A LARGE COLLECTION OF ANIMATION CELS WITH DRAWING, ANIMATION CEL, AND SOLO DRAWINGS FROM THE EMMY NOMINATED ANIMATED FILM FROM 1999
OUR FRIEND, MARTIN
Our Friend, Martin is a 1999 American direct-to-video animated children's educational film about Martin Luther King Jr. and the Civil Rights Movement. It was produced by DIC Entertainment, L.P. and Intellectual Properties Worldwide, and distributed by 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment under the CBS/Fox Video label. The film followed two friends in middle school who traveled through time, meeting Dr. King at several points during his life. It featured an all-star voice cast and was nominated for an Emmy award in 1999 for "Outstanding Animated Program (For Programming More Than One Hour)". It was also the final release under the CBS/Fox Video name before it was retired. It was released three days before Martin Luther King Jr.'s 70th birthday.
The DIC Entertainment Corporation was an international film and television production company, that is mostly associated as an animation studio.
THE ANIMATED FILM IS AVAILABLE ON YOUTUBE
Our Friend, Martin is a 1999 American direct-to-video animated children's educational film about Martin Luther King Jr. and the Civil Rights Movement. It was produced by DIC Entertainment, L.P. and Intellectual Properties Worldwide, and distributed by 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment under the CBS/Fox Video label. The film followed two friends in middle school who traveled through time, meeting Dr. King at several points during his life. It featured an all-star voice cast and was nominated for an Emmy award in 1999 for "Outstanding Animated Program (For Programming More Than One Hour)". It was also the final release under the CBS/Fox Video name before it was retired. It was released three days before Martin Luther King Jr.'s 70th birthday.
Contents
1 Plot
2 Voice cast
3 Soundtrack
4 See also
5 External links
Plot
Miles Woodman, an African-American teenager who is a sports fan of baseball icon Hank Aaron, is failing at school. His teacher Mrs. Clark threatens to have him repeat 6th grade if his grades do not improve. Miles and his class visit a museum dedicated to Martin Luther King Jr. He and his white best friend Randy explore Martin's bedroom but are caught by the museum's curator Mrs. Peck, who winds up an old watch. The boys hold Martin's baseball glove and are transported back to 1941, encountering a 12-year-old Martin playing with his two white friends Sam and Skip Dale until their mother Mrs. Dale arrives and reprimands her sons for integrating with "colored". Martin explains to Miles and Randy that her hatred of black people is that she regards them as "different", but violence would only worsen things.
The boys travel three years forward in 1944 and meet a 15-year-old Martin on a segregated train, who explains that blacks and whites are unable to integrate and must be kept separate at all times. They later have dinner with Martin's family. While he goes to do shut in rounds with his father, the boys travel 12 years forward in 1956 and meet Martin in his 20s working as a minister at a church. He is holding a meeting about the Montgomery bus boycott set off after Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a bus and was imprisoned for it; now, black people are refusing to ride buses. Martin is alerted that his house has been bombed; he races home where his wife and newborn daughter have escaped unharmed.
His friend Turner announces they'll attack the perpetrators with weapons in retaliation, but Martin stops him, reminding the crowd of Gandhi peacefully standing his ground to exile the British colonies from India and of Jesus teaching love for his enemies. Miles and Randy travel to the Birmingham riot of 1963, witnessing firemen and police officers spraying black protesters with firehoses and releasing German Shepherds on them. The boys are transported back to the museum and rejoin their class at school the next day. Miles and Randy tell Miss Clark about the events prior to Martin's work. The class watches a videotape of Martin's work.
After school, the boys' classmates, Latina girl Maria and another white boy Kyle, decide to investigate for themselves of how Miles and Randy got the information. When the boys arrive at the museum, Mrs. Peck lets them stay but warns them that when one messes with the past, this can affect the present. Maria and Kyle follow and catch them in Martin's bedroom. The four are transported to the March on Washington Movement and meet Martin in his 30s along with a young Mrs. Clark. When they return, they discover Martin was assassinated. They travel back to 1941 and bring 12-year-old Martin to the present.
However, only Miles and Martin return together and the present is different. The museum is burnt down; Randy and Kyle are racists and no longer friends with Miles or know him; their middle school is segregated and named after Robert E. Lee; the principal is also racist and mistreats Mrs. Clark; Maria works as a maid and cannot speak English; Miles and his mother live in poverty as she also works as a maid.
The next day, Martin surmises that because he left his own time, it created an alternate timeline where his civil rights work never happened. Miles and Martin bid one another a farewell, and as Martin leaves, he gives Miles his watch. Martin returns to his time, where he is shot dead at his hotel and the timeline returns to normal. Miles reunites with Randy, Maria, and Kyle. Mrs. Peck knows about his time traveling and tells him that while they cannot change the past, they can change the future for the better. Miles receives an A on his history project, allowing him to progress to 7th grade. He and his friends then vow to continue Martin's work. Mrs. Peck closes the door to Martin's bedroom.
Voice cast
Robert Ri'chard - Miles Woodman, an avid baseball fan who tries not to fail in his class.
Lucas Black - Randy Smith, Miles' best friend. In the alternate timeline, he is racist and is best friends with Kyle.
Dexter King - Martin Luther King, Jr. at age 34. This was when he did his "I Have a Dream" speech on August 28, 1963, with archive sound footage being used on his speech.
LeVar Burton - Martin Luther King, Jr. at age 27. This was when he was a Church Minister during that time, and experienced his house burning down.
Jaleel White - Martin Luther King, Jr. at age 15. This was when he was on a train, explaining the whole boycott situation to Kyle and Randy.
Theodore Borders - Martin Luther King, Jr. at age 12.
Jessica Garcia - Maria Ramirez, Miles' Latina friend. In the alternate timeline, she is a maid and only can understand Spanish.
Zachary Leigh - Kyle Langon, Miles' white bully, but later friend. In the alternate timeline, he is best friends with Randy and is racist.
Ed Asner - Mr. Harris, the school principal of Martin Luther King Middle School.
Angela Bassett - Mrs. Woodman, Miles' mother
Danny Glover - Train Conductor
Whoopi Goldberg - Mrs. Peck, the owner of the museum
Samuel L. Jackson - Turner
James Earl Jones - Daddy King, Martin Luther King Jr's father
Ashley Judd - Mrs. Dale
Richard Kind - Mr. Willis, Miles' school bus driver who takes him to school. In the alternate timeline, he is a racist and only allows white passengers to ride his bus since blacks were only allowed to walk.
Yolanda King - Christine King, Martin Luther King Jr's sister.
Susan Sarandon - Mrs. Joyce Clark, Miles' teacher
John Travolta - Mr. Langon, Kyle's father
Adam Wylie - Sam Dale/Skip Dale
Oprah Winfrey - Coretta Scott King, Martin Luther King Jr's wife
Frank Welker - Bull Connor/Chihuahua/German Shepherds
Nicole Palacio - Parker Marie
Jess Harnell - Reporter #1/Demonstrator #1
Joe Lala - Reporter #2/Demonstrator #2
John Wesley - Man/Demonstrator #3
Elizabeth Primm - Old Woman/Demonstrator #4
Jodi Carlisle - Additional Voices
artin Luther King, Jr., (January 15, 1929-April 4, 1968) was born Michael Luther King, Jr., but later had his name changed to Martin. His grandfather began the family’s long tenure as pastors of the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, serving from 1914 to 1931; his father has served from then until the present, and from 1960 until his death Martin Luther acted as co-pastor. Martin Luther attended segregated public schools in Georgia, graduating from high school at the age of fifteen; he received the B. A. degree in 1948 from Morehouse College, a distinguished Negro institution of Atlanta from which both his father and grandfather had graduated. After three years of theological study at Crozer Theological Seminary in Pennsylvania where he was elected president of a predominantly white senior class, he was awarded the B.D. in 1951. With a fellowship won at Crozer, he enrolled in graduate studies at Boston University, completing his residence for the doctorate in 1953 and receiving the degree in 1955. In Boston he met and married Coretta Scott, a young woman of uncommon intellectual and artistic attainments. Two sons and two daughters were born into the family.
In 1954, Martin Luther King became pastor of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama. Always a strong worker for civil rights for members of his race, King was, by this time, a member of the executive committee of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the leading organization of its kind in the nation. He was ready, then, early in December, 1955, to accept the leadership of the first great Negro nonviolent demonstration of contemporary times in the United States, the bus boycott described by Gunnar Jahn in his presentation speech in honor of the laureate. The boycott lasted 382 days. On December 21, 1956, after the Supreme Court of the United States had declared unconstitutional the laws requiring segregation on buses, Negroes and whites rode the buses as equals. During these days of boycott, King was arrested, his home was bombed, he was subjected to personal abuse, but at the same time he emerged as a Negro leader of the first rank.
In 1957 he was elected president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, an organization formed to provide new leadership for the now burgeoning civil rights movement. The ideals for this organization he took from Christianity; its operational techniques from Gandhi. In the eleven-year period between 1957 and 1968, King traveled over six million miles and spoke over twenty-five hundred times, appearing wherever there was injustice, protest, and action; and meanwhile he wrote five books as well as numerous articles. In these years, he led a massive protest in Birmingham, Alabama, that caught the attention of the entire world, providing what he called a coalition of conscience. and inspiring his “Letter from a Birmingham Jail”, a manifesto of the Negro revolution; he planned the drives in Alabama for the registration of Negroes as voters; he directed the peaceful march on Washington, D.C., of 250,000 people to whom he delivered his address, “l Have a Dream”, he conferred with President John F. Kennedy and campaigned for President Lyndon B. Johnson; he was arrested upwards of twenty times and assaulted at least four times; he was awarded five honorary degrees; was named Man of the Year by Time magazine in 1963; and became not only the symbolic leader of American blacks but also a world figure.
At the age of thirty-five, Martin Luther King, Jr., was the youngest man to have received the Nobel Peace Prize. When notified of his selection, he announced that he would turn over the prize money of $54,123 to the furtherance of the civil rights movement.
On the evening of April 4, 1968, while standing on the balcony of his motel room in Memphis, Tennessee, where he was to lead a protest march in sympathy with striking garbage workers of that city, he was assassinated.
During the less than 13 years of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s leadership of the modern American Civil Rights Movement, from December 1955 until April 4, 1968, African Americans achieved more genuine progress toward racial equality in America than the previous 350 years had produced. Dr. King is widely regarded as America’s pre-eminent advocate of nonviolence and one of the greatest nonviolent leaders in world history.
Drawing inspiration from both his Christian faith and the peaceful teachings of Mahatma Gandhi, Dr. King led a nonviolent movement in the late 1950s and ‘60s to achieve legal equality for African-Americans in the United States. While others were advocating for freedom by “any means necessary,” including violence, Martin Luther King, Jr. used the power of words and acts of nonviolent resistance, such as protests, grassroots organizing, and civil disobedience to achieve seemingly-impossible goals. He went on to lead similar campaigns against poverty and international conflict, always maintaining fidelity to his principles that men and women everywhere, regardless of color or creed, are equal members of the human family.
Dr. King’s “I Have a Dream” speech, Nobel Peace Prize lecture and “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” are among the most revered orations and writings in the English language. His accomplishments are now taught to American children of all races, and his teachings are studied by scholars and students worldwide. He is the only non-president to have a national holiday dedicated in his honor and is the only non-president memorialized on the Great Mall in the nation’s capital. He is memorialized in hundreds of statues, parks, streets, squares, churches and other public facilities around the world as a leader whose teachings are increasingly-relevant to the progress of humankind.
SOME OF DR. KING’S MOST IMPORTANT ACHIEVEMENTS
In 1955, he was recruited to serve as spokesman for the Montgomery Bus Boycott, which was a campaign by the African-American population of Montgomery, Alabama to force integration of the city’s bus lines. After 381 days of nearly universal participation by citizens of the black community, many of whom had to walk miles to work each day as a result, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that racial segregation in transportation was unconstitutional.
In 1957, Dr. King was elected president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), an organization designed to provide new leadership for the now burgeoning civil rights movement. He would serve as head of the SCLC until his assassination in 1968, a period during which he would emerge as the most important social leader of the modern American civil rights movement.
In 1963, he led a coalition of numerous civil rights groups in a nonviolent campaign aimed at Birmingham, Alabama, which at the time was described as the “most segregated city in America.” The subsequent brutality of the city’s police, illustrated most vividly by television images of young blacks being assaulted by dogs and water hoses, led to a national outrage resulting in a push for unprecedented civil rights legislation. It was during this campaign that Dr. King drafted the “Letter from a Birmingham Jail,” the manifesto of Dr. King’s philosophy and tactics, which is today required-reading in universities worldwide.
Later in 1963, Dr. King was one of the driving forces behind the March for Jobs and Freedom, more commonly known as the “March on Washington,” which drew over a quarter-million people to the national mall. It was at this march that Dr. King delivered his famous “I Have a Dream” speech, which cemented his status as a social change leader and helped inspire the nation to act on civil rights. Dr. King was later named Time magazine’s “Man of the Year.”
In 1964, at 35 years old, Martin Luther King, Jr. became the youngest person to win the Nobel Peace Prize. His acceptance speech in Oslo is thought by many to be among the most powerful remarks ever delivered at the event, climaxing at one point with the oft-quoted phrase “I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. This is why right temporarily defeated is stronger than evil triumphant.”
Also in 1964, partly due to the March on Washington, Congress passed the landmark Civil Rights Act, essentially eliminating legalized racial segregation in the United States. The legislation made it illegal to discriminate against blacks or other minorities in hiring, public accommodations, education or transportation, areas which at the time were still very segregated in many places.
The next year, 1965, Congress went on to pass the Voting Rights Act, which was an equally-important set of laws that eliminated the remaining barriers to voting for African-Americans, who in some locales had been almost completely disenfranchised. This legislation resulted directly from the Selma to Montgomery, AL March for Voting Rights lead by Dr. King.
Between 1965 and 1968, Dr. King shifted his focus toward economic justice – which he highlighted by leading several campaigns in Chicago, Illinois – and international peace – which he championed by speaking out strongly against the Vietnam War. His work in these years culminated in the “Poor Peoples Campaign,” which was a broad effort to assemble a multiracial coalition of impoverished Americans who would advocate for economic change.
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s less than thirteen years of nonviolent leadership ended abruptly and tragically on April 4th, 1968, when he was assassinated at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee. Dr. King’s body was returned to his hometown of Atlanta, Georgia, where his funeral ceremony was attended by high-level leaders of all races and political stripes.
For more information regarding the assassination trial of Dr. King. Click here.
For more information regarding the Transcription of the King Family Press Conference on the MLK Assassination Trial Verdict December 9, 1999, Atlanta, GA. Click Here
For more information regarding the Civil Case: King family versus Jowers. Click here.
Later in 1968, Dr. King’s wife, Mrs. Coretta Scott King, officially founded the Martin Luther King, Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change, which she dedicated to being a “living memorial” aimed at continuing Dr. King’s work on important social ills around the world.
No figure is more closely identified with the mid-20th century struggle for civil rights than Martin Luther King, Jr. His adoption of nonviolent resistance to achieve equal rights for Black Americans earned him the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964. King is remembered for his masterful oratorical skills, most memorably in his "I Have a Dream" speech.
EARLY LIFE AND EDUCATION
Born in 1929 in Atlanta, Georgia, King was heavily influenced by his father, a church pastor, who King saw stand up to segregation in his daily life. In 1936, King's father also led a march of several hundred African Americans to Atlanta's city hall to protest voting rights discrimination.
As a member of his high school debate team, King developed a reputation for his powerful public speaking skills, enhanced by his deep baritone voice and extensive vocabulary. King left high school at the age of 15 to enter Atlanta's Morehouse College, an all-male historically Black university attended by both his father and maternal grandfather.
After graduating in 1948 with a bachelor's degree in sociology, King decided to follow in his father's footsteps and enrolled in a seminary in Pennsylvania before pursuing a doctorate in theology at Boston University. While studying for King served as an assistant minister at Boston's Twelfth Baptist Church, which was renowned for its abolitionist origins. In Boston, he met and married Coretta Scott, a student at the New England Conservatory of Music.
JOINING THE CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT
After finishing his doctorate, King returned to the South at the age of 25, becoming pastor of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama. Shortly after King took up residence in the town, Rosa Parks made history when she refused to give up her seat for a white passenger on a Montgomery bus.
Starting in 1955, Montgomery's Black community staged an extremely successful bus boycott that lasted for over a year. King, played a pivotal leadership role in organizing the protest. His arrest and imprisonment as the boycott's leader propelled King onto the national stage as a lead figure in the civil rights movement.
"Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.… We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed." — Martin Luther King, Jr.
With other Black church leaders in the South, King founded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) to mount nonviolent protests against racist Jim Crow laws. Inspired by Mahatma Gandhi's model of nonviolent resistance, King believed that peaceful protest for civil rights would lead to sympathetic media coverage and public opinion. His instincts proved correct when civil rights activists were subjected to violent attacks by white officials in widely televised episodes that drew nationwide outrage. With King at its helm, the civil rights movement ultimately achieved victories with the passage of the Civil Rights Act in 1964 and the Voting Rights Act in 1965.
NONVIOLENT PROTEST GAINS TRACTION
In 1959, King returned to Atlanta to serve as co-pastor with his father at the Ebenezer Baptist Church. His involvement in a sit-in at a department 1960 presidential election between Richard Nixon and John F. Kennedy. Pressure from Kennedy led to King's release.
Working closely with NAACP, King and the SCLC turned their sights on Birmingham, Alabama in 1963, organizing sit-ins in public spaces. Again, the protests drew nationwide attention when televised footage showed Birmingham police deploying pressurized water jets and police dogs against peaceful demonstrators. The campaign was ultimately successful, forcing the infamous Birmingham police chief Bull Connor to resign and the city to desegregate public spaces.
"There is nothing greater in all the world than freedom. It's worth going to jail for. It's worth losing a job for. It's worth dying for. My friends, go out this evening determined to achieve this freedom which God wants for all of His children." — Martin Luther King, Jr.
During the campaign, King was once again sent to prison, where he composed his legendary "Letter from Birmingham Jail," in response to a call from white sympathizers to address civil rights through legal means rather than protest. King passionately disagreed, saying the unjust situation necessitated urgent action. He wrote: "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.… We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed."
HISTORY-MAKING MARCHES
In 1963, King and the SCLC worked with NAACP and other civil rights groups to organize the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, which attracted 250,000 people to rally for the civil and economic rights of Black Americans in the nation's capital. There, King delivered his majestic 17-minute "I Have a Dream" speech.
Along with other civil rights activists, King participated in the Selma-to-Montgomery march in 1965. The brutal attacks on activists by the police during the march were televised into the homes of Americans across the country. When the march concluded in Montgomery, King gave his "How Long, Not Long" speech, in which he predicted that equal rights for African Americans would be imminently granted. His legendary words are widely quoted today: "How long? Not long, because the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice."
Less than six months later, President Lyndon Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act banning disenfranchisement of Black Americans.
DEATH AND LEGACY
Over the next few years, King broadened his focus and began speaking out against the Vietnam War and economic issues, calling for a bill of rights for all Americans.
In the spring of 1968, King visited Memphis, Tennessee, to support Black sanitary workers who were on strike. On April 4, King was assassinated by James Earl Ray in his Memphis hotel. President Johnson called for a national day of mourning on April 7. In 1983, Congress cemented King's legacy as an American icon by declaring the third Monday of every January Martin Luther King, Jr. Day.
"The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice." — Martin Luther King, Jr.
King was honored with dozens of awards and honorary degrees for his achievement throughout his life and posthumously. In addition to receiving the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964, King was awarded the NAACP Medal in 1957 and the American Liberties Medallion by the American Jewish Committee in 1965. After his death, King was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1977 and received the Congressional Gold Medal in 1994 with his wife, Coretta.
King's legacy has inspired activists fighting injustice anywhere in the world. NAACP has carried on King's work on behalf of Black Americans and strives to keep his dream alive for future generations. We take inspiration from his closing remarks at the NAACP Emancipation Day Rally in 1957: "I close by saying there is nothing greater in all the world than freedom. It's worth going to jail for. It's worth losing a job for. It's worth dying for. My friends, go out this evening determined to achieve this freedom which God wants for all of His children."
No figure is more closely identified with the mid-20th century struggle for civil rights than Martin Luther King, Jr. His adoption of nonviolent resistance to achieve equal rights for Black Americans earned him the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964. King is remembered for his masterful oratorical skills, most memorably in his "I Have a Dream" speech.
EARLY LIFE AND EDUCATION
Born in 1929 in Atlanta, Georgia, King was heavily influenced by his father, a church pastor, who King saw stand up to segregation in his daily life. In 1936, King's father also led a march of several hundred African Americans to Atlanta's city hall to protest voting rights discrimination.
As a member of his high school debate team, King developed a reputation for his powerful public speaking skills, enhanced by his deep baritone voice and extensive vocabulary. King left high school at the age of 15 to enter Atlanta's Morehouse College, an all-male historically Black university attended by both his father and maternal grandfather.
After graduating in 1948 with a bachelor's degree in sociology, King decided to follow in his father's footsteps and enrolled in a seminary in Pennsylvania before pursuing a doctorate in theology at Boston University. While studying for King served as an assistant minister at Boston's Twelfth Baptist Church, which was renowned for its abolitionist origins. In Boston, he met and married Coretta Scott, a student at the New England Conservatory of Music.
JOINING THE CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT
After finishing his doctorate, King returned to the South at the age of 25, becoming pastor of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama. Shortly after King took up residence in the town, Rosa Parks made history when she refused to give up her seat for a white passenger on a Montgomery bus.
Starting in 1955, Montgomery's Black community staged an extremely successful bus boycott that lasted for over a year. King, played a pivotal leadership role in organizing the protest. His arrest and imprisonment as the boycott's leader propelled King onto the national stage as a lead figure in the civil rights movement.
"Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.… We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed." — Martin Luther King, Jr.
With other Black church leaders in the South, King founded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) to mount nonviolent protests against racist Jim Crow laws. Inspired by Mahatma Gandhi's model of nonviolent resistance, King believed that peaceful protest for civil rights would lead to sympathetic media coverage and public opinion. His instincts proved correct when civil rights activists were subjected to violent attacks by white officials in widely televised episodes that drew nationwide outrage. With King at its helm, the civil rights movement ultimately achieved victories with the passage of the Civil Rights Act in 1964 and the Voting Rights Act in 1965.
NONVIOLENT PROTEST GAINS TRACTION
In 1959, King returned to Atlanta to serve as co-pastor with his father at the Ebenezer Baptist Church. His involvement in a sit-in at a department 1960 presidential election between Richard Nixon and John F. Kennedy. Pressure from Kennedy led to King's release.
Working closely with NAACP, King and the SCLC turned their sights on Birmingham, Alabama in 1963, organizing sit-ins in public spaces. Again, the protests drew nationwide attention when televised footage showed Birmingham police deploying pressurized water jets and police dogs against peaceful demonstrators. The campaign was ultimately successful, forcing the infamous Birmingham police chief Bull Connor to resign and the city to desegregate public spaces.
"There is nothing greater in all the world than freedom. It's worth going to jail for. It's worth losing a job for. It's worth dying for. My friends, go out this evening determined to achieve this freedom which God wants for all of His children." — Martin Luther King, Jr.
During the campaign, King was once again sent to prison, where he composed his legendary "Letter from Birmingham Jail," in response to a call from white sympathizers to address civil rights through legal means rather than protest. King passionately disagreed, saying the unjust situation necessitated urgent action. He wrote: "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.… We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed."
HISTORY-MAKING MARCHES
In 1963, King and the SCLC worked with NAACP and other civil rights groups to organize the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, which attracted 250,000 people to rally for the civil and economic rights of Black Americans in the nation's capital. There, King delivered his majestic 17-minute "I Have a Dream" speech.
Along with other civil rights activists, King participated in the Selma-to-Montgomery march in 1965. The brutal attacks on activists by the police during the march were televised into the homes of Americans across the country. When the march concluded in Montgomery, King gave his "How Long, Not Long" speech, in which he predicted that equal rights for African Americans would be imminently granted. His legendary words are widely quoted today: "How long? Not long, because the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice."
Less than six months later, President Lyndon Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act banning disenfranchisement of Black Americans.
DEATH AND LEGACY
Over the next few years, King broadened his focus and began speaking out against the Vietnam War and economic issues, calling for a bill of rights for all Americans.
In the spring of 1968, King visited Memphis, Tennessee, to support Black sanitary workers who were on strike. On April 4, King was assassinated by James Earl Ray in his Memphis hotel. President Johnson called for a national day of mourning on April 7. In 1983, Congress cemented King's legacy as an American icon by declaring the third Monday of every January Martin Luther King, Jr. Day.
"The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice." — Martin Luther King, Jr.
King was honored with dozens of awards and honorary degrees for his achievement throughout his life and posthumously. In addition to receiving the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964, King was awarded the NAACP Medal in 1957 and the American Liberties Medallion by the American Jewish Committee in 1965. After his death, King was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1977 and received the Congressional Gold Medal in 1994 with his wife, Coretta.
King's legacy has inspired activists fighting injustice anywhere in the world. NAACP has carried on King's work on behalf of Black Americans and strives to keep his dream alive for future generations. We take inspiration from his closing remarks at the NAACP Emancipation Day Rally in 1957: "I close by saying there is nothing greater in all the world than freedom. It's worth going to jail for. It's worth losing a job for. It's worth dying for. My friends, go out this evening determined to achieve this freedom which God wants for all of His children."
Martin Luther King Jr. (born Michael King Jr.; January 15, 1929 – April 4, 1968) was an American Baptist minister and activist who became the most visible spokesman and leader in the American civil rights movement from 1955 until his assassination in 1968. King advanced civil rights through nonviolence and civil disobedience, inspired by his Christian beliefs and the nonviolent activism of Mahatma Gandhi. He was the son of early civil rights activist and minister Martin Luther King Sr.
King participated in and led marches for blacks' right to vote, desegregation, labor rights, and other basic civil rights.[1] King led the 1955 Montgomery bus boycott and later became the first president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). As president of the SCLC, he led the unsuccessful Albany Movement in Albany, Georgia, and helped organize some of the nonviolent 1963 protests in Birmingham, Alabama. King helped organize the 1963 March on Washington, where he delivered his famous "I Have a Dream" speech on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.
The SCLC put into practice the tactics of nonviolent protest with some success by strategically choosing the methods and places in which protests were carried out. There were several dramatic stand-offs with segregationist authorities, who sometimes turned violent.[2] Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Director J. Edgar Hoover considered King a radical and made him an object of the FBI's COINTELPRO from 1963, forward. FBI agents investigated him for possible communist ties, recorded his extramarital affairs and reported on them to government officials, and, in 1964, mailed King a threatening anonymous letter, which he interpreted as an attempt to make him commit suicide.[3]
On October 14, 1964, King won the Nobel Peace Prize for combating racial inequality through nonviolent resistance. In 1965, he helped organize two of the three Selma to Montgomery marches. In his final years, he expanded his focus to include opposition towards poverty, capitalism, and the Vietnam War.
In 1968, King was planning a national occupation of Washington, D.C., to be called the Poor People's Campaign, when he was assassinated on April 4 in Memphis, Tennessee. His death was followed by riots in many U.S. cities. Allegations that James Earl Ray, the man convicted of killing King, had been framed or acted in concert with government agents persisted for decades after the shooting. King was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1977 and the Congressional Gold Medal in 2003. Martin Luther King Jr. Day was established as a holiday in cities and states throughout the United States beginning in 1971; the holiday was enacted at the federal level by legislation signed by President Ronald Reagan in 1986. Hundreds of streets in the U.S. have been renamed in his honor, and the most populous county in Washington State was rededicated for him. The Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., was dedicated in 2011.
