Six on History: Martin Luther King Jr. Holiday
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"While confined here in the Birmingham city jail, I came across your recent statement calling our present activities “unwise and untimely.” Seldom, if ever, do I pause to answer criticism of my work and ideas. If I sought to answer all of the criticisms that cross my desk, my secretaries would be engaged in little else in the course of the day, and I would have no time for constructive work. But since I feel that you are men of genuine good will and your criticisms are sincerely set forth, I would like to answer your statement in what I hope will be patient and reasonable terms.
I think I should give the reason for my being in Birmingham, since you have been influenced by the argument of “outsiders coming in”
I am in Birmingham because injustice is here …I am cognizant of the interrelatedness of all communities and states. I cannot sit idly by in Atlanta and not be concerned about what happens in Birmingham. 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. Never again can we afford to live with the narrow, provincial “outside agitator” idea. Anyone who lives inside the United States can never be considered an outsider …
There are some instances when a law is just on its face and unjust in its application. For instance, I was arrested Friday on a charge of parading without a permit. Now, there is nothing wrong with an ordinance which requires a permit for a parade, but when the ordinance is used to preserve segregation and to deny citizens the First Amendment privilege of peaceful assembly and peaceful protest, then it becomes unjust.
Of course, there is nothing new about this kind of civil disobedience. It was seen sublimely in the refusal of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego to obey the laws of Nebuchadnezzar because a higher moral law was involved. It was practiced superbly by the early Christians, who were willing to face hungry lions and the excruciating pain of chopping blocks before submitting to certain unjust laws of the Roman Empire. To a degree, academic freedom is a reality today because Socrates practiced civil disobedience.
We can never forget that everything Hitler did in Germany was “legal” and everything the Hungarian freedom fighters did in Hungary was “illegal.” It was “illegal” to aid and comfort a Jew in Hitler’s Germany. But I am sure that if I had lived in Germany during that time, I would have aided and comforted my Jewish brothers even though it was illegal. If I lived in a Communist country today where certain principles dear to the Christian faith are suppressed, I believe I would openly advocate disobeying these anti-religious laws …
Never before have I written a letter this long–or should I say a book? I’m afraid that it is much too long to take your precious time. I can assure you that it would have been much shorter if I had been writing from a comfortable desk, but what else is there to do when you are alone for days in the dull monotony of a narrow jail cell other than write long letters, think strange thoughts, and pray long prayers?
If I have said anything in this letter that is an understatement of the truth and is indicative of an unreasonable impatience, I beg you to forgive me. If I have said anything in this letter that is an overstatement of the truth and is indicative of my having a patience that makes me patient with anything less than brotherhood, I beg God to forgive me.
Yours for the cause of Peace and Brotherhood,
MARTIN LUTHER KING JR.
Volume 212, Number 2, pp. 78-88
This post originally appeared at The Atlantic.
On May 17, 1957, Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was one of the speakers at a Prayer Pilgrimage held at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington DC. King demanded that Congress pass legislation ensuring the right of African Americans to vote. He condemned Democrats for
With voting rights under attack today in Republican controlled state legislatures, a national voting rights bill stalled in the U.S. Senate, and threats being made against American democracy, King’s words still ring true today. For a Martin Luther King Day lesson, students can read excerpts from his 1957 speech on the importance of voting rights and discuss these questions. There is an audio recording of the speech.
Questions
(1) In section A, why does Dr. King believe securing voting rights is crucial for achieving other civil rights goals?
(2) In section B, why does Dr. King place blame on both the Democrats and Republicans?
(3) As a minister, Dr. King often makes religious analogies in his speeches and writings. He also believes in conveying a message of hope. How did Dr. King use a biblical reference in Section E of this speech to suggest hope for the future?
(4) In section D, Dr. King disparages people who claim to be liberal but are not committed to the goals of liberalism like racial justice. In your opinion, is this still a problem today? Explain.
(5) Dr. King argues in section C that the “civil rights issue is not an ephemeral, evanescent domestic issue that can be kicked about by reactionary guardians of the status quo.” In your opinion, what civil rights issues are paramount in the United States today? Why do you select these issues?
