I want to preach this morning from the subject: "The Birth of a New
Nation." And I would like to use as a basis for our thinking together
a story that has long since been stenciled on the mental sheets of succeeding
generations. It is the story of the Exodus, the story of the flight of the
Hebrew people from the bondage of Egypt, through the wilderness, and finally,
to the promised land. It's a beautiful story. I had the privilege the other
night of seeing the story in movie terms in New York City, entitled the
"Ten Commandments," and I came to see it in all of its beauty-the
struggle of Moses, the struggle of his devoted followers as they sought
to get out of Egypt. And they finally moved on to the wilderness and toward
the promised land. This is something of the story of every people struggling
for freedom. It is the first story of man's explicit quest for freedom.
And it demonstrates the stages that seem to inevitably follow the quest
for freedom. Prior to March the sixth, 1957, there existed a country known as the Gold
Coast. This country was a colony of the British Empire. And this country
was situated in that vast continent known as Africa. I'm sure you know a
great deal about Africa, that continent with some two hundred million people.
And it extends and covers a great deal of territory. There are many familiar
names associated with Africa that you would probably remember, and there
are some countries in Africa that many people never realize. For instance,
Egypt is in Africa. And there is that vast area of North Africa with Egypt
and Ethiopia, with tunisia and Algeria and Morocco and Libya. Then you might
move to South Africa and you think of that extensive territory known as
the Union of South Africa. There is that capital city Johannesburg that
you read so much about these days. Then there is central Africa with places
like Rhodesia and the Belgian Congo. And then there is East Africa with
places like Kenya and Tanganyika, and places like Uganda and other very
powerful countries right there. And then you move over to West Africa where
you find the French West Africa and Nigeria, and Liberia and Sierra Leone
and places like that. And it is in this spot, in this section of Africa,
that we find the Gold Coast, there in West Africa. You also know that for years and for centuries, Africa has been one of
the most exploited continents in the history of the world. It's been the
"Dark Continent." It's been the continent that has suffered all
of the pain and the affliction that could be mustered up by other nations.
And it is that continent which has experienced slavery, which has experienced
all of the lowest standards that we can think about that have been brought
into being by the exploitation inflicted upon it by other nations. And this country, the Gold Coast, was a part of this extensive continent
known as Africa. It's a little country there in West Africa about ninety-one
thousand miles in area, with a population of about five million people,
a little more than four and a half million. And it stands there with its
capital city Accra. For years the Gold Coast was exploited and dominated
and trampled over. The first European settlers came in there about 1444,
the Portuguese, and they started legitimate trade with the people in the
Gold Coast; they started dealing with them with their gold, and in turn
they gave them guns and ammunition and gunpowder and that type of thing.
Well, pretty soon America was discovered a few years later in the fourteen
hundreds, and then the British West Indies. And all of these growing discoveries
brought about the slave trade. You remember it started in America in 1619.
And there was a big scramble for power in Africa. With the growth of
the slave trade there came into Africa, into the Gold Coast in particular,
not only the Portuguese but also the Swedes and the Danes and the Dutch
and the British. And all of these nations competed with each other to win
the power of the Gold Coast so that they could exploit these people for
commercial reasons and sell them into slavery. Finally, in 1850, Britain won out and she gained possession of the total
territorial expansion of the Gold Coast. From 1850 to 1957, March sixth,
the Gold Coast was a colony of the British Empire. And as a colony she suffered
all of the injustices, all of the exploitation, all of the humiliation that
comes as a result of colonialism.