Contents
1 Early life and education
1.1 Birth
1.2 Early childhood
1.3 Adolescence
1.4 Morehouse College
2 Religious education, ministry, marriage and family
2.1 Crozer Theological Seminary
2.2 Boston University
2.3 Marriage and family
3 Activism and organizational leadership
3.1 Montgomery bus boycott, 1955
3.2 Southern Christian Leadership Conference
3.2.1 The Common Society
3.3 Survived knife attack, 1958
3.4 Atlanta sit-ins, prison sentence, and the 1960 elections
3.5 Albany Movement, 1961
3.6 Birmingham campaign, 1963
3.7 March on Washington, 1963
3.7.1 I (We) Have a Dream
3.8 St. Augustine, Florida, 1964
3.9 Biddeford, Maine, 1964
3.10 New York City, 1964
3.11 Selma voting rights movement and "Bloody Sunday", 1965
3.12 Chicago open housing movement, 1966
3.13 Opposition to the Vietnam War
3.13.1 Correspondence with Thích Nhất Hạnh
3.14 Poor People's Campaign, 1968
4 Assassination and aftermath
4.1 Aftermath
4.2 Allegations of conspiracy
5 Legacy
5.1 South Africa
5.2 United Kingdom
5.3 United States
5.3.1 Martin Luther King Jr. Day
6 Veneration
7 Ideas, influences, and political stances
7.1 Christianity
7.1.1 The Measure of a Man
7.2 Nonviolence
7.3 Criticism within the movement
7.4 Activism and involvement with Native Americans
7.5 Politics
7.6 Compensation
7.7 Family planning
7.8 Television
7.9 Israel
7.10 Homosexuality
8 State surveillance and coercion
8.1 FBI surveillance and wiretapping
8.2 NSA monitoring of King's communications
8.3 Allegations of communism
8.4 CIA surveillance
8.5 Allegations of adultery
8.6 Police observation during the assassination
9 Awards and recognition
9.1 Five-dollar bill
10 Works
11 See also
12 References
12.1 Notes
12.2 Citations
12.3 Sources
12.4 Further reading
13 External links
Early life and education
Birth
King was born Michael King Jr. on January 15, 1929, in Atlanta, Georgia, the second of three children to Michael King and Alberta King (née Williams).[4][5][6] King's mother named him Michael, which was entered onto the birth certificate by the attending physician.[7] King's older sister is Christine King Farris and his younger brother was Alfred Daniel "A.D." King.[8] King's maternal grandfather Adam Daniel Williams,[9] who was a minister in rural Georgia, moved to Atlanta in 1893,[6] and became pastor of the Ebenezer Baptist Church in the following year.[10] Williams was of African-Irish descent.[11][12][13] Williams married Jennie Celeste Parks, who gave birth to King's mother, Alberta.[6] King's father was born to sharecroppers, James Albert and Delia King of Stockbridge, Georgia.[5][6] In his adolescent years, King Sr. left his parents' farm and walked to Atlanta where he attained a high school education.[14][15][16] King Sr. then enrolled in Morehouse College and studied to enter the ministry.[16] King Sr. and Alberta began dating in 1920, and married on November 25, 1926.[17][18] Until Jennie's death in 1941, they lived together on the second floor of her parent's two-story Victorian house, where King was born.[7][17][18][19]
Shortly after marrying Alberta, King Sr. became assistant pastor of the Ebenezer Baptist Church.[18] Adam Daniel Williams died of a stroke in the spring of 1931.[18] That fall, King's father took over the role of pastor at the church, where he would in time raise the attendance from six hundred to several thousand.[18][6] In 1934, the church sent King Sr. on a multinational trip to Rome, Tunisia, Egypt, Jerusalem, Bethlehem, then Berlin for the meeting of the Baptist World Alliance (BWA).[20] The trip ended with visits to sites in Berlin associated with the Reformation leader, Martin Luther.[20] While there, Michael King Sr. witnessed the rise of Nazism.[20] In reaction, the BWA conference issued a resolution which stated, "This Congress deplores and condemns as a violation of the law of God the Heavenly Father, all racial animosity, and every form of oppression or unfair discrimination toward the Jews, toward coloured people, or toward subject races in any part of the world."[21] He returned home in August 1934, and in that same year began referring to himself as Martin Luther King, and his son as Martin Luther King Jr.[20][22][17] King's birth certificate was altered to read "Martin Luther King Jr." on July 23, 1957, when he was 28 years old.[20][21][23]
Early childhood
King's childhood home in Atlanta, Georgia
At his childhood home, King and his two siblings would read aloud the Bible as instructed by their father.[24] After dinners there, King's grandmother Jennie, who he affectionately referred to as "Mama", would tell lively stories from the Bible to her grandchildren.[24] King's father would regularly use whippings to discipline his children.[25] At times, King Sr. would also have his children whip each other.[25] King's father later remarked, "[King] was the most peculiar child whenever you whipped him. He'd stand there, and the tears would run down, and he'd never cry."[26] Once when King witnessed his brother A.D. emotionally upset his sister Christine, he took a telephone and knocked out A.D. with it.[25][27] When he and his brother were playing at their home, A.D. slid from a banister and hit into their grandmother, Jennie, causing her to fall down unresponsive.[28][27] King, believing her dead, blamed himself and attempted suicide by jumping from a second-story window.[29][27] Upon hearing that his grandmother was alive, King rose and left the ground where he had fallen.[29]
King became friends with a white boy whose father owned a business across the street from his family's home.[30] In September 1935, when the boys were about six years old, they started school.[30][31] King had to attend a school for black children, Younge Street Elementary School,[30][32] while his close playmate went to a separate school for white children only.[30][32] Soon afterwards, the parents of the white boy stopped allowing King to play with their son, stating to him "we are white, and you are colored".[30][33] When King relayed the happenings to his parents, they had a long discussion with him about the history of slavery and racism in America.[30][34] Upon learning of the hatred, violence and oppression that black people had faced in the U.S., King would later state that he was "determined to hate every white person".[30] His parents instructed him that it was his Christian duty to love everyone.[34]
King witnessed his father stand up against segregation and various forms of discrimination.[35] Once, when stopped by a police officer who referred to King Sr. as "boy", King's father responded sharply that King was a boy but he was a man.[35] When King's father took him into a shoe store in downtown Atlanta, the clerk told them they needed to sit in the back.[36] King's father refused, stating "we'll either buy shoes sitting here or we won't buy any shoes at all", before taking King and leaving the store.[15] He told King afterward, "I don't care how long I have to live with this system, I will never accept it."[15] In 1936, King's father led hundreds of African Americans in a civil rights march to the city hall in Atlanta, to protest voting rights discrimination.[25] King later remarked that King Sr. was "a real father" to him.[37]
King memorized and sang hymns, and stated verses from the Bible, by the time he was five years old.[29] Over the next year, he began to go to church events with his mother and sing hymns while she played piano.[29] His favorite hymn to sing was "I Want to Be More and More Like Jesus"; he moved attendees with his singing.[29] King later became a member of the junior choir in his church.[38] King enjoyed opera, and played the piano.[39] As he grew up, King garnered a large vocabulary from reading dictionaries and consistently used his expanding lexicon.[27] He got into physical altercations with boys in his neighborhood, but oftentimes used his knowledge of words to stymie fights.[27][39] King showed a lack of interest in grammar and spelling, a trait which he carried throughout his life.[39] In 1939, King sang as a member of his church choir in slave costume, for the all-white audience at the Atlanta premiere of the film Gone with the Wind.[40][41] In September 1940, at the age of 12, King was enrolled at the Atlanta University Laboratory School for the seventh grade.[42][43] While there, King took violin and piano lessons, and showed keen interest in his history and English classes.[42]
On May 18, 1941, when King had snuck away from studying at home to watch a parade, King was informed that something had happened to his maternal grandmother.[37] Upon returning home, he found out that she had suffered a heart attack and died while being transported to a hospital.[19] He took the death very hard and believed that his deception of going to see the parade may have been responsible for God taking her.[19] King jumped out of a second-story window at his home, but again survived an attempt to kill himself.[19][26][27] His father instructed him in his bedroom that King should not blame himself for her death, and that she had been called home to God as part of God's plan which could not be changed.[19][44] King struggled with this, and could not fully believe that his parents knew where his grandmother had gone.[19] Shortly thereafter, King's father decided to move the family to a two-story brick home on a hill that overlooked downtown Atlanta.[19]
The high school that King attended was named after African-American educator Booker T. Washington.
Adolescence
In his adolescent years, he initially felt resentment against whites due to the "racial humiliation" that he, his family, and his neighbors often had to endure in the segregated South.[45] In 1942, when King was 13 years old, he became the youngest assistant manager of a newspaper delivery station for the Atlanta Journal.[46] That year, King skipped the ninth grade and was enrolled in Booker T. Washington High School, where he maintained a B-plus average.[44][47] The high school was the only one in the city for African-American students.[18] It had been formed after local black leaders, including King's grandfather (Williams), urged the city government of Atlanta to create it.[18]
While King was brought up in a Baptist home, King grew skeptical of some of Christianity's claims as he entered adolescence.[48] He began to question the literalist teachings preached at his father's church.[49] At the age of 13, he denied the bodily resurrection of Jesus during Sunday school.[50][49] King has stated, he found himself unable to identify with the emotional displays and gestures from congregants frequent at his church, and doubted if he would ever attain personal satisfaction from religion.[51][49] He later stated of this point in his life, "doubts began to spring forth unrelentingly."[52][50][49]
In high school, King became known for his public-speaking ability, with a voice which had grown into an orotund baritone.[53][47] He proceeded to join the school's debate team.[53][47] King continued to be most drawn to history and English,[47] and choose English and sociology to be his main subjects while at the school.[54] King maintained an abundant vocabulary.[47] But, he relied on his sister, Christine, to help him with his spelling, while King assisted her with math.[47] They studied in this manner routinely until Christine's graduation from high school.[47] King also developed an interest in fashion, commonly adorning himself in well polished patent leather shoes and tweed suits, which gained him the nickname "Tweed" or "Tweedie" among his friends.[55][56][57][58] He further grew a liking for flirting with girls and dancing.[57][56][59] His brother A. D. later remarked, "He kept flitting from chick to chick, and I decided I couldn't keep up with him. Especially since he was crazy about dances, and just about the best jitterbug in town."[56]
On April 13, 1944, in his junior year, King gave his first public speech during an oratorical contest, sponsored by the Improved Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks of the World in Dublin, Georgia.[60][56][61][62] In his speech he stated, "black America still wears chains. The finest negro is at the mercy of the meanest white man. Even winners of our highest honors face the class color bar."[63][60] King was selected as the winner of the contest.[60][56] On the ride home to Atlanta by bus, he and his teacher were ordered by the driver to stand so that white passenger could sit down.[56][64] The driver of the bus called King a "black son-of-a-bitch".[56] King initially refused but complied after his teacher told him that he would be breaking the law if he did not follow the directions of the driver.[64] As all the seats were occupied, he and his teacher were forced to stand on the rest of the drive back to Atlanta.[56] Later King wrote of the incident, saying "That night will never leave my memory. It was the angriest I have ever been in my life."[64]
Morehouse College
During King's junior year in high school, Morehouse College—an all-male historically black college which King's father and maternal grandfather had attended[65][66]—began accepting high school juniors who passed the school's entrance examination.[56][67][64] As World War II was underway many black college students had been enlisted in the war, decreasing the numbers of students at Morehouse College.[56][67] So, the university aimed to increase their student numbers by allowing junior high school students to apply.[56][67][64] In 1944, at the age of 15, King passed the entrance examination and was enrolled at the university for the school season that autumn.[a][56][67][65][68]
In the summer before King started his freshman year at Morehouse, he boarded a train with his friend—Emmett "Weasel" Proctor—and a group of other Morehouse College students to work in Simsbury, Connecticut at the tobacco farm of Cullman Brothers Tobacco (a cigar business).[69][70] This was King's first trip outside of the segregated south into the integrated north.[71][72] In a June 1944 letter to his father King wrote about the differences that struck him between the two parts of the country, "On our way here we saw some things I had never anticipated to see. After we passed Washington there was no discrimination at all. The white people here are very nice. We go to any place we want to and sit any where we want to."[71] The students worked at the farm to be able to provide for their educational costs at Morehouse College, as the farm had partnered with the college to allot their salaries towards the university's tuition, housing, and other fees.[69][70] On weekdays King and the other students worked in the fields, picking tobacco from 7:00am till at least 5:00pm, enduring temperatures above 100°F, to earn roughly USD$4 per day.[70][71] On Friday evenings, King and the other students visited downtown Simsbury to get milkshakes and watch movies, and on Saturdays they would travel to Hartford, Connecticut to see theatre performances, shop and eat in restaurants.[70][72] While each Sunday they would go to Hartford to attend church services, at a church filled with white congregants.[70] King wrote to his parents about the lack of segregation in Connecticut, relaying how he was amazed they could go to the "one of the finest restaurants in Hartford" and that "Negroes and whites go to the same church".[70][73][71]
He played freshman football there. The summer before his last year at Morehouse, in 1947, the 18-year-old King chose to enter the ministry. Throughout his time in college, King studied under the mentorship of its president, Baptist minister Benjamin Mays, who he would later credit with being his "spiritual mentor."[74] King had concluded that the church offered the most assuring way to answer "an inner urge to serve humanity." His "inner urge" had begun developing, and he made peace with the Baptist Church, as he believed he would be a "rational" minister with sermons that were "a respectful force for ideas, even social protest."[75] King graduated from Morehouse with a Bachelor of Arts (BA) in sociology in 1948, aged nineteen.[76]
Religious education, ministry, marriage and family
Crozer Theological Seminary
A large facade of a building
King received a Bachelor of Divinity degree at Crozer Theological Seminary (pictured in 2009).
King enrolled in Crozer Theological Seminary in Upland, Pennsylvania.[77][78] King's father fully supported his decision to continue his education and made arrangements for King to work with J. Pius Barbour, a family friend who pastored at Calvary Baptist Church in nearby Chester, Pennsylvania.[79] King became known as one of the "Sons of Calvary", an honor he shared with William Augustus Jones Jr. and Samuel D. Proctor who both went on to become well-known preachers in the black church.[80]
While attending Crozer, King was joined by Walter McCall, a former classmate at Morehouse.[81] At Crozer, King was elected president of the student body.[82] The African-American students of Crozer for the most part conducted their social activity on Edwards Street. King became fond of the street because a classmate had an aunt who prepared collard greens for them, which they both relished.[83]
King once reproved another student for keeping beer in his room, saying they had shared responsibility as African Americans to bear "the burdens of the Negro race." For a time, he was interested in Walter Rauschenbusch's "social gospel."[82] In his third year at Crozer, King became romantically involved with the white daughter of an immigrant German woman who worked as a cook in the cafeteria. The woman had been involved with a professor prior to her relationship with King. King planned to marry her, but friends advised against it, saying that an interracial marriage would provoke animosity from both blacks and whites, potentially damaging his chances of ever pastoring a church in the South. King tearfully told a friend that he could not endure his mother's pain over the marriage and broke the relationship off six months later. He continued to have lingering feelings toward the woman he left; one friend was quoted as saying, "He never recovered."[82] King graduated with a B.Div. degree in 1951.[77]
Boston University
See also: Martin Luther King Jr. authorship issues
In 1951, King began doctoral studies in systematic theology at Boston University.[84] While pursuing doctoral studies, King worked as an assistant minister at Boston's historic Twelfth Baptist Church with William Hunter Hester. Hester was an old friend of King's father and was an important influence on King.[85] In Boston, King befriended a small cadre of local ministers his age, and sometimes guest pastored at their churches, including the Reverend Michael Haynes, associate pastor at Twelfth Baptist Church in Roxbury (and younger brother of jazz drummer Roy Haynes). The young men often held bull sessions in their various apartments, discussing theology, sermon style, and social issues.
King attended philosophy classes at Harvard University as an audit student in 1952 and 1953.[86]
At the age of 25 in 1954, King was called as pastor of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama.[87] King received his Ph.D. degree on June 5, 1955, with a dissertation (initially supervised by Edgar S. Brightman and, upon the latter's death, by Lotan Harold DeWolf) titled A Comparison of the Conceptions of God in the Thinking of Paul Tillich and Henry Nelson Wieman.[88][84]
An academic inquiry in October 1991 concluded that portions of his doctoral dissertation had been plagiarized and he had acted improperly. However, "[d]espite its finding, the committee said that 'no thought should be given to the revocation of Dr. King's doctoral degree,' an action that the panel said would serve no purpose."[89][84][90] The committee found that the dissertation still "makes an intelligent contribution to scholarship." A letter is now attached to the copy of King's dissertation held in the university library, noting that numerous passages were included without the appropriate quotations and citations of sources.[91] Significant debate exists on how to interpret King's plagiarism.[92]
Marriage and family
While studying at Boston University, he asked a friend from Atlanta named Mary Powell, who was a student at the New England Conservatory of Music, if she knew any nice Southern girls. Powell asked fellow student Coretta Scott if she was interested in meeting a Southern friend studying divinity. Scott was not interested in dating preachers but eventually agreed to allow Martin to telephone her based on Powell's description and vouching. On their first phone call, King told Scott "I am like Napoleon at Waterloo before your charms," to which she replied, "You haven't even met me." They went out for dates in his green Chevy. After the second date, King was certain Scott possessed the qualities he sought in a wife. She had been an activist at Antioch in undergrad, where Carol and Rod Serling were schoolmates.
King married Coretta Scott on June 18, 1953, on the lawn of her parents' house in her hometown of Heiberger, Alabama.[93] They became the parents of four children: Yolanda King (1955–2007), Martin Luther King III (b. 1957), Dexter Scott King (b. 1961), and Bernice King (b. 1963).[94] During their marriage, King limited Coretta's role in the civil rights movement, expecting her to be a housewife and mother.[95]
In December 1959, after being based in Montgomery for five years, King announced his return to Atlanta at the request of the SCLC.[96] In Atlanta, King served until his death as co-pastor with his father at the Ebenezer Baptist Church, and helped expand the Civil Rights Movement across the South.
Activism and organizational leadership
Montgomery bus boycott, 1955
Main articles: Montgomery bus boycott and Jim Crow laws § Public arena
Rosa Parks with King (left), 1955
In March 1955, Claudette Colvin—a fifteen-year-old black schoolgirl in Montgomery—refused to give up her bus seat to a white man in violation of Jim Crow laws, local laws in the Southern United States that enforced racial segregation. King was on the committee from the Birmingham African-American community that looked into the case; E. D. Nixon and Clifford Durr decided to wait for a better case to pursue because the incident involved a minor.[97]
Nine months later on December 1, 1955, a similar incident occurred when Rosa Parks was arrested for refusing to give up her seat on a city bus.[98] The two incidents led to the Montgomery bus boycott, which was urged and planned by Nixon and led by King.[99] King was in his twenties, and had just taken up his clerical role. The other ministers asked him to take a leadership role simply because his relative newness to community leadership made it easier for him to speak out. King was hesitant about taking the role, but decided to do so if no one else wanted the role.[100]
The boycott lasted for 385 days,[101] and the situation became so tense that King's house was bombed.[102] King was arrested and jailed during this campaign, which overnight drew the attention of national media, and greatly increased King's public stature. The controversy ended when the United States District Court issued a ruling in Browder v. Gayle that prohibited racial segregation on all Montgomery public buses.[103] Blacks resumed riding the buses again, and were able to sit in the front with full legal authorization.[1][100]
King's role in the bus boycott transformed him into a national figure and the best-known spokesman of the civil rights movement.[104]
Southern Christian Leadership Conference
In 1957, King, Ralph Abernathy, Fred Shuttlesworth, Joseph Lowery, and other civil rights activists founded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). The group was created to harness the moral authority and organizing power of black churches to conduct nonviolent protests in the service of civil rights reform. The group was inspired by the crusades of evangelist Billy Graham, who befriended King,[105] as well as the national organizing of the group In Friendship, founded by King allies Stanley Levison and Ella Baker.[106] King led the SCLC until his death.[107] The SCLC's 1957 Prayer Pilgrimage for Freedom was the first time King addressed a national audience.[108] Other civil rights leaders involved in the SCLC with King included: James Bevel, Allen Johnson, Curtis W. Harris, Walter E. Fauntroy, C. T. Vivian, Andrew Young, The Freedom Singers, Cleveland Robinson, Randolph Blackwell, Annie Bell Robinson Devine, Charles Kenzie Steele, Alfred Daniel Williams King, Benjamin Hooks, Aaron Henry and Bayard Rustin.[109]
The Common Society
Harry Wachtel joined King's legal advisor Clarence B. Jones in defending four ministers of the SCLC in the libel case New York Times Co. v. Sullivan; the case was litigated in reference to the newspaper advertisement "Heed Their Rising Voices". Wachtel founded a tax-exempt fund to cover the suit's expenses and assist the nonviolent civil rights movement through a more effective means of fundraising. This organization was named the "Gandhi Society for Human Rights." King served as honorary president for the group. He was displeased with the pace that President Kennedy was using to address the issue of segregation. In 1962, King and the Gandhi Society produced a document that called on the President to follow in the footsteps of Abraham Lincoln and issue an executive order to deliver a blow for civil rights as a kind of Second Emancipation Proclamation. Kennedy did not execute the order.[110]
The FBI was under written directive from Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy when it began tapping King's telephone line in the fall of 1963.[111] Kennedy was concerned that public allegations of communists in the SCLC would derail the administration's civil rights initiatives. He warned King to discontinue these associations and later felt compelled to issue the written directive that authorized the FBI to wiretap King and other SCLC leaders.[112] FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover feared the civil rights movement and investigated the allegations of communist infiltration. When no evidence emerged to support this, the FBI used the incidental details caught on tape over the next five years in attempts to force King out of his leadership position in the COINTELPRO program.[3]
King believed that organized, nonviolent protest against the system of southern segregation known as Jim Crow laws would lead to extensive media coverage of the struggle for black equality and voting rights. Journalistic accounts and televised footage of the daily deprivation and indignities suffered by southern blacks, and of segregationist violence and harassment of civil rights workers and marchers, produced a wave of sympathetic public opinion that convinced the majority of Americans that the civil rights movement was the most important issue in American politics in the early 1960s.[113][114]
King organized and led marches for blacks' right to vote, desegregation, labor rights, and other basic civil rights.[1] Most of these rights were successfully enacted into the law of the United States with the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the 1965 Voting Rights Act.[115][116]
The SCLC put into practice the tactics of nonviolent protest with great success by strategically choosing the methods and places in which protests were carried out. There were often dramatic stand-offs with segregationist authorities, who sometimes turned violent.[2]
Survived knife attack, 1958
On September 20, 1958, King was signing copies of his book Stride Toward Freedom in Blumstein's department store in Harlem[117] when he narrowly escaped death. Izola Curry—a mentally ill black woman who thought that King was conspiring against her with communists—stabbed him in the chest with a letter opener, which nearly impinged on the aorta. King received first aid by police officers Al Howard and Philip Romano.[118] King underwent emergency surgery with three doctors: Aubre de Lambert Maynard, Emil Naclerio and John W. V. Cordice; he remained hospitalized for several weeks. Curry was later found mentally incompetent to stand trial.[119][120]
Atlanta sit-ins, prison sentence, and the 1960 elections
Georgia governor Ernest Vandiver expressed open hostility towards King's return to his hometown in late 1959. He claimed that "wherever M. L. King, Jr., has been there has followed in his wake a wave of crimes", and vowed to keep King under surveillance.[121] On May 4, 1960, several months after his return, King drove writer Lillian Smith to Emory University when police stopped them. King was cited for "driving without a license" because he had not yet been issued a Georgia license. King's Alabama license was still valid, and Georgia law did not mandate any time limit for issuing a local license.[122] King paid a fine but was apparently unaware that his lawyer agreed to a plea deal that also included a probationary sentence.
Meanwhile, the Atlanta Student Movement had been acting to desegregate businesses and public spaces in the city, organizing the Atlanta sit-ins from March 1960 onwards. In August the movement asked King to participate in a mass October sit-in, timed to highlight how 1960's Presidential election campaign had ignored civil rights. The coordinated day of action took place on October 19. King participated in a sit-in at the restaurant inside Rich's, Atlanta's largest department store, and was among the many arrested that day. The authorities released everyone over the next few days, except for King. Invoking his probationary plea deal, judge J. Oscar Mitchell sentenced King on October 25 to four months of hard labor. Before dawn the next day, King was taken from his county jail cell and transported to a maximum-security state prison.[where?][123]
The arrest and harsh sentence drew nationwide attention. Many feared for King's safety, as he started a prison sentence with people convicted of violent crimes, many of them White and hostile to his activism.[124] Both Presidential candidates were asked to weigh in, at a time when both parties were courting the support of Southern Whites and their political leadership including Governor Vandiver. Nixon, with whom King had a closer relationship prior to the sit-in, declined to make a statement despite a personal visit from Jackie Robinson requesting his intervention. Nixon's opponent John F. Kennedy called the governor (a Democrat) directly, enlisted his brother Robert to exert more pressure on state authorities, and also, at the personal request of Sargent Shriver, made a phone call to King's wife to express his sympathy and offer his help. The pressure from Kennedy and others proved effective, and King was released two days later. King's father decided to openly endorse Kennedy's candidacy for the November 8 election which he narrowly won.[125]
After the October 19 sit-ins and following unrest, a 30-day truce was declared in Atlanta for desegregation negotiations. However, the negotiations failed and sit-ins and boycotts resumed in full swing for several months. On March 7, 1961, a group of Black elders including King notified student leaders that a deal had been reached: the city's lunch counters would desegregate in fall 1961, in conjunction with the court-mandated desegregation of schools.[126][127] Many students were disappointed at the compromise. In a large meeting March 10 at Warren Memorial Methodist Church, the audience was hostile and frustrated towards the elders and the compromise. King then gave an impassioned speech calling participants to resist the "cancerous disease of disunity," and helping to calm tensions.[128]
Albany Movement, 1961
Main article: Albany Movement
The Albany Movement was a desegregation coalition formed in Albany, Georgia, in November 1961. In December, King and the SCLC became involved. The movement mobilized thousands of citizens for a broad-front nonviolent attack on every aspect of segregation within the city and attracted nationwide attention. When King first visited on December 15, 1961, he "had planned to stay a day or so and return home after giving counsel."[129] The following day he was swept up in a mass arrest of peaceful demonstrators, and he declined bail until the city made concessions. According to King, "that agreement was dishonored and violated by the city" after he left town.[129]
King returned in July 1962 and was given the option of forty-five days in jail or a $178 fine (equivalent to $1,500 in 2020); he chose jail. Three days into his sentence, Police Chief Laurie Pritchett discreetly arranged for King's fine to be paid and ordered his release. "We had witnessed persons being kicked off lunch counter stools ... ejected from churches ... and thrown into jail ... But for the first time, we witnessed being kicked out of jail."[130] It was later acknowledged by the King Center that Billy Graham was the one who bailed King out of jail during this time.[131]
After nearly a year of intense activism with few tangible results, the movement began to deteriorate. King requested a halt to all demonstrations and a "Day of Penance" to promote nonviolence and maintain the moral high ground. Divisions within the black community and the canny, low-key response by local government defeated efforts.[132] Though the Albany effort proved a key lesson in tactics for King and the national civil rights movement,[133] the national media was highly critical of King's role in the defeat, and the SCLC's lack of results contributed to a growing gulf between the organization and the more radical SNCC. After Albany, King sought to choose engagements for the SCLC in which he could control the circumstances, rather than entering into pre-existing situations.[134]
Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson and Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy with King, Benjamin Mays, and other civil rights leaders, June 22, 1963
Birmingham campaign, 1963
Main article: Birmingham campaign
King was arrested in 1963 for protesting the treatment of blacks in Birmingham.
In April 1963, the SCLC began a campaign against racial segregation and economic injustice in Birmingham, Alabama. The campaign used nonviolent but intentionally confrontational tactics, developed in part by Wyatt Tee Walker. Black people in Birmingham, organizing with the SCLC, occupied public spaces with marches and sit-ins, openly violating laws that they considered unjust.
King's intent was to provoke mass arrests and "create a situation so crisis-packed that it will inevitably open the door to negotiation."[135] The campaign's early volunteers did not succeed in shutting down the city, or in drawing media attention to the police's actions. Over the concerns of an uncertain King, SCLC strategist James Bevel changed the course of the campaign by recruiting children and young adults to join in the demonstrations.[136] Newsweek called this strategy a Children's Crusade.[137][138]
During the protests, the Birmingham Police Department, led by Eugene "Bull" Connor, used high-pressure water jets and police dogs against protesters, including children. Footage of the police response was broadcast on national television news and dominated the nation's attention, shocking many white Americans and consolidating black Americans behind the movement.[139] Not all of the demonstrators were peaceful, despite the avowed intentions of the SCLC. In some cases, bystanders attacked the police, who responded with force. King and the SCLC were criticized for putting children in harm's way. But the campaign was a success: Connor lost his job, the "Jim Crow" signs came down, and public places became more open to blacks. King's reputation improved immensely.[137]
King was arrested and jailed early in the campaign—his 13th arrest[140] out of 29.[141] From his cell, he composed the now-famous "Letter from Birmingham Jail" that responds to calls on the movement to pursue legal channels for social change. The letter has been described as "one of the most important historical documents penned by a modern political prisoner".[142] King argues that the crisis of racism is too urgent, and the current system too entrenched: "We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed."[143] He points out that the Boston Tea Party, a celebrated act of rebellion in the American colonies, was illegal civil disobedience, and that, conversely, "everything Adolf Hitler did in Germany was 'legal'."[143] Walter Reuther, president of the United Auto Workers, arranged for $160,000 to bail out King and his fellow protestors.[144]
"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 Councilor 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."
—Martin Luther King Jr.[143]
File:Bezoek ds Martin Luther King-selectionclip.ogv
Martin Luther King Jr. speaking in an interview in the Netherlands, 1964
March on Washington, 1963
Main article: March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom
Leaders of the March on Washington posing in front of the Lincoln Memorial
The March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom (1963)
King, representing the SCLC, was among the leaders of the "Big Six" civil rights organizations who were instrumental in the organization of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, which took place on August 28, 1963. The other leaders and organizations comprising the Big Six were Roy Wilkins from the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People; Whitney Young, National Urban League; A. Philip Randolph, Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters; John Lewis, SNCC; and James L. Farmer Jr., of the Congress of Racial Equality.[145]
Bayard Rustin's open homosexuality, support of socialism, and his former ties to the Communist Party USA caused many white and African-American leaders to demand King distance himself from Rustin,[146] which King agreed to do.[147] However, he did collaborate in the 1963 March on Washington, for which Rustin was the primary logistical and strategic organizer.[148][149] For King, this role was another which courted controversy, since he was one of the key figures who acceded to the wishes of United States President John F. Kennedy in changing the focus of the march.[150][151]
Kennedy initially opposed the march outright, because he was concerned it would negatively impact the drive for passage of civil rights legislation. However, the organizers were firm that the march would proceed.[152] With the march going forward, the Kennedys decided it was important to work to ensure its success. President Kennedy was concerned the turnout would be less than 100,000. Therefore, he enlisted the aid of additional church leaders and Walter Reuther, president of the United Automobile Workers, to help mobilize demonstrators for the cause.[153]
File:The March (1964 film).webm
The March, a 1964 documentary film produced by the United States Information Agency. King's speech has been redacted from this video because of the copyright held by King's estate.
