"The Other America" is a speech by Martin Luther King Jr. delivered in various forms at least five times from 1967 until 1968. It was first given in its recognized form on Friday, April 14, 1967, at the Memorial Auditorium at Stanford University, where it was filmed and recorded by KQED-TV. King delivered three well-known variations that have transcriptions, at Stanford, Hunter College, and Grosse Pointe High School. In the original 49-minute speech, King addresses the concept of Two Americas, the history of the civil rights movement, the long-term problem of racism in the United States, arguments for and against addressing it, a proposal for a comprehensive anti-poverty program with a guaranteed minimum income, and closes out the speech by touching briefly on his opposition to the Vietnam War.
Historian Sylvie Laurent notes the speech draws influence from writer and activist Michael Harrington and economist John Kenneth Galbraith. The title and the theme of King's speech was influenced by Harrington, a democratic socialist who had once worked on several civil rights campaigns with King. Galbraith, a post-Keynesian economist who took an institutionalist approach, also informed King's speech, with both of their ideas evolving into key positions taken by King's Poor People's Campaign (PPC) a year later. King eventually developed a loose alliance with Robert F. Kennedy to promote the PPC, with three of the ideas originally found in the speech becoming PPC campaign policy proposals by March 1968: a call for a guaranteed annual income, a need for a public works program, and an end to the Vietnam War.
Background Almost a century after the end of slavery in the United States, violence and racial injustice by whites against Black Americans in the 1950s was still occurring, with murders, lynchings, and executions a continuing threat. After Brown v. Board of Education overturned racial segregation in 1954, it took years to implement in the Deep South where Jim Crow laws persisted. Baptist minister Martin Luther King Jr. used nonviolence to lead a movement to dismantle Jim Crow, starting with the Montgomery bus boycott in 1955. He became the president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) in 1957. The Cold War period of anti-communism led the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) under J. Edgar Hoover to monitor King in the early 1960s.
Success finally came with the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. But even with the end of legalized segregation, poverty, unemployment, and institutional racism persisted. By 1966, after white attacks on the Chicago Freedom Movement and James Meredith in the March Against Fear, nonviolence as a primary strategy began to lose ground to young radicals and black power factions who believed King was out of touch. Meanwhile, King believed a national solution was needed, as programs like the Great Society were not producing results for most Black Americans. King began to oppose the Vietnam War outright by early 1967, directly criticizing the role of the United States, a position which severed his ties with the Johnson administration. King now shifted his focus towards a multiracial movement, calling for economic justice, income security, full employment, and housing for all Americans.
Speeches Stanford
During his lifetime, King delivered two speeches on the Stanford University campus. The first was the keynote address at the Western States Civil Rights Conference, held at the Stanford Memorial Auditorium on April 23, 1964. Three years later, on Friday afternoon, April 14, 1967, he returned to the same venue to deliver "The Other America". Both speeches are commemorated with a wall plaque near the auditorium's entrance.
King flew in to the San Francisco Airport from Los Angeles, arriving an hour late due to a flight delay. Because of the time constraints, King was taken directly to the auditorium, where he stepped out of the car and on to the stage. After a brief introduction by Rev. B. Davie Napier, dean of the chapel, King gave a mostly extemporaneous speech to an audience of 1,800 people, the majority of whom were students, for approximately 49 minutes. The crowd was polite, and King received two standing ovations. An overflow crowd of 100 listened outside over loudspeakers. One man was arrested at the scene for disorderly conduct.
Content King begins by addressing the problem of poverty and racial and economic inequality. He describes what he calls the "Two Americas", where white people prosper in one America while Black Americans live "in rat-infested, vermin-filled slums" in the other. In this other America, Black children are taught that they are inferior to whites. King summarizes the problem as one of race, poverty, and misery, describing the harsh economic conditions of Black Americans, their mass unemployment, and housing discrimination.
He notes that the struggle for civil rights has now shifted from ending the everyday humiliation of segregation, a fight for basic decency, to one of true equality, a position that many white supporters of the movement seem unwilling to accept. King discusses how racism goes beyond prejudice, as a belief in the inferiority of other people, an idea at the root of those who support genocide. He spends time discussing the white backlash to progress in the struggle for civil rights, noting historically that for every advance, the country often takes a step back. King provides numerous examples from Black history illustrating this problem, such as the failed promise of land to native-born Black Americans in the Reconstruction era, while white European immigrants received land and other benefits denied to Blacks.
