TWU Local 100 Honors the Memory of Dr. King

The Transport Workers Union always had a special relationship with the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. In 1961, the TWU invited Dr. King to address our Eleventh Constitutional Convention, so that delegates from all regions might hear him. His powerful speech to our delegates was reprinted last year and distributed to members of TWU Local 100 in booklet form. Here is some of what he told us on October 5, 1961

There are certain words in every academic discipline which soon become stereotypes and cliches. Every act of democratic discipline has its technical nomenclature. Modern psychology has a word that is probably used more than any other word in modern environment. It is the word, "maladjustment." Certainly, we all want to live the well adjusted life in order to avoid neurotic and schizophrenic personalities. As I come to my conclusion, I say to you, today, that there are some things in our social order toward which I am glad to be maladjusted, and I call upon you to be maladjusted.

I never intend to adjust myself to slavery and segregation. I never intend to adjust myself to religious bigotry. I never intend to become adjusted to economic conditions that will take necessities from the many to give luxuries to the few. I never intend to become adjusted to the madness of militarism, for in a day when sputniks and explorers are dashing through outer space, and guided ballistic missiles are carving highways of death through the stratosphere, no nation can win a war. It is no longer a choice between violence and non-violence. It is now either non-violence or non-existence.

And I never intend to adjust to the madness of militarism and the self-defeating effects of physical violence. And so I call upon you to be maladjusted and continue in the maladjustment that you have already demonstrated, for it may well be that the salvation of our world lies in the hands of the maladjusted. And so, let us be maladjusted. If you will allow the preacher in me to come out now, let us be as maladjusted as the Prophet Amos, who, in the midst of the injustices of his day, cried out in words that echo across the centuries: " Let justice run down like waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream."

As maladjusted as Abraham Lincoln, who had the vision to see that this nation could not exist half slave and half free. As maladjusted as Thomas Jefferson, who in the midst of an age amazingly adjusted to slavery, could cry out in words lifted to cosmic proportions, "We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; and that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

As maladjusted as Mahatma K. Ghandi, who could say to his people, "Non-cooperation with evil is as much a moral obligation as is cooperation with good." As maladjusted as Jesus of Nazareth, who could say to the men and women of his generation, "Love your enemies; bless them that curse you; pray for them that despitefully use you."

And I believe through such maladjustment we will be able to emerge from the bleak and desolate midnight of man's inhumanity to man, and to the bright and glittering daybreak of freedom and justice. And may I remind you that those of us who struggle for a good life to realize the American dream and to make a better place in which to live, do not struggle in vain, and we do not struggle alone, for somehow in this struggle we have cosmic companionship. The hours are dark, sometimes, and the nights are dreary, and there are moments when we feel, even in the struggle for racial justice, that we are going backwards instead of forward - there are always those frustrating moments in any move toward a great goal. But, somehow, there is something that reminds us that the Arc of the Universe is long, but it bends toward justice, and there is something in this universe that justifies Carlyle in saying, "No lie can live forever."