It All Boils Down To This: That

Occasionally In Life There Are Those Moments Of Unutterable Fulfillment Which Cannot Be Completely Explained By Those Symbols Called Words. Their Meanings Can Only Be Articulated By The Inaudible Language Of The Heart.

Five Score Years Ago, A Great American, In Whose Symbolic Shadow We Stand Today Signed The Emancipation Proclamation. This Momentous Decree Came As A Great Beacon Light Of Hope To Millions Of Negro Slaves Who Had Been Seared In The Flames Of Withering Injustice. It Came As A Joyous Daybreak To End The Long Night Of Their Captivity. But One Hundred Years Later, We Must Face The Tragic Fact That The Negro Is Still Not Free.

We Must Come To See That The End We Seek Is A Society At Peace With Itself, A Society That Can Live With Its Conscience.

The Poor In Our Countries Have Been Shut Out Of Our Minds And Driven From The Mainstream Of Our Societies, Because We Have Allowed Them To Become Invisible.

The Recent Statement Of Your Executive Committee Are The Sentiments Of My Own Heart And I Found Myself In Full Accord When I Read Its Opening Lines: "a Time Comes When Silence Is Betrayal." That Time Has Come For Us In Relation To Vietnam. Some Of Us Who Have Already Begun To Break The Silence Of The Night Have Found That The Calling To Speak Is Often A Vocation Of Agony, But We Must Speak. We Must Speak With All The Humility That Is Appropriate To Our Limited Vision, But We Must Speak.