A. “All types of conniving methods are still being used to prevent Negroes from becoming registered voters. The denial of this sacred right is a tragic betrayal of the highest mandates of our democratic tradition. And so our most urgent request to the president of the United States and every member of Congress is to give us the right to vote. Give us the ballot, and we will no longer have to worry the federal government about our basic rights. Give us the ballot, and we will no longer plead to the federal government for passage of an anti-lynching law; we will by the power of our vote write the law on the statute books of the South and bring an end to the dastardly acts of the hooded perpetrators of violence. Give us the ballot, and we will transform the salient misdeeds of bloodthirsty mobs into the calculated good deeds of orderly citizens.”
B. “In this juncture of our nation’s history, there is an urgent need for dedicated and courageous leadership. If we are to solve the problems ahead and make racial justice a reality, this leadership must be fourfold. First, there is need for strong, aggressive leadership from the federal government . . . This dearth of positive leadership from the federal government is not confined to one particular political party. Both political parties have betrayed the cause of justice. The Democrats have betrayed it by capitulating to the prejudices and undemocratic practices of the southern Dixiecrats. The Republicans have betrayed it by capitulating to the blatant hypocrisy of right wing, reactionary northerners. These men so often have a high blood pressure of words and an anemia of deeds.”
C. “In the midst of these prevailing conditions, we come to Washington today pleading with the president and members of Congress to provide a strong, moral, and courageous leadership for a situation that cannot permanently be evaded. We come humbly to say to the men in the forefront of our government that the civil rights issue is not an ephemeral, evanescent domestic issue that can be kicked about by reactionary guardians of the status quo; it is rather an eternal moral issue which may well determine the destiny of our nation . . . The hour is late. The clock of destiny is ticking out. We must act now, before it is too late.”
D. “There is a dire need today for a liberalism which is truly liberal. What we are witnessing today in so many northern communities is a sort of quasi-liberalism which is based on the principle of looking sympathetically at all sides. It is a liberalism so bent on seeing all sides, that it fails to become committed to either side. It is a liberalism that is so objectively analytical that it is not subjectively committed. It is a liberalism which is neither hot nor cold, but lukewarm. We call for a liberalism from the North which will be thoroughly committed to the ideal of racial justice and will not be deterred by the propaganda and subtle words of those who say: ‘Slow up for a while; you’re pushing too fast.’”
E. “I conclude by saying that each of us must keep faith in the future. Let us not despair. Let us realize that as we struggle for justice and freedom, we have cosmic companionship . . . Sometimes it gets hard, but it is always difficult to get out of Egypt, for the Red Sea always stands before you with discouraging dimensions. And even after you’ve crossed the Red Sea, you have to move through a wilderness with prodigious hilltops of evil and gigantic mountains of opposition. But I say to you this afternoon: Keep moving. Let nothing slow you up.”
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3) Critical Race Theory and the Misappropriating of Martin Luther King, Jr. | BLACK PERSPECTIVES AAIHS
"During a July 12, 2021 episode of The Rubin Report, a conservative-leaning talk show where the host, Dave Rubin, uses long-form interviews to examine current social and political issues, Republican politician Kevin McCarthy evoked a rather tiresome talking point about Martin Luther King that set off a proverbial firestorm on social media. In less than 20 seconds, McCarthy pronounced the supposed inconsistencies between MLK’s “dream” and the tenets of Critical Race Theory (CRT). Citing school boards as the battleground for the next conservative campaign, the California Republican hoped to spark the ire of conservative parents by making a sweeping generalization of King’s legacy, claiming that proponents of CRT were “against everything Martin Luther King has ever told us: ‘Don’t judge us by the color of our skin,’ and “now they’re embracing it…they’re going backwards.” McCarthy’s claim trended on Twitter, as it was either criticized or embraced by those in the public square, oftentimes demarcated by one’s political self-identification as “right” or “left.”
McCarthy’s claim exposes how King’s legacy is sanitized by rightwing figures. He asserts that CRT does not only go against MLK’s “dream” in 1963, it goes against “everything Martin Luther King has ever told us.” This statement provides the crux of the issue. By emphasizing it goes against everything the Civil Rights leader “ever” told Americans about race relations, McCarthy and his conservative counterparts assume that the totality of King’s teachings are encapsulated in a single statement of one speech he gave in 1963.
