Martin Luther King’s rallying cry to his supporters in Selma Alabama in 1965

Martin Luther King's speech in March, 1965, in in Selma, Alabama, before he led a protest against racial inequality:

“The only way we can really achieve freedom is to somehow conquer the fear of death. For if a man has not discovered something that he will die for, he isn’t fit to live.

“Deep down in our non-violent creed is the conviction that there are some things so dear, some things so precious, some things so eternally true, that they are worth dying for.

“And if a man happens to be 36 years old, as I happen to be, and some great truth stands before the door of his life, some great opportunity to stand up for that which is right and that which is just, and he refuses to stand up because he wants to live a little longer and he is afraid his home will get bombed, or he is afraid that he will lose his job, or he is afraid that he will get shot or beat down by state troopers. He may go on and live until he’s 80. He’s just as dead at 36 as he would be at 80. And the cessation of breathing in his life is merely the belated announcement of an earlier death of the spirit. He died.

“A man dies when he refuses to stand up for that which is right. A man dies when he refuses to take a stand for justice. A man dies when he refuses to take a stand for that which is true.

“So we are going to stand up amid the horses. We’re going to stand up right here, amid the billy clubs. We’re going to stand up right here amid the police dogs, if they have them. We’re going to stand up amid the tear gas. We’re going to stand up amid anything they can muster up, letting the world know we are determined to be free.”