Social Change due to Martin Luther King - Essay Example

Leading Social Change Martin Luther King, Jr. was an activist, American pastor, and the leader of various social groups including civil rights movements. His Christian beliefs made the King to be popular in his efforts to advocate for civil rights since he advanced his agenda using civil disobedience that are not violent. King received various prizes and honors after leading the societal mass movements in fighting for change on issues that affected the societal world. For example, he received a Nobel Peace Prize in October 1964 after successfully combating the racial inequality through non-violence mechanisms (Arsenault, p. 62). In his final events of his life, King had actively expanded his notions in fighting against poverty and Vietnam War. This is especially when he alienated his personal liberals through a speech dubbed “Beyond Vietnam” that he delivered in 1967. Before his assassinations, King had planned a national event that aimed to eliminate poverty in USA named Poor People’s Campaign, when he faced his death before its happening. His assassination followed various riots and demonstrations in several cities in an effort to express solidarity of Luther King (Ling, p. 296). However, the ability of Luther King to organize, coordinate, and influence various civil groups for a common cause left many to wonder his personal traits and leadership styles. This has aroused the interests of conducting this research study to establish various scopes and strategies used by Luther King in congregating the crowd to follow his objected issues for social change. The paper also aims at providing the importance of moral leadership and social change in the political, cultural, and economic aspects. Leadership can be theoretically defined as a potential of social influence where an individual can coordinate all the necessary resources to support or aid other people in order to achieve a common agenda (Fiedler, p. 5). Other definitions of the leader include simply an individual who directs or guides others. A leader may also be referred as a person who has follower in a given task. On the other hand, the social change is referred to as an alteration of a societal order including a change in social behaviors, relations, institutions, and nature, among other aspects. It may also be referred to as a revolution of social order through a specific event of objectivity. This means that the external pressures related to religious, cultural, economic, technological, and scientific phenomenon drive the social change. Martin Luther King understood well the importance of social change that gave him a motivation and notions of coordinating his followers. He used attractive speeches and wit words that touched the lives of the people in the societal world. The social change is important to the people’s lives, as they custom their activities to the way that conforms to the changing economical, technological, and political formalities. The social change helps to advocate for moral responsibilities of the people, especially during the current days where the resources are limited. Such limitations results to chaotic sharing or a divisive sense of ownership, thereby causing wars or chaos in the society. However, most changes ensure a planned societal welfare that helps to predict the occurrence of a future issue that might affect the community in one way or another. Moreover, the social change is important to the living styles of the people, as it assures better living conditions due to progression of societal changes from the traditional to modern living styles that brings comfort and satisfaction, as explained by Eisenstadt (p. 11). This is because the societal changes in the community upgrade the living standards to the manner that improves the conditions of the society. In this case, the leaders of social change are only responsible of providing the necessary informational resources to make the changes happen. Martin Luther King was a man of peace and destiny, who rose from various levels of spiritual awareness to a historical hero and role model with a goal of serving his people. His dreams, words, wisdom, deeds, and commitments reflected the hopes of life and noble aspirations for human beings. His traits were always hopeful and joyous to other people. In addition, he had brilliant insights and charismatic figure that attracted huge crowd, especially through magnificence of his conceptual words. The goals and visions of King can be simplified to the elimination of injustices and liberation of humankind in the societal platform. He did all the best to ensure all the laws that prevented these goals are changed, which were perceived to be a big challenge for Western democracies. His doctrines were strong and attractive to several religious people and even those interested in the social justice since they were mostly inspirational for a stable and orderly social setting. Being a preacher and moralist gave King a motivation to interact with the people cohesively and simultaneously. This helped him to understand various issues affecting the common citizen, especially the ones that are caused by structural frameworks in the societal setting such as existing laws. King believed that the issues affecting the common person are adjustable provided they are caused by the will of man. He respected the issues caused by the nature, but totally disagreed on the world issues such as poverty, war, or even constitutional injustice. In addition to King’s personal attributes, he was warm, compassionate, honest, and wise leader with a clear perception of a purpose, internal balances, and a self defined that were expressed by his deeds. His contributions to social change were meaningful and dramatic to the global societies and were adversely appreciated everywhere. This is because the contributions were beneficial to the rest of the world by establishing a moral and equal society that gave hopes to several neglected and oppressed groups. This is especially in the lines of tribalism, racism, gender, social class, and religion. He frankly motivated the nations and their citizens to live in a true meaning of their lives and heritage, which infused the people’s pride and the necessary strength and determinations to change the societal world. Such motivations include giving poor people the hopes, making the oppressed feel supported, gave friendship aspects to the lonely people, assisted the lost minded people find the correct way, and make the society to understand the ignorant gurus. Martin Luther King was acknowledged leader of his own, who had a potential to fuse ideals in relation to the current happenings at the time into a liberated scope of the society. In other words, King was capable of delivering inspirational concepts of solving future challenges that may affect the societies. He delivered his sermons in relation to the religious teaches that made his efforts to organize the civil groups in good relations with the government. For example, none of his demonstrations was faced with violent actions since he understood the moral knowledge and the purpose of rioting. Instead, the King’s followers were united by his inspirational words that gave then their moral dignity in their roles of seeking social order. In other words, King did not use any hierarchical model in achieving their goals, but gained anonymous support from members of public to achieve the course. King’s religious notions were strengthened when he was ordained to the Christianity ministry at a tender age of nineteen. Therefore, he maintained his moral pedagogy of respecting the religious attributes and practices of loving, creating peace, and respecting the people. However, his decisions to fight social injustices made him to protect the lives of the people, especially respecting the constitution that was established by the founding fathers. King had a vision of ensuring the fundamental rights of a person are provided to all, as stipulated in the constitution and ensure it is equally applied to all. He was also committed to ensure the nation fulfills the American dream and promises of true democracy. Martin Luther King led other civil and human rights groups with strength of sacrificing his life to ensure they achieve their missions (Ching, p. 18). He strongly fought for racial equality and social justice and centered his struggles to the commitment of change in public opinion in American societies through the reaffirmation that all people are equal. In conclusion, Martin Luther King, Jr. was a unique leader by his efforts of leading religiously, politically, and socially his people towards achieving their goals and missions of social change. He played an important role of educational integration, elimination of racism in public services, fight for rights to vote, better wages and housing for workers, and elimination of traditional and legal barriers to human dignity. His religious leadership approaches made King to be respected person even to the governmental agencies since all their activities were non-violent in their efforts to seek social change and justice. The political and sociological factors were the main factors that drove King towards achieving the social change, since his main goal was to advocate for alteration of structural frameworks in the social world. Works Cited Arsenault, Raymond. Freedom Riders: 1961 and the Struggle for Racial Justice. London: Oxford University Press. 2006. ISBN 0-19-513674-8 Ching, Jacqueline. The Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. New York: Rosen Publishing. 2002. ISBN 0-8239-3543-4 Eisenstadt, Noah. Tradition, Change, and Modernity. 1973. Malabar, FL: Krieger Publishing. Fiedler, Fred. A theory of leadership effectiveness. McGraw-Hill: Harper and Row Publishers Inc. 1967  Ling, Peter J. Martin Luther King, Jr. New York: Routledge. 2002ISBN 0-415-21664-8. Read More