Throughout American history, King maintains, Black Americans were denied the same rights as whites. And when they do finally achieve some small measure of progress, enforcement of their newfound rights is minimal to nonexistent. King condemns those who would engage in race riots, but recognizes that "a riot is the language of the unheard", a cry of desperation for justice after it is repeatedly ignored.
King then addresses three major arguments the civil rights movement faces: those of time, legislation, and the bootstrap metaphor. Those who claim the time is not right to enact major social changes betray a kind of non-neutrality that is hostile to civil rights. "The time is always right to do right", King argues. Addressing the argument against civil rights legislation, he notes that some say morality cannot be legislated and that people must be changed by converting their hearts. King counters that legislation allows behavior to be moderated: "Even though it may be true that the law cannot make a man love me, it can restrain him from lynching me."
Finally, to address the bootstrap metaphor, King says that he is often told that Black people should just help themselves and solve their own problems in their communities, as other white immigrant groups have done. King counters this notion by noting that Black Americans were the only people who were forced to come to the country more than three centuries ago and are the only group that was enslaved and discriminated against because of the color of their skin. No other group has been treated this way in the United States, King argues. He then proposes a guaranteed minimum income for all Americans as a way to partly address the economic conditions in the Black community.
King briefly touches upon the war in Vietnam to great applause, noting that it harms the lives of American soldiers and Vietnamese children alike and dilutes the efforts of the Great Society by wasting money abroad instead of using those resources at home, where they are most needed. King observes, "if we can spend $35 billion a year to fight an ill-considered war in Vietnam, and $20 billion to put a man on the Moon, our nation can spend billions of dollars to put God's children on their own two feet right here on earth." He closes the speech with a brief homily, expressing optimism that the future will be brighter and that justice will eventually prevail.
Hunter College Almost a year later, the Kerner Commission, set up to investigate race riots in the summer of 1967, released their final report in February 1968. Their conclusions were aligned with the theme of King's "The Other America" speech, finding that the "nation is moving toward two societies, one black, one white—separate and unequal." A month later, King delivered a variation of the original speech to a mostly Black audience as part of his main address at the 18th annual "Salute to Freedom" at Hunter College in New York, on March 10, 1968.
The fundraising event, attended by more than 2000 people affiliated with Local 1199, represented healthcare workers for the Drug and Hospital Union, the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union (RWDSU), and the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO). Local 1199 was known for its high representation of people of color, including Black and Puerto Rican members. It is believed that this was part of King's larger strategy of building a multiracial coalition for his Poor People's Campaign.
Grosse Pointe High School
Four days after speaking at Hunter College, King delivered another variation of "The Other America" speech, this time at Grosse Pointe High School. The Grosse Pointe Human Relations Council, a citizens' group concerned about housing discrimination in Grosse Pointe Farms, Michigan, had invited King to speak to their community. On Thursday, March 14, 1968, King addressed a crowd of 2,500 people in the high school gymnasium.
From the beginning, the event was marred by approximately 150 protesters from different factions who carried anti-communist and religious signs and chanted "Commie go home!" outside the venue. Inside the gymnasium, King's speech was repeatedly interrupted by hecklers, one of whom shouted, "King, you're a traitor!" At one point, fireworks were set off, frightening the crowd. The Ku Klux Klan also left recruitment literature on the windshields of cars parked for the event. King told the media that this was the first time he had witnessed such organized opposition.
Influences and impact Michael Harrington Writer Michael Harrington, originally a member of the Catholic Worker Movement, was a political ally of Bayard Rustin and first began working with him on civil rights campaigns in the mid to late 1950s, around the time of the Montgomery bus boycotts. Harrington first heard King speak in 1957 in his "Give Us the Ballot" speech at the Prayer Pilgrimage for Freedom in Washington, D.C. He began working more closely with the movement in 1960, first on the Committee to Defend Martin Luther King and later as one of the primary organizers of the march outside the 1960 Democratic National Convention, which intended to strengthen the Democratic Party's position on civil rights. During this period, Harrington developed a working relationship with King, and the two began sharing ideas.