The march originally was conceived as an event to dramatize the desperate condition of blacks in the southern U.S. and an opportunity to place organizers' concerns and grievances squarely before the seat of power in the nation's capital. Organizers intended to denounce the federal government for its failure to safeguard the civil rights and physical safety of civil rights workers and blacks. The group acquiesced to presidential pressure and influence, and the event ultimately took on a far less strident tone.[154] As a result, some civil rights activists felt it presented an inaccurate, sanitized pageant of racial harmony; Malcolm X called it the "Farce on Washington", and the Nation of Islam forbade its members from attending the march.[154][155]
King gave his most famous speech, "I Have a Dream", before the Lincoln Memorial during the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.
I Have a Dream
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30-second sample from "I Have a Dream" speech by Martin Luther King Jr. at the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom on August 28, 1963
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The march made specific demands: an end to racial segregation in public schools; meaningful civil rights legislation, including a law prohibiting racial discrimination in employment; protection of civil rights workers from police brutality; a $2 minimum wage for all workers (equivalent to $17 in 2020); and self-government for Washington, D.C., then governed by congressional committee.[156][157][158] Despite tensions, the march was a resounding success.[159] More than a quarter of a million people of diverse ethnicities attended the event, sprawling from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial onto the National Mall and around the reflecting pool. At the time, it was the largest gathering of protesters in Washington, D.C.'s history.[159]
I (We) Have a Dream
Main article: I Have a Dream
King delivered a 17-minute speech, later known as "I Have a Dream". In the speech's most famous passage – in which he departed from his prepared text, possibly at the prompting of Mahalia Jackson, who shouted behind him, "Tell them about the dream!"[160][161] – King said:[162]
I say to you today, my friends, so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.
I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal."
I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.
I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.
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.
I have a dream today.
I have a dream that one day, down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of interposition and nullification; one day right there in Alabama, little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.
I have a dream today.
"I Have a Dream" came to be regarded as one of the finest speeches in the history of American oratory.[163] The March, and especially King's speech, helped put civil rights at the top of the agenda of reformers in the United States and facilitated passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.[164][165]
The original typewritten copy of the speech, including King's handwritten notes on it, was discovered in 1984 to be in the hands of George Raveling, the first African-American basketball coach of the University of Iowa. In 1963, Raveling, then 26 years old, was standing near the podium, and immediately after the oration, impulsively asked King if he could have his copy of the speech, and he got it.[166]
St. Augustine, Florida, 1964
Main article: St. Augustine movement
In March 1964, King and the SCLC joined forces with Robert Hayling's then-controversial movement in St. Augustine, Florida. Hayling's group had been affiliated with the NAACP but was forced out of the organization for advocating armed self-defense alongside nonviolent tactics. However, the pacifist SCLC accepted them.[167][168] King and the SCLC worked to bring white Northern activists to St. Augustine, including a delegation of rabbis and the 72-year-old mother of the governor of Massachusetts, all of whom were arrested.[169][170] During June, the movement marched nightly through the city, "often facing counter demonstrations by the Klan, and provoking violence that garnered national media attention." Hundreds of the marchers were arrested and jailed. During the course of this movement, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was passed.[171]
Biddeford, Maine, 1964
On May 7, 1964, King spoke at Saint Francis College's "The Negro and the Quest for Identity," in Biddeford, Maine. This was a symposium that brought many civil rights leaders together such as Dorothy Day and Roy Wilkins.[172][173] King spoke about how "We must get rid of the idea of superior and inferior races," through nonviolent tactics.[174]
New York City, 1964
On February 6, 1964, King delivered the inaugural speech of a lecture series initiated at the New School called "The American Race Crisis." No audio record of his speech has been found, but in August 2013, almost 50 years later, the school discovered an audiotape with 15 minutes of a question-and-answer session that followed King's address. In these remarks, King referred to a conversation he had recently had with Jawaharlal Nehru in which he compared the sad condition of many African Americans to that of India's untouchables.[175] In his March 18, 1964 interview by Robert Penn Warren, King compared his activism to his father's, citing his training in non-violence as a key difference. He also discusses the next phase of the civil rights movement and integration.[176]
Selma voting rights movement and "Bloody Sunday", 1965
Main article: Selma to Montgomery marches
The civil rights march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama, in 1965
In December 1964, King and the SCLC joined forces with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) in Selma, Alabama, where the SNCC had been working on voter registration for several months.[177] A local judge issued an injunction that barred any gathering of three or more people affiliated with the SNCC, SCLC, DCVL, or any of 41 named civil rights leaders. This injunction temporarily halted civil rights activity until King defied it by speaking at Brown Chapel on January 2, 1965.[178] During the 1965 march to Montgomery, Alabama, violence by state police and others against the peaceful marchers resulted in much publicity, which made racism in Alabama visible nationwide.
Acting on James Bevel's call for a march from Selma to Montgomery, Bevel and other SCLC members, in partial collaboration with SNCC, attempted to organize a march to the state's capital. The first attempt to march on March 7, 1965, at which King was not present, was aborted because of mob and police violence against the demonstrators. This day has become known as Bloody Sunday and was a major turning point in the effort to gain public support for the civil rights movement. It was the clearest demonstration up to that time of the dramatic potential of King and Bevel's nonviolence strategy.[52]
On March 5, King met with officials in the Johnson Administration in order to request an injunction against any prosecution of the demonstrators. He did not attend the march due to church duties, but he later wrote, "If I had any idea that the state troopers would use the kind of brutality they did, I would have felt compelled to give up my church duties altogether to lead the line."[179] Footage of police brutality against the protesters was broadcast extensively and aroused national public outrage.[180]
King next attempted to organize a march for March 9. The SCLC petitioned for an injunction in federal court against the State of Alabama; this was denied and the judge issued an order blocking the march until after a hearing. Nonetheless, King led marchers on March 9 to the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, then held a short prayer session before turning the marchers around and asking them to disperse so as not to violate the court order. The unexpected ending of this second march aroused the surprise and anger of many within the local movement.[181] Meanwhile, on March 11 King cried at the news of Johnson supporting a voting rights bill on television in Marie Foster's living room.[182] The march finally went ahead fully on March 25, 1965.[183][184] At the conclusion of the march on the steps of the state capitol, King delivered a speech that became known as "How Long, Not Long." In it, King stated that equal rights for African Americans could not be far away, "because the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice" and "you shall reap what you sow".[b][185][186][187]
Chicago open housing movement, 1966
Main article: Chicago Freedom Movement
King stands behind President Johnson as he signs the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
In 1966, after several successes in the south, King, Bevel, and others in the civil rights organizations took the movement to the North, with Chicago as their first destination. King and Ralph Abernathy, both from the middle class, moved into a building at 1550 S. Hamlin Avenue, in the slums of North Lawndale[188] on Chicago's West Side, as an educational experience and to demonstrate their support and empathy for the poor.[189]
The SCLC formed a coalition with CCCO, Coordinating Council of Community Organizations, an organization founded by Albert Raby, and the combined organizations' efforts were fostered under the aegis of the Chicago Freedom Movement.[190] During that spring, several white couple/black couple tests of real estate offices uncovered racial steering: discriminatory processing of housing requests by couples who were exact matches in income, background, number of children, and other attributes.[191] Several larger marches were planned and executed: in Bogan, Belmont Cragin, Jefferson Park, Evergreen Park (a suburb southwest of Chicago), Gage Park, Marquette Park, and others.[190][192][193]
President Lyndon B. Johnson meeting with King in the White House Cabinet Room, 1966
King later stated and Abernathy wrote that the movement received a worse reception in Chicago than in the South. Marches, especially the one through Marquette Park on August 5, 1966, were met by thrown bottles and screaming throngs. Rioting seemed very possible.[194][195] King's beliefs militated against his staging a violent event, and he negotiated an agreement with Mayor Richard J. Daley to cancel a march in order to avoid the violence that he feared would result.[196] King was hit by a brick during one march, but continued to lead marches in the face of personal danger.[197]
When King and his allies returned to the South, they left Jesse Jackson, a seminary student who had previously joined the movement in the South, in charge of their organization.[198] Jackson continued their struggle for civil rights by organizing the Operation Breadbasket movement that targeted chain stores that did not deal fairly with blacks.[199]
A 1967 CIA document declassified in 2017 downplayed King's role in the "black militant situation" in Chicago, with a source stating that King "sought at least constructive, positive projects."[200]
Opposition to the Vietnam War
The black revolution is much more than a struggle for the rights of Negroes. It is forcing America to face all its interrelated flaws—racism, poverty, militarism, and materialism. It is exposing evils that are rooted deeply in the whole structure of our society. It reveals systemic rather than superficial flaws and suggests that radical reconstruction of society itself is the real issue to be faced
–Martin Luther King Jr.[201]
We must recognize that we can’t solve our problem now until there is a radical redistribution of economic and political power... this means a revolution of values and other things. We must see now that the evils of racism, economic exploitation and militarism are all tied together… you can’t really get rid of one without getting rid of the others… the whole structure of American life must be changed. America is a hypocritical nation and [we] must put [our] own house in order.
—Martin Luther King Jr.[202]
See also: Opposition to United States involvement in the Vietnam War
External audio
audio icon You can listen to the speech, "Why I Am Opposed to the War in Vietnam", by Martin Luther King here.
King was long opposed to American involvement in the Vietnam War,[203] but at first avoided the topic in public speeches in order to avoid the interference with civil rights goals that criticism of President Johnson's policies might have created.[203] At the urging of SCLC's former Director of Direct Action and now the head of the Spring Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam, James Bevel, and inspired by the outspokenness of Muhammad Ali,[204] King eventually agreed to publicly oppose the war as opposition was growing among the American public.[203]
During an April 4, 1967, appearance at the New York City Riverside Church—exactly one year before his death—King delivered a speech titled "Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence."[205] He spoke strongly against the U.S.'s role in the war, arguing that the U.S. was in Vietnam "to occupy it as an American colony"[206] and calling the U.S. government "the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today."[207] He connected the war with economic injustice, arguing that the country needed serious moral change:
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."[208]
King opposed the Vietnam War because it took money and resources that could have been spent on social welfare at home. The United States Congress was spending more and more on the military and less and less on anti-poverty programs at the same time. He summed up this aspect by saying, "A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death."[208] He stated that North Vietnam "did not begin to send in any large number of supplies or men until American forces had arrived in the tens of thousands",[209] and accused the U.S. of having killed a million Vietnamese, "mostly children."[210] King also criticized American opposition to North Vietnam's land reforms.[211]
King's opposition cost him significant support among white allies, including President Johnson, Billy Graham,[212] union leaders and powerful publishers.[213] "The press is being stacked against me", King said,[214] complaining of what he described as a double standard that applauded his nonviolence at home, but deplored it when applied "toward little brown Vietnamese children."[215] Life magazine called the speech "demagogic slander that sounded like a script for Radio Hanoi",[208] and The Washington Post declared that King had "diminished his usefulness to his cause, his country, his people."[215][216]
King speaking to an anti-Vietnam war rally at the University of Minnesota in St. Paul, April 27, 1967
The "Beyond Vietnam" speech reflected King's evolving political advocacy in his later years, which paralleled the teachings of the progressive Highlander Research and Education Center, with which he was affiliated.[217][218] King began to speak of the need for fundamental changes in the political and economic life of the nation, and more frequently expressed his opposition to the war and his desire to see a redistribution of resources to correct racial and economic injustice.[219] He guarded his language in public to avoid being linked to communism by his enemies, but in private he sometimes spoke of his support for social democracy and democratic socialism.[220][221]
In a 1952 letter to Coretta Scott, he said: "I imagine you already know that I am much more socialistic in my economic theory than capitalistic ..."[222] In one speech, he stated that "something is wrong with capitalism" and claimed, "There must be a better distribution of wealth, and maybe America must move toward a democratic socialism."[223] King had read Marx while at Morehouse, but while he rejected "traditional capitalism", he rejected communism because of its "materialistic interpretation of history" that denied religion, its "ethical relativism", and its "political totalitarianism."[224]
King stated in "Beyond Vietnam" that "true compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar ... it comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring."[225] King quoted a United States official who said that from Vietnam to Latin America, the country was "on the wrong side of a world revolution."[225] King condemned America's "alliance with the landed gentry of Latin America", and said that the U.S. should support "the shirtless and barefoot people" in the Third World rather than suppressing their attempts at revolution.[225]
King's stance on Vietnam encouraged Allard K. Lowenstein, William Sloane Coffin and Norman Thomas, with the support of anti-war Democrats, to attempt to persuade King to run against President Johnson in the 1968 United States presidential election. King contemplated but ultimately decided against the proposal on the grounds that he felt uneasy with politics and considered himself better suited for his morally unambiguous role as an activist.[226]
On April 15, 1967, King participated and spoke at an anti-war march from Manhattan's Central Park to the United Nations. The march was organized by the Spring Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam and initiated by its chairman, James Bevel. At the U.N. King brought up issues of civil rights and the draft:
I have not urged a mechanical fusion of the civil rights and peace movements. There are people who have come to see the moral imperative of equality, but who cannot yet see the moral imperative of world brotherhood. I would like to see the fervor of the civil-rights movement imbued into the peace movement to instill it with greater strength. And I believe everyone has a duty to be in both the civil-rights and peace movements. But for those who presently choose but one, I would hope they will finally come to see the moral roots common to both.[227]
Seeing an opportunity to unite civil rights activists and anti-war activists,[204] Bevel convinced King to become even more active in the anti-war effort.[204] Despite his growing public opposition towards the Vietnam War, King was not fond of the hippie culture which developed from the anti-war movement.[228] In his 1967 Massey Lecture, King stated:
The importance of the hippies is not in their unconventional behavior, but in the fact that hundreds of thousands of young people, in turning to a flight from reality, are expressing a profoundly discrediting view on the society they emerge from.[228]
On January 13, 1968 (the day after President Johnson's State of the Union Address), King called for a large march on Washington against "one of history's most cruel and senseless wars."[229][230]
We need to make clear in this political year, to congressmen on both sides of the aisle and to the president of the United States, that we will no longer tolerate, we will no longer vote for men who continue to see the killings of Vietnamese and Americans as the best way of advancing the goals of freedom and self-determination in Southeast Asia.[229][230]
Correspondence with Thích Nhất Hạnh
Thích Nhất Hạnh was an influential Vietnamese Buddhist who taught at Princeton University and Columbia University. He had written a letter to Martin Luther King Jr. in 1965 entitled: "In Search of the Enemy of Man". It was during his 1966 stay in the US that Nhất Hạnh met with King and urged him to publicly denounce the Vietnam War.[231] In 1967, King gave a famous speech at the Riverside Church in New York City, his first to publicly question the U.S. involvement in Vietnam.[232] Later that year, King nominated Nhất Hạnh for the 1967 Nobel Peace Prize. In his nomination, King said, "I do not personally know of anyone more worthy of [this prize] than this gentle monk from Vietnam. His ideas for peace, if applied, would build a monument to ecumenism, to world brotherhood, to humanity".[233]
Poor People's Campaign, 1968
Main article: Poor People's Campaign
Rows of tents
A shantytown established in Washington, D. C. to protest economic conditions as a part of the Poor People's Campaign
In 1968, King and the SCLC organized the "Poor People's Campaign" to address issues of economic justice. King traveled the country to assemble "a multiracial army of the poor" that would march on Washington to engage in nonviolent civil disobedience at the Capitol until Congress created an "economic bill of rights" for poor Americans.[234][235]
The campaign was preceded by King's final book, Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community? which laid out his view of how to address social issues and poverty. King quoted from Henry George and George's book, Progress and Poverty, particularly in support of a guaranteed basic income.[236][237][238] The campaign culminated in a march on Washington, D.C., demanding economic aid to the poorest communities of the United States.
King and the SCLC called on the government to invest in rebuilding America's cities. He felt that Congress had shown "hostility to the poor" by spending "military funds with alacrity and generosity." He contrasted this with the situation faced by poor Americans, claiming that Congress had merely provided "poverty funds with miserliness."[235] His vision was for change that was more revolutionary than mere reform: he cited systematic flaws of "racism, poverty, militarism and materialism", and argued that "reconstruction of society itself is the real issue to be faced."[239]
The Poor People's Campaign was controversial even within the civil rights movement. Rustin resigned from the march, stating that the goals of the campaign were too broad, that its demands were unrealizable, and that he thought that these campaigns would accelerate the backlash and repression on the poor and the black.[240]
Assassination and aftermath
Main article: Assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.
The Lorraine Motel, where King was assassinated, is now the site of the National Civil Rights Museum.
I've Been to the Mountaintop
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Final 30 seconds of "I've Been to the Mountaintop" speech by Martin Luther King Jr.
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On March 29, 1968, King went to Memphis, Tennessee, in support of the black sanitary public works employees, who were represented by AFSCME Local 1733. The workers had been on strike since March 12 for higher wages and better treatment. In one incident, black street repairmen received pay for two hours when they were sent home because of bad weather, but white employees were paid for the full day.[241][242][243]
On April 3, King addressed a rally and delivered his "I've Been to the Mountaintop" address[244] at Mason Temple, the world headquarters of the Church of God in Christ. King's flight to Memphis had been delayed by a bomb threat against his plane.[245] In the prophetic peroration of the last speech of his life, in reference to the bomb threat, King said the following:
And then I got to Memphis. And some began to say the threats, or talk about the threats that were out. What would happen to me from some of our sick white brothers? Well, I don't know what will happen now. We've got some difficult days ahead. But it doesn't matter with me now. Because I've been to the mountaintop. And I don't mind. Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I'm not concerned about that now. I just want to do God's will. And He's allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I've looked over. And I've seen the promised land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land. 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.[246]
King was booked in Room 306 at the Lorraine Motel (owned by Walter Bailey) in Memphis. Ralph Abernathy, who was present at the assassination, testified to the United States House Select Committee on Assassinations that King and his entourage stayed at Room 306 so often that it was known as the "King-Abernathy suite."[247] According to Jesse Jackson, who was present, King's last words on the balcony before his assassination were spoken to musician Ben Branch, who was scheduled to perform that night at an event King was attending: "Ben, make sure you play 'Take My Hand, Precious Lord' in the meeting tonight. Play it real pretty."[248]
King was fatally shot by James Earl Ray at 6:01 p.m., Thursday, April 4, 1968, as he stood on the motel's second-floor balcony. The bullet entered through his right cheek, smashing his jaw, then traveled down his spinal cord before lodging in his shoulder.[249][250] Abernathy heard the shot from inside the motel room and ran to the balcony to find King on the floor.[251] Jackson stated after the shooting that he cradled King's head as King lay on the balcony, but this account was disputed by other colleagues of King; Jackson later changed his statement to say that he had "reached out" for King.[252]
After emergency chest surgery, King died at St. Joseph's Hospital at 7:05 p.m.[253] According to biographer Taylor Branch, King's autopsy revealed that though only 39 years old, he "had the heart of a 60 year old", which Branch attributed to the stress of 13 years in the civil rights movement.[254] King is buried within Martin Luther King Jr. National Historical Park.[255]
Aftermath
Further information: King assassination riots
Jackson standing onstage in a long white dress
King's friend Mahalia Jackson (seen here in 1964) sang at his funeral.
The assassination led to a nationwide wave of race riots in Washington, D.C., Chicago, Baltimore, Louisville, Kansas City, and dozens of other cities.[256][257][258] Presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy was on his way to Indianapolis for a campaign rally when he was informed of King's death. He gave a short, improvised speech to the gathering of supporters informing them of the tragedy and urging them to continue King's ideal of nonviolence.[259] The following day, he delivered a prepared response in Cleveland.[260] James Farmer Jr. and other civil rights leaders also called for non-violent action, while the more militant Stokely Carmichael called for a more forceful response.[261] The city of Memphis quickly settled the strike on terms favorable to the sanitation workers.[262]
The plan to set up a shantytown in Washington, D.C., was carried out soon after the April 4 assassination. Criticism of King's plan was subdued in the wake of his death, and the SCLC received an unprecedented wave of donations for the purpose of carrying it out. The campaign officially began in Memphis, on May 2, at the hotel where King was murdered.[263] Thousands of demonstrators arrived on the National Mall and stayed for six weeks, establishing a camp they called "Resurrection City."[264]
President Lyndon B. Johnson tried to quell the riots by making several telephone calls to civil rights leaders, mayors and governors across the United States and told politicians that they should warn the police against the unwarranted use of force.[258] But his efforts didn't work out: "I'm not getting through," Johnson told his aides. "They're all holing up like generals in a dugout getting ready to watch a war."[258] Johnson declared April 7 a national day of mourning for the civil rights leader.[265] Vice President Hubert Humphrey attended King's funeral on behalf of the President, as there were fears that Johnson's presence might incite protests and perhaps violence.[266] At his widow's request, King's last sermon at Ebenezer Baptist Church was played at the funeral,[267] a recording of his "Drum Major" sermon, given on February 4, 1968. In that sermon, King made a request that at his funeral no mention of his awards and honors be made, but that it be said that he tried to "feed the hungry", "clothe the naked", "be right on the [Vietnam] war question", and "love and serve humanity."[268] His good friend Mahalia Jackson sang his favorite hymn, "Take My Hand, Precious Lord", at the funeral.[269] The assassination helped to spur the enactment of the Civil Rights Act of 1968.[258]
Two months after King's death, James Earl Ray—who was on the loose from a previous prison escape—was captured at London Heathrow Airport while trying to leave England on a false Canadian passport. He was using the alias Ramon George Sneyd on his way to white-ruled Rhodesia.[270] Ray was quickly extradited to Tennessee and charged with King's murder. He confessed to the assassination on March 10, 1969, though he recanted this confession three days later.[271] On the advice of his attorney Percy Foreman, Ray pleaded guilty to avoid a trial conviction and thus the possibility of receiving the death penalty. He was sentenced to a 99-year prison term.[271][272] Ray later claimed a man he met in Montreal, Quebec, with the alias "Raoul" was involved and that the assassination was the result of a conspiracy.[273][274] He spent the remainder of his life attempting, unsuccessfully, to withdraw his guilty plea and secure the trial he never had.[272] Ray died in 1998 at age 70.[275]
Allegations of conspiracy
Main article: Martin Luther King Jr. assassination conspiracy theories
The sarcophagus of Martin Luther King and Coretta Scott King at the Martin Luther King Jr. National Historic Site in Atlanta, Georgia
Ray's lawyers maintained he was a scapegoat similar to the way that John F. Kennedy's assassin Lee Harvey Oswald is seen by conspiracy theorists.[276] Supporters of this assertion said that Ray's confession was given under pressure and that he had been threatened with the death penalty.[272][277] They admitted that Ray was a thief and burglar, but claimed that he had no record of committing violent crimes with a weapon.[274] However, prison records in different U.S. cities have shown that he was incarcerated on numerous occasions for charges of armed robbery.[278] In a 2008 interview with CNN, Jerry Ray, the younger brother of James Earl Ray, claimed that James was smart and was sometimes able to get away with armed robbery. Jerry Ray said that he had assisted his brother on one such robbery. "I never been with nobody as bold as he is," Jerry said. "He just walked in and put that gun on somebody, it was just like it's an everyday thing."[278]
Those suspecting a conspiracy in the assassination point to the two successive ballistics tests which proved that a rifle similar to Ray's Remington Gamemaster had been the murder weapon. Those tests did not implicate Ray's specific rifle.[272][279] Witnesses near King at the moment of his death said that the shot came from another location. They said that it came from behind thick shrubbery near the boarding house—which had been cut away in the days following the assassination—and not from the boarding house window.[280] However, Ray's fingerprints were found on various objects (a rifle, a pair of binoculars, articles of clothing, a newspaper) that were left in the bathroom where it was determined the gunfire came from.[278] An examination of the rifle containing Ray's fingerprints determined that at least one shot was fired from the firearm at the time of the assassination.[278]
In 1997, King's son Dexter Scott King met with Ray, and publicly supported Ray's efforts to obtain a new trial.[281]
Two years later, King's widow Coretta Scott King and the couple's children won a wrongful death claim against Loyd Jowers and "other unknown co-conspirators." Jowers claimed to have received $100,000 to arrange King's assassination. The jury of six whites and six blacks found in favor of the King family, finding Jowers to be complicit in a conspiracy against King and that government agencies were party to the assassination.[282][283] William F. Pepper represented the King family in the trial.[284]
In 2000, the U.S. Department of Justice completed the investigation into Jowers' claims but did not find evidence to support allegations about conspiracy. The investigation report recommended no further investigation unless some new reliable facts are presented.[285] A sister of Jowers admitted that he had fabricated the story so he could make $300,000 from selling the story, and she in turn corroborated his story in order to get some money to pay her income tax.[286][287]
In 2002, The New York Times reported that a church minister, Ronald Denton Wilson, claimed his father, Henry Clay Wilson—not James Earl Ray—assassinated King. He stated, "It wasn't a racist thing; he thought Martin Luther King was connected with communism, and he wanted to get him out of the way." Wilson provided no evidence to back up his claims.[288]
King researchers David Garrow and Gerald Posner disagreed with William F. Pepper's claims that the government killed King.[289] In 2003, Pepper published a book about the long investigation and trial, as well as his representation of James Earl Ray in his bid for a trial, laying out the evidence and criticizing other accounts.[290][291] King's friend and colleague, James Bevel, also disputed the argument that Ray acted alone, stating, "There is no way a ten-cent white boy could develop a plan to kill a million-dollar black man."[292] In 2004, Jesse Jackson stated:
The fact is there were saboteurs to disrupt the march. And within our own organization, we found a very key person who was on the government payroll. So infiltration within, saboteurs from without and the press attacks. ... I will never believe that James Earl Ray had the motive, the money and the mobility to have done it himself. Our government was very involved in setting the stage for and I think the escape route for James Earl Ray.[293]
Legacy
See also: Memorials to Martin Luther King Jr. and List of streets named after Martin Luther King Jr.
Martin Luther King Jr. statue over the west entrance of Westminster Abbey, installed in 1998
South Africa
See also: Black Consciousness Movement
King's legacy includes influences on the Black Consciousness Movement and civil rights movement in South Africa.[294][295] King's work was cited by, and served as, an inspiration for South African leader Albert Lutuli, who fought for racial justice in his country and was later awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.[296]
United Kingdom
See also: Northern Ireland civil rights movement
King influenced Irish politician and activist John Hume. Hume, the former leader of the Social Democratic and Labour Party, cited King's legacy as quintessential to the Northern Irish civil rights movement and the signing of the Good Friday Agreement, calling him "one of my great heroes of the century."[297][298][299]
In the United Kingdom, The Northumbria and Newcastle Universities Martin Luther King Peace Committee[300] exists to honor King's legacy, as represented by his final visit to the UK to receive an honorary degree from Newcastle University in 1967.[301][302] The Peace Committee operates out of the chaplaincies of the city's two universities, Northumbria and Newcastle, both of which remain centres for the study of Martin Luther King and the US civil rights movement. Inspired by King's vision, it undertakes a range of activities across the UK as it seeks to "build cultures of peace."
In 2017, Newcastle University unveiled a bronze statue of King to celebrate the 50th anniversary of his honorary doctorate ceremony.[303] The Students Union also voted to rename their bar Luthers.[304]
United States
Banner at the 2012 Republican National Convention
King has become a national icon in the history of American liberalism and American progressivism.[305] His main legacy was to secure progress on civil rights in the U.S. Just days after King's assassination, Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1968.[306] Title VIII of the Act, commonly known as the Fair Housing Act, prohibited discrimination in housing and housing-related transactions on the basis of race, religion, or national origin (later expanded to include sex, familial status, and disability). This legislation was seen as a tribute to King's struggle in his final years to combat residential discrimination in the U.S.[306] The day following King's assassination, school teacher Jane Elliott conducted her first "Blue Eyes/Brown Eyes" exercise with her class of elementary school students in Riceville, Iowa. Her purpose was to help them understand King's death as it related to racism, something they little understood as they lived in a predominantly white community.[307]
King's wife Coretta Scott King followed in her husband's footsteps and was active in matters of social justice and civil rights until her death in 2006. The same year that Martin Luther King was assassinated, she established the King Center in Atlanta, Georgia, dedicated to preserving his legacy and the work of championing nonviolent conflict resolution and tolerance worldwide.[308] Their son, Dexter King, serves as the center's chairman.[309][310] Daughter Yolanda King, who died in 2007, was a motivational speaker, author and founder of Higher Ground Productions, an organization specializing in diversity training.[311]
Even within the King family, members disagree about his religious and political views about gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people. King's widow Coretta publicly said that she believed her husband would have supported gay rights.[312] However, his youngest child, Bernice King, has said publicly that he would have been opposed to gay marriage.[313]
On February 4, 1968, at the Ebenezer Baptist Church, in speaking about how he wished to be remembered after his death, King stated:
I'd like somebody to mention that day that Martin Luther King Jr. tried to give his life serving others. I'd like for somebody to say that day that Martin Luther King Jr. tried to love somebody.
I want you to say that day that I tried to be right on the war question. I want you to be able to say that day that I did try to feed the hungry. I want you to be able to say that day that I did try in my life to clothe those who were naked. I want you to say on that day that I did try in my life to visit those who were in prison. And I want you to say that I tried to love and serve humanity.
