If You Cant Fly Then Run

Delivered at Spelman College in Atlanta on April 10, 1960, as Martin Luther King Jr. addressed students during the early sit-in movement — a period when young Black students across the South were staging nonviolent protests at segregated lunch counters. King used the escalating series of alternatives (fly, run, walk, crawl) to urge students to participate in the movement at whatever level they could, insisting only that they keep moving forward.