The Social and Political Thought of Martin Luther King - Essay Example

The Social and Political Thought of Martin Luther King Martin Luther King (January 15, 1929 - April 4, 1968), one of the pillars of the American Civil Rights Movement, in his struggle for racial equality, contributed significantly to the cause of the African Americans and in a comparatively short span of life changed the face of America forever. Between the Montgomery Bus Boycott of 1956 and the Memphis Sanitation Workers' Strike of 1968,Martin Luther King, Jr's.,thoughts evolved and unfolded into a memorable socio-political career that was sabotaged on an April morning in 1968. Greatly influenced by Thoreau's idea - that men should not obey evil or unjust laws and convinced by Gandhi's Civil disobedience movement, King adopted non-violence as his motto in his fight for the African-Americans' equality. It was the Montgomery Bus Boycott, a year-long protest in Montgomery, Alabama, that inflamed the American Civil Rights Movement and catapulted King to national fame. In December 1955, 42,000 black residents of Montgomery began a year-long boycott of city buses (Montgomery Bus Boycott)1 to protest racially segregated seating. The Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA) was formed and King was elected as its president. That evening King inspired the audience with his words: "There comes a time when people get tired of being trampled over by the iron feet of oppression." With this speech, King was able to ignite the African-Americans' collective outrage into a grassroots movement that would sustain the boycott. King's nonviolent resistance was the mission statement that captained the cause of the Montgomery Bus Boycott, even in the face of violent opposition from the police and the whites. Even though the boycott was challenged throughout by violent protests, King did not let people forget that Christian principles were the base of the protest. He urged the black protestors when faced with violence, to "turn the other cheek". This set the tone for all of King's subsequent campaigns. The protest propelled the Civil Rights Movement into national consciousness and Martin Luther King Jr. into the public eye. In the words of King: "We have gained a new sense of dignity and destiny. We have discovered a new and powerful weapon-nonviolent resistance." After 381 days of intense struggle, African Americans eventually won their fight to desegregate seating on public buses, not only in Montgomery, but throughout the United States. With the success of the Montgomery bus boycott, King had begun his journey along the road of civil rights, whose ultimate destination was the realization of human rights, not only for the blacks but to all the underprivileged of America. Thomas F.Jackson begins his book, "From Civil Rights to Human Rights" by stating "Over the course of his public ministry, between the Montgomery bus boycott of 1956 and the Memphis sanitation workers' Strike of 1968, Martin Luther King, Jr., wove together African American dreams of freedom with global dreams of political and economic equality. King opposed racism, imperialism, poverty, and political disfranchisement in increasingly radical terms. Often he referred to the American civil rights movement as simply one expression of an international human rights revolution that demanded economic rights to work, income, housing, and security." Jackson argues that King's ideas and his socio-political thoughts did not undergo a sudden change towards economic justice in the final few years of his life but had begun taking root even in the initial years of his involvement in the civil rights movement. The fact that the theme of economic justice was central to King's thoughts throughout his career is evident from the way King attacked the unequal distribution of American wealth twice before the NAACP2.He even pointed out to a January MIA mass meeting that he could not preach about honesty to the poor without censuring the "economic conditions" forcing them into theft and dishonesty. King was instrumental in the founding of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) in 1957, a group created to harness the moral authority and organizing power of black churches to conduct non-violent protests in the service of civil rights reform. King and the SCLC applied the principles of nonviolent protest with great success by strategically choosing the method of protest and the places in which protests were carried out.(Wikipedia) The historic Civil Rights March that took place in Washington D.C in 1963 was a milestone in the civil rights movement. The march made specific demands of freedom and jobs and contributed to the atmosphere in which federal civil rights legislation could pass. Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech, fervent, rhythmic, and clear, described his hopes for the future: I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slaveowners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood. I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice. I have a dream that my four little children one day will live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but the content of their character. I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low. The rough places will be made plain and the crooked places will be made straight. This is the faith that I go back to the South with. With this faith we will be able to hew out of the mountains of despair the stone of hope. With this faith we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing we will be free one day. The needs of the movement for radical change grew, and several larger marches were planned and executed, including those in the following neighborhoods: Bogan, Belmont-Cragin, Jefferson Park, Evergreen Park (a suburb southwest of Chicago), Gage Park and Marquette Park, among others Birmingham3 had led to