You know, my friends, there comes a time when people get tired of being trampled over by the iron feet of oppression. There comes a time, my friends, when people get tired of being plunged across the abyss of humiliation, where they’d experienced the bleakness of nagging despair. There comes a time when people get tired of being pushed out of the glittering sunlight of life’s July and left standing amid the piercing chill of an alpine November. There comes a time.
And we are here, we are here this evening because we are tired now. And I want to say that we are not here advocating violence. We have never done that. I want it to be known throughout Montgomery and throughout this nation that we are Christian people! We believe in the Christian religion! We believe in the teachings of Jesus! The only weapon that we have in our hands this evening is the weapon of protest!
Love is one of the pivotal points of the Christian faith, but there is another side called justice. And justice is really love in calculation. Justice is love correcting that which revolts against love.
The Almighty God himself is not the God just standing out saying through Hosea,
I love you, Israel.He’s also the God that stands up before the nations and says,Be still and know that I’m God, that if you don’t obey me I will break the backbone of your power and slap you out of the orbits of your international and national relationships.Martin Luther King Jr., address to the first Montgomery Improvement Association, December 5, 1955
