Martin Luther King, Jr.
January 15th 1929 to April 4th 1968
You may well ask: "Why direct action? Why sit-ins, marches and so forth? Isn't negotiation a better path?" You are quite right in calling for negotiation. Indeed, this is the very purpose of direct action. Nonviolent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and foster such a tension that a community which has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue. It seeks so to dramatize the issue that it can no longer be ignored. . . . We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.
The words of MLK
Martin Luther King, Jr. (just off centre), with other civil-rights supporters at a march on Washington, D.C., in August 1963
Update 2-18-04 Move Bush! Get out the way! Get out the way! An
insider's account of the day Bush tried to crash MLK's birthday.
