The Uniqueness Of Ethical Leadership Style By Martin Luther King Jr - Essay Example

Ethical leadership Martin Luther King Jr. Leadership and ethics go hand in hand and leadership is the ability to bring people together to dedicate themselves to a common goal. There are several qualities in a leader and if we look at some of the well known leaders, most of it is a common feature among them and they are all able to influence people in one way or the other. For instance, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Lee Iacoco, Eleanor Roosevelt, Angela Davis are known because of what they have accomplished and how these accomplishments changed our world. This paper focuses mainly on the ethical leadership of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Ethical leadership is about the quality of a leader to fight for the ethics which is applicable for everybody. This is really shown in the life of Martin Luther King Jr., whose says that "In struggling for human dignity the oppressed people of the world must not allow themselves to become bitter or indulge in hate campaigns. To retaliate with hate and bitterness would do nothing but intensify the hate in the world. Along the way of life, someone must have sense enough and morality enough to cut off the chain of hate. This can be done only by projecting the ethics of love to the center of our lives" "There are two types of laws: there are just laws and there are unjust laws...What is the difference between the two...An unjust law is a man-made code that is out of harmony with the moral law. The ultimate test of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and moments of convenience, but where he stands in moments of challenge and moments of controversy." (quietspaces.com n.pag) His purpose in life was to give the true meaning of freedom and he had taken the path of non-violence to achieve it. He had studied the life great leader Mahatma Gandhi, who also achieved freedom for his nation through the means of nonviolence. With this ethical means he fought against discrimination and racialism particularly, towards the black or the Negro community in United States. He fought for their rights by telling the suppressing community the true meaning of freedom that is equality in all human being without the discrimination in color of skin. Martin Luther King even while he was a student he was known for his leadership qualities and was rewarded several times. He was elected president of the senior class and delivered the valedictory address; he won the Pearl Plafker Award for the most outstanding student; and he received the J. Lewis Crozer fellowship for graduate study at a university of his choice. Dr. King was awarded honorary degrees from a number of colleges and universities in the United States and several other foreign countries (Brown et al. n.pag 2006). Martin Luther King also followed his father's and grandfather's steps and entered the Christian ministry. He was ordained in February 1948 at the age of nineteen at Ebenezer Baptist Church, Atlanta, Georgia and became Assistant Pastor of Ebenezer. Soon after the completion of his studies at Boston University, he accepted the call of Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, Montgomery, Alabama (Brown et al. n.pag 2006). Psychological research has discovered the following positive personality variables associated with strong leadership includes warmth, friendliness, self-confidence, ability to stand up to pressure. These researches have also found that the absence of the negative qualities of arrogance, hostility, boastfulness, egotism, and passivity are correlated with positive leadership (Romney, 1996). If we look into the life of King, it can be said that he is among the top leaders of the world. He was always a strong worker for civil rights for members of his race as a member of the executive committee of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. The Montgomery Bus Boycott, in 1955 led by King lasted for 382 days and was among ones in which he was arrested, his home was bombed, he was subjected to personal abuse. King was arrested during this campaign, which ended with a United States Supreme Court decision outlawing racial segregation on all public transport but, king was determined to fight against discrimination. Even after these hardships he emerged as a Negro leader. He believed in non-violence and always followed the principles of non-violence. The most important attribute for a leader is being principle-centered. King was one such leader with principles. Centering on principles that are universal and timeless provides a foundation and compass to guide every decision and every act. All enduring philosophies, religions and thoughts are based on principles such as integrity, compassion, trust, honesty, accountability and others at their core. In 1957 King 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 and since King was a believer of the philosophies of non-violent civil disobedience used successfully in India by Mohandas "Mahatma" Gandhi, and he applied this philosophy to the protests organized by the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (Wikipedia n.pag, 2007). King was among the leaders of the so-called "Big Six" civil rights organizations who were instrumental in the organization of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom in 1963. The purpose of this march was to dramatize the desperate condition of blacks in the South and a very public opportunity to place organizers' concerns and grievances squarely before the seat of power in the nation's capital. The march did, however, make specific demands: an end to racial isolation in public school; important 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. Despite tensions, the march was a success. More than a quarter of a million people of different 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's history. King's "I Have a Dream" speech inspired and electrified the crowd (Wikipedia n.pag, 2007). 