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In order to be a man of distinction, you must drink this whiskey. In order to make your neighbors envious, you must drive this type of car. In order to be lovely to love, you must wear this kind of lipstick or this kind of perfume. And you know before you know it, you're just buying that stuff.

That's the way the advertisers do it. I got a letter the other day and it was a magazine coming out and it opened up, opened up, "Dear Dr. King, as you know you are on many mailing lists and you are categorized as highly intelligent, progressive, a lover of the arts and the sciences, and I know you will want to read what I have to say." Of course I did.

After you said all of that and explained me so exactly, of course I wanted to read it. But very seriously, it goes through life. The drum major instinct is real. And you know what else that happens or causes to happen? It often causes us to live above our means.

(Make it plain, make it plain.) It's nothing but the drum major instinct. (Yeah) You ever see people buy cars that they can't even begin to buy in terms of their income? You've seen people riding around in Cadillacs and Chryslers who aren't enough to have a good T Model 4.

(Make it plain, make it plain.) But it feeds a repressed ego. You know, economists tell us that your automobile should not cost more than half of your annual income. So if you make an income of five thousand dollars, your car shouldn't cost more than about twenty-five hundred. That's just good economics.

And if it's a family of two and both members of the family make ten thousand dollars, they would have to make out with one car. That would be good economics, although it's often inconvenient. But so often, haven't you seen people making five thousand dollars a year and driving a car that costs six thousand?

And they wonder why their ends never meet. That's a fact. Now the economists also say that your house shouldn't cost—if you're buying a house, it shouldn't cost more than twice your income. That's based on the economy and how you would make ends meet. So if you have an income of five thousand dollars—it's kind of difficult in this society—but say it's a family with an income of ten thousand dollars, the house shouldn't cost much more than twenty thousand.

But I've seen folk making ten thousand dollars living in forty- and fifty-thousand-dollar houses. And you know, they just barely make it. They get a check every month somewhere, and they owe all of that out before it comes in. Never have anything to put away for rainy days. But now the problem is, it is the drum-major instinct.

And you know, you see people over and over again with the drum-major instinct taking them over, and they just live their lives trying to outdo the gentleman. They got to get this coat because this particular coat is a little better and a little better looking than Mary's coat. And I've got to drive this car because it's something about this car that makes my car a little better than my neighbor's car.

I know a man who used to live in a thirty-five-thousand-dollar house, and other people started building thirty-five-thousand-dollar houses, so he built a seventy-five-thousand-dollar house, and then somebody else built a seventy-five-thousand-dollar house, and he built a hundred-thousand-dollar house, and I don't know where he's going to end up if he's going to live his life trying to keep up with the Joneses.

There comes a time that the drum-major instinct can become destructive. And that's where I want to move now. I want to move to the point of saying that if this instinct is not harnessed, it becomes a very dangerous, pernicious instinct. For instance, if it isn't harnessed, it causes one's personality to become distorted.

I guess that's the most damaging aspect of it, what it does to the personality. If it isn't harnessed, you will end up, day in and day out, trying to deal with your ego problem by boasting. Have you ever heard people that, you know—and I'm sure you've met them—that really become sickening because they just sit up all the time talking about themselves, and they just boast and boast and boast, and that's a person who has not harnessed the drum-major instinct.

And then it does other things to the personality. It causes you to lie about who you know sometimes. There are some people who are influence peddlers, and in that attempt to deal with the drum-major instinct, they have to try to identify with the so-called big-name people. And if you're not careful, they will make you think they know somebody that they don't really know.

They know them well, they sip tea with them, and they this and that. That happens to people. And the other thing is that it causes one to engage, ultimately, in activities that are merely used to get attention. Criminologists tell us that some people are driven to crime because of this drum-major instinct.

They don't feel that they're getting enough attention through the normal channels of social behavior, and so they turn to antisocial behavior in order to get attention, in order to feel important. And so they get that gun, and before they know it, they rob the bank in a quest for recognition and a quest for importance.