McCarthy surely knew he was preaching to the choir, as Dave Rubin has repeated the claim of King’s colorblindness throughout his Youtube career. Right-leaning pundits from organizations like Campus Reform and PragerU,
As debates over Critical Race Theory overtook public discourse throughout the Summer of 2021, conservative commentators followed a familiar pattern of invoking a sanitized version of MLK’s legacy that relies upon a selective reading of his many public speeches. The tactic transforms King from a radical civil rights activist who criticized capitalism, US imperialism, income inequality, and white supremacy, into a harmless symbol who simply wanted Americans to transcend race and imagine that racial inequities are a problem of the past. This latter version of King was specifically molded by conservatives in the post-Civil Rights to reject movements seeking systemic change. For if the United States is truly “colorblind,” they argue, then any focus on race and racism is unnecessary.
Thankfully, scholars and left-leaning activists have not been silent on these misrepresentations. One cartoonist creatively reconstructed how an anti-CRT activist would react when confronted with King’s criticisms of structural racism in the United States. MLK’s daughter, Bernice King, has confronted McCarthy and rightwing politicians like Josh Mandel on Twitter, noting how both men are grossly misrepresenting both her father’s legacy and the lessons of CRT.
But the question remains: where do King’s teachings stand in comparison to critical race theory? To start, it is necessary to understand that within the 2016 edition of Critical Race Theory: An Introduction, editors Richard Delgado and Jean Stefancic argued that CRT followed in the “American radical tradition” of Martin Luther King, Jr. (5). They positioned Critical Race Theory as a successor to his social justice philosophy that condemned American imperialism, classism, and anti-Black racism, noting that King’s legacy had been co-opted by “a rampant, in-your-face conservatism” designed to impede racial progress (30). So, despite conservatives’ lazy efforts to place King in opposition to CRT, many of the theorists themselves wholly embraced him as a precursor to their own scholarship.
It is, of course, impossible to condense the numerous writings of critical race scholars alongside those of the prolific Dr. King in a few paragraphs, but we can identify some core beliefs amongst them to determine how they align with one another. In Derrick Bell’s seminal 1995 essay “Who’s Afraid of Critical Race Theory,” he examined how CRT was a necessary tool for exposing systemic racism in US society, bluntly asserting, “As I see it, critical race theory recognizes that revolutionizing a culture begins with a radical reassessment of it” (893). The article notes how CRT is especially useful in critiquing the discourses of colorblindness in the post-Civil Rights era, noting that adherents to this method seek to “disrupt” and go beyond legal policies like “integration, affirmative action, and other liberal measures,” adding that these scholars are highly suspicious of the “liberal agenda.” The reference to a “liberal” agenda seems to critique those in the establishment who were satisfied by the legislative changes of the 1960s and remained complacent as racial injustices devastated Black communities in the era of “colorblindness.”
Indeed, CRT was developed among scholars of the post-civil rights generation as a lens for detecting the covert methods through which Black Americans were continuously marginalized in American society. Kimberle Crenshaw, a distinguished law professor and one of CRT’s foundational thought leaders, recently explained that practitioners of this theory “weren’t just looking at civil rights practice,” they were developing a methodology that helped a new generation of researchers “grapple with how law has created and sustained race—our particular kind of race and racism—in American society.” Critical Race Theorists use a variety of methods to critique the persistence of structural racism in the supposedly postracial era of US society, exposing how legal apparatuses continually perpetuate racist policies and racial injustices even after the legislative victories of the 1950s and 1960s. They also issue calls for anti-racist practices that confront and dismantle the structures of white supremacy that persisted into the present.
For Martin Luther King, Jr., one of his final works, Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community?, published in 1967, clearly demarcates his thoughts surrounding how white America largely abandoned the Civil Rights Movement after its legislative victories in the mid-1960s, and discusses a need to directly invest in the Black American community to achieve collective uplift. King used race-conscious messaging to note how white Americans held an “oppressor status” that caused too many of them to carry an “ambivalence” toward Black America’s continuous pursuit of social justice (109). King directly addresses the critiques of white Americans who attempted to redirect attention from the Black struggle, noting that the descendants of enslaved people in the United States held a wholly unique history of oppression that distinguished their contemporary issues from those of Irish or Italian populations, proclaiming “Negroes were brought here in chains long before the Irish decided voluntarily to leave Ireland or the Italians thought of leaving Italy” (110). It was the “stigma of color” that rendered Black Americans in a more precarious position when compared to white ethnic groups (110).
