choosing these companies because they haven't been fair in their hiring policies; and we are choosing them because they can begin the process of saying they are going to support the needs and the rights of these men who are on strike. And then they can move on town -- downtown and tell Mayor Loeb to do what is right. But not only that, we've got to strengthen black institutions. I call upon you to take your money out of the banks downtown and deposit your money in Tri-State Bank. We want a "bank-in" movement in Memphis. Go by the savings and loan association. I'm not asking you something that we don't do ourselves at SCLC. Judge Hooks and others will tell you that we have an account here in the savings and loan association from the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. We are telling you to follow what we are doing. Put your money there. You have six or seven black insurance companies here in the city of Memphis. Take out your insurance there. We want to have an "insurance-in." Now these are some practical things that we can do. We begin the process of building a greater economic base. And at the same time, we are putting pressure where it really hurts. I ask you to follow through here. Now, let me say as I move to my conclusion that we've got to give ourselves to this struggle until the end. Nothing would be more tragic than to stop at this point in Memphis. We've got to see it through. And when we have our march, you need to be there. If it means leaving work, if it means leaving school -- be there. Be concerned about your brother. You may not be on strike. But either we go up together, or we go down together.Let us develop a kind of dangerous unselfishness. One day a man came to Jesus, and he wanted to raise some questions about some vital matters of life. At points he wanted to trick Jesus, and show him that he knew a little more than Jesus knew and throw him off base.... Now that question could have easily ended up in a philosophical and theological debate. But Jesus immediately pulled that question from mid-air, and placed it on a dangerous curve between Jerusalem and Jericho. And he talked about a certain man, who fell among thieves. You remember that a Levite and a priest passed by on the other side. They didn't stop to help him. And finally a man of another race came by. He got down from his beast, decided not to be compassionate by proxy. But he got down with him, administered first aid, and helped the man in need. Jesus ended up saying, this was the good man, this was the great man, because he had the capacity to project the "I" into the "thou," and to be concerned about his brother. Now you know, we use our imagination a great deal to try to determine why the priest and the Levite didn't stop. At times we say they were busy going to a church meeting, an ecclesiastical gathering, and they had to get on down to Jerusalem so they wouldn't be late for their meeting. At other times we would speculate that there was a religious law that "One who was engaged in religious ceremonials was not to touch a human body twenty-four hours before the ceremony." And every now and then we begin to wonder whether maybe they were not going down to Jerusalem -- or down to Jericho, rather to organize a "Jericho Road Improvement Association." That's a possibility. Maybe they felt that it was better to deal with the problem from the causal root, rather than to get bogged down with an individual effect. But I'm going to tell you what my imagination tells me. It's possible that those men were afraid. You see, the Jericho road is a dangerous road. I remember when Mrs. King and I were first in Jerusalem. We rented a car and drove from Jerusalem down to Jericho. And as soon as we got on that road, I said to my wife, "I can see why Jesus used this as the setting for his parable." It's a winding, meandering road. It's really conducive for ambushing. You start out in Jerusalem, which is about 1200 miles -- or rather 1200 feet above sea level. And by the time you get down to Jericho, fifteen or twenty minutes later, you're about 2200 feet below sea level. That's a dangerous road. In the days of Jesus it came to be known as the "Bloody Pass." And you know, it's possible that the priest and the Levite looked over that man on the ground and wondered if the robbers were still around. Or it's possible that they felt that the man on the ground was merely faking. And he was acting like he had been robbed and hurt, in order to seize them over there, lure them there for quick and easy seizure. And so the first question that the priest asked -- the first question that the Levite asked was, "If I stop to help this man, what will happen to me?" But then the Good Samaritan came by. And he reversed the question: "If I do not stop to help this man, what will happen to him?" That's the question before you tonight. Not, "If I stop to help the sanitation workers, what will happen to my job. Not, "If I stop to help the sanitation workers what will happen to all of the hours that I usually spend in my office every day and every week as a pastor?" The question is not, "If I stop to help this man in need, what will happen to me?" The question is, "If I do not stop to help the sanitation workers, what will happen to them?" That's the question.Let us rise up tonight with a greater readiness. Let us stand with a greater determination. And let us move on in these powerful days, these days of challenge to make America what it ought to be. We have an opportunity to make America a better nation. And I want to thank God, once more, for allowing me to be here with you. You know, several years ago, I was in New York City autographing the first book that I had written. And while sitting there autographing books, a demented black woman came up. The only question I heard from her was, "Are you Martin Luther King?" And I was looking down writing, and I said, "Yes." And the next minute I felt something beating on my chest. Before I knew it I had been stabbed by this demented woman. I was rushed to Harlem Hospital. It was a dark Saturday afternoon. And that blade had gone through, and the X-rays revealed that the tip of the blade was on the edge of my aorta, the main artery. And once that's punctured, your drowned in your own blood -- that's the end of you. It came out in the New York Times the next morning, that if I had merely sneezed, I would have died. Well, about four days later, they allowed me, after the operation, after my chest had been opened, and the blade had been taken out, to move around in the wheel chair in the hospital. They allowed me to read some of the mail that came in, and from all over the states and the world, kind letters came in. I read a few, but one of them I will never forget. I had received one from the President and the Vice-President. I've forgotten what those telegrams said. I'd received a visit and a letter from the Governor of New York, but I've forgotten what that letter said. But there was another letter that came from a little girl, a young girl who was a student at the White Plains High School. And I looked at that letter, and I'll never forget it. It said simply, "Dear Dr. King, I am a ninth-grade student at the White Plains High School." And she said, "While it should not matter, I would like to mention that I'm a white girl. I read in the paper of your misfortune, and of your suffering. And I read that if you had sneezed, you would have died. And I'm simply writing you to say that I'm so happy that you didn't sneeze." And I want to say tonight -- I want to say tonight that I too am happy that I didn't sneeze. Because if I had sneezed, I wouldn't have been around here in 1960, when students all over the South started sitting-in at lunch counters. And I knew that as they were sitting in, they were really standing up for the best in the American dream, and taking the whole nation back to those great wells of democracy which were dug deep by the Founding Fathers in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. If I had sneezed, I wouldn't have been around here in 1961, when we decided to take a ride for freedom and ended segregation in inter-state travel. If I had sneezed, I wouldn't have been around here in 1962, when Negroes in Albany, Georgia, decided to straighten their backs up. And whenever men and women straighten their backs up, they are going somewhere, because a man can't ride your back unless it is bent. If I had sneezed -- If I had sneezed I wouldn't have been here in 1963, when the black people of Birmingham, Alabama, aroused the conscience of this nation, and brought into being the Civil Rights Bill. If I had sneezed, I wouldn't have had a chance later that year, in August, to try to tell America about a dream that I had had. If I had sneezed, I wouldn't have been down in Selma, Alabama, to see the great Movement there. If I had sneezed, I wouldn't have been in Memphis to see a community rally around those brothers and sisters who are suffering. I'm so happy that I didn't sneeze. And they were telling me --. Now, it doesn't matter, now. It really doesn't matter what happens now. I left Atlanta this morning, and as we got started on the plane, there were six of us. The pilot said over the public address system, "We are sorry for the delay, but we have Dr. Martin Luther King on the plane. And to be sure that all of the bags were checked, and to be sure that nothing would be wrong with on the plane, we had to check out everything carefully. And we've had the plane protected and guarded all night."And then I got into Memphis. And some began to say the threats, or talk about the threats that were out. What would happen to me from some of our sick white brothers? Well, I don't know what will happen now. We've got some difficult days ahead. But it really doesn't matter with me now, because I've been to the mountaintop. And I don't mind. Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I'm not concerned about that now. I just want to do God's will. And He's allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I've looked over. And I've seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land! And so I'm happy, tonight. I'm not worried about anything. I'm not fearing any man! Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord!! Source: https://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/mlkivebeentothemountaintop.htm

Mr. Chairman, friends and brothers in this first gathering of the National Conference on New Politics. Ladies and gentlemen. . .can you hear me in the back? (No) I don’t know if the Klan is in here tonight or not with all the troubles we’re having with these microphones. Seldom if ever. . . .has. . . .we’re still working with it. As I was about to say, seldom if ever has such a diverse and truly ecumenical gathering convened under the egis of politics in our nation, and I want to commend the leadership of the National Conference on New Politics for all of the great work that they have done in making this significant convention possible. Indeed by our very nature we affirm that something new is taking place on the American political horizon. We have come here from the dusty plantations of the Deep South and the depressing ghettos of the North. We have come from the great universities and the flourishing suburbs. We have come from Appalachian poverty and from conscious stricken wealth. But we have come. And we have come here because we share a common concern for the moral health of our nation. We have come because our eyes have seen through the superficial glory and glitter of our society and observed the coming of judgment. Like the prophet of old, we have read the handwriting on the wall. We have seen our nation weighed in the balance of history and found wanting. We have come because we see this as a dark hour in the affairs of men. For most of us this is a new mood. We are traditionally the idealists. We are the marchers from Mississippi and Selma and Washington, who staked our lives on the American Dream during the first half of this decade. Many assembled here campaigned lasciviously for Lyndon Johnson in 1964 because we could not stand ideally by and watch our nation contaminated by the 18th century policies of Goldwaterism. We were the hardcore activists who were willing to believe that Southerners could be reconstructed in the constitutional image. We were the dreamers of a dream that dark yesterdays of mans inhumanity to man would soon be transformed into bright tomorrows of justice. Now it is hard to escape, the disillusionment and betrayal. Our hopes have been blasted and our dreams have been shattered. The promise of a Great Society was shipwrecked off the coast of Asia, on the dreadful peninsula of Vietnam. The poor, black and white, are still perishing on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity. What happens to a dream deferred? It leads to bewildering frustration and corroding bitterness. I came to see this in a personal experience here in Chicago last summer. In all the speaking I have done in the United States before varied audiences, including some hostile whites, the only time I have ever been booed was one night in our regular weekly mass meetings by some angry young men of our movement. Now I went home that night with an ugly feeling. Selfishly I thought of my suffering and sacrifices over the last twelve years. Why would they boo one so close to them? But as I lay awake thinking. I finally came to myself. And I could not for the life of me have less impatience and understanding for those young men. For twelve years, I am others like me, have held out radiant promises of progress. I had preached to them about my dream. I had lectured to them about, the not to distant day when they would have freedom, all here, now. I had urged them to have faith in America and in white society. Their hopes had soared. They were now booing me because they felt that we were unable to deliver on our promises. They were booing because we had urged them to have faith in  people who had too often proved to be unfaithful. They were now hostile because they were watching the dream that they had so readily accepted, turn into a frustrating nightmare. This situation is all the more ominous, in view of the rising expectations of men the world over. The deep rumblings that we hear today, the rumblings of discontent, is the thunder of disinherited masses rising from dungeons of oppressions to the bright hills of freedom. All over the world like a fever, freedom is spreading in the widest liberation movement in history. The great masses of people are determined to end the exploitation of their races and lands. And in one majestic chorus they are singing in the worlds of our freedom song, “ain’t gonna let nobody turn us around”. And so the collision course is set. The people cry for freedom and the congress attempts to legislate repression. Millions, yes billions, are appropriated for mass murder; but the most meager pittance for foreign aid for international development is crushed in the surge of reaction. Unemployment rages at a major depression level in the black ghettos, but the bi-partisan response is an anti-riot bill rather than a serious poverty program. The modest proposals for model cities, rent supplement and rat control, pitiful as they were to began with, get caught in the maze of congressional inaction. And I submit to you tonight, that a congress that proves to be more anti-negro than anti-rat needs to be dismissed. It seems that our legislative assemblies have adopted Nero as their patron saint and are bent on fiddling while our cities burn. Even when the people persist and in the face of great obstacles, develop indigenous leadership and self-help approaches to their problems and finally tread the forest of bureaucracy to obtain existing government funds, the corrupt political order seeks to crush even this beginning of hope. The case of CDGM in Mississippi is the most publicized example but it is a story repeated many times across our nation. Our own experience here in Chicago is especially painfully present. After an enthusiastic approval by H.E. W’s Department of Adult Education, SCLC began an adult literacy project to aid 1,000 young men and women who have been pushed out of overcrowded ghetto schools, in obtaining basic [literary] skills prerequisite to receiving jobs. We had an agreement with A&P stores for 750 jobs through SCLC’s job program, Operation Breadbasket and had recruited over 500 pupils the first week. At that point Congressmen Paccinski and the Daley machine intervened and demanded that Washington cut off our funds or channel them through the machine-controlled poverty program in Chicago. Now we have no problem with administrative supervision, but we do have a desire to be independent of machine control and the Democratic Party patronage network. For this desire for a politically independent approach to the needs of our brothers, our funds are being stopped as of September 15 and a very meaningful program discontinued. Yes the hour is dark, evil comes forth in the guise of good. It is a time of double talk when men in high places have a  high blood pressure of deceptive rhetoric and an anemia of concrete performance. We cry out against welfare hand-outs to the poor but generously approve an oil depletion allowance to make the rich, richer. Six Mississippi plantations receive more than a million dollars a year, not to plant cotton but no provision is made to feed the tenant farmer who is put out of work by the government subsidy. The crowning achievement in hypocrisy must go to those staunch Republicans and Democrats of the Midwest and West who were given land by our government when they came here as immigrants from Europe. They were given education through the land grant colleges. They were provided with agricultural agents to keep them abreast of forming trends, they were granted low interest loans to aid in the mechanization of their farms and now that they have succeeded in becoming successful, they are paid not to farm and these are the same people that now say to black people, whose ancesors were brought to this country in chains and who were emancipated in 1863 without being given land to cultivate or bread to eat; that they must pull themselves up by their own  bootstraps. What they truly advocate is Socialism for the rich and Capitalism for the poor. I wish that I could say that this is just a passing phase in the cycles of our nation’s life; certainly times of war, times of reaction throughout the society but I suspect that we are now experiencing the coming to the surface of a triple prong sickness that has been lurking within our body politic from its very beginning. That is the sickness of racism, excessive materialism and militarism. Not only is this our nation’s dilemma it is the plague of western civilization. As early as 1906 W. E. B Dubois prophesized that the problem of the 20th century, would be the problem of the color line, now as we stand two-thirds into this crucial period of history we know full well that racism is still that hound of hell which dogs the tracks of our civilization. Ever since the birth of our nation, White America has had a Schizophrenic personality on the question of race, she has been torn between selves. A self in which she proudly professes the great principle of democracy and a self in which she madly practices the antithesis of democracy. This tragic duality has produced a strange indecisiveness and ambivalence toward the Negro, causing America to take a step backwards simultaneously with every step forward on the question of Racial Justice; to be at once attracted to the Negro and repelled by him, to love and to hate him. There has never been a solid, unified and determined thrust to make justice a reality for Afro-Americans. The step backwards has a new name today, it is called the white backlash, but the white backlash is nothing new. It is the surfacing of old prejudices, hostilities and ambivalences that have always been there. It was caused neither by the cry of black power nor by the unfortunate recent wave of riots in our cities. The white backlash of today is rooted in the same problem that has characterized America ever since the black man landed in chains on the shores of this nation. This does not imply that all White Americans are racist, far from it. Many white people have, through a deep moral compulsion fought long and hard for racial justice nor does it mean that America has made no progress in her attempt to cure the body politic of the disease of racism or that the dogma of racism has not been considerably modified in recent years. However for the good of America, it is necessary to refute the idea that the dominant ideology in our country, even today, is freedom and equality while racism is just an occasional departure from the norm on the part of a few bigoted extremists. Racism can well be, that corrosive evil that will bring down the curtain on western civilization. Arnold Toynbee has said that some twenty-six civilization have risen upon the face of the Earth, almost all of them have descended into the junk heap of destruction. The decline and fall of these civilizations, according to Toynbee, was not caused by external invasion but by internal decay. They failed to respond creatively to the challenges impingent upon them. If America does not respond creatively to the challenge to banish racism, some future historian will have to say, that a great civilization died because it lacked the soul and commitment to make justice a reality for all men. The second aspect of our afflicted society is extreme materialism. An Asian writer has portrayed our dilemma in candid terms, he says, “you call your thousand material devices labor saving machinery, yet you are forever busy. With the multiplying of your machinery, you grow increasingly fatigued, anxious, nervous, dissatisfied. Whatever you have you want more and wherever you are you want to go somewhere else. Your devices are neither time saving nor soul saving machinery. They are so many sharp spurs which urge you on to invent more machinery and to do more business”. This tells us something about our civilization that cannot be caste aside as a prejudiced charge by an eastern thinker who is jealous of Western prosperity. We cannot escape the indictment. This does not mean that we must turn back the clock of scientific progress. No one can overlook the wonders that science has wrought for our lives. The automobile will not abdicate in favor of the horse and buggy or the train in favor of the stagecoach or the tractor in favor of the handplow or the scientific method in favor of ignorance and superstition. But our moral lag must be redeemed; when scientific power outruns moral power, we end up with guided missiles and misguided men. When we foolishly maximize the minimum and minimize the maximum we sign the warrant for our own day of doom. It is this moral lag in our thing-oriented society that blinds us to the human reality around us and encourages us in the greed and exploitation which creates the sector of poverty in the midst of wealth. Again we have diluted ourselves into believing the myth that Capitalism grew and prospered out of the protestant ethic of hard work and sacrifice. The fact is that Capitalism was build on the exploitation and suffering of black slaves and continues to thrive on the exploitation of the poor – both black and white, both here and abroad. If Negroes and poor whites do not participate in the free flow of wealth within our economy, they will forever be poor, giving their energies, their talents and their limited funds to the consumer market but reaping few benefits and services in return. The way to end poverty is to end the exploitation of the poor, ensure them a fair share of the government services and the nation’s resources. I proposed recently