An ASL Translation from Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. "Remaining Awake Through a Great Revolution"

Dear #Deaf #Black #United #Human #Community: This ASL translation is an excerpt from the last Sunday sermon of Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. before he was assassinated on April 4, 1968. The sermon is called: "Remaining Awake Through a Great Revolution"

Dr. King delivered his final Sunday sermon on March 31, 1968, from the Canterbury Pulpit at The Cathedral Church of Saint Peter and Saint Paul in the City and Diocese of Washington, commonly known as Washington National Cathedral, 3101 Wisconsin Avenue, N.W., Washington, D.C., U.S.A.

#BlackHistoryMonth #BlackHistory #MLK #DrMartinLutherKingJr #DrKing #MartinLutherKingJr #ReverendKing #OurDeafCommunity #BlackASL #BASL #SignLanguage #AmericanSignLanguage #ASL #RepresentationMatters #Racism #EndRacism #PowerToThePeople #BlackPeople #Revolution #Diversity #DiversityMatters #Inclusion #InclusionMatters #BlackInterpreter #BIPOCInterpreter #BIPOC #POCInterpreter #GODAloveit #coda #Deaf #Intersectionality #LastSundaySermon #Assassination #Reverence #Time #Justice

*IMAGE DESCRIPTION: Two videos are laid side-by-side: On the left is the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. dressed in a white collard shirt, light brown and black diagonally-striped necktie, and a black, textured congregation robe with horizontal velvet stripes along the sleeves. He is a Black man with caramel-brown skin, brown eyes, short black hair and a thin, black mustache. His eyes are filled with both passion and sadness for our nation. He stands in a church with golden pillars surrounding him and a congregation of diverse churchgoers attending his words.

On the right is an American Sign Language Interpreter, Brandon Kazen-Maddox. They are a Black, caramel-skinned individual with hazel-brown eyes, dark eyelashes and loc’d hair corn-rolled back in three layers into a fishtail hairstyle. Brandon wears a black button-up shirt with the sleeves rolled up and stands in front of a white wall.

The videos are set against a black background with honey mahogany subtitles along the lower third of the video that describe the audio of Dr. King’s last Sunday sermon before he was assassinated on April 4, 1968.

The white text along the top of the layout reads:
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
"Remaining Awake Through a Great Revolution”
March 31, 1968







*FULL TRANSCRIPT
The hour has come for everybody, for all institutions of the public sector and the private sector to work to get rid of racism. And now if we are to do it we must honestly admit certain things and get rid of certain myths that have constantly been disseminated all over our nation.
One is the myth of time. It is the notion that only time can solve the problem of racial injustice. And there are those who often sincerely say to the Negro and his allies in the white community, "Why don’t you slow up? Stop pushing things so fast. Only time can solve the problem. And if you will just be nice and patient and continue to pray, in a hundred or two hundred years the problem will work itself out."
There is an answer to that myth. It is that time is neutral. It can be used either constructively or destructively. And I am sorry to say this morning that I am absolutely convinced that the forces of ill will in our nation, the extreme rightists of our nation—the people on the wrong side—have used time much more effectively than the forces of goodwill. And it may well be that we will have to repent in this generation. Not merely for the vitriolic words and the violent actions of the bad people, but for the appalling silence and indifference of the good people who sit around and say, "Wait on time."
Somewhere we must come to see that human progress never rolls in on the wheels of inevitability. It comes through the tireless efforts and the persistent work of dedicated individuals who are willing to be co-workers with God. And without this hard work, time itself becomes an ally of the primitive forces of social stagnation. So we must help time and realize that the time is always ripe to do right.