Today is Martin Luther King, Jr. Day and schools in many parts of the country are closed. Although few people take part in public tributes or actions to commemorate the day, many will at some point at least remember the man behind the day off. But do teachers and students know about what compelled the Rev. Dr. King in his last years, or do they only know his earlier work for civil rights and his famous 1963 "I Have a Dream" speech?
The truth is that King's final years saw him boldly speaking out on issues that made many Americans and their leaders uncomfortable and even angry. For one thing, he spoke boldly against the Vietnam war and against American militarism generally. Although at the time the White House was held by a civil rights-friendly Democrat (Lyndon Johnson), King did not feel beholden to the Johnson administration and was quite specific in his criticisms of US conduct. That brought him in for criticism from the Washington Post, the New York Times, and even the NAACP who said he shouldn't be muddling the issues.
Even more controversially, though, King came to see the root problems of injustice as being that of a class conflict rather than a primarily racial one. He called for the elimination of poverty and in his final months worked to organize a "multiracial army of the poor" to march on Washington, D.C. Sadly, his Poor People's Campaign was stymied by his death just weeks before the planned rally.
Here are some quotes from Dr. King that you may not have heard before, but which are worth thinking about and teaching about:
"A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death." - 1967
"Nonviolence is the answer to the crucial political and moral questions of our time: the need for man to overcome oppression and violence without resorting to oppression and violence. Man must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression and retaliation. The foundation of such a method is love." - 1964
"The curse of poverty has no justification in our age. It is socially as cruel and blind as the practice of cannibalism at the dawn of civilization, when men ate each other because they had not yet learned to take food from the soil or to consume the abundant animal life around them. The time has come for us to civilize ourselves by the total, direct and immediate abolition of poverty." - 1967
"Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that. Hate multiplies hate, violence multiplies violence, and toughness multiplies toughness in a descending spiral of destruction....The chain reaction of evil--hate begetting hate, wars producing more wars--must be broken, or we shall be plunged into the dark abyss of annihilation." - 1963
"I am aware that there are many who wince at a distinction between property and persons--who hold both sacrosanct. My views are not so rigid. A life is sacred. Property is intended to serve life, and no matter how much we surround it with rights and respect, it has no personal being. It is part of the earth man walks on; it is not man." - 1967
"The church must be reminded that it is not the master or the servant of the state, but rather the conscience of the state. It must be the guide and the critic of the state, and never its tool. If the church does not recapture its prophetic zeal, it will become an irrelevant social club without moral or spiritual authority." - 1963
"Many of the ugly pages of American history have been obscured and forgotten....America owes a debt of justice which it has only begun to pay. If it loses the will to finish or slackens in its determination, history will recall its crimes and the country that would be great will lack the most indispensable element of greatness--justice." - 1967
Great post, Jeremy. Ironically, just last night a local history prof. was talking to me about how local MLK curriculum seems to stop far short in describing MLK's work around war, poverty, class, and global awareness. Do you think that's from a lack of understanding and information or an intentional avoidance? That latter work of MLK certainly represents his evolved and deeper understanding of the issues. That would seem to make it the most appropriate place to begin.
ReplyDeleteBy the way, Interfaith Worker Justice (www.iwj.org) is one organization that does carry the torch for much of that "unknown legacy" work. IWJ is headed by my friend Kim Bobo, who's a very inspired and committed leader.