On this day of Monday, January 16, 2023, we celebrate the contributions of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. He lived a life filled with revolutionary changes in the world. He witnessed some of the most awe-inspiring moments in all of human history. After long decades, we know more about his life and legacy. He was one of the most prominent civil rights leaders in history. He was also a great intellectual, a husband, a son, and a black leader whose eloquent words inspire us to this day. From his background as a Baptist clergyman, he used his invocation of religious, and spiritual themes in expressing his call for racial and social justice. Dr. King was influenced by diverse people from political leaders to religious scholars. He was born and raised in the Southern city of Atlanta, Georgia on January 15, 1929. He was the son of the preacher Michael King and Alberta King. He had an older sister, who was Christine King Farris, and a younger brother, Alfred Daniel (or A.D.) King. Dr. King's father's grandfather was a preacher. Ebenezer Baptist Church was where his father preached sermons on many issues. His father stood up and preached against Nazism back in the 1930's. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was raised in a religious household. His father and mother inspired him to fight injustice.
Dr. King's father stood up against racism in his daily life. Dr. King loved to sing hymns and state verses from the Bible. Ironically, Dr. King would reject biblical literally and deny a literal hell. He would deny the bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ. Obviously, I believe in a literal hell, I believe in the bodily resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ, and I believe in the Virgin Birth. From high school, he had the great speaking ability, inherited from his family. He had a thorough, expanded vocabulary at a young age. He played basketball and pool too. He helped his sister Christine with math, and Christine helped him with English. Dr. King was a victim of vulgar racism on a bus, and he promised to fight racism afterward. He came to Morehouse College when he was 15 years old. He joined the ministry at the age of 18, being inspired by Baptist minister Benjamin Mays. By 19 years old, Dr. King earned his Bachelor of Arts degree in sociology in 1948. He studied theology more up North in Upland, Pennsylvania at the Crozier Theological Seminary. The social gospel of scholar Walter Rauschenbusch inspired him. He earned his Bachelor of Divinity (B.Div.) degree in 1951. He earned his doctorate from Boston University. Dr. King married Coretta Scott King, a progressive and a singer too. Coretta Scott King was a civil rights leader in her own right. Their children were Martin Luther King III, Yolanda King, Dexter Scott King, and Bernice King.
Dr. King preached first in the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama. He supported the Montgomery Bus Boycott movement of 1955. Rosa Parks, Claudette Colvin, and other people fought against racial injustice involving the Montgomery bus system. This came after the unjust murder of Emmitt Till. Dr. King's home was bombed, but he fought onward for his cause. Dr. King once had a gun in his house, but Bayard Rustin convinced him to get rid of it in promoting the philosophy of nonviolent resistance. There is nothing wrong with nonviolence, but self-defense is not evil either. Both methods are legitimate forms of human expression. After the success of the Montgomery Bus Boycott, Dr. King became an international leader of the civil rights movement. By 1957, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference was made. It was created by Dr. King, Ralph Abernathy, Fred Shuttlesworth, Joseph Lowery, and other leaders. The SCLC wanted to use political activism in order to get racial equality in the world. The SCLC included some of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s friends like Dorothy Cotton, Cleveland Robinson, Benjamin Hooks, etc. Dr. King supported Gandhi's views of civil disobedience and nonviolent resistance. This was before many in the public knew about Gandi's racist views today. Dr. King wanted to use nonviolent resistance to overthrow unjust Jim Crow laws in order for freedom to come massively. Segregation is evil because it is immoral, it restricts human interaction, it violates human freedom, and it promotes the racist idea that certain humans are less than human based on skin color or race. Segregation is different from independence and true freedom plus justice for all. Dr. King marched for the right to vote, anti-imperialism, labor rights, and other human rights. Dr. King suffered pain from the knife attack in 1958 by Izola Curry, and Dr. King was assaulted by a white racist in the pulpit. By 1960, Atlanta sit-ins were commonplace. Dr. King was arrested and freed. The Albany movement saw the first time when some SNCC members showed overt hostility towards Dr. King.
