Where Do We Go From Here, Chaos or Community? [Japanese Edition. Translated by Kaname Saruya. Signed and Inscribed by Translator]

“The Negro will only be truly free when he reaches down to the inner depths of his own being and signs…his own emancipation proclamation”

---

Japanese translation of Martin Luther King, Jr.‘s final book—containing the important chapter on “Black Power.” Inscribed and dated by the translator.

King’s book is about non-violence in the face of growing black nationalism and militancy in the mid-1960s:

As long as the mind is enslaved the body can never be free. Psychological freedom, a firm sense of self-esteem, is the most powerful weapon against the long night of physical slavery. No Lincolnian Emancipation Proclamation or Kennedyan or Johnsonian civil rights bill can totally bring this kind of freedom. The Negro will only be truly free when he reaches down to the inner depths of his own being and signs with the pen and ink of assertive selfhood his own emancipation proclamation. ...and say to himself and the world: “I am somebody. I am a person. I am a man with dignity and honor. I have a rich and noble history, however painful and exploited that history has been. I am black and comely.” This self-affirmation is the black man’s need made compelling by the white man’s crimes against him. This is positive and necessary power for black people. (pp43–44)

“In his last book, Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community? (1967), King dismissed the claim of Black Power advocates ‘to be the most revolutionary wing of the social revolution taking place in the United States,’ but he acknowledged that they responded to a psychological need among African Americans he had not previously addressed.” (ANB)

Sold