Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

http://www.nytimes.com/books/98/01/18/home/king-oslo.html

December 11, 1964

Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Oslo, Norway

Your Majesty, your Royal Highness, Mr. President, excellencies,
ladies and gentlemen:

I accept the Nobel prize for peace at a moment when 22 million
Negroes of the United States of America are engaged in a creative
battle to end the long night of racial injustice. I accept this award
in behalf of a civil rights movement which is moving with
determination and a majestic scorn for risk and danger to establish a
reign of freedom and a rule of justice.

I am mindful that only yesterday in Birmingham, Ala., our children,
crying out for brotherhood, were answered with fire hoses, snarling
dogs and even death. I am mindful that only yesterday in
Philadelphia, Miss., young people seeking to secure the right to vote
were brutalized and murdered.

I am mindful that debilitating and grinding poverty afflicts my
people and chains them to the lowest rung of the economic ladder.

Therefore, I must ask why this prize is awarded to a movement which
is beleaguered and committed to unrelenting struggle: to a
movement which has not won the very peace and brotherhood
which is the essence of the Nobel prize.

After contemplation, I conclude that this award which I received on
behalf of that movement is profound recognition that nonviolence is
the answer to the crucial political and moral question of our time--
the need for man to overcome oppression and violence without
resorting to violence and oppression.

Civilization and violence are antithetical concepts. Negroes of the
United States, following the people of India, have demonstrated that
nonviolence is not sterile passivity, but a powerful moral force
which makes for social transformation. Sooner or later, all the
people of the world will have to discover a way to live together in
peace, and thereby transform this pending cosmic elegy into a
creative psalm of brotherhood.

If this is to be achieved, man must evolve for all human conflict a
method which rejects revenge, aggression and retaliation. The
foundation of such a method is love.

The tortuous road which has led from Montgomery, Ala., to Oslo
bears witness to this truth. This is a road over which millions
of Negroes are traveling to find a new sense of dignity. This
same road has opened for all Americans a new era of progress
and hope....