The Black Force That Moved America: The Achievements of Martin Luther King, Jr - Essay Example

The Black Force That Moved America: The Achievements of Martin Luther King, Jr. And 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." Martin Luther King Jr. Quoted from "I Have a Dream" speech, August 28, 1963 Once a great man will always remain a great man, especially if he made a special mark on people's hearts after all what he had done and inspired many others to carry on the struggles to attain ultimate freedom from the bondage of racial discrimination. On August 23, 1968, Martin Luther King Jr. stood by the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C. Much to the knowledge of everyone, he delivered what is regarded as one of the greatest speeches in American history. King himself seemed to sense the historic importance of the moment as he opened his "I Have a Dream" speech by calling the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom "the greatest demonstration for freedom in the history of our nation." The landmark protest, which drew more than 200,000 people, announced a turning point in the civil rights movement and set the stage for the movement's two most important legislative achievements, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 (Microsoft Encarta 2005). It is interesting to speculate on what the course of American history might have been, if Martin Luther King, Jr. had not gone to Montgomery, Alabama in 1954. But he did go, and the America he had grown up in was forever changed. The historic bus boycott that began there in late 1955 brought him national recognition and triggered a decade of direct-action protest that permanently altered the status of black Americans. Andrew Young once said that Rosa Parks thrust greatness upon King. Rosa Parks is a leading member of the local branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), who was famous for her refusal to give her bus seat to a white man. Certainly she shaped the setting in which he emerged as a national figure and challenged him to translate his theory of nonviolence into practice. King had no intention of initiating a major campaign in Montgomery, but Mrs. Parks' refusal to yield her bus seat to a white man on December 1, 1955 forced the first serious test of King's willingness to undergo personal sacrifice for the sake of Negro freedom. She has never claimed much credit for what happened in Montgomery, but Rosa Parks' action was a catalyst in King's rise to prominence and the emergence of the southern civil rights movement that dominated American social history for a decade (SCLC/NH, National Conventions, 1980). Local leaders of the NAACP, especially Edgar D. Nixon, recognized that the arrest of the popular and highly respected Parks was the event that could rally local blacks to a bus protest. Nixonalsobelievedthat a citywide protest should be led by someone who could unify the community. Unlike Nixon and other leaders in Montgomery's black community, the recently arrived King had no enemies. Furthermore, Nixon saw King's public-speaking gifts as great assets in the battle for black civil rights in Montgomery. King was soon chosen as president of the Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA), the organization that directed the bus boycott. By the time the Supreme Court upheld the lower court decision in November 1956, King prominence elevated him to become leading black national figure. His memoir of the bus boycott, Stride Toward Freedom (1958), provided a thoughtful account of that experience and further extended King's national influence. Another important contribution of King is the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), an organization of black churches and ministers that aimed to challenge racial segregation. As SCLC's president, King became the organization's dominant personality and its primary intellectual influence. He was responsible for much of the organization's fund-raising, which he frequently conducted in conjunction with preaching engagements in Northern churches. The history of SCLC after 1959 was the story of the interaction of campaigns and organizational development. Both were important to its identity, and neither in itself explains the essence of the organization. Its loose structure sharply contrasted with the NAACP. SCLC had no membership, but rather affiliates which paid a small fee of about $25 to $50. The activities of SCLC were local in nature rather than guided meticulously from Atlanta. But the organization depended upon King's visibility and upon a sense of active movement. Without that sense of carrying on what began in Montgomery, there would have been no Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC/NH, National Conventions, 1980). In his fervent desire to completelyharmonize his understanding of Gandhi's principle of nonviolent persuasion, called satyagraha, King had determined to use as his main instrument of social protest and he visited India in 1959. The next year he gave up his pastorate in Montgomery to become co-pastor (with his father) of the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta (Norrell, 2005). During the 1960s, King inspired many youths to join him in his protests and sit-in movements. He was a hero to the black young people and to some a kind of pastor. Certainly the nonviolent approach was the model most influential upon the sit-ins. Franklin McCain, in an interview by Raines (1977), recounted that the sit-in movement started out as a movement of nonviolence and as a Christian movement and we wanted to make that very clear to everybody, that it was a movement that was seeking justice more than anything else and not a movement to start a war. He further explained that "Martin Luther King was a hero. . . but he was not the individual that we had upmost in mind when we started the sit-in movement" (Raines, 1977, p. 79). Presumably, he was describing Mahatma Gandhi. But, to American youths that time, they compared King to Gandhi, as they both uphold nonviolence in forwarding their calls of protests. King's adherence on nonviolence and direct-action was not new. What was distinctive in his case was the theological philosophical basis that shaped his concept of an ideal mass movement, energized chiefly by nonviolence. He grounded it in love - first, God's love for man, then the derivative love among human beings. His views do not adhere to naive sentimentalism. The young civil rights leader was the first to recognize that his view was unnatural in a purely logical sense, but not when viewed in Christian terms, in short this is the kind of love exemplified in Christianity. To wit, he wrote: It would be nonsense to urge men to love their oppressors in an affectionate sense.'Love' in this connection means understanding good will." King distinguished between agape and other types of love. "Agape means nothing sentimental or basically affectionate; it means understanding, redeeming good will for all men, an overflowing love which seeks nothing in return (King 1957, p. 166). With his predilection to nonviolence, it is unfortunate that he meted such a violent demise. King was assassinated in Memphis by a sniper on April 4, 1968. The news of the assassination summoned a national uproar of shock and anger throughout the nation and the world, prompting riots in more than 100 United States cities in the days following King's death. In 1969, James Earl Ray, an escaped white convict, pleaded guilty to the murder of King and was sentenced to 99 years in prison (Oates, 1982). Nonetheless, the achievements of the late Martin Luther King will never be eradicated in US history. For he was a great man to begin with; and he fanned the flames of the black movement to forward their issues to the US government. How he lived his life was not just an inspiration to black people, but in his greater triumph is to convince even the white people to support his advocacy of nonviolence. Since then, Martin Luther King, Jr. became a symbol of black courage and achievement, high moral leadership, and the ability of Americans to address and overcome racial divisions. Works Cited King, Martin Luther Jr., Nonviolence and Racial Justice, Christian Century, vol. 74, (February 6, 1957). King, Martin Luther Jr., Stride Toward Freedom: The Montgomery Story (New York: Harper and Row, 1958) Norrell, Robert J. Martin Luther King, Jr. Microsoft Encarta 2005 (CD-ROM). Redmond, WA: Microsoft Corporation, 2005. Oates, Stephen B. Let the Trumpet Sound: The Life of Martin Luther King, Jr. (New York: Harper and Row, 1982) Raines, Howell. My Soul Is Rested. (New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1977), SCLC/NH, National Conventions, Twenty-Second Annual Convention, Cleveland, Ohio, August 10, 1980. Read More