Last week, I sent out a video of Dr. Martin Luther King giving his famous speech, “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop.” While I was doing the research for it, I came across this, a much less famous speech that Dr. King gave to a group of students at the Barratt Junior High School in South Philadelphia on October 27, 1967. I didn’t know about the speech – I was just a few years behind in the Philadelphia public schools at the time, so somehow it really hit home.
While Dr. King’s most famous speeches are meant to inspire the masses, this one was much more personal. He asks, “What is Your Life’s Blueprint?”
Here is the text (it’s been edited):
I want to suggest some of the things that should begin your life’s blueprint.
Number one in your life’s blueprint should be … Don’t allow anybody to make you feel that you’re nobody. Always feel that you count. Always feel that you have worth, and always feel that your life has ultimate significance. Don’t be ashamed of your color. Don’t be ashamed of your biological features. Somehow, you must be able to say in your own lives and really believe it, “I Am Black But Beautiful!” and believe that in your heart.
Secondly, in your life’s blueprint, you must have the determination to achieve excellence in your various fields of endeavor. When you discover what you’re going to be in life, set out to do it as if God Almighty called you at this particular moment in history to do it.
If it falls your lot to be a street sweeper, sweep streets like Michelangelo painted pictures, sweep streets like Beethoven composed music, sweep streets like Leontyne Price sings before the Metropolitan Opera. Sweep streets like Shakespeare wrote poetry.
And so from an old slave cabin of Virginia’s hills, Booker T Washington rose to be one of America’s great leaders. He lit a torch in Alabama, and darkness fled in that setting. From a poverty-stricken area of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Marian Anderson rose to be the world’s greatest contralto so that a Toscanini could say that a voice like this comes only once in a century, and Sibelius of Finland could say my roof is too low for such a voice. From crippling circumstances, there came a George Washington Carver to carve for himself an imperishable niche in the annals of science. Then came Joe Lewis and Muhammad Ali with their adjudicated fists. All of them came to tell us that we can be somebody.
Skin may differ, but affection
Dwells in black and white the same.
And if I were so tall as to reach the pole,
And to grasp the ocean at a span,
I must be measured by my soul.
The mind is the standard of the man.
Finally, in your life’s blueprint must be a commitment to the eternal principles of beauty, love, and justice. Don’t allow anybody to pull you so low as to make you hate them.
I close by quoting once more the man that the young lady quoted, that magnificent black bard who is now passed on, Langston Hughes. One day, he wrote a poem entitled, Mother to Son.
Well, son, I’ll tell you
Life for me ain’t been no crystal stair.
It’s had tacks in it,
And boards torn up,
And places with no carpet on the floor —
Bare.
But all the time
I’ve been a-climbin’ on,
And reachin’ landin’s,
And turnin’ corners,
And sometimes goin’ in the dark
Where there ain’t been no light.
So boy, don’t you turn back.
Don’t you sit down on the steps
‘Cause you find it’s kind of hard.
Don’t you fall now —
For I’se still goin’, honey,
I’se still climbin’,
And life for me ain’t been no crystal stair.
If you can’t fly, run. If you can’t run, walk. If you can’t walk, crawl, but by all means, keep moving!”
Nearly 60 years later, these words still hold. I love this message. May we each be the best “me” that we can be. And may we all keep moving to bring more beauty, peace, and justice into this world. As he also said, “Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that.” Here’s to the light in each of us.