On this day in 1965, Martin Luther King Jr. stood on the steps of the Alabama State Capitol in Montgomery and delivered what many scholars consider one of his greatest orations. Fresh from the brutal march in Selma, addressing a crowd of 25,000 people who had risked everything to reach that moment, he asked a question that still echoes: “How long?”
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How long would injustice prevail? How long would segregation endure? How long would the right to vote remain a distant dream for millions of Black Americans? And then, with the soaring oratory he began cultivating with the help of his high school teacher, Ms. Sarah Grace Bradley, he answered: “Not long.”
Sixty-one years later, as we commemorate that speech—delivered just months before the Voting Rights Act would become law—we must reckon with both the audacious hope it embodied and the hard truth it contains. The arc of the moral universe bends toward justice, King famously said. But that speech in Montgomery made clear what we too often forget: the arc bends only
because people bend it. The moral arc bent dramatically in 1965 precisely because people forced it to bend through extraordinary sacrifice. They marched. They bled. They died. They created a crisis that demanded a response.
Today, we find ourselves once again in a battle for voting rights. Voting rights face renewed assault through gerrymandering, voter ID laws, and polling place closures that disproportionately affect communities of color. The possible overturning of mail-in voting laws in 29 states, and Congress is debating the President’s SAVE ACT (Safeguarding American Voter Eligibility) Act,
which would require States to obtain documentary proof of citizenship before registering any voter. A sworn statement attesting to citizenship—currently accepted in most states—would no longer suffice. Voters who cannot meet these requirements will be purged.
The journey to the Capitol steps had been paid for in blood. The 54-mile walk from Selma had been a gauntlet of hatred and violence. Just three weeks earlier, state troopers had brutally attacked peaceful marchers on the Edmund Pettus Bridge. Jimmie Lee Jackson had been shot and killed by an Alabama state trooper weeks before that, his death the catalyst for the march itself.
Reverend James Reeb, a white Unitarian-Universalist minister, was murdered during the march, and Viola Liuzzo was murdered by Klansmen just hours after King spoke.
Yet King stood before that crowd and spoke not primarily of suffering but of certainty. Not long, he insisted, because “the arm of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” Not long, because “you shall reap what you sow.” Not long, because truth crushed to earth shall rise again.
It was a speech born of studied optimism—optimism as a discipline, not a disposition. King knew better than most that progress was neither inevitable nor irreversible. He had seen too much violence, buried too many martyrs, weathered too many setbacks to indulge in naive faith. His optimism was harder than that: a choice to believe that sustained struggle yields results even when evidence seems scarce.
What King learned from that march is key for us if we are going to bend the arc. Sometime after the march, King published a lesser-known essay in Ebony, recounting what he had learned. In addition to his unwavering commitment to nonviolence, King laid out three things he had learned about bending the arc of the universe.
One March is Not Enough
First, one march is not enough. King believed the only way marches could be impactful was if they included Americans of all races and religions—like Selma— and that such demonstrations had to be consistent. “Our experience is that marches must continue over a period of 30 to 45 days to produce any meaningful results,” he wrote. “They must also be of sufficient size to produce some inconvenience to the forces in power or they go unnoticed. In other words, they
must demand the attention of the press, for it is the press which interprets the issue to the community at large and thereby sets in motion the machinery for change.”
Marches Must Be Supported By Targeted Economic Boycotts
Second, King learned that marches and demonstrations are insufficient, no matter how much (social) media attention they receive. King believed that such actions must be accompanied by targeted economic boycotts. “Basic to the philosophy of nonviolence is the refusal to cooperate with evil. There is nothing quite so effective as a refusal to cooperate economically with the forces and institutions which perpetuate evil in our communities.” Like marches, the boycotts had to be enduring, lasting long enough to have an impact. And they had to be accompanied by consistent education to maintain the moral frame of the issue. King believed people of goodwill would be willing to sacrifice as long as they are kept informed of the issue and the goal. “This,” King remarked, “is nonviolence at its peak of power.”
Local Organizing Brings it All Together
Third, King believed local organizing was the tie that brought it all together. Early in his career, seasoned women activists such as the brilliant Ella Baker criticized King for failing to harness his fame for the cause of local organizing. By 1966, King was turning the corner; he was clear that mobilizing communities for short-term demonstrations had significant limitations when it came to enduring change. He noted that the established Civil Rights Movement had to start
emphasizing the need to “organiz[e] people into permanent groups to protect their own interests and to produce change in their behalf.” He understood that local organizing—forming unions, voter leagues, mutual aid societies, financial institutions—and other forms of social glue at the local level were key to the struggle of building a new world.
The Selma to Montgomery March and the lessons learned offer no comfort to those seeking easy reassurance. As King often noted, progress does not roll in on the wheels of inevitability.
How long? Much of that depends on us. Justice arrives on the backs, prayers, feet, arms, and resources of people—imperfect, frightened, but committed people—who through learning the lessons of history, decide to demonstrate, boycott, and organize to bend the arc.
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