that a national agency be established to provide employment for everyone needing it. Nothing is more socially inexcusable than unemployment in this age. In the 30s, when the nation was bankrupt it instituted such an agency, the WPA, in the present conditions of a nation glutted with resources, it is barbarous to condemn people desiring work to soul sapping inactivity and  poverty. I am convinced that even this one, massive act of concern will do more than all the state police and armies of the nation to quell riots and still hatreds. The tragedy is our materialistic culture does not possess the statesmanship necessary to do it. Victor Hugo could have been thinking of 20th Century America when he wrote, “there’s always more misery among the lower classes than there is humanity in the higher classes”. The time has come for America to face the inevitable choice between materialism and humanism. We must devote at least as much to our children’s education and the health of the poor as we do to the care of our automobiles and the building of beautiful, impressive hotels. We must also realize that the problems of racial injustice and economic injustice cannot be solved without a radical redistribution of political and economic power. We must further recognize that the ghetto is a domestic colony. Black people must develop programs that will aid in the transfer of power and wealth into the hands of residents of the ghetto so that they may in reality control their own destinies. This is the meaning of New Politics. People of will in the larger community, must support the black man in this effort. The final phase of our national sickness is the disease of militarism. Nothing more clearly demonstrates our nation’s abuse of military power than our tragic adventure in Vietnam. This war has played havoc with the destiny of the entire world. It has torn up the Geneva Agreement, it has seriously impaired the United Nations, it has exacerbated the hatred between continents and worse still between races. It has frustrated our development at home, telling our own underprivileged citizens that we place insatiable military demands above their critical needs. It has greatly contributed to the forces of reaction in America and strengthened the military industrial complex. And it has practically destroyed Vietnam and left thousands of American and Vietnamese youth maimed and mutilated and exposed the whole world to the risk of nuclear warfare. Above all, the War in Vietnam, has revealed what Senator Fulbright calls, “our nation’s arrogance of power”. We are arrogant in  professing to be concerned about the freedom of foreign nations while not setting our own house in order. Many of our Senators and Congressmen vote joyously to appropriate billions of dollars for the War in Vietnam and many of these same Senators and Congressmen vote loudly against a Fair Housing Bill to make it possible for a Negro veteran of Vietnam to purchase a decent home. We arm Negro soldiers to kill on foreign battlefields but offer little protection for their relatives from beatings and killings in our own South. We are willing to make a Negro 100% of a citizen in Warfare but reduce him to 50% of a citizen on American soil. No war in our nation’s history has ever been so violative of our conscience, our national interest and so destructive of our moral standing before the world. No enemy has ever been able to cause such damage to us as we inflict upon ourselves. The inexorable decay of our urban centers has flared into terrifying domestic conflict as the pursuit of foreign war absorbs our wealth and energy. Squalor and poverty scar our cities as our military might destroy cities in a far-off land to support oligarchy, to intervene in domestic conflict. The President who cherishes consensus for peace has intensified the war in answer to a cry to stop the war. It has brought tauntingly to one minute’s flying time from China to a moment before the midnight of world conflagration. We are offered a tax for war instead of a plan for peace. Men of reason should no longer debate the merits of war or means of financing war. They should end the war and restore sanity and humanity to American policy. And if the will of the people continues to be unheeded, all men of good will must create a situation in which the 1967- 68 are made a referendum on the War. The American people must have an opportunity to vote into oblivion those who cannot detach themselves from militarism, and those that lead us. So we are here because we believe, we hope, we pray that something new might emerge in the political life of this nation which will produce a new man, new structures and institutions and a new life for mankind. I am convinced that this new life will not emerge until our nation undergoes a radical revolution of values. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people the giant triplets of racism, economic exploitation and militarism are incapable of being conquered. A civilization can flounder as readily in the face of moral bankruptcy as it can through financial bankruptcy. A true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and justice of many of our past and present policies. We are called to play the Good Samaritan on life’s roadside, but that will only be an initial act. One day the whole Jericho Road must be transformed so that men and women will not be beaten and robbed as they make their journey through life. True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar, it understands that an edifice which produces beggars, needs restructuring. A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth, with righteous indignation it will look at thousands of working people displaced from their jobs, with reduced incomes as a result of automation while the profits of the employers remain intact and say, this is not just. It will look across the ocean and see individual Capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia and Africa only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries and say, this is not just. It will look at our alliance with the landed gentry of Latin America and say, this is not just. A true revolution of values will lay hands on the world order and say of war, this way of settling differences is not just. This business of burning human being with napalm, of filling our nation’s home with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into the veins of peoples normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloodied battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice and love. A nation that continues year after year, to spend more money on military defense then on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death. So what we must all see is that these are revolutionary times All over the globe, men are revolting against old systems of exploitation and out of the wombs of a frail world, new systems of justice and equality are  being born. The shirtless and barefoot of the Earth are rising up as never before. The people who sat in darkness have seen a great light. We in the west must support these revolutions. It is a sad fact that because of comfort, complacency, a morbid fear of Communism and our proneness to adjust to injustice, the Western nations that initiated so much of the revolutionary spirit of the modern world have now become the arch anti-revolutionaries. This has driven many to feel that only Marxism has the revolutionary spirit. In a sense, Communism is a judgment of our failure to make democracy real and to follow through on the revolutions that we initiated. Our only hope today lies in our ability to recapture the revolutionary spirit and go out into a sometimes hostile world, declaring eternal opposition to poverty, racism and militarism. With this powerful commitment, we shall boldly challenge the status quo and unjust mores and thereby speed the day when every valley shall be exalted and every mountain and hill shall be made low and the crooked places shall be made straight and the rough places plain. May I say in conclusion that there is a need now, more than ever before, for men and women in our nation to be creatively maladjusted. Mr. Davis said, and I say to you that I choose to be among the maladjusted, as my good friend Bill Coffin said there are those who have criticized me and many of you for taking a stand against the War in Vietnam and for seeking to say to the nation that the issues of Civil Rights cannot be separated from the issues of peace. I want to say to you tonight that I intend to keep these issues mixed because they are mixed. Somewhere we must see that justice is indivisible, injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere and I have fought too long and too hard against segregated public accommodations to end up at this point in my life, segregating my moral concerns. So let us stand in this convention knowing that on some positions; cowardice asks the questions, is it safe; expediency asks the question, is it politic; vanity asks the question, is it popular, but conscious asks the question, is it right. And on some positions, it is necessary for the moral individual to take a stand that is neither safe, nor politic nor popular; but he must do it because it is right. And we say to our nation tonight, we say to our Government, we even say to our FBI, we will not be harassed, we will not make a butchery of our conscience, we will not be intimidated and we will be heard. Source: https://www.nwesd.org/the-current/equity/the-three-evils-of-society-address-martin-luther-king-jr/

Hussein is Captured

CONSTITUTION OF DELAWARE—1792 We, the people, hereby ordain and establish this constitution of government for the State of Delaware. Through divine goodness all men have, by nature, the rights of worshipping and serving their Creator according to the dictates of their consciences, of enjoying and defending life and liberty, of acquiring and protecting reputation and property, and, in general, of attaining objects suitable to their condition, without injury by one to another; and as these rights are essential to their welfare, for the due exercise thereof, power is inherent in them; and, therefore, all just authority in the institutions of political society is derived from the people, and established with their consent, to advance their happiness; and they may, for this end, as circumstances require, from time to time, alter their constitution of government. Article I Section 1. Although it is the duty of all men frequently to assemble together for the public worship of the Author of the universe, and piety and morality, on which the prosperity of communities depends, are thereby promoted; yet no man shall or ought to be compelled to attend any religious worship, to contribute to the erection or support of any place of worship, or to the maintenance of any ministry, against his own free will and consent; and no power shall or ought to be vested in or assumed by any magistrate that shall in any case interfere with, or in any manner control, the rights of conscience, in the free exercise of religious worship, nor a preference be given by law to any religious societies, denominations, or modes of worship. Sec. 2. No religious test shall be required as a qualification to any office, or public trust, under this State. Sec. 3. All elections shall be free and equal. Sec. 4. Trial by jury shall be as heretofore. Sec. 5. The press shall be free to every citizen who undertakes to examine the official conduct of men acting in a public capacity; and any citizen may print on any subject, being responsible for the abuse of that liberty. In prosecutions for publications investigating the proceedings of officers, or where the matter published is proper for public information, the truth thereof may be given in evidence; and in all indictments for libels, the jury may determine the facts and the law, as in other cases. Sec. 6. The people shall be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and possessions from the unreasonable searches and seizures; and no warrant to search any place, or to seize any person or things, shall issue without describing them as particularly as may be, nor then, unless there be probable cause supported by oath or affirmation. Sec. 7. In all criminal prosecutions the accused hath a right to be heard by himself and his counsel, to be plainly and fully informed of the nature and cause of the accusation against him, to meet the witnesses in their examination face to face, to have compulsory process in due time, on application by himself, his friends, or counsel, for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and a speedy and public trial by an impartial jury; he shall not be compelled to give evidence against himself, nor shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property, unless by the judgment of his peers or the law of the land. Sec. 8. No person shall for any indictable offence be proceeded against criminally by information, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the militia when in actual service in time of war or public danger, and no person shall be, for the same offence, twice put in jeoparay of life or limb; nor shall any man’s property be taken or applied to public use without the consent of his representatives, and without compensation being made. Sec. 9. All courts shall be open; and every man, for an injury done, him in his reputation, person, movable or immovable possessions, shall have remedy by the due course of law, and justice administered according to the very right of the cause and the law of the land, without sale, denial, or unreasonable delay or expense; and every action shall be tried in the county in which it shall be commenced, unless when the judges of the court in which the cause is to be tried shall determine that an impartial trial therefore cannot be had in that county. Suits may be brought against the State, according to such regulations as shall be made law. Sec. 10. No power of suspending laws shall be exercised, but by authority of the legislature. Sec. 11. Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel punishments inflicted; and in the construction of jails a proper regard shall be had to the health of prisoners. Sec. 12. All prisoners shall be bailable by sufficient sureties, unless for capital offences, when the proof is positive, or the presumption great; and when persons are confined on accusation for such offences, their friends and counsel may at proper seasons have access to them. Sec. 13. The privilege of the writ of habeas corpus shall not be suspended, unless when, in cases of rebellion or invasion, the public safety may require it. Sec. 14. No commission of oyer and terminer or jail-delivery shall be issued. Sec. 15. No attainder shall work corruption of blood, nor, except during the life of the offender, forfeiture of estate. The estates of those who destroy their own lives shall descend or vest as in case of natural death; and if any person be killed by accident, no forfeiture shall be thereby incurred. Sec. 16. Although disobedience to laws by a part of the people, upon suggestions of impolicy or injustice in them, tends by immediate effect and the influence of example, not only to endanger the public welfare and safety, but also, in governments of a republican form, contravenes the social principles of such governments founded on common consent for common good, yet the citizens have a right, in an orderly manner, to meet together, and to apply to persons intrusted with the powers of government for redress of grievances or other proper purposes, by petition, remonstrance, or address. Sec. 17. No standing army shall be kept up without the consent of the legislature; and the military shall, in all cases and at all times, be in strict subordination to the civil power. Sec. 18. No soldier shall in time of peace be quartered in any house without the consent of the owner; nor in time of war, but by a civil magistrate, in a manner to be prescribed by law. Sec. 19. No hereditary distinction shall be granted, nor any office created or exercised, the appointment to which shall be for a longer term than during good behavior; and no person holding any office under this State shall accept of any office or title of any kind whatever, from any king, prince, or foreign state. We declare that everything in this article is reserved out of the general powers of government hereinafter mentioned. Article II Section 1. The legislative power of this State shall be vested in a general assembly, which shall consist of a senate and house of representatives. Sec. 2. The representatives shall be chosen annually by the citizens residing in the several counties, respectively, on the first Tuesday of October. No person shall be a representative who shall not have attained to the age of twenty-four years, and have a freehold in the county in which he shall be chosen, have been a citizen and inhabitant of the State three years next preceding the first meeting of the legislature after his election, and the last year of that term an inhabitant of the county in which he shall be chosen, unless he shall have been absent on the public business of the United States, or of this State. There shall be seven representatives chosen in each county, until a greater number of representatives shall by the general assembly be judged necessary; and then, two-thirds of each branch of the legislature concurring, they may by law make provision for increasing their number. Sec. 3. The senators shall be chosen for three years by the citizens residing in the several counties, respectively, having right to vote for representatives, at the same time when they shall vote for representatives, in the same manner, and at the same places. No person shall be a senator who shall not have attained to the age of twenty-seven years, and have in the county in which he shall be chosen a freehold estate in two hundred acres of land, or an estate in real and personal property, or in either, of the value of one thousand pounds at least, and have been a citizen and inhabitant of the State three years next preceding the first meeting of the legislature after his election, and the last year of that term an inhabitant of the county in which he shall be chosen, unless he shall have been absent on the public business of the United States or of this State. There shall be three senators chosen in each county. When a greater number of senators shall by the general assembly be judged necessary, two-thirds of each branch concurring, they may, by law, make provision for increasing their number; but the number of senators shall never be greater than one-half, nor less than one-third, of the number of representatives. Immediately after the senators shall be assembled in consequence of the first election, the senators residing in each county shall be divided by lot into three classes. The seats of the senators of the first class shall be vacated at the expiration of the first year; of the second class at the expiration of the second year; and of the third class at the expiration of the third year, so that one-third may be chosen every year. Sec. 4. The general assembly shall meet on the first Tuesday of January, in every year, unless sooner convened by the governor. Sec. 5. Each house shall choose its speaker and other officers; and also each house, whose speaker shall exercise the office of governor, may choose a speaker pro tempore. Sec. 6. Each house shall judge of the elections, returns, and qualifications of its own members; and a majority of each shall constitute a quorum to do business; but a smaller number may adjourn from day to day, and shall be authorized to compel the attendance of absent members, in such manner, and under such penalties, as shall be deemed expedient. Sec. 7. Each house may determine the rules of its proceedings, punish any of its members for disorderly behavior, and, with the concurrence of two-thirds, expel a member, and shall have all other powers necessary for a branch of the legislature of a free and independent State. Sec. 8. Each house shall keep a journal of its proceedings, and publish them immediately after every session, except such parts as may require secrecy, and the yeas and nays of the members on any question shall, at the desire of any member, be entered on the journal. Sec. 9. The doors of each house, and of committees of the whole, shall be open, unless when the business is such as ought to be kept secret. Sec. 10. Neither house shall, without the consent of the other, adjourn for more than three days, nor to any other place than that in which the two houses shall be sitting. Sec. 11. The senators and representatives shall receive a compensation for their services to be ascertained by law, and paid out of the treasury of the State; but no law varying the compensation shall take effect till an election of representatives shall have intervened. They shall in all cases, except treason, felony, or breach of the peace, be privileged from arrest during their attendance at the session of their respective houses, and in going to and returning from the same; and for any speech or debate in either house they shall not be questioned in any other place. Sec. 12. No senator nor representative shall, during the time for which he shall have been elected, be appointed to any civil office under this State which shall have been created, or the emoluments of which shall have been increased, during such time. No person concerned in any army or navy contract, no member of Congress, nor any person holding any office under this State or the United States, except the attorney-general, officers usually appointed by the courts of justice respectively, attorneys at law, and officers in the militia, holding no disqualifying office, shall, during his continuance in Congress or in office, be a senator or representative. Sec. 13. When vacancies happen in either house writs of election shall be issued by the speakers respectively, or, in cases of necessity, in such other manner as shall be provided for by law; and the persons thereupon chosen shall hold their seats as long as those in whose stead they are elected might have done if such vacancies had not happened. Sec. 14. All bills for raising revenue shall originate in the house of representatives; but the senate may propose alterations, as on other bills; and no bill, from the operation of which, when passed into a law, revenue may incidentally arise, shall be accounted a bill for raising revenue; nor shall any matter or clause whatever, not immediately relating to and necessary for raising revenue, be in any manner blended with or annexed to a bUl for raising revenue. Sec. 15. No money shall be drawn from the treasury but in consequence of appropriations made by law; and a regular statement and account of the receipts and expenditures of all public money shall be published annually. Article III Section 1. The supreme executive powers of this State shall be vested in a governor. Sec. 2. The governor shall be chosen on the first Tuesday of October by the citizens of the State having right to vote for representatives in the counties where they respectively reside, at the places where they shall vote for representatives. The returns of every election for governor shall be sealed up, and immediately delivered by the returning officers of the several counties to the speaker of the senate, [or in case of his death to the speaker of the house of representatives,] who shall keep the same until a speaker of the senate shall be appointed, to whom they shall be immediately delivered after his appointment, who shall open and publish the same in the presence of the members of both houses of the legislature. Duplicates of the said returns shall also be immediately lodged with the prothonotary of each county. The person having the highest number of