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FREEDOMWAYS                   FIRST QUARTER 1972

ership was not merely following the consensus, but having the courage and the integrity to go out and mobilize and mould the consensus. And that's what King was all about.
The man called King saw evil and tried to correct it. He saw im- morality and tried to right it. He saw suffering and tried to end it. He saw war and tried to stop it. But perhaps most importantly he saw something that a brilliant young black man who now sings sees very clearly, because King saw the need to "save the babies, to save the children" and to save a world destined to die-the same words that Marvin Gaye now sees so clearly. He saw students and tried to teach. You know he said, "I have gone to the mountain top."
Well, in case some of you have not gone to the mountain top, on top of the mountain there's a sign that says "Niggers not wanted." And if you are able to struggle to the top of that mountain, to gain the perception and the visual ability that it gives you, you are con- fronted with a box, and on the outside of that box it says "Niggers don't touch; and if you touch the box, don't open." The man called King walked to the top of the mountain, and he touched the box and he opened it. And inside the box it said, "Nigger, if you're crazy enough or courageous enough to look inside this box, don't be crazy enough to tell the world what you see here." But King opened the box and studied the documents and he came down from the moun- tain top and he said, "I have seen the problems in this country." He tried to tell you and me what he saw. And I realize that my inter- pretation of what I heard is colored by my own experience, my own family, my own travels, perhaps even my own neuroses. But let me try to bring your attention to a few of the things that King talked about.
Many of us castigated him for his advocacy of non-violence, but many of us didn't understand that King was not so simplistic as to assume that non-violence was a strategy. He saw non-violence as an ultimate way of life. He realized that dying was not the challenge, but living was the challenge. And on the domestic scene, he under- stood that violence, in and of itself, is dysfunctional and divisive. But far beyond that his thinking probed much deeper. He was a man brilliant enough to understand that if you and I are to engage in the struggle against evil, against war, racism, poverty, hunger, disease and all the other critical problems that cripple human beings, we must pose a clear alternative. For those who engage in evil and battle of evil can only receive evil. So there must be some alternative. And he saw that alternative as good. Because those who seek justice

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