![]() ![]() We do not have to look very far to see signs of the present revolution revolution that is taking place in our world today. There is nothing more tragic than to sleep through a revolution. While he was peacefully snoring up in the mountain a revolution was taking place which completely changed the face of the world. This incident suggest that the most striking thing about the story of Rip Van Winkle was not that he slept twenty years, but that he slept through a great revolution. When he came down she was a free and independent nation. When he started his quiet sleep America was still under the domination of the British Empire. Rip looking up at the picture of George Washington was completely lost. When he came down it had the picture of another George, George Washington. When he went up the wall had a picture of King George III of England. It is the change that took place in that the pictures that on of wall of the little inn in the town in the Hudson town on the Hudson from which Rip went up into the mountains mountains for his long sleep. But there is another significant fact in this story that is often over looked. 4 The one thing that most of us us we all remember about this story is the fact that Rip Van Winkle slept twenty years. In thinking of the challenge which this revolution brings to each of us, I am reminded of a familiar story that comes down to us from the pen of Washington Irving. The great challenge facing every member of this graduating class is to remain awake, alert and creative through this great revolution. Every segment of society is being swept into its mainstream. You can hear its deep rumblings from the lowest village street to the highest intellectual ivory tower. ![]() It has engulfed every continent of the world. It is shaking the foundations of the east and the west. The distinctive feature of the present revolution is that it is worldwide. Indeed there have been other revolutions, but they have been local and isolated. There can be no gainsaying of the fact that we are experiencing today one of the greatest revolutions that the world has ever known. ![]() and we stand on the border of the promised land in integration.” 2 King reportedly closed with a warning against inaction: “If you go home, sit down and do nothing about the revolution which we are witnessing you will be the victim of a dangerous optimism.” 3 He advised his audience to adhere to nonviolence, for the "oppressors would be happy if black Americans “would resort to physical violence” and reminded them of progress already made: “We’ve broken loose from the Egypt of slavery. News coverage of the speech indicates that King modified this handwritten text at several points. 1 He places the domestic “social revolution" in a global context and urges the graduates of his alma mater to rise above the limits of “individualistic concerns,” submitting that all people are “caught up in an inescapable network of mutuality.” In these prepared remarks-his earliest known usage of this title-King invokes his common themes of anticolonialism and black self-respect. It is in your spirit, or it is nowhere.In a 22 December 1958 letter, Morehouse president Benjamin Mays invited King to address the graduating class of 1959 King accepted six days later. You cannot take what you have not given, and you must give yourself. You must come to it alone, and naked, as the child comes into the world, into his future, without any past, without any property, wholly dependent on other people for his life. ![]() If it is Anarres you want, if it is the future you seek, then I tell you that you must come to it with empty hands. We have no states, no nations, no presidents, no premiers, no chiefs, no generals, no bosses, no bankers, no landlords, no wages, no charity, no police, no soldiers, no wars. We have no government but the single principle of free association. We have no law but the single principle of mutual aid between individuals. We have nothing to give you but your own freedom. I am here because you see in me the promise, the promise that we made two hundred years ago in this city-the promise kept. All you have is what you are, and what you give. And the hand that you reach out is empty, as mine is. We know that there is no help for us but from one another, that no hand will save us if we do not reach out our hand. We know it, because we have had to learn it. In pain, which each of us must suffer alone, in hunger, in poverty, in hope, we know our brotherhood. Love does not obey the mind, and turns to hate when forced. It is our suffering that brings us together. ![]()
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