Excerpt:
“There are certain words in the technical vocabulary of every academic discipline that tend after a while to become stereotype and cliches, there is a word in modern psychology which is now probably more familiar than any other words in psychology. It is the word the maladjusted; it is the ringing cry of the new child, psychology — maladjusted.
And as a minister seeing and counseling with people very day concerning their problems and their maladjustment’s, I’m certainly concerned with those who are maladjusted, concerned to see everybody as adjusted as possible.
But I want to leave this evening saying to you that there are some things in our social system that I’m proud to be maladjusted to, and I call upon you to be maladjusted to. I never intend to adjust myself to the viciousness of lynch mobs; I never intend to become adjusted to the evils of segregation and discrimination; I never intend to become adjusted to the tragic inequalities of the economic system which will take necessity from the masses to give luxury to the classes; I never intend to become adjusted to the insanity’s of militarism, the self-defeating method of physical violence.
There are some things that I never intend to become adjusted to, and I call upon you to continue to be maladjusted. History still has a choice place for the maladjusted. There is still a call for individuals to be maladjusted. The salvation of our world lies in the hands of the maladjusted.
I call upon you to be maladjusted, maladjusted as the prophet Amos who in the midst of the tragic inequalities of injustice in his day cried out in words that echoes across the generations: ”Let judgment run down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.”
As maladjusted as Lincoln who confronted a nation divided against itself and had the vision to see that the nation could not exist half free, and half slave.
Maladjusted as the — hundreds and thousands — of Negroes, North and South who are determined now to stand up for freedom, willing to face possible violence and possible death, who are willing to stand up and sacrifice and struggle until segregation is a dead reality and until integration is a fact.
Maladjusted as Jefferson who in the midst of an age amazingly adjusted to slavery cried out in words of cosmic proportions: ”All men are created equal; they are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights. Among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”
I call upon you to follow this maladjustment. It is through such a maladjustment that we will be able to emerge from the bleak and desolate midnight of man’s inhumanity to man to the bright and glittering daybreak of freedom, equality and justice.”
Wildflowers' Movement 