And then the final great tragedy of the distorted personality is the fact that when one fails to harness this instinct, he ends up trying to push others down in order to push himself up. And whenever you do that, you engage in some of the most vicious activities. You will spread evil, vicious, lying gossip on people because you are trying to pull them down in order to push yourself up.

And the great issue of life is to harness the drum-major instinct. Now, the other problem is, when you don't harness the drum-major instinct, this uncontrolled aspect of it is that it leads to snobbish exclusivism. It leads to snobbish exclusivism. Now, you know, this is the danger of social clubs and fraternities—I'm in a fraternity, I'm in two or three—for sororities and all of these.

I'm not talking against them, I'm saying it's the danger. The danger is that they can become forces of classism and exclusivism, where somehow you get a degree of satisfaction because you are in something exclusive, and that's fulfilling something, you know. And I'm in this fraternity, and it's the best fraternity in the world, and everybody can't get in this fraternity.

So it ends up, you know, a very exclusive kind of thing. And you know, that can happen with the church. I know churches get in that bind sometimes. (Yes, yes, they get plain luke.) I've been to churches, you know, and they say, "We have so many doctors and so many schoolteachers and so many lawyers and so many businessmen in our church." And that's fine, because doctors need to go to church, and lawyers and businessmen, teachers, they ought to be in church.

But they say that—even the preacher sometimes will go all through that—they say that as if the other people don't count. The church is the one place where the doctor ought to forget that he's a doctor. The church is the one place where the Ph.D. ought to forget that he's a Ph.D.

The church is the one place that the schoolteacher ought to forget the degree she has behind her name. The church is the one place where the lawyer ought to forget that he's a lawyer. And any church that violates the "whosoever will let him come" doctrine is a dead, cold church, and nothing but a little soldier with a fiendishness of religiosity.

The church is true to its job. It says, "Whosoever will let him come." It says, "Whosoever will let him come." And it does not suppose to satisfy the perverted uses of the drum major instinct. It's the one place where everybody should be the same, standing before a common master and savior.

And a recognition grows out of this that all men are brothers because they are children of a common father. The drum major instinct leads to exclusivist wanting. The drum major instinct can lead one to feel that because he has some training, he's a little better than that person who doesn't have it.

Or because he has some economic security, that he's a little better than that person who doesn't have it. That's the uncontrolled, perverted use of the drum major instinct. Now the other thing is that it leads to tragic, and we've seen it happen so often, tragic race prejudice. This recording is briefly interrupted at this point.

We see with our own eyes, in fact not too long ago a man down in Mississippi said that God was a charter member of the White Citizens Council. And so God being the charter member means that everybody who's in that has a kind of divinity, a kind of superiority.

And think of what has happened in history as a result of this perverted use of the drum major instinct that has led to the most tragic prejudice, the most tragic expressions of man's inhumanity to man. The other day I was saying, I always try to do a little converting when I'm in jail.

And when we were in jail in Birmingham the other day, the white wardens and all enjoyed coming around the cell to talk about the race problem. And they were showing us where we were so wrong demonstrating, and they were showing us where segregation was so right, and they were showing us where intermarriage was so wrong.

So I would get to preaching, and we would get to talking calmly because they wanted to talk about it. And then we got down one day to the point—that was the second or third day—to talk about where they lived and how much they were earning. And when those brothers told me what they were earning, I said, "Now you know what?

You ought to be marching with us. You just as poor as Negro." And I said, "You are put in the position of supporting your oppressor, because through prejudice and blindness you fail to see that the same forces that oppress Negroes in American society oppress poor white people. And all you are living on is the satisfaction of your skin being white and the drum-major instinct of thinking that you are somebody big because you're white.