Yes, if you want to say that I was a drum major. Say that I was a drum major for justice. Say that I was a drum major for peace. I was a drum major for righteousness. And all of the other shallow things will not matter. I won't have any money to leave behind. I won't have the fine and luxurious things of life to leave behind. But I just want to leave a committed life behind.[261][314]
Martin Luther King Jr. was among hundreds of artists whose material was destroyed in the 2008 Universal Studios fire.[315]
Martin Luther King Jr. Day
Main article: Martin Luther King Jr. Day
Beginning in 1971, cities such as St. Louis, Missouri, and states established annual holidays to honor King.[316] At the White House Rose Garden on November 2, 1983, President Ronald Reagan signed a bill creating a federal holiday to honor King. Observed for the first time on January 20, 1986, it is called Martin Luther King Jr. Day. Following President George H. W. Bush's 1992 proclamation, the holiday is observed on the third Monday of January each year, near the time of King's birthday.[317][318] On January 17, 2000, for the first time, Martin Luther King Jr. Day was officially observed in all fifty U.S. states.[319] Arizona (1992), New Hampshire (1999) and Utah (2000) were the last three states to recognize the holiday. Utah previously celebrated the holiday at the same time but under the name Human Rights Day.[320]
Veneration
Martin Luther King of Georgia
Pastor and Martyr
Honored in Holy Christian Orthodox Church
Episcopal Church (United States)
Evangelical Lutheran Church in America
Canonized September 9, 2016, The Christian Cathedral by Timothy Paul Baymon
Feast April 4
January 15 (Episcopalian and Lutheran)
Martin Luther King Jr.[321] was canonized[322] by Archbishop Timothy Paul of the Holy Christian Orthodox Church[323] (not in communion with the Eastern Orthodox Church)[324] on September 9, 2016[325] in the Christian Cathedral in Springfield, Massachusetts,[326] his feast day is April 4, the date of his assassination. King is honored[327] with a Lesser Feast on the liturgical calendar of the Episcopal Church in the United States of America[328] on April 4[329] or January 15.[330] The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America commemorates King liturgically on the anniversary of his birth, January 15.[331]
Ideas, influences, and political stances
Christianity
King at the 1963 Civil Rights March in Washington, D.C.
As a Christian minister, King's main influence was Jesus Christ and the Christian gospels, which he would almost always quote in his religious meetings, speeches at church, and in public discourses. King's faith was strongly based in Jesus' commandment of loving your neighbor as yourself, loving God above all, and loving your enemies, praying for them and blessing them. His nonviolent thought was also based in the injunction to turn the other cheek in the Sermon on the Mount, and Jesus' teaching of putting the sword back into its place (Matthew 26:52).[332] In his famous Letter from Birmingham Jail, King urged action consistent with what he describes as Jesus' "extremist" love, and also quoted numerous other Christian pacifist authors, which was very usual for him. In another sermon, he stated:
Before I was a civil rights leader, I was a preacher of the Gospel. This was my first calling and it still remains my greatest commitment. You know, actually all that I do in civil rights I do because I consider it a part of my ministry. I have no other ambitions in life but to achieve excellence in the Christian ministry. I don't plan to run for any political office. I don't plan to do anything but remain a preacher. And what I'm doing in this struggle, along with many others, grows out of my feeling that the preacher must be concerned about the whole man.[333][334]
King's private writings show that he rejected biblical literalism; he described the Bible as "mythological," doubted that Jesus was born of a virgin and did not believe that the story of Jonah and the whale was true.[335]
The Measure of a Man
In 1959, King published a short book called The Measure of a Man, which contained his sermons "What is Man?" and "The Dimensions of a Complete Life". The sermons argued for man's need for God's love and criticized the racial injustices of Western civilization.[336]
Nonviolence
A close-up of Rustin
King worked alongside Quakers such as Bayard Rustin to develop nonviolent tactics.
World peace through nonviolent means is neither absurd nor unattainable. All other methods have failed. Thus we must begin anew. Nonviolence is a good starting point. Those of us who believe in this method can be voices of reason, sanity, and understanding amid the voices of violence, hatred, and emotion. We can very well set a mood of peace out of which a system of peace can be built.
—Martin Luther King Jr.[337]
Veteran African-American civil rights activist Bayard Rustin was King's first regular advisor on nonviolence.[338] King was also advised by the white activists Harris Wofford and Glenn Smiley.[339] Rustin and Smiley came from the Christian pacifist tradition, and Wofford and Rustin both studied Mahatma Gandhi's teachings. Rustin had applied nonviolence with the Journey of Reconciliation campaign in the 1940s,[340] and Wofford had been promoting Gandhism to Southern blacks since the early 1950s.[339]
King had initially known little about Gandhi and rarely used the term "nonviolence" during his early years of activism in the early 1950s. King initially believed in and practiced self-defense, even obtaining guns in his household as a means of defense against possible attackers. The pacifists guided King by showing him the alternative of nonviolent resistance, arguing that this would be a better means to accomplish his goals of civil rights than self-defense. King then vowed to no longer personally use arms.[341][342]
In the aftermath of the boycott, King wrote Stride Toward Freedom, which included the chapter Pilgrimage to Nonviolence. King outlined his understanding of nonviolence, which seeks to win an opponent to friendship, rather than to humiliate or defeat him. The chapter draws from an address by Wofford, with Rustin and Stanley Levison also providing guidance and ghostwriting.[343]
King was inspired by Gandhi and his success with nonviolent activism, and as a theology student, King described Gandhi as being one of the "individuals who greatly reveal the working of the Spirit of God".[344] King had "for a long time ... wanted to take a trip to India."[345] With assistance from Harris Wofford, the American Friends Service Committee, and other supporters, he was able to fund the journey in April 1959.[346][347] The trip to India affected King, deepening his understanding of nonviolent resistance and his commitment to America's struggle for civil rights. In a radio address made during his final evening in India, King reflected, "Since being in India, I am more convinced than ever before that the method of nonviolent resistance is the most potent weapon available to oppressed people in their struggle for justice and human dignity."
King's admiration of Gandhi's nonviolence did not diminish in later years. He went so far as to hold up his example when receiving the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964, hailing the "successful precedent" of using nonviolence "in a magnificent way by Mohandas K. Gandhi to challenge the might of the British Empire ... He struggled only with the weapons of truth, soul force, non-injury and courage."[348]
Another influence for King's nonviolent method was Henry David Thoreau's essay On Civil Disobedience and its theme of refusing to cooperate with an evil system.[349] He also was greatly influenced by the works of Protestant theologians Reinhold Niebuhr and Paul Tillich,[350] and said that Walter Rauschenbusch's Christianity and the Social Crisis left an "indelible imprint" on his thinking by giving him a theological grounding for his social concerns.[351][352] King was moved by Rauschenbusch's vision of Christians spreading social unrest in "perpetual but friendly conflict" with the state, simultaneously critiquing it and calling it to act as an instrument of justice.[353] However, he was apparently unaware of the American tradition of Christian pacifism exemplified by Adin Ballou and William Lloyd Garrison.[354] King frequently referred to Jesus' Sermon on the Mount as central for his work.[352][355][356][357] King also sometimes used the concept of "agape" (brotherly Christian love).[358] However, after 1960, he ceased employing it in his writings.[359]
Even after renouncing his personal use of guns, King had a complex relationship with the phenomenon of self-defense in the movement. He publicly discouraged it as a widespread practice, but acknowledged that it was sometimes necessary.[360] Throughout his career King was frequently protected by other civil rights activists who carried arms, such as Colonel Stone Johnson,[361] Robert Hayling, and the Deacons for Defense and Justice.[362][363]
Criticism within the movement
King was criticized by other black leaders during the course of his participation in the civil rights movement. This included opposition by more militant thinkers such as Nation of Islam member Malcolm X.[364] Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee founder Ella Baker regarded King as a charismatic media figure who lost touch with the grassroots of the movement[365] as he became close to elite figures like Nelson Rockefeller.[366] Stokely Carmichael, a protege of Baker's, became a black separatist and disagreed with King's plea for racial integration because he considered it an insult to a uniquely African-American culture.[367][368]
Activism and involvement with Native Americans
King was an avid supporter of Native American rights. Native Americans were also active supporters of King's civil rights movement which included the active participation of Native Americans.[369] In fact, the Native American Rights Fund (NARF) was patterned after the NAACP's Legal Defense and Education Fund.[370] The National Indian Youth Council (NIYC) was especially supportive in King's campaigns especially the Poor People's Campaign in 1968.[371] In King's book Why We Can't Wait he writes:
Our nation was born in genocide when it embraced the doctrine that the original American, the Indian, was an inferior race. Even before there were large numbers of Negroes on our shores, the scar of racial hatred had already disfigured colonial society. From the sixteenth century forward, blood flowed in battles over racial supremacy. We are perhaps the only nation which tried as a matter of national policy to wipe out its indigenous population. Moreover, we elevated that tragic experience into a noble crusade. Indeed, even today we have not permitted ourselves to reject or to feel remorse for this shameful episode. Our literature, our films, our drama, our folklore all exalt it.[372]
King assisted Native American people in south Alabama in the late 1950s.[370] At that time the remaining Creek in Alabama were trying to completely desegregate schools in their area. The South had many egregious racial problems: In this case, light-complexioned Native children were allowed to ride school buses to previously all white schools, while dark-skinned Native children from the same band were barred from riding the same buses.[370] Tribal leaders, upon hearing of King's desegregation campaign in Birmingham, Alabama, contacted him for assistance. He promptly responded and through his intervention the problem was quickly resolved.[370]
In September 1959, King flew from Los Angeles, California, to Tucson, Arizona.[373] After giving a speech at the University of Arizona on the ideals of using nonviolent methods in creating social change. He put into words his belief that one must not use force in this struggle "but match the violence of his opponents with his suffering."[373] King then went to Southside Presbyterian, a predominantly Native American church, and was fascinated by their photos. On the spur of the moment, King wanted to go to an Indian Reservation to meet the people so Reverend Casper Glenn took King to the Papago Indian Reservation.[373] At the reservation King met with all the tribal leaders, and others on the reservation then ate with them.[373] King then visited another Presbyterian church near the reservation, and preached there attracting a Native American crowd.[373] He later returned to Old Pueblo in March 1962 where he preached again to a Native American congregation, and then went on to give another speech at the University of Arizona.[373] King would continue to attract the attention of Native Americans throughout the civil rights movement. During the 1963 March on Washington there was a sizable Native American contingent, including many from South Dakota, and many from the Navajo nation.[370][374] Native Americans were also active participants in the Poor People's Campaign in 1968.[371]
King was a major inspiration along with the civil rights movement which inspired the Native American rights movement of the 1960s and many of its leaders.[370] John Echohawk a member of the Pawnee tribe and the executive director and one of the founders of the Native American Rights Fund stated:
Inspired by Dr. King, who was advancing the civil rights agenda of equality under the laws of this country, we thought that we could also use the laws to advance our Indianship, to live as tribes in our territories governed by our own laws under the principles of tribal sovereignty that had been with us ever since 1831. We believed that we could fight for a policy of self-determination that was consistent with U.S. law and that we could govern our own affairs, define our own ways and continue to survive in this society.[375]
Politics
As the leader of the SCLC, King maintained a policy of not publicly endorsing a U.S. political party or candidate: "I feel someone must remain in the position of non-alignment, so that he can look objectively at both parties and be the conscience of both—not the servant or master of either."[376] In a 1958 interview, he expressed his view that neither party was perfect, saying, "I don't think the Republican party is a party full of the almighty God nor is the Democratic party. They both have weaknesses ... And I'm not inextricably bound to either party."[377] King did praise Democratic Senator Paul Douglas of Illinois as being the "greatest of all senators" because of his fierce advocacy for civil rights causes over the years.[378]
King critiqued both parties' performance on promoting racial equality:
Actually, the Negro has been betrayed by both the Republican and the Democratic party. The Democrats have betrayed him by capitulating to the whims and caprices of the Southern Dixiecrats. The Republicans have betrayed him by capitulating to the blatant hypocrisy of reactionary right-wing northern Republicans. And this coalition of southern Dixiecrats and right-wing reactionary northern Republicans defeats every bill and every move towards liberal legislation in the area of civil rights.[379]
Although King never publicly supported a political party or candidate for president, in a letter to a civil rights supporter in October 1956 he said that he had not decided whether he would vote for Adlai Stevenson II or Dwight D. Eisenhower at the 1956 presidential election, but that "In the past, I always voted the Democratic ticket."[380] </ref> In his autobiography, King says that in 1960 he privately voted for Democratic candidate John F. Kennedy: "I felt that Kennedy would make the best president. I never came out with an endorsement. My father did, but I never made one." King adds that he likely would have made an exception to his non-endorsement policy for a second Kennedy term, saying "Had President Kennedy lived, I would probably have endorsed him in 1964."[381]
In 1964, King urged his supporters "and all people of goodwill" to vote against Republican Senator Barry Goldwater for president, saying that his election "would be a tragedy, and certainly suicidal almost, for the nation and the world."[382]
King supported the ideals of social democracy and democratic socialism, although he was reluctant to speak directly of this support due to the anti-communist sentiment being projected throughout the United States at the time, and the association of socialism with communism. King believed that capitalism could not adequately provide the necessities of many American people, particularly the African-American community.[222]
Compensation
See also: Reparations for slavery debate in the United States
King stated that black Americans, as well as other disadvantaged Americans, should be compensated for historical wrongs. In an interview conducted for Playboy in 1965, he said that granting black Americans only equality could not realistically close the economic gap between them and whites. King said that he did not seek a full restitution of wages lost to slavery, which he believed impossible, but proposed a government compensatory program of $50 billion over ten years to all disadvantaged groups.[383]
He posited that "the money spent would be more than amply justified by the benefits that would accrue to the nation through a spectacular decline in school dropouts, family breakups, crime rates, illegitimacy, swollen relief rolls, rioting and other social evils."[384] He presented this idea as an application of the common law regarding settlement of unpaid labor, but clarified that he felt that the money should not be spent exclusively on blacks. He stated, "It should benefit the disadvantaged of all races."[385]
Family planning
On being awarded the Planned Parenthood Federation of America's Margaret Sanger Award on May 5, 1966, King said:
Recently, the press has been filled with reports of sightings of flying saucers. While we need not give credence to these stories, they allow our imagination to speculate on how visitors from outer space would judge us. I am afraid they would be stupefied at our conduct. They would observe that for death planning we spend billions to create engines and strategies for war. They would also observe that we spend millions to prevent death by disease and other causes. Finally they would observe that we spend paltry sums for population planning, even though its spontaneous growth is an urgent threat to life on our planet. Our visitors from outer space could be forgiven if they reported home that our planet is inhabited by a race of insane men whose future is bleak and uncertain.
There is no human circumstance more tragic than the persisting existence of a harmful condition for which a remedy is readily available. Family planning, to relate population to world resources, is possible, practical and necessary. Unlike plagues of the dark ages or contemporary diseases we do not yet understand, the modern plague of overpopulation is soluble by means we have discovered and with resources we possess.
What is lacking is not sufficient knowledge of the solution but universal consciousness of the gravity of the problem and education of the billions who are its victims ...[386][387][third-party source needed]
Television
Actress Nichelle Nichols planned to leave the science-fiction television series Star Trek in 1967 after its first season, wanting to return to musical theater.[388] She changed her mind after talking to King[389] who was a fan of the show. King explained that her character signified a future of greater racial harmony and cooperation.[390] King told Nichols, "You are our image of where we're going, you're 300 years from now, and that means that's where we are and it takes place now. Keep doing what you're doing, you are our inspiration."[391] As Nichols recounted, "Star Trek was one of the only shows that [King] and his wife Coretta would allow their little children to watch. And I thanked him and I told him I was leaving the show. All the smile came off his face. And he said, 'Don't you understand for the first time we're seen as we should be seen. You don't have a black role. You have an equal role.'"[388] For his part, the series' creator, Gene Roddenberry, was deeply moved upon learning of King's support.[392]
Israel
King believed Israel has a right to exist, saying "Peace for Israel means security, and we must stand with all our might to protect her right to exist, its territorial integrity and the right to use whatever sea lanes it needs. Israel is one of the great outposts of democracy in the world, and a marvelous example of what can be done, how desert land can be transformed into an oasis of brotherhood and democracy. Peace for Israel means security, and that security must be a reality."[393]
Homosexuality
A boy once asked King about how he should deal with his homosexuality. King replied:[394][395]
Your problem is not at all an uncommon one. However, it does require careful attention. The type of feeling that you have toward boys is probably not an innate tendency, but something that has been culturally acquired. Your reasons for adopting this habit have now been consciously suppressed or unconsciously repressed. Therefore, it is necessary to deal with this problem by getting back to some of the experiences and circumstances that lead to the habit. In order to do this I would suggest that you see a good psychiatrist who can assist you in bringing to the forefront of conscience all of those experiences and circumstances that lead to the habit. You are already on the right road toward a solution, since you honestly recognize the problem and have a desire to solve it.
State surveillance and coercion
FBI surveillance and wiretapping
Memo describing FBI attempts to disrupt the Poor People's Campaign with fraudulent claims about King—part of the COINTELPRO campaign against the anti-war and civil rights movements
FBI director J. Edgar Hoover personally ordered surveillance of King, with the intent to undermine his power as a civil rights leader.[396][397] The Church Committee, a 1975 investigation by the U.S. Congress, found that "From December 1963 until his death in 1968, Martin Luther King Jr. was the target of an intensive campaign by the Federal Bureau of Investigation to 'neutralize' him as an effective civil rights leader."[398]
In the fall of 1963, the FBI received authorization from Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy to proceed with wiretapping of King's phone lines, purportedly due to his association with Stanley Levison.[399] The Bureau informed President John F. Kennedy. He and his brother unsuccessfully tried to persuade King to dissociate himself from Levison, a New York lawyer who had been involved with Communist Party USA.[400][401] Although Robert Kennedy only gave written approval for limited wiretapping of King's telephone lines "on a trial basis, for a month or so",[402] Hoover extended the clearance so his men were "unshackled" to look for evidence in any areas of King's life they deemed worthy.[112]
The Bureau placed wiretaps on the home and office phone lines of both Levison and King, and bugged King's rooms in hotels as he traveled across the country.[400][403] In 1967, Hoover listed the SCLC as a black nationalist hate group, with the instructions: "No opportunity should be missed to exploit through counterintelligence techniques the organizational and personal conflicts of the leaderships of the groups ... to insure [sic] the targeted group is disrupted, ridiculed, or discredited."[397][404]
NSA monitoring of King's communications
In a secret operation code-named "Minaret", the National Security Agency monitored the communications of leading Americans, including King, who were critical of the U.S. war in Vietnam.[405] A review by the NSA itself concluded that Minaret was "disreputable if not outright illegal."[405]
Allegations of communism
For years, Hoover had been suspicious of potential influence of communists in social movements such as labor unions and civil rights.[406] Hoover directed the FBI to track King in 1957, and the SCLC when it was established.[3]
Due to the relationship between King and Stanley Levison, the FBI feared Levison was working as an "agent of influence" over King, in spite of its own reports in 1963 that Levison had left the Party and was no longer associated in business dealings with them.[407] Another King lieutenant, Jack O'Dell, was also linked to the Communist Party by sworn testimony before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC).[408]
Despite the extensive surveillance conducted, by 1976 the FBI had acknowledged that it had not obtained any evidence that King himself or the SCLC were actually involved with any communist organizations.[398]
For his part, King adamantly denied having any connections to communism. In a 1965 Playboy interview, he stated that "there are as many Communists in this freedom movement as there are Eskimos in Florida."[409] He argued that Hoover was "following the path of appeasement of political powers in the South" and that his concern for communist infiltration of the civil rights movement was meant to "aid and abet the salacious claims of southern racists and the extreme right-wing elements."[398] Hoover did not believe King's pledge of innocence and replied by saying that King was "the most notorious liar in the country."[410] After King gave his "I Have A Dream" speech during the March on Washington on August 28, 1963, the FBI described King as "the most dangerous and effective Negro leader in the country."[403] It alleged that he was "knowingly, willingly and regularly cooperating with and taking guidance from communists."[411]
The attempts to prove that King was a communist was related to the feeling of many segregationists that blacks in the South were content with the status quo, but had been stirred up by "communists" and "outside agitators."[412] As context, the civil rights movement in 1950s and '60s arose from activism within the black community dating back to before World War I. King said that "the Negro revolution is a genuine revolution, born from the same womb that produces all massive social upheavals—the womb of intolerable conditions and unendurable situations."[413]
CIA surveillance
CIA files declassified in 2017 revealed that the agency was investigating possible links between King and Communism after a Washington Post article dated November 4, 1964, claimed he was invited to the Soviet Union and that Ralph Abernathy, as spokesman for King, refused to comment on the source of the invitation.[414] Mail belonging to King and other civil rights activists was intercepted by the CIA program HTLINGUAL.[415]
Allegations of adultery
The only meeting of King and Malcolm X, outside the United States Senate chamber, March 26, 1964, during the Senate debates regarding the (eventual) Civil Rights Act of 1964.[416]
The FBI having concluded that King was dangerous due to communist infiltration, attempts to discredit King began through revelations regarding his private life. FBI surveillance of King, some of it since made public, attempted to demonstrate that he also had numerous extramarital affairs.[403] Lyndon B. Johnson once said that King was a "hypocritical preacher".[417]
In his 1989 autobiography And the Walls Came Tumbling Down, Ralph Abernathy stated that King had a "weakness for women", although they "all understood and believed in the biblical prohibition against sex outside of marriage. It was just that he had a particularly difficult time with that temptation."[418] In a later interview, Abernathy said that he only wrote the term "womanizing", that he did not specifically say King had extramarital sex and that the infidelities King had were emotional rather than sexual.[419]
Abernathy criticized the media for sensationalizing the statements he wrote about King's affairs,[419] such as the allegation that he admitted in his book that King had a sexual affair the night before he was assassinated.[419] In his original wording, Abernathy had stated that he saw King coming out of his room with a woman when he awoke the next morning and later said that "he may have been in there discussing and debating and trying to get her to go along with the movement, I don't know...the Sanitation Worker's Strike."[419]
In his 1986 book Bearing the Cross, David Garrow wrote about a number of extramarital affairs, including one woman King saw almost daily. According to Garrow, "that relationship ... increasingly became the emotional centerpiece of King's life, but it did not eliminate the incidental couplings ... of King's travels." He alleged that King explained his extramarital affairs as "a form of anxiety reduction." Garrow asserted that King's supposed promiscuity caused him "painful and at times overwhelming guilt."[420] King's wife Coretta appeared to have accepted his affairs with equanimity, saying once that "all that other business just doesn't have a place in the very high-level relationship we enjoyed."[421] Shortly after Bearing the Cross was released, civil rights author Howell Raines gave the book a positive review but opined that Garrow's allegations about King's sex life were "sensational" and stated that Garrow was "amassing facts rather than analyzing them."[422]
The FBI distributed reports regarding such affairs to the executive branch, friendly reporters, potential coalition partners and funding sources of the SCLC, and King's family.[423] The bureau also sent anonymous letters to King threatening to reveal information if he did not cease his civil rights work.[424] The FBI–King suicide letter sent to King just before he received the Nobel Peace Prize read, in part:
The FBI–King suicide letter,[425] mailed anonymously by the FBI
The American public, the church organizations that have been helping—Protestants, Catholics and Jews will know you for what you are—an evil beast. So will others who have backed you. You are done. King, there is only one thing left for you to do. You know what it is. You have just 34 days in which to do (this exact number has been selected for a specific reason, it has definite practical significant [sic]). You are done. There is but one way out for you. You better take it before your filthy fraudulent self is bared to the nation.[426]
The letter was accompanied by a tape recording—excerpted from FBI wiretaps—of several of King's extramarital liaisons.[427] King interpreted this package as an attempt to drive him to suicide,[428] although William Sullivan, head of the Domestic Intelligence Division at the time, argued that it may have only been intended to "convince Dr. King to resign from the SCLC."[398] King refused to give in to the FBI's threats.[403]
In 1977, Judge John Lewis Smith Jr. ordered all known copies of the recorded audiotapes and written transcripts resulting from the FBI's electronic surveillance of King between 1963 and 1968 to be held in the National Archives and sealed from public access until 2027.[429]
In May 2019, FBI files emerged alleging that King "looked on, laughed and offered advice" as one of his friends raped a woman. His biographer, David Garrow, wrote that "the suggestion... that he either actively tolerated or personally employed violence against any woman, even while drunk, poses so fundamental a challenge to his historical stature as to require the most complete and extensive historical review possible".[430] These allegations sparked a heated debate among historians.[431] Clayborne Carson, Martin Luther King biographer and overseer of the Dr. King records at Stanford University states that he came to the opposite conclusion of Garrow saying "None of this is new. Garrow is talking about a recently added summary of a transcript of a 1964 recording from the Willard Hotel that others, including Mrs. King, have said they did not hear Martin's voice on it. The added summary was four layers removed from the actual recording. This supposedly new information comes from an anonymous source in a single paragraph in an FBI report. You have to ask how could anyone conclude King looked at a rape from an audio recording in a room where he was not present."[432] Carson bases his position of Coretta Scott King's memoirs where she states "I set up our reel-to-reel recorder and listened. I have read scores of reports talking about the scurrilous activities of my husband but once again, there was nothing at all incriminating on the tape. It was a social event with people laughing and telling dirty jokes. But I did not hear Martin's voice on it, and there was nothing about sex or anything else resembling the lies J. Edgar and the FBI were spreading." The tapes that could confirm or refute the allegation are scheduled to be declassified in 2027.[433]
Police observation during the assassination
A fire station was located across from the Lorraine Motel, next to the boarding house in which James Earl Ray was staying. Police officers were stationed in the fire station to keep King under surveillance.[434] Agents were watching King at the time he was shot.[435] Immediately following the shooting, officers rushed out of the station to the motel. Marrell McCollough, an undercover police officer, was the first person to administer first aid to King.[436] The antagonism between King and the FBI, the lack of an all points bulletin to find the killer, and the police presence nearby led to speculation that the FBI was involved in the assassination.[437]
Awards and recognition
King showing his medallion, which he received from Mayor Wagner
Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, where King ministered, was renamed Dexter Avenue King Memorial Baptist Church in 1978.
King was awarded at least fifty honorary degrees from colleges and universities.[438] On October 14, 1964, King became the (at the time) youngest winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, which was awarded to him for leading nonviolent resistance to racial prejudice in the U.S.[439][440] In 1965, he was awarded the American Liberties Medallion by the American Jewish Committee for his "exceptional advancement of the principles of human liberty."[438][441] In his acceptance remarks, King said, "Freedom is one thing. You have it all or you are not free."[442]
In 1957, he was awarded the Spingarn Medal from the NAACP.[443] Two years later, he won the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award for his book Stride Toward Freedom: The Montgomery Story.[444] In 1966, the Planned Parenthood Federation of America awarded King the Margaret Sanger Award for "his courageous resistance to bigotry and his lifelong dedication to the advancement of social justice and human dignity."[445] Also in 1966, King was elected as a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.[446] In November 1967 he made a 24-hour trip to the United Kingdom to receive an honorary degree from Newcastle University, being the first African-American to be so honored by Newcastle.[302] In a moving impromptu acceptance speech,[301] he said
There are three urgent and indeed great problems that we face not only in the United States of America but all over the world today. That is the problem of racism, the problem of poverty and the problem of war.
In addition to being nominated for three Grammy Awards, the civil rights leader posthumously won for Best Spoken Word Recording in 1971 for "Why I Oppose The War In Vietnam".[447]
In 1977, the Presidential Medal of Freedom was posthumously awarded to King by President Jimmy Carter. The citation read:
Martin Luther King Jr. was the conscience of his generation. He gazed upon the great wall of segregation and saw that the power of love could bring it down. From the pain and exhaustion of his fight to fulfill the promises of our founding fathers for our humblest citizens, he wrung his eloquent statement of his dream for America. He made our nation stronger because he made it better. His dream sustains us yet.[448]
King and his wife were also awarded the Congressional Gold Medal in 2004.[449]
King was second in Gallup's List of Most Widely Admired People of the 20th Century.[450] In 1963, he was named Time Person of the Year, and in 2000, he was voted sixth in an online "Person of the Century" poll by the same magazine.[451] King placed third in the Greatest American contest conducted by the Discovery Channel and AOL.[452]
Five-dollar bill
On April 20, 2016, Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew announced that the $5, $10, and $20 bills would all undergo redesign prior to 2020. Lew said that while Lincoln would remain on the front of the $5 bill, the reverse would be redesigned to depict various historical events that had occurred at the Lincoln Memorial. Among the planned designs are images from King's "I Have a Dream" speech and the 1939 concert by opera singer Marian Anderson.[453]
Works
Stride Toward Freedom: The Montgomery Story (1958) ISBN 978-0-06-250490-6
The Measure of a Man (1959) ISBN 978-0-8006-0877-4
Strength to Love (1963) ISBN 978-0-8006-9740-2
Why We Can't Wait (1964) ISBN 978-0-8070-0112-7
Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community? (1967) ISBN 978-0-8070-0571-2
The Trumpet of Conscience (1968) ISBN 978-0-8070-0170-7
A Testament of Hope: The Essential Writings and Speeches of Martin Luther King Jr. (1986) ISBN 978-0-06-250931-4
The Autobiography of Martin Luther King Jr. (1998), ed. Clayborne Carson ISBN 978-0-446-67650-2
"All Labor Has Dignity" (2011) ed. Michael Honey ISBN 978-0-8070-8600-1
"Thou, Dear God": Prayers That Open Hearts and Spirits. Collection of King's prayers. (2011), ed. Lewis Baldwin ISBN 978-0-8070-8603-2
MLK: A Celebration in Word and Image (2011). Photographed by Bob Adelman, introduced by Charles Johnson ISBN 978-0-8070-0316-9
See also
Biography portal
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Civil rights movement in popular culture
Equality before the law
List of civil rights leaders
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List of streets named after Martin Luther King Jr.
