*Photo: Martin Luther King Jr addressing a rally*
There is often the risk of getting carried away by the eloquence of the Reverend (Dr.) Martin Luther King Jr. (MLK), the African-American civil rights Baptist Minister, so much that a significant part of his profound thoughts gets missing. MLK had taken it as his bounden duty to shine a guiding light on public morality. In a 16 April, 1963 “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” MLK wrote: “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.” Moreover, in his famous 28 August, 1963 “I have a dream” speech, MLK declared: “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”
Though a Christian Minister, MLK was conscious of the use of religion to service segregation and oppression. In a 25 March, 1965 speech titled “Our God is Marching On!” which he delivered in Montgomery, Alabama, he said: “If it may be said of the slavery era that the white man took the world and gave the Negro Jesus, then it may be said of the Reconstruction era that the southern aristocracy took the world and gave the poor white man Jim Crow [the metaphor for racist and anti-communist hysteria]. He gave him Jim Crow. And when his wrinkled stomach cried out for the food that his empty pockets could not provide, he ate Jim Crow, a psychological bird that told him that no matter how bad off he was, at least he was a white man, better than the black man. … And when his undernourished children cried out for the necessities that his low wages could not provide, he showed them the Jim Crow signs on the buses and in the stores, on the streets and in the public buildings. And his children, too, learned to feed upon Jim Crow, their last outpost of psychological oblivion.”
On the persistence of the struggle for freedom and justice, MLK said, in the same speech: “Yes, we are on the move and no wave of racism can stop us. We are on the move now. The burning of our churches will not deter us. The bombing of our homes will not dissuade us. We are on the move now. The beating and killing of our clergymen and young people will not divert us. We are on the move now. The wanton release of their known murderers would not discourage us. We are on the move now. Like an idea whose time has come, not even the marching of mighty armies can halt us. We are moving to the land of freedom.” MLK then exhorted the audience passionately: “My people, my people, listen. The battle is in our hands.”
On the Vietnam war, MLK remarked, in his 4 April, 1967 speech entitled, “Beyond Vietnam: A time to break silence,”: “The Vietnamese people proclaimed their own independence … in 1945 … after a combined French and Japanese occupation and before the communist revolution in China. They were led by Ho Chi Minh. Even though they quoted the American Declaration of Independence in their own document of freedom, we refused to recognize them. Instead, we decided to support France in its reconquest of her former colony. … For nine years following 1945 we denied the people of Vietnam the right of independence. For nine years we vigorously supported the French in their abortive effort to recolonize Vietnam. … After the French were defeated, it looked as if independence and land reform would come again through the Geneva Agreement. But instead there came the United States, determined that Ho should not unify the temporarily divided nation, and the peasants watched again as we supported one of the most vicious modern dictators, our chosen man, Premier Diem.”
Furthermore, MLK noted, in the speech: “These are revolutionary times. All over the globe men are revolting against old systems of exploitation and oppression, and out of the wounds of a frail world, new systems of justice and equality are being born.” Agreeing with “a sensitive American overseas official” who said in 1957 that America was on “the wrong side of a world revolution,” MLK recalled the words of the late US President J.F. Kennedy: “Five years ago he said, ‘Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.’ Increasingly, by choice or by accident, this is the role our nation has taken, the role of those who make peaceful revolution impossible by refusing to give up the privileges and the pleasures that come from the immense profits of overseas investments. I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values.”
According to MLK, “A true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and justice of many of our past and present policies. On the one hand, we are called to play the Good Samaritan on life’s roadside, but that will be only an initial act. One day we must come to see that the whole Jericho Road must be transformed so that men and women will not be constantly beaten and robbed as they make their journey on life’s highway. True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring.”
He continued: “A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth. With righteous indignation, it will look across the seas and see individual capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa, and South America, only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries, and say, ‘This is not just.’ It will look at our alliance with the landed gentry of South America and say, ‘This is not just.’”
Furthermore, he remarked: “A true revolution of values will lay hand on the world order and say of war, ‘This way of settling differences is not just.’ This business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation’s homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into the veins of peoples normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice, and love. A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.”
He also contends: “This kind of positive revolution of values is our best defense against communism. War is not the answer. Communism will never be defeated by the use of atomic bombs or nuclear weapons. Let us not join those who shout war and, through their misguided passions, urge the United States to relinquish its participation in the United Nations. These are days which demand wise restraint and calm reasonableness. … We must with positive action seek to remove those conditions of poverty, insecurity, and injustice, which are the fertile soil in which the seed of communism grows and develops.”
Moreover, MLK asserts: “A genuine revolution of values means in the final analysis that our loyalties must become ecumenical rather than sectional. Every nation must now develop an overriding loyalty to mankind as a whole in order to preserve the best in their individual societies. … This call for a worldwide fellowship that lifts neighborly concern beyond one’s tribe, race, class, and nation is in reality a call for an all-embracing – embracing and unconditional – love for all mankind. … We can no longer afford to worship the god of hate or bow before the altar of retaliation. The oceans of history are made turbulent by the ever-rising tides of hate. And history is cluttered with the wreckage of nations and individuals that pursued this self-defeating path of hate.”
On the question whether progress was being made in the struggle for justice and freedom, MLK responded in an 11 January, 1968 speech at Ohio Northern University: “I think in answering the question we have to avoid, on the one hand, a superficial optimism. On the other hand, we must avoid a deadening pessimism, because a superficial optimism says in substance that the problem is about solved now and we really don’t have much to do, while the deadening pessimism tends to conclude that the problem can’t be solved and that we’ve only made minor strides in the struggle for racial justice. I would much prefer following what I consider a realistic position which combines the truths of two opposites while avoiding the extremes of both. The realistic position would agree with optimism that we have made some meaningful strides, but it would also agree with some aspects of pessimism in recognizing that we still have a long, long way to go. … We have come a long, long way, but we have a long, long way to go.”
On the value of hope and patience, MLK said, in the speech titled “Our God is Marching On!”: “Somebody’s asking, ‘How long will prejudice blind the visions of men, darken their understanding, and drive bright-eyed wisdom from her sacred throne?’ Somebody’s asking, ‘When will wounded justice, lying prostrate on the streets … be lifted from this dust of shame to reign supreme among the children of men?’ … ‘How long will justice be crucified, and truth bear it?’ I come to say to you this afternoon, however difficult the moment, however frustrating the hour, it will not be long, because ‘truth crushed to earth will rise again.’ How long? Not long, because ‘no lie can live forever.’ How long? Not long, because ‘you shall reap what you sow.’”
The ultimate value which MLK himself acquired was to conquer the fear of death, and given the inevitability of death, that was the best thing any human being could do. So, he ended his 3 April, 1968 “I’ve been to the mountaintop” speech as follows with respect to information on threats against his person: “What would happen to me from some of our sick white brothers? Well, I don’t know what will happen now. … But it really doesn’t matter with me now, because I’ve been to the mountaintop. … And I’ve looked over. And I’ve seen the Promised Land. … And so I’m happy, tonight. I’m not worried about anything. I’m not fearing any man. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.” The next day, he was assassinated at the age of 39.