Eulogy for the Martyred Children Summary and Analysis

In his tribute at the funeral of the four little girls who died in the bombing of the Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. declared that these girls died nobly. They died as martyrs in a campaign for freedom and dignity. In their deaths, they spoke to ministers who refused to speak up, to politicians who continued to incite hatred and racism, to the federal government that compromised with undemocratic processes and to every Negro who submissively accepted segregation. To each person, the girls asked for a substitution of courage for caution. The concern was not for who killed them, but for the social system that shaped the murderers. Since these girls died, the struggle needed to persist without concessions to the dream of justice.

Their deaths were not...