votes shall be governor; but if two or more shall be equal in the highest number of votes, the members of the two houses shall, by joint ballot, choose one of them to be governor; and if, upon such ballot, two or more of them shall still be equal and highest in votes the speaker of the senate shall have an additional casting vote. Contested elections of a governor shall be determined by a joint committee, consisting of one-third of all the members of each branch of the legislature, to be selected by ballot of the houses respectively; every person of the committee shall take an oath or affirmation that in determining the said election he will faithfully discharge the trust reposed in him; and the committee shall always sit with open doors. Sec. 3. The governor shall hold his office during three years from the third Tuesday of January next ensuing his election, and shall not be capable of holding it longer than three in any term of six years. Sec. 4. He shall be at least thirty years of age, and have been a citizen and inhabitant of the United States twelve years, next before the first meeting of the legislature after his election, and the last six of that term an inhabitant of this State, unless he shall have been absent on the public business of the United States or of this State. Sec. 5. No member of Congress, nor person holding any office under the United States, or this State, shall exercise the office of governor. Sec. 6. The governor shall, at stated times, receive for his services an adequate salary, to be fixed by law, which shall be neither increased nor diminished during the period for which he shall have been elected. Sec. 7. He shall be commander-in-chief of the army and navy of this State, and of the militia, except when they shall be called into the service of the United States. Sec. 8. He shall appoint all officers whose offices are established by this constitution, or shall be established by law, and whose appointments are not herein otherwise provided for; but no person shall be appointed to an office within a county who shall not have a right to vote for representatives, and have been an inhabitant therein one year next before his appointment, nor hold the office longer than he continues to reside in the county. No member of Congress, nor any person holding or exercising any office under the United States, shall at the same time hold or exercise the office of judge, treasurer, attorney-general, secretary, clerk of the supreme court, prothonotary, register or the probate of wills and granting letters of administration, recorder, sheriff, or any office under this State, with a salary by law annexed to it, or any other office which the legislature shall declare incompatible with offices or appointments under the United States. No person shall hold more than one of the following offices at the same time, to wit, treasurer, attorney-general, clerk of the supreme court, prothonotary, register, or sheriff. All commissions shall be in the name of the State, shall be sealed with the great seal, and be signed and tested by the governor. Sec. 9. He shall have power to remit fines and forfeitures, and to grant reprieves and pardons, except in cases of impeachment. Sec. 10. He may require information in writing from the officers in the executive department, upon any subject relating to the duties of their respective offices. Sec. 11. He shall from time to time give to the general assembly information of affairs concerning the State, and recommend to their consideration such measures as he shall judge expedient. Sec. 12. He may, on extraordinary occasions, convene the general assembly; and in case of disagreement between the two houses with respect to the time of adjournment, adjourn them to such time as he shall think proper, not exceeding three months. Sec. 13. He shall take care that the laws be faithfully executed. Sec. 14. On the death or resignation of the governor, or his removal from office on impeachment, or for inability, the speaker of the senate at that time shall exercise the office of governor, until a new governor shall be duly qualified, and on the death or resignation of the speaker of the senate, the speaker of the house of representatives at that time shall exercise the office, until it be regularly vested in a new governor. If the trial of a Contested election shall continue longer than until the third Tuesday of January next ensuing the election of a governor, the governor of the last year, or the speaker of the senate, or of the house of representatives, who may then be in the exercise of the executive authority, shall continue therein until a determination of such contested election. The governor shall not be removed from his office for inability, but with the concurrence of two-thirds of all the members of each branch of the legislature. Sec. 15. A secretary shall be appointed and commissioned during the governor’s continuance in office, if he shall so long behave himself well. He shall keep a fair register of all the official acts and, proceedings of the governor, and shall, when required by either branch of the legislature, lay the same, and all papers, minutes, and vouchers relative thereto, before them, and shall perform such other duties as shall be enjoined him by law. He shall have a compensation for his services to be fixed by law. Article IV Section 1. All elections of governor, senators, and representatives shall be by ballot. And in such elections every white free man of the age of twenty-one years, having resided in the State two years next before the election, and within that time paid a State or county tax, which shall have been assessed at least six months before the election, shall enjoy the right of an elector; and the sons of persons so qualified shall, between the ages of twenty-one and twenty-two years, be entitled to vote, although they shall not have paid taxes. Sec. 2. Electors shall in all cases, except treason, felony, or breach of the peace, be privileged from arrest during their attendance at elections, and in going to and returning from them. Article V Section 1. The house of representatives shall have the sole power of impeaching; but two-thirds of all the members must concur in an impeachment. All impeachments shall be tried by the senate; and, when sitting for that purpose, the senators shall be upon oath or affirmation to do justice according to the evidence. No person shall be convicted without the concurrence of two-thirds of all the senators. Sec. 2. The governor, and all other civil officers under this State, shall be liable to impeachment for treason, bribery, or any high crime or misdemeanor in office. Judgment in such cases shall not extend further than to removal from office, and disqualification to hold any office of honor, trust, or profit under this State; but the party convicted shall nevertheless be subject to indictment, trial, judgment, and punishment according to law. Sec. 3. Treason against this State shall consist only in levying war against it, or in adhering to the enemies of the government, giving them aid and comfort. No person shall be convicted of treason unless on the testimony of two witnesses to the same overt act, or on confession in open court. Article VI Section 1. The judicial power of this State shall be vested in a court of chancery, a supreme court, and courts of oyer and terminer and general gaol-delivery, in a court of common pleas, and in an orphans’ court, registers’ court, and a court of quarter-sessions of the peace for each county, in justices of the peace, and in such other courts as the legislature (two-thirds of all the members of each branch concurring) may, from time to time, establish. Sec. 2. The chancellor and the judges of the supreme court, and of the court of common pleas, shall hold their offices during good behavior; but, for any reasonable cause which shall not be a sufficient ground for an impeachment, the governor may, in his discretion, remove any of them, on the address of two-thirds of all the members of each branch of the legislature. They shall, at stated times, receive for their services adequate salaries, to be fixed by law, which shall not be diminished during their continuance in office, and shall be payable quarterly to their respective orders upon the treasurer, out of any moneys in the treasury; but they shall hold no other office of profit, nor receive any fees or perquisites, except such fees as shall be fixed by law for business to be done out of court. Sec. 3. The judges of the supreme court shall be not fewer than three, nor more than four, one of whom shall be chief-justice. There shall be a judge residing in each county. The jurisdiction of this court shall extend over the State. The judges shall, by virtue of their offices, be justices of oyer and terminer and general gaol-delivery in the several counties. Any two of the judges may act as if all were present. Sec. 4. The judges of the court of common pleas shall be not fewer than three, nor more than four, one of whom shall be chief-justice. There shall be a judge residing in each county. The jurisdiction of this court shall extend over the State. Any two of the judges may act as if all were present. Sec. 5. The chancellor, or any judge of the supreme court, or of the court of common pleas, shall issue the writ of habeas corpus in vacation time, and out of term, when duly applied for, which shall be immediately obeyed. Sec. 6. Any judge of the supreme court, or of the court of common pleas, may, unless the legislature shall otherwise provide by law, out of court, take the acknowledgment of deeds; and the same being thereon certified, under his hand, such deed shall be recorded, and have the same effect, as if acknowledged in open court. Sec. 7. In civil causes, when pending, the supreme court and court of common pleas shall have the power, before judgment, of directing, upon such terms as they shall deem reasonable, amendments in pleadings and legal proceedings, so that by error in any of them the determination of causes, according to their real merits, shall not be hindered; and also of directing the examination of witnesses that are aged, very infirm, or going out of the State, upon interrogatories de bene esse, to be read in evidence in case of the death or departure of the witnesses before the trial, or inability by reason of age, sickness, bodily infirmity, or imprisonment then to attend; and also the power of obtaining evidence from places not within the State. Sec. 8. Suits may originate in the supreme court or court of common pleas. Sec. 9. One judge of the supreme court, or of the court of common pleas, may, if the other judges come not, open and adjourn the court, and may also make the necessary rules preparatory, respectively, to the trial or argument of causes. Sec. 10. At any time pending an action for debt or damages, the defendant may bring into court a sum of money for discharging the same, and the costs then accrued, and the plaintiff not accepting thereof, it shall be delivered for his use to the clerk or prothonotary of the court; and if, upon the final decision of the cause, the plaintiff shall not recover a greater sum than that so paid into court for him, he shall not recover any costs accruing after such payment, except where the plaintiff is an executor or administrator. Sec. 11. By the death of any party, no suit in chancery or at law, where the cause of action survives, shall abate; but, until the legislature shall otherwise provide, suggestion of such death being entered of record, the executor or administrator of a deceased petitioner, or plaintiff, may prosecute the said suit; and if a respondent or defendant dies, the executor or administrator, being duly served with a scire facias, thirty days before the return thereof, shall be considered as a party to the suit, in the same manner as if he had voluntarily made himself a party; and in any of those cases the court shall pass a decree, or render judgment for or against executors or administrators as to right appertains. But where an executor or administrator of a deceased respondent or defendant becomes a party, the court, upon motion, shall grant such a continuance of the cause as to the judges shall appear proper. Sec. 12. Whenever a person, not being an executor or administrator, appeals from a decree of the chancellor, or applies for a writ of error, such appeal or writ shall be no stay of proceeding in the chancery, or the court to which the writ issues, unless the appellant or plaintiff in error shall give sufficient security, to be approved respectively by the chancellor, or by a judge of the court from which the writ issues, that the appellant or plaintiff in error shall prosecute respectively his appeal or writ to effect, and pay the condemnation-money and all costs, or otherwise abide the decree in appeal or the judgment in error, if he fail to make his plea good. Sec. 13. No writ of error shall be brought upon any judgment heretofore confessed, entered, or rendered, but within five years from this time; nor upon any judgment hereafter to be confessed, entered, or rendered, but within five years after the confessing, entering, or rendering thereof, unless the person entitled to such writ be an infant, feme-covert, non compos mentis, or a prisoner, and then within five years exclusive of the time of such disability. Sec. 14. The equity jurisdiction heretofore exercised by the judges of the court of common pleas shall be separated from the common-law jurisdiction, and vested in a chancellor, who shall hold courts of chancery in the several counties of this State. In cases of equity jurisdiction, where the chancellor is interested, the cognizance thereof shall belong to the court of common pleas, with an appeal to the high court of errors and appeals. Sec. 15. The judges of the court of common pleas, or any two of them, shall compose the orphans’ court of each county, and may exercise the equity jurisdiction heretofore exercised by the orphans’ courts, except as to the adjusting and settling executors, administrators, and guardians’ accounts; in which cases they shall have an appellate jurisdiction from the sentence or decree of the register. This court may issue process throughout the State to compel the attendance of witnesses. Appeals may be made from the orphans’ court, in cases where that court has original jurisdiction, to the supreme court, whose decision shall be final. Sec. 16. An executor, administrator, or guardian shall file every account with the register for the county, who shall, as soon as conveniently may be, carefully examine the particulars, with the proofs thereof, in the presence of such executor, administrator, or guardian, and shall adjust and settle the same, according to the very right of the matter, and the law of the land; which account, so settled, shall remain in his office for inspection; and the executor, administrator, or guardian shall, within three months after such settlement, give due notice, in writing, to all persons entitled to shares of the estate, or to their guardians respectively if residing within the State, that the account is lodged in the said office for inspection; and the judges of the orphans’ court shall hear the exceptions of any persons concerned, if any be made, and thereupon allow no demand whatever against the estate of the deceased, unless, upon consideration of all circumstances, they shall be fully convinced that the same is therewith justly chargeable. Sec. 17. The registers of the several counties shall respectively hold the register’s court in each county. Upon the litigation of a cause, the depositions of the witnesses examined shall be taken at large in writing, and make part of the proceedings in the cause. This court may issue process throughout the State to compel the attendance of witnesses. Appeals may be made from a register’s court to the supreme court, whose decision shall be final. In cases where a register is interested in questions concerning the probate of wills, the granting letters of administration, or executors, administrators, or guardians’ accounts, the cognizance thereof shall belong to the orphans’ court, with an appeal to the supreme court, whose decision shall be final. Sec. 18. The prothonotaries of the court of common pleas may issue process as heretofore, take recognizances of bail, and sign confessions of judgment; and the clerks of the supreme court shall have the like powers. No judgment in the supreme court or court of common pleas held for one county shall bind lands or tenements in another, until a testatum fieri facias, being issued, shall be entered of record in the office of the prothonotary of the county wherein the lands or tenements are situated. Sec. 19. The judges of the court of common pleas shall, by virtue of their offices, compose the courts of general quarter-sessions of the peace and gaol-delivery within the several counties. Any two of the said judges shall be a quorum. Sec. 20. The governor shall appoint a competent number of persons to the office of justice of the peace, not exceeding twelve in each county, until two-thirds of both houses of the legislature shall by law direct an addition to the number, who shall be commissioned for seven years, if so long they shall behave themselves well; but may be removed by the governor within that time on conviction of misbehavior in office, or on the address of both houses of the legislature. Sec. 21. The style in all process and public acts shall be, “The State of Delaware.” Prosecutions shall be carried on in the name of the State, and shall conclude, “against the peace and dignity of the State.” Article VII Section 1. There shall be a court styled “The high court of errors and appeals,” which shall consist of the chancellor and of the judges of the supreme court and court of common pleas. Any four of the judges of this court may proceed on business, but any smaller number may open and adjourn the court. If any of them has rendered judgment or passed a decree in any cause before removal, he shall not sit judicially upon the hearing of the same in this court, but may assign the reasons upon which such judgment was rendered, or such decree passed. The chancellor shall preside, except when he cannot sit judicially; and in such cases, or in his absence, the chief-justice of the supreme court; but if he is so disqualified or absent, then the chief-justice of the court of common pleas shall preside; and if he is so disqualified or absent, then the next eldest judge, according to priority in date of commissions, if present, and not disqualified as aforesaid, shall preside. This court shall have power to issue writs of error to the supreme court, and to the court of common pleas, and to receive and determine appeals from interlocutory or final orders or decrees of the chancellor. Errors shall be assigned and causes of appeal exhibited in writing speedily, and citations duly served on adverse parties. Sec. 2. Upon the reversal of a judgment of the supreme court or of the court of common pleas, or a decree of the chancellor, this court shall respectively render such judgment or pass such decree as the supreme court, or the court of common pleas, or the chancellor ought to have rendered or passed, except where the reversal is in favor of the plaintiff or petitioner in the original suit, and the damages to be assessed, or the matters to be decreed, are uncertain; in any of which cases the cause shall be remanded, in order to a final decision. Sec. 3. The judges of this court may issue all process proper for bringing records fully before them, and for carrying their determinations into execution. Article VIII Section 1. The members of the senate and house of representatives, the chancellor, the judges of the supreme court and the court of common pleas, and the attorney-general, shall, by virtue of their offices, be conservators of the peace throughout the State; and the treasurer, secretary, clerks of the supreme court, prothonotaries, registers, recorders, sheriffs, and coroners shall, by virtue of their offices, be conservators thereof within the counties respectively in which they reside. Sec. 2. The representative, and when there shall be more than one the representatives, of the people of this State in Congress, shall be voted for at the same places where representatives in the State legislature are voted for, and in the same manner. Sec. 3. The State treasurer shall be appointed annually by the house of representatives, with the concurrence of the Senate. No person who hath served in the office of State treasurer shall be eligible to a seat in either house of the legislature until he shall have made a final settlement of his accounts as treasurer, and discharged the balance, if any, thereon due. Sec. 4. Two persons for the office of sheriff, and two for the office of coroner, shall be chosen by the citizens residing in each county, and having right to vote for representatives, at the time and places of election of representatives, one of whom for each office respectively shall be appointed by the governor. They shall hold their offices for three years, if so long they shall behave themselves well, and until successors be duly qualified; but no person shall be twice appointed sheriff, upon election by the citizens, in any term of six years. The governor shall fill vacancies in these offices by new appointments, to continue unto the next general election, and until successors shall be chosen and duly qualified. The legislature, two-thirds of each branch concurring, may, when it shall be judged expedient, vest the appointment of sheriffs and coroners in the governor; but no person shall be twice appointed sheriff in any term of six years. Sec. 5. The attorney-general, clerks of the supreme court, prothonotaries, registers, clerks of the orphans’ courts and of the peace, shall respectively be commissioned for five years, if so long they shall behave themselves well; but may be removed by the governor within that time, on conviction of misbehavior in office, or on the address of both houses of the legislature. Prothonotaries, clerks of the supreme court, of the orphans’ courts, registers, recorders, and sheriffs, shall keep their offices in the town or place in each county in which the supreme court and the court of common pleas are usually held. Sec. 6. Attorneys at law, all inferior officers in the treasury department, election officers, officers relating to taxes, to the poor, and to highways, constables and hundred officers, shall be appointed in such manner as is or may be directed by law. Sec. 7. All salaries and fees annexed to offices shall be moderate; and no officer shall receive any fees whatever, without giving to the person who pays a receipt for them, if required, therein specifying every, particular, and the charge for it. Sec. 8. No costs shall be paid by a person accused, on a bill being returned ignoramus; nor on acquittal by a jury, unless a majority of the judges present at the trial certify that there was probable cause for the prosecution. Sec. 9. The rights, privileges, immunities, and estates of religious societies and corporate bodies shall remain as if the constitution of this State had not been altered. No clergyman or preacher of the gospel, of any denomination, shall be capable of holding any civil office in this State, or of being a member of either branch of the legislature, while he continues in the exercise of the pastoral or clerical functions. Sec. 10. All the laws of this State, existing at the time of making this constitution, and not inconsistent with it, shall remain in force, unless they shall be altered by future laws; and all actions and prosecutions now pending shall proceed as if this constitution had not been made. Sec. 11. This constitution shall be prefixed to every edition of the laws made by direction of the legislature. Sec. 