‘I still have faith in the future.’ The day MLK brought his message to Fresno

In June 1964, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. brought the civil rights movement to Fresno. He led a march to Ratcliffe Stadium, where he spoke at a rally attended by several thousand people. This is The Bee’s front-page story about Dr. King’s time in Fresno.

The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. says the nation must “recognize the urgency of the moment” in the fight for civil rights if the American dream – equality for all – is to become a reality.

“Now is the time; now is the time to make brotherhood a reality,” he told an audience of more than 3,000 persons at a Witness of Faith for Freedom rally last night in windy, dust-swept Ratcliffe Stadium.

The 35-year-old Baptist minister, head of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and leader of the non-violent civil rights movement, said Negroes across the nation still are hearing “cries of wait, wait, you’re pushing too fast.”

But, he said, Negro leaders have often listened to these arguments only to see integration efforts bog down because of “gradualism.”

“Gradualism,” he explained, “is little more than nothing-ism and escapism, which ends in standstill-ism.”

The Rev. King, whose talk was liberally punctuated by the applause of the near half-white, half-Negro audience, also said there are two other chores Americans must accomplish if the American dream is to come true: “Continue to affirm the essential immortality of racial segregation” and develop a legislative action program to guarantee equality.

Segregation, he charged, is “the Negroes’ burden and America’s shame,” “morally wrong and sinful” and “a new form of slavery, a cancer on the body politic which must be cured.”

Under the legislation sub-heading, the Rev. King had words for those who have said morality cannot be legislated.

“It may be true you can legislate integration,” he said, “But you can legislate away desegregation. It is true morality cannot be legislated, but behavior can be regulated.

“The law cannot make a man love me, but it can keep him from lynching me, and I think that is pretty important also.

“The law doesn’t change the hearts of men, but it changes the habits of men and pretty soon they change the hearts of men.”

Rights Bill Plea

The stocky and forceful-speaking clergyman said the civil rights bill now before the Senate must be passed soon without modification in the three important sections dealing with public accommodation, equal employment and withdrawal of federal funds to projects on which discrimination is practiced.

“I’m convinced it is so important, so significant for the health of the nation, so I’d rather see no civil rights bill without these three provisions.”

The Rev. King termed the California Real Estate Association’s initiative to nullify the Rumford Fair Housing Act a “segregation initiative” and said Californians are faced with the question of whether they will “continue to travel the high road of justice or tread the low road of injustice.”

Effect On Nation

Passage of the initiative, which will be on the November ballot, the Rev. King said, would set off a chain reaction of similar initiatives in other states. He said the result would be a “setback not merely for the nation, but a setback for democracy and justice and a setback for the freedom of all people.”

The Rev. King termed his non-violent civil rights movement “a struggle for noble ends of integration through non-violent ends of love.” Non-violent protesters, he said, meet “physical force with soul force,” adding:

“We will wear down the enemy by our capacity to suffer. ...”

“I still have faith in the future and in America. We have the resources to solve this problem.”

He said many may “be scared” and physically suffer before full rights are achieved, but “if physical death is necessary to save our children from permanent psychological death, nothing can be more redemptive.”

Before the rally, which was sponsored by the Fresno Area Council of Churches, the West Fresno Interdenomination Ministerial Alliance and the Fresno Inter-Faith Social Action Council, the Fresno Police Department was notified a bomb would be set off in the stadium when the rally started.

A search was made, but no bomb was found and the call was discounted. Those taking part in the rally were not notified of the call. Later, at a reception following the rally, the Rev. King said he receives about three threats a day.

About eight persons were at the stadium entrance passing out leaflets purporting to connect the Rev. King with Communist organizations. One supposedly is a copy of an affidavit by a former counterspy and the copy quotes him as saying the minister “has either been a member of, or wittingly has accepted support from, over 60 Communist fronts, individuals and/or organizations, which give aid to or espouse Communist causes.”

James Scott, a member of a local John Birch Society unit, said the leaflets were being passed out by a group known as Alert Americans Group, P.O. Box 1046 Fresno. He said some of those handing out the leaflets were members of the Birch Society and some were not.

Several persons who accepted the Alert Americans’ leaflets looked at them, then threw them to the ground or handed them back.

This story was originally published January 15, 2018 at 4:16 PM with the headline "‘I still have faith in the future.’ The day MLK brought his message to Fresno."