Memorials to Martin Luther King Jr.
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Sermons and speeches of Martin Luther King Jr.
United States labor law
Violence begets violence
Letter from Birmingham Jail
by Martin Luther King, Jr.
From the Birmingham jail, where he was imprisoned as a participant in nonviolent demonstrations against segregation, Dr.
Martin Luther King, Jr., wrote in longhand the letter which follows. It was his response to a public statement of concern and
caution issued by eight white religious leaders of the South. Dr. King, who was born in 1929, did his undergraduate work at
Morehouse College; attended the integrated Crozer Theological Seminary in Chester, Pennsylvania, one of six black pupils
among a hundred students, and the president of his class; and won a fellowship to Boston University for his Ph.D.
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 have the honor of serving as president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, an organization operating
in every Southern state, with headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia. We have some eighty-five affiliate organizations all across the
South, one being the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights. Whenever necessary and possible, we share staff,
educational and financial resources with our affiliates. Several months ago our local affiliate here in Birmingham invited us to be
on call to engage in a nonviolent direct-action program if such were deemed necessary. We readily consented, and when the hour
came we lived up to our promises. So I am here, along with several members of my staff, because we were invited here. I am
here because I have basic organizational ties here.
Beyond this, I am in Birmingham because injustice is here. Just as the eighth-century prophets left their little villages and carried
their "thus saith the Lord" far beyond the boundaries of their hometowns; and just as the Apostle Paul left his little village of
Tarsus and carried the gospel of Jesus Christ to practically every hamlet and city of the Greco-Roman world, I too am compelled
to carry the gospel of freedom beyond my particular hometown. Like Paul, I must constantly respond to the Macedonian call for
aid.
Moreover, 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.
You deplore the demonstrations that are presently taking place in Birmingham. But I am sorry that your statement did not express
a similar concern for the conditions that brought the demonstrations into being. I am sure that each of you would want to go
beyond the superficial social analyst who looks merely at effects and does not grapple with underlying causes. I would not
hesitate to say that it is unfortunate that so-called demonstrations are taking place in Birmingham at this time, but I would say in
more emphatic terms that it is even more unfortunate that the white power structure of this city left the Negro community with no
other alternative.
IN ANY nonviolent campaign there are four basic steps: collection of the facts to determine whether injustices are alive,
negotiation, self-purification, and direct action. We have gone through all of these steps in Birmingham. There can be no
gainsaying of the fact that racial injustice engulfs this community. Birmingham is probably the most thoroughly segregated city
in the United States. Its ugly record of police brutality is known in every section of this country. Its unjust treatment of Negroes
in the courts is a notorious reality. There have been more unsolved bombings of Negro homes and churches in Birmingham than
in any other city in this nation. These are the hard, brutal, and unbelievable facts. On the basis of them, Negro leaders sought to
negotiate with the city fathers. But the political leaders consistently refused to engage in good-faith negotiation.
Then came the opportunity last September to talk with some of the leaders of the economic community. In these negotiating
sessions certain promises were made by the merchants, such as the promise to remove the humiliating racial signs from the
stores. On the basis of these promises, Reverend Shuttlesworth and the leaders of the Alabama Christian Movement for Human
Rights agreed to call a moratorium on any type of demonstration. As the weeks and months unfolded, we realized that we were
the victims of a broken promise. The signs remained. As in so many experiences of the past, we were confronted with blasted
hopes, and the dark shadow of a deep disappointment settled upon us. So we had no alternative except that of preparing for direct
action, whereby we would present our very bodies as a means of laying our case before the conscience of the local and national
community. We were not unmindful of the difficulties involved. So we decided to go through a process of self-purification. We
Letter From Birmingham Jail 2
started having workshops on nonviolence and repeatedly asked ourselves the questions, "Are you able to accept blows without
retaliating?" and "Are you able to endure the ordeals of jail?" We decided to set our direct-action program around the Easter
season, realizing that, with exception of Christmas, this was the largest shopping period of the year. Knowing that a strong
economic withdrawal program would be the by-product of direct action, we felt that this was the best time to bring pressure on
the merchants for the needed changes. Then it occurred to us that the March election was ahead, and so we speedily decided to
postpone action until after election day. When we discovered that Mr. Conner was in the runoff, we decided again to postpone
action so that the demonstration could not be used to cloud the issues. At this time we agreed to begin our nonviolent witness the
day after the runoff.
This reveals that we did not move irresponsibly into direct action. We, too, wanted to see Mr. Conner defeated, so we went
through postponement after postponement to aid in this community need. After this we felt that direct action could be delayed no
longer.
You may well ask, "Why direct action, why sit-ins, marches, and so forth? Isn't negotiation a better path?" You are exactly right
in your call for negotiation. Indeed, this is the purpose of direct action. Nonviolent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and
establish such creative tension that a community that has consistently refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue. It seeks
so to dramatize the issue that it can no longer be ignored. I just referred to the creation of tension as a part of the work of the
nonviolent resister. This may sound rather shocking. But I must confess that I am not afraid of the word "tension." I have
earnestly worked and preached against violent tension, but there is a type of constructive nonviolent tension that is necessary for
growth. Just as Socrates felt that it was necessary to create a tension in the mind so that individuals could rise from the bondage
of myths and half-truths to the unfettered realm of creative analysis and objective appraisal, we must see the need of having
nonviolent gadflies to create the kind of tension in society that will help men to rise from the dark depths of prejudice and racism
to the majestic heights of understanding and brotherhood. So, the purpose of direct action is to create a situation so crisis-packed
that it will inevitably open the door to negotiation. We therefore concur with you in your call for negotiation. Too long has our
beloved Southland been bogged down in the tragic attempt to live in monologue rather than dialogue.
One of the basic points in your statement is that our acts are untimely. Some have asked, "Why didn't you give the new
administration time to act?" The only answer that I can give to this inquiry is that the new administration must be prodded about
as much as the outgoing one before it acts. We will be sadly mistaken if we feel that the election of Mr. Boutwell will bring the
millennium to Birmingham. While Mr. Boutwell is much more articulate and gentle than Mr. Conner, they are both
segregationists, dedicated to the task of maintaining the status quo. The hope I see in Mr. Boutwell is that he will be reasonable
enough to see the futility of massive resistance to desegregation. But he will not see this without pressure from the devotees of
civil rights. My friends, I must say to you that we have not made a single gain in civil rights without determined legal and
nonviolent pressure. History is the long and tragic story of the fact that privileged groups seldom give up their privileges
voluntarily. Individuals may see the moral light and voluntarily give up their unjust posture; but, as Reinhold Niebuhr has
reminded us, groups are more immoral than individuals.
We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the
oppressed. Frankly, I have never yet engaged in a direct-action movement that was "well timed" according to the timetable of
those who have not suffered unduly from the disease of segregation. For years now I have heard the word "wait." It rings in the
ear of every Negro with a piercing familiarity. This "wait" has almost always meant "never." It has been a tranquilizing
thalidomide, relieving the emotional stress for a moment, only to give birth to an ill-formed infant of frustration. We must come
to see with the distinguished jurist of yesterday that "justice too long delayed is justice denied." We have waited for more than
three hundred and forty years for our God-given and constitutional rights. 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. I guess it is easy for those who have never felt the stinging darts of segregation to say "wait." But when you
have seen vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers at will and drown your sisters and brothers at whim; when you have seen
hate-filled policemen curse, kick, brutalize, and even kill your black brothers and sisters with impunity; when you see the vast
majority of your twenty million Negro brothers smothering in an airtight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society; when
you suddenly find your tongue twisted and your speech stammering as you seek to explain to your six-year-old daughter why she
cannot go to the public amusement park that has just been advertised on television, and see tears welling up in her little eyes
when she is told that Funtown is closed to colored children, and see the depressing clouds of inferiority begin to form in her little
mental sky, and see her begin to distort her little personality by unconsciously developing a bitterness toward white people; when
you have to concoct an answer for a five-year-old son asking in agonizing pathos, "Daddy, why do white people treat colored
people so mean?"; when you take a cross-country drive and find it necessary to sleep night after night in the uncomfortable
corners of your automobile because no motel will accept you; when you are humiliated day in and day out by nagging signs
reading "white" and "colored"; when your first name becomes "nigger" and your middle name becomes "boy" (however old you
are) and your last name becomes "John," and when your wife and mother are never given the respected title "Mrs."; when you are
harried by day and haunted by night by the fact that you are a Negro, living constantly at tiptoe stance, never knowing what to
expect next, and plagued with inner fears and outer resentments; when you are forever fighting a degenerating sense of
"nobodyness" -- then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait. There comes a time when the cup of endurance runs
over and men are no longer willing to be plunged into an abyss of injustice where they experience the bleakness of corroding
despair. I hope, sirs, you can understand our legitimate and unavoidable impatience.
Letter From Birmingham Jail 3
YOU express a great deal of anxiety over our willingness to break laws. This is certainly a legitimate concern. Since we so
diligently urge people to obey the Supreme Court's decision of 1954 outlawing segregation in the public schools, it is rather
strange and paradoxical to find us consciously breaking laws. One may well ask, "How can you advocate breaking some laws and
obeying others?" The answer is found in the fact that there are two types of laws: there are just laws, and there are unjust laws. I
would agree with St. Augustine that "An unjust law is no law at all."
Now, what is the difference between the two? How does one determine when a law is just or unjust? A just law is a man-made
code that squares with the moral law, or the law of God. An unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law. To
put it in the terms of St. Thomas Aquinas, an unjust law is a human law that is not rooted in eternal and natural law. Any law that
uplifts human personality is just. Any law that degrades human personality is unjust. All segregation statutes are unjust because
segregation distorts the soul and damages the personality. It gives the segregator a false sense of superiority and the segregated a
false sense of inferiority. To use the words of Martin Buber, the great Jewish philosopher, segregation substitutes an "I - it"
relationship for the "I - thou" relationship and ends up relegating persons to the status of things. So segregation is not only
politically, economically, and sociologically unsound, but it is morally wrong and sinful. Paul Tillich has said that sin is
separation. Isn't segregation an existential expression of man's tragic separation, an expression of his awful estrangement, his
terrible sinfulness? So I can urge men to obey the 1954 decision of the Supreme Court because it is morally right, and I can urge
them to disobey segregation ordinances because they are morally wrong.
Let us turn to a more concrete example of just and unjust laws. An unjust law is a code that a majority inflicts on a minority that
is not binding on itself. This is difference made legal. On the other hand, a just law is a code that a majority compels a minority to
follow, and that it is willing to follow itself. This is sameness made legal.
Let me give another explanation. An unjust law is a code inflicted upon a minority which that minority had no part in enacting or
creating because it did not have the unhampered right to vote. Who can say that the legislature of Alabama which set up the
segregation laws was democratically elected? Throughout the state of Alabama all types of conniving methods are used to
prevent Negroes from becoming registered voters, and there are some counties without a single Negro registered to vote, despite
the fact that the Negroes constitute a majority of the population. Can any law set up in such a state be considered democratically
structured?
These are just a few examples of unjust and just laws. 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.
I MUST make two honest confessions to you, my Christian and Jewish brothers. First, I must confess that over the last 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 the stride toward freedom is not the White Citizens Councillor 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 can't agree with your methods
of direct action"; who paternalistically feels that he can set the timetable for another man's freedom; who lives by the myth of
time; and who constantly advises the Negro to wait until 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.
In your statement you asserted that our actions, even though peaceful, must be condemned because they precipitate violence. But
can this assertion be logically made? Isn't this like condemning the robbed man because his possession of money precipitated the
evil act of robbery? Isn't this like condemning Socrates because his unswerving commitment to truth and his philosophical
delvings precipitated the misguided popular mind to make him drink the hemlock? Isn't this like condemning Jesus because His
unique God-consciousness and never-ceasing devotion to His will precipitated the evil act of crucifixion? We must come to see,
as federal courts have consistently affirmed, that it is immoral to urge an individual to withdraw his efforts to gain his basic
constitutional rights because the quest precipitates violence. Society must protect the robbed and punish the robber.
Letter From Birmingham Jail 4
I had also hoped that the white moderate would reject the myth of time. I received a letter this morning from a white brother in
Texas which said, "All Christians know that the colored people will receive equal rights eventually, but is it possible that you are
in too great of a religious hurry? It has taken Christianity almost 2000 years to accomplish what it has. The teachings of Christ
take time to come to earth." All that is said here grows out of a tragic misconception of time. It is the strangely irrational notion
that there is something in the very flow of time that will inevitably cure all ills. Actually, time is neutral. It can be used either
destructively or constructively. I am coming to feel that the people of ill will have used time much more effectively than the
people of good will. We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the vitriolic words and actions of the bad people but
for the appalling silence of the good people. We must come to see that human progress never rolls in on wheels of inevitability. It
comes through the tireless efforts and persistent work of men willing to be coworkers with God, and without this hard work time
itself becomes an ally of the forces of social stagnation.
YOU spoke of our activity in Birmingham as extreme. At first I was rather disappointed that fellow clergymen would see my
nonviolent efforts as those of an extremist. I started thinking about the fact that I stand in the middle of two opposing forces in
the Negro community. One is a force of complacency made up of Negroes who, as a result of long years of oppression, have been
so completely drained of self-respect and a sense of "somebodyness" that they have adjusted to segregation, and, on the other
hand, of a few Negroes in the middle class who, because of a degree of academic and economic security and because at points
they profit by segregation, have unconsciously become insensitive to the problems of the masses. The other force is one of
bitterness and hatred and comes perilously close to advocating violence. It is expressed in the various black nationalist groups
that are springing up over the nation, the largest and best known being Elijah Muhammad's Muslim movement. This movement is
nourished by the contemporary frustration over the continued existence of racial discrimination. It is made up of people who have
lost faith in America, who have absolutely repudiated Christianity, and who have concluded that the white man is an incurable
devil. I have tried to stand between these two forces, saying that we need not follow the do-nothingism of the complacent or the
hatred and despair of the black nationalist. There is a more excellent way, of love and nonviolent protest. I'm grateful to God that,
through the Negro church, the dimension of nonviolence entered our struggle. If this philosophy had not emerged, I am
convinced that by now many streets of the South would be flowing with floods of blood. And I am further convinced that if our
white brothers dismiss as "rabble-rousers" and "outside agitators" those of us who are working through the channels of
nonviolent direct action and refuse to support our nonviolent efforts, millions of Negroes, out of frustration and despair, will seek
solace and security in black nationalist ideologies, a development that will lead inevitably to a frightening racial nightmare.
Oppressed people cannot remain oppressed forever. The urge for freedom will eventually come. This is what has happened to the
American Negro. Something within has reminded him of his birthright of freedom; something without has reminded him that he
can gain it. Consciously and unconsciously, he has been swept in by what the Germans call the Zeitgeist, and with his black
brothers of Africa and his brown and yellow brothers of Asia, South America, and the Caribbean, he is moving with a sense of
cosmic urgency toward the promised land of racial justice. Recognizing this vital urge that has engulfed the Negro community,
one should readily understand public demonstrations. The Negro has many pent-up resentments and latent frustrations. He has to
get them out. So let him march sometime; let him have his prayer pilgrimages to the city hall; understand why he must have sitins and freedom rides. If his repressed emotions do not come out in these nonviolent ways, they will come out in ominous
expressions of violence. This is not a threat; it is a fact of history. So I have not said to my people, "Get rid of your discontent."
But I have tried to say that this normal and healthy discontent can be channeled through the creative outlet of nonviolent direct
action. Now this approach is being dismissed as extremist. I must admit that I was initially disappointed in being so categorized.
But as I continued to think about the matter, I gradually gained a bit of satisfaction from being considered an extremist. Was not
Jesus an extremist in love? -- "Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, pray for them that despitefully use you." Was not
Amos an extremist for justice? -- "Let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream." Was not Paul an
extremist for the gospel of Jesus Christ? -- "I bear in my body the marks of the Lord Jesus." Was not Martin Luther an extremist?
-- "Here I stand; I can do no other so help me God." Was not John Bunyan an extremist? -- "I will stay in jail to the end of my
days before I make a mockery of my conscience." Was not Abraham Lincoln an extremist? -- "This nation cannot survive half
slave and half free." Was not Thomas Jefferson an extremist? -- "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created
equal." So the question is not whether we will be extremist, but what kind of extremists we will be. Will we be extremists for
hate, or will we be extremists for love? Will we be extremists for the preservation of injustice, or will we be extremists for the
cause of justice?
I had hoped that the white moderate would see this. Maybe I was too optimistic. Maybe I expected too much. I guess I should
have realized that few members of a race that has oppressed another race can understand or appreciate the deep groans and
passionate yearnings of those that have been oppressed, and still fewer have the vision to see that injustice must be rooted out by
strong, persistent, and determined action. I am thankful, however, that some of our white brothers have grasped the meaning of
this social revolution and committed themselves to it. They are still all too small in quantity, but they are big in quality. Some,
like Ralph McGill, Lillian Smith, Harry Golden, and James Dabbs, have written about our struggle in eloquent, prophetic, and
understanding terms. Others have marched with us down nameless streets of the South. They sat in with us at lunch counters and
rode in with us on the freedom rides. They have languished in filthy roach-infested jails, suffering the abuse and brutality of
angry policemen who see them as "dirty nigger lovers." They, unlike many of their moderate brothers, have recognized the
urgency of the moment and sensed the need for powerful "action" antidotes to combat the disease of segregation.
Letter From Birmingham Jail 5
LET me rush on to mention my other disappointment. I have been disappointed with the white church and its leadership. Of
course, there are some notable exceptions. I am not unmindful of the fact that each of you has taken some significant stands on
this issue. I commend you, Reverend Stallings, for your Christian stand this past Sunday in welcoming Negroes to your Baptist
Church worship service on a nonsegregated basis. I commend the Catholic leaders of this state for integrating Springhill College
several years ago.
But despite these notable exceptions, I must honestly reiterate that I have been disappointed with the church. I do not say that as
one of those negative critics who can always find something wrong with the church. I say it as a minister of the gospel who loves
the church, who was nurtured in its bosom, who has been sustained by its Spiritual blessings, and who will remain true to it as
long as the cord of life shall lengthen.
I had the strange feeling when I was suddenly catapulted into the leadership of the bus protest in Montgomery several years ago
that we would have the support of the white church. I felt that the white ministers, priests, and rabbis of the South would be some
of our strongest allies. Instead, some few have been outright opponents, refusing to understand the freedom movement and
misrepresenting its leaders; all too many others have been more cautious than courageous and have remained silent behind the
anesthetizing security of stained-glass windows.
In spite of my shattered dreams of the past, I came to Birmingham with the hope that the white religious leadership of this
community would see the justice of our cause and with deep moral concern serve as the channel through which our just
grievances could get to the power structure. I had hoped that each of you would understand. But again I have been disappointed.
I have heard numerous religious leaders of the South call upon their worshipers to comply with a desegregation decision because
it is the law, but I have longed to hear white ministers say, follow this decree because integration is morally right and the Negro is
your brother. In the midst of blatant injustices inflicted upon the Negro, I have watched white churches stand on the sidelines and
merely mouth pious irrelevancies and sanctimonious trivialities. In the midst of a mighty struggle to rid our nation of racial and
economic injustice, I have heard so many ministers say, "Those are social issues which the gospel has nothing to do with," and I
have watched so many churches commit themselves to a completely otherworldly religion which made a strange distinction
between bodies and souls, the sacred and the secular.
There was a time when the church was very powerful. It was during that period that the early Christians rejoiced when they were
deemed worthy to suffer for what they believed. In those days the church was not merely a thermometer that recorded the ideas
and principles of popular opinion; it was the thermostat that transformed the mores of society. Wherever the early Christians
entered a town the power structure got disturbed and immediately sought to convict them for being "disturbers of the peace" and
"outside agitators." But they went on with the conviction that they were "a colony of heaven" and had to obey God rather than
man. They were small in number but big in commitment. They were too God-intoxicated to be "astronomically intimidated."
They brought an end to such ancient evils as infanticide and gladiatorial contest.
Things are different now. The contemporary church is so often a weak, ineffectual voice with an uncertain sound. It is so often
the arch supporter of the status quo. Far from being disturbed by the presence of the church, the power structure of the average
community is consoled by the church's often vocal sanction of things as they are.
But the judgment of God is upon the church as never before. If the church of today does not recapture the sacrificial spirit of the
early church, it will lose its authentic ring, forfeit the loyalty of millions, and be dismissed as an irrelevant social club with no
meaning for the twentieth century. I meet young people every day whose disappointment with the church has risen to outright
disgust.
I hope the church as a whole will meet the challenge of this decisive hour. But even if the church does not come to the aid of
justice, I have no despair about the future. I have no fear about the outcome of our struggle in Birmingham, even if our motives
are presently misunderstood. We will reach the goal of freedom in Birmingham and all over the nation, because the goal of
America is freedom. Abused and scorned though we may be, our destiny is tied up with the destiny of America. Before the
Pilgrims landed at Plymouth, we were here. Before the pen of Jefferson scratched across the pages of history the majestic word of
the Declaration of Independence, we were here. For more than two centuries our foreparents labored here without wages; they
made cotton king; and they built the homes of their masters in the midst of brutal injustice and shameful humiliation -- and yet
out of a bottomless vitality our people continue to thrive and develop. If the inexpressible cruelties of slavery could not stop us,
the opposition we now face will surely fail. We will win our freedom because the sacred heritage of our nation and the eternal
will of God are embodied in our echoing demands.
I must close now. But before closing I am impelled to mention one other point in your statement that troubled me profoundly.
You warmly commended the Birmingham police force for keeping "order" and "preventing violence." I don't believe you would
have so warmly commended the police force if you had seen its angry violent dogs literally biting six unarmed, nonviolent
Negroes. I don't believe you would so quickly commend the policemen if you would observe their ugly and inhuman treatment of
Negroes here in the city jail; if you would watch them push and curse old Negro women and young Negro girls; if you would see
them slap and kick old Negro men and young boys, if you would observe them, as they did on two occasions, refusing to give us
food because we wanted to sing our grace together. I'm sorry that I can't join you in your praise for the police department.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Letter From Birmingham Jail 6
It is true that they have been rather disciplined in their public handling of the demonstrators. In this sense they have been publicly
"nonviolent." But for what purpose? To preserve the evil system of segregation. Over the last few years I have consistently
preached that nonviolence demands that the means we use must be as pure as the ends we seek. So I have tried to make it clear
that it is wrong to use immoral means to attain moral ends. But now I must affirm that it is just as wrong, or even more, to use
moral means to preserve immoral ends.
I wish you had commended the Negro demonstrators of Birmingham for their sublime courage, their willingness to suffer, and
their amazing discipline in the midst of the most inhuman provocation. One day the South will recognize its real heroes. They
will be the James Merediths, courageously and with a majestic sense of purpose facing jeering and hostile mobs and the
agonizing loneliness that characterizes the life of the pioneer. They will be old, oppressed, battered Negro women, symbolized in
a seventy-two-year-old woman of Montgomery, Alabama, who rose up with a sense of dignity and with her people decided not to
ride the segregated buses, and responded to one who inquired about her tiredness with ungrammatical profundity, "My feets is
tired, but my soul is rested." They will be young high school and college students, young ministers of the gospel and a host of
their elders courageously and nonviolently sitting in at lunch counters and willingly going to jail for conscience's sake. One day
the South will know that when these disinherited children of God sat down at lunch counters they were in reality standing up for
the best in the American dream and the most sacred values in our Judeo-Christian heritage.
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.
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. 1963 WMU Speech Found
MLK at Western
Introduction
This Web site highlights Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s, December 18, 1963 speech at Western Michigan
University. The pages include historical background, details about the recovery of the tape recording,
transcription of the speech and question and answer session, primary source documents, and a list of
library and Internet sources about Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
The speech transcription is important for several reasons. It adds to the body of knowledge about the
development of Dr. King's work and ideas. Dr. King spoke at WMU just four months after he made his
famous "I Have a Dream" speech. King's WMU address contains elements of earlier speeches and
sermons, including his address at the Freedom Rally in 1957 and a sermon about loving enemies that he
had given at the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama.
The speech transcription is also an important document for studying the continuing dialogue about
racial prejudice and race relations on Western's campus. The speech transcription and accompanying
documents provide additional information to better understand Dr. King's enduring influence on
Western's campus through the programs and curricula established in the late 1960s and the broader
societal changes brought about by his nonviolent movement for civil rights and social justice for all.
The Lost Tape
The tape recording of the live broadcast of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s December 18, 1963 speech was
lost for almost 30 years. The tape was rebroadcast at the time of Dr. King's assassination in 1968 but was
later lost until 1997 when Phill Novess contacted WMUK general manager, Garrard Macleod.
A copy of King's address had been found on a reel‐to‐reel machine that Novess had acquired from his
grandfather, Phillip Novess. The senior Novess owned a small grocery store on the east side of
Kalamazoo and accepted the reel‐to‐reel tape recorder as collateral for groceries in the early 1970s.
When he sold the grocery store and the tape player had not been reclaimed, Novess took it home and
put it in his basement. He gave the tape to his grandson for restoration purposes. Novess' business,
Eclipse Media Group, specializes in noise reduction and restoration of audio tapes. Novess restored the
tape with the assistance of Kevin Brown, of Brown & Brown Recording & Music Productions in Portage.
Martin Luther King, Jr. is remembered for his achievements
in civil rights and for the methods he used to get there —
namely, nonviolence. More than just a catchphrase, more than
just the “absence of violence,” and more than just a tactic,
nonviolence was a philosophy that King honed over the
course of his adult life. It has had a profound, lasting influence on social justice movements at home and abroad.
In September 1962, King convened a meeting of the
Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), the
main organizational force behind his civil rights activism,
in Birmingham, Alabama. King was giving a talk on the
need for nonviolent action in the face of violent white
racism when a white man jumped on stage and, without
a word, punched him in the face repeatedly.
King naturally put up his hands to deflect the blows.
But after a few punches, he let his hands fall to his side.
The man, who turned out to be an American Nazi Party
member, continued to flail.
The integrated audience at first thought the whole
thing was staged, a mock demonstration of King’s nonviolent philosophy in action. But as King reeled, and real
blood spurted from his face, they began to realize it was
no act. Finally, several SCLC members rushed the stage
to stop the attack.
But they stopped short when King shouted, “Don’t
touch him! Don’t touch him! We have to pray for him.”
The SCLC men pulled the Nazi off King, who was beaten
so badly he couldn’t continue the speech.
Precisely because the attack wasn’t staged, it left an
immense impression on the convention attendees, and
anyone else who heard about it in the coming days. King
© 2017, Constitutional Rights Foundation, Los Angeles. All Constitutional Rights Foundation materials and publications, including Bill of Rights in Action, are protected by copyright. However, we hereby grant to all recipients a
license to reproduce all material contained herein for distribution to students, other school site personnel, and district administrators. (ISSN: 1534-9799)
SUMMER 2017 Volume 32 No4
CHALLENGING IDEAS
This edition of Bill of Rights in Action focuses on ideas that provoke change. The first article traces the development of Martin
Luther King, Jr.’s nonviolent philosophy in the civil rights movement. The second article reviews political and economic changes
in Vietnam since the end of the Vietnam War. The third article analyzes conflicts over free speech on today’s college campuses.
U.S. History: Martin Luther King and the Philosophy of Nonviolence by guest writer and New York Times deputy op-ed editor
Clay Risen
World History: Vietnam Today by longtime contributor Carlton Martz
U.S. Government/Current Issues: Free Speech on Campus: Trigger Warnings, Safe Spaces, and Controversial Speech at U.S.
Colleges by guest writer Aimée Koeplin, Ph.D.
Constitutional
Rights
Foundation
Wikimedia Commons
Bill of Rights in Action
MARTIN LUTHER KINGAND
THE PHILOSOPHY OF NONVIOLENCE
Martin Luther King, Jr. addressing the crowd of about 250,000 people at the March on Washington in August 1963.
BRIA 32:4 (Summer 2017) U.S. HISTORY 2
hadn’t been just preaching nonviolence; confronted,
without warning, by racist violence, he lived it, even at
great risk to himself.
King did not invent nonviolence as a doctrine for
achieving social justice. But he adapted it for an American context, and showed how compelling yet flexible it
could be.
Influences on King’s Nonviolence
King’s earliest exposure to the ideas that would
coalesce in his nonviolent philosophy occurred when
he was an undergraduate at Morehouse College, in Atlanta. He read Henry David Thoreau’s “Essay on Civil
Disobedience,” which outlined the idea of resisting an
unjust government through nonviolent resistance, several times. And yet he had a hard time seeing how
Thoreau’s highly intellectual New England mentality
could provide much of a model for the problem of
blacks in the American South, where lynching and
plain murder were common fates for African Americans who challenged white supremacy.
King continued his academic studies, and his personal research into nonviolence, at Pennsylvania’s
Crozier Theological Seminary, where he began his graduate studies in 1948. There he read deeply the growing
literature around Christianity as a social movement,
which placed the demands of political and economic
justice at the heart of a Christian’s religious calling.