12. The legislature shall, as soon as conveniently may be, provide by law for ascertaining what statutes and parts of statutes shall continue to be in force within this State; for reducing them, and all acts of the general assembly, into such order, and publishing them in such manner, that thereby the knowledge of them may be generally diffused; for choosing inspectors and judges of elections, and regulating the same, in such manner as shall most effectually guard the rights of the citizens entitled to vote; for better securing personal liberty, and easily and speedily redressing all wrongful restraints thereof; for more certainly obtaining returns of impartial juries; for dividing lands and tenements in sales by sheriffs, where they will bear a division, into as many parcels as may be, without spoiling the whole, and for advertising and making the sales, in such manner and at such times and places as may render them most beneficial to all persons concerned; and for establishing schools, and promoting arts and sciences. Article IX Members of the general assembly, and all officers, executive and judicial, shall be bound, by oath or affirmation, to support the constitution of this State, and to perform the duties of their respective offices with fidelity. Article X The general assembly, whenever two-thirds of each house shall deem it necessary, may, with the approbation of the governor, propose amendments to this constitution, and at least three, and not more than six months, before the next general election of representatives, duly publish them in print, for the consideration of the people; and, if three-fourths of each branch of the legislature shall, after such an election, and before another, ratify the said amendments, they shall be valid to all intents and purposes, as parts of this constitution. No convention shall be called but by the authority of the people; and an unexceptionable mode of making their sense known, will be for them, at a general election of representatives, to vote also, by ballot, for or against a convention, as they shall severally choose to do; and if, thereupon, it shall appear that a majority of all the citizens in the State, having right to vote for representatives, have voted for a convention, the general assembly shall, accordingly, at their next sessions, call a convention, to consist of at least as many members as there are in both houses of the legislature, to be chosen in the same manner, at the same places, and at the same time that representatives are by the citizens entitled to vote for representatives, on due notice given for one month, and to meet within three months after they shall be elected. Schedule That no inconveniences may arise from the alterations of the constitution of this State, and in order to carry the same into complete operation, it is hereby declared and ordained— I. That the president, or, in case of his death, inability, or absence from the State, the speaker of the legislative council, at that time, and in case of his death, inability, or absence from the State, the speaker of the house of assembly, at that time, shall respectively, with the privy council, exercise the executive authority of this State, until the third Tuesday in January next. If the death, inability, or absence of the president shall happen after the first Tuesday of next October, and before the first Tuesday in next January, then the executive authority shall devolve upon the person who was speaker of the council at the next preceding session of the general assembly; and in case of his death, inability, or absence, upon the person who was speaker of the house of assembly at the said next preceding session. II. That all persons holding offices to which, under this constitution, appointments are to be made by the governor, shall continue in the exercise of the duties of their respective offices, until the first Tuesday of October, 1793, unless their commissions shall sooner expire by their own limitations, or the said offices shall become vacant by death or resignation, and no longer, unless reappointed and commissioned by the governor. III. That justice shall be administered in the several counties of this State, until the period last mentioned, by the same justices, in the same courts, and in the same manner as heretofore. IV. That the sheriffs elected at October next shall hold their respective commissions two years, and no longer, from that time, or until new sheriffs are elected and appointed; and such persons shall not be again eligible until the expiration of three years after their commissions cease. V. That the elections of governor, senators, and representatives shall be conducted by the same persons and in the same manner as is prescribed by the election laws of this State concerning the election of members of the council and of the house of assembly; and the returns thereof shall be made respectively to the person exercising the executive authority, to the senate, and to the house of representatives. VI. The first meeting of the legislature under this constitution shall be at the town of Dover. Done in convention the twelfth day of June, in the year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and ninety-two, and of the Independence of the United States of America the sixteenth. In testimony whereof we have hereunto subscribed our names. Thomas Montgomery, President. Attest: James Booth, Secretary. AMENDMENT TO THE CONSTITUTION OF 1792. The chancellor shall compose the orphans’ court of each county, and exercise the equity jurisdiction heretofore exercised by the orphans’ court, except as to the adjusting and settling executors, administrators, and guardians’ accounts, in which case he shall have an appellate jurisdiction from the sentence and decree of the register. This court may issue process throughout the State to compel the attendance of witnesses. Appeals may be made from the orphans’ court, in cases where that court has original jurisdiction, to the supreme court, whose decision shall be final. Source: https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Constitution_of_Delaware_(1792)

A Proclamation Whereas it appears that a state of war exists between Austria, Prussia, Sardinia, Great Britain, and the United Netherlands, of the one part, and France on the other; and the duty and interest of the United States require, that they should with sincerity and good faith adopt and pursue a conduct friendly and impartial toward the belligerant Powers; I have therefore thought fit by these presents to declare the disposition of the United States to observe the conduct aforesaid towards those Powers respectfully; and to exhort and warn the citizens of the United States carefully to avoid all acts and proceedings whatsoever, which may in any manner tend to contravene such disposition. And I do hereby also make known, that whatsoever of the citizens of the United States shall render himself liable to punishment or forfeiture under the law of nations, by committing, aiding, or abetting hostilities against any of the said Powers, or by carrying to any of them those articles which are deemed contraband by the modern usage of nations, will not receive the protection of the United States, against such punishment or forfeiture; and further, that I have given instructions to those officers, to whom it belongs, to cause prosecutions to be instituted against all persons, who shall, within the cognizance of the courts of the United States, violate the law of nations, with respect to the Powers at war, or any of them. In testimony whereof, I have caused the seal of the United States of America to be affixed to these presents, and signed the same with my hand. Done at the city of Philadelphia, the twenty-second day of April, one thousand seven hundred and ninety-three, and of the Independence of the United States of America the seventeenth. George Washington April 22, 1793 Source: https://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/neutra93.asp

The quest for peace and justice It is impossible to begin this lecture without again expressing my deep appreciation to the Nobel Committee of the Norwegian Parliament for bestowing upon me and the civil rights movement in the United States such a great honor. Occasionally in life there are those moments of unutterable fulfillment which cannot be completely explained by those symbols called words. Their meaning can only be articulated by the inaudible language of the heart. Such is the moment I am presently experiencing. I experience this high and joyous moment not for myself alone but for those devotees of nonviolence who have moved so courageously against the ramparts of racial injustice and who in the process have acquired a new estimate of their own human worth. Many of them are young and cultured. Others are middle aged and middle class. The majority are poor and untutored. But they are all united in the quiet conviction that it is better to suffer in dignity than to accept segregation in humiliation. These are the real heroes of the freedom struggle: they are the noble people for whom I accept the Nobel Peace Prize. This evening I would like to use this lofty and historic platform to discuss what appears to me to be the most pressing problem confronting mankind today. Modern man has brought this whole world to an awe-inspiring threshold of the future. He has reached new and astonishing peaks of scientific success. He has produced machines that think and instruments that peer into the unfathomable ranges of interstellar space. He has built gigantic bridges to span the seas and gargantuan buildings to kiss the skies. His airplanes and spaceships have dwarfed distance, placed time in chains, and carved highways through the stratosphere. This is a dazzling picture of modern man’s scientific and technological progress. Yet, in spite of these spectacular strides in science and technology, and still unlimited ones to come, something basic is missing. There is a sort of poverty of the spirit which stands in glaring contrast to our scientific and technological abundance. The richer we have become materially, the poorer we have become morally and spiritually. We have learned to fly the air like birds and swim the sea like fish, but we have not learned the simple art of living together as brothers. Every man lives in two realms, the internal and the external. The internal is that realm of spiritual ends expressed in art, literature, morals, and religion. The external is that complex of devices, techniques, mechanisms, and instrumentalities by means of which we live. Our problem today is that we have allowed the internal to become lost in the external. We have allowed the means by which we live to outdistance the ends for which we live. So much of modern life can be summarized in that arresting dictum of the poet Thoreau: “Improved means to an unimproved end”. This is the serious predicament, the deep and haunting problem confronting modern man. If we are to survive today, our moral and spiritual “lag” must be eliminated. Enlarged material powers spell enlarged peril if there is not proportionate growth of the soul. When the “without” of man’s nature subjugates the “within”, dark storm clouds begin to form in the world. This problem of spiritual and moral lag, which constitutes modern man’s chief dilemma, expresses itself in three larger problems which grow out of man’s ethical infantilism. Each of these problems, while appearing to be separate and isolated, is inextricably bound to the other. I refer to racial injustice, poverty, and war. The first problem that I would like to mention is racial injustice. The struggle to eliminate the evil of racial injustice constitutes one of the major struggles of our time. The present upsurge of the Negro people of the United States grows out of a deep and passionate determination to make freedom and equality a reality “here” and “now”. In one sense the civil rights movement in the United States is a special American phenomenon which must be understood in the light of American history and dealt with in terms of the American situation. But on another and more important level, what is happening in the United States today is a relatively small part of a world development. We live in a day, says the philosopher Alfred North Whitehead, ”when civilization is shifting its basic outlook: a major turning point in history where the presuppositions on which society is structured are being analyzed, sharply challenged, and profoundly changed.” What we are seeing now is a freedom explosion, the realization of “an idea whose time has come”, to use Victor Hugo’s phrase. The deep rumbling of discontent that we hear today is the thunder of disinherited masses, rising from dungeons of oppression to the bright hills of freedom, in one majestic chorus the rising masses singing, in the words of our freedom song, “Ain’t gonna let nobody turn us around.” All over the world, like a fever, the freedom movement is spreading in the widest liberation in history. The great masses of people are determined to end the exploitation of their races and land. They are awake and moving toward their goal like a tidal wave. You can hear them rumbling in every village street, on the docks, in the houses, among the students, in the churches, and at political meetings. Historic movement was for several centuries that of the nations and societies of Western Europe out into the rest of the world in “conquest” of various sorts. That period, the era of colonialism, is at an end. East is meeting West. The earth is being redistributed. Yes, we are “shifting our basic outlooks”. These developments should not surprise any student of history. Oppressed people cannot remain oppressed forever. The yearning for freedom eventually manifests itself. The Bible tells the thrilling story of how Moses stood in Pharaoh’s court centuries ago and cried, “Let my people go.” This is a kind of opening chapter in a continuing story. The present struggle in the United States is a later chapter in the same unfolding story. Something within has reminded the Negro of his birthright of freedom, and something without has reminded him that it can be gained. Consciously or unconsciously, he has been caught up by the Zeitgeist , and with his black brothers of Africa and his brown and yellow brothers in Asia, South America, and the Caribbean, the United States Negro is moving with a sense of great urgency toward the promised land of racial justice. Fortunately, some significant strides have been made in the struggle to end the long night of racial injustice. We have seen the magnificent drama of independence unfold in Asia and Africa. Just thirty years ago there were only three independent nations in the whole of Africa. But today thirty-five African nations have risen from colonial bondage. In the United States we have witnessed the gradual demise of the system of racial segregation. The Supreme Court’s decision of 1954 outlawing segregation in the public schools gave a legal and constitutional deathblow to the whole doctrine of separate but equal. The Court decreed that separate facilities are inherently unequal and that to segregate a child on the basis of race is to deny that child equal protection of the law. This decision came as a beacon light of hope to millions of disinherited people. Then came that glowing day a few months ago when a strong Civil Rights Bill became the law of our land. This bill, which was first recommended and promoted by President Kennedy, was passed because of the overwhelming support and perseverance of millions of Americans, Negro and white. It came as a bright interlude in the long and sometimes turbulent struggle for civil rights: the beginning of a second emancipation proclamation providing a comprehensive legal basis for equality of opportunity. Since the passage of this bill we have seen some encouraging and surprising signs of compliance. I am happy to report that, by and large, communities all over the southern part of the United States are obeying the Civil Rights Law and showing remarkable good sense in the process. Another indication that progress is being made was found in the recent presidential election in the United States. The American people revealed great maturity by overwhelmingly rejecting a presidential candidate who had become identified with extremism, racism, and retrogression. The voters of our nation rendered a telling blow to the radical right. They defeated those elements in our society which seek to pit white against Negro and lead the nation down a dangerous Fascist path. Let me not leave you with a false impression. The problem is far from solved. We still have a long, long way to go before the dream of freedom is a reality for the Negro in the United States. To put it figuratively in biblical language, we have left the dusty soils of Egypt and crossed a Red Sea whose waters had for years been hardened by a long and piercing winter of massive resistance. But before we reach the majestic shores of the Promised Land, there is a frustrating and bewildering wilderness ahead. We must still face prodigious hilltops of opposition and gigantic mountains of resistance. But with patient and firm determination we will press on until every valley of despair is exalted to new peaks of hope, until every mountain of pride and irrationality is made low by the leveling process of humility and compassion; until the rough places of injustice are transformed into a smooth plane of equality of opportunity; and until the crooked places of prejudice are transformed by the straightening process of bright-eyed wisdom. What the main sections of the civil rights movement in the United States are saying is that the demand for dignity, equality, jobs, and citizenship will not be abandoned or diluted or postponed. If that means resistance and conflict we shall not flinch. We shall not be cowed. We are no longer afraid. The word that symbolizes the spirit and the outward form of our encounter is nonviolence , and it is doubtless that factor which made it seem appropriate to award a peace prize to one identified with struggle. Broadly speaking, nonviolence in the civil rights struggle has meant not relying on arms and weapons of struggle. It has meant noncooperation with customs and laws which are institutional aspects of a regime of discrimination and enslavement. It has meant direct participation of masses in protest, rather than reliance on indirect methods which frequently do not involve masses in action at all. Nonviolence has also meant that my people in the agonizing struggles of recent years have taken suffering upon themselves instead of inflicting it on others. It has meant, as I said, that we are no longer afraid and cowed. But in some substantial degree it has meant that we do not want to instill fear in others or into the society of which we are a part. The movement does not seek to liberate Negroes at the expense of the humiliation and enslavement of whites. It seeks no victory over anyone. It seeks to liberate American society and to share in the self-liberation of all the people. Violence as a way of achieving racial justice is both impractical and immoral. I am not unmindful of the fact that violence often brings about momentary results. Nations have frequently won their independence in battle. But in spite of temporary victories, violence never brings permanent peace. It solves no social problem: it merely creates new and more complicated ones. Violence is impractical because it is a descending spiral ending in destruction for all. It is immoral because it seeks to humiliate the opponent rather than win his understanding: it seeks to annihilate rather than convert. Violence is immoral because it thrives on hatred rather than love. It destroys community and makes brotherhood impossible. It leaves society in monologue rather than dialogue. Violence ends up defeating itself. It creates bitterness in the survivors and brutality in the destroyers. In a real sense nonviolence seeks to redeem the spiritual and moral lag that I spoke of earlier as the chief dilemma of modern man. It seeks to secure moral ends through moral means. Nonviolence is a powerful and just weapon. Indeed, it is a weapon unique in history, which cuts without wounding and ennobles the man who wields it. I believe in this method because I think it is the only way to reestablish a broken community. It is the method which seeks to implement the just law by appealing to the conscience of the great decent majority who through blindness, fear, pride, and irrationality have allowed their consciences to sleep. The nonviolent resisters can summarize their message in the following simple terms: we will take direct action against injustice despite the failure of governmental and other official agencies to act first. We will not obey unjust laws or submit to unjust practices. We will do this peacefully, openly, cheerfully because our aim is to persuade. We adopt the means of nonviolence because our end is a community at peace with itself. We will try to persuade with our words, but if our words fail, we will try to persuade with our acts. We will always be willing to talk and seek fair compromise, but we are ready to suffer when necessary and even risk our lives to become witnesses to truth as we see it. This approach to the problem of racial injustice is not at all without successful precedent. It was used in a magnificent way by Mohandas K. Gandhi to challenge the might of the British Empire and free his people from the political domination and economic exploitation inflicted upon them for centuries. He struggled only with the weapons of truth, soul force, non-injury, and courage. In the past ten years unarmed gallant men and women of the United States have given living testimony to the moral power and efficacy of nonviolence. By the thousands, faceless, anonymous, relentless young people, black and white, have temporarily left the ivory towers of learning for the barricades of bias. Their courageous and disciplined activities have come as a refreshing oasis in a desert sweltering with the heat of injustice. They have taken our whole nation back to those great wells of democracy which were dug deep by the founding fathers in the formulation of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence. One day all of America will be proud of their achievements. I am only too well aware of the human weaknesses and failures which exist, the doubts about the efficacy of nonviolence, and the open advocacy of violence by some. But I am still convinced that nonviolence is both the most practically sound and morally excellent way to grapple with the age-old problem of racial injustice. A second evil which plagues the modern world is that of poverty. Like a monstrous octopus, it projects its nagging, prehensile tentacles in lands and villages all over the world. Almost two-thirds of the peoples of the world go to bed hungry at night. They are undernourished, ill-housed, and shabbily clad. Many of them have no houses or beds to sleep in. Their only beds are the sidewalks of the cities and the dusty roads of the villages. Most of these poverty-stricken children of God have never seen a physician or a dentist. This problem of poverty is not only seen in the class division between the highly developed industrial nations and the so-called underdeveloped nations; it is seen in the great economic gaps within the rich nations themselves. Take my own country for example. We have developed the greatest system of production that history has ever known. We have become the richest nation in the world. Our national gross product this year will reach the astounding figure of almost 650 billion dollars. Yet, at least one-fifth of our fellow citizens – some ten million families, comprising about forty million individuals – are bound to a miserable culture of poverty. In a sense the poverty of the poor in America is more frustrating than the poverty of Africa and Asia. The misery of the poor in Africa and Asia is shared misery, a fact of life for the vast majority; they are all poor together as a result of years of exploitation and underdevelopment. In sad contrast, the poor in America know that they live in the richest nation in the world, and that even though they are perishing on a lonely island of poverty they are surrounded by a vast ocean of material prosperity. Glistening towers of glass and steel easily seen from their slum dwellings spring up almost overnight. Jet liners speed over their ghettoes at 600 miles an hour; satellites streak through outer space and reveal details of the moon. President Johnson, in his State of the Union Message, emphasized this contradiction when he heralded the United States’ “highest standard of living in the world”, and deplored that it was accompanied by “dislocation; loss of jobs, and the specter of poverty in the midst of plenty”. So it is obvious that if man is to redeem his spiritual and moral “lag”, he must go all out to bridge the social and economic gulf between the “haves” and the “have nots” of the world. Poverty is one of the most urgent items on the agenda of modern life. There is nothing new about poverty. What is new, however, is that we have the resources to get rid of it. More than a century and a half ago people began to be disturbed about the twin problems of population and production. A thoughtful Englishman named Malthus wrote a book that set forth some rather frightening conclusions. He predicted that the human family was gradually moving toward global starvation because the world was producing people faster than it was producing food and material to support them. Later scientists, however, disproved the conclusion of Malthus, and revealed that he had vastly underestimated the resources of the world and the resourcefulness of man. Not too many years ago, Dr. Kirtley Mather, a Harvard geologist, wrote a book entitled Enough and to Spare . He set forth the basic theme that famine is wholly unnecessary in the modern world. 