And you're so poor you can't send your children to school. You ought to be out here marching with every one of us every time we have a march." Now that's the fact. The poor white has been put into this position where through blindness and prejudice he is forced to support his oppressors, and all the things he has gone for him is the false feeling that he is superior because his skin is white and can hardly eat and make his ends meet week in and week out.

Not only does it stop, and not only does this thing go into the racial struggle, it goes into the struggle between nations. And I would submit to you this morning that what is wrong in the world today is that the nations of the world are engaged in a bitter, colossal contest for supremacy.

And if something doesn't happen to stop this trend, I'm sorely afraid that we won't be here to talk about Jesus Christ and about God and about brotherhood too many more years. If somebody doesn't bring an end to this suicidal thrust that we see in the world today, none of us are going to be around, because somebody is going to make the mistake through our senseless blundering of dropping a nuclear bomb somewhere, and then another one is going to drop.

And don't let anybody fool you. This can happen within a matter of seconds. They have twenty-megaton bombs in Russia right now that can destroy a city as big as New York in three seconds, with everybody wiped away and every building. And we can do the same thing to Russian China.

But this is why we are drifting, and we are drifting there, because nations are caught up with the drum-major instinct, "I must be first, I must be supreme, our nation must rule the world." And I am sad to say that the nation in which we live is the supreme culprit.

And I'm going to continue to say it to America, because I love this country too much to see the drift that it has taken. God didn't call America to do what she's doing in the world now. God didn't call America to engage in a senseless, unjust war as the war in Vietnam.

And we are criminals in that war. We have committed more war crimes almost than any nation in the world, and I'm going to continue to say it. And we won't stop it because of our pride and our arrogance as a nation. But God has a way of even putting nations in their place.

And the God that I worship has a way of saying, "Don't play with me." He has a way of saying, as the God of the Old Testament used to say to the Hebrews, "Don't play with me, Israel. Don't play with me, Babylon. Be still and know that I'm God.

And if you don't stop your reckless course, I'll rise up and break the backbone of your power." And that can happen to America. Every now and then I go back and read Gibbons' Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, and when I come and look at America, I say to myself, "The parallels are frightening." We have perverted the drummage instinct.

Let me rush on to my conclusion, because I want you to see what Jesus was really saying. What was the answer that Jesus gave these men? It's very interesting. One would have thought that Jesus would have condemned them. One would have thought that Jesus would have said, "You are out of your place.

You are selfish. Why would you raise such a question?" That isn't what Jesus did. He did something altogether different. He said in substance, "Oh, I see. You want to be first. You want to be great. You want to be important. You want to be significant. Well, you ought to be.

If you want to be my disciple, you must be." He reordered priorities, and he said, "Yes, don't give up this instinct. It's a good instinct if you use it right. It's a good instinct if you don't distort it and pervert it. Don't give it up. Keep feeling the need for being important.

Keep feeling the need for being first. But I want you to be first in love. I want you to be first in moral excellence. I want you to be first in generosity. That is what I want you to do." He transformed the situation by giving a new definition of greatness.

And you know how he said it? He said, "Now, brethren, I can't give you greatness, and really, I can't make you first." This is what Jesus said to James and John. "You must earn it. True greatness comes not by favoritism but by fitness. The right hand and the left are not mine to give; they belong to those who are prepared." And so Jesus gave us a new norm of greatness.

If you want to be important, wonderful. If you want to be recognized, wonderful. If you want to be great, wonderful. But recognize that "he who is greatest among you shall be your servant." That's a new definition of greatness. This morning, the thing that I like about it, by giving that definition of greatness, it means that everybody can be great, because everybody can serve.

You don't have to have a college degree to serve. You don't have to make your subject and your verb agree to serve. You don't have to know about Plato and Aristotle to serve. You don't have to know Einstein's theory of relativity to serve. You don't have to know the second theory of thermodynamics in physics to serve.

You only need a heart full of grace, a soul generated by love, and you can be that servant. I know a man, and I just want to talk about him a minute, and maybe you will discover who I'm talking about as I go down the way, because he was a great one.