But like all slavery, like all domination, like all exploitation, it came
to the point that the people got tired of it. And that seems to be the long
story of history. There seems to be a throbbing desire, there seems to be
an internal desire for freedom within the soul of every man. And it's there-it
might not break forth in the beginning, but eventually it breaks out, for
men realize that freedom is something basic. To rob a man of his freedom
is to take from him the essential basis of his manhood. To take from him
his freedom is to rob him of something of God's image. To paraphrase the
words of Shakespeare's Othello: Who steals my purse steals trash; 't is something, nothing;
'T was mine, 't is his, has been slave to thousands;
But he that filches from me my freedom
Robs me of that which not enriches him
But makes me poor indeed. There is something in the soul that cries out for freedom. There is something
deep down within the very soul of man that reaches out for Canaan. Men cannot
be satisfied with Egypt. They try to adjust to it for awhile. Many men have
vested interests in Egypt, and they are slow to leave. Egypt makes it profitable
to them; some people profit by Egypt. The vast majority, the masses of people,
never profit by Egypt, and they are never content with it. And eventually
they rise up and begin to cry out for Canaan's land. And so these people got tired. It had a long history-as far back as 1844,
the chiefs themselves of the Gold Coast rose up and came together and revolted
against the British Empire and the other powers that were in existence at
that time dominating the Gold Coast. They revolted, saying that they wanted
to govern themselves. But these powers clamped down on them, and the British
said that we will not let you go. About 1909, a young man was born on the twelfth of September. History
didn't know at that time what that young man had in his mind. His mother
and father, illiterate, not a part of the powerful tribal life of Africa,
not chiefs at all, but humble people. And that boy grew up. He went to school
at Atchimoto for a while in Africa, and then he finished there with honors
and decided to work his way to America. And he landed to America one day
with about fifty dollars in his pocket in terms of pounds, getting ready
to get an education. And he went down to Pennsylvania, to Lincoln University.
He started studying there, and he started reading the great insights of
the philosophers, he started reading the great insights of the ages. And
he finished there and took his theological degree there and preached awhile
around Philadelphia and other areas as he was in the country. And went over
to the University of Pennsylvania and took up a masters there in philosophy
and sociology. All the years that he stood in America, he was poor, he had
to work hard. He says in his autobiography how he worked as a bellhop in
hotels, as a dishwasher, and during the summer how he worked as a waiter
trying to struggle through school. [recording interrupted] "I want to go back home. I want to go back to West Africa, the land
of my people, my native land, for there is some work to be done there."
He got a ship and went to London and stopped for a while by London School
of Economy and picked up another degree there. Then while in London, he
came, he started thinking about Pan-Africanism and the problem of how to
free his people from colonialism, for as he said, he always realized that
colonialism was made for domination and for exploitation. It was made to
keep a certain group down and exploit that group economically for the advantage
of another. And he studied and thought about all of this and one day he
decided to go back to Africa. He got to Africa and he was immediately elected the executive secretary
of the United Party of the Gold Coast. And he worked hard and he started
getting a following. And the people in this party, the old, the people who
had had their hands on the plow for a long time, thought he was pushing
a little too fast and they got a little jealous of his influence. So finally
he had to break from the United Party of the Gold Coast, and in 1949 he
organized the Convention People's Party. It was this party that started
out working for the independence of the Gold Coast. He started out in a
humble way urging his people to unite for freedom and urging the officials
of the British Empire to give them freedom. They were slow to respond, but
the masses of people were with him, and they had united to become the most
powerful and influential party that had ever been organized in that section
of Africa. He started writing, and his companions with him and many of them started
writing so much that the officials got afraid and they put them in jail.
And Nkrumah himself was finally placed in jail for several years because
he was a seditious man, he was an agitator. He was imprisoned on the basis
of sedition. And he was placed there to stay in prison for many years, but
he had inspired some people outside of prison. They got together just a
few months after he'd been in prison and elected him the prime minister
while he was in prison. For awhile the British officials tried to keep him
there, and Gbedemah says, one of his close associates, the minister of finance,
Mr. Gbedemah, said that that night the people were getting ready to go down
to the jail and get him out. But Gbedemah said, "This isn't the way,
we can't do it like this; violence will break out and we will defeat our
purpose." But the British Empire saw that they had better let him out,
and in a few hours Kwame Nkrumah was out of jail, the Prime Minister of
the Gold Coast. He was placed there for fifteen years but he only served
eight or nine months, and now he comes out the Prime Minister of the Gold
Coast. This was the struggling that had been going on for years. It was now coming
to the point that this little nation was moving toward its independence.
Then came the continual agitation, the continual resistance, so that the
British Empire saw that it could no longer rule the Gold Coast. And they
agreed that on the sixth of March, 1957, they would release this nation.
This nation would no longer be a colony of the British Empire, but this
nation would be a sovereign nation within the British Commonwealth. All
of this was because of the persistent protest, the continual agitation,
on the part of Prime Minister Kwame Nkrumah and the other leaders who worked
along with him and the masses of people who were willing to follow. So that day finally came. It was a great day. The week ahead was a great
week. They had been preparing for this day for many years and now it was
here. People coming in from all over the world. They had started getting
in by the second of March. Seventy nations represented had come to say to
this new nation, "We greet you and we give you our moral support. We
hope for you God's guidance as you move now into the realm of independence."