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 (nobelprize.org n. pag, 1964). He was one among the leaders who fought for peace in the world. 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 choice for the prize, he announced that he would turn over the prize money of $54,123 to the furtherance of the civil rights movement (nobelprize.org n. pag, 1964). King also voiced against certain decisions taken by the US government. In 1965, King began to express doubts about the United States' role in the Vietnam War. In this context, on April 4, 1967 King delivered the speech "Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence". In this speech he spoke strongly against the U.S.'s role in the war, insisting that the U.S. was in Vietnam "to occupy it as an American colony" and calling the US government "the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today." By this he argued that the country needed larger and broader moral changes. King also stated that "True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar; it comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring." From Vietnam to South Africa to Latin America, King said, the U.S. was "on the wrong side of a world revolution." King questioned "our alliance with the landed gentry of Latin America," and asked why the U.S. was suppressing revolutions "of the shirtless and barefoot people" in the Third World, instead of supporting them. King had read Marx while at Morehouse, but while he rejected "traditional capitalism," he also rejected Communism due to its "materialistic interpretation of history" that denied religion, its "ethical relativism," and its "political totalitarianism." King organized and led marches for blacks' right to vote, desegregation, labor rights and other basic civil rights. Most of these rights were successfully enacted into United States law with the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Throughout his career of service, King wrote and spoke often, drawing on his long experience as a preacher. His "Letter from Birmingham Jail", written in 1963, is a passionate statement of his crusade for justice (Wikipedia n.pag, 2007). In 1968, King and the SCLC organized the "Poor People's Campaign" to address issues of economic justice. However, according to the article "Coalition Building and Mobilization Against Poverty", King and SCLC's Poor People's Campaign was not supported by the other leaders of the Civil Rights Movement, including Bayard Rustin. Their opposition incorporated arguments that the goals of Poor People Campaign was too broad, the demands unrealizable, and thought these campaigns would accelerate the backlash and repression on the poor and the black. The campaign culminated in a march on Washington, D.C. demanding economic aid to the poorest communities of the United States. He crisscrossed the country to assemble "a multiracial army of the poor" that would descend on Washington-engaging in nonviolent civil disobedience at the Capitol, if need be-until Congress enacted a poor people's bill of rights. Reader's Digest warned of an "insurrection." In King's economic bill of rights that called for massive government jobs programs to rebuild America's cities, he saw a necessity to confront a Congress that had demonstrated its "hostility to the poor"-appropriating "military funds with alacrity and generosity," but providing "poverty funds with miserliness." His vision was for change that was more revolutionary than mere reform: he cited systematic flaws of racism, poverty, militarism and materialism, and that "reconstruction of society itself is the real issue to be faced." (Wikipedia n.pag, 2007). Dr. King's concept of somebodiness gave black and poor people a new sense of worth and dignity. His philosophy of nonviolent direct action, and his strategies for rational and non-destructive social change, galvanized the conscience of this nation and reordered its priorities. The Voting Rights Act of 1965, for example, went to Congress as a result of the Selma to Montgomery march. His wisdom, his words, his actions, his commitment, and his dreams for a new cast of life, are intertwined with the American experience (Brown et al. n.pag 2006). 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 (nobelprize.org n. pag, 1964). A good leader inspires others to follow by setting an example and Martin Luther King, Jr. is one among them. The greatest authority in leadership is reserved for those who have done themselves the things they seek to motivate others to do. He fought against racism and is among the most adored leaders. His writings and speeches were most powerful and inspired many of them to choose him as a role model. King had set his direction against racial discrimination and strived to influence people to follow that direction. He is a role model for those who adopts a persona that embodies his mission and vision, and is worthy of imitation. Work cited Brown, M., Clark, I. and Hart, A. Martin Luther King, Jr.: A Biographical Sketch (14 March 2006) LSU Libraries, nobelprize.org n. Martin Luther King: The Nobel Peace Prize 1964, Biography (1964) The Nobel Foundation 15 June 2007 quietspaces.com Dr. Martin Luther King: Quotations & Excerpts 15 June 2007 Romney, P. Being a Leader, (1996), 15 June 2007 Wikipedia Martin Luther King, Jr. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., 15 June 2007 Read More