“Your blueprint must be a commitment to the eternal principles, of beauty, love and justice.”
Rarely seen footage of Martin Luther King, Jr., speaking to students at Barratt Junior High School in Philadelphia on October 26, 1967, where he delivered his speech "What Is Your Life's Blueprint?" Full speech - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZmtOGXreTOU
MLK’s Edited Speech
What is in your life's blueprint?
And I want to suggest number one in your life's blueprint should be a deep belief in your own dignity, your own worth, and your somebodiness. Don't allow anybody to make you feel that you are nobody.
Always feel that you count, always feel that you have worth and always feel that your life has ultimate significance.
In your life's blueprint, you must have as a basic principle, the determination to achieve excellence in your various fields of endeavor, What you will do in life, what your life's work will be.
And when you discover what you are going to be in life, set out to do it as if God almighty called you at this particular moment in history to do it.
Finally, in your last blueprint must be a commitment to the eternal principles. Of beauty, love and justice.
Don't allow anybody to pull you so low as to make you hate them.
Don't allow anybody to cause you to lose your self respect to the point, that you do not struggle for justice.
However young you are, you have a responsibility to seek to make your nation a better nation in which to live.
You have a responsibility to seek to make life better for everybody. And so you must be involved in the struggle for freedom and justice.
Now in this struggle for freedom and justice, there are many constructive things that we all can do and that we all must do. And we must not give ourselves to those things, which will not solve our problems.
I believe that we can transform dark yesterday's of injustice into bright tomorrows of justice and humanity.
Let us keep going toward the goal of selfhood, toward the realization of the dream of brotherhood and toward the realization of the dream of understanding goodwill, let nobody stop us.
We must keep moving. We must keep going.
If you can't fly, run, if you can't run, walk, if you can't walk, crawl, but by all means, keep moving.
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