Eleven o’clock on Sunday morning is still the most segregated hour in America and the Sunday school is still the most segregated school of the week.” The speech closes with King restating the importance of legal victories but also stressing the equally important role of the church.

Only by doing this can it be effective in its attack on outside evils. First, he proposed the church “make it palpably clear that segregation is morally wrong and sinful.” Next, he impressed on them the need to teach how “race hate is based on fears, suspicions, and misunderstandings that are usually groundless.” And lastly, King urged churches to take the lead in social reforms: “the church must remove the yoke of segregation from its own body. Called to combat social evils, it has often remained silent behind the safe security of stained glass windows… It has often cast the mantle of its sanctity over the system of segregation.” King veers from his original draft, likely sensing the friction his message would create with more conservative members, he crosses out several lines that called Southern churches “the ready lackeys of state government” and which pointed out their hypocrisy “in defiance of the Supreme Court’s desegregation decisions, they allow their religious educational building to be used for private segregated schools.” Instead, he settled on a more optimistic tone asking for churches to be “a headlight guiding men progressively and decisively to higher levels of understanding.” The speech goes on to a list of three ways King says the church can face the challenges of the day. “Honesty impels us to admit that religious bodies in America have not been faithful to their prophetic mission on the question of racial justice in the midst of a nation rife with racial animosity, the church too often has been content to mouth pious irrelevancies and sanctimonious trivialities. Nowhere is this moral and spiritual lag expressed more than in the continued existence of racial injustice.” King calls the church the country’s “chief moral guardians” but scolded their lack of action. … If we are to survive today, our moral and spiritual ‘lag’ must be eliminated. We have learned to fly the air like birds and swim the sea like fish, but we have not learned the simple art of walking the earth like brothers. “The richer we have become materially, the poorer we have become morally and spiritually. The speech, which echoed another by King given at The Conference on Religion and Race in Chicago in 1963, opens with him praising the heights of America’s accomplishments in science and technology but lamenting the lows of its culture. Civil Rights Commission, who made a strong stand against the King-style civil disobedience.” At the time, the ICCC represented 8000 congregations, including 587 all-Black congregations, each with their own annual meeting. According to *Christianity Today* (10/14/66), King was originally scheduled to appear alone, but “conservative queasiness caused the addition of lawyer Robert G. to deliver an address to the assembled delegates at The International Convention of Christian Churches (ICCC) held in Dallas, Texas on September 25th, 1966. An original speech used by Martin Luther King, Jr. About very good with dampstaining to the left margins of each page, oxidation residue from a paperclip on the first and last sheets affecting several interior pages and a chip on the last page, but with the text and emendations clearly legible. Quarto sheets typed rectos only with text capitalized throughout and with various corrections, additions, and edits in King’s hand on 25 pages, including the hand written title.

Library of Congress 88 Books That Shaped Americaĭallas: International Convention of Christian Churches, September 25, 1966.

Johnson Highspot of American Literature.Hugo Award for Best Science Fiction Achievement.

What makes a book an 'Antiquarian Book'?.

Manuscript for speech