Martin Luther King Jr. urged the crowd to put down their weapons, reject retaliation, and remain committed to nonviolence, telling them to go home without seeking vengeance and to meet hate with love.

What MLK Told The Crowd

When King arrived at his bombed home in Montgomery in January 1956, he faced an angry, armed crowd ready to strike back. He calmed them by reaffirming his philosophy of nonviolence , insisting that violence would only make things worse.

He told them things to this effect:

  • “If you have weapons, take them home; if you do not have them, please do not seek them.”
  • “We cannot solve this problem through violence. We must meet violence with nonviolence.”
  • “If you have weapons, take them home. He who lives by the sword will perish by the sword.”
  • “We want to love our enemies… We must meet hate with love.”

His Final Assurance That Night

To keep people from acting in anger, he reassured them that his family was safe and that the movement was bigger than any one person. He told the crowd to disperse peacefully with words like:

  • “Go home and don’t worry. We are not hurt.”
  • “Remember, if anything happens to me there will be others to take my place.”

These statements became a defining example of how King responded to violent attacks with disciplined, principled nonviolence.

Information gathered from public forums or data available on the internet and portrayed here.