Martin Luther King, Jr., gave a speech at Stanford that we must not forget
Martin Luther King, Jr., was at a crossroads when he came to Stanford University in April 1967.
The civil rights movement was adrift. Nonviolence was challenged by riots in Los Angeles, Detroit, Chicago, and Newark. Just ten days before he arrived on campus King had spoken out against the Vietnam War, which met with a fierce backlash from the editorial pages of the New York Times, the Washington Post, and even from the NAACP, as Jonathan Eig writes in King: A Life, his magisterial new biography.
At Stanford, though, despite his audience of mostly draft-age undergraduates, King said he did not want to discuss Vietnam. Delivered without notes before a crowded Memorial Auditorium, his address, which would turn out to be among his most famous, was about inequality.
There are two Americas, King said, one “overflowing with the milk of prosperity and the honey of opportunity. This America is the habitat of millions of people who have food and material necessities for their bodies; and culture and education for their minds; and freedom and human dignity for their spirits. In this America, millions of people experience every day the opportunity of having life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness in all of their dimensions. And in this America millions of young people grow up in the sunlight of opportunity.”
But the sunlight of opportunity did not shine for all young people.
“...Tragically and unfortunately, there is another America. This other America has a daily ugliness about it that constantly transforms the ebulliency of hope into the fatigue of despair. In this America millions of work-starved men walk the streets daily in search for jobs that do not exist. In this America millions of people find themselves living in rat-infested, vermin-filled slums. In this America people are poor by the millions. They find themselves perishing on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity.”
The speech was a meditation not just on the material conditions of poverty, but also on its psychological impact, especially for children:
“In a sense, the greatest tragedy of this other America is what it does to little children. Little children in this other America are forced to grow up with clouds of inferiority forming every day in their little mental skies. As we look at this other America, we see it as an arena of blasted hopes and shattered dreams.”
That burden cuts across races, and afflicts “people of various backgrounds… Some are Mexican Americans, some are Puerto Ricans, some are Indians, some happen to be from other groups. Millions of them are Appalachian whites. But probably the largest group in this other America in proportion to its size in the population is the American Negro.”
In a radical move, King linked racial segregation to class division. Racism, in his Christian ethics, was harmful to its perpetrators’ souls, and helping them overcome it was an act of love. Socioeconomic inequality was similarly harmful to the whole country “in the realm of the spirit” because “we are all caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny” (as he wrote in the “Letter from Birmingham Jail” and reiterated at Stanford).
To unite the “two Americas” King proposed “a guaranteed minimum income for all people, and for our families of our country,” anticipating the concept of universal basic income. “I submit this afternoon that we can end poverty in the United States. Our nation has the resources to do it… The question is, whether our nation has the will.” Later that year King would formally launch the Poor People’s Campaign, an effort to refocus the civil rights movement on issues of economic justice and translate the ideas of the Stanford speech into policy.
What led King to give “The Other America” speech on our campus? King described the audience that day as “enlightened” and “wonderful,” perhaps sensing, in the two ovations he received, a shared commitment to shine the “sunlight of opportunity” more widely. Perhaps he was also aware that Stanford was founded in 1885 with a mission to promote mobility, that it enrolled women from its beginning, that the first graduating class included an African-American, and that the school charged no tuition for decades. But even if King did not know about these unique aspects of Stanford’s history it is important that we do.
Stanford’s story remains intertwined with King’s, not least because the university is home to the Martin Luther King, Jr. Research and Education Institute, directed by Lerone A. Martin, professor of religious studies and African and African American studies. In addition to housing the King papers, the institute is a partner to Stanford Digital Education in our shared mission to democratize access to the liberatory education that King believed should be available to all young people. The kind of education that would help America repair its divides.
January 20, 2025 will mark the 40th observance of Martin Luther King, Jr. day. As we commemorate the occasion on campus, including a screening of King delivering the Stanford speech (which is also available online), let us reflect on King’s legacy, our own educational ideals, and how we might work together to close the gaps that separate them from our reality.
Matthew Rascoff is vice provost for digital education at Stanford.
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