the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Selma4 led to the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which Johnson signed into law in August. Insofar as federal legislation was concerned, Selma marked the final stage of the Civil Rights Movement. It was the last major gain obtained by non-violent direct action. After the Selma victory, King changed his focus. In 1964, when riots broke out in the black ghettos of the Northern states, King realized that poverty and unemployment were the real reasons behind them. He understood the riots as he had always said that segregation and poverty were "twin evils." The aim of segregation, he said, was to keep blacks poor. In February 1966, King rented an apartment in Chicago slums for his family and himself, and began organizing protests against poverty and discrimination in housing and employment. Increasingly his focus was economic as he strongly believed that only by securing decent jobs and homes could African Americans escape humiliating life conditions. Chicago's Operation Breadbasket was not much of a success in securing employment for the blacks of Chicago. This metropolis of the North resisted tactics that had succeeded in the cities of the South. By turning his attention to the Vietnam War, King's attention began to get more global. In an April 4, 1967 appearance at the New York City Riverside Church - exactly one year before his death - King delivered Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence. In the 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 U.S. government "the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today." But he also argued that the country needed larger and broader moral changes: A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth. With righteous indignation, it will look across the seas and see individual capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa and South America, only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries, and say: "This is not just." King saw the war as essentially a fight by the ruthless capitalists against the helpless peasants. On 4 April 1967 at New York's Riverside Church, King delivered his first sermon devoted entirely to the issue of Vietnam. Even though King's anti-war stance met with criticism from fellow civil rights leaders, who questioned the wisdom of diverting much-needed attention away from the immediate concerns of African Americans, King believed the war exported the same spirit of racism and economic exploitation under which African Americans suffered at home. For King both situations, at home and in Vietnam were essentially the same. King stated in his "Beyond Vietnam" speech: "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. The Vietnam War, as well as the conditions in the cities, led King to adopt a belief in a kind of Christian socialism, and to concern himself with campaigns aimed at a redistribution of American wealth.In 1968, King and the SCLC organized the "Poor People's Campaign" to address issues of economic justice and to force Congress to enact a poor people's bill of rights. King's economic bill of rights called for massive government jobs programs to rebuild America's cities. He saw a crying need 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." He aimed more for a revolution than just reform.He cited systematic flaws of racism, poverty, militarism and materialism, and that "reconstruction of society itself is the real issue to be faced." In his "I Have A Dream" speech, he presented America as a wasted opportunity, but not as an evil thing itself. After the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 had passed, however, his view of the situation changed. Between racial tensions in the Northern ghettos, and the escalation of the Vietnam War, King realized that America's problems were more than legal. He began to see social problems as rooted in economic offences. Even the campaign that King was planning in the days before his assassination was a Poor People's March, which aimed for economic equality and equal distribution of America's wealth to all people, regardless of race. There is no doubt that the events of the 1960s transformed King from a harmless reformer to a radical threat to not only America's class system but the dominant institutions of the whole world. The last few years of his life made King understand beyond any doubt that the hurdles that he and his black community had to overcome were economic rather than legal and were associated with issues of class rather than race and he planned his course of action based on this strong belief of his. When compared to the formative years of his life as the civil rights leader, championing the cause of just the African Americans, the years before his untimely death and his campaigns of those years hold more meaning and value for the whole of humanity. The fact that he understood that the fate of any one nation is intertwined with that of the whole world is evident from his words, "We must move past indecision to action. We must find new ways to speak for peace in Vietnam and for justice throughout the developing world, a world that borders on our doors. If we do not act, we shall surely be dragged down the long, dark, and shameful corridors of time reserved for those who possess power without compassion, might without morality, and strength without sight". --Martin Luther King, Jr., "CONSCIENCE AND THE VIETNAM WAR" in The Trumpet of Conscience (1968) References Jackson Thomas F. From Civil Rights to Human Rights: Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Struggle for Economic Justice. Introduction. University of Pennsylvania Press.2006. Montgomery Bus Boycott. African American World. 25 April 2008 Martin Luther King, Jr.Wikipedia. 25 April 2008 "Beyond Vietnam," Address Delivered to the Clergy and Laymen concerned about Vietnam, at Riverside Church. 25 April 2008 Read More