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? Even deserts can be irrigated and top soil can be replaced. We cannot complain of a lack of land, for there are twenty-five million square miles of tillable land, of which we are using less than seven million. We have amazing knowledge of vitamins, nutrition, the chemistry of food, and the versatility of atoms. There is no deficit in human resources; the deficit is in human will. The well-off and the secure have too often become indifferent and oblivious to the poverty and deprivation in their midst. The poor in our countries have been shut out of our minds, and driven from the mainstream of our societies, because we have allowed them to become invisible. Just as nonviolence exposed the ugliness of racial injustice, so must the infection and sickness of poverty be exposed and healed – not only its symptoms but its basic causes. This, too, will be a fierce struggle, but we must not be afraid to pursue the remedy no matter how formidable the task. The time has come for an all-out world war against poverty. The rich nations must use their vast resources of wealth to develop the underdeveloped, school the unschooled, and feed the unfed. Ultimately a great nation is a compassionate nation. No individual or nation can be great if it does not have a concern for “the least of these”. Deeply etched in the fiber of our religious tradition is the conviction that men are made in the image of God and that they are souls of infinite metaphysical value, the heirs of a legacy of dignity and worth. If we feel this as a profound moral fact, we cannot be content to see men hungry, to see men victimized with starvation and ill health when we have the means to help them. The wealthy nations must go all out to bridge the gulf between the rich minority and the poor majority. In the final analysis, the rich must not ignore the poor because both rich and poor are tied in a single garment of destiny. All life is interrelated, and all men are interdependent. The agony of the poor diminishes the rich, and the salvation of the poor enlarges the rich. We are inevitably our brothers’ keeper because of the interrelated structure of reality. John Donne interpreted this truth in graphic terms when he affirmed: No man is an Iland, intire of its selfe: everyman is a peece of the Continent, a part of themaine: if a Clod bee washed away by the Sea,Europe is the lesse, as well as if a Promontoriewere, as well as if a Mannor of thy friendsor of thine owne were: any mans deathdiminishes me, because I am involved inMankinde: and therefore never send to knowfor whom the bell tolls: it tolls for thee. A third great evil confronting our world is that of war. Recent events have vividly reminded us that nations are not reducing but rather increasing their arsenals of weapons of mass destruction. The best brains in the highly developed nations of the world are devoted to military technology. The proliferation of nuclear weapons has not been halted, in spite of the Limited Test Ban Treaty. On the contrary, the detonation of an atomic device by the first nonwhite, non- Western, and so-called underdeveloped power, namely the Chinese People’s Republic, opens new vistas of exposure of vast multitudes, the whole of humanity, to insidious terrorization by the ever-present threat of annihilation. The fact that most of the time human beings put the truth about the nature and risks of the nuclear war out of their minds because it is too painful and therefore not “acceptable”, does not alter the nature and risks of such war. The device of “rejection” may temporarily cover up anxiety, but it does not bestow peace of mind and emotional security. So man’s proneness to engage in war is still a fact. But wisdom born of experience should tell us that war is obsolete. There may have been a time when war served as a negative good by preventing the spread and growth of an evil force, but the destructive power of modern weapons eliminated even the possibility that war may serve as a negative good. If we assume that life is worth living and that man has a right to survive, then we must find an alternative to war. In a day when vehicles hurtle through outer space and guided ballistic missiles carve highways of death through the stratosphere, no nation can claim victory in war. A so-called limited war will leave little more than a calamitous legacy of human suffering, political turmoil, and spiritual disillusionment. A world war – God forbid! – will leave only smoldering ashes as a mute testimony of a human race whose folly led inexorably to ultimate death. So if modern man continues to flirt unhesitatingly with war, he will transform his earthly habitat into an inferno such as even the mind of Dante could not imagine. Therefore, I venture to suggest to all of you and all who hear and may eventually read these words, that the philosophy and strategy of nonviolence become immediately a subject for study and for serious experimentation in every field of human conflict, by no means excluding the relations between nations. It is, after all, nation-states which make war, which have produced the weapons which threaten the survival of mankind, and which are both genocidal and suicidal in character. Here also we have ancient habits to deal with, vast structures of power, indescribably complicated problems to solve. But unless we abdicate our humanity altogether and succumb to fear and impotence in the presence of the weapons we have ourselves created, it is as imperative and urgent to put an end to war and violence between nations as it is to put an end to racial injustice. Equality with whites will hardly solve the problems of either whites or Negroes if it means equality in a society under the spell of terror and a world doomed to extinction. I do not wish to minimize the complexity of the problems that need to be faced in achieving disarmament and peace. But I think it is a fact that we shall not have the will, the courage, and the insight to deal with such matters unless in this field we are prepared to undergo a mental and spiritual reevaluation – a change of focus which will enable us to see that the things which seem most real and powerful are indeed now unreal and have come under the sentence of death. We need to make a supreme effort to generate the readiness, indeed the eagerness, to enter into the new world which is now possible, “the city which hath foundations, whose builder and maker is God”. We will not build a peaceful world by following a negative path. It is not enough to say “We must not wage war.” It is necessary to love peace and sacrifice for it. We must concentrate not merely on the negative expulsion of war, but on the positive affirmation of peace. There is a fascinating little story that is preserved for us in Greek literature about Ulysses and the Sirens. The Sirens had the ability to sing so sweetly that sailors could not resist steering toward their island. Many ships were lured upon the rocks, and men forgot home, duty, and honor as they flung themselves into the sea to be embraced by arms that drew them down to death. Ulysses, determined not to be lured by the Sirens, first decided to tie himself tightly to the mast of his boat, and his crew stuffed their ears with wax. But finally he and his crew learned a better way to save themselves: they took on board the beautiful singer Orpheus whose melodies were sweeter than the music of the Sirens. When Orpheus sang, who bothered to listen to the Sirens? So we must fix our vision not merely on the negative expulsion of war, but upon the positive affirmation of peace. We must see that peace represents a sweeter music, a cosmic melody that is far superior to the discords of war. Somehow we must transform the dynamics of the world power struggle from the negative nuclear arms race which no one can win to a positive contest to harness man’s creative genius for the purpose of making peace and prosperity a reality for all of the nations of the world. In short, we must shift the arms race into a “peace race”. If we have the will and determination to mount such a peace offensive, we will unlock hitherto tightly sealed doors of hope and transform our imminent cosmic elegy into a psalm of creative fulfillment. All that I have said boils down to the point of affirming that mankind’s survival is dependent upon man’s ability to solve the problems of racial injustice, poverty, and war; the solution of these problems is in turn dependent upon man squaring his moral progress with his scientific progress, and learning the practical art of living in harmony. Some years ago a famous novelist died. Among his papers was found a list of suggested story plots for future stories, the most prominently underscored being this one: “A widely separated family inherits a house in which they have to live together.” This is the great new problem of mankind. We have inherited a big house, a great “world house” in which we have to live together – black and white, Easterners and Westerners, Gentiles and Jews, Catholics and Protestants, Moslem and Hindu, a family unduly separated in ideas, culture, and interests who, because we can never again live without each other, must learn, somehow, in this one big world, to live with each other. This means that more and more our loyalties must become ecumenical rather than sectional. We must now give an overriding loyalty to mankind as a whole in order to preserve the best in our individual societies. This call for a worldwide fellowship that lifts neighborly concern beyond one’s tribe, race, class, and nation is in reality a call for an all-embracing and unconditional love for all men. This oft misunderstood and misinterpreted concept so readily dismissed by the Nietzsches of the world as a weak and cowardly force, has now become an absolute necessity for the survival of man. When I speak of love I am not speaking of some sentimental and weak response which is little more than emotional bosh. I am speaking of that force which all of the great religions have seen as the supreme unifying principle of life. Love is somehow the key that unlocks the door which leads to ultimate reality. This Hindu-Moslem-Christian-Jewish-Buddhist belief about ultimate reality is beautifully summed up in the First Epistle of Saint John: Let us love one another: for love is of God; and everyonethat loveth is born of God, and knoweth God.He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love.If we love one another, God dwelleth in us, and Hislove is perfected in us. Let us hope that this spirit will become the order of the day. As Arnold Toynbee says: “Love is the ultimate force that makes for the saving choice of life and good against the damning choice of death and evil. Therefore the first hope in our inventory must be the hope that love is going to have the last word.” We can no longer afford to worship the God of hate or bow before the altar of retaliation. The oceans of history are made turbulent by the ever-rising tides of hate. History is cluttered with the wreckage of nations and individuals that pursued this self-defeating path of hate. Love is the key to the solution of the problems of the world. Let me close by saying that I have the personal faith that mankind will somehow rise up to the occasion and give new directions to an age drifting rapidly to its doom. In spite of the tensions and uncertainties of this period something profoundly meaningful is taking place. Old systems of exploitation and oppression are passing away, and out of the womb of a frail world new systems of justice and equality are being born. Doors of opportunity are gradually being opened to those at the bottom of society. The shirtless and barefoot people of the land are developing a new sense of “some-bodiness” and carving a tunnel of hope through the dark mountain of despair. “The people who sat in darkness have seen a great light.” Here and there an individual or group dares to love, and rises to the majestic heights of moral maturity. So in a real sense this is a great time to be alive. Therefore, I am not yet discouraged about the future. Granted that the easygoing optimism of yesterday is impossible. Granted that those who pioneer in the struggle for peace and freedom will still face uncomfortable jail terms, painful threats of death; they will still be battered by the storms of persecution, leading them to the nagging feeling that they can no longer bear such a heavy burden, and the temptation of wanting to retreat to a more quiet and serene life. Granted that we face a world crisis which leaves us standing so often amid the surging murmur of life’s restless sea. But every crisis has both its dangers and its opportunities. It can spell either salvation or doom. In a dark confused world the kingdom of God may yet reign in the hearts of men. Free at last, free at last, thank God almighty we are free at last! Source: https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/peace/1964/king/lecture/

Before I begin my talk with you, I want to ask you for a few minutes patience while I say something that is on my heart: I want to thank those home folks of my county who first gave an anxious country boy his opportunity to serve in State politics. I shall always owe a lot to those who gave me that first opportunity to serve. . . . . This is the day of myInauguration as Governor of the State of Alabama. And on this day I feel a deep obligation to renew my pledges, my covenants with you . . . the people of this great state. General Robert E. Lee said that "duty" is the sublimest word on the English language and I have come, increasingly, to realize what he meant. I SHALL do my duty to you, God helping . . . to every man, to every woman . . . yes, to every child in this state. I shall fulfill my duty toward honesty and economy in our State government so that no man shall have a part of his livelihood cheated and no child shall have a bit of his future stolen away. . . . that the farmer in the field, the worker in the factory, the businessman in his office, the housewife in her home, have decided that the money can be better spent to help our children's education and our older citizens . . . and they have put a man in office to see that it is done. It shall be done. Let me say one more time . . . . no more liquor drinking in your governor's mansion. I shall fulfill my duty in working hard to bring industry into our state, not only by maintaining an honest, sober and free enterprise climate of government in which industry can have confidence . . but in going out and getting it . . . so that our people can have industrial jobs in Alabama and provide a better life for their children. I shall not forget my duty to our senior citizens . . . so that their lives can be lived in dignity and enrichment of the golden years, nor to our sick, both mental and physical . . . and they will know we have not forsaken them. I want the farmer to feel confident that in this State government he has a partner who will work with him in raising his income and increasing his markets. And I want the laboring man to know he has a friend who is sincerely striving to better his field of endeavor. I want to assure every child that this State government is not afraid to invest in their future through education, so that they will not be handicapped on every threshold of their lives. Today I have stood, where once Jefferson Davis stood, and took an oath to my people. It is very appropriate then that from this Cradle of the Confederacy, this very Heart of the Great Anglo-Saxon Southland, that today we sound the drum for freedom as have our generations of forebears before us done, time and time again through history. Let us rise to the call of freedom- loving blood that is in us and send our answer to the tyranny that clanks its chains upon the South. In the name of the greatest people that have ever trod this earth, I draw the line in the dust and toss the gauntlet before the feet of tyranny . . . and I say . . . segregation now . . . segregation tomorrow . . . segregation forever. The Washington, D.C. school riot report is disgusting and revealing. We will not sacrifice our children to any such type school system–and you can write that down. The federal troops in Mississippi could be better used guarding the safety of the citizens of Washington, D.C., where it is even unsafe to walk or go to a ballgame–and that is the nation’s capitol. I was safer in a B-29 bomber over Japan during the war in an air raid, than the people of Washington are walking in the White House neighborhood. A closer example is Atlanta, Georgia. The city officials fawn for political reasons over school integration and THEN build barricades to stop residential integration–what hypocrisy! Let us send this message back to Washington by our representatives who are with us today– that from this day we are standing up, and the heel of tyranny does not fit the neck of an upright man . . . that we intend to take the offensive and carry our fight for freedom across the nation, wielding the balance of power we know we possess in the Southland . . . . that WE, not the insipid bloc of voters of some sections . . will determine in the next election who shall sit in the White House of these United States . . . That from this day, from this hour . . . from this minute . . . we give the word of a race of honor that we will tolerate their boot in our face no longer . . . . and let those certain judges put that in their opium pipes of power and smoke it for what it is worth. Hear me, Southerners! You sons and daughters who have moved north and west throughout this nation . . . . we call on you from your native soil to join with us in national support and vote . . and we know . . . wherever you are . . away from the hearths of the Southland . . . that you will respond, for though you may live in the fartherest reaches of this vast country . . . . your heart has never left Dixieland. And you native sons and daughters of old New England’s rock-ribbed patriotism . . . and you sturdy natives of the great Mid-West . . and you descendants of the far West flaming spirit of pioneer freedom . . we invite you to come and be with us . . for you are of the Southern spirit . . and the Southern philosophy . . . you are Southerners too and brothers with us in our fight. What I have said about segregation goes double this day . . . and what I have said to or about some federal judges goes TRIPLE this day… And while the manufacturing industries of free enterprise have been coming to our state in increasing numbers, attracted by our bountiful natural resources, our growing numbers of skilled workers and our favorable conditions, their present rate of settlement here can be increased from the trickle they now represent to a stream of enterprise and endeavor, capital and expansion that can join us in our work of development and enrichment of the educational futures of our children, the opportunities of our citizens and the fulfillment of our talents as God has given them to us. To realize our ambitions and to bring to fruition our dreams, we as Alabamians must take cognizance of the world about us. We must re-define our heritage, re-school our thoughts in the lessons our forefathers knew so well, first hand, in order to function and to grow and to prosper. We can no longer hide our head in the sand and tell ourselves that the ideology of our free fathers is not being attacked and is not being threatened by another idea . . . for it is. We are faced with an idea that if a centralized government assume enough authority, enough power over its people, that it can provide a utopian life . . that if given the power to dictate, to forbid, to require, to demand, to distribute, to edict and to judge what is best and enforce that will produce only “good” . . and it shall be our father . . . . and our God. . . . We find we have replaced faith with fear . . . and though we may give lip service to the Almighty . . in reality, government has become our god. It is, therefore, a basically ungodly government and its appeal to the psuedo-intellectual and the politician is to change their status from servant of the people to master of the people . . . to play at being God . . . without faith in God . . . and without the wisdom of God. It is a system that is the very opposite of Christ for it feeds and encourages everything degenerate and base in our people as it assumes the responsibilities that we ourselves should assume. Its psuedo-liberal spokesmen and some Harvard advocates have never examined the logic of its substitution of what it calls “human rights” for individual rights, for its propaganda play on words has appeal for the unthinking. Its logic is totally material and irresponsible as it runs the full gamut of human desires . . . including the theory that everyone has voting rights without the spiritual responsibility of preserving freedom. Our founding fathers recognized those rights . . . but only within the framework of those spiritual responsibilities. But the strong, simple faith and sane reasoning of our founding fathers has long since been forgotten as the so-called “progressives” tell us that our Constitution was written for “horse and buggy” days . . . so were the Ten Commandments. Not so long ago men stood in marvel and awe at the cities, the buildings, the schools, the autobahns that the government of Hitler’s Germany had built . . . just as centuries before they stood in wonder of Rome’s building . . . but it could not stand . . . for the system that built it had rotted the souls of the builders . . . and in turn . . . rotted the foundation of what God meant that men should be. Today that same system on an international