On Martin Luther King, Jr.: Thinking Through Justice, Equity, and Compassion
Thinking Through Justice, Equity, and Compassion
 Dave Hudson, January 25, 2009
Good morning and thank you for coming to this service to help celebrate and reflect on the work of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and specifically, to help think through some of his important lessons on a topic that we as Unitarians, along with people of conscience more broadly, hold dear: justice, equity, and compassion. How do we undertake work towards a more just, equitable, and compassionate world? And what might we draw from the work of Martin Luther King, Jr. in trying to answer this question?
Before we get to trying to think these questions through, I'll offer a few biographical words for those of you who might not have heard of Dr. King before. Martin Luther King, Jr. was born in Atlanta, Georgia on January 15th, 1929, which means that today is exactly 80 years and 10 days since his birth. He spent the entirety of his adult life as a Baptist minister and the last 11 years as the head of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, which was the civil rights organization that he helped to found and through which he undertook virtually all his public work. And he was assassinated on April 4th, 1968 – at just 39 years old – in Memphis, Tennessee, likely with the help, if not direct involvement, of the U.S. federal authorities.
King's work as an outspoken human rights advocate and cultural critic was tireless and passionate, producing an intricate web of insights on topics ranging from love to the power of music to the role of the media to the dynamics of white identities and white privilege. But he is best known for his work as one of the leading figures in the U.S. civil rights struggles of the 1950s and 60s, particularly those struggles in the South that sought to end legalized racial segregation. But by the mid-1960s, when he started to be more vocal in challenging things like the Vietnam War, as well as poverty and racism in the United States as a whole – that is, when he started to focus his attention not just on the South, but on the economic structure, international policy, and cultural values of the United States as a whole – the FBI and the CIA started taking serious steps to eliminate him. And in particular, they talked about the need to replace him with what they called "a Negro leader who is clean" – that is, with someone who was manageable, whose ideas were less threatening, who more palatable to the status quo, someone who could more easily be contained and co-opted.
One of the great tragedies of the last 40 years has not only been Dr. King's absence as a living figure within current struggles for justice, but also his transformation, as a historical figure, into precisely such a "clean", manageable leader – the way in which his legacy has been made more palatable.
There is certainly no shortage of talk about Martin Luther King in our society; indeed, over the last week in particular, his name and words have been invoked incessantly and often, I'd add, irresponsibly in connection to the inauguration of Barack Obama. But as many have pointed out, when we hear about King today, we so often hear only a watered-down, sort of "Hallmark greeting card" version of his ideas, with his insights cleaned up to the degree that they are robbed of their power as tools for fundamental social change, that they indeed end up being used to reinforce the status quo, not challenge it.
When we hear about Martin Luther King, we tend, most often, to hear about the March on Washington in 1963, about his famous "I Have a Dream" speech, and particularly, about that one line, "I have a dream that my four children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character." And the lesson that tends to be distilled from this one line, stripped of context, is that we should not discriminate against one another on the basis of petty differences like skin colour. But, in a perverse logic, we in turn see this so-called "anti-discrimination" being used today to shut down discussions of white privilege, because you can't talk about racial injustice, you can't work on ending white supremacy, unless you talk about race, unless you make reference to racial difference.
Likewise, we hear about Martin Luther King as an advocate of peace. We hear that he not only worked towards a future of peace, but also consistently rejected violence as a means of settling differences. We hear that he was different from those other black leaders, particularly black nationalists like Malcolm X and the Black Panther Party, who are often mischaracterized as going around hating on everybody and shooting everybody. And so we hear of a quote by King like the following, "[Violence] is immoral because it thrives on hatred rather than love. It destroys community and makes brotherhood impossible." And the lesson that tends to be drawn here is simply that we should dismiss violence at every turn and just try to live our daily lives as peacefully as possible. And, again, in a sort of perverse logic, we in turn see this so-called "peacefulness" being used to say, "Now, don't get upset!" We see it being used to say, "Don't worry, be happy!" We see it being used to justify a superficial calm, a superficial peace and quiet – the kind of calm you get when everything is not okay, but few, if any, voices are raised.
