In June 1965 Martin Luther King Jr. wrote an editorial to the New York​ Amsterdam News asking for immediate passage of the voting rights bill. The bill had been passed by the US Senate by not yet by the House of Representatives. On August 6, 1965, The Voting Rights Bill was signed by President Lyndon B. Johnson with Dr. King in attendance​. Today, I will read the letter that King wrote along with a brief note on the bill. Remembering that the 15th Amendment to the Constitution which was ratified in 1870 had been virtually ignored for nearly a century in this nation. In 2019, it is no longer let my people vote, but now the mantra​ should come on people get out and vote.

An Address by:
DR. MARTIN LUTHER KING, J R . Chicago Freedom Festival The Amphitheatre
Chicago, Illinois
Saturday, March 12, 1966

By The Blackman, Who Reads Aloud

A CRUST OF BREAD
AND A CORNER TO SLEEP IN,
A MINUTE TO SMILE
AND AN HOUR TO WEEP IN,
A PINT OF JOY TO A PECK OF TROUBLE,
AND NEVER A LAUGH
THAT THE MOURNS COME DOUBLE,​
AND THIS IS LIFE.

Paul Laurence Dunbar

I KNOW THAT
YOU HAVE BEEN TEMPTED TO TAKE UP THE TORCHES AND DO AS DID THE SLUM TENANTS OF LOS ANGELES WHO LIT THE FIRES OF WATTS, SCORCHING THE RATIONAL CONSCIENCE INDELIBLY WITH THEIR SEETHING RESENTMENTMENT AND Sl'fOULDERING FRUSTRATION. BUT LET ME REMIND YOU THAT THERE ARE MANY WHITE MEN AND WOMEN WHO ARE OUR FRIENDS, MANY WHO HAVE SUFFERED
AND SACRIFICED AND DIED HITH US AS WE STRUGGLED TO BRING TRUE FREEDOM AND DEMOCRACY TO OUR BELOVED LAND. WE MUST NEVER FORGET THAT IT WAS A HHITE 1-iOTHER FROM MICHIGAN, VIOLA LIUZZO, WHO CAME TO THE SOUTH TO SELMA TO MARCH WITH US AND WHO HAS SHOT DOWN IN THE DARK OF NIGHT ON ALABAMA'S HIGHWAY 80. WE MUST NOT FORGET THAT IT WAS A YOUNG EPISCOPALIAN SEMINARIAN, NAMED JONATHAN DANIELS WHO WORKED WITH US IN VOTER REGISTRATION IN LOWNDES COUNTY, Alabama, AND, WHO THERE GAVE HIS LIFE ON FREEDOM'S ALTAR, WHILE BESIDE HIM WAS A CATHOLIC PIUEST, FATHER MORRISROE, FROM THIS VERY CITY, CHICAGO. WE MUST NEVER FORGET THAT THERE HERE ONCE TWO JEWISH LADS, MICHAEL SCHWERNER AND ANDREW GOODMAN, FROH NEW YORK, WHO GAVE THEIR LIVES FOR FREEDOM ALONG WITH A BLACK FRIEND, JAMES CHANEY IN MISSISSIPPI. WITH SUCH VALIENT MARTYRS IN MIND, LET ME CALL YOU AWAY FROM THE BITTERNESS OF BIGOTRY, BACK TO LOVE AND RECONCILIATION REMINDING YOU THAT SUCH GREAT SOULS WERE TRULY​ OUR FRIENDS

MLK 1966

THE BLACKMAN WHO READS ALOUD
162 years ago Frederick Douglass spoke the absolute truth to a nation that was mired in the sins of institutional slavery. Fast forward to today the nation is mired in the sins caused by that sinful system. Will this nation finally make right what was horribly wrong with that system?​

“If there is no struggle there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom and yet depreciate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground, they want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters.
This struggle may be a moral one, or it may be a physical one, and it may be both moral and physical, but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows​ or with both”

Looking back as we look ahead. If the American Decendents of Slavery think that this nation will easily give in to the payment of reparations without a mass effort of civil disobedience or civil direct action confronting the forces who control the economic systems of this nation. Then they are paddling up torrid river crushed by relentless rain and wind without the benefit of a paddle. The battle for reparation will be more difficult than the battle for our civil and social rights. You see those rights came without a price for controlling institutions to pay. That is simply not the case as it relates to reparations. That battle will be hard-fought and it will require an undue amount of perseverance. Frederick Douglass said it clearly the is no struggle there is no progress. My only wish is that Mr. Douglass and Mr. Garnet had fought as hard for reparations as they fought for the abolition of slavery in the United States. Yet, way too many of our ancestors were victims of ignorance caused by the enslavement of 246 years to understand that they truly had economic rights sacred that needed to be honored and not ignored.​

THE BLACKMAN WHO READS ALOUD
162 years ago Frederick Douglass spoke the absolute truth to a nation that was mired in the sins of institutional slavery. Fast forward to today the nation is mired in the sins caused by that sinful system. Will this nation finally make right what was horribly wrong with that system?​

“If there is no struggle there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom and yet depreciate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground, they want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters.
This struggle may be a moral one, or it may be a physical one, and it may be both moral and physical, but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows​ or with both”

Looking back as we look ahead. If the American Decendents of Slavery think that this nation will easily give in to the payment of reparations without a mass effort of civil disobedience or civil direct action confronting the forces who control the economic systems of this nation. Then they are paddling up torrid river crushed by relentless rain and wind without the benefit of a paddle. The battle for reparation will be more difficult than the battle for our civil and social rights. You see those rights came without a price for controlling institutions to pay. That is simply not the case as it relates to reparations. That battle will be hard-fought and it will require an undue amount of perseverance. Frederick Douglass said it clearly the is no struggle there is no progress. My only wish is that Mr. Douglass and Mr. Garnet had fought as hard for reparations as they fought for the abolition of slavery in the United States. Yet, way too many of our ancestors were victims of ignorance caused by the enslavement of 246 years to understand that they truly had economic rights sacred that needed to be honored and not ignored.​