It is commonly observed that the crisis in race relations dominates the arena of American life. This crisis has been precipitated by two factors: the determined resistance of reactionary elements in the south to the Supreme Court’s momentous decision outlawing segregation in the public schools, and the radical change in the Negro’s evaluation of himself. While southern legislative halls ring with open defiance through “interposition” and “nullification,” while a modern version of the Ku Klux Klan has arisen in the form of “respectable” white citizens’ councils, a revolutionary change has taken place in the Negro’s conception of his own nature and destiny. Once he thought of himself as an inferior and patiently accepted injustice and exploitation. Those days are gone​.

Description + Context:​ Excerpt from “Nonviolence and Racial Justice,” an article by Martin Luther King Jr. published in a weekly religious magazine in December, 1956