In similarities with the “radical reassessment” espoused in Bell’s essay, King bluntly stated: “as a first step toward the journey to full equality, we will have to engage in a radical reordering of national priorities” (90). In similarity to many CRT scholars, King critiques complacent white people who benefit from structural racism while denying that they are themselves “racist” (126); he notes that America still has a “debt of justice” it must pay to its Black population (116); he advocated for a “guaranteed income” (271), and he asserted that such a wealthy nation holds a moral imperative to ensure all of its citizens have access to “a decent house, an adequate education and enough money to provide basic necessities for one’s family” (138). An objective reader will notice how such ideas are in opposition to the colorblind King imagined by conservative commentators, and that they align with the more radical concepts of Critical Race Theorists who argue that the manifestations of anti-Black racism are unique in US society, and that anti-racist action must be a primary method toward dismantling white supremacy and radically restructuring society. Much more can be said on this topic, but these brief selections exemplify how the teachings of MLK and CRT are objectively much more closely aligned than they are in opposition.
In reality, the CRT debate is just another moment in the American tradition of misappropriating MLK, ranging from the contests over affirmative action; the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement; and the debates over socialism vs. capitalism, to name a few. When CRT is no longer politically useful, conservative pundits will find another point for their fearmongering and recycle the same colorblind King as a prop to misrepresent their target. Though it is tiring, scholars and activists must continually respond to these misrepresentations on all available platforms. The true believers of the conservative cause may willfully ignore the evidence, but as we make such blogs and essays more widely available, we can reach many others and introduce them to a Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King who believed that achieving a better society requires an honest reckoning with history; who unapologetically fought for the downtrodden and the poor; and who envisioned a “genuine revolution in values” in creating a more just and equitable society (2011)."
"On March 25, 1965, at the conclusion of the brutally consequential march from Selma to Montgomery, Martin Luther King, Jr., delivered a speech titled “Our God Is Marching On!” He spoke to a crowd of twenty-five thousand people on the grounds of the Alabama state capitol, in view of the office window of the segregationist governor George Wallace. The address is not among King’s best-known, but it is among the most revelatory. King argued that, in the decade since the bus boycotts in that city, a new movement had emerged and an older order was starting to fall away. Referring to the historian C. Vann Woodward’s book “The Strange Career of Jim Crow,” King said that racial segregation had begun not simply as an expression of white supremacy but as a “political stratagem employed by the emerging Bourbon interests in the South to keep the southern masses divided and southern labor the cheapest in the land.” The so-called split-labor-market theory held that, by creating a hyper-exploited class of Black people, white élites could hold down the wages of white workers. And so racism didn’t just injure Black people, its immediate object; it took a toll on white laborers, too.
The Montgomery speech is notable because it presages the interracial populism that became an increasingly prominent part of King’s thinking and organizing in his remaining years; it’s notable, too, because it highlights the extent to which his thought had always been informed by a study of American history. In his “I Have a Dream” speech, he had mentioned the ideas of “interposition and nullification,” which he attributed to Wallace, but which implicitly harked back to John C. Calhoun’s efforts to protect slavery. King’s final book, “Where Do We Go from Here?” (1967), rooted an argument for a universal basic income and general economic redistribution in the Homestead policies of the mid-nineteenth century. To an underappreciated extent, he related the nation’s contemporary concerns to a genealogy of past ones.
The substance as well as the symbols of a divided era have been infiltrating our political spaces. “In state after state, new laws are being written not to protect the vote but to deny it, not only to suppress the vote but to subvert it,” the President observed. King’s speech at the Alabama capitol, it should be recalled, was given amid a fight for a voting-rights law. Stripping the right to vote from Black Southerners, King noted, laid the groundwork for laws that further disadvantaged poor people across racial lines. Then as now, Southern legislatures justified limiting the franchise with specious claims about electoral malfeasance.
The Selma campaign was marked by the particular brutality unleashed on the marchers; voting-rights activists (including the late representative John Lewis) were bludgeoned, and some were even killed. White Southerners who participated in this violence understood themselves to be acting defensively; the marchers, they believed, were the aggressors, whose actions left them no choice but to turn to violence. That sentiment will be familiar to anyone who has been observing recent events. A survey from the fall found that large numbers of Americans think the nation’s democracy is in trouble, but that the preponderance of those who consider it to be under major threat are Republicans—the party whose President incited the attack on the Capitol in the first place. Given the prevalence of disinformation and propaganda on social media and cable news, electoral mistrust among conservatives, and thus the prospect of democracy derailed by its defenders, is not a surprising development. But it is a deeply disquieting one.