Now, don't get me wrong: Martin Luther King was passionate and unrelenting in his promotion of peace, in his advocacy of nonviolence, and in his commitment to working towards a future in which all would be treated with respect, in which folks would not be discriminated against because of petty differences, and in which all would be cared for. He wanted a future of living together in harmony, love, and equality – a vision that I'm sure all of us share in one way or another.
But if we are serious about working towards that goal, we ask honestly, "What are the specific barriers to such a future? How do we get there? And if the world we live in doesn't look like we want it to, what specific details would we like to see change and what specifically are we going to do about it?" If we're to recognize the true power of Martin Luther King's insights into the specifics of these sorts of questions, then we need to get beyond the cleaned-up, "Hallmark greeting card" version that is so often presented to us.
So where do we start? Well, I think a good place to start is with some of King's words on peace, particularly his important assertion that "True peace is not merely the absence of tension, but the presence of justice." Not about the absence of tension, but the presence of justice: for King, peace is not about quiet, about tranquility, about calmness, it's not simply about the absence of disruption and upheaval in society. That's not peace, for Martin Luther King.
King emphasized again and again that there would be no peace – that we could not make a society built on equality and compassion – until the root causes of violence were addressed. And he recognized that it is all too easy and ultimately ineffective to simply attribute violence to human nature or individual savagery: violence could be overcome only when injustice was overcome.
The lesson of Dr. King's that follows is that if we genuinely want to contribute towards a more just society, we must become students of injustice; that if we want to work towards a more compassionate, non-violent society, we must, in a certain sense, immerse ourselves in the world of the violence we wish to change, genuinely seeking to understand its dynamics, its roots, and its various forms. While King did disagree sharply with some of his contemporaries who condoned or advocated violent resistance, he also recognized that the violence of the oppressed could neither be understood nor addressed in the same terms as the violence of the oppressor. And so, for example, while he ultimately did condemn the violence of the riots in predominately black ghettos of Los Angeles and Chicago in the mid-1960s, he also emphasized that "Riots grow out of intolerable conditions. Violent revolts are generated by revolting conditions and there is nothing more dangerous than to build a society with a large segment of people who feel they have no stake in it, who feel they have nothing to lose."
He placed ultimate responsibility for violence, then, on those who refused to address the conditions of injustice that lay at its roots. And for King, this meant emphasizing that violence is not always about direct insults or physical attacks: he stressed that subtler systems of violence are just as vicious. "[A] mere condemnation of violence is empty," King wrote, "without understanding the daily violence that our society inflicts upon many of its members. The violence of poverty and humiliation hurts as intensely as the violence of the club." He also recognized the subtle yet powerful violence of white privilege within the civil rights movement itself, as well as the psychological violence brought to bear by centuries of formal and informal slavery and Western colonialism.
What kind of lessons, then, can we take from these of King's insights? Well, what these observations lead us to is the realization that our work cannot be momentary, that we cannot achieve a just, equitable, and compassionate society if we limit ourselves simply to being just, equitable, and compassionate on a moment-by-moment basis in individual one-on-one relations. For King, working towards such a society required active and honest recognition of, understanding of, and challenges to injustice not only in individual relations, not only in individual moments, but also in the broader economic structures and sets of cultural values that regulate our society. King called for what he termed a revolution of values, observing that "True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring." He was concerned with confronting not simply the racist murderers, but also "the system, the way of life, and the philosophy which produced the murderers."
King's suggestion that we must be serious about confronting structures of violence and injustice also points to another more fundamental lesson: we cannot contribute to building a just, equitable, and compassionate world if we are not prepared to risk tension, to sacrifice our immediate happiness and personal tranquility. "Nothing is gained without sacrifice," he said. "[N]othing is gained without pressure […] Never forget that freedom is not something that is voluntarily given by the oppressor. It is something that must be demanded by the oppressed. Freedom is not some lavish dish that the power structure and the white forces in policy-making positions will voluntarily hand out on a silver platter while the Negro merely furnishes the appetite." As King saw it, if we shy away from speaking out on injustice for fear of tension, we are not simply remaining neutral – we are indeed complicit in maintaining that injustice, in maintaining that inequality: "I agree with Dante," he said, "that the hottest places in hell are reserved for those who in a period of moral crisis maintain their neutrality. There comes a time when silence becomes betrayal."