From America itself more than a hundred persons. And the press, the diplomatic
guests, and the prime minister's guests. And oh, it was a beautiful experience
to see some of the leading persons on the scene of civil rights in America
on hand to say, "Greetings to you," as this new nation was born.
Look over, to my right is Adam Powell, to my left is Charles Diggs, to my
right again is Ralph Bunche. To the other side is Her Majesty's First Minister
of Jamaica, Manning, Ambassador Jones of Liberia. All of these people from
America, Mordecai Johnson, Horace Mann Bond, all of these people just going
over to say, "We want to greet you and we want you to know that you
have our moral support as you grow." Then you look out and see the
vice-president of the United States; you see A. Philip Randolph; you see
all of the people who have stood in the forefront of the struggle for civil
rights over the years coming over to Africa to say we bid you godspeed.
This was a great day not only for Nkrumah but for the whole of the Gold
Coast. Then came Tuesday, December the fifth, many events leading up to it. That
night we walked into the closing of Parliament-the closing of the old Parliament,
the old Parliament which was which presided over by the British Empire,
the old Parliament which designated colonialism and imperialism. Now that
Parliament is closing. That was a great sight and a great picture and a
great scene. We sat there that night, just about five hundred able to get
in there. People, thousands and thousands of people waiting outside, just
about five hundred in there, and we were fortunate enough to be sitting
there at that moment as guests of the Prime Minister. And at that hour we
noticed Prime Minister Nkrumah walking in with all of his ministers, with
his justices of the Supreme Court of the Gold Coast, and with all of the
people of the Convention People's Party, the leaders of that party. Nkrumah
came up to make his closing speech to the old Gold Coast. There was something
old now passing away. The thing that impressed me more than anything else that night was the
fact that when Nkrumah walked in and his other ministers who had been in
prison with him, they didn't come in with the crowns and all of the garments
of kings, but they walked in with prison caps and the coats that they had
lived with for all of the months that they had been in prison. Nkrumah stood
up and made his closing speech to Parliament with the little cap that he
wore in prison for several months and the coat that he wore in prison for
several months, and all of his ministers round about him. That was a great
hour. An old Parliament passing away. And then at twelve o'clock that night we walked out. As we walked out
we noticed all over the polo grounds almost a half-a-million people. They
had waited for this hour and this moment for years. As we walked out of
the door and looked at that beautiful building, we looked up to the top
of it and there was a little flag that had been flowing around the sky for
many years. It was the Union Jack flag of the Gold Coast, the British flag,
you see. But at twelve o'clock that night we saw a little flag coming down,
and another flag went up. The old Union Jack flag came down, and the new
flag of Ghana went up. This was a new nation now, a new nation being born.
And when Prime Minister Nkrumah stood up before his people out in the
polo ground and said, "We are no longer a British colony. We are a
free, sovereign people," all over that vast throng of people we could
see tears. And I stood there thinking about so many things. Before I knew
it I started weeping; I was crying for joy. And I knew about all of the
struggles, and all of the pain, and all of the agony that these people had
gone through for this moment.
And after Nkrumah had made that final speech, it was about twelve-thirty
now and we walked away. And we could hear little children six years old
and old people eighty and ninety years old walking the streets of Accra
crying, "Freedom! Freedom!" They couldn't say it in the sense
that we say it-many of them don't speak English too well-but they had their
accents and it could ring out, "Free-doom!" They were crying it
in a sense that they had never heard it before, and I could hear that old
Negro spiritual once more crying out: Free at last! Free at last!
Great God Almighty, I'm free at last! They were experiencing that in their very souls. And everywhere we turned,
we could hear it ringing out from the housetops; we could hear it from every
corner, every nook and crook of the community: Freedom! Freedom!
This was the birth of a new nation. This was the breaking aloose from Egypt. Wednesday morning the official opening of Parliament was held. There again
we were able to get on the inside. There Nkrumah made his new speech. And
now the Prime Minister of the Gold Coast with no superior, with all of the
power that MacMillan of England has, with all of the power that Nehru of
India has-now a free nation, now the prime minister of a sovereign nation.
