King's Lost Legacy

“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., Report to SCLC Staff, May 1967. 

Yes. That Martin Luther King. It's sad that so many people, supported by the very governmental system King was so critical of, only know him as the non-violent peacemaker who wanted America to look beyond its racial divisions. He was that, but he was so much more, and his political activism was much more intense--and much more radical--than what mainstream America has glommed onto by making one Monday out of the year a federal holiday in his honor.

For starters, he was widely hated in his own time--a time that was not that long ago.

We in 2019 are, at best, only a few generations removed from very real and state-sanctioned segregation between men and women of different races--legitimized inequality based on nothing but the color of someone's skin and the happenstance of where their ancestors were born. This, in a nation so many say is Christian.

And what did this nation think of the man who, peacefully and inspired by a God-given love for humanity, refused to follow immoral laws that denied a portion of the country their basic dignity? They didn't like him. 

Only 22% approved of his methods--methods that included sitting at the same counters as white people, refusing to give up seats to white people, and typically just engaging in the same facets of society as white people. These egregious methods of "living" were too much for most Americans to deal with. I'm guessing we would hear a lot of the same "arguments" we hear today against protesters who peacefully block roads (which King did as well) or otherwise become a non-violent nuisance to their government. 

Today us and our institutions universally acknowledge King's activism as a good and noble thing, but back then the US Government was right in step with the majority of Americans. The FBI routinely and consistently violated King's rights to privacy by wiretapping his home, office, and by gathering intelligence on him--recording tens of thousands of memos in the 1960s. They viewed him as a potential enemy of the state and a communist (he was probably the first--if loving humanity and refusing to follow immoral laws makes you an enemy--but definitely not the second). 

They even went as far as writing him a letter, allegedly by one of his followers, calling him a "complete fraud and a great liability to all of us Negroes." It also contained the threat, “your end is approaching," and presumably a call to kill himself in the words, "there is only one thing left for you to do. You know what it is."

All of this was done with approval (but perhaps not oversight) by the highest office in the land: then-president John F. Kennedy, everyone's dashing rogue despite the fact that he bedded basically anything on two legs. 

Okay, now let's go overthrow a democratically-elected government. 

The full, radical activism of Dr. King is completely lost when we allow our government and society to white-wash his entire life's work and reduce him to a more palatable person that doesn't ask anything out of us or make any demands on our current way of life.

And he did make demands...

“And one day we must ask the question, ‘Why are there forty million poor people in America? And when you begin to ask that question, you are raising questions about the economic system, about a broader distribution of wealth.’ When you ask that question, you begin to question the capitalistic economy. And I’m simply saying that more and more, we’ve got to begin to ask questions about the whole society…” –Martin Luther King, Jr. in his Speech to Southern Christian Leadership Conference Atlanta, Georgia, August 16, 1967.

“The evils of capitalism are as real as the evils of militarism and evils of racism.” –Martin Luther King, Jr. in his Speech to SCLC Board, March 30, 1967. 

"I imagine you already know that I am much more socialistic in my economic theory than capitalistic… [Capitalism] started out with a noble and high motive… but like most human systems it fell victim to the very thing it was revolting against. So today capitalism has out-lived its usefulness.” – Martin Luther King, Jr. in his Letter to Coretta Scott, July 18, 1952.

"And the leaders of the world today talk eloquently about peace. Every time we drop our bombs in North Vietnam, President Johnson talks eloquently about peace. What is the problem? They are talking about peace as a distant goal, as an end we seek, but one day we must come to see that peace is not merely a distant goal we seek, but that it is a means by which we arrive at that goal. We must pursue peaceful ends through peaceful means. All of this is saying that, in the final analysis, means and ends must cohere because the end is preexistent in the means, and ultimately destructive means cannot bring about constructive ends."
--Martin Luther King, Jr., "A Christmas Sermon on Peace," The Trumpet of Conscience, 24 December 1967

"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., December 1964 

"I refuse to accept the cynical notion that nation after nation must spiral down a militaristic stairway into the hell of nuclear annihilation... I believe that even amid today's mortar bursts and whining bullets, there is still hope for a brighter tomorrow... I still believe that one day mankind will bow before the altars of God and be crowned triumphant over war and bloodshed."
--Martin Luther King, Jr., Address in Acceptance of Nobel Peace Prize, 10 December 1964  

If we are truly to truly honor his legacy, we must honor his true legacy--which includes attacking the evils of capitalism, imperialism, and war. 

Why have we as a culture forgotten the real MLK? Partly because of a state that couldn't deny the love its people had for a great man, but also couldn't follow all that man lived for without relinquishing the very thing that makes a state what it is--namely, systematic violence and economic oppression. 

But that is only partly the cause.

The other part is that we, as consumers and upholders of that order, don't want to be bothered with having to change our lives. We've decided that we can love and appreciate King without challenging the systems that create poverty he spoke against, and we can respect King's mission of non-violence and love of mankind while still serving a country that commits war and brings death to thousands across the globe.

In short we're lazy and uninspired.

Dr. King was a man of intense faith, and his love for humanity and his activism sprang from that wellspring. 

"So I say to you, seek God, and discover Him and make Him a power in your life. Without Him all of our efforts turn to ashes and our sunrises into darkest nights. Without Him, life is a meaningless drama with the decisive scenes missing. But with him we are able to rise from the fatigue of despair to the buoyancy of hope. With Him we are able to rise from the midnight of desperation to the daybreak of Joy. St. Augustine was right--we were made for God and we will be restless until we find rest in Him."--Martin Luther King Jr, the Measure of a Man

It was his intense faith and personal reflection that brought him to the conclusions he came to about people, government, and society. It's what made him fight for what's right without arms and without violence. It's what made him say, to his "most bitter opponents:"

"We shall match your capacity to inflict suffering by our capacity to endure suffering. We shall meet your physical force with soul force. Do to us what you will, and we shall continue to love you. We cannot in all good conscience obey unjust laws, because non-cooperation with evil is as much a moral obligation as is cooperation with good. Throw us in jail, and we will still love you. Bomb our homes and threaten our children and we shall still love you. Send your hooded perpetrators of violence into our community at the midnight hour and beat us and leave us half dead, and we shall still love you. But be assured that we will wear you down by our capacity to suffer. One day we shall win freedom, but not only for ourselves. We shall so appeal to your heart and conscience that we shall win you in the process, and our victory will be a double victory." -- Martin Luther King, Jr., Loving Your Enemies