NOVEMBER 23 - 29, 1986
E cerpts from
artin Luther King, Jr.'s Famous Sermon
. .
"I See the Promised Land"
This was Dr. King's last sermon. He delivered it on the eve uf his ussussiuutiou, April 3, 1968.
" ... Now the other thing we'll have to do is this: Alway anchor our external direct
ction with the power of economic withdrawal. No , we are poor people, individu­
ally, we are poor when you compare us with white society in America. We are poor. Never
stop and forget that collectively, thatmeana all of us together, collectively we are richer
than all the nation in the world, with the exception of nine. Did you ever think about
that? After you leave the United States, Soviet Rus ia, Great Britain, West Germany,
France, and I could name the others, the Negro collectively i richer than most nations of
the world. We have an annual income of more than thirty billion dollars a year, which is
more than all of the exports of the United States, and more than the national budget of
Canada. Did you know that? That' power right there, if we know how to pool it.
We don't have to argue with anybody. We don't have to curse and go around acting bad
with our words. We don't need any bricks and bottle , we don't need any Molotov cocktails,
we ju t need to go around to these teres, and to these massive industrie in our country,
and say, "God sent us by here, to ay to you that you're not treating his children right. And
we've come by here to ask you to make the first item on your agenda - fair treatment, where
God's children are concerned. Now, if you are not prepared to do that, we do have an agenda
that we must follow. And our agenda calls for withdrawing economic support from you."
And so, as a result of this, we are asking you tonight, to go out and tell your neighbors not to buy
Coca-Cola in Memphis. Go by and tell them not to buy Sealtest milk. Tell them not to buy -."
" ... But not only that, we've got to strengthen blac institution . I call upon you to take your
money out of the banks downtown and eposit your money in Tri-State Bank - we want a
"bank-in" movement in Memphis. So go by the savings and loan as ociation. I'm not
asking you something that we don't do ourselves at SCLC. Judge Hook and others will tell
you that we have an account here in the savings and loan association from the Southern
Chri tian Leadership Conference. We're just telling you to follow what we're doing. Put
your money there. You have six or seven black insurance companies in Memphi . Take out
your insurance there. We want to have an "insurance-in. n
Now these are some practical things we can do. We begin the proce of building a greater
economic base. And at the ame time, we are putting pressure where it really hurts. I ask
you to follow through here.
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