The Ultimate Goal (for our national and global community)

Rev. Dr. King Jr., “The Ethical Demands of Integration” (1962):

"Although the terms desegregation and integration are often used interchangeably, there is a great deal of difference between the two. In the context of what our national community needs, desegregation alone is empty and shallow. We must always be aware of the fact that our ultimate goal is integration, and that desegregation is only a first step on the road to the good society. Perhaps this is the point at which we should define our terms.

The word segregation represents a system that is prohibitive; it denies the Negro equal access to schools, parks, restaurants, libraries and the like. Desegregation is eliminative and negative, for it simply removes these legal and social prohibitions. Integration is creative, and is therefore more profound and far-reaching than desegregation. Integration is the positive acceptance of desegregation and the welcomed participation of Negroes in the total range of human activities. Integration is genuine intergroup, interpersonal doing.

Desegregation then, rightly, is only a short-range goal. Integration is the ultimate goal of our national community. Thus, as America pursues the important task of respecting the “letter of the law,” i.e., compliance with desegregation decisions, she must be equally concerned with the “spirit of the law,” i.e., commitment to the democratic dream of integration.

We do not have to look very far to see the pernicious effects of a desegregated society that is not integrated. It leads to “physical proximity without spiritual affinity.” It gives us a society where men are physically desegregated and spiritually segregated, where elbows are together and hearts are apart. It gives us special togetherness and spiritual apartness. It leaves us with a stagnant equality of sameness rather than a constructive equality of oneness."