Now, this business of sacrificing individual tranquility; this business of breaking silence, risking tension and individual happiness for the sake of the broader cause of social justice; this business of taking our understanding of and our work towards justice, equity, and compassion beyond the sort of individual, momentary level – this is really what King referred to as a "dangerous unselfishness." And we connect here to another principle that we, as Unitarians, seek to affirm and promote – and that's the inherent interdependency of all life. Now, interdependency – this was a principle that really drove Dr. King's thinking about struggles for justice at a number of fundamental levels.
One of the things that, it would seem, made King such a revolutionary is that he directly confronted and shook up the ideas of independence, individualism, and self-sufficiency that really tend to get romanticized here in the West. It was, in large part, because he felt so passionately that we are never truly individuals – because he felt so acutely the interconnectedness of all life – that he was driven to challenge injustice: "We are all caught," he said, "in a network of inescapable mutuality, caught up in a single garment of destiny. And whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly. For some strange reason," he continued, "I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be." But for King, this recognition that we are inevitably tied to one another was not a constraint: it was not a weakness, but a strength – something that served as a source of empowerment to the struggles for justice of which he was a part. He knew that a sense of disconnection from others, a sense of self-interest, a sense of immediate individual success, could never truly motivate folks to go out day after day and face impossible odds in the struggle for justice – face jail cells, face police dogs, face fire hoses, death threats and an entire culture of humiliation. And so time and time again, we hear King and the movement of which he is a part finding the motivation for their urgent justice work in a deep, almost visceral connection to the other bodies in their community and to generations beyond their own, beyond the present.
And so we come to the final words that Martin Luther King, Jr. spoke in public, words that powerfully capture this sense of interconnectedness beyond the life of an individual's body, this sense that such interconnectedness might inspire our work towards a more just, equitable, and compassionate world. On the night before his assassination, at a time when he knew he was about to be assassinated, when he could feel he was about to be assassinated, he delivered words that captured this sense of faith beyond individual success:
"Well, I don't know what will happen now. We've got some difficult days ahead. But it really doesn't matter with me now, because I've been to the mountaintop. And I don't mind. Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I'm not concerned about that now. I just want to do God's will. And He's allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I've looked over. And I've seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the Promised Land! And so I'm happy tonight. I'm not worried about anything. I'm not fearing any man! Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord!"
Let's bring it back to faith, let's bring it back to the fact that we are gathered here today in a faith community, in a place of worship, to reflect on what it means to work for justice, equity, and compassion. In Dr. King's world, it meant risking tension, committing to being honest, to educating oneself and facing history, looking beyond the moment and the individual, and breaking silence, all with what he was fond of calling "the fierce urgency of now." And it meant retaining such urgency and not giving up even if you would not live to see justice, even if there was no individual success.
Well, it's precisely in this way that I think Dr. King's work and the movement of which he was a part speak to the particular power of faith communities as sites from which to challenge injustice. It would seem to me that as a spiritual community, we offer a space to conceive of a power greater than the individual, beyond that which is conceivable in individual terms, beyond that which can be seen and empirically known, beyond that which is known with certainty in the here and now. For the power of such unpredictable circumstances to be realized, one needs faith. It would seem to me, then, that the ability to retain such faith, as a community, in spite of seemingly impossible individual odds is crucial to any struggles towards justice.
The question that remains is how we, both as a congregation and as people of conscience more broadly, go about intervening as communities – together – in those struggles for justice around us – how we, to use some of Dr. King's words, go about transforming a Sunday kind of love into a Monday kind of action. Whether we are talking about getting serious as a community in pressuring our governments to act on climate change; whether we are talking about working to end the more than six decades long Israeli occupation of Palestine; whether we are talking about working to end the plunder of world resources by Canadian and other mining companies; or whether we are working to make the important connections between these and other issues, there is no question that the lives and the dignity of generations to come hang in the balance of our silence and our honesty, our inaction and our urgency, our individualism and our faith.
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Listening to Martin Luther King, Jr.: A Few Online Sources
I've cited several print and online sources in my bibliography below. The Guelph Public Library also has several books of his writing (including his Autobiography) and books related to his work (including Michael Eric Dyson's I May Not Get There with You). But I also wanted to point to a few places on the web where you can hear and hear about Martin Luther King, Jr. He really was a brilliant orator, so it's worth taking the time to listen to his words as he spoke them. I've included these links in the brief annotated list that follows. All are freely accessible to those with a connection to the internet.