The Duchess of Kent walked in; the Duchess of Kent, who represented the
Queen of England, no longer had authority now. She was just a passing visitor
now. The night before she was the official leader and spokesman for the
Queen, thereby the power behind the throne of the Gold Coast. But now it's
Ghana-it's a new nation now, and she's just an official visitor like M.
L. King and Ralph Bunche and Coretta King and everybody else, because this
is a new nation. A new Ghana has come into being. And now Nkrumah stands the leader of that great nation. And when he drives
out, the people standing around the streets of the city after Parliament
is open cry out, "All hail, Nkrumah!" The name of Nkrumah crowning
around the whole city, everybody crying this name, because they knew he
had suffered for them, he had sacrificed for them, he'd gone to jail for
them. This was the birth of a new nation. This nation was now out of Egypt and has crossed the Red Sea. Now it will
confront its wilderness. Like any breaking aloose from Egypt, there is a
wilderness ahead. There is a problem of adjustment. Nkrumah realizes that.
There is always this wilderness standing before you. For instance, it's
a one-crop country, cocoa mainly; sixty percent of the cocoa of the world
comes from the Gold Coast, or from Ghana. In order to make the economic
system more stable it will be necessary to industrialize. Cocoa is too fluctuating
to base a whole economy on that, so there is the necessity of industrializing.
Nkrumah said to me that one of the first things that he will do is to work
toward industrialization. And also he plans to work toward the whole problem
of increasing the cultural standards of the community. Still ninety percent
of the people are illiterate, and it is necessary to lift the whole cultural
standard of the community in order to make it possible to stand up in the
free world.
Yes, there is a wilderness ahead, though it is my hope that even people
from America will go to Africa as immigrants, right there to the Gold Coast,
and lend their technical assistance, for there is great need and there are
rich opportunities there. Right now is the time that American Negroes can
lend their technical assistance to a growing new nation. I was very happy
to see already people who have moved in and making good. The son of the
late president of Bennett College, Dr. Jones, is there, who started an insurance
company and making good, going to the top. A doctor from Brooklyn, New York
had just come in that week and his wife is also a dentist, and they are
living there now, going in there and working and the people love them. There
will be hundreds and thousands of people, I'm sure, going over to make for
the growth of this new nation. And Nkrumah made it very clear to me that
he would welcome any persons coming there as immigrants to live there. Now
don't think that because they have five million people the nation can't
grow, that that's a small nation to be overlooked. Never forget the fact
that when America was born in 1776, when it received its independence from
the British Empire, there were fewer, less than four million people in America,
and today it's more than a hundred and sixty million. So never underestimate
a people because it's small now. America was smaller than Ghana when it
was born.
There is a great day ahead. The future is on its side. It's going now
through the wilderness. But the Promised Land is ahead. Now I want to take just a few more minutes as I close to say three or
four things that this reminds us of and things that it says to us-things
that we must never forget as we ourselves find ourselves breaking aloose
from an evil Egypt, trying to move through the wilderness toward the Promised
Land of cultural integration. Ghana has something to say to us. It says
to us first that the oppressor never voluntarily gives freedom to the oppressed.
You have to work for it. And if Nkrumah and the people of the Gold Coast
had not stood up persistently, revolting against the system, it would still
be a colony of the British Empire. Freedom is never given to anybody, for
the oppressor has you in domination because he plans to keep you there,
and he never voluntarily gives it up. And that is where the strong resistance
comes-privileged classes never give up their privileges without strong resistance. So don't go out this morning with any illusions. Don't go back into your
homes and around Montgomery thinking that the Montgomery City Commission
and that all of the forces in the leadership of the South will eventually
work out this thing for Negroes. It's going to work out; it's going to roll
in on the wheels of inevitability. If we wait for it to work itself out,
it will never be worked out. Freedom only comes through persistent revolt,
through persistent agitation, through persistently rising up against the
system of evil. The bus protest is just the beginning. Buses are integrated
in Montgomery, but that is just the beginning. And don't sit down and do
nothing now because the buses are integrated, because if you stop now we
will be in the dungeons of segregation and discrimination for another hundred
years, and our children and our children's children will suffer all of the
bondage that we have lived under for years. It never comes voluntarily.
