What would Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. be saying and doing today? The physical man was stolen from us that tragic spring evening in 1968, but his ethos survives. There is no need to speculate and use our words in place of his own. His ‘The Other America’ speech seems hauntingly prescient and could easily be delivered today, replacing ‘Vietnam’ with ‘Covid-19’, and ‘Black Power’ with ‘#DefundThePolice’. Dr. King had wisdom beyond his time and years. His life was a gift to us, a gift that is just as valuable today as it was when he walked among us. I, like a majority of Americans, only know Dr. King through his footprint on history having been born after his assassination. Although he has not drawn breath for over a half-century now, I regard his prophetic voice as perhaps the most important to heed today.
Please take the time to read(or reread), or listen(or relisten) to Dr. King’s ‘The Other America’ speech and think about what it means you should be doing today.
The Other America Transcript
This version of the speech was delivered at Stanford University April 14th, 1967. Dr. King would deliver similar versions of the speech in other venues through the rest of 1967 and early 1968 before his assassination.
Members of the faculty and members of the student body of this great institution of learning; ladies and gentlemen.
Now there are several things that one could talk about before such a large, concerned, and enlightened audience. There are so many problems facing our nation and our world, that one could just take off anywhere. But today I would like to talk mainly about the race problems since I’ll have to rush right out and go to New York to talk about Vietnam tomorrow. and I’ve been talking about it a great deal this week and weeks before that.
But I’d like to use a subject from which to speak this afternoon, the Other America.