Leid Stories—Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s Plan for Justice and Progress—01.16.17

We commemorate Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day (he would have been 88 years old on his actual birthday, Jan. 15, 1929) with his own words.

Addressing the 11th annual convention of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in Atlanta, Ga. (Aug. 16, 1967), Dr. King laid out the strategies the civil-rights organization had been using to beat back social, political and economic oppression of African Americans in the South. Similar self-initiated grassroots action across America would produce more benefits and less misery, he said.

Dr. King warned of the power of the state to impede justice and progress, and maintain inequality and oppression. This is the “natural” order in our capitalist society, he said, and therefore “change” must be systemic, not isolated