“[W]e are drifting … because nations are caught up with the drum major instinct. ‘I must be first.’ ‘I must be supreme.’ ‘Our nation must rule the world.'”
“And I am sad to say that the nation in which we live is the supreme culprit. And I’m going to continue to say it to America, because I love this country too much to see the drift that it has taken.
God didn’t call America to do what she’s doing in the world now. (Preach it, preach it) God didn’t call America to engage in a senseless, unjust war as the war in Vietnam. And we are criminals in that war. We’ve committed more war crimes almost than any nation in the world, and I’m going to continue to say it. And we won’t stop it because of our pride and our arrogance as a nation.
But God has a way of even putting nations in their place. (Amen) The God that I worship has a way of saying, “Don’t play with me.” (Yes) He has a way of saying, as the God of the Old Testament used to say to the Hebrews, “Don’t play with me, Israel. Don’t play with me, Babylon. (Yes) Be still and know that I’m God. And if you don’t stop your reckless course, I’ll rise up and break the backbone of your power.” (Yes) And that can happen to America. (Yes) Every now and then I go back and read Gibbons’ Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. And when I come and look at America, I say to myself, the parallels are frightening. And we have perverted the drum major instinct.”
— Martin Luther King Jr.’s “Drum Major Instinct” sermon (4 February 1968)
“I know there’s been a lot of controversy lately about the quote on the memorial,” Obama, the nation’s first black president, said at a service project at a school in Washington in honor of today’s King holiday. “If you look at that speech about Dr. King as a drum major, what he really said was that all of us could be a drum major for service, all of us could be a drum major for justice, and there’s nobody who can’t serve, nobody who can’t help somebody else.”
Dr. King also said in that speech that all of us could be a drum major for peace.
Here is something else Dr. King said in that speech that is particularly applicable to “the nation’s first black president”:
If any of you are around when I have to meet my day, I don’t want a long funeral. And if you get somebody to deliver the eulogy, tell them not to talk too long. (Yes) And every now and then I wonder what I want them to say. Tell them not to mention that I have a Nobel Peace Prize—that isn’t important.
Follow
