"I’ve seen too much hate
to want to hate, myself, and every time I see it, I say to myself, hate
is too great a burden to bear. Somehow we must be able to stand up
against our most bitter opponents and say:”We shall match your capacity
to inflict suffering by our capacity to endure suffering. We will meet
your physical force with soul force. Do to us what you will and we will
still love you. We cannot in all good conscience obey your unjust laws
and abide by the unjust system, because non-cooperation with evil is as
much a moral obligation as is cooperation with good, so throw us in jail
and we will still love you. Bomb our homes and threaten our children,
and, as difficult as it is, we will still love you. Send your hooded
perpetrators of violence into our communities at the midnight hour and
drag us out on some wayside road and leave us half-dead as you beat us,
and we will still love you. Send your propaganda agents around the
country and make it appear that we are not fit, culturally and
otherwise, for integration, but we’ll still love you. But be assured
that we’ll wear you down by our capacity to suffer, and one day we will
win our freedom. We will not only win freedom for ourselves; we will
appeal to your heart and conscience that we will win you in the process,
and our victory will be a double victory." Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