President Biden’s speech was an attempt to correct a false narrative taking hold on the right. The President criticized Donald Trump (without naming him) for creating “a web of lies about the 2020 election.” The word “truth” was used sixteen times. Yet purveyors of disinformation win simply by forcing their subjects to address their lies in public. Indeed, previous attempts to correct Trump-fuelled lies, not least Barack Obama’s showing his birth certificate, in 2011, have not proved an effective remedy. And aggregated lies can congeal into a counterfeit history of their own—the old Southern myths of the Lost Cause flutter the Confederate flags of today. As the Smithsonian curators Jon Grinspan and Peter Manseau argued in a chilling Times piece last week, it is not far-fetched to consider that Statuary Hall might one day feature a marble likeness of the QAnon Shaman, who, with his headdress of horns and fur, helped galvanize the January 6th mob. A statue of Jefferson Davis, after all, has resided there since 1931.
This holiday honoring Martin Luther King, Jr., sees a nation embroiled in conflicts that would have looked numbingly familiar to him. As school curricula and online discourse threaten to narrow our understanding of both past and future, it’s more important than ever to take stock of our history and its consequences, as King did in his speech more than half a century ago. In Montgomery, the civil-rights leader spoke of the intransigent optimism that had led activists to fight for change, in the face of skepticism about what could actually be achieved. President Biden struck a similar note in his Statuary Hall speech. For those who believe in democracy, he said, “anything is possible—anything.” This is true, as the events of both March 25, 1965, and January 6, 2021, established. Anything is possible right now, and that is as much cause for hope as it is for grave concern. ♦"
"We celebrate Martin Luther King, Jr. Day not only to commemorate King’s historic role in overcoming racism and other injustice, but because his work and vision remain relevant.
Today’s persistent racism in policing, health care, housing, and elsewhere, and attacks on voting rights — particularly for Black Americans — show that Martin Luther King, Jr. Day is not just about the past or the South.
King got arrested in Alabama. He marched in Chicago. He spoke truth to power in Washington. He worked with countless activists and ordinary people to take action that transformed the Jim Crow South and impacted this whole country.
But his outlook went well beyond our borders. Martin Luther King was an internationalist.
He spoke out against the U.S. war in Vietnam, appalled by a government that came up short when it came to investing money to end poverty but found endless funds for destruction.
But beyond opposing the war on the grounds of its violent misuse of the national wealth, King was compelled to speak out because of the suffering of the people of Vietnam. “They watch as we poison their water, as we kill a million acres of their crops,” he said in 1967. “They must weep as the bulldozers roar through their areas preparing to destroy the precious trees.”
King’s anti-war stance is painfully relevant today.
Describing the false belief that an American invasion would make life better for the people of Vietnam, King said that “we again fell victim to the deadly Western arrogance that has poisoned the international atmosphere for so long.” Those words could tragically apply to U.S. actions in Afghanistan, Iraq, and many other places, especially over the past 20 years.
But King’s global perspective was not limited to condemning war — it was also about making change. He took inspiration from struggles for freedom around the world and used it to fuel campaigns for civil rights and against poverty here.
King was inspired by the Indian anti-colonial movement, studied Gandhi’s strategies, and brought lessons to fellow activists as they crafted campaigns against racism and poverty in the United States. He was also present in Ghana for that country’s declaration of independence from British rule and the inauguration of its first prime minister, Kwame Nkrumah.
As an active observer of struggles against colonialism around the world, King brought lessons from freedom struggles elsewhere to the U.S. to motivate change here. Writing in 1963, King lamented that “the nations of Asia and Africa are moving with jetlike speed toward the goal of political independence, and we still creep at horse-and-buggy pace toward the gaining of a cup of coffee at a lunch counter.”
We face any number of injustices and social problems in the U.S. today. To solve many of them, it would help to expand the conversation beyond our own country.
After all, the United States is not the only place where conflicts rage about how to overcome racism, sexism, discrimination against LGBTQ people, and other forms of division and oppression. It is not the only country where there is deep disagreement about national history and how to teach it. And it is far from the only place where there are battles over basic democratic rights.
And then there are problems that truly demand an international perspective and collaboration because they extend across borders — such as pandemics and climate change.
People around the world confront these problems, and we should join them. As we celebrate Martin Luther King and his legacy, we should be sure to honor his internationalism, and see its urgent relevance today."