But it was not until he began to study the life and
works of Mahatma Gandhi that he began to see the possibility of applying nonviolence to the specific problems
of African Americans, especially in the South. As he
later told it, in Philadelphia he listened to a sermon by
the president of Howard University, Mordecai Johnson,
who spoke at length about the teachings and actions of
Gandhi, and in particular his use of nonviolent mass
protest to challenge British control over India. King left
the sermon transfixed.
Though Gandhi was Hindu, King saw immediately
the similarity with the teachings of Jesus Christ, and the
possibility of applying Gandhian nonviolence in an American and Christian context. King had struggled to see how
the lessons of the New Testament could be useful in the
struggle for racial justice. “Prior to reading Gandhi, I had
about concluded that the ethics of Jesus were only effective in individual relationship,” he wrote. “But after reading Gandhi, I saw how utterly mistaken I was.”
Would Nonviolence Work?
For King, the heart of Gandhi’s nonviolence was
love, in the spiritual, transcendent form of the word. In
the face of coercive, racist British rule, Gandhi so loved
his oppressors that he refused to take up arms against
them. But Gandhi was not without his critics. Some observers said he was lucky that the British were the ones
doing the oppressing and questioned whether the Nazis
– or racist American whites – would have allowed similar flouting of the law, however nonviolent. King was
willing to take a chance that, at least in America, the
answer was yes.
King also had to deal with another criticism. Some,
like the theologian Reinhold Neibuhr, said that nonviolence too often became a way of sealing off one’s moral
superiority, of accepting suffering at the hands of one’s
oppressors as a form of soul-cleansing, while losing
sight of the goal of social justice. “All too many had an
unwarranted optimism concerning man and leaned unconsciously toward self-righteousness,” King wrote. It
was a point he took to heart – and it was one reason, he
said, “why I never joined a pacifist organization.”
But nonviolence, he argued, was anything but passive. “Nonviolent resistance is not a method of cowardice,” he said. “It does resist. It is not a method of
stagnant passivity and deadening complacency. The
nonviolent resister is just as opposed to the evil that he
is standing against as the violent resister but he resists
without violence.”
What did King mean by nonviolence? It was not
merely the refusal to hit back, an insistence on turning the other cheek. It was, in its own way, aggressive. It meant putting oneself in the face of violence,
of actively confronting it and, responding with love to
the jabs and punches.
It also meant organizing thousands across the South
in specific mass actions that would force face-to-face encounters with white, racist power. Doing so, King
taught, would demonstrate both the impotence of white
violence and show the country that the black community was not afraid to insist on its rights. For King, responding to violence in kind would show the weakness
of the black community, not its strength.
Nonviolence would also strengthen the activist
community through shared suffering and struggle.
Wikimedia Commons
Mahatma Gandhi was a major leader of the movement for Indian
independence from Great Britain from 1915 until 1947, when Britain
granted independence. His nonviolent philosophy was a central influence on Martin Luther King.
This experience would expand outward to encompass
the black community broadly and, King hoped, all
Americans in what he called “the beloved community.”
Of course, King also understood the practical reasons for nonviolence. Given that blacks were a minority, and that Southern whites often had the power of the
local and state police behind them, violence was a dead
end. Even demonstrating the possibility of a violent response would elicit a massive backlash, potentially destroying the civil rights movement. And it would negate
whatever good will the movement was building in the
national community, and especially in Washington,
where King and other leaders hoped to see federal civil
rights legislation.
Testing Nonviolence
King’s first foray into nonviolent protest was with
the Montgomery bus boycott, which began in 1955
when Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat to a white
person while riding home from work. She was arrested,
leading to an organized effort by Montgomery blacks to
avoid riding the bus system, relying instead on carpools.
The boycott was a classic Gandhian
move: a demonstration of economic independence as a way of eliciting concessions from the white establishment.
It was also classic King: intricately organized, well-publicized, and while noble in itself, also leading in a
lengthy negotiation with the local white political establishment to desegregate the bus service. And it worked.
It would be several years before King’s next major
action, but already others followed his model. The 1961
Freedom Riders, who traveled across the Deep South on
desegregated interstate buses, demonstrated King’s
highest ideal when they reached Montgomery, Alabama,
where a mob of angry whites attacked and beat them
savagely. Not a single rider, black or white, hit back.
Meanwhile, King was leading seminars and workshops on nonviolence. While King was trying to build a
mass movement, he also was preparing a vanguard of experts in nonviolence who could walk in the front of
marches and absorb the brunt of any assault. They also
could do their own training in seminars across the South.
Perhaps the most noteworthy trainee to come out of
King’s workshops was John Lewis. Lewis was a young
seminarian who became a leading activist in Nashville,
participated in the Freedom Rides, spoke at the 1963
March on Washington and, most famously, was beaten
severely in the so-called Bloody Sunday incident in
Selma, Alabama, in 1965.
From Birmingham to D.C.
As the ranks of the Southern civil rights movement
grew, King began to set his sights higher. Nonviolent protest
on a large enough scale would overwhelm any possible response. Police could arrest several dozen marchers, but not
several thousand. In late spring 1963, King decided to focus
on organizing a boycott by black shoppers of the downtown retailers in Birmingham, Alabama, calling for integration of the city’s shops and restaurants.
When talks between King’s SCLC, the city government, and local business leaders faltered, King organized hundreds of school children to march through
downtown Birmingham, despite not having a permit.
The city police and fire departments, under the command of Theophilus “Bull” Connor, met them with dogs
and fire hoses. The water pressure was so high it
stripped the clothes off the children’s backs. Those who
didn’t turn around were arrested.
King and his associates had trained the students in
nonviolence, however, and not a single one struck out.
Images from Birmingham appeared in newspapers and
on evening news programs around the world. Not only
did the protests force the city’s leaders to reach a compromise with King and the SCLC, but the fear of more
incidents such as the one in Birmingham spurred President Kennedy
(and later President Lyndon Johnson) to push for the landmark 1964
Civil Rights Act, ending segregation
across the South.
King followed up on his success in Birmingham with
the August 1963 March on Washington. Despite widespread fears of violence, the march of a quarter of a million people who came to the city to hear King, Lewis, and
other civil rights leaders speak was entirely peaceful, a
demonstration that Birmingham was no fluke and that
nonviolence could indeed become a mass movement.
From Selma to Chicago
Perhaps the most powerful moment in the civil
rights movement came a little over a year later, in early
1965, when King and Lewis joined local leaders James
Bevel and Amelia Boynton in organizing a march from
Selma, Alabama, to Montgomery. The march would
protest the lack of voting rights protections in the South.
King was unable to join the protesters when they
first set off on Sunday, March 7, across the Edmund Pettus Bridge, headed east out of town. As they reached the
far side, they were met by dozens of state troopers. They
pressed on and the officers set on them, raining down
billy clubs and boot kicks. Lewis had his head split open.
Eventually the marchers fled back over the bridge. This
incident became known as “Bloody Sunday.”
King arrived to lead a second march three days later
but turned back at the last minute, fearing a trap. Finally,
with federal protection, the peaceful march set off on
March 21 and reached Montgomery three days later. That
BRIA 32:4 (Summer 2017) U.S. HISTORY 3
Nonviolence,King
argued,was anything
but passive.
4 U.S. HISTORY BRIA 32:4 (Summer 2017)
summer, with images of Bloody Sunday still fresh in the
nation’s mind, Congress passed the Voting Rights Act.
As a philosophy, nonviolence was unassailable. As
a tactic, it worked well in the context of an embattled
South, where national attention focused on the shrinking hard core of white racists who refused to give
ground to the civil rights movement.
But nonviolence proved less effective as King tried to
take his movement national. In 1966, he launched the
Chicago campaign, a combination of marches and education intended to highlight the entrenched, but complex,
racial disparities in the Windy City. The marchers again
encountered white racists who shouted epithets at them,
but many Northern whites saw racial disparities as merely
the unfortunate outcome of economic disparities. Markets,
not men, were to blame, and they refused to see the moral
appeal behind King’s nonviolent activism.
At the same time, while King dominated the civil
rights story in the media during the late 1950s and early
1960s, other leaders and other factions of the movement
were often just as active in demanding change but significantly less committed to nonviolence. As the 1960s
progressed, these groups, especially the next generation
emerging from college, began to gain prominence by taking a more aggressive, even violent stance, embracing
armed self-defense complete with automatic weapons.
King disparaged these activists, like Stokely
Carmichael and H. Rap Brown, as immature and unsophisticated. But he could see as well as anyone the diminishing appeal of nonviolence in a country where
violence was spreading both at home and in the Vietnam War. Indeed, Brown memorably argued that “violence is necessary. It’s as American as cherry pie.”
From Memphis to Today
King’s last attempt at a nonviolent movement came
in Memphis in 1968, where a garbage workers’ strike
was dragging on. In late March, King arrived in the city
to lead a protest march, but he couldn’t control it. Hoodlums on the edges of the march began shattering windows, and the police moved in. Dozens were injured,
and one boy was killed.
King returned to the city a few days later to try
again, hoping that success in Memphis could illustrate
the continued power of nonviolence. Instead, on the
early evening of April 4, 1968, he was shot and killed by
James Earl Ray, a white drifter, while standing on the
balcony of the Lorraine Motel.
In the days that followed, riots broke out in more
than 100 cities across America; scores were killed and
thousands injured; and active-duty military forces
occupied Washington, Baltimore, and Chicago. As
skeptics noted, it was a very violent end to the life of a
proponent of nonviolence.
Despite his violent end, nonviolent protest did not
die with King. In fact, protest movements have adopted
it time and again in America and around the world –
the gay rights movement, the Solidarity trade union in
Poland, the Green Revolution in Iran, and recent demonstrations throughout the U.S. (such as Occupy Wall
Street and the Women’s March on Washington). Not all
of them have referenced King specifically. But that’s all
the more to his credit: Their reliance on the philosophy
of nonviolence as the cornerstone of protest politics is
the greatest tribute that the world could give to Martin
Luther King, Jr.
WRITING & DISCUSSION
1. What did the violent incident with the American Nazi
in 1962 reveal about Martin Luther King’s philosophy? What did it reveal about his character?
2. Describe the influences on Martin Luther King’s philosophy of nonviolence. How did he interpret those
influences in an American context?
3. How was King’s philosophy of nonviolence more
than just an “absence of violence”? Use examples
from the article.
4. What do you think was the greatest success of the
civil rights movement described in the article. How
did King’s philosophy of nonviolence play a part in
its success?
The class is a group of civil rights protesters planning
an action in a Southern town in 1962 calling for desegregation of a local lunch counter. Divide students
into groups of four. Each group will discuss and then
answer the following questions:
A. What is the best method to protest? (Choices include: sitting at the lunch counter without moving (a sit-in), marching down the center of the
town, boycotting the lunch counter, starting a
petition to deliver to the owner of the lunch
counter, etc.)
B. What sort of response do they expect from the
owners and authorities?
C. Who are some local allies they can engage with?
D. What is the best way to publicize the action?
E. What sort of training is necessary?
After answering the questions, each group’s
spokesperson will share:
• The method of protest his or her group chose,
and
• Reasons for the choice (incorporating answers
to the questions as part of the rationale).
MARTIN LUTHER KING FJ ®
PLAYBOY INTERVIEW:
a candid conversation with the nobel prize-winning leader of the civil rights movement
On December 5, 1955, to the amused
annoyance of the white citizens of Montgornery, Alabama, an obscure young
Baptist minister named Martin Luther
King, ]1-., called a city-wide Negro boycolt of its segregated bus system. To
thei1· constemation, however, it was almost 100 pe1·cent successful; it lasted for
381 days and nearly bankrupted the
bus line. When King's home was
bombed dming the siege, thousands of
enraged Negroes wae ready to riot,
but the soft-spoken clergyman prevailed
on them to channel their anger into
nonviolent protest-and became world·
1·enowned as a champion of Gandhi's
philosophy of passive resistance. Within
a year the Supreme Court had ruled jim
Crow seating unlawful on JVI.on tgomery's
buses, and King found himself, at 27, on
the front lines of a nonviolent Negro
revolution against mcial injustice.
Moving to Atlanta, he formed the
Southern ChTistian Leadership Conference, an alliance of chuTCh-affiliated civil
rights oTganizations which joined such
activist gToups as CORE and SNCC in a
widening campaign of sit-in demonstrations and freedom rides throughout the
South. Dissatisfied with the slow pace of
the protest movement, King decided to
create a c1·isis in 1963 that would " dramatize the Negro plight and galvanize
the national conscience." He was abundantly successful, for his mass nonviolent demonstmtion in arch-segregationist
Bi1·mingham resulted in · the arrest of
moTe than 3300 Negroes, including King
"Measures must be taken at the· Federal
level to wrb the reign of terror in the
South. It's getting so anybody can kill a
Negro and get away with it, as long as
they go through the motions of a trial."
himself; and millions were outraged by
front-page pictures of Negro demonstrators being brutalized by the billy sticks,
police dogs and fire hoses of police chief
Bull Connor.
In the months that followed, mass sitins and demonstrations erupted in 800
Southern cities; Presiden t Kennedy proposed a Civil Rights Bill aimed at the
enforcement of voting rights, equal employment opportunities, and the desegregation of public facilities; and the
now-famous march on Washington, 200,-
000 strong, was eloquently addressed by
King on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. By the end of that "long hot summer," Ame1·ica's Negroes had won more
tangible gains than in any year since
1865-and Mm·tin Luther King had become their aclmowledged leader and
most respected spokesman.
He earned it the hard way: In the
course of his civil rights work he has
been jailed 14 times and stabbed once in
the chest; his home has been bombed
three times; and his daily mail brings a
steady flow of death threats and obscenities. Undeterred, he works 20 hours a
day, travels 325,000 miles anrl'makes 450
speeches a year throughout the country
on behalf of the Negro cause. 1mmdated
by calls, callers and correspondence at
his S.C. L. C. office in Atlanta, he also
finds time somehow to preach, visit the
sick and help th e poor among his congregation at the city's Ebeneza Baptist
Church, of which he and his father are
the pastors.
"I'm getting sicli and tired of people saying that this movement has been infiltrated by Communists. There are as many
Communists in this freedom movement
as there are Eskimos in Florida."
Reprinted from the January 1965 issue of PLAYBOY
@1 965 HM H Publishing Co., Inc.
So heavy, in fact, were his commitments when we called him last summer
for an interview, that two months
elapsed before he was able to accept Ottr
request for an appointment. We kept it
-only to spend a week in Atlanta waiting vainly for him to find a moment for
more than an apology and a hun·ied
handshal<e: A bit less pressed when we
1·etumed for a second visit, King was
finally able to sandwich in a series of
hour and half-hour conversations with
us among the other demands of a grueling week. The resultant interview is
the longest he has ever granted to any
publication.
Though he spoke with heartfelt and
often eloqu ent sincerity, his tone was
one of bwinesslike detachment. And his
mood, except for one or two flickering
smiles of irony, was gravely se1·ious-never more so than the moment, during a
rare evening with his family on our first
night in town, when his four children
chided him affectionately for "not being
home enough." After dinner, we began
the interview on this per-sonal note.
PLAYBOY: Dr. King, are your children
old enough to be aware of the issues at
stake in the civil rights movement, and
of your role in it?
KING: Yes, they are-especially my oldest child, Yolanda. Two years ago, I remember, I returned home after serving
one of my terms in the Albany, Georgia,
jail, and she asked me, "Daddy, why do
"The Nobel award Tecognizes the amazing discipline of the Negro. Though we
have had 1·iots, the bloodshed we would
have lin own without the discipline of nonviolence would have been frightening."
you have to go to jail so much?" I told
her that I was involved in a struggle to
make conditions better for the colored
people, and thus for all people. I explained that because things are as they
are, someone has to take a stand, that it
is necessary for someone to go to jail, because many Southern officials seek to
maintain the barriers that have historically been erected to exclude the colored
people. I tried to make her understand
that someone had to do this to make the
world better-for all children. She was
only six at that time, but she was already
aware of segregation because of an experience that we had had.
PLAYBOY: Would you mind telling us
about it?
KING: Not at all. The family often used
to ride with me to the Atlanta airport,
and on our way, we always passed Funtown, a sort of miniature Disneyland
with mechanical rides and that sort of
thing. Yolanda would inevitably say, "I
want to go to Funtown," and I would
always evade a direct reply. I really
didn't know how to explain to her why
she couldn't go. Then one day at home,
she ran downstairs exclaiming that a TV
commercial was urging people to come
to Funtown. Then my wife and I had to
sit down with her between us and try to
explain it. I have won some applause as
a speaker, but my tongue twisted a'nd my
speech stammered seeking to explain to
my six-year-old daughter why the public
invitation on television didn't include
her, and others like her. Dne of the most
painful experiences I have ever faced
was to see her tears when I told her that
Funtown was closed to colored children,
for I realized that at that moment the
first dark cloud of inferiority had floated
into her little mental sky, that at that
moment her personality had begun to
warp with that-first unconscious bitterness toward white people. It was the first
time that prejudice based upon skin color had been explained to her. But it was
of paramount importance to me that she
not grow up bitter. So I told her that although many white people were against
her going to Funtown, there were many
others who did want colored children to
go. It helped somewhat. Pleasantly, word
came to me later that Funtown had
quietly desegregated, so I took Yolanda.
A number of white persons there asked,
"Aren't. you Dr. King, and isn't this your
daughter?" I said we were, and she heard
them say how glad they were to see us
there.
PLAYBOY: As one who grew up in the
economically comfortable, socially insulated environment of a middle-income
home in Atlanta, can you recall when it
was that you yourself first became painfully and personally aware of racial prejudice?
KING: Very clearly. When I was 14, I
had traveled from Atlanta to Dublin,
Georgia, with a dear teacher of mine,
Mrs. Bradley; she's dead now. I had participated there in an oratorical contest
sponsored by the Negro Elks. It turned
out to be a memorable day, for I had
succeeded in winning the contest. My
subject, I recall, ironically enough, was
"The Negro and the Constitution." Anyway, that night, Mrs. Bradley and I were
on a bus returning to Atlanta, and at a
small town along the way, some white
passengers boarded the bus, and the
white driver ordered us to get up and.
give the whites our seats. We didn't
move quickly enough to suit him, so he
began cursing us, calling us "black sons
of bitches." I intended to stay right in
that scat, but Mrs. Bradley finally urged
me up, saying we had to obey the law.
And so we stood up in the aisle for the
90 miles to Atlanta. That night will never leave my memory. It was the angriest
I have ever been in my life.
PLAYBOY: Wasn't it another such incident on a bus, years later, that thrust
you into your present role as a civil
rights leader?
KING: Yes, it was-in Montgomery, Alabama, in 1955. E. D. Nixon, a Pullman
porter long identified with the NAACP,
telephoned me late one night to tell me
that Mrs. Rosa Parks had been arrested
around seven-thirty that evening when a
bus driver demanded that she give up her
seat, and she refused-because her feet
hurt. Nixon had already bonded Mrs.
Parks out of prison. He said, "It's time
this stops; we ought to boycott the
buses." I agreed and said, "Now." The
next night we called a meeting of Negro
community leaders to discuss it, and on
Saturday and Sunday we appealed to the
Negro community, with leaflets and
from the pulpits, to boycott the buses
on Monday. We had in mind a one-day
boycott, and we were banking on 60-percent success. But the boycott saw instantaneous 99-percent success. We were so
pleasantly surprised and impressed that
we continued, and for the next 381 days
the boycott of Montgomery's buses by
Negroes was 991
YJ 0 successful.
PLAYBOY: Were you sure you'd win?
KING: There was one dark moment
when we doubted it. We had been struggling to make the boycott a success
when the city of Montgomery successfully obtained an injunction from the
court to stop our car pool. I didn't
know what to say to our people. They
had backed us up, and we had let them
down. It was a desolate moment. I saw,
all of us saw, that the court was leaning
against us. I remember telling a group of
those working closest with me to spread
in the Negro community the message,
"We must have the faith that things will
work out somehow, that God will make
a way for us when there seems no way."
It was about noontime, I remember,
when Rex Thomas of the Associated
Press rushed over to where I was sitting
and told me of the news flash that the
U. S. Supreme Court had declared that
bus segregation in Montgomery was unconstitutional. It had literally been the
darkest hour before the dawn.
PLAYBOY: You and your followers were
criticized, after your arrest for participating in the boycott, for accepting bail
and leaving jail. Do you feel, in retrospect, that you did the right thing?
KING: No; I think it was a mistake, a
tactical error for me to have left jail, by
accepting bail, after being indicted
along with 125 others, mainly drivers of
our car pool, under an old law of doubtful constitutionality, an "antiboycott"
ordinance. I should have stayed in prison. It would have nationally dramatized and deepened our movement
even earlier, and it would have more
quickly aroused and keened America's
conscience.
PLAYBOY: Do you feel you've been guilty
of any comparable errors in judgment
since then?
KING: Yes, I do-in Albany, Georgia,
in 1962. If I had that to do again, I
would guide that community's Negro
leadership differently than I did. The
mistake I made there was to protest
against segregation generally rather than
against a single and distinct facet of it.
Our protest was so vague that we got
nothing, and the people were left very
depressed and in despair. It would have
been much better to have concentrated
upon integrating the buses or the lunch
counters. One victory of this kind would
have been symbolic, would have galvanized support and boosted morale. But I
don't mean that our work in Albany
ended in failure. The Negro people
there straightened up their bent backs;
you can't ride a man's back unless it's
bent. Also, thousands of Negroes registered to vote who never had voted
before, and because of the expanded
Negro vote in the next election lor
governor of Georgia-which pitted a
moderate candidate against a rabid segregationist-Georgia elected its first governor who had pledged to respect and
enforce the law impartially. And what
we learned from our mistakes in Albany
helped our later campaigns in other
cities to be more effective. We have
never since scattered our efforts in a general attack on segregation, but have focused upon specific, symbolic objectives.
PLAYBOY: Can you recall any other
mistakes you've made in leading the
movement?
KING: Well, the most pervasive mistake
I have made was in believing that because our cause was just, we could be
sure that the white ministers of the
South, once their Christian consciences
were challenged, would rise to our aid. I
felt that white ministers would take our
cause to the white power structures. I
ended up, of course, chastened and disillusioned. As our movement unfolded,
ami cl:rect appeals were made to white
ministers, most folded their hands--and
some even took stands against us.
PLAYBOY: Their stated reason for refusing to help was that it was not the
proper role of the church to "intervene
in secular affairs." Do you disagree with
this view?
KING: Most emphatically. The essence
of the Epistles of Paul is that Christians should rejoice at being deemed
worthy to suffer for: what they believe.
The projection of a soci al gospel, in my
opinion, is the true witness of a Christian life. This is the meaning of the true
ekklesia-the inner, spiritual church.
The church once changed society. It was
then a thermostat of society. But today I
feel that too much of the church is merely a thermometer, which measures rather
than molds popular opinion.
PLAYBOY: Are you speaking of the
church in general-or the white church
in particular?
KING: The white church, I'm sorry to
say. Its leadership has greatly disappointed me. Let me h asten to say there are
some outstanding exceptions. As one
whose Christian roots go back through
three generations of ministers-my father, grandfather and great-grandfather
-I will remain true to the church as
long as I live. But the laxity of the white
church collectively has caused me to
weep tears of love. There cannot be
deep disappointment without deep love.
Time and again in my travels, as I have
seen the outward beauty of white
churches, I have had to ask myself,
"What kind of people worship there?
Who is their God? Is their God the God
of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and is
their Savior the Savior who hung on the
cross a t Golgotha? Where were their
voices when a black race took upon itself
the cross of protest against man's injustice to man? Where were their voices
when defiance and hatred were called
for by white men who sat in these very
churches?"
As the Negro struggles against grave
injustice, most white churchmen offer
pious irrelevancies and sanctimonious
trivialities. As you say, they claim that
the gospel of Christ should have no
concern with social issues. Yet white
churchgoers, who insist that they are
Christians, practice segregation as rigidly
in the house of God as they do in moviehouses. Too much of the white church is
timid and ineffectual, and some of it is
shrill in its defense of bigotry and prejudice. In most communities, the spirit of
status quo is endorsed by the churches.
i\ly personal disillusionment with the
church began when I was thrust into the
leadership of the bus protest in Montgomery. I was confident that the white
ministers, priests and rabbis of the South
would prove strong allies in our just
cause. But some became open adversaries, some cautiously shrank from the issue, and others hid behind silence. My
optimism about help from the white
church was shattered; and on too many
occasions since, my hopes for the white
church have been dashed. There are
many signs th at the judgment of God is
upon the church as never before. Unless
the early sacrificial spirit is recaptured, I
am very much afraid that today's Christian church will lose its authenticity, for·
feit t-he loyalty of millions, and we will
see the Christian church dismissed as a
social club with no meaning or effectiveness for our time, as a form without substance, as salt without savor. The real
tragedy, though, is not Martin Luther
King's disillusionment with the churchfor I am sustained by its spiritual blessings as a minister of the gospel with a
lifelong commitment; the tragedy is that
in my travels, I meet young people of all
races whose disenchantment with the
church has soured into outright disgust.
PLAYBOY: Do you feel that the Negro
church has come any closer to "the projection of a social gospel" in its commitment to the cause?
KING: I must say that when my Southern Christian Leadership Conference
began its work in Birmingham, we encountered numerous Negro church reactions that had to be overcome. Negro
ministers were among other Negro
leaders who felt they were being pulled
into something that they had not helped
to organize. This is almost always a
problem. Negro community unity was
the first requisite if our goals were to be
realized. I talked with many groups, including one group of 200 ministers, my
theme to them being that a minister cannot preach the glories of heaven while
ignoring social conditions in his own
community that cause men an earthly
hell. I stressed that the Negro minister
had particular freedom and independence to provide strong, firm leadership,
and I asked how the Negro would ever
gain freedom without his minister's
guidance, support and inspiration.
These ministers finally decided to entrust our movement with their support,
and as a result, the role of the Negro
church today, by and large, is a glorious
example in the history of Christendom. For never in Christian history,
within a Christian country, have Christian churches been on the receiving end
of such naked brutality and violence as
we are witnessing here in America today. Not since the days of the Christians
in the catacombs has God's house, as a
symbol, weathered such attack as the
Negro churches.
I shall never forget the grief and bitterness I felt on that terrible September
morning when a bomb blew out the
lives of those four little, innocent girls
sitting in their Sunday-school class in the
16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham. I think of how a woman cried out,
crunching through broken glass, "My
God, we're not even safe in church!" I
think of how that explosion blew the
face of Jesus Christ from a stained-glass
window. It was symbolic of how sin and
evil had blotted out the life of Christ. I
can remember thinking that if men were
this bestial, was it all worth it? \Vas
there any hope? Was there any way out?
PLAYBOY: Do you still feel this way?
KING: No, time has healed the wounds
-and buoyed me with the inspiration of
another moment which I shall never forget: when I saw with my own eyes over
3000 young Negro boys and girls, totally unarmed, leave Birmingham's 16th
Street Baptist Church to march to a
prayer meeting-ready to pit nothing
but the power of their bodies and
souls against Bull Connor's police dogs,
clubs and fire hoses. When they refused Connor's bellowed order to turn
back, he whirled and shouted to his men
to turn on the hoses. It was one of the
most fantastic events of the Birmingham
story that these Negroes, many of them
on their knees, stared, unafraid and unmoving, at Connor's men with the hose
nozzles in their hands. Then, slowly the
Negroes stood up and advanced, and
Connor's lilen fell back as though hypnotized, as the Negroes marched on past
to hold their prayer meeting. I saw
there, I felt there, for the first time, the
pride and the power of nonviolence.
Another time I will never forget was
one Saturday night, late, when my
brother telephoned me in Atlanta from
Birmingham-that city which some call
"Bombingham"-which I had just left.
He told me that a bomb had wrecked his
home, and that another bomb, positioned to exert its maximum force · upon
the motel room in which I had been
staying, had injured several people. l\fy
brother described the terror in the
streets as Negroes, furious at the bombings, fought whites. Then, . behind his
voice, I heard a rising chorus of beautiful singing: "We shall overcome." Tears
came into my eyes that at such a tragic
moment, my race still could sing .its hope
and faith .
PLAYBOY: We Shall Overcome has become the unofficial song and slogan of
the civil rights movement. Do you consider such inspirational anthems important to morale?
KING: In a sense, songs are the soul of
a movement. Consider, in World War
Two, Praise the Lord and Pass the Ammunition, and in World War One, Over
There and Tipperary, and during the
Civil War, Battle Hymn of the Republic and john Brown's Body . A Negro song anthology would include sorrow songs, shouts for joy, battle hymns,
anthems. Since slavery, the Negro has
sung throughout his struggle in America.
Steal Away and Go Down, 1\1.oses were
the songs of faith and inspiration
which were sung on the plantations.
For the same reasons the slaves sang,
Negroes today sing freedom songs,
for we, too, are in bondage. We
sing out our determination that "We
shall overcome, black and white together, we shalt overcome someday." I should
also mention a song parody that I enjoyed very much which the Negroes sang
during our campaign in Albany, Georgia. It goes: ''I'm comin', I'm comin'/
And my head ain't bendin' low /I'm
walkin' tall, I'm talkin' strong/I'm
America's N ew Black Joe."
PLAYBOY: Your detractors in the Negro community often refer to you snidely as "De Lawd" and "Booker T. King."
What's your reaction to this sort of Uncle Tom label?
KING: I hear some of those names, but
my reaction to them is never emotional.
