April 4th 1968 is a day when the soul of the black community was wrenched away as a bullet felled the nation’s prophet Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. While he had plenty of detractors, there has not been a voice in America that has equaled his prophetic utterances, motivated a people or threatened the status quo.
During the 1990’s, the late George Givens, Gary Rodwell and myself while attending an Industrial Areas Foundation organizers meeting went to the Lorraine Motel where Dr. King was assasinated. The three of us were not what you would call quiet but at that spot a quietness came over us. In that moment Gary said “and he was just one man” to which George replied “yes but what a man” As we drove back to the hotel we were silent as we reflected on the life of the dreamer.
As I reflect on that moment, I am reminded that the King celebrated each January with acclamations of “I Have a Dream” is not the King that was assassinated on April 4th, 1968. The King whose “content of their character” has been bastardized by white conservative GOP politicians to assuage their guilty conscience was not seen as a man of peace during his 39 years in the earthly realm.
King was seen by many as a rabble rouser and an outside agitator. He would not be the hero of Joe Manchin, Mitt Romney, Kristen Sinema or Lindsay Graham. He was not lifted up as the progenitor of love by those who advocated white supremacy such as the late William F. Buckley Jr. Even from some believed to be on the left such as Saul Alinksy, who intellectually was against the Civil Rights bill and was more in line with the libertarianism of Barry Goldwater, was against the methods of King. His rallys were not always welcomed by city officials or religious leaders. He was condemned by right wing GOP leaders and some black leaders as well. Newspapers across the nation were not kind to Rev. King when he was alive.
Dr. King was a man who believed social justice should be at the heart of the gospel which was something his denomination the National Baptist Convention had a lackadaisical attitude towards. It is this belief about social justice that ultimately led many pastors to leave the National Baptist Convention, including King, and create the Progressive National Baptist convention. Dr. King also believed that a space for redemption and reconciliation had to be part of the healing process in America.
Because of his scriptural foundation his rhethoric was not seen as the most muscular in the northern urban centers of the nation. While the more muscular rhetoric came from some of his critics such as Malcom X or SNCC leader Kwame Ture (Stokley Carmichael) King was the most radical of all the leaders of that day and more than most he had a clear understanding of the political, social and militaristic context in which he operated. While he was not always supported by some within the civil rights movement his influence eclipsed those around him and was felt around the world. In a meeting Malcolm X had with African leaders about his plan to bring the United States to the International Criminal Court for its treatment of African Americans, the response to Malcolm was to ask what did Martin think of the plan.
From the pulpit of Riverside Church in New York Dr. King condemned the Vietnam War which resulted in him being criticized by many people, including the NAACP. which according to The New York Times “voted unanimously on a resolution to condemn his speech.”
Even within the faith world Dr. King was not seen in the same light he is viewed today. In 1963 when King was planning a march in Birmingham Alabama he received a letter from seven Christian clergy and one Rabbi in which they called upon black protesters to stand down saying ”We do not believe that these days of new hope are days when extreme measures are justified in Birmingham…We further strongly urge our own Negro community to withdraw support from these demonstrations, and to unite locally in working peacefully for a better Birmingham. When rights are consistently denied, a cause should be pressed in the courts and in negotiations among local leaders, and not in the streets. We appeal to both our white and Negro citizenry to observe the principles of law and order and common sense”
King responded with his iconic “Letter from A Birmingham Jail “I must make two honest confessions to you, my Christian and Jewish brothers. First, I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to “order” than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: “I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action”; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man’s freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a “more convenient season.” Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.”
On a national level King’s actions caused consternation. Despite the fact that the 1963 March on Washington was peaceful, the head of the FBI’s domestic intelligence division William Sullivan wrote in a 1963 memo “Personally, I believe in the light of King’s powerful demagogic speech yesterday he stands heads and shoulders over all other Negro leaders put together when it comes to influencing great masses of Negroes. We must mark him now, if we have not done so before, as the most dangerous Negro of the future in this Nation from the standpoint of communism, the Negro, and national” King was seen as a threat to national security which prompted J. Edgar Hoover to put him under constant surveillance through the COINTELPRO program and other schemes.
Even then Attorney general Robert Kennedy, expressed what he believed was King’s affect on the black community when he allegedly told his brother President Robert Kennedy, “Negroes are now just antagonistic and mad and they’re going to be mad at everything. You can’t talk to them. My friends all say [even] the Negro maids and servants are getting antagonistic.”
As Black Lives Matter is criticized for its fight against police brutality the nation forgets King’s critique of police brutality and misconduct which led to Los Angeles Mayor Sam Yorty accusing King of supporting black lawlessness. This is on top of King calling for the suspension of a NYC officer who in 1964 shot a 15 year old black student James Powell and criticized the then police commissioner Michael Murphy for having “little understanding of the urgency of the situation” and for being “unresponsive to either the demands or the aspirations” of Black people, which led to King being condemned by Mayor Wagner.
The nation forgets his call for universal health care long for it became the rallying cry of Senator Bernie Sanders and a guaranteed basic income.
America is right to celebrate King but in doing so it has diminished the real radical legacy of King. Pentecostal theologian Barbara Holmes said “be careful who you give your culture to because they will diminish it down to something that they can understand” Unfortunately, what is celebrated is a watered down, sanitized version that serves to appeal to the conservative base of America. The real King would be censored by people like Gov. Abbott of Texas and Ron Desantis of Florida because in their warped minds he would make little white children feel guilty.
What King fought for is now under attack from the Supreme Court gutting the voting rights bill, republican schemes to dilute the power of the vote as well as attempts to sanitize American history
It is hard to predict where King would be today but if past is prologue he would have more than likely supported the cause of Black Lives Matter and supported the rights of the LGBTQ community. He certainly would have supported an overhaul of the immigration system especially for dreamers. He would have condemned the Russian invasion of Ukraine while at the same time speaking about the unfair treatment of African and Indian students as they tried to leave Ukraine. He would have found a way to create links between the two communities.
Perhaps Dr. King was an anomaly. Perhaps the times called for a voice such as his. Today there is no voice as profoundly insightful or significant as his. Today too many leaders speak for applause rather than a cause. Coretta Scott King once wrote to Rev. Al Sharpton criticizing his rhetoric “sometimes you are tempted to speak to the applause of the crowd rather than the heights of the cause, and you will say cheap things to get cheap applause rather than do higher things to raise the nation higher.” Too often leaders from the sixties and today have used rhetoric geared more towards entertainment and applause. Unfortunately, there is no unelected leader with the prominent voice of Dr. King and perhaps the nation may never hear a voice like his.
If America is going to celebrate Dr. King it should celebrate what he actually stood for. As the generation who marched and fought alongside him to create a better union die off, the story of the civil rights movement is in danger of being buried with them. If that is the case the narrative of that time may be in the hands of rightwing officials and organizations whose self interest is to turn the clock back to a time when white supremacy went unchallenged.
There is no doubt that progress has been made as a result of the civil rights movement and the people who participated in it. Even since the time when a bullet felled the nation’s prophet there has been great strides towards equality in the nation. Nonetheless, the celebration of Dr. King should be about the struggles of a people and their victories and the struggles that remain. For the next commemoration of the life of Dr. King let it be about the man who gave his life for social justice and equality and not the false image created by the political right to serve its own warped image of America.
Anything less does disservice to King, the civil rights movement, and the nation that needs to hear the truth.