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Books by
Martin Luther King, Jr.
The Autobiography of Martin Luther King, Jr.
/
Strength to Love /
The Measure of a Man /
Why We Can't Wait
A Testament of Hope /
A Knock at Midnight /
The Papers of Martin Luther King, Jr., 1948-1963
Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community /
Stride Toward Freedom: The Montgomery Story
* * * * *
Eulogy for the Young Victims
of the
Sixteenth Street Baptist Church Bombing
By Martin Luther King,
Jr.
Delivered at
Sixth Avenue Baptist Church 18 September 1963 -- Birmingham, Alabama
This afternoon we gather in the quiet of this
sanctuary to pay our last tribute of respect to these beautiful
children of God. They entered the stage of history just a few
years ago, and in the brief years that they were privileged to
act on this mortal stage, they played their parts exceedingly
well. Now the curtain falls; they move through the exit; the
drama of their earthly life comes to a close. They are now
committed back to that eternity from which they came.
These children—unoffending, innocent, and beautiful—were
the victims of one of the most vicious and tragic crimes ever
perpetrated against humanity.
And yet they died nobly. They are the martyred heroines of a
holy crusade for freedom and human dignity. And so this
afternoon in a real sense they have something to say to each of
us in their death. They have something to say to every minister
of the gospel who has remained silent behind the safe security
of stained-glass windows. They have something to say to every
politician [Audience:] (Yeah) who has fed his
constituents with the stale bread of hatred and the spoiled meat
of racism. They have something to say to a federal government
that has compromised with the undemocratic practices of southern
Dixiecrats (Yeah) and the blatant hypocrisy of right-wing
northern Republicans. (Speak)
They have something to say
to every Negro (Yeah) who has passively accepted the evil
system of segregation and who has stood on the sidelines in a
mighty struggle for justice. They say to each of us, black and
white alike, that we must substitute courage for caution. They
say to us that we must be concerned not merely about who
murdered them, but about the system, the way of life, the
philosophy which produced the murderers. Their death says to us
that we must work passionately and unrelentingly for the
realization of the American dream.
And so my friends, they did not die in vain. (Yeah)
God still has a way of wringing good out of evil. (Oh yes)
And history has proven over and over again that unmerited
suffering is redemptive. The innocent blood of these little
girls may well serve as a redemptive force (Yeah) that
will bring new light to this dark city. (Yeah) The holy
Scripture says, "A little child shall lead them." (Oh
yeah) The death of these little children may lead our whole
Southland (Yeah) from the low road of man's inhumanity to
man to the high road of peace and brotherhood. (Yeah, Yes)
These tragic deaths may lead our nation to substitute an
aristocracy of character for an aristocracy of color. The
spilled blood of these innocent girls may cause the whole
citizenry of Birmingham (Yeah) to transform the negative
extremes of a dark past into the positive extremes of a bright
future. Indeed this tragic event may cause the white South to
come to terms with its conscience. (Yeah)
And so I stand here to say this afternoon to all assembled
here, that in spite of the darkness of this hour (Yeah Well),
we must not despair. (Yeah, Well) We must not become
bitter (Yeah, That’s right), nor must we harbor the
desire to retaliate with violence. No, we must not lose faith in
our white brothers. (Yeah, Yes) Somehow we must believe
that the most misguided among them can learn to respect the
dignity and the worth of all human personality.
May I now say a word to you, the members of the bereaved
families? It is almost impossible to say anything that can
console you at this difficult hour and remove the deep clouds of
disappointment which are floating in your mental skies. But I
hope you can find a little consolation from the universality of
this experience. Death comes to every individual. There is an
amazing democracy about death. It is not aristocracy for some of
the people, but a democracy for all of the people. Kings die and
beggars die; rich men and poor men die; old people die and young
people die. Death comes to the innocent and it comes to the
guilty. Death is the irreducible common denominator of all men.
I hope you can find some consolation from Christianity's
affirmation that death is not the end. Death is not a period
that ends the great sentence of life, but a comma that
punctuates it to more lofty significance. Death is not a blind
alley that leads the human race into a state of nothingness, but
an open door which leads man into life eternal. Let this daring
faith, this great invincible surmise, be your sustaining power
during these trying days.
Now I say to you in conclusion, life is hard, at times as
hard as crucible steel. It has its bleak and difficult moments.
Like the ever-flowing waters of the river, life has its moments
of drought and its moments of flood. (Yeah, Yes) Like the
ever-changing cycle of the seasons, life has the soothing warmth
of its summers and the piercing chill of its winters. (Yeah)
And if one will hold on, he will discover that God walks with
him (Yeah, Well), and that God is able (Yeah, Yes)
to lift you from the fatigue of despair to the buoyancy of hope,
and transform dark and desolate valleys into sunlit paths of
inner peace.
And so today, you do not walk alone. You gave to this world
wonderful children. [moans] They didn’t live long
lives, but they lived meaningful lives. (Well) Their
lives were distressingly small in quantity, but glowingly large
in quality. (Yeah) And no greater tribute can be paid to
you as parents, and no greater epitaph can come to them as
children, than where they died and what they were doing when
they died. (Yeah) They did not die in the dives and dens
of Birmingham (Yeah, Well), nor did they die discussing
and listening to filthy jokes. (Yeah) They died between
the sacred walls of the church of God (Yeah, Yes), and
they were discussing the eternal meaning (Yes) of love.
This stands out as a beautiful, beautiful thing for all
generations. (Yes)
Shakespeare had Horatio to say some
beautiful words as he stood over the dead body of Hamlet. And
today, as I stand over the remains of these beautiful, darling
girls, I paraphrase the words of Shakespeare: (Yeah, Well):
Good night, sweet princesses. Good night, those who symbolize a
new day. (Yeah, Yes) And may the flight of angels (That’s
right) take thee to thy eternal rest. God bless you.
* * * * *
This "Eulogy" was delivered at funeral service for three of the children—Addie
Mae Collins, Carol Denise McNair, and Cynthia Diane Wesley—killed in
the bombing. A separate service was held for the fourth victim, Carole
Robertson, Sept. 17, 1963, at St.
John AME Church. * * * * *
update 31 August 2008 |
