In commemoration of Martin Luther King Jr. Day, UNMC Today will feature a series of photos and quotations from the civil rights leader. In today’s excerpt, King talks about war.
Acclaimed veteran African American journalist and talk show host Tony Brown will present the Martin Luther King Commemorative Presentation on Monday, Jan. 19. The program, which is free to the public, will be from noon to 1 p.m. in the Storz Pavilion, lower level of Clarkson Hospital. There will be free refreshments available for the first 300 people. Overflow audience members will be able to see a live video simulcast in the Wittson Hall Amphitheater.
“I once felt that while war could never be a positive or absolute good, it could serve as a negative good in the sense of preventing the spread and growth of an evil force. War, I felt, as horrible as it is, might be preferable to surrender to a totalitarian system. But more and more I have come to the conclusion that the potential destructiveness of modern weapons of war totally rules out the possibility of war ever serving again as a negative good. If we assume that mankind has a right to survive then we must find an alternative to war and destruction. In a day when Sputniks dash through outer space and guided ballistic missiles are carving highways of death through the stratosphere, nobody can win a war. The choice today is no longer between violence and nonviolence. It is either nonviolence or nonexistence.”
I May Not Get There With You: The True Martin Luther King, Jr.
Michael Eric Dyson, Author