Eulogy for the Young Victims of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church Bombing, by Martin Luther King, Jr. on Sept 18, 1963 in Birmingham, Ala. This was the eulogy for three of the four children killed in attack, Addie Mae Collins, Carol Denise McNair, and Cynthia Diane Wesley. From DKos:
This afternoon we gather in the quiet of this sanctuary to pay our last tribute of respect to these beautiful children of God....And there you have it. Martin Luther King using the funeral of small children to criticize the existing members of Congress and the federal government overall. And this is exactly what Coretta Scott King's mourners did yesterday at her funeral. Something the Republican party blowhards flipped out over. Something Coretta and MLK would have likely WANTED, as clearly shown by their own actions.
They are the martyred heroines of a holy crusade for freedom and human dignity. And so this afternoon in a real sense they have something to say to each of us in their death.
They have something to say to every minister of the gospel who has remained silent behind the safe security of stained-glass windows.
They have something to say to every politician [Audience:] (Yeah) who has fed his constituents with the stale bread of hatred and the spoiled meat of racism.
They have something to say to a federal government that has compromised with the undemocratic practices of southern Dixiecrats (Yeah) and the blatant hypocrisy of right-wing northern Republicans. (Speak)
They have something to say to every Negro (Yeah) who has passively accepted the evil system of segregation and who has stood on the sidelines in a mighty struggle for justice.
They say to each of us, black and white alike, that we must substitute courage for caution.
They say to us that we must be concerned not merely about who murdered them, but about the system, the way of life, the philosophy which produced the murderers. Their death says to us that we must work passionately and unrelentingly for the realization of the American dream [...]
So, come on, Ken. You know you want to blast Martin Luther King for what you view as angrily exploiting the deaths of children, just as you Republicans blasted Democrats for saying the exact same things at Coretta's funeral yesterday. Your fingers are just itching to hit the keys and type out a blistering press release about that "angry" black man MLK and the way he politicizes the funerals of CHILDREN, no less!
Come on, Ken. Tell the black man his real place in America. Tell him how his church is supposed to be run, how his funerals are supposed to look and act and sound and feel like white folk's funerals. Give African-Americans the lecture you so want to give them on how their churches are a bit too noisy and unnerving for nice upstanding white Republicans like yourself.
Come on, Ken. Tell Martin Luther King what he SHOULD have said about those four young children killed in Birmingham in 1963. You're such a paragon of minority leadership. Tell us, Ken. Tell us.
