Martin Luther King, Jr.'s Words about Justice: Safety, Expediency, Vanity and Conscience: His Call for Our Collective State of Maladjustment
(On September 1, 1967, Martin Luther King, Jr. presented a keynote address to a national convention
group of psychologists: "The Role of the Behavioral Scientist in The Civil Rights Movement"
The following are excerpts from that address:)
"These are often difficult things to say but I have come to see more and more that it is necessary to utter the truth in order to deal with the great problems that we face in our society.” ...“It is my deep conviction that justice is indivisible, that injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” ...“On some positions cowardice asks the question, "Is it safe?" Expediency asks the question, "Is it politic?" Vanity asks the question, "Is it popular?" But conscience must ask the question, "Is it right?" And there comes a time when one must take a stand that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular. But one must take it because it is right. And that is where I find myself today.”
"... I am sure that we all recognize that there are some things in our society, some things in our world, to which we should never be adjusted... There are some things concerning which we must always be maladjusted if we are to be people of good will. We must never adjust ourselves to racial discrimination and racial segregation. We must never adjust ourselves to religious bigotry... Thus, it may well be that our world is in dire need of a new organization, the International Association for the Advancement of Creative Maladjustment.
"Men and women should be as maladjusted as the prophet Amos, who in the midst of the injustices of his day, could cry out in words that echo across the centuries, "Let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream"; or as maladjusted as Abraham Lincoln, who in the midst of his vacillations finally came to see that this nation could not survive half slave and half free; or as maladjusted as Thomas Jefferson, who in the midst of an age amazingly adjusted to slavery, could scratch across the pages of history, words lifted to cosmic proportions, "We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal..." "... And through such creative maladjustment, we may be able to emerge from the bleak and desolate midnight of man's inhumanity to man.... I have not lost hope. I must confess that these have been very difficult days for me personally. And these have been difficult days for every Civil Rights leader, for every lover of justice and peace.”