Ella Baker was the Mother of SNCC, and SNCC wanted to use grassroots people to enact social change in eliminating racial injustice. SNCC rejected the ideal of charismatic, single leadership that would just run the show. It is important to note that the Civil Rights Movement is made up of a community of people filled with diverse views. The Albany results caused a lack of results. The 1963 Birmingham campaign caused everything to change. Really, the year of 1963 was one of the most important years of the black freedom struggle period. Black people fought for justice in the most segregated urban city of Birmingham. Many people were arrested, and the racist Bull Connor used water hoses on innocent men, women, and children at Birmingham. This was very personal as these bigots showed no respect for black life. The television coverage of water hoses used on black Americans angered people worldwide. Dr. Martin Luther King was arrested in the campaign in his 13th arrest. He wrote his famous Letter from Birmingham Jail to refute the call of moderates to end demonstrations as freedom is not based on a clock or respectability politics. Freedom should be given to all human beings ASAP and without delay period. Birmingham was different in that black activists used nonviolence and active, legitimate self-defense against racist authorities. Connor lost his job. The Birmingham campaign was controversial for the use of children in the protests, but it was a large success.
The 1963 March on Washington was organized by many civil rights leaders and organizations like the SCLC, SNCC, the NAACP, CORE, etc. Dr. King worked with Roy Wilkins, Whitney Young, A. Philip Randolph, John Lewis, James L. Farmer, and Bayard Rustin to make things happen. The march wasn't without controversies. President Kennedy used his influence to sugarcoat certain aspects of how the march would proceed. Many women speakers were rudely sent off stage. Many speakers like John Lewis were censored of their speeches being more palatable to the administration. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. gave a great I Have a Dream speech at the March on Washington. The I Have a Dream speech spoke of confronting racism and injustice to promote justice. He spoke the truth that America didn't give black people just compensation after black people experienced unspeakable crimes by their own American government. Malcolm X criticized the march as a farce as being too controlled by corporate power. Dr. King spoke before the Lincoln Memorial to aspire to the greatness of the ideals of human liberty. He had a rousing applause afterward. Later, the FBI used COINTELPRO and spying to monitor Dr. King from that moment to the day of his death. The March on Washington wanted a higher wage, an end to police brutality, self-government for Washington, D.C., labor rights, and other progressive legislation. Mahalia Jackson inspired Dr. King to speak about the Dream too. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was born after the March on Washington. The deaths of four little girls in Birmingham, Alabama in 1963 angered and sadden Dr. King. Dr. King said that the racists and the moderates are responsible for their deaths in 1963. Dr. King was right. President John F. Kennedy was assassinated on November 22, 1963, and Dr. King predicted that he would be assassinated afterward because of the sickness of some in America. Later, Dr. King worked in St. Augustine, Florida in 1964 and in Biddeford, Maine in 1964 to speak his mind.
Dr. King worked everywhere in New York City and supported the labor Scripto strike in Atlanta in 1964. Dr. King helped to establish a labor deal giving workers their Christmas bonuses and ending the boycott. In 1964, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. won the Nobel Peace Prize, whose ceremony was held in Olso, Norway for his work in fighting against racial oppression. J. Edgar Hoover was angered by this because Hoover was jealous of Dr. King's successes. Hoover believed in the lie that any progressive activist for freedom and justice was somehow infiltrated or inspired by Communism explicitly. Levison left Communism by 1960, and O'Dell was a Communist. My view is so what. We have the right to hang out with people that we ideologically disagree with. That doesn't merit a person being subject to illegal wiretapping. O'Dell was a freedom fighter too. Many of my great heroes were socialists or communists like W.E.B. DuBois and Claudia Jones. In 1965, Dr. King and others were involved in the Selma voting rights movement. The Selma movement was the peak or zenith of the old-school civil rights movement (where unified support transpired among many factions). Thousands of people of every color worked together in Selma to stand up for voting rights. There was the police beating up peaceful protesters in 1965 called Bloody Sunday. The Voting Rights Act was signed in 1965. Later, Watts happened. The Watts Los Angeles rebellion was a rebellion caused by decades of racism, police brutality, economic injustice, and poverty. Dr. King was booed by some people in Watts, Los Angeles, which was rare at that time in 1965. Dr. King later figured out that the gains in the South were not spreading fast enough in the Northern and Western ghettoes that had no legal segregation but lacked economic justice. That is why in 1966, Dr. King went up north into Chicago to stand up for housing rights. Dr. King said it doesn't matter if integration happened if black people lacked the resources to get a living wage, have affordable, great housing, or have a great job to live on. He worked with Albert Raby and the Chicago Freedom Movement. The result was mixed, but it contributed to the passage of the 1968 Housing Act. Dr. King was hit in the head by a rock in the Chicago area, and Dr. King said he saw more racism in Chicago than in Mississippi.