We've got to keep on keeping on in order to gain freedom. It never comes
like that. It would be fortunate if the people in power had sense enough
to go on and give up, but they don't do it like that. It is not done voluntarily,
but it is done through the pressure that comes about from people who are
oppressed. If there had not been a Gandhi in India with all of his noble followers,
India would have never been free. If there had not been an Nkrumah and his
followers in Ghana, Ghana would still be a British colony. If there had
not been abolitionists in America, both Negro and white, we might still
stand today in the dungeons of slavery. And then because there have been,
in every period, there are always those people in every period of human
history who don't mind getting their necks cut off, who don't mind being
persecuted and discriminated and kicked about, because they know that freedom
is never given out, but it comes through the persistent and the continual
agitation and revolt on the part of those who are caught in the system.
Ghana teaches us that. It says to us another thing. It reminds us of the fact that a nation or
a people can break aloose from oppression without violence. Nkrumah says
in the first two pages of his autobiography, which was published on the
sixth of March-a great book which you ought to read-he said that he had
studied the social systems of social philosophers and he started studying
the life of Gandhi and his techniques. And he said that in the beginning
he could not see how they could ever get aloose from colonialism without
armed revolt, without armies and ammunition, rising up. Then he says after
he continued to study Gandhi and continued to study this technique, he came
to see that the only way was through nonviolent positive action. And he
called his program "positive action." And it's a beautiful thing,
isn't it? That here is a nation that is now free and it is free without
rising up with arms and with ammunition; it is free through nonviolent means.
Because of that the British Empire will not have the bitterness for Ghana
that she has for China, so to speak. Because of that, when the British Empire
leaves Ghana, she leaves with a different attitude then she would have left
with if she had been driven out by armies. We've got to revolt in such a
way that after revolt is over we can live with people as their brothers
and their sisters. Our aim must never be to defeat them or humiliate them. On the night of the State Ball, standing up talking with some people,
Mordecai Johnson called my attention to the fact that Prime Minister Kwame
Nkrumah was there dancing with the Duchess of Kent. And I said, "Isn't
this something?" Here it is the once-serf, the once-slave, now dancing
with the lord on an equal plane." And that is done because there is
no bitterness. These two nations will be able to live together and work
together because the breaking aloose was through nonviolence and not through
violence. The aftermath of nonviolence is the creation of the beloved community.
The aftermath of nonviolence is redemption. The aftermath of nonviolence
is reconciliation. The aftermaths of violence are emptiness and bitterness.
This is the thing I'm concerned about. Let us fight passionately and unrelentingly
for the goals of justice and peace, but let's be sure that our hands are
clean in this struggle. Let us never fight with falsehood and violence and
hate and malice, but always fight with love, so that when the day comes
that the walls of segregation have completely crumbled in Montgomery that
we will be able to live with people as their brothers and sisters.
Oh, my friends, our aim must be not to defeat Mr. Engelhardt, not to defeat
Mr. Sellers and Mr. Gayle and Mr. Parks. Our aim must be to defeat the evil
that's in them. And our aim must be to win the friendship of Mr. Gayle and
Mr. Sellers and Mr. Engelhardt. We must come to the point of seeing that
our ultimate aim is to live with all men as brothers and sisters under God
and not be their enemies or anything that goes with that type of relationship.
And this is one thing that Ghana teaches us: that you can break aloose from
evil through nonviolence, through a lack of bitterness. Nkrumah says in
his book: "When I came out of prison, I was not bitter toward Britain.
I came out merely with the determination to free my people from the colonialism
and imperialism that had been inflicted upon them by the British. But I
came out with no bitterness." And because of that this world will be
a better place in which to live. There's another thing that Ghana reminds us. I'm coming to the conclusion
now. Ghana reminds us that freedom never comes on a silver platter. It's
never easy. Ghana reminds us that whenever you break out of Egypt you better
get ready for stiff backs. You better get ready for some homes to be bombed.
