WARREN: -- yes --
KING: -- eggs at a car, I think that was really a, a result of the black nationalist groups, and a feeling, you know, they've heard all of these things about my being soft and my talking about 'love the white' man all the time, and I, I think a real feeling that, that, that this kind of approach is far from, it, it's a cowardly approach. And they transfer that bitterness toward the white man to me because they began to see, I mean, they began to fear that I'm saying love this person that they have such a bitter attitude toward. I think it's, I think it grows right out of that. In fact Malcolm X had a meeting the day before and he had talked about me a great deal and said, told them that I would be there the next night and said, "Now, you all are to go over there and let old King know what you think about him."
And he had said a great deal about nonviolence, criticizing nonviolence, and saying that I approved of Negro men and women being bitten by dogs and the fire hoses, and I say, say go on and not defend yourself. So I think this kind of response grew out of the build up and the, all of the talk about my being a sort of polished Uncle Tom. I mean this is the kind of thing they say in those groups. Now my feeling has always been, again, that they have never understood what I've said, I'm, I'm saying --
WARREN: -- same old story?
KING: Because, yeah, they confuse, they don't see that there's a great deal of a difference between nonresistance to evil and nonviolent resistance.
And certainly I'm not saying that you sit down and patiently accept injustice. I'm talking about a very strong force, where you stand up with all your might against an evil system, and you, you, you are not a coward.
You, you, you are resisting, but you've come to see that tactically as well as morally, it is better to be nonviolent. I can't see anything but, even if one would, didn't want to deal with the moral questions, it would just be impractical for the Negro to talk about making his struggle a violent one.
WARREN: On that point, the, this Brinkley survey and the Post survey in Harlem came up with an astonishing fact, that a large percentage of the population of Harlem do not think of a Negro as being a minority.
KING: Is that so?
WARREN: Don't even know it.
KING: They don't even --
WARREN: -- that even though it's factually been done.
KING: Yeah.
WARREN: And other, others feel it, emotionally don't feel it because they see so few white people around.
KING: This is a, that's right; they never go out of Harlem.
WARREN: So, the tactical appeal doesn't apply to them.
KING: Um-hm. Yeah.
WARREN: They say, "We're the majority."
KING: Yeah. That's right. That's right. I think that's --
WARREN: -- that's dangerous fact, isn't it?
KING: Right. That's a dangerous fact, yes. And you see many people in Harlem never go out of Harlem. I mean they'd never even been downtown. And you can see how this bitterness can accumulate. Here you see people crowded and hovered up in ghettos and slums with no hope, you see. They, they, they see no way out. If they could, you know, look down a long corridor and see an exit sign, they would feel a little better, but they, they see no sense of hope. And it, it's, it's very easy for one talking about violence and hatred for the white man to appeal to them. And, and I have never thought of this, but I think this, this is quite true, that if, even if you talk to them about nonviolence from a tactical point of view, they can't quite see it because they don't even know they're outnumbered --