I don't think you can be in public life
without being called bad names. As Lincoln said, "If 1 answered all criticism, I'd
have time for nothing else." But with
regard to both of the names you mentioned, I've always tried to be what I call
militantly nonviolent. 1 don't believe
that anyone could seriously accuse me of
not being totally committed to the
breakdown of segregation.
PLAYBOY: What do you mean by "militantly nonviolent"?
KING: I mean to say that a strong man
must be militant as well as moderate. He
must be a realist as well as an idealist. If
I am to merit the trust invested in me by
some of my race, I must be both of these
things. This is why nonviolence is a
powerful as well as a just weapon. If you
confront a man who has long been cruelly misusing yp u, and say, "Punish me, if
you will; I do not deserve it, but I will
accept it, so that the world will know I
am right and you are wrong," then you
wield a powerful and a just weapon.
This man, your oppressor, is automatically morally defeated, and if he has any
conscience, he is ashamed. Wherever i:his
weapon is used in a manner that stirs a
community's, or a nation's, anguished
conscience, then the pressure of public
opinion becomes an ally in your just
cause.
Another of the major strengths of the
nonviolent weapon is its strange power
to transform and transmute the individuals who subordinate themselves to its
disciplines, investing them with a cause
that is larger than themselves. They become, for the first time, somebody, and
they have, for the first time, the courage
to be free. When the Negro finds the
courage to be free, he faces dogs and
guns and clubs and fire hoses totally
unafraid, and the white men with those
dogs, guns, clubs and fire hoses see that
the Negro they have traditionally called
"boy" has become a man.
We should not forget that, although
nonviolent direct action did not originate in America, it found a na tural
home where it has been a revered tradition to rebel against injustice. This great
weapon, which we first tried out in
Montgomery during the bus boycott, has
been further developed throughout the
South over the past decade, until by today it has become instrumental in the
greatest mass-action crusade for freedom
that has occurred in America since the
Revolutionary War. The effectiveness of
this weapon's ability to dramatize, in the
world's eyes, an oppressed peoples' struggle for justice is evident in the fact that
of 1963's top ten news stories after the
assassination of President Kennedy and
the events immediately connected with
it, nine stories dealt with one aspect or
another of the Negro struggle.
PLAYBOY: Several of those stories dealt
with your own nonviolent campaigns
against segregation in various Southern
cities, where you and your followers
have been branded "rabble-rousers" and
"outside agitators." Do you feel you've
earned these labels?
KING: Wherever the early Christians
appeared, spreading Christ's doctrine of
love, the resident power structure accused them of being "disturbers of the
peace" and "outside agitators." But the
small Christian band continued to teach
and exemplify love, convinced that they
were "a colony of heaven" on this earth
who were missioned to obey not man
but God. If those of us who employ nonviolent direct action today are dismissed
by our white brothers as "rabble-rousers"
and "outside agitators," if they refuse to
support our nonviolent efforts and goals,
we can be assured that the summer of
1965 will be no less long and hot than
the summer of 1964.
Our white brothers must be made to
understand that nonviolence is a weapon fabricated of love. It is a sword that
heals. Our nonviolent direct-action program has as its objective not the creation
of tensions, but the surfacing of tensions
already present. We set out to precipitate a crisis situation that must open the
door to negotiation. I am not afraid of
the words "crisis" and "tension." I deeply oppose violence, but constructive crisis and tension are necessary for growth.
Innate in all life, and all growth, is tension. Only in death is there an absence
of tension. To cure injustices, you must
expose them before the light of human
conscience and the bar of public opinion, regardless of whatever tensions that
exposure generates. Injustices to the Negro must be brought out into the open
where they cannot be evaded.
PLAYBOY: Is this the sole aim of your
Southern Christian Leadership Conference?
KING: We have five aims: first, to stimulate nonviolent, direct, mass action to
expose and remove the barriers of segregation and discrimina tion; second, to
disseminate the creative philosophy and
techniques of nonviolence through local
and area workshops; third, to secure the
right and unhampered use of the ballot
for every citizen; fourth, to achieve full
citizenship rights, and the total integration of the Negro into American
life; and fifth, to reduce the cultural
lag through our citizenship training
program.
PLAYBOY: How does S. C. L. C. select the
cities where nonviolent campaigns and
demonstrations are to be staged?
KING: The operational area of S. C. L. C.
is the entire South, where we have affiliated organizations in some 85 cities. Our
major campaigns have been conducted
only in cities where a request for our
help comes from one of these affiliate organizations, and only when we feel that
intolerable conditions in that community might be ameliorated with our help. I
will give you an example. In Birmingham, one of our affiliate organizations is
the Alabama Christian Movement for
Human Rights, which was organized by
the Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth, a
most energetic and indomitable man. It
was he who set out to end Birmingham's
racism, challenging the terrorist reign of
Bull Connor. S. C. L. C. watched admiringly as the small Shuttlesworth-led organization fought in the Birmingham
courts and with boycotts. Shuttlesworth
was jailed several times, his home and
church were bombed, and still he did not
back down. His defiance of Birmingham's racism inspired and encouraged
Negroes throughout the South. Then,
at a May 1962 board meeting of the
S. C. L. C. in Chattanooga, the first discussions began that later led to our
joining Shuttlesworth's organization m
a massive direct-action campaign to
attack Birmingham's segregation.
PLAYBOY: One of the highlights of that
campaign was your celebrated "Letter
from a Birmingham Jail''-written during one of your jail terms for civil disobedience-an eloquent reply to eight
Protestant, Catholic and Jewish clergymen who had criticized your activities in
Birmingham. Do you feel that subsequent events have justified the sentiments expressed in your letter?
KING: I would say yes. Two or three
important and constructive things have
happened which can be at least partially
attnbuted to that letter. By now, nearly
a million copies of the letter have been
widely circulated in churches of most of
the major denominations. It helped to
focus greater international attention
upon what was happening in Birmingham. And I am sure that without Birmingham, the march on Washington
wouldn't have been called-which in my
mind was one of the most creative steps
the Negro struggle has taken. The march
on Washington spurred and galvanized
the consciences of millions. It gave the
American Negro a new national and international stature. The press of the
world recorded the story as nearly a
quarter of a million Americans, white
and black, assembled in grandeur as a
testimonial to the Negro's determination
to achieve freedom in this generation.
It was also the image of Birmingham
which, to a great extent, helped to bring
the Civil Rights Bill into being in 1963.
Previously, President Kennedy had decided not to propose it that year, feeling
that it would so arouse the South that
it would meet a bottleneck. But Birmingham, and subsequent developments,
caused him to reorder his legislative
priorities.
One of these decisive developments
was our last major campaign before the
enactment of the Civil Rights Act-in
St .. Augustine, Florida. We received a
plea for help from Dr. Robert Hayling,
the leader of the St. Augustine movement. St. Augustine, America's oldest
city, and one of the most segregated
cities in America, was a stronghold of
the Ku Klux Klan and the John Birch
Society. Such things had happened as
Klansmen abducting four Negroes and
beating them unconscious with clubs,
brass knuckles, ax handles and· pistol
butts. Dr. Hayling's home had been shot
up with buckshot, three Negro homes
had been bombed and several Negro
night clubs shotgunned. A Negro's car
had been destroyed by fire because his
child was one of the six Negro children
permitted to attend white schools. And
the homes of two of the Negro children
in the white schools had been burned
down. Many Negroes had been fired
from jobs that some had worked on for
28 years because they were somehow
connected with the demonstrations. Police had beaten and arrested Negroes for
picketing, marching and singing freedom songs. Many Negroes had served up
to 90 days in jail for demonstrating
against segregation, and four teenagers
had spent six months in jail for picketing. Then, on 'February seventh of last
year, Dr. Hay}ing's home was shotgunned a second time, with his pregnant
wife and two children barely escaping
death; the family dog was killed while
standing behind the living-room door.
So S. C. L. C. decided to join in last
year's celebration of St. Augustine's
gala 400th birthday as America's oldest
city-by converting it into a nonviolent
battleground. This is just what we did.
PLAYBOY: But isn't it true, Dr. King,
that during this and other "nonviolent"
demonstrations, violence has occurredsometimes resulting in hundreds of casualties on both sides?
KING: Yes, in part that is true. But what
is always overlooked is how few people,
in ratio to the numbers involved, have
been casualties. An army on maneuvers,
against no enemy, suffers casualties, even
fatalities. A minimum of whites have
been casualties in demonstrations solely
because our teaching of nonviolence disciplines our followers not to fight even if
attacked. A minimum of Negroes are
casualties for two reasons: Their white
oppressors know tha t the world watches
their actions, and for the first time they
are being faced by Negroes who display
no fear.
PLAYBOY: It was shortly after your St.
Augustine campaign last summer, as you
mentioned, that the Civil Rights Bill
was passed-outlawing many of the injustices against which you had been
demonstrating. Throughout the South,
predictably, it was promptly anathematized as unconstitutional and excessive
h:~ its concessions to Negro demands.
How do you feel about it?
KING: I don't feel that the Civil Rights
Act has gone far enough in some of its
coverage. In the first place, it needs a
stronger voting section. You will never
have a true democracy until you can
eliminate all restrictions. We need to do
away with restrictive literacy tests. I've
seen too much of native intelligence to
accept the validity of these tests as a ~riterion for voting qualifications. Our nation needs a universal method of voter
registration-one man, one vote, literally. Second, there is a pressing, urgent
need to give the attorney general the
right to initi ate Federal suits in any area
of civil rights denial. Third, we need a
strong and strongly enforced fair-housing section such as many states already
have. President Kennedy initiated the
present housing law, but it is not broad
enough. Fourth, we need an extension
of FEPC to grapple more effectively
with the problems of poverty. Not only
are millions of Negroes caught in the
clutches of poverty, but millions of poor
whites as well. And fifth, conclusive and
effective measures must be taken immediately at the Federal level to curb
the worsening reign of terror in the
South-which is aided and abetted, as
everyone knows, by state and local lawenforcement agencies. It's getting so that
anybody can kill a Negro and get away
with it in the South, as long as they go
through the motions of a jury ".rial.
There is very little chance of conviction
from lily-white Southern jurors. It must
be fixed so that in the case of interracial
murder, the Federal Government can
prosecute.
PLAYBOY: Your dissatisfaction with the
Civil Rights Act reflects that of most
other Negro spokesmen. According to recent polls, however, many whites resent
this attitude, calling the Negro "ungrateful" and "unrealistic" to press his demands for more.
KING: This is a litany to those of us in
this field. "What more will the Negro
want?" "What will it take to make thest
demonstrations end?" Well, I would likt
tu reply with another rhetorical question : Why do white people seem to find
it so difficult to understand that the Negro is sick and tired of having reluctantly parceled out to him those rights and
privileges which all others receive upon
birth or entry in America? I never cease
to wonder at the amazing presumption
of much of white society, assuming that
they have the right to bargain with the
Negro for his freedom. This continued
arrogant ladling out of pieces of the
rights of citizenship has begun to generate a fury in the Negro. Even so, he is
not pressing for revenge, or for conquest, or to gain spoils, or to ensla,·e, or
even to marry the sisters of those who
have injured him. What the Negro
wants-and will not stop until he getsis absolute and unqualified freedom and
equality here in this land of his birth,
and not in Africa or in some imaginary
state. The Negro no longer will be tolerant of anything less than his due right
;md heritage. He is pursuing only that
which he knows is honorably his. He
knows that he is right.
But every Negro leader since the turn
of the century has been saying this in
one form or another. It is because we
haYe been so long and so conscientiously
ignored by the dominant white society
that the situation has now reached such
crisis proportions. Few white people,
even today, will face the clear fact that
the very future and destiny of this country are tied up in what answer will be
given to the Negro. And that answer
must be gi,·en soon.
PLAYBOY: Relatively few dispute the justness of the struggle to eradicate racial injustice, but many whites feel that the
Negro should be more patient, th;tt only
the passage of time-perhaps generations
-will bring about the sweeping
changes he demands in traditional attitudes and customs. Do you think this is
true?
KING: No, I do not. I feel that the time
is always right to do what is right.
Where progress for the Negro in America is concerned, there is a tragic misconception of time among whites. They
seem to cherish a strange, irrational notion that something in the ,·ery How of
time will cure all ills. In truth, time itself is only neutral. Increasingly, 1 feel
that time has been used destructively by
people of ill will much more than it has
been used constructively by those of
good will.
If I were to select a timetable for the
equalization of human rights, it would
be the intent of the "all deliberate
speed" specified in the historic 1954 Supreme Court decision. But what has
happened? A Supreme Court decision
was met, and balked, with utter defiance. Ten years later, in most areas
of the South, less than one percent of
the Negro children ha,·e been integrated in schools, and in · some of the
deepest South, not e\·en one tenth of
one percent. Approximately 25 percent
of employable Negro youth, for another
example, are presently unemployed.
Though many would prefer not to, we
must face the fact that progress for the
Negro--to which white "moderates" like
to point in justifying gradualism-has
been relatively insignificant, particularly
in terms of the Negro masses. What little
progress has been made-and that includes the Civil Rights Act-has applied
primarily to the middle-class Negro.
Among the masses, especially in the
Northern ghettos, the situation remains
about the same, and for some it is worse.
PLAYBOY: It would seem that much
could be done at the local, state and
Federal levels to remedy these inequities. In your own contact with them,
have you found Government officials--in
the North, if not in the South-to be
generally sympathetic, understanding,
and receptive to appeals for reform?
KING: On the contrary, I have been dismayed at the degree to which abysmal
ignorance seems to prevail among many
state, city and even Federal officials on
the whole question of racial justice and
injustice. Particularly, I have found that
these men seriously-and dangerouslyunderestimate the explosive mood of the
Negro and the gravity of the crisis. Even
among those whom I would consider to
be both sympathetic and sincerely intellectually committed, there is a lamentable lack of understanding. But this white
failure to comprehend the depth and dimension of the · Negro problem is far
from being peculiar to Government
officials. Apart from bigots and backlashers, it seems to be a malady even among
those whites who like to regard themselves as "enlightened." I would especially refer to those who counsel, "Wait!"
and to those who say that they sympathize with our goals but cannot condone
our methods of direct-action pursuit of
those goals. I wonder at men who dare
to feel that they have some paternalistic
right to set the timetable for another
man's liberation. Over the past several
years, I must s<;ty. I have been gravely disappointed with such white "moderates."
I am often inclined to think that they
are more of a stumbling block to the Negro's progress than the White Citizen's
Counc::iler or the Ku Klux Klanner.
PLAYBOY: Haven't both of these segregationist societies been implicated in
connection with plots against your life?
KING: It's difficult to trace the authorship of these death threats. I seldom go
through a day without one. Some are telephoned anonymously to my office; others are sent-unsigned, of coursethrough the mails. Drew Pearson wrote
not long ago about one group of unknown affiliation that was committed to
assassinate not only me but also Chief
Justice Warren and President Johnson.
And not long ago, when I was about to
visit in Mississippi, I received some very
urgent calls from Negro leaders in Mobile, who had been told by a very reliable source that a sort of guerrilla group
led by a retired major in the area of Lucyville, Mississippi, was plotting to take
my life during the visit. I was strongly
urged to cancel the trip, but when I
thought about it, I decided that I had no
alternative but to go on into Mississippi.
PLAYBOY: Why?
KING: Because I have a job to do. If I
were constantly worried about death, I
couldn't function. After a while, if your
life is more or less constantly in peril,
you come to a point where you accept
the possibility philosophically. I must
face the fact, as all others in positions of
leadership must do, that America today
is an extremely sick nation, and that
something could well happen to me at
any time. I feel, though, that my cause is
so right, so moral, that if I should lose
my life, in some way it would aid the
cause.
PLAYBOY: That statement exemplifies
the total dedication to the civil rights
movement for which you are so widely
admired-but also denounced as an "extremist" by such segregationist spokesmen as Alabama's Governor Wallace.
Do you accept this identification?
KING: It disturbed me when I first heard
it. But when I began to consider the
true meaning of the word, I decided that
perhaps I would like to think of myself
as an extremist-in the light of the
spirit which made Jesus an extremist
for love. If it sounds as though I am
comparing myself to the Savior, let
me remind you that all who honor themselves with the claim of being "Christians" should compare themselves to
Jesus. Thus I consider myself an extremist for that brotherhood of man which
Paul so nobly expressed: "There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither
bond nor free, there is neither male nor
female: for ye are all one in Christ
Jesus." Love is the only force on earth
that can be dispensed or received in an
extreme manner, without any qualifications, without any harm to the giver or
to the receiver.
PLAYBOY: Perhaps. But the kind of extremism for which you've been criticized
has to do not with love, but with your
advocacy of willful disobedience of what
you consider to be "unjust laws." Do you
feel you have the right to pass judgment
on and defy the law-nonviolently or
otherwise?
KING: Yes-morally, if not legally. For
there are two kinds of laws: man's and
God's. A man-made code that squares
with the moral law, or the law of God, is
a just law. But a man-made code that is
inharmonious with the moral law is an
unjust law. And an unjust law, as St. Augustine said, is no law at all. Thus a law
that is unjust is morally null and void,
and must be defied until it is legally null
and void as well. Let us not forget, in
the memories of 6,000,000 who died, that
everything Adolf Hitler did in Germany
was "legal," and that everything the
Freedom Fighters in Hungary did was
"illegal." In spite of that, I am sure that
I would have aided and comforted my
Jewish brothers if I had Jived in Germany
during Hitler's reign, as some Christian
priests and ministers did do, often at the
cost of their lives. And if I lived now in
a Communist country where principles
dear to the Christian's faith are suppressed, I know that I would openly
advocate defiance of that country's antireligious laws--again, just as some Christian priests and ministers are doing today
behind the .Iron Curtain. Right here in
America today there are white ministers,
priests and rabbis who have shed blood
in the support of our struggle against a
web of human injustice, much of which
is supported by immoral man-made laws.
PLAYBOY: Segregation laws?
KING: Specifically, court mJunctions.
Though the rights of the First Amendment guarantee that any citizen or
group of citizens may engage in peaceable assembly, the South has seized upon
the device of invoking injunctions to
block our direct-action civil rights demonstrations. \Vhen you get set to stage a
nonviolent demonstration, the city simply secures an injunction to cease and
desist. Southern courts are well known
for "sitting on" this type of case; conceivably a two- or three-year delay could be
incurred. At first we found this to be a
highly effective subterfuge against us.
\Ve first experienced it in Montgomery
when, during the bus boycott, our car
pool was outlawed by an injunction. An
injunction also destroyed the protest
movement in Talladega, Alabama. Another injunction outlawed the oldest t:ivil rights organization, the NAACP, from
the whole state of Alabama. Still another
injunction thwarted our organization's
efforts in Albany, Georgia. Then in Birmingham, we felt that we had to take a
stand and disobey a court injunction
against demonstrations, knowing the
consequences and being prepared to
meet them-or the unjust law would
break our movement.
We did not take this step hastily or
rashly. We gave the matter intense
thought and prayer before deciding that
the right thing was being done. And
when we made our decision, I announced our plan to the press, making it
clear that we were not anarchists advocating lawlessness, but that in good conscience we could not comply with a
misuse of the judicial process in order to
perpetuate injustice and segregation.
When our plan was made known, it
bewildered and immobilized our segregationist opponents. We felt that our
decision had been morally as well as
tactically right-in keeping with God's
law as well as with the spirit of our
nonviolent direct-action program.
PLAYBOY: If it's morally right for supporters of civil rights to violate segregation laws which they consider unjust,
why is it wrong for segregationists to resist the enforcement of integration laws
which they consider unjust?
KING: Because segregation, as even the
segregationists know in their hearts, is
morally wrong and sinful. If it weren't,
the white South would not be haunted
as it is by a deep sense of guilt for what
it has done to the Negro-guilt for
patronizing him, degrading him, brutalizing him, depersonalizing him, thingifying him; guilt for lying to itself. This is
the source of the schizophrenia that the
South will suffer until it goes through
its crisis of conscience.
PLAYBOY: Is this crisis imminent?
KING: It may not come next week or
next year, but it is certainly more imminent in the South than in the North. If
the South is honest with itself, it may
well outdistance the North in the improvement of race relations.
PLAYBOY: Why?
KING: Well, the Northern white, having had little actual contact with the Negro, is devoted to an abstract principle
of cordial interracial relations. The
North has long considered, in a theoretical way, that it supported brotherhood
and the equality of man, but the truth is
that deep prejudices and discriminations
exist in hidden and subtle and covert
disguises. The South's prejudice and discrimination, on the other hand, has been
applied against the Negro in obvious,
open, overt and glaring forms-which
make the problem easier to get at. The
Southern white man has the advantage
of far more actual contact with Negroes
than the Northerner. A major problem
is that this contact has been paternalistic and poisoned by the myth of racial
superiority.
PLAYBOY: Many Southern whites, supported by the "research" of several
Southern anthropologists, vow that
white racial superiority-and Negro infe.
riority-are a biological fact.
KING: You may remember that during
the rise of Nazi Germany, a rash of
books by respected, German scientists appeared, supporting the master-race theory. This utterly ignorant fallacy has
been so thoroughly refuted by the social
scientists, as well as by medical science,
that any individual who goes on believing it is standing in an absolutely
misguided and diminishing circle. The
American Anthropological Association
has unanimously adopted a resolution
repudiating statements that Negroes are
biologically, in innate mental ability or
in any other way inferior to whites. The
collective weight and authority of world
scientists are embodied in a Unesco
report on races which flatly refutes the
theory of innate superiority among any
ethnic group. And as far as Negro
"blood" is concerned, medical science
finds the same four blood types in all
race groups.
When the Southern white finally accepts this simple fact-as he eventually
must-beautiful results will follow, for
we will have come a long way toward
transforming his master-servant perspective into a person-to-person perspective.
The Southern white man, discovering
the "nonmyth" Negro, exhibits all the
passion of the new convert, seeing the
black man as a man among men for
the first time. The South, if it is to survive economically, must make dramatic
changes, and these must include the Negro. People of good will in the South,
who are the vast majority, have the challenge to be open and honest, and to
turn a deaf ear to the shrill cries of the
irresponsible few on the lunatic fringe. I
think and pray they will.
PLAYBOY: Whom do you include among
"the irresponsible few"?
KING: I include those who preach racism and commit violence; and those
who, in various cities where we have
sought to peacefully demonstrate, have
sought to goad Negroes into violence as
an excuse for violent mass reprisal. In
Birmingham, for example, on the day it
was flashed about the world that a
"peace pact" had been signed between
the moderate whites and the Negroes,
Birmingham's segregationist forces reacted with fury, swearing vengeance against
the white businessmen who had "betrayed" them by negotiating with Negroes. On Saturday night, just outside of
Birmingham, a Ku Klux Klan meeting
was held, and that same night, as I mentioned earlier, a bomb ripped the home
of my brother, the Reverend A. D.
King, and another bomb was planted
where it would have killed or seriously
wounded anyone in the· motel room
which I had been occupying. Both
bombings had been timed just as Birmingham's bars closed on Saturday midnight, as the streets filled with thousands
of Negroes who were not trained in nonviolence, and who had been drinking.
Just as whoever planted the bombs had
wanted to happen, fighting began, policemen were stoned by Negroes, cars
were overturned and fires started.
PLAYBOY: Were none of your S, C. L. C.
workers involved?
KING: If they had been, there would
have been no riot, for we believe that
only just means may be used in seeking
a just end. We believe that lasting gains
can be made-and they have been made
-only by practicing what we preach: a
policy of nonviolent, peaceful protest.
The riots, North and South, have involved mobs-not the disciplined, nonviolent, direct-action demonstrators with
whom I identify. We do not condone
lawlessness, looting and violence committed by the racist or the reckless of
any color.
I must say, however, that riots such as
have occurred do achieve at least one
partially positive effect: They dramatically focus national attention upon the
Negro's discontent. Unfortunately, they
also give the white majority an excuse,
a provocation, to look away from the
cause of the riots-the poverty and
the deprivation and the degradation of
the Negro, especially in the slums and
ghettos where the riots occur-and to
talk instead of looting, and of the breakdown of law and order. It is never circulated that some of the looters have been
white people, similarly motivated by
their own poverty. In one riot in a
Northern city, aside from the Negroes
and Puerto Ricans who were arrested,
there were also 158 white people-including mothers stealing food, children's
shoes and other necessity items. The
poor, white and black, were rebelling
together against the establishment.
PLAYBOY: Whom do you mean by "the
establishment"?
KING: I mean the white leadershipwhich I hold as responsible as anyone for
the riots, for not removing the conditions
that cause them. The deep frustration, the seething desperation of the Negro today is a product of slum housing,
chronic poverty, woefully inadequate
education and substandard schools. The
Negro is trapped in a long and desolate
corridor with no exit sign, caught in a
vicious socioeconomic vise. And he is ostracized as is no other minority group in
America by the evil of oppressive and
constricting prejudice based solely upon
his color. A righteous man has no alternative but to resist such an evil system.
If he does not have the courage to resist
nonviolently, then he runs the risk of a
violent emotional explosion. As much as
I deplore violence, there is one evil that
is worse than violence, and that's cowardice. It is still my basic article of faith
that social justice can be achieved and
democracy advanced only to the degree
that there is firm adherence to nonviolent
action and resistance in the pursuit of social justice. But America will be faced
with the ever-present threat of violence,
rioting and senseless crime as long as
Negroes by the hundreds of thousands
are packed into malodorous, rat-plagued
ghettos; as long as Negroes remain
smothered by poverty in the midst of an
affluent society; as long as Negroes are
made to feel like exiles in their own land;
as long as Negroes continue to be dehumanized; as long as Negroes see their
freedom endlessly delayed and diminished by the head winds of tokenism and
small handouts from the white power
structure. No nation can suffer any
greater tragedy than to cause millions of
its citizens to feel that they have no stake
in their own society.
Understand that I am trying only to
explain the reasons for violence and the
threat of violence. Let me say again. that
by no means and under no circumstance
do I condone outbreaks of looting and
lawlessness. I feel that every responsible
Negro leader must point out, with all
possible vigor, that anyone who perpetrates and participates in a riot is immoral as well as impractical-that the
use of immoral means will not achieve
the moral · end of racial justice.
PLAYBOY: Whom do you consider the
most responsible Negro leaders?
KING: Well, I would say that Roy Wilkins of the NAACP has proved time and
again to be a very articulate spokesman
for the rights of Negroes. He is a most
able administrator and a dedicated organization man wi1h personal resources
that have helped the whole struggle.
Another outstanding man is Whitney
Young Jr. of the National Urban League,
an extremely able social scientist. He has
developed a meaningful balance between militancy and moderation. James
Farmer of CORE is another courageous,
dedicated and thoughtful civil rights
spokesman. I have always been impressed by how he maintains a freshness
in his awareness of the meaning of the
whole quest for freedom. And John
Lewis of SNCC symbolizes the kind of
strong militancy, courage and creativity
that our youth have brought to the civil
rights struggle. But I feel that the greatest leader of these times that the Negro
has produced is A. Philip Randolph,
president of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, whose total integrity,
depth of dedication and caliber of statesmanship set an example for us all.
PLAYBOY: Many whites feel that last
summer's riots occurred because leadership is no longer being offered by the
men you named.
KING: The riots we h ave h ad are minute compared to what would h ave
happened without their effective and
restraining leadership. I am convinced
that unless the nonviolent philosophy
had emerged and taken hold among N egroes, North and South, by today the
streets of dozens of American communities would have flowed with blood.
Hundreds of <;ities might now be mourning countless dead, of both races, were it
not for the nonviolent influence which
has given political surg~ons the time and
opportunity to boldly and safely excise
some aspects of the peril of violence that
faced this nation in the summers of 1963
and 1964. The whole world has seen what
happened in communities such as Harlem, Brooklyn, Rochester, Philadelphia,
Newark, St. Petersburg and Birmingham,
where this emergency operation was
either botched or not performed at all.
PLAYBOY: Still, doesn 't the very fact
that riots have occurred tend to indicate
that many .Negroes are no longer heeding the counsels of nonviolence?
KING: Not the majority, by any means.
But it is true that some Negroes subscribe to a deep feeling that the tactic of
nonviolence is not producing enough
concrete victories. We have seen, in our
experience, that nonviolence thrives best
in a climate of justice. Violence grows to
the degree that injustice prevails; the
more injustice in a given community,
the more violence, or potential violence,
smolders in that community. I can give
you a clear example. If you will notice,
there have been fewer riots in the South.
The :reason for this is that the Negro in
the South can see some visible, concrete
victories in civil rights. Last year, the police would have been called if he sat
down at a community lunch counter.
This year, if he chooses to sit at that
counter, he is served. More riots have
occurred in the North because the fellow
in Harlem, to name one Northern ghetto, can't see any victories. He remains
throttled, as he has always been, by
vague, intangible economic and social
deprivations. Until the concerned power
structures begin to grapple creatively
with these fundamental inequities, it
will be difficult for violence to be eliminated. The longer our people see no
progress, or halting progress, the easier it
will be for them to yield to the counsels
of hatred and demagoguery.
PLAYBOY: The literature of the John
Birch Society, accusing you of just such
counsels, has branded you "a conscious
agent of the Communist conspiracy."
KING: As you know, they have sought
to link many people with communism,
including the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court and a former President of
the United States. So I'm in good company, at least. The Birchers thrive on
sneer and smear, on the dissemination of
half-truths and outright lies. It would be
comfortable to dismiss them as the lunatic fringe-which, by and large, they are;
but some priests and ministers have also
shown themselves to be among them.