You better get ready for some churches to be bombed. You better get ready
for a lot of nasty things to be said about you, because you getting out
of Egypt, and whenever you break aloose from Egypt the initial response
of the Egyptian is bitterness. It never comes with ease. It comes only through
the hardness and persistence of life. Ghana reminds us of that. You better
get ready to go to prison. When I looked out and saw the Prime Minister
there with his prison cap on that night that reminded me of that fact, that
freedom never comes easy. It comes through hard labor and it comes through
toil; it comes through hours of despair and disappointment. And that's the way it goes. There is no crown without a cross. I wish
we could get to Easter without going to Good Friday, but history tells us
that we got to go by Good Friday before we can get to Easter. That's the
long story of freedom, isn't it? Before you get to Canaan you've got a Red
Sea to confront; you have a hardened heart of a pharaoh to confront; you
have the prodigious hilltops of evil in the wilderness to confront. And
even when you get up to the Promised Land you have giants in the land. The
beautiful thing about it is that there are a few people who've been over
in the land. They have spied enough to say, "Even though the giants
are there we can possess the land, because we got the internal fiber to
stand up amid anything that we have to face." The road to freedom is a difficult, hard road. It always makes for temporary
setbacks. And those people who tell you today that there is more tension
in Montgomery than there has ever been are telling you right. Whenever you
get out of Egypt, you always confront a little tension, you always confront
a little temporary setback. If you didn't confront that you'd never get
out. You must remember that the tensionless period that we like to think
of was the period when the Negro was complacently adjusted to segregation,
discrimination, insult, and exploitation. And the period of tension is the
period when the Negro has decided to rise up and break aloose from that.
And this is the peace that we are seeking: not an old negative obnoxious
peace which is merely the absence of tension, but a positive, lasting peace
which is the presence of brotherhood and justice. And it is never brought
about without this temporary period of tension. The road to freedom is difficult.
But finally, Ghana tells us that the forces of the universe are on the
side of justice. That's what it tells us, now. You can interpret Ghana any
kind a way you want to, but Ghana tells me that the forces of the universe
are on the side of justice. That night when I saw that old flag coming down
and the new flag coming up, I saw something else. That wasn't just an Ephemeral,
evanescent event appearing on the stage of history, but it was an event
with eternal meaning, for it symbolizes something. That thing symbolized
to me that an old order is passing away and a new order is coming into being.
An old order of colonialism, of segregation, of discrimination is passing
away now, and a new order of justice and freedom and goodwill is being born.
That's what it said. Somehow the forces of justice stand on the side of
the universe, so that you can't ultimately trample over God's children and
profit by it. I want to come back to Montgomery now, but I must stop by London for a
moment, for London reminds me of something. I never will forget the day
we went into London. The next day we started moving around this great city,
the only city in the world that is almost as large as New York City. Over
eight million people in London, about eight million, three hundred thousand;
New York about eight million, five hundred thousand. London larger in area
than New York, though. Standing in London is an amazing picture. And I never
will forget the experience I had, the thoughts that came to my mind as we
went to Buckingham Palace. And I looked there at all of Britain, at all
of the pomp and circumstance of royalty. And I thought about all of the
queens and kings that had passed through here. Look at the beauty of the
changing of the guards and all of the guards with their beautiful horses.
It's a beautiful sight. Move on from there and go over to Parliament. Move
into the House of Lords and the House of Commons. There with all of its
beauty standing up before the world is one of the most beautiful sights
in the world. Then I remember, we went on over to Westminster Abbey. And I thought about
several things when we went into this great church, this great cathedral,
the center of the Church of England. We walked around and went to the tombs
of the kings and queens buried there. Most of the kings and queens of England
are buried right there in the Westminster Abbey. And I walked around. On
the one hand I enjoyed and appreciated the great gothic architecture of
that massive cathedral. I stood there in awe thinking about the greatness
of God and man's feeble attempt to reach up for God. And I thought something
else-I thought about the Church of England.
My mind went back to Buckingham Palace and I said that this is the symbol
of a dying system. There was a day that the queens and kings of England
could boast that the sun never sets on the British Empire, a day when she
occupied the greater portion of Australia, the greater portion of Canada.
There was a day when she ruled most of China, most of Africa, and all of
India. I started thinking about this empire. I started thinking about the
fact that she ruled over India one day. Mahatma Gandhi stood there at every
hand trying to get the freedom of his people, and they never bowed to it.
