Martin Luther King, We Need Your Voice Today!
TRANSCEND MEMBERS, 8 Apr 2013
John Scales Avery – TRANSCEND Media Service
The son of a southern Baptist minister, Martin Luther King, Jr received his Ph.D. in theology from Boston University in 1955. During his studies, he had admired Thoreau’s essay “On the Duty of Civil Disobedience,” and he had also been greatly moved by the life and teachings of Mahatma Gandhi.
King applies the teachings of Thoreau and Gandhi to the Civil Rights movement
Martin Luther King Jr. had been pastor of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery Alabama for only a year when he was chosen to lead a boycott protesting segregation in the Montgomery buses. Suddenly thrust into this situation of intense conflict, he remembered both the Christian principle of loving one’s enemies and Gandhi’s methods of non-violent protest. In his first speech as President of the Montgomery Improvement Association (a speech which the rapid pace of events had forced him to prepare in only twenty minutes, five of which he spent in prayer), he said:
“Our method will be that of persuasion, not coercion. We will only say to people, ‘Let your conscience be your guide’. Our actions must be guided by the deepest principles of our Christian faith. Love must be our regulating ideal. Once again we must hear the words of Jesus echoing across the centuries: ‘Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, and pray for them that despitefully use you.’ If we fail to do this, our protest will end up as a meaningless drama on the stage of history, and its memory will be
shrouded by the ugly garments of shame. In spite of the mistreatment that we have confronted, we must not become bitter and end up by hating our white brothers. As Booker T. Washington said, ‘Let no man pull you down so low as to make you hate him.’”
“If you will protest courageously, and yet with dignity and Christian love, when the history books are written in future generations, the historians will have to pause and say, ‘There lived a great people, a black people, who injected new meaning and dignity into the veins of civilization.’ This is our
challenge and our overwhelming responsibility.”
Victory in the court of public opinion
This speech, which Dr. King made in December 1955, set the tone of the black civil rights movement. Although the protesters against racism were often faced with brutality and violence; although many of them, including Dr. King were unjustly jailed; although the homes of the leaders were bombed; although they constantly received telephone calls threatening their lives; although many civil rights workers were severely beaten, and several of them killed, they never resorted to violence in their protests against racial discrimination. Because of this adherence to Christian ethics, public opinion shifted to the side of the civil rights movement, and the United States Supreme Court ruled bus segregation to be unconstitutional.
Welcomed to India by Nehru
In 1959, while recovering from an almost-fatal stabbing, Martin Luther King Jr. visited India at the invitation of Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru. Dr. King and his wife Coretta were warmly welcomed by Nehru, who changed his schedule in order to meet them. They had an opportunity to visit a religious community or “ashram” that Gandhi had founded, and they discussed non-violence with many of Gandhi’s disciples.
King is awarded the Nobel Peace Prize
In 1964, the change in public opinion produced by the non-violent black civil rights movement resulted in the passage of the civil rights act. In the same year, Dr. King was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. He accepted it, not as an individual, but on behalf of all civil rights workers; and he immediately gave all the prize money to the movement.
Opposition to war and to nuclear weapons; Assassination
In 1967, a year before his assassination, Dr. King forcefully condemned the Viet Nam war in an address at a massive peace rally in New York City. He felt that opposition to war followed naturally from his advocacy of non-violence. In his book, “Strength to Love”, Dr. King wrote,“Wisdom born of experience should tell us that war is obsolete. There may have been a time when war served a negative good by preventing the spread of an evil force, but the power of modern weapons eliminates even the possibility that war may serve as a negative good. If we assume that life is worth living, and that man has a right to survival, then we must find an alternative to war … I am convinced that the Church cannot be silent while mankind faces the threat of nuclear annihilation. If the church is true to her mission, she must call for an end to the nuclear arms race.” A number of people, including members of his own family, believe that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was killed because of his opposition to the Viet Nam War.
Redemptive love
Concerning the Christian principle of loving one’s enemies, Dr. King wrote: “Why should we love our enemies? Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate. Only love can do that … Love is the only force capable of transforming an enemy into a friend. We never get rid of an enemy by meeting hate with hate; we get rid of an enemy by getting rid of enmity… It is this attitude that made it possible for Lincoln to speak a kind word about the South during the Civil War, when feeling was most bitter. Asked by a shocked bystander how he could do this, Lincoln said, ‘Madam, do I not destroy my enemies when I make them my friends?’ This is the power of redemptive love.”
To a large extent, the black civil rights movement of the ’50’s and ’60’s succeeded in ending legalized racial discrimination in America. If the methods used had been violent, the movement could easily have degenerated into a nightmare of interracial hatred; but by remembering the Christian message, “Love your enemy; do good to them that despitefully use you”, Martin Luther King Jr. raised the ethical level of the civil rights movement; and the final result was harmony and understanding between the black and white communities. Later the nonviolent methods of Gandhi and King were successfully applied to the South African struggle against Apartheid by Nelson Mandela and his followers.
What would Martin Luther King say today?
What would Dr. King say about the illegal detention of prisoners at Guantanamo?
What would Dr. King say about governments that use torture?
What would Dr. King say about the worldwide Gulag of prisons for “extraordinary rendition”?
What would Dr. King say about wholesale wiretapping under the Patriot Act?
What would Dr. King say about indefinite detention without trial under the National Defense Authorization Act?
What would Dr. King say about the imprisonment of whistle-blowers while war criminals go free?
What would Dr. King say about the 1,700,000,000,000.00 dollars which the world spends each year on armaments while 11 million children die each year from poverty and starvation?
What would Dr. King say about the illegal war that ruined Iraq, smashing its infrastructure, killing a million innocent people and forcing two million to flee as refugees?
What would Dr. King say about oil and petrodollars as motives for war?
What would Dr. King say about the militarization of space?
What would Dr. King say about perpetual war under the guise of a “war on terror”?
What would Dr. King say about the craven failure of the mass media to educate us and to mobilize the public to the action needed to solve the multiple threats to our beautiful world?
What would Dr. King say about a fossil fuel industry that pays advertisers do deny climate change?
What would Dr. King say about nations which quarrel about who is to blame for climate change while each of them pours megatons of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere?
What would Dr. King say about advertisers who convince us that we cannot be happy without more and more material goods?
What would Dr. King say about the illegal long-distance killing of men, women and children by means of drones?
What would Dr. King say about the threat of an omnicidal nuclear war, a threat that hangs like a dark cloud over the future of life on earth?
What would Dr. King say about wars of aggression aimed at gaining control over oil and other resources?
What would Dr. King say about the rape of Africa for the sake of its agricultural land and mineral resources?
What would Dr. King say about the illegal activities and greed of banks which are “too big to prosecute”?
What would Dr. King say about the destruction of the earth’s environment for the sake of profit?
What would Dr. King say about the fact that the United States Government has been enslaved by Israel?
What would Dr. King say about the threat of an all-destroying Third World War, initiated by a military attack on Iran?
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., eloquent champion of justice and equality, fearless opponent of war, we need your voice today!
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John Scales Avery, Ph.D. is a member of the TRANSCEND Network and Associate Professor Emeritus at the H.C. Ørsted Institute, University of Copenhagen, Denmark. He is chairman of both the Danish National Pugwash Group and the Danish Peace Academy and received his training in theoretical physics and theoretical chemistry at M.I.T., the University of Chicago and the University of London. He is the author of numerous books and articles both on scientific topics and on broader social questions. His most recent book is “Crisis 21: Civilization’s Crisis in the 21st Century.”
This article originally appeared on Transcend Media Service (TMS) on 8 Apr 2013.
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