“The Fierce Urgency of Now” — Michelle Alexander and Lucas Johnson

From Krista:

On April 4, 1967, Martin Luther King Jr. gave a speech at Riverside Church in New York City called “A Time to Break Silence.” This is often referred to as his “Beyond Vietnam” Speech. His own allies criticized it as a risky departure from a focus on civil rights. But Dr. King had never seen his calling confined to those two words. The Vietnam War needed to end, he believed, and he needed to say that plain. And in the waging of this war — and all of its consequences for people at home, especially the poor — he saw an underlying crisis that threatened the very soul of our nation.

On that same date this year, the 59th anniversary of this speech, hundreds gathered again at Riverside for reflection, song, and a reading of portions of the speech. It was drafted by Dr. King’s friend and comrade Vincent Harding, a beloved former On Being guest, and many of his friends and family joined this year.

None of the words of this speech is as famous as the sentence “I have a dream.” This speech altogether gives voice to the less remembered and heeded evolution of the vision of Dr. King and Vincent Harding and others. It invokes the work that endures beyond leaders and events of the day, and that can be neglected at our peril if too many of us too narrowly focus our imaginations and creativity and callings on what transfixes and demoralizes in the moment. It calls for a “revolution of values” in the face of glaring contrasts of poverty and wealth and the human cost of a world order that settles differences with wars. That our world is broken, it tells us, should come as no surprise. There were deep moral and spiritual underpinnings to the events of 59 years ago, which we did not acknowledge, much less have risen to as a nation.

A line from this speech seems directly aimed at our ears and our hearts: “We are now faced with the fact, my friends, that tomorrow is today. We are confronted with the fierce urgency of now.” What are the callings now, finally, for us to pick up in creating the world we want to inhabit in the beyond of this moment of great peril and an equal magnitude of possibility?

This is a conversation with two human beings who loved Vincent Harding and whom he loved and formed: Michelle Alexander and Lucas Johnson.