Cowardice asks the question, is it safe?

White man and black man, jew and gentile, protestant and catholic, will be able to hold hands and sing in the words of the ancient negro spiritual, "Free at last, free at last. Thank God almighty! We are free at last!"

We have waited for more than three hundred and forty years for our constitutional and God-given rights.

I'm grateful to God that, through the Negro church, the dimension of nonviolence entered our struggle.

[I]t must be emphasized that nonviolent resistance is not a method for cowards; it does resist. If one uses this method because he is afraid or merely because he lacks the instruments of violence, he is not truly nonviolent. This is why Gandhi often said that if cowardice is the only alternative to violence, it is better to fight.

Peace is not merely the absence of war but the presence of justice, of law, of order —in short, of government.

The labor movement was the principal force that transforme­d misery and despair into hope and progress.