Dr. King allowed Jesse Jackson to stay in Chicago to promote Operation Breadbasket which wanted to boycott stores that discriminated against black Americans. While this was going on, the modern-day Black Power movement was born in 1966. Kwame Ture gave a speech in Mississippi to endorse Black Power after James Meredith was unjustly shot by a racist. Ture, King, and other leaders united to support Meredith and the Mississippi civil rights movement. Black Power was a call for independence, it was the promotion of establishing institutions beneficial to the black community, and it was about the self-determination of black human beings. Back then, moderate civil rights leaders like Roy Wilkins called Black Power as racist and just like the Klan. Obviously, Black Power is not racist as it was a call for independence not racism against non-black people. Black Power was about empowerment. Black Power advocates were diverse with the Black Panthers being the progressive faction and the conservative faction being represented by black capitalists (like Jim Brown, Nathan Wright, etc.), some black Republicans, and black conservatives in general. Dr. King had a nuisance view of Black Power. Dr. King believed in black economic and political power. He believed in self-determination among black people, but he disagreed with separatism. The irony is that as time went on, Dr. King would be more revolutionary than many of the Black Power advocates. For example, Dr. King would oppose the Vietnam War, criticize capitalism, desire a guaranteed annual income, oppose the death penalty, desire reparations for black Americans, desire a boycott against the 1968 Olympics, and want a radical redistribution of wealth to help those suffering poverty and oppression. Dr. King also opposed American involvement in the Vietnam War. This was one of Dr. King's most courageous and excellent actions that he took in his life. I 100 percent agree with Dr. King on disagreeing with the Vietnam War. Dr. King opposed the war for several reasons. He felt that the war was a civil war that could be solved by peaceful negotiations without militarism. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. believed that the war stripped needed resources that could be used to build up American society, and he felt that it disproportionately harmed black and poor human lives. He felt that it was an immoral war as the Vietnam War has nothing to do with threatening America or has to do with any moral cause. Dr. King opposed the war in 1964 and in 1965. He tempered his criticism in 1966 because of pressure from the Johnson administration. He came to speak out more overtly in 1967 after visiting Jamaica and seeing napalmed Vietnamese human beings in the Ramparts magazine. The April 4, 1967, Riverside Church speech called "Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence" was a strong speech that compared American involvement in Vietnam to colonialism. Dr. King said that the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today was the American government. He was criticized not only far-right extremists but by moderates from TIME, Life Magazine, the New York Times, and fellow civil rights leaders (like Whitney Young and Roy Wilkins. Ironically, both men would oppose the Vietnam War years later).