scale is sweeping the world. It is the “changing world” of which we are told . . . it is called “new” and “liberal”. It is as old as the oldest dictator. It is degenerate and decadent. As the national racism of Hitler’s Germany persecuted a national minority to the whim of a national majority . . . so the international racism of the liberals seek to persecute the international white minority to the whim of the international colored majority . . . so that we are footballed about according to the favor of the Afro-Asian bloc. But the Belgian survivors of the Congo cannot present their case to a war crimes commission . . . nor the Portuguese of Angola . . . nor the survivors of Castro . . . nor the citizens of Oxford, Mississippi. It is this theory of international power politic that led a group of men on the Supreme Court for the first time in American history to issue an edict, based not on legal precedent, but upon a volume, the editor of which said our Constitution is outdated and must be changed and the writers of which, some had admittedly belonged to as many as half a hundred communist-front organizations. It is this theory that led this same group of men to briefly bare the ungodly core of that philosophy in forbidding little school children to say a prayer. And we find the evidence of that ungodliness even in the removal of the words “in God we trust” from some of our dollars, which was placed there as like evidence by our founding fathers as the faith upon which this system of government was built. It is the spirit of power thirst that caused a President in Washington to take up Caesar’s pen and with one stroke of it make a law. A Law which the law making body of Congress refused to pass . . . a law that tells us that we can or cannot buy or sell our very homes, except by his conditions . . . and except at HIS descretion. It is the spirit of power thirst that led the same President to launch a full offensive of twenty-five thousand troops against a university . . . of all places . . . in his own country . . . and against his own people, when this nation maintains only six thousand troops in the beleagured city of Berlin. We have witnessed such acts of “might makes right” over the world as men yielded to the temptation to play God . . . but we have never before witnessed it in America. We reject such acts as free men. We do not defy, for there is nothing to defy . . . since as free men we do not recognize any government right to give freedom . . . or deny freedom. No government erected by man has that right. As Thomas Jefferson said, “The God who gave us life, gave us liberty at the same time; no King holds the right of liberty in his hands.” Nor does any ruler in American government…. We intend, quite simply, to practice the free heritage as bequeathed to us as sons of free fathers. We intend to re-vitalize the truly new and progressive form of government that is less that two hundred years old . . . a government first founded in this nation simply and purely on faith . . . that there is a personal God who rewards good and punishes evil . . . that hard work will receive its just deserts . . . that ambition and ingenuity and incentiveness . . . and profit of such . . .are admirable traits and goals . . . that the individual is encouraged in his spiritual growth and from that growth arrives at a character that enhances his charity toward others and from that character and that charity so is influenced business, and labor and farmer and government. We intend to renew our faith as God-fearing men . . . not government-fearing men nor any other kind of fearing-men. We intend to roll up our sleeves and pitch in to develop this full bounty God has given us . . . to live full and useful lives and in absolute freedom from all fear. Then can we enjoy the full richness of the Great American Dream. . . . This nation was never meant to be a unit of one . . . but a united of the many . . . . that is the exact reason our freedom loving forefathers established the states, so as to divide the rights and powers among the states, insuring that no central power could gain master government control. In united effort we were meant to live under this government . . . whether Baptist, Methodist, Presbyterian, Church of Christ, or whatever one’s denomination or religious belief . . . each respecting the others right to a separate denomination . . . each, by working to develop his own, enriching the total of all our lives through united effort. And so it was meant in our political lives . . . whether Republican, Democrat, Prohibition, or whatever political party . . . each striving from his separate political station . . . respecting the rights of others to be separate and work from within their political framework . . . and each separate political station making its contribution to our lives . . . . And so it was meant in our racial lives . . . each race, within its own framework has the freedom to teach . . to instruct . . to develop . . to ask for and receive deserved help from others of separate racial stations. This is the great freedom of our American founding fathers . . . but if we amalgamate into the one unit as advocated by the communist philosophers . . . then the enrichment of our lives . . . the freedom for our development . . . is gone forever. We become, therefore, a mongrel unit of one under a single all powerful government . . . and we stand for everything . . . and for nothing. The true brotherhood of America, of respecting the separateness of others . . . and uniting in effort . . . has been so twisted and distorted from its original concept that there is a small wonder that communism is winning the world. We invite the negro citizens of Alabama to work with us from his separate racial station . . . as we will work with him . . . to develop, to grow in individual freedom and enrichment. We want jobs and a good future for BOTH races . . . the tubercular and the infirm. This is the basic heritage of my religion, if which I make full practice . . . . for we are all the handiwork of God. But we warn those, of any group, who would follow the false doctrine of communistic amalgamation that we will not surrender our system of government . . . our freedom of race and religion . . . that freedom was won at a hard price and if it requires a hard price to retain it . . . we are able . . . and quite willing to pay it. The liberals’ theory that poverty, discrimination and lack of opportunity is the cause of communism is a false theory . . . if it were true the South would have been the biggest single communist bloc in the western hemisphere long ago . . . for after the great War Between the States, our people faced a desolate land of burned universities, destroyed crops and homes, with manpower depleted and crippled, and even the mule, which was required to work the land, was so scarce that whole communities shared one animal to make the spring plowing. There were no government handouts, no Marshall Plan aid, no coddling to make sure that our people would not suffer; instead the South was set upon by the vulturous carpetbagger and federal troops, all loyal Southerners were denied the vote at the point of bayonet, so that the infamous, illegal 14th Amendment might be passed. There was no money, no food and no hope of either. But our grandfathers bent their knee only in church and bowed their head only to God. . . . We remind all within hearing of this Southland that a Southerner, Peyton Randolph, presided over the Continental Congress in our nation’s beginning . . . that a Southerner, Thomas Jefferson, wrote the Declaration of Independence, that a Southerner, George Washington, is the Father of our country . . . that a Southerner, James Madison, authored our Constitution, that a Southerner, George Mason, authored the Bill of Rights and it was a Southerner who said, “Give me liberty . . . . . . or give me death,” Patrick Henry. Southerners played a most magnificent part in erecting this great divinely inspired system of freedom . . . and as God is our witnesses, Southerners will save it. Let us, as Alabamians, grasp the hand of destiny and walk out of the shadow of fear . . . and fill our divine destination. Let us not simply defend . . . but let us assume the leadership of the fight and carry our leadership across this nation. God has placed us here in this crisis . . . let is not fail in this . . . our most historical moment. My pledge to you . . . to "Stand up for Alabama," is a stronger pledge today than it was the first day I made that pledge. I shall "Stand up for Alabama," as Governor of our State . . . you stand with me . . . and we, together, can give courageous leadership to millions of people throughout this nation who look to the South for their hope in this fight to win and preserve our freedoms and liberties.

Baldwin vs Buckley Debate

January 07, 1948 Mr. President, Mr. Speaker, and Members of the 80th Congress: We are here today to consider the state of the Union. On this occasion, above all others, the Congress and the President should concentrate their attention, not upon party but upon the country; not upon things which divide us but upon those which bind us together--the enduring principles of our American system, and our common aspirations for the future welfare and security of the people of the United States. The United States has become great because we, as a people, have been able to work together for great objectives even while differing about details. The elements of our strength are many. They include our democratic government, our economic system, our great natural resources. But these are only partial explanations. The basic source of our strength is spiritual. For we are a people with a faith. We believe in the dignity of man. We believe that he was created in the image of the Father of us all. We do not believe that men exist merely to strengthen the state or to be cogs in the economic machine. We do believe that governments are created to serve the people and that economic systems exist to minister to their wants. We have a profound devotion to the welfare and rights of the individual as a human being. The faith of our people has particular meaning at this time in history because of the unsettled and changing state of the world. The victims of war in many lands are striving to rebuild their lives, and are seeking assurance that the tragedy of war will not occur again. Throughout the world new ideas are challenging the old. Men of all nations are reexamining the beliefs by which they live. Great scientific and industrial changes have released new forces which will affect the future course of civilization. The state of our Union reflects the changing nature of the modern world. On all sides there is heartening evidence of great energy--of capacity for economic development-and even more important, capacity for spiritual growth. But accompanying this great activity there are equally great questions, great anxieties, and great aspirations. They represent the concern of an enlightened people that conditions should be so arranged as to make life more worthwhile. We must devote ourselves to finding answers to these anxieties and aspirations. We seek answers which will embody the moral and spiritual elements of tolerance, unselfishness, and brotherhood upon which true freedom and opportunity must rest. As we examine the state of our Union today, we can benefit from viewing it on a basis of the accomplishments of the last decade and of our goals for the next. How far have we come during the last 10 years and how far can we go in the next 10? It was 10 years ago that the determination of dictators to wage war upon mankind became apparent. The years that followed brought untold death and destruction. We shared in the human suffering of the war, but we were fortunate enough to escape most of war's destruction. We were able through these 10 years to expand the productive strength of our farms and factories. More important, however, is the fact that these years brought us new courage, new confidence in the ideals of our free democracy. Our deep belief in freedom and justice was reinforced in the crucible of war. On the foundations of our greatly strengthened economy and our renewed confidence in democratic values, we can continue to move forward. There are some who look with fear and distrust upon planning for the future. Yet our great national achievements have been attained by those with vision. Our Union was formed, our frontiers were pushed back, and our great industries were built by men who looked ahead. I propose that we look ahead today toward those goals for the future which have the greatest bearing upon the foundations of our democracy and the happiness of our people. I do so, confident in the thought that with clear objectives and with firm determination, we can, in the next 10 years, build upon the accomplishments of the past decade to achieve a glorious future. Year by year, beginning now, we must make a substantial part of this progress. Our first goal is to secure fully the essential human rights of our citizens. The United States has always had a deep concern for human rights. Religious freedom, free speech, and freedom of thought are cherished realities in our land. Any denial of human rights is a denial of the basic beliefs of democracy and of our regard for the worth of each individual. Today, however, some of our citizens are still denied equal opportunity for education, for jobs and economic advancement, and for the expression of their views at the polls. Most serious of all, some are denied equal protection under laws. Whether discrimination is based on race, or creed, or color, or land of origin, it is utterly contrary to American ideals of democracy. The recent report of the President's Committee on Civil Rights points the way to corrective action by the Federal Government and by State and local governments. Because of the need for effective Federal action, I shall send a special message to the Congress on this important subject. We should also consider our obligation to assure the fullest possible measure of civil rights to the people of our territories and possessions. I believe that the time has come for Alaska and Hawaii to be admitted to the Union as States. Our second goal is to protect and develop our human resources. The safeguarding of the rights of our citizens must be accompanied by an equal regard for their opportunities for development and their protection from economic insecurity. In this Nation the ideals of freedom and equality can be given specific meaning in terms of health, education, social security, and housing. Over the past 12 years we have erected a sound framework of social security legislation. Many millions of our citizens are now protected against the loss of income which can come with unemployment, old age, or the death of wage earners. Yet our system has gaps and inconsistencies; it is only half finished. We should now extend unemployment compensation, old age benefits, and survivors' benefits to millions who are not now protected. We should also raise the level of benefits. The greatest gap in our social security structure is the lack of adequate provision for the Nation's health. We are rightly proud of the high standards of medical care we know how to provide in the United States. The fact is, however, that most of our people cannot afford to pay for the care they need. I have often and strongly urged that this condition demands a national health program. The heart of the program must be a national system of payment for medical care based on well-tried insurance principles. This great Nation cannot afford to allow its citizens to suffer needlessly from the lack of proper medical care. Our ultimate aim must be a comprehensive insurance system to protect all our people equally against insecurity and ill health. Another fundamental aim of our democracy is to provide an adequate education for every person. Our educational systems face a financial crisis. It is deplorable that in a Nation as rich as ours there are millions of children who do not have adequate schoolhouses or enough teachers for a good elementary or secondary education. If there are educational inadequacies in any State, the whole Nation suffers. The Federal Government has a responsibility for providing financial aid to meet this crisis. In addition, we must make possible greater equality of opportunity to all our citizens for education. Only by so doing can we insure that our citizens will be capable of understanding and sharing the responsibilities of democracy. The Government's programs for health, education, and security are of such great importance to our democracy that we should now establish an executive department for their administration. Health and education have their beginning in the home. No matter what our hospitals or schools are like, the youth of our Nation are handicapped when millions of them live in city slums and country shacks. Within the next decade, we must see that every American family has a decent home. As an immediate step we need the long-range housing program which I have recommended on many occasions to this Congress. This should include financial aids designed to yield more housing at lower prices. It should provide public housing for low-income families, and vigorous development of new techniques to lower the cost of building. Until we can overcome the present drastic housing shortage, we must extend and strengthen rent control. We have had, and shall continue to have, a special interest in the welfare of our veterans. Over 14 million men and women who served in the armed forces in World War II have now returned to civilian life. Over 2 million veterans are being helped through school. Millions have been aided while finding jobs, and have been helped in buying homes, in obtaining medical care, and in adjusting themselves to physical handicaps. All but a very few veterans have successfully made the transition from military life to their home communities. The success of our veterans' program is proved by this fact. This Nation is proud of the eagerness shown by our veterans to become self-reliant and self-supporting citizens. Our third goal is to conserve and use our natural resources so that they can contribute most effectively to the welfare of our people. The resources given by nature to this country are rich and extensive. The material foundations of our growth and economic development are the bounty of our fields, the wealth of our mines and forests, and the energy of our waters. As a Nation, we are coming to appreciate more each day the close relationship between the conservation of these resources and the preservation of our national strength. We are doing far less than we know how to do to make use of our resources without destroying them. Both the public and private use of these resources must have the primary objective of maintaining and increasing these basic supports for an expanding future. We must continue to take specific steps toward this goal. We must vigorously defend our natural wealth against those who would misuse it for selfish gain. We need accurate and comprehensive knowledge of our mineral resources and must intensify our efforts to develop new supplies and to acquire stockpiles of scarce materials. We need to protect and restore our land-public and private--through combating erosion and rebuilding the fertility of the soil. We must expand our reclamation program to bring millions of acres of arid land into production, and to improve water supplies for additional millions of acres. This will provide new opportunities for veterans and others, particularly in the West, and aid in providing a rising living standard for a growing population. We must protect and restore our forests by sustained-yield forestry and by planting new trees in areas now slashed and barren. We must continue to erect multiple-purpose dams on our great rivers--not only to reclaim land, but also to prevent floods, to extend our inland waterways and to provide hydroelectric power. This public power must not be monopolized for private gain. Only through well-established policies of transmitting power directly to its market and thus encouraging widespread use at low rates can the Federal Government assure the people of their full share of its benefits. Additional power--public and private--is needed to raise the ceilings now imposed by power shortages on industrial and agricultural development. We should achieve the wise use of resources through the integrated development of our great river basins. We can learn much from our Tennessee Valley experience. We should no longer delay in applying the lessons of that vast undertaking to our other great river basins. Our fourth goal is to lift the standard of living for all our people by strengthening our economic system and sharing more broadly among our people the goods we produce. The amazing economic progress of the past 10 years points the way for the next 10. Today 14 million more people have jobs than in 1938. Our yearly output of goods and services has increased by two-thirds. The average income of our people, measured in dollars of equal purchasing power, has increased--after taxes--by more than 50 percent. In no other 10 years have farmers, businessmen, and wage earners made such great gains. We may not be able to expand as rapidly in the next decade as in the last, because we are now starting from full employment and very high production. But we can increase our annual output by at least one-third above the present level. We can lift our standard of living to nearly double what it was 10 years ago. If we distribute these gains properly, we can go far toward stamping out poverty in our generation. To do this, agriculture, business, and labor must move forward together. Permanent farm prosperity and agricultural abundance will be achieved only as our whole economy grows and prospers. The farmer can sell more food at good prices when the incomes of wage earners are high and when there is full employment. Adequate diets for every American family, and the needs of our industries at full production, will absorb a farm output well above our present levels. Although the average farmer is now better off than ever before, farm families as a whole have only begun to catch up with the standards of living enjoyed in the cities. In 1946, the average income of farm people was $779, contrasted with an average income of $1,288 for nonfarm people. Within the next decade, we should eliminate elements of inequality in these living standards. To this end our farm program should enable the farmer to market his varied crops at fair price levels and to improve his standard of living. We need to continue price supports for major farm commodities on a basis which will afford reasonable protection against fluctuations in the levels of production and demand. The present price support program must be reexamined and modernized. Crop insurance should be strengthened and its benefits extended in order to protect the farmer against the special hazards to which he is subject. We also need to improve the means for getting farm products into markets and into the hands of consumers. Cooperatives which directly or indirectly serve this purpose must be encouraged--not discouraged. The school lunch program should be continued and adequately financed. We need to go forward with the rural electrification program to bring the benefits of electricity to all our farm population. We can, and must, aid and encourage farmers to conserve their soil resources and restore the fertility of the land that has suffered from neglect or unwise use. All these are practical measures upon which we should act immediately to enable agriculture to make its full contribution to our prosperity. We must also strengthen our economic system within