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. [4] 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. [5]
King spoke to a mostly white audience of 1,800 people in a speech lasting approximately 49 minutes. An overflow crowd of 100 listened outside over loudspeakers. One man was arrested at the scene for disorderly conduct. [6]
King began his speech by addressing the problem of racial inequality, [7] describing what he called the "Two Americas", one where white people prosper, while in another, Black Americans live "in rat-infested, vermin-filled slums", [2] with Black children taught by whites that they are inferior. 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. [8]
King spends time discussing the white backlash to every step forward in the struggle for civil rights, noting historically how for every two steps forward that the U.S. moves, it tends to also move one step back. King provides numerous examples from Black history illustrating this problem, such as the failed promise of forty acres and a mule to native born Black Americans while white European immigrants received land and other benefits. Throughout American history, King maintains, Black Americans were denied the same rights as whites. [8]
King then addresses three major arguments the civil rights movement faces: those of time, legislation, and the "bootstrap" argument. Those who say 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, King notes that there are those who say morality cannot be legislated, that you have to change the people by converting them, by changing their very hearts. King argues 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." [8]
| External videos | |
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 "The Other America" (1967). Digitally restored from a 16mm optical newsfilm by the Bay Area Television Archive. |
Finally, to address the bootstrap argument, King says that he is often told that Black people should just help themselves and solve their own problems in their communities, just as other white immigrant groups have done. King counters this notion, 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 were made slaves and discriminated against because of the color of their skin. No other group has been treated this way in the United States, argues King. He then proposes a guaranteed minimum income for all Americans as a way to partly address the economic conditions in the Black community. [8]
King briefly touches upon the war in Vietnam to great applause, [7] noting that it is harming the lives of American soldiers and Vietnamese children alike and diluting the efforts of the Great Society by wasting money on the war 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." [6] King closes the speech with a brief homily, expressing optimism [9] that the future will be brighter and that justice will eventually prevail. [8]
