We face therefore, a moral crisis as a country and as a people. It cannot be met by repressive police action. It cannot be left to increased demonstrations in the streets. It cannot be quieted by token moves or talk. It is time to act in Congress, in your state and local legislative bodies and above all in our daily lives.
It is not enough to pin the blame on others, to say this is a regional problem of one section of the country or another, or deplore the facts we face. A great change is at hand, and our task, our obligation, is to make the revolution, that change, peaceful and constructive for all.
Those who do nothing are inviting shame as well as violence. Those who act boldly are recognizing right as well as reality.
Next week I shall ask the Congress of the United States to act, to make a commitment it has not fully made in this century to the proposition that race has no place in American life or law. The federal judiciary has upheld that proposition in series of forthright cases. The executive branch has adopted that proposition in the conduct of its affairs, including the employment of federal personnel, the use of federal facilities, and the sale of federally financed housing.
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This is one country. It has become one country because all the people who came here had an equal chance to develop their talents.
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As I have said before, not every child has an equal talent or an equal ability or an equal motivation, but they should have the equal right to develop their talent and their ability and their motivation, to make something of themselves.
We have a right to hold that the Negro community will be responsible and will uphold the law: but they have a right to expect that the law will be color blind, as Justice Harlan said at the turn of the century.
This is what we are talking about. This is a matter which concerns this country and what it stands for, and in meeting it I ask the support of all our citizens.
June 11, 1963 from a televised address to the Nation.
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