the next decade by enlarging our industrial capacity within the framework of our free enterprise system. We are today far short of the industrial capacity we need for a growing future. At least $50 billion should be invested by industry to improve and expand our productive facilities over the next few years. But this is only the beginning. The industrial application of atomic energy and other scientific advances will constantly open up further opportunities for expansion. Farm prosperity and high employment will call for an immensely increased output of goods and services. Growth and vitality in our economy depend on vigorous private enterprise. Free competition is the key to industrial development, full production and employment, fair prices, and an ever improving standard of living. Competition is seriously limited today in many industries by the concentration of economic power and other elements of monopoly. The appropriation of sufficient funds to permit proper enforcement of the present antitrust laws is essential. Beyond that we should go on to strengthen our legislation to protect competition. Another basic element of a strong economic system is the well-being of the wage earners. We have learned that the well-being of workers depends on high production and consequent high employment. We have learned equally well that the welfare of industry and agriculture depends on high incomes for our workers. The Government has wisely chosen to set a floor under wages. But our 40-cent minimum wage is inadequate and obsolete. I recommend the lifting of the minimum wage to 75 cents an hour. In general, however, we must continue to rely on our sound system of collective bargaining to set wage scales. Workers' incomes should increase at a rate consistent with the maintenance of sound price, profit, and wage relationships and with increase of productivity. The Government's part in labor-management relations is now largely controlled by the terms of the Labor-Management Relations Act of 1947. I made my attitude clear on this act in my veto message to the Congress last June. Nothing has occurred since to change my opinion of this law. As long as it remains the law of the land, however, I shall carry out my constitutional duty and administer it. As we look ahead we can understand the crucial importance of restraint and wisdom in arriving at new labor-management contracts. Work stoppages would result in a loss of production--a loss which could bring higher prices for our citizens and could also deny the necessities of life to the hard-pressed peoples of other lands. It is my sincere hope that the representatives of labor and of industry will bear in mind that the Nation as a whole has a vital stake in the success of their bargaining efforts. If we surmount our current economic difficulties, we can move ahead to a great increase in our national income which will enable all our people to enjoy richer and fuller lives. All of us must advance together. One-fifth of our families now have average annual incomes of less than $850. We must see that our gains in national income are made more largely available to those with low incomes, whose need is greatest. This will benefit us all through providing a stable foundation of buying power to maintain prosperity. Business, labor, agriculture, and Government, working together, must develop the policies which will make possible the realization of the full benefits of our economic system. Our fifth goal is to achieve world peace based on principles of freedom and justice and the equality of all nations. Twice within our generation, world wars have taught us that we cannot isolate ourselves from the rest of the world. We have learned that the loss of freedom in any area of the world means a loss of freedom to ourselves--that the loss of independence by any nation adds directly to the insecurity of the United States and all free nations. We have learned that a healthy world economy is essential to world peace--that economic distress is a disease whose evil effects spread far beyond the boundaries of the afflicted nation. For these reasons the United States is vigorously following policies designed to achieve a peaceful and prosperous world. We are giving, and will continue to give, our full support to the United Nations. While that organization has encountered unforeseen and unwelcome difficulties, I am confident of its ultimate success. We are also devoting our efforts toward world economic recovery and the revival of world trade. These actions are closely related and mutually supporting. We believe that the United States can be an effective force for world peace only if it is strong. We look forward to the day when nations will decrease their armaments. Yet so long as there remains serious opposition to the ideals of a peaceful world, we must maintain strong armed forces. The passage of the National Security Act by the Congress at its last session was a notable step in providing for the security of this country. A further step which I consider of even greater importance is the early provision for universal training. There are many elements in a balanced national security program, all interrelated and necessary, but universal training should be the foundation for them all. A favorable decision by the Congress at an early date is of world importance. I am convinced that such action is vital to the security of this Nation and to the maintenance of its leadership. The United States is engaged today in many international activities directed toward the creation of lasting peaceful relationships among nations. We have been giving substantial aid to Greece and Turkey to assist those nations in preserving their integrity against foreign pressures. Had it not been for our aid, their situation today might well be radically different. The continued integrity of those countries will have a powerful effect upon other nations in the Middle East and in Europe struggling to maintain their independence while they repair the damages of war. The United States has special responsibilities with respect to the countries in which we have occupation forces: Germany, Austria, Japan, and Korea. Our efforts to reach agreements on peace settlements for these countries have so far been blocked. But we shall continue to exert our utmost efforts to obtain satisfactory settlements for each of these nations. Many thousands of displaced persons, still living in camps overseas, should be allowed entry into the United States. I again urge the Congress to pass suitable legislation at once so that this Nation may do its share in caring for the homeless and suffering refugees of all faiths. I believe that the admission of these persons will add to the strength and energy of this Nation. We are moving toward our goal of world peace in many ways. But the most important efforts which we are now making are those which support world economic reconstruction. We are seeking to restore the world trading system which was shattered by the war and to remedy the economic paralysis which grips many countries. To restore world trade we have recently taken the lead in bringing about the greatest reduction of world tariffs that the world has ever seen. The extension of the provisions of the Reciprocal Trade Agreements Act, which made this achievement possible, is of extreme importance. We must also go on to support the International Trade Organization, through which we hope to obtain worldwide agreement on a code of fair conduct in international trade. Our present major effort toward economic reconstruction is to support the program for recovery developed by the countries of Europe. In my recent message to the Congress, I outlined the reasons why it is wise and necessary for the United States to extend this support. I want to reaffirm my belief in the soundness and the promise of this proposal. When the European economy is strengthened, the product of its industry will be of benefit to many other areas of economic distress. The ability of free men to overcome hunger and despair will be a moral stimulus to the entire world. We intend to work also with other nations in achieving world economic recovery. We shall continue our cooperation with the nations of the Western Hemisphere. A special program of assistance to China, to provide urgent relief needs and to speed reconstruction, will be submitted to the Congress. Unfortunately, not all governments share the hope of the people of the United States that economic reconstruction in many areas of the world can be achieved through cooperative effort among nations. In spite of these differences we will go forward with our efforts to overcome economic paralysis. No nation by itself can carry these programs to success; they depend upon the cooperative and honest efforts of all participating countries. Yet the leadership is inevitably ours. I consider it of the highest importance that the Congress should authorize support for the European recovery program for the period from April 1, 1948, to June 30, 1952, with an initial amount for the first 15 months of $6.8 billion. I urge the Congress to act promptly on this vital measure of our foreign policy--on this decisive contribution to world peace. We are following a sound, constructive, and practical course in carrying out our determination to achieve peace. We are fighting poverty, hunger, and suffering. This leads to peace--not war. We are building toward a world where all nations, large and small alike, may live free from the fear of aggression. This leads to peace--not war. Above all else, we are striving to achieve a concord among the peoples of the world based upon the dignity of the individual and the brotherhood of man. This leads to peace--not war. We can go forward with confidence that we are following sound policies, both at home and with other nations, which will lead us toward our great goals for economic, social and moral achievement. As we enter the new year, we must surmount one major problem which affects all our goals. That is the problem of inflation. Already inflation in this country is undermining the living standards of millions of families. Food costs too much. Housing has reached fantastic price levels. Schools and hospitals are in financial distress. Inflation threatens to bring on disagreement and strife between labor and management. Worst of all, inflation holds the threat of another depression, just as we had a depression after the unstable boom following the First World War. When I announced last October that the Congress was being called into session, I described the price increases which had taken place since June 1946. Wholesale prices had increased 40 percent; retail prices had increased 23 percent. Since October prices have continued to rise. Wholesale prices have gone up at an annual rate of 18 percent. Retail prices have gone up at an annual rate of 10 percent. The events which have occurred since I presented my 10-point anti-inflation program to the Congress in November have made it even clearer that all 10 points are essential. High prices must not be our means of rationing. We must deal effectively and at once with the high cost of living. We must stop the spiral of inflation. I trust that within the shortest possible time the Congress will make available to the Government the weapons that are so desperately needed in the fight against inflation. One of the most powerful anti-inflationary factors in our economy today is the excess of Government revenues over expenditures. Government expenditures have been and must continue to be held at the lowest safe levels. Since V-J day Federal expenditures have been sharply reduced. They have been cut from more than $63 billion in the fiscal year 1946 to less than $38 billion in the present fiscal year. The number of civilian employees has been cut nearly in half--from 3 3/4 million down to 2 million. On the other hand, Government revenues must not be reduced. Until inflation has been stopped there should be no cut in taxes that is not offset by additions at another point in our tax structure. Certain adjustments should be made within our existing tax structure that will not affect total receipts, yet will adjust the tax burden so that those least able to pay will have their burden lessened by the transfer of a portion of it to those best able to pay. Many of our families today are suffering hardship because of the high cost of living. At the same time profits of corporations have reached an all-time record in 1947. Corporate profits total $17 billion after taxes. This compared with $12.5 billion in 1946, the previous high year. Because of this extraordinarily high level of profits, corporations can well afford to carry a larger share of the taxload at this time. During this period in which the high cost of living is bearing down on so many of our families, tax adjustments should be made to ease their burden. The low-income group particularly is being pressed very hard. To this group a tax adjustment would result in a saving that could be used to buy the necessities of life. I recommend therefore that, effective January 1, 1948, a cost of living tax credit be extended to our people consisting of a credit of $40 to each individual taxpayer and an additional credit of $40 for each dependent. Thus the income tax of a man with a wife and two children would be reduced $160. The credit would be extended to all taxpayers, but it would be particularly helpful to those in the low-income group. It is estimated that such a tax credit would reduce Federal revenue by $3.2 billion. This reduction should be made up by increasing the tax on corporate profits in an amount that will produce this sum--with appropriate adjustments for small corporations. This is the proper method of tax relief at this time. It gives relief to those who need it most without cutting the total tax revenue of the Government. When the present danger of inflation has passed we should consider tax reduction based upon a revision of our entire tax structure. When we have conquered inflation, we shall be in a position to move forward toward our chosen goals. As we do so, let us keep ever before us our high purposes. We are determined that every citizen of this Nation shall have an equal right and an equal opportunity to grow in wisdom and in stature and to take his place in the control of his Nation's destiny. We are determined that the productive resources of this Nation shall be used wisely and fully for the benefit of all. We are determined that the democratic faith of our people and the strength of our resources shall contribute their full share to the attainment of enduring peace in the world. It is our faith in human dignity that underlies these purposes. It is this faith that keeps us a strong and vital people. This is a time to remind ourselves of these fundamentals. For today the whole world looks to us for leadership. This is the hour to rededicate ourselves to the faith in mankind that makes us strong. This is the hour to rededicate ourselves to the faith in God that gives us confidence as we face the challenge of the years ahead. Source: https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/annual-message-the-congress-the-state-the-union-14

May 11, 1960   THE PRESIDENT [reading]. I have made some notes from which I want to talk to you about this U-2 incident. A full statement about this matter has been made by the State Department, and there have been several statesmanlike remarks by leaders of both parties. For my part, I supplement what the Secretary of State has had to say, with the following four main points. After that I shall have nothing further to say--for the simple reason I can think of nothing to add that might be useful at this time. The first point is this: the need for intelligence-gathering activities. No one wants another Pearl Harbor. This means that we must have knowledge of military forces and preparations around the world, especially those capable of massive surprise attacks. Secrecy in the Soviet Union makes this essential. In most of the world no large-scale attack could be prepared in secret, but in the Soviet Union there is a fetish of secrecy and concealment. This is a major cause of international tension and uneasiness today. Our deterrent must never be placed in jeopardy. The safety of the whole free world demands this. As the Secretary of State pointed out in his recent statement, ever since the beginning of my administration I have issued directives to gather, in every feasible way, the information required to protect the United States and the free world against surprise attack and to enable them to make effective preparations for defense. My second point: the nature of intelligence-gathering activities. These have a special and secret character. They are, so to speak, "below the surface" activities. They are secret because they must circumvent measures designed by other countries to protect secrecy of military preparations. They are divorced from the regular visible agencies of government which stay clear of operational involvement in specific detailed activities. These elements operate under broad directives to seek and gather intelligence short of the use of force--with operations supervised by responsible officials within this area of secret activities. We do not use our Army, Navy, or Air Force for this purpose, first, to avoid any possibility of the use of force in connection with these activities, and second, because our military forces, for obvious reasons, cannot be given latitude under broad directives but must be kept under strict control in every detail. These activities have their own rules and methods of concealment which seek to mislead and obscure--just as in the Soviet allegations there are many discrepancies. For example, there is some reason to believe that the plane in question was not shot down at high altitude. The normal agencies of our Government are unaware of these specific activities or of the special efforts to conceal them. Third point: how should we view all of this activity? It is a distasteful but vital necessity. We prefer and work for a different kind of world--and a different way of obtaining the information essential to confidence and effective deterrents. Open societies, in the day of present weapons, are the only answer. This was the reason for my "open skies" proposal in 1955, which I was ready instantly to put into effect--to permit aerial observation over the United States and the Soviet Union which would assure that no surprise attack was being prepared against anyone. I shall bring up the "open skies" proposal again at Paris--since it is a means of ending concealment and suspicion. My final point is that we must not be distracted from the real issues of the day by what is an incident or a symptom of the world situation today. This incident has been given great propaganda exploitation. The emphasis given to a flight of an unarmed nonmilitary plane can only reflect a fetish of secrecy. The real issues are the ones we will be working on at the summit-disarmament, search for solutions affecting Germany and Berlin, and the whole range of East-West relations, including the reduction of secrecy and suspicion. Frankly, I am hopeful that we may make progress on these great issues. This is what we mean when we speak of "working for peace." And as I remind you, I will have nothing further to say about this matter. [Ends reading] Q. Robert J. Donovan, New York Herald Tribune: Mr. President, since our last visit, or conference, Prime Minister Khrushchev has made some pretty vigorous statements about your plans for bringing Mr. Nixon to the summit in case you had to come home. Do his comments in any way change your intentions? THE PRESIDENT. No, indeed. And, I should clarify something. There seems to be some misunderstanding, because a friend from Congress, a friend indeed of the other party, told me the other day that he had never heard of the latter part of my press conference on this point where I said that if my absence from the conference had to. be more than 2 or 3 days, I would be right back there. And I believe I remarked, although I am not sure, that the jet plane made this kind of a trip possible. Now, as far as Mr. Khrushchev's statement, I can just say this: he has never asked me my opinion of some of his people. [Laughter] Q. Charles H. Mohr, Time Magazine: In case, Mr. President, that the Soviet Union should reject your proposal for a surprise attack conference, or an "open skies" arrangement, do you think that the development of satellites like Samos and Midas will possibly in the next few years erase our worries on the score of surveillance; and also are you doing anything now to speed up those scientific projects? THE PRESIDENT. I keep in touch with my Scientific Advisory Committee and operators, and I know of nothing we could do to speed these up. They are research items and as such no one can predict exactly what would be their degree of efficiency. So I couldn't make a real prediction of how useful they are going to be. Q. Mr. Mohr: Sir, do you think that their development will ease our worries on the question of secrecy? THE PRESIDENT. Well, I say, I just can't predict what the final results will be. Now, we do know this, right now. I believe it's Tiros that is sending back constantly pictures on the cloud cover all around the earth. That is admittedly a rather rough example of what might be done in photography, but that is being done constantly; and I don't know how many thousands of photographs have been taken. And they send them back on command. Q. Laurence H. Burd, Chicago Tribune: Mr. President, last week you used the word "if" in connection with your trip to Russia. Have you changed any plans about that, or think you might? THE PRESIDENT. NO, not at all. I have no idea, but you can never tell from one day to the other what is happening in this world, it seems, so I just said "if." I put it in the positive sense, I think. I expect to go; put it that way. Q. Felix Belair, New York Times: I know, Mr. President, you don't ordinarily tip your hand on disposition of pending legislation before you, but since the legislative leaders more than a week ago said you were very much opposed to the emergency housing bill, may I ask if you have had any change of view about it? THE PRESIDENT. Well, what it says right now, I don't know; but I have said this: I am very definitely opposed of taking another billion dollars of Federal money and making use of it, making it available for direct loans when we don't need it. And I think it's a very bad way to stimulate housing. As a matter of fact, while I think there has been some little slowup in the housing field, there is indication it's coming up--back to the level of 1.2, something of that kind. I see no reason for constantly getting excited about this one. By the way, I've got another paper. [Laughter] Q. (Questioner unidentified): How many more? THE PRESIDENT. This is something that is good news in this whole economic field, and that is what you are talking about. I understand the employment rose 1.9 million between mid-March and mid-April, and has reached a total of 66.2 million. This is the biggest April increase by far in the postwar period. There was also a sharp drop in the number of unemployed persons, a decline of more than one-half million. It has been reported by the Commerce Department that retail sales in April were more than 3 percent above March, and 5 percent above last April. Finally, figures from the Department of Commerce today show that in the first quarter of this year, gross national product reached 500.2 billion. This means that, in effect, the United States is producing goods and services at a rate of a half-trillion dollars for the first time in our history. The achievement of these high levels of employment and production, at the same