"Remaining Awake Through a Great Revolution," Address at Morehouse College Commencement | The Martin Luther King, Jr. Research and Education Institute

"Remaining Awake Through a Great Revolution," Address at Morehouse College Commencement

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Author: King, Martin Luther, Jr.<br>Date: June 2, 1959?<br>Location: Atlanta, Ga.?<br>Genre: Speech<br>Topic: Brown v. Board of Education<br>Martin Luther King, Jr. - Political and Social Views<br>Details<br>In a 22 December 1958 letter, Morehouse president Benjamin Mays invited King to address the graduating class of 1959; King accepted six days later. In these prepared remarks—his earliest known usage of this title—King invokes his common themes of anticolonialism and black self-respect.1 He places the domestic “social revolution" in a global context and urges the graduates of his alma mater to rise above the limits of “individualistic concerns,” submitting that all people are “caught up in an inescapable network of mutuality.”<br>News coverage of the speech indicates that King modified this handwritten text at several points. He advised his audience to adhere to nonviolence, for the "oppressors would be happy if black Americans “would resort to physical violence” and reminded them of progress already made: “We’ve broken loose from the Egypt of slavery . . . and we stand on the border of the promised land in integration.”2 King reportedly closed with a warning against inaction: “If you go home, sit down and do nothing about the revolution which we are witnessing you will be the victim of a dangerous optimism.”3<br>There can be no gainsaying of the fact that we are experiencing today one of the greatest revolutions that the world has ever known. Indeed there have been other revolutions, but they have been local and isolated. The distinctive feature of the present revolution is that it is worldwide. It is shaking the foundations of the east and the west. It has engulfed every continent of the world. You can hear its deep rumblings from the lowest village street to the highest intellectual ivory tower. Every segment of society is being swept into its mainstream. The great challenge facing every member of this graduating class is to remain awake, alert and creative through this great revolution.<br>In thinking of the challenge which this revolution brings to each of us, I am reminded of a familiar story that comes down to us from the pen of Washington Irving. It is the story of Rip Van Winkle.4 The one thing that most of us us we all remember about this story is the fact that Rip Van Winkle slept twenty years. But there is another significant fact in this story that is often over looked. It is the change that took place in that the pictures that [strikeout illegible] on of wall of the little inn in the town in the Hudson town on the Hudson from which Rip went up into the mountains mountains for his long sleep. When he went up the wall had a picture of King George III of England. When he came down it had the picture of another George, George Washington. Rip looking up at the picture of George Washington was completely lost. When he started his quiet sleep America was still under the domination of the British Empire. When he came down she was a free and independent nation. This incident suggest that the most striking thing about the story of Rip Van Winkle was not that he slept twenty years, but that he slept through a great revolution. While he was peacefully snoring up in the mountain a revolution was taking place which completely changed the face of the world. Rip knew nothing about it. He was asleep. There is nothing more tragic than to sleep through a revolution.5<br>We do not have to look very far to see signs of the present revolution revolution that is taking place in our world today. There is a revolution in the social and political structure of our world on the question of the equality of man. The great masses of people are determined to end the explotation of their lives, and share in their own future and destiny. They are moving toward their goal like a tidal wave. They are saying in no uncertain terms that colonialism and racism must go.<br>There are approximately two billion five hundred million (2,500,000,000) people in this world, and the vast majority of those<br>The practical consequences of this revolution are clearly seen. For insta example; twenty five years ago most of the one billion six hundred million (1,600,000,00) colored peoples of Asia and Africa were dominated politically, exploited economically, segregated and humiliated by some foreign power. Just fourteen years ago the British had under her control more than five hundred million people in Asia and Africa. Twenty Thirty years ago there were only two independent countries in the whole of Africa—Liberia and Ethiopia. But today the picture has greatly changed. More the one billion three hundred million (1,300,000,000) of the former colonial subject have their independence, and the British Empire now has less than...