American Rhetoric: Online Speech Bank
American Rhetoric is an internet database of speeches by prominent American. It offers full text, audio, and video of many, many speeches, including famous and less famous addresses by Dr. King. I've highlighted a few below:
Address to a Methodist Student Leadership Conference (1964)
http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/mlkmethodistyouthconference.htm King speaks to Methodist Student Leadership Conference about the need to take action for social change, touching on such topics as interdependency, non-violence, love, faith, and the role of the church in social justice work.
I've Been to the Mountaintop (April 3, 1968)
http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/mlkivebeentothemountaintop.htm King's last address, delivered less than a day before his assassination. It was delivered in Memphis, Tennessee in support of striking sanitation workers. The noise in the background is a heavy thunderstorm, which offered an eerie atmosphere for the speech. If you're going to listen to one of King's speeches, I recommend this one.
I Have a Dream (August 28, 1963)
http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/mlkihaveadream.htm King's most famous speech, delivered at the March on Washington. Many will have heard the last few minutes as soundbites, but he makes important observations throughout.
Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence (April 4, 1967) http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/mlkatimetobreaksilence.htm King offers his first public address in opposition to the Vietnam War, highlighting that it is part of a larger problem. Often ignored by mainstream media, the speech highlights King's understanding of the broader structures of violence and imperialism that surround civil rights work. Delivered exactly one year to the day before his assassination.
Voice of King [A collection of sermons and speeches] http://www.stanford.edu/group/King/popular_requests/voice_of_king.htm A collection of more than 20 of King's sermons and speeches, spanning from 1954 until the day before his assassination. Include audio and full-text. Features many unknown speeches, as well as more famous ones. Hosted by the Martin Luther King, Jr. Research and Education Institute at Stanford University in the United States.
“From the Vault” specials: Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. http://pacificaradio.wordpress.com/2008/01/19/from-the-vault-specials-dr-martin-luther-king-jr/ Two of King's speeches – "The Power of Peaceful Persuasion" and "Dimensions of a Complete Life" – within special programming by Pacifica Radio. Audio can be accessed by clicking on player embedded in the web page.
Why I Am Opposed to the War in Vietnam (April 30, 1967) http://www.liberty4urbana.com/drupal-6.8/node/78 Another great anti-war speech by King. Full-text and audio available.
Martin Luther King, Jr. and James Baldwin Speak Together (March 16, 1968) http://www.archive.org/details/MenAndWomenInTheArtsConcernedWithVietnam-BenefitForMartinLuther King speaks to a group of artists (including Marlon Brando and others) who have gathered in benefit of him. His comments are preceded by brief yet insightful words by the great writer James Baldwin (link leads to Wikipedia page).
Democracy Now! Special on Martin Luther King, Jr.'s Life and Legacy
http://www.democracynow.org/2008/4/4/mlk_anniversary_placeholder Democracy Now! (a critically-acclaimed independent news radio and television show) often features the work of Martin Luther King, Jr. as part of its programming. On April 4, 2008, it dedicated an entire show to exploring his legacy on the 40th anniversary of his assassination. Features interviews with "the Rev. Jesse Jackson, who was with King at the Lorraine Motel, where he was killed; Harry Belafonte, who was with Coretta Scott King at the King home in Atlanta on April 4, 1968; Dr. Vincent Harding, a close friend and colleague of King’s who wrote King’s major antiwar speech, 'Beyond Vietnam;' Taylor Rogers, a former sanitation worker in Memphis; Charles Cabbage, a longtime activist and community organizer in Memphis who met with King hours before he died; Jerry Williams, one of the only African American detectives in the Memphis Police Department in 1968; Judge D’Army Bailey, a circuit court judge in Memphis and co-founder of the National Civil Rights Museum" (from show description). Worth listening to.