time that prices have been reasonably stable--the consumer price index has varied only one-quarter of one percent in the last 6 months--is proof of the great strength of our free enterprise system and its promise for the future. And if we continue to act responsibly, I think it will keep going. Q. Edward T. Foillard, Washington Post: Mr. President, do you think the outlook for the summit conference has changed, or has been changed, in the last week or so? THE PRESIDENT. Not decisively at all, no. Q. Mrs. May Craig, Portland (Maine) Press Herald: Mr. President, when you came into office you obtained a truce in Korea. Do you think a treaty now, an effort to get a treaty now would be useful, and will you discuss that with Mr. Rhee and the acting officials of Korea when you visit there? THE PRESIDENT. Well, Mrs. Craig, I have no reason to believe that it would now be easy to achieve a treaty. Now, as far as my trip to Korea is concerned, it is to be an official one. Assuming the permission of the people now in charge of Korea, and a proper opportunity, I should be glad to see Mr. Rhee who, as I have told you people, I have admired and respected over the years. Q. Andrew F. Tully, Jr., Scripps-Howard Newspapers: Sir, I know this borders on your rule not to discuss personalities, but Mr. Truman has written an article in a magazine in which he says certain things about you, and I wonder if you would like to speak out in your own behalf for the record. THE PRESIDENT. I just haven't time. Q. Sarah McClendon, El Paso Times: Sir, now that you have been to Fort Benning and you have seen the wonderful display of modern Army weapons, I wonder if you don't realize that we need a stepping up of production of some of these weapons. THE PRESIDENT. Well, I'd say this: of course, your question implies that you know very much more about the military than I do and it's probably true. [Laughter] I can just say this: I do just as good as what the commonsense the Good Lord gave me and my own judgment and experience allow me to do. Q. Pat Munroe, Chicago American: Mr. President, when an unfriendly cartoon or column appears in the press, that is unfriendly to you, we often hear people say, "I'll bet they won't let the President see that one." Now, what are your regular habits, sir, for keeping up with what we are saying about you? THE PRESIDENT. Well, I don't know whether you can call it a habit, for the simple reason that it takes a lot of time if I was going to keep track of what all you people say. I take what I call the important sections of the Sunday papers that review world events, go over the things, and those are the things I study carefully. The kind of things that you tall of, cartoons and unfriendly quips, I just can't be bothered. Q. Ruth S. Montgomery, Hearst Headline Service: Mr. President, to go back a minute, I am very puzzled about this statement by your predecessor. As I recall, you not only participated in the inaugural parade, but you also attended the inaugural ball that night, did you not, in '49? THE PRESIDENT. I don't think I went to the ball. I had an invitation from Mr. Royall, then Secretary of the Army. He was very anxious, and he said the administration approved of his request, that I, as a five-star general, ride with him because I believe the Secretary of the Navy was going to have, oh, Admiral Nimitz or somebody, and he felt that he had to have one of these five-star generals which I still was then. So, I went along. Now, I think I went right back to Columbia that day. Q. Miss Montgomery: I attended a party where you were that evening at George Allen's, and you and Mrs. Eisenhower went in and changed into evening attire and left for the ball. THE PRESIDENT. Well, then, your memory is better than mine. [Laughter] Can I just say one thing: I have never advanced the theory that my memory is perfect, like a good many others. Q. Merriman Smith, United Press International: Quite aside from your comment about the U-2 plane episode, sir, I wonder if you could give us your reaction to a rather denunciatory speech made this morning, right ahead of the summit meeting, by the Russian Foreign Minister. Mr. Gromyko attributes to this country deeds and efforts which he said amount to dangerous ways of balancing on the brink of war. He says that the United States has deliberately engaged in provocative acts in conjunction with some of our allies. Now, with statements like this, do you still maintain a hopeful attitude toward the summit? THE PRESIDENT. I'd say yes. I have some hope, because these things have been said for many years, ever since World War II, and there is no real change in this matter. I wonder how many of you people have read the full text of the record of the trial of Mr. Abel. Well, I think he was sentenced to 30 years. Now, this business of saying that you're doing things that are provocative, why, they had better look at their own record. And I'll tell you this: the United States--and none of its allies that I know of--has engaged in nothing that would be considered honestly as provocative. We are looking to our own security and our defense and we have no idea of promoting any kind of conflict or war. This is just-it's absolutely ridiculous and they know it is. Q. Henry N. Taylor, Scripps-Howard Newspapers: Sir, would it be trespassing on your request about the U-2 to ask if you could tell us something about any possible Soviet reconnaissance flights over the western part of the world, and our response to them, if any? THE PRESIDENT. I could just say this: as far as I know, there has never been any over the United States. Q. Holmes Alexander, McNaught Syndicate: Sir, this is a question about Quemoy and Matsu; two of the Democratic candidates have said that if elected they would try to get rid of that responsibility. I know you don't deal in personalities, but I wonder if you could tell us as a military man to what extent these islands help us control the air and sea over the Formosa Strait. THE PRESIDENT. Well, I am not talking personalities because I don't know who said this. I will say this: if you go back to the Formosa doctrine, you will find that the responsibility is placed upon the President to determine, in the event of any attack upon Quemoy and Matsu, whether this is in fact a preliminary to or part of an attack against the Pescadores and Taiwan. If that is true, then he must participate because then it will be the defense of Formosa, one of our allies. Now, as to the actual value of Matsu and Quemoy, of course we must remember how much this seems to mean to the morale of all the Chinese forces on Formosa. From their viewpoint, any desertion of those islands means a complete surrender--abject surrender. So, it is a factor that anyone who is going to have to make possible decisions in the future has to take into consideration when he talks about the abandonment of these sets of islands. And frankly, no President of the United States can do it by himself. Now, he can withhold support to Taiwan, but are you going to destroy Taiwan? So, none of these problems is ever a simple, black and white thing. You have got a very great number of conflicting considerations and they take study and heart searching, and you hope and pray that you are right most of the time. Q. Chalmers M. Roberts, Washington Post: Last week, sir, you announced that the U.S. would resume underground nuclear testing for purposes of protecting the detection and control system. There seems, however, to be some dispute as to whether this would be joint or coordinated, that is, this testing in conjunction with the Soviet Union. Could you tell us what the argument there is, and what your own view is? THE PRESIDENT. Well, I'll tell you, Mr. Roberts, having heard of this misunderstanding, I had a discussion with Dr. Kistiakowsky only this morning. These things are not nuclear weapons testing. They are for one simple--and as a matter of fact in many cases I don't think will involve any nuclear explosions except under the coordinated directions of a body made up of the U.K., U.S.S.R., and ourselves. That's the way I understood the agreement, and I believe that you will find that they are not expected to have anything to do either with weapons development or the Plowshare Project, anything else except just finding out how good this testing of the weapons below 4.75 is. On May 7 a White House release stated that the President had that day announced approval of a major expansion of research and development directed toward an improved capability to detect and identify underground nuclear explosions. The release added that the program, to be known as Project VELA, had grown out of the recommendations of the Panel on Seismic Improvement ("Berkner Panel"), and that it provided that "such nuclear explosions as are essential to a full understanding of both the capabilities of the presently proposed detection system and the potential for improvements in this system would be carried out under fully contained conditions and would produce no radioactive fallout." The release further stated that Soviet negotiators at Geneva had concurred with the proposal that underground nuclear explosions should be conducted to improve the capability of the proposed control network; that they had also indicated a willingness to discuss research and development in the seismic detection area with the U.S. and the U.K.; and that agreement had been reached to convene a group of U.S.S.R., U.K., and U.S. scientists at Geneva on May 11 to exchange information on the seismic research activities of the three nations as a basis for future determination of the areas in which coordinated or joint research would be most fruitful. Q. Mr. Roberts: Well, sir, is it your understanding that we would show everything involved, mechanism and so on, to the Soviets under this program? THE PRESIDENT. Well, now, Mr. Roberts, there are some details I just can't get down to. You know that. But, I would think that everything that they found it necessary to see in order to determine whether this thing is effective, they would see and should see. Now, I think that to get a little further on the thing you might get that statement of Dr. Kistiakowsky's and show it to him--[confers with Mr. Hagerty] Mr. Hagerty just reminds me of what Dr. Kistiakowsky told me, another point. Our people are leaving tomorrow, they will meet there together-the U.S.S.R. and the U.K. and the U.S.--in determining exactly how we will do this. Q. Charles W. Roberts, Newsweek: Sir, in connection with the Abel trial which you mentioned, the Soviet Government in that case made no effort to defend Colonel Abel. I wonder if an American citizen were arrested by a foreign government and brought to trial as a spy, what the policy of this Government would be so far as his defense was concerned. THE PRESIDENT. We would certainly offer the good offices of our Embassy, and see whether there was anything we could do. Of course it would be an internal matter there, and we would have to do it with the permission of the other country. I think that if there is anything wrong diplomatically with my answer, you had better ask the State Department, but I think that would be the result. Q. Robert C. Pierpoint, CBS News: Mr. President, many people seem to feel that the result of yesterday's elections in West Virginia once and for all buries the religious issue in politics in America. Do you agree with that premise, sir, and how do you feel about it? THE PRESIDENT. Well, I don't know whether I agree completely with the conclusion or not. Certainly I have made as strong a statement as I can, deploring the insertion of the religious issue in elections. As a matter of fact, I think it is very, very bad for this country. But as to what this election means, the only thing it means to me is--as a response to one question I said that I normally read only the Sunday papers, but I have read what the newspapers said were going to happen. Now, this morning, I am a bit astonished. [Laughter] Q. Marvin L. Arrowsmith, Associated Press: Mr. President, you have said many times that you wouldn't go to the summit under any threats or ultimatums. Yesterday, as you know, the Soviets in their note threatened retaliation against us if we continued to fly these planes over their territory. Do you regard that kind of threat as within the category you were speaking of? THE PRESIDENT. No. I think that you have to set that aside in a special category. I don't believe it's the kind of thing that you call an ultimatum at all. Q. Edward P. Morgan, American Broadcasting Company: A point of clarification, Mr. President. Do we infer correctly that your prepared statement this morning is the final, complete, and ultimate answer to your critics, friendly and hostile, on the subject? THE PRESIDENT. I said that at this time I could see nothing more useful that I could say, so that's where I stand at this moment. Q. Thomas N. Schroth, Congressional Quarterly: You said last summer, sir, that you planned to put before Congress at its final session a plan to reorganize the highest echelons of Government in order to relieve the burdens on some of the high officials. Can you give us any of the details of your plans and whether you expect to send them to Congress? THE PRESIDENT. I've had to change my plan a little bit, because I became convinced that anything you did this year of extraordinary nature would probably be made political in some form or another. So I decided that regardless of who was elected to my present office, when I go up in January, as I must go under the Constitution--I must go make a statement--I'm going to put in then the plans that I have adverted to in these conferences before. In general, it is to get closer, tighter day-by-day coordination in everything that touches upon the foreign field through one proper part of the plan; and the other, get all our business affairs, our types of procurement and making of contracts and all that, get that more tightly coordinated day in and day out. The first one, I think, is tremendously important, because almost every department now has really heavy responsibilities in the foreign field. I think more and more we have to have not merely day-by-day meetings with the department heads concerned; it has to be closer, more tightly done than that. Q. John Scali, Associated Press: Mr. President, you said in your initial statement that the Soviet account of the downing of this plane contained many discrepancies, and that there was reason to doubt that the plane was downed at a high altitude, as Mr. Khrushchev claims. Can you tell us, sir, whether the administration at some future time intends to expose these discrepancies, and can you at this time without violating what you have said, give us any more details about how we believe this plane actually came down in the Soviet Union? THE PRESIDENT. You raise a question that is really an auxiliary to the main issue, and so I don't mind saying this: take the pictures themselves, we know that they were not, or we believe we know that they are not pictures of the plane that was downed, and there are other things in their statements. Now, I don't know what's going to happen in the future, but these things you can be sure will be carefully looked into. Again I say I do not foreclose any kind of statement that in the future may be necessary; I am saying that now I can see nothing more useful to say. Q. John Herling, National Newspaper Syndicate: Mr. President, in reference to the drop in unemployment to which you referred, the hard core unemployment continues in many depressed areas, including West Virginia. Now, in view of that, sir, is Senator Dirksen correct in predicting that you plan to veto the depressed areas bill? THE PRESIDENT. Well, if I don't approve of the particular depressed area bill, what do you expect me to do? As a matter of fact, as I have so far been reading this bill, the amounts there to be put under this greatly inflated bill of $251 million, or something like that, the amounts that are going into the areas like West Virginia, Southern Illinois, Pennsylvania, and Eastern Kentucky are less than they would be under ours. It's a shotgun--it's getting to be a pork barrel bill, as I see it. So I say I am not predicting anything; I am just saying this: I'll do what my judgment tells me to. Q. Frank van der Linden, Nashville Banner: Sir, recently you proposed that the several southern cities having the problems of sit-in demonstrations should have biracial committees to meet and try to solve them. Yesterday six of the stores in downtown Nashville admitted Negroes to the lunch counters. I wondered, sir, if you felt that was a solution to the problem, do you think that would be a pattern for the other cities to follow? THE PRESIDENT. Let me say this: let us assume that I had the wisdom of a Solomon. I am still a good many hundred miles away from any of these cities, and any solutions to these problems must take into account local considerations and feelings and beliefs. We here can talk and believe in the ideals that have been set up for us by the Constitution, and certainly we have a responsibility in helping to enforce or seeing that the constitutional rights guaranteed are not violated. Now, when it comes to sit-ins, I am just not enough of a lawyer to say just exactly what they do mean--what they mean in the constitutional or legal terms. We, you and I, can talk about it in social terms and you might say on a moral standard, but this is something else. I would say for that question, you ought to go to the Attorney General. I am just not that much of a lawyer. Q. Raymond P. Brandt, St. Louis Post-Dispatch: In view of your emphasis on you might go back to the summit, if you had to come back here, have you any idea how long the Paris meeting will go on--how long do you think it will take you to. get to some agreement? THE PRESIDENT. Well, I don't know. But I just want to point this out: I hear that some--I don't know whether this is all of the others or not--do not like the simultaneous translations. Now, let us assume you have called an hour's conference, and one of you, for example, wants to make a, let's say, a 10-minute exposition. When you take seriatum translations, here is already a half hour of an hour's conference gone, and you have had only 10 minutes. Now, these are very slow and laborious things, and consequently the possibility of prophesying how long this thing is going to be is really remote. Now, for my part, I am perfectly ready to work as many hours as an individual human can to get this thing along the line. I am prepared to go to this thing as long as there is any usefulness whatsoever promised, and even if I am called back--I know I have one date for 24 hours--I am still ready and prepared to go back. That is what I have been trying to insist, that I am not making my own convenience and my own duties here the decisive thing as to how long this conference will last. Q. Lillian Levy, National Jewish Post and Opinion: Mr. President, are any changes in the present borders of West Germany part of the German question to be discussed at the summit? I ask this, sir, because this issue has been raised by a responsible West German leader and member of Adenauer's Cabinet who recently suggested that Germans be allowed to return to Sudetenland. THE PRESIDENT. I didn't get the very first clause of your question. Q. Mrs. Levy: Well, what I asked--were boundaries going to be part of the German question to be raised? THE PRESIDENT. Well, at this time we wouldn't raise it. As a matter of fact, they've been living with these boundaries for a long time, and I would see at this moment no possibility of changing them except in methods that would be unacceptable. So, it might be raised by someone but I have no plan to do it. Marvin L. Arrowsmith, Associated Press: Thank you, Mr. President. Source: https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/the-presidents-news-conference-231

INSTRUMENT OF SURRENDER We, acting by command of and in behalf of the Emperor of Japan, the Japanese Government and the Japanese Imperial General Headquarters, hereby accept the provisions set forth in the declaration issued by the heads of the Governments of the United States, China, and Great Britain on 26 July 1945 at Potsdam, and subsequently adhered to by the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, which four powers are hereafter referred to as the Allied Powers. We hereby proclaim the unconditional surrender to the Allied Powers of the Japanese Imperial General Headquarters and of all Japanese armed forces and all armed forces under the Japanese control wherever situated. We hereby command all Japanese forces wherever situated and the Japanese people to cease hostilities forthwith, to preserve and save from damage all ships, aircraft, and military and civil property and to comply with all requirements which my be imposed by the Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers or by agencies of the Japanese Government at his direction. We hereby command the Japanese Imperial Headquarters to issue at once orders to the Commanders of all Japanese forces and all forces under Japanese control wherever situated to surrender unconditionally themselves and all forces under their control. We hereby command all civil, military and naval officials to obey and enforce all proclamations, and orders and directives deemed by the Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers to be proper to effectuate this surrender and issued by him or under his authority and we direct all such officials to remain at their posts and to continue to perform their non-combatant duties unless specifically relieved by him or under his authority. We hereby undertake for the Emperor, the Japanese Government and their successors to carry out the provisions of the Potsdam Declaration in good faith, and to issue whatever orders and take whatever actions may be required by the Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers or by any other designated representative of the Allied Powers for the purpose of giving effect to that Declaration. We hereby command the Japanese Imperial Government and the Japanese Imperial General Headquarters at once to liberate all allied prisoners of war and civilian internees now under Japanese control and to provide for their protection, care, maintenance and immediate transportation to places as directed. The authority of the Emperor and the Japanese Government to rule the state shall be subject to the Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers who will take such steps as he deems proper to effectuate these terms of surrender. Signed at TOKYO BAY, JAPAN at 09:04 I on the SECOND day of SEPTEMBER, 1945 MAMORU SHIGMITSU By Command and in behalf of the Emperor of Japan and the Japanese Government YOSHIJIRO UMEZU By Command and in behalf of the Japanese Imperial General Headquarters Accepted at TOKYO BAY, JAPAN at 0903 I on the SECOND day of SEPTEMBER, 1945, for the United States, Republic of China, United Kingdom and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, and in the interests of the other United Nations at war with Japan. DOUGLAS MAC ARTHUR Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers C.W. NIMITZ United States Representative HSU YUNG-CH'ANG Republic of China Representative BRUCE FRASER United Kingdom Representative KUZMA DEREVYANKO Union of Soviet Socialist Republics Representative THOMAS BLAMEY Commonwealth of Australia Representative L. MOORE COSGRAVE Dominion of Canada Representative JACQUES LE CLERC Provisional Government of the French Republic Representative C.E.L. HELFRICH Kingdom of the Netherlands Representative LEONARD M. ISITT Dominion of New Zealand Representative Source: https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/surrender-of-japan

Bush's Address on the L.A. Riots