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. lost economic support. Yet, he continued to disagree with an unjust war. President Johnson and Billy Graham disagreed with Dr. King's opposition to the Vietnam War. Dr. King praised social democratic principles found in Scandinavia and praised democratic socialism. I see nothing wrong with that. Dr. King always had critiques of capitalism, but he rejected communism as promoting ethical relativism and political totalitarianism. Norman Thomas, Muhammad Ali, William Sloane Coffin, Allard K. Lowenstein, Kwame Ture, Coretta Scott King, and others supported his views on Vietnam. In 1967, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. traveled to places like London and Louisville, Kentucky. He was a friend to Muhamad Ali in opposing the Vietnam War. Dr. King didn't agree with the hippie culture as some hippies wanted to drop out of society instead of fighting for a better society. He wrote to Thich Nhat Hanh, an influential Vietnamese Buddhist who wanted peace involving the Vietnam War. By 1968, Dr. King was involved in the Poor People's Campaign and the Memphis Sanitation workers' strike. The Poor People's Campaign started in late 1967 (being inspired by Dr. Marian Edelman) when he wanted a multiracial group of people to eliminate poverty in America and the world. He desired reparations and an economic bill of rights to help the nation's poor, to have a guaranteed basic income, and economic aid to build housing plus other resources to end poverty. He wanted cities and rural areas to be rebuilt. This was beyond just civil rights. This was a call to have a redistribution of economic and political power to make the collective rights of the people to be enhanced. The Poor People's Campaign was opposed by even some in the civil rights movement, but it was a courageous, legitimate movement. Dr. King worked with Memphis strike workers who wanted a living wage and benefits to help black working-class people. The strike continued. By March 29, 1968, Dr. King spoke in Memphis. March 12 was the day of the start of the strike. One march in Memphis failed in violence, but Dr. King wanted to fight on. He gave his April 3, 1968, I've Been to the Mountaintop which was prophetic in predicting his death in an eerily sad way. Dr. King worked from Room 306 at the Lorraine motel. Dr. King worked with Ralph Abernathy, Jesse Jackson, Georgia Davis, Dorothy Cotton, and other activists. By this time, Dr. King released his final book, "Where Do We Go From Here: Choas or Community?" which outlined his views addressing racism, poverty, imperialism, politics, and other social issues. Dr. King was assassinated on April 4, 1968. James Earl Ray was found and convicted, but some people, including the King family, believe that the U.S. government had involvement in his assassination.
Dr. King lived to be only 39 years old, and an autopsy said that he had a heart of a 60-year-old man. This probably was attributed to the stress of the civil rights movement. He was buried at a tomb on the site of the Martin Luther King Jr. National Historical Park. The 1968 rebellions happened, and the Poor People's Campaign existed by the late Spring of 1968. The 1968 Civil Rights Act existed to address housing discrimination was passed.
Decades from now in 2023, many things have changed socially and technologically. We have the Internet, IG, the Metaverse, smartphones, and various advanced apps. Yet, the same fight for racial justice, for human equality, for environmental justice, for gender justice, for universal health care, for against hate crimes, and for an end to imperialism remains. He promoted love in complex and simplistic terms. In 2023, human beings are still fighting for living wages, voter rights protections, and extended tax credits. After the fascist insurrection on January 6, 2021, we know how urgent the time is to defend our democracy, save human lives, and build up our world in constructive ways. The movement for black freedom is about the cultivation of a progressive community as our African heritage always embraces the concept of community, family, culture, love, and human empathy for thousands of years. Racism is more than just individual prejudice or the usage of horrendous epithets. Racism is a destructive, international structure that harms people's economic power, housing, education, healthcare, land, mental health, etc. The spiritual, moral, and political edict to help the poor, welcome immigrants, lift up black lives, and stand up for workers' rights remains powerful and true. A new generation of leaders and scholars are here now fighting the good fight from being doctors, lawyers, activists, teachers, musicians, filmmakers, and a diverse myriad of heroes who want the truth to be shown. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. believed in service. Service is not about egoism or arrogance. It's about a sincere action and duty to improve the lives of your neighbors, regardless of background. Dr. King's dream was about guaranteeing jobs and income, redistributing wealth plus power, ending racism, ending poverty, and ending militarism. So, we should be of service to wisdom, compassion, tolerance, and empathy. Therefore, all of us have that inspiration to desire to see real justice for all made into a reality.
Selah.
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