Notes
Cynthia McKinney, Confronting Empire, TUC Radio/Maria Gilardin, 2007, MP3, http://www.radio4all.net/responder.php/download/25715/29973/44590/?url=http://emma2.radio4all.net/pub/files/tuc@tucradio.org/44-1-20071206-12052007McKinney.mp3, (accessed February 3, 2009). McKinney is quoting a CIA memo from May 11, 1965 between an individual whose name has been redacted and Morse Allen, the CIA's research director. While it would arguably be safe to assume that the U.S. government was involved in King's assassination (given their well documented history of assassinating folks who they feel are a threat), the particular extent of their involvement continues to be debated (hence my use of the word "likely"). See also the U.S. Congress, Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities, "Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Case Study," Final Report – Book III, Supplementary Detailed Staff Reports on Intelligence Activities and the Rights of Americans, April 23, 1973, http://www.icdc.com/~paulwolf/cointelpro/churchfinalreportIIIb.htm, (accessed February 3, 2009). See, for instance, Michael Eric Dyson, I May Not Get There With You: The True Martin Luther King, Jr. (New York: Free Press, 2000). King, Martin Luther, Jr., The Autobiography of Martin Luther King, Jr., ed. Clayborne Carson (New York: Warner Books, 1998), 226. Full text, audio-recording, and video-recording of this speech is also available on the internet by clicking here (link leads to American Rhetoric, an online database of speeches by prominent Americans). King, Martin Luther, Jr., The Papers of Martin Luther King, Jr: Threshold of a New Decade, January 1959-December 1960, ed. Clayborne Carson et al. (Berkley: University of California Press, 1992), 248. The quote is also found in The Words of Martin Luther King, Jr., comp. Coretta Scott King (New York: Newmarket Press, 1996), which is available at the Guelph Public Library. King, Martin Luther, Jr., The Power of Peaceful Persuasion, speech recorded by KPFA-Berkley/Pacifica, June 24, 1957, online audio, http://pacificaradio.wordpress.com/2008/01/19/from-the-vault-specials-dr-martin-luther-king-jr/, (accessed February 3, 2009). King, Autobiography, 303.
Ibid, 295.
Ibid, 340.
Ibid, 231.
Ibid, 353. King, Martin Luther, Jr., "Why I am Opposed to the War in Vietnam" [Full-text and audio of speech], Liberty for Urbana, April 30, 1967 (January 14, 2009), http://www.liberty4urbana.com/ drupal-6.8/node/78, (accessed February 3, 2009). King, Autobiography, 362. King, Martin Luther, Jr. "Address to a Methodist Student Leadership Conference," 1964, American Rhetoric, 2009, http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/mlkmethodistyouthconference.htm, (accessed February 3, 2009). King, Autobiography, 224.
Bibliography
Dyson, Michael Eric. I May Not Get There With You: The True Martin Luther King, Jr. New York: Free Press, 2000.
King, Martin Luther, Jr. "Address to a Methodist Student Leadership Conference." American Rhetoric, 1964 (2009), http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/mlkmethodistyouthconference.htm, (accessed February 3, 2009).
—. The Autobiography of Martin Luther King, Jr. Ed. Clayborne Carson. New York: Warner Books, 1998.
—. The Papers of Martin Luther King, Jr: Threshold of a New Decade, January 1959-December 1960. Eds. Clayborne Carson et al. Berkley: University of California Press, 1992.
—. The Power of Peaceful Persuasion. Speech recorded by KPFA-Berkley/Pacifica, June 24, 1957. Online audio, http://pacificaradio.wordpress.com/2008/01/19/from-the-vault-specials-dr-martin-luther-king-jr/, (accessed February 3, 2009).
—. The Words of Martin Luther King, Jr. Comp. Coretta Scott King. New York: Newmarket Press, 1996.
—. "Why I am Opposed to the War in Vietnam" [Full-text and audio of speech]. Liberty for Urbana, April 30, 1967 (January 14, 2009), http://www.liberty4urbana.com/ drupal-6.8/node/78, (accessed February 3, 2009).
McKinney, Cynthia. Confronting Empire. TUC Radio/Maria Gilardin, 2007. MP3, http://www.radio4all.net/responder.php/download/25715/29973/44590/?url=http://emma2.radio4all.net/pub/files/tuc@tucradio.org/44-1-20071206-12052007McKinney.mp3, (accessed February 3, 2009).
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