They are a very dangerous group--and
they could become even more dangerous
if the public doesn't reject the un-American travesty of patriotism that they
espouse.
PLAYBOY: \.Vas there any basis in fact
for the rumors, still circulating in some
quarters, that last summer's riots were
fomented and stage-directed by Communist agitators?
KING: I'm getting sick and tired of people saying that this movement has been
infiltrated by Communists. There are as
many Communists in this freedom movement as there are Eskimos in Florida.
The FBI provided the best answer to
this absurd rumor in its report to the
President after a special investigation
which he had requested. It stated that
the riots were not caused or directed by
any such groups, although they did try
to capitalize upon and prolong the riots.
All Negro leaders, including myself,
were most happy with the publication of
these findings, for the public whisperings had troubled us. We knew that it
could prove vitally harmful to the Negro
struggle if the riots had been catalyzed
or manipulated by the Communists or
some other extremist group. It would
h ave sown the seed of doubt in the public's mind that the Negro revolution is a
genuine revolution, born from the same
womb that produces all massive social
upheavals-the womb of intolerable conditions and unendurable situations.
PLAYBOY: Is it destined to be a violent
revolution?
KING: God willing, no. But white Americans must be made to understand the
basic motives underlying Negro demonstrations. Many pent-up resentments
and latent frustrations are boiling inside
the Negro, and he must release them. It
is not a threat but a fact of history that
if an oppressed people's pent-up emotions are not nonviolently released, they
will be violently released. So let the Negro march. Let him make pilgrimages to
city hall. Let him go on freedom rides.
And above all, make an effort to understand why he must do this. For if his
frustration and despair are allowed to
continue piling up, millions of Negroes
will seek solace and security in blackna tionalist ideologies. And this, inevitably, would lead to a frightening racial
nightmare.
PLAYBOY: Among whites, the best-known
and most feared of these militantly racist
Negro sects is the Black Muslims. What
is your estimation of its power and influence among the Negro masses?
KING: Except in a few metropolitan
ghettos, my experience has been that few
Negroes have any interest a t all in this
organization, much less give any allegiance to its pessimistic doctrines. The
Black Muslims are a quasi-religious, sociopolitical movement tha t has appealed
to some Negroes who formerly were
Christians. For the first time, the Negro
was presented with a choice of a religion
other than Christianity. What this appeal actually represented was an indictment of Christian failures to live up to
Christianity's precepts; for there is nothing in Christianity, nor in the Bible,
that justifies racial segregation. But
when the Negroes' genuine fighting spirit rose during 1963, the appeal of the
Muslims began to diminish.
PLAYBOY: One of the basic precepts of
black nationalism has been the attempt
to engender a sense of communion between the American Negro and his
African "brother," a sense of identity between the emergence of black Africa and
the Negro's struggle for freedom in
America. Do you feel that this is a constructive effort?
KING: Yes, I do, in many ways. There is
a distinct, significant and inevitable
correlation. The Negro across America,
looking at his television set, sees black
statesmen voting in the United Nations
on vital world issues, knowing that in
many of America's cities, he himself is
not yet permitted to place his ballot.
The Negro hears of black kings and · potentates ruling in palaces, while he remains ghettoized in urban slums. It is
only natural that Negroes would react to
this extreme irony. Consciously or unconsciously, the American Negro has
been caught up by the black Zeitgeist.
He feels a deepening sense of iden-
tification with his black African brothers, and with his brown and yellow
brothers of Asia, South America and the
Caribbean. With them he is moving with
a sense of increasing urgency toward the
promised land of racial justice.
PLAYBOY: Do you feel that the African
nations, in turn, should involve themselves more actively in American Negro
affairs?
KING: I do indeed. The world is now so
small in terms of geographic proximity
and mutual problems that no nation
should stand idly by and watch another's plight. I think that in every
possible instance Africans should use the
influence of their governments to make
it clear that the struggle of their brothers in the U.S. is part of a world-wide
struggle. In short, injustice anywhere is a
threat to justice everywhere, for we are
tied together in a garment of mutuality.
What happens in Johannesburg affects
Birmingham, however indirectly. We are
descendants of the Africans. Our heritage is Africa. We should never seek to
break the ties, nor should the Africans.
PLAYBOY: One of the most articulate
champions of black Afro-American
brotherhood has been Malcolm X, the
former Black Muslim leader who recently renounced his racist past and converted to orthodox Mohammedanism. What
is your opinion of him and his career?
KING: I met Malcolm X once in Washington, but circumstances didn't enable
me to talk with him for more than a
minute. He is very articulate, as you say,
but I totally disagree with many of his
political and philosophical views-at
least insofar as I understand where he
now stands. I don't want to seem to
sound self-righteous, or absolutist, or
that I think I have the only truth, the
only way. Maybe he does have some of
the answer. I don't know how he feels
now, but I know that I have often
wished tha t he would talk less of violence, because violence is not going to
solve our problem. And in his litany of
articulating the despair of the Negro
without offering any positive, creative
alternative, I feel that Malcolm has done
himself and our people a great disservice. Fiery, demagogic oratory in the
black ghettos, urging Negroes to arm
themselves and prepare to engage in violence, as he has done, can reap nothing
but grief.
PLAYBOY: For them or for whites?
KING: For everyone, but mostly for them.
Even the extremist leaders who preach
revolution are invariably unwilling to
lead what they know would certainly
end in bloody, chaotic and total defeat;
for in the event of a violent revolution, we would be sorely outnumbered. And when it was all over, the
Negro would face the same unchanged
conditions, the same squalor and deprivation-the only difference being that
his bitterness would be even more intense, his disenchantment even more
abject. Thus, in purely practical as well
as moral terms, the American Negro has
no rational alternative to nonviolence.
PLAYBOY: You categorically reject violence as a tactical technique for social
change. Can it not be argued, however,
that violence, historically, has effected
massive and sometimes constructive social change in some countries?
KING: I'd be the first to say that some
historical victories have been won by violence; the U. S. Revolution is certainly
one of the foremost. But the Negro
rev:olution is seeking integration, not independence. Those fighting for independence have the purpose to drive out
the oppressors. But here in America,
we've got to live toget!ter. We've got to
find a way to reconcile ourselves to living in community, one group with the
other. The struggle of the Negro in
America, to be successful, must be waged
with resolute efforts, but efforts that are
kept strictly within the framework of our
democratic society. This means reaching,
educating and moving large enough
groups of people of both races to stir the
conscience of the nation.
PLAYBOY: How do you propose to go
about it?
KING: Before we can make any progress, we must avoid retrogression-by
doing everything in our power to avert
further racial violence. To this end,
there are three immediate steps that I
would recommend. Firstly, it is mandatory that people of good will across
America, particularly those who are in
positions to wield influence and power,
conduct honest, soul-searching analyses
and evaluations of the environmental
causes that spawn riots. All major industrial and ghetto areas should establish
serious biracial discussions of community
problems, and of ways to begin solving
them. Instead of ambulance service,
municipal leaders need to provide preventive medicine. Secondly, these communities should make serious efforts to
provide work and training for unemployed youth, through job-and-training
programs such as the HARYOU-ACT
program in New York City. Thirdly, all
cities concerned should make first-priority efforts to provide immediate quality
education for Negro youth-instead of
conducting studies for the next five
years. Young boys and girls now in the
ghettos must be enabled to feel that
they count, that somebody cares about
them; they must be able to feel hope.
And on a longer-range basis, the physical
ghetto itself must be eliminated, because
these are the environmental conditions
that germinate riots. It is both socially
and morally suicidal to continue a pattern of deploring effects while failing to
come to grips with the causes. Ultimately, law and order will be maintained
only when justice and dignity are accorded impartially to all.
PLAYBOY: Along with the other civil
rights leaders, you have often proposed
a massive program of economic aid,
financed by the Federal Government, to
improve the lot of the nation's 20,000,-
000 Negroes. Just one of the projects
you've mentioned, however-the HARYOU-ACT program to provide jobs for
Negro youths-is expected to cost $141,-
000,000 over the next ten years, and that
includes only Harlem. A nationwide program such as you propose would undoubtedly run into the billions.
KING: About 50 billion, actually-which
is less than one year of our present
defense spending. It is my belief that
with the expenditure of this amount,
over a ten-year period, a genuine and
dramatic transformation could be
achieved in the conditions of Negro life
in America. I am positive, moreover,
that the money spent would be more
than amply justified by the benefits that
would accrue to the nation through a
spectacular decline in school dropouts,
family breakups, crime rates, illegitimacy, swollen relief rolls, rioting and
other social evils.
PLAYBOY: Do you think it's realistic to
hope that the Government would consider an appropriation of such magnitude other than for national defense?
KING: I certainly do. This country has
the resources to solve any problem once
that problem is accepted as national policy. An example is aid to Appalachia,
which has been made a policy of the
Federal Government's mud1-touted war
on poverty; one billion was proposed for
its relief-without making the slightest
dent in the defense budget. Another example is the fact that after World War
Two, during the years when it became
policy to build and maintain the largest
military machine the world has ever
known, America also took upon itself,
through the Marshall Plan and other
measures, the financial relief and rehabilitation of millions of European people. If America can afford to underwrite
its allies and ex-enemies, it can certainly
afford-and has a much greater obligation, as I see it-to do at least as well by
its own no-less-needy countrymen.
PLAYBOY: Do you feel it's fair to request a multibillion-dollar program of
preferential treatment for the Negro, or
for any other minority group?
KING: I do indeed. Can any fair-minded citizen deny that the Negro has been
deprived? Few people reflect that for
two centuries the Negro was enslaved,
and robbed of any wages-potential accrued wealth which would have been the
legacy of his descendants. All of America's wealth today could not adequately
compensate its Negroes for his centuries
of exploitation and humiliation. It is an
economic fact that a program such as I
propose would certainly cost far less
than any computation of two centuries
of unpaid wages plus accumulated inter-
est. In any case, I do not intend that this
program of economic aid should apply
only to the Negro; it should benefit the
disadvantaged of all races.
Within common law, we have ample
precedents for special compensatory programs, which are regarded as settlements. American Indians are still being
paid for land in a settlement manner. Is
not two centuries of labor, which helped
to build this country, as real a commodity? Many other easily appl icable precedents are readily at hand: our child
labor laws, social security, unemployment compensation, man-power retraining programs. And you will remember
that America adopted a policy of special
treatment for her millions of Yeterans
after the War-a program which cost far
more than a policy of preferential treatment to rehabilitate the traditionally
disadvantaged Negro would cost today.
The closest analogy is the GI Bill of
Rights. Negro rehabilitation in America
would require approximately the same
breadth of program-which would not
place an undue burden on our economy.
Just as was the case with the returning
soldier, such a bill for the disadvantaged
and impoYerished could enable them to
buy homes without cash, at lower and
easier repayment terms. They could negotiate loans from banks to launch businesses. They could receive, as did ex-Gis,
special points to place them ahead in
competition for civil service jobs. Under
certain circumstances of physical disability, medical care and long-term financial
grants could be made available. And together with these rights, a favorable
social climate could be created to encourage the preferential employment of
the disadvantaged, as was the case for so
many years with veterans. During those
years, it might- be noted, there was no
appreciable resentment of the preferential treatment being giYen to the special
group. America was only -compensating
her veterans for their time lost from
school or from business.
PLAYBOY: If a nationwide program of
preferential employment for Negroes
were to be adopted, how wou:d you propose to assuage the resentment of whites
who already feel that their jobs are
being jeopardized by the influx of Negroes resulting from desegregation?
KING: 'Ve must develop a Federal program of puhlic works, retraining and
jobs for all-so that none, white or black,
will have cause to feel threatened. At the
present time, thousands of jobs a week
are disappearing in the wake of automation and other production efficiency
techniques. Black and white, we will all
be harmed unless something grand and
imaginative is done. The unemployed,
poverty-stricken white man must be
made to realize that he is in the very
same boat with the Negro. Together,
they could exert massive pressure on the
Government to get jobs for all. Together,
they could form a grand alliance. Together, they could merge all people for
the good of all.
PLAYBOY: If Negroes are also granted
preferential treatment in housing, as
you propose, how would you allay the
alarm with which many white homeowners, fearing property devaluation, greet
the arrival of Negroes in hitherto allwhite neighborhoods?
KING: We must expunge from our society the myths and half-truths that engender such groundless fears as these. In
the first place, there is no truth to the
myth that Negroes depreciate property.
The fact is that most Negroes are kept
out of residential neighborhoods so long
that when one of us is finally sold a
home, it's already depreciated. In the second place, we must dispel the negative
and harmful atmosphere that has been
created by avaricious and unprincipled
realtors who engage in ".blockbusting."
If we had in America really serious
efforts to break down discrimination in
housing, and at the same time a concerted program of Government aid to
improve housing for Negroes, I think
that many white people would be surprised at how many Negroes would
choose to live among themselves, exactly
as Poles and Jews and other ethnic
groups do.
PLAYBOY: The B'nai B'rith, a prominent
social-action organization which undertakes on behalf of the Jewish people many of the activities that you ask
the Government to perform for Negroes,
is generously financed by Jewish charities and private donations. All of the
Negro civil rights groups, on the other
hand-including your own-are perennially in financial straits and must rely
heavily on white philanthropy in order
to remain solvent. Why do they receive
so little support from Negroes?
KING: We have to face and live with
the fact that the Negro has not developed a sense of stewardship. Slavery
was so divisive and brutal, so molded
to break up unity, that we never
developed a sense oL oneness, as in Judaism. Starting with the individual family unit, the Jewish people are closely
knit into what is, in effect, one big family. But with the Negro, slavery separated
families from families, and the pattern
of disunity that we see among Negroes
today derives directly from this cruel
fact of history. It is also a cruel fact that
the Negro, generally speaking, has not
developed a responsible sense of financial values. The best economists say that
your automobile shouldn't cost more
than half of your annual income, but we
see many Negroes earning $7000 a year
paying $5000 for a car. The home, it is
said, should not cost more than twice the
annual income, but we see many Negroes earning, say, $8000 a year living in
a $30,000 home. Negroes, who amount
to about II percent of the America
population, are reported to consume
over 40 percent of the Scotch whisky imported into the U.S., and to spend over
$72,000,000 a year in jewelry stores. So
when we come asking for civil rights donations, or help for the United Negro
College Fund, most Negroes are trying
to make ends meet.
PLAYBOY: The widespread looting that
took place during last summer's riots
would seem to prove your point. Do you
agree with those who feel that this looting-much of which was directed against
Jewish-owned stores-was anti-Semitic in
motivation?
KING: No, I do not believe that the
riots could in any way be considered
expressions of anti-Semitism. It's true, as
I was particularly pained to learn, that a
large percentage of the looted stores
were owned by our Jewish friends, but I
do not feel that anti-Semitism was involved. A high percentage of the merchants serving most Negro communities
simply happen to be Jewish. How could
there be anti-Semitism among Negroes
when our Jewish friends have demonstrated their commitment to the principle of tolerance and brotherhood not
only in the form of sizable contributions, but in many other tangible ways,
and often at great personal sacrifice?
Can we ever express our appreciation to
the rabbis who chose to give moral witness with us in St. Augustine during our
recent protest against segregation in tha t
unhappy city? Need I remind anyone of
the awful beating suffered by Rabbi Arthur Lelyveld of Cleveland when he
joined the civil rights workers there in
Hattiesburg, Mississippi? And who can
ever forget the sacrifice of two Jewish
lives, Andrew Goodman and Michael
Schwerner, in the swamps of Mississippi?
It would be impossible to record the
contribution that the Jewish people
have made toward the Negro's struggle
for freedom-it has been so great.
PLAYBOY: In conspicuous contrast, according to a recent poll conducted by
Ebony, only one Negro in ten has ever
participated physically in any form of
social protest. vVhy?
KING: It is not always sheer numbers
that are the measure of public support.
As I see it, every Negro who does participate represents the sympathy and the
moral backing of thousands of others.
Let us never forget how one photograph, of those Birmingham policemen
with th eir knees on that Negro woman
on the ground, touched something emotionally deep in most Negroes in America, no matter who they were. In city after
city, where S.C. L. C. has helped to
achieve sweeping social changes, it has
been not only because of the quality of
its members' dedication and discipline,
but because of the moral support of
many Negroes who never took an active
part. It's significant, I think, that during
each of our city struggles, the usual aver-
age of crimes committed by Negroes has
dropped to almost nothing.
But it is true, undeniably, that there
are many Negroes who will never fight
for freedom-yet who will be eager
enough to accept it when it comes. And
there are millions of Negroes who have
never known anything but oppression,
who are so devoid of pride and selfrespect that they have resigned themselves to segregation. Other Negroes,
comfortable and complacent, consider
that they are above the struggle of the
masses. And still others seek personal
profit from segregation.
PLAYBOY: Many Southern whites have
accused you of being among those who
exploit the race problem for private
gain. You are widely believed throughout the South, in fact, to have amassed a
vast personal fortune in the course of
your civil rights activities.
KING: Me wealthy? This is so utterly
fallacious and erroneous that I often
wonder where it got started. For the
sixth straight year since I have been
S.C. L. C.'s president, I have rejected our
board's insistent recommendation that I
accept some salary beyond the one dollar
a year which I receive, which entitles me
to participate in our employees' group
insurance plan. I have rejected also our
board's offer of financial gifts as a measure and expression of appreciation. My
only salary is from my church, $4000 a
year, plus $2000 more a year for what is
known as "pastoral care." To earn a
grand total of about $.10,000 a year, I
keep about $4000 to $5000 a year for myself from the honorariums that I receive
from various speaking engagements.
About 90 percent of my speaking is for
S.C. L. C., and it brings into our treasury
something around $200,000 a year. Additionally, I get a fairly sizable but fluctuating income in the form of royalties
from my writings. But all of this, too, I
give to my church, or to my alma mater,
Morehouse College, here in Atlanta.
I believe as sincerely as I believe anything that the struggle for freedom in
which S. C. L. C. is engaged is not one
that should reward any participant with
individual wealth and gain. I think I'd
rise up in my grave if I died leaving two
or three hundred thousand dollars. But
people just don't seem to believe that
this is the way I feel about it. If I have
any weaknesses, they are not in the area
of coveting wealth. My wife knows this
well; in fact, she feels that I overdo it.
But the Internal Revenue people, they
stay on me; they feel sure that one day
they are going to find a fortune stashed
in a mattress. To give you some idea of
my reputed affluence, just last week I
came in from a trip and learned that a
television program had announced I was
going to purchase an expensive home in
an all-white neighborhood here in Atlanta. It was news to me!
PLAYBOY: Your schedule of speaking engagements and civil rights commitments
throughout the country is a punishing
one-often 20 hours a day, seven days
a week, according to reports. How much
time do you get to spend at home?
KING: Very little, indeed. I've averaged
not more than two days a week at home
here in Atlanta over the past year-or
since Birmingham, actually. I'm away
two and three weeks at a time, mostly
working in commumues across the
South. WhereYer I am, I try to be in a
pulpit as many Sundays as possible. But
eYery day when I'm at home, I break
from the office for dinner and try to
spend a few hours with the children before I return to the office for some night
work. And on Tuesdays when I'm not
out of town, I don't go to the office. I
keep this for my quiet day of reading
and silence and meditation, and an entire evening with Mrs. King and the
children.
PLAYBOY: If you could have a week's
uninterrupted rest. with no commitments whatever, how would you spend
it?
KING: It's difficult to imagine such a
thing, but if I had the luxury of an entire week, I would spend it meditating
and reading, refreshing myself spiritually and intellectually. I have a deep nostalgia for the periods in the past that I
was able to devote in this manner.
Amidst the struggle, amidst the frustrations, amidst the endless work, I often
reflect that I am forever giving-never
pausing to take in. I feel urgently the
need for even an hour of time to get
away, to withdraw, to refuel. I need
more time to think through what is
being done, to take time out from the
mechanics of the movement, to reflect
on the meaning of the movement.
PLAYBOY: If you were marooned on
the proverbial desert island, and could
have with you only one book-apart
from the Bible-what would it be?
KING: That's tough. Let me think about
it-one book, not the Bible. Well,
I think I would have to pick Plato's
Republic. I feel that it brings together
more of the insights of history than any
other book. There is not a creative idea
extant that is not discussed, in some way,
in this work. Whatever realm of theology or philosophy is one's interest-and I
am deeply interested in both-somewhere along the way, in this book, you
will find the matter explored.
PLAYBOY: If you could send someoneanyone-to that desert island in your
stead, who would it be?
KING: That's another tough one. Let
me see, I guess I wouldn't mind seeing
Mr. Goldwater dispatched to a desert island. I hope they'd feed him and everything, of course. I am nonviolent, you
know. Politically, though, he's already
on a desert island, so it may be unnecessary to send him there.
PLAYBOY: We take it you weren't overly distressed by his defeat in the Presidential race.
KING: Until that defeat, Goldwater was
the most dangerous man in America. He
talked soft and nice, but he gave aid and
comfort to the most vicious racists
and the most extreme rightists in America. He gave respectability to views totally alien to the democratic process. Had
he won, he would have led us down a
fantastic path that would have totally
destroyed America as we know it.
PLAYBOY: Until his withdrawal from
the race following Goldwater's nomination, Alabama's Governor Wallace was
another candidate for the Presidency.
What's your opinion of his qualifications
for that office?
KING: Governor \Vallace is a demagog
with a capital D. He symbolizes in this
country many of the evils that were alive
in Hitler's Germany. He is a merchant
of racism, peddling hate under the guise
of States' rights. He wants to turn bao:;k
the clock, for his own personal aggrandizement, and he will do literally anything to accomplish this. He represents
the misuse, the corruption, the destruc-
' tion of leadership. I am not sure that he
beli eves all the poison that he preaches,
but he is artful enough to o:;onvince others
that he does. Instead of guiding people
to new peaks of reasonableness, he intensifies misunderstanding, deepens suspicion and prejudice. He is perhaps the
most dangerous racist in America today.
PLAYBOY: One of the most controversial issues of the past year, apart from
civil rights, was the question of school
prayer, which has been ruled unlawful
by the Supreme Court. Governor Wallace, among others, has denounced the
decision. How do you feel about it?
KING: I endorse it. I think it was correct. Contrary to what many have said, it
sought to outlaw neither prayer nor belief in God. In a pluralistic society such
as ours, who is to determine what prayer
shall be spoken, and by whom? Legally,
constitutionally or otherwise, the state
certainly has no such right. I am strongly
opposed to the efforts that have been
made to nullify the decision. They have
been motivated, I think, by little more
than the wish to embarrass the Supreme
Court. When I saw Brother Wallace
going up to Washington to testify
against the decision at the Congressional
hearings, it only strengthened my conviction that the decision was right.
PLAYBOY: Governor Wallace has intimated tha t President Johnson, in championing the cause of civil rights only
since he became Vice-President, may be
guilty of "insincerity."
KING: How President Johnson may or
may not have felt about or voted on civil rights during his years in Congress is
less relevant, at this point, than what he
has said and done about it during his
tenure· as President of the United States.
In my opinion, he has done a good job
up to now. He is an extremely keen political man, and he has demonstrated his
wisdom and his commitment in forthrightly coming to grips. with the problem. He does not tire of reminding the
nation of the moral issues involved. My
impression is that he will remain a
strong President for civil rights.
PLAYBOY: Late in 1963, you wrote, "As
I look toward 1964, one fact is unmistakably clear: The thrust of the Negro toward full emancipation will increase
rather than decrease." As last summer's
riots testified, these words were unhappily prophetic. Do you foresee more violence in the year ahead?
KING: To the degree that the Negro is
not thwarted in his thrust forward, I believe that one can predict less violence. I
am not saying that there will be no demonstrations. There assuredly will, for the
Negro in America has not made one civil rights gain without tense legal. and extralegal pressure. If the Constitution
were today applied equally and impartially to all of America's citizens, in every section of the country, in every court
and code of law, there would be no need
for any group of citizens to seek extralegal redress.
Our task has been a difficult one, and
will continue to be, for privileged
groups, historically, have not volunteered to give up their privileges. As
Reinhold Niebuhr has written, individuals may see the moral light and voluntarily abandon their unjust posture, but
groups tend to be more immoral, and
more intransigent, than individuals. Our
nonviolent direct-action program, therefore-which has proved its strength and
effectiveness in more than a thousand
American cities where some baptism of
fire has taken place-will continue to
dramatize and demonstrate against local
injustices to the Negro until the last of
those who impose those injustices are
forced to negotiate; until, finally, the
Negro ·wins the protections of the Constitution that have been denied to him;
until society, at long last, is stricken
gloriously and incurably color-blind.
PLAYBOY: In well-earned recognition of
your dedication to and leadership of
the struggle to achieve these goals, you
became, in October of last year, the
youngest man ever to receive the Nobel
Peace Prize. What was your reaction to
the news?
KING: It made me feel very humble indeed. But I would like to think that the
award is not a personal tribute, but a
tribute to the entire freedom movement,
and to the gallant people of both races
who surround me in the drive for civil
rights which will make the American
dream a reality. I think that this internationally known award will call even
more attention to our struggle, gain
even greater sympathy and understanding for our cause, from people all over
the world. I like to think that the award
recognizes symbolically the gallantry, the
courage and the amazing discipline of
the Negro in America, for these things
are to his eternal credit. Though we
have had riots, the bloodshed that we
would have known without the discipline of nonviolence would have been
truly frightening. I know that many
whites feel the civil rights movement is
getting out of hand; this may reassure
them. It may let them see that basically
this is a disciplined struggle, let them appreciate the meaning of our struggle, let
them see that a great struggle for human
freedom can occur within the framework
of a democratic society.
PLAYBOY: Do you feel that this goal
will be achieved within your lifetime?
KING: I confess that I do not believe
this day is around the corner. The concept of supremacy is so imbedded in the
white society that it will take many years
for color to cease to be a judgmental factor. But it is certainly my hope and
dream. Indeed, it is the keystone of my
faith in the future that we will someday
achieve a thoroughly integrated society.
I believe that before the turn of the century, if trends continue to move and develop as presently, we will have moved a
long, long way toward such a society.
PLAYBOY: Do you intend to dedicate
the rest of your life, then, to the Negro
cause?
KING: If need be, yes. But I dream of
the day when the demands presently cast
upon me will be greatly diminished. I
would say that in the next five years,
though, I can't hape for much letup-either in the South or in the North. After
that time, it is my hope that things will
taper off a bit.
PLAYBOY: If they do, what are your
plans?
KING: Well, at one time I dreamed of
pastoring for a few years, and then of
going to a university to teach theology.
But I gave that up when I became deeply involved in the civil rights struggle.
Perhaps, in five years or so, if the demands on me have lightened, I will have
the chance to make that dream come
true.
PLAYBOY: In the meanwhile, you are
now the universally acknowledged leader of the American civil rights movement, and chief spokesman for the
nation's 20,000,000 Negroes. Are there
ever moments when you feel awed by
this burden of responsibility, or inadequate to its demands?
KING: One cannot be in my position,
looked to by some for guidance, without
being constantly reminded of the awesomeness of its responsibility. I live with
one deep concern: Am I making the
right decisions? Sometimes I am uncertain, and I must look to God for guidance. There was one morning I recall,
when I was in the Birmingham jail, in
solitary, with not even my lawyers permitted to visit, and I was in a nightmare
of despair. The very future of our movement hung in the balance, depending
upon capricious turns of events over
which I could have no control there, incommunicado, in an utterly dark dungeon. This was about ten days after our
Birmingham demonstrations began.
Over 400 of our followers had gone to
jail; some had been bailed out, but we
had ·used up all of our money for bail,
and about 300 remained in jail, and I
felt personally responsible. It was then
that President Kennedy telephoned my
wife, Coretta. After that, my jail conditions were relaxed, and the following
Sunday afternoon-it was Easter Sunday
-two S.C.L.C. attorneys were permitted
to visit me. The next day, word came to
me from New York that Harry Belafonte
had raised $50,000 that was available immediately for bail bonds, and if more
was needed, he would raise that. I cannot express what I felt, but I knew at
that moment that God's presence had
never left me, that He had been with me
there in solitary.
I subject myself to self-purification
and to endless self-analysis; I question
and soul-search constantly into myself to
be as certain as I can that -I am fulfilling
the true meaning of my work, that I am
maintaining my sense of purpose, that I
am holding fast to my ideals, that I am
guiding my people in the right direction. But whatever my doubts, however
heavy the burden, I feel that I must accept the task of helping to make this nation and this world a better place to live
in-for all men, black and white alike.
I never will forget a moment in Birmingham when a white policeman accosted a little Negro girl, seven or eight
years old, who was walking in a demonstration with her mother. "What do you
want?" the ·policeman asked her gruffly,
and the little girl looked him straight
in the eye and answered, "Fee-dom."
She couldn't even pronounce it, but she
knew.lt was beautiful! Many times when
I have been in sorely trying situations,
the memory of that little one has come
into my mind, and has buoyed me.
.Similarly, not long ago, I toured in
eight communities of the state of Mississippi. And I have carried with me ever
since a visual image of the penniless and
the unlettered, and of the expressions on
their faces--of deep and courageous determination to cast off the imprint of the
past and become free people. I welcome
the opportunity to be a part of this great
drama, for it is a drama that will determine America's destiny. If the problem
is not solved, America will be on the
road to its self-destruction. But if it is
solved, America will just as surely be on
the high road to the fulfillment of the
founding fathers' dream, when they
wrote: "We hold these truths to be selfevident ..• "