They never, they decided that they were going to stand up and hold India
in humiliation and in colonialism many, many years. And I remember we passed
by Ten Downing Street. That's the place where the Prime Minister of England
lives. And I remember that a few years ago a man lived there by the name
of Winston Churchill. One day he stood up before the world and said, "I
did not become his Majesty's First Minister to preside over the liquidation
of the British Empire." And I thought about the fact that a few weeks ago a man by the name of
Anthony Eden lived there. And out of all of his knowledge of the Middle
East he decided to rise up and march his armies with the forces of Israel
and France into Egypt, and there they confronted their doom, because they
were revolting against world opinion. Egypt, a little country; Egypt, a
country with no military power. They could have easily defeated Egypt, but
they did not realize that they were fighting more than Egypt. They were
attacking world opinion; they were fighting the whole Asian-African bloc,
which is the bloc that now thinks and moves and determines the course of
the history of the world. I thought of many things. I thought of the fact that the British Empire
exploited India. Think about it! A nation with four hundred million people
and the British exploited them so much that out of a population of four
hundred million, three hundred and fifty million made an annual income of
less than fifty dollars a year. Twenty-five of that had to be used for taxes
and the other things of life. I thought about dark Africa. And how the people
there, if they can make a hundred dollars a year they are living very well
they think. Two shillings a day-one shilling is fourteen cents, two shillings
twenty-eight cents-that's a good wage. That's because of the domination
of the British Empire. All of these things came to my mind when I stood there in Westminster
Abbey with all of its beauty, and I thought about all of the beautiful hymns
and anthems that the people would go in there to sing. And yet the Church
of England never took a stand against this system; the Church of England
sanctioned it; the Church of England gave it moral stature. All of the exploitation
perpetuated by the British Empire was sanctioned by the Church of England. But something else came to my mind: God comes in the picture even when
the Church won't take a stand. God has injected a principle in this universe.
God has said that all men must respect the dignity and worth of all human
personality, and if you don't do that, I will take charge. It seems this
morning that I can hear God speaking. I can hear him speaking throughout
the universe, saying, Be still and know that I am God. And if you don't
stop, if you don't straighten up, if you don't stop exploiting people, I'm
going to rise up and break the backbone of your power. And your power will
be no more! And the power of Great Britain is no more. I looked at France. I looked
at Britain. And I thought about the Britain that could boast, The sun
never sets on our great Empire. And I said now she had gone to the level
that the sun hardly rises on the British Empire-because it was based on
exploitation, because the God of the universe eventually takes a stand. And I say to you this morning, my friends, rise up and know that as you
struggle for justice you do not struggle alone, but God struggles with you.
And he is working every day. Somehow I can look out, I can look out across
the seas and across the universe, and cry out, Mine eyes have seen the
glory of the coming of the Lord; He is trampling out the vintage where the
grapes of wrath are stored. Then I think about it because his truth is marching on, and I can sing
another chorus: Hallelujah, glory hallelujah! His truth is marching on.
Then I can hear Isaiah again, because it has profound meaning to me, that
somehow every valley shall be exalted, and every hill shall be made low;
the crooked places shall be made straight, and the rough places plain; and
the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together. That's the beauty of this thing: all flesh shall see it together. Not
some from the heights of Park Street and others from the dungeons of slum
areas. Not some from the pinnacles of the British Empire and some from the
dark deserts of Africa. Not some from inordinate, superfluous wealth and
others from abject, deadening poverty. Not some white and not some black,
not some yellow and not some brown, but all flesh shall see it together.
They shall see it from Montgomery. They shall see it from New York. They
shall see it from Ghana. They shall see it from China. For I can look out and see a great number, as John saw, marching into
the great eternity, because God is working in this world, and at this hour,
and at this moment. And God grant that we will get on board and start marching
with God because we got orders now to break down the bondage and the walls
of colonialism, exploitation, and imperialism, to break them down to the
point that no man will trample over another man, but that all men will respect
the dignity and worth of all human personality. And then we will be in Canaan's
freedom land. Moses might not get to see Canaan, but his children will see it. He even
got to the mountain top enough to see it and that assured him that it was
coming. But the beauty of the thing is that there's always a Joshua to take
up his work and take the children on in. And it's there waiting with its
milk and honey, and with all of the bountiful beauty that God has in store
for His children. Oh, what exceedingly marvelous things God has in store
for us. Grant that we will follow Him enough to gain them. O God, our gracious Heavenly Father, help us to see the insights that
come from this new nation. Help us to follow Thee and all of Thy creative
works in this world. And that somehow we will discover that we are made
to live together as brothers. And that it will come in this generation:
the day when all men will recognize the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood
of man. Amen. |
