Martin Luther King

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Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., Ph.D. (1929-1968) was by far the most important black leader of the 1960s. Since his assassination in 1968, he has been the single most important exemplar of civil rights and of liberalism generally in recent U.S. history.[1]

Contents

Education and early career

King was educated at Boston University, where he earned his advanced degree in theology. His PhD dissertation, however, was largely plagiarized; historians believe the supervising committee did not realize that. King became the pastor of the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, Georgia.

Theology

Rathbun (1968) shows the theological basis for King as a social reformer derived from four sources: the Social Gospel of Walter Rauschenbusch, the Protestant Neo-Orthodoxy of Reinhold Niebuhr and Paul Tillich, Personalism taught at Boston University, and Gandhi's concept of nonviolent love. King's synthesis of these four sources supported his civil rights activities. Laws may be broken, said King, if they are unjust laws which do not conform to eternal, natural law. Jesus, said King, was a true revolutionary who brought peace as a "presence of justice" instead of an "absence of tension." The church also must be revolutionary to counteract evil and bring about social justice. King's theology of social action foresaw complete, unprejudiced equality based on natural rights and privileges.[2]

Civil rights

He became an advocate against racial discrimination.

On Dec. 31, 1955, he led the nonviolent boycott of city buses of Montgomery, Alabama, after he sent Rosa Parks to be arrested for not moving to the back of the bus.[3]

Rev. King wrote his most famous writing, “Letter From A Birmingham Jail” (1963), while imprisoned for demonstrating against segregated eating facilities.


“ Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that. ”

Foreign policy

By 1966 his attacks on the Vietnam War led to a break with Lyndon Johnson and the labor unions that had been his base of support in the white community (along with the liberal churches).


King founded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.

Rev. King's most famous speech, delivered to a huge crowd gathered in Washington, D.C. in 1964, chanted the refrain "I Have a Dream" of an end to segregation and discrimination. It was a brilliant Christian sermon that drew upon verses and images in the Bible,[4] ending in "Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!"[5] The same year Rev. King was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Rev. King was assassinated by James Earl Ray on April 4, 1968 in Memphis, Tennessee.

On April 16, 1963, Rev. King wrote:

"As the Apostle Paul carried the gospel of Jesus Christ ... so am I compelled to carry the gospel... I must make two honest confessions to you, my Christian and Jewish brothers ...
I stand in the middle of two opposing forces ... One is a force of complacency ... The other force is one of bitterness and hatred, and it comes perilously close to advocating violence. It is expressed in the various black nationalist groups ... the largest being Elijah Muhammad's Muslim movement.
Nourished by frustration over racial discrimination, this movement is made up of people who have lost faith in America ...
I have tried to stand between these two forces ... for there is the more excellent way of love ...
One day the South will know that when these disinherited children of God sat down at lunch counters they were standing up for what is best in the American dream and for the most sacred values in our Judeo-Christian heritage."
Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.: "I Have a Dream" (1963)

In his 1964 book, WHY WE CAN'T WAIT, Rev. King wrote:

"Whenever this issue of compensatory or preferential treatment for the Negro is raised, some of our friends recoil in horror. The Negro should be granted equality, they agree, but he should ask for nothing more. On the surface, this appears reasonable, but it is not realistic. For it is obvious that if a man enters the starting line of a race three hundred years after another man, the first would have to perform some incredible feat in order to catch up."

His last major public speech became known as "I've Been to the Mountaintop" [6]

Although King is generally embraced by the American cultural establishment today, he and the authorities did not always have such a cordial relationship. In 1967, King called the United States "the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today." The FBI, under the direction of J. Edgar Hoover, kept King under surveillance from 1961 until his death in 1968. The Bureau tapped his phones and bugged his hotel rooms. The FBI did not end its surveillance of King's wife, Coretta Scott King, until many years after her husband's death.

Quotes

  • "We know from painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor. It must be demanded by the oppressed." [7]
  • "Judge people by the content of their character not the color of their skin."
  • "Faith is taking the first step even when you don't see the whole staircase."
  • "I submit that an individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for the law.
  • "It may be true that the law cannot make a man love me, but it can stop him from lynching me, and I think that's pretty important."
  • "We must learn to live together as brothers or perish together as fools."
  • "When you are right you cannot be too radical; when you are wrong, you cannot be too conservative."
  • "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere."
  • "I submit to you that if a man hasn't discovered something he will die for, he isn't fit to live."
  • "Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity."

See also

Further reading


References

  1. ↑ Alonzo Hamby, Liberalism and Its Challengers: From F.D.R. to Bush (1992)
  2. ↑ John W. Rathbun, "Martin Luther King: The Theology of Social Action." American Quarterly 1968 20(1): 38-53. in JSTOR
  3. ↑ http://www.thekingcenter.org/mlk/chronology.html
  4. ↑ For example, the speech recited Isaiah 40:4-5.
  5. ↑ http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/mlkihaveadream.htm
  6. ↑ http://www.afscme.org/about/1549.cfm
  7. ↑ [http://books.google.com/books?id=5wrCR_9VWowC&pg=PA346&dq=Freedom+is+never+voluntarily+given+by+the+oppressor%3B+it+must+be+demanded+by+the+oppressed&ei=_NxUSv-XJ6S4yQTg3ZGyBw God's new Israel: religious interpretations of American destiny‎ - Page 346] by Conrad Cherry
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