He just went about serving. He was born in an obscure village, the child of a poor peasant woman. Then he grew up in still another obscure village, where he worked as a carpenter until he was thirty years old. Then for three years, he just got on his feet, and he was an itinerant preacher.

And he went about doing some things. He didn't have much; he never wrote a book. He never held an office. He never had a family. He never owned a house. He never went to college. He never visited a big city. He never went two hundred miles from where he was born.

He did none of the usual things that the world would associate with greatness. He had no credentials but himself. He was only a little one. The eye of the public began to look at him. They called him a rouse. They turned against him. They called him a rabble-rouser. They called him a troublemaker.

They said he was an agitator. He practiced civil disobedience. He broke injunctions. And so he was turned over to his enemies and went through the mockery of a trial. And the irony of it all is that his friends turned him over to them. One of his closest friends denied him.

Another of his friends turned him over to his enemies. And while he was dying, the people who killed him gambled for his clothing, the only possession that he had in the world. When he was dead, he was buried in a barraton through the pity of a friend. Nineteen centuries have come and gone.

Today he stands as the most influential figure that ever entered human history. All the armies that ever marched, all the navies that ever sailed, all the pirates that ever stood, all kings that ever went to jail, and all the pharaohs that ever went to heaven, and all the pharaohs that ever went to hell, and all the pharaohs that ever went to heaven, and all the pharaohs that ever went to heaven, and all the pharaohs that ever went to hell, and all the pharaohs that ever went to heaven, and all the pharaohs that ever went to heaven, and all the pharaohs that ever went to heaven, and all the pharaohs that ever went to heaven, and all the pharaohs that ever went to heaven, and all the pharaohs that ever went to heaven, and all the pharaohs that ever went to heaven, and all the pharaohs that ever went to heaven, and all the pharaohs that ever went to heaven, and all the pharaohs that ever went to heaven, and all the pharaohs that ever went to heaven, and all the pharaohs that ever went to heaven, and all the pharaohs that ever went to heaven.

I think about my own death, and I think about my own funeral, and I don't think of it in a morbid sense. Every now and then I ask myself, "What is it that I would want said?" And I leave the word to you this morning. If any of you are around, when I have to meet my day, I don't want a long funeral.

And if you get somebody to deliver the eulogy, tell them not to talk too long. Every now and then I wonder what I want them to say. Tell them not to mention that I have a Nobel Peace Prize, that isn't important. Tell them not to mention that I have three or four hundred other awards, that's not important.

Tell them not to mention where I went to school. I'd like somebody to mention that day that Martin Luther King, Jr. tried to give his life serving others. I'd like for somebody to say that day that Martin Luther King, Jr. tried to love somebody. I want you to say that day that I tried to be right on the wall question.

I want you to be able to say that day that I did try to feed the hungry. I want you to be able to say that day that I did try in my life to clothe those who were naked. I want you to say on that day that I did try in my life to visit those who were imprisoned.

I want you to say that I tried to love and serve humanity. Yes, if you want to say that I was a drum major, say that I was a drum major for justice. Say that I was a drum major for peace, I was a drum major for righteousness, and all of the other shallow things will not matter.

I won't have any money to leave behind. I won't have the fine and luxurious things of life to leave behind, but I just want to leave a committed life behind. And that's all I want to say. If I can help somebody as I pass along, if I can cheer somebody with a war song, if I can show somebody he's traveling wrong, then my living will not be in vain.

If I can do my duty as a Christian, or if I can bring salvation to a world once wrought, if I can spread the message as the Master taught, then my living will not be in vain. Yes, Jesus, I want to be on your right or your left side, not for any selfish reason.

I want to be on your right or your left side, not in terms of some political kingdom or position, but I just want to be there in love and in justice and in truth and in commitment to others so that we can make of this old world a new world.

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