On a day when we remember Martin Luther King, I want to share a personal perspective on his advocacy of non-violence. When the wisdom of a great person is invoked, omission of the context that gave it meaning demeans the person and distorts his\/her message.<\/p>\n
The origin of this reflection:<\/p>\n
Shortly after 911, the teacher of the \u201cAlternatives to Violence\u201d class at Washington, DC’s Wilson HS, a DC Public School, invited a number of speakers opposed to the US military response to share their views with students and interested teachers.<\/p>\n
Some also criticized the SAT as \u201cracist,\u201d \u201csince poor black children shouldn\u2019t be expected to know vocabulary words like \u2018yacht\u2019 they don\u2019t hear at home.\u201d*<\/p>\n
Several spoke about the \u201cAIDS conspiracy,\u201d but were curiously silent about South African President Thabo Mbeki\u2019s pseudo-scientific theories of its origins, the basis of his opposition to preventive health measures. No mention was made of the protests that Mbeki\u2019s measures provoked.<\/p>\n
One speaker, who had attended the recent UN World Conference Against Racism in Durban, South Africa, decried the fact that English was one of the conference\u2019s eight \u201cprivileged\u201d official languages. He was clearly oblivious to the fact that the Soweto uprising, which reignited the movement that culminated in the end of apartheid, began when Soweto high school students demanded the right to be taught in English, the language of Martin Luther King and Malcolm X, whose speeches on smuggled tapes were the target of the apartheid government\u2019s thinly disguised censorship plan of making Afrikaans the language of instruction. (In 1979, when I was at Cardozo HS, with the backing of the Washington Teachers\u2019 Union and its president, William Simons, I helped to organize a speaking tour of DC high schools for Soweto student leader Tsietsi Mashinini).<\/p>\n
Speakers made frequent references to Martin Luther King Jr and his advocacy of non-violence, attempting to tie it to each of these issues. A few months later, on the occasion of his birthday, students and teachers were invited to a speak-out on non-violence and the war in Afghanistan (this was a year before the Iraq invasion). I gave the following talk.<\/p>\n
– – – – – – – – – – –<\/p>\n
MARTIN LUTHER KING\u2019S NON-VIOLENCE:
\nPERSONAL BELIEF or STRATEGY or BOTH?<\/p>\n
From a pay phone somewhere in the Negro neighborhood of Selma, Alabama, the scratchy sound of my friend Walter\u2019s insistent voice stirred me. Following the Battle at Selma Bridge and the cowardly murder of Jim Reeb, the ex-minister of DC\u2019s All Souls Unitarian Church, our safe classrooms overlooking the Potomac couldn\u2019t keep him north. His picture had just appeared in Time Magazine, backed against a wall, dodging Sheriff Jim Clark\u2019s trademark white cane, swung from horseback with punishing effect. I could think of no reason to stay away.<\/p>\n
It was March 1965.
\nTwo days later, my ’51 Merc was one of several carloads that ended up in Montgomery, Alabama, home of the Confederacy and George Wallace, its current symbol of defiance. We were among the many drawn to the last half dozen or so miles of that great and swelling march, where Martin Luther King, speaking on the capital steps, called upon the U.S. Congress to enact the stalled Voting Rights Bill. The marching, the singing and the exhilaration of a common bond of purpose forged indelible memories that gave life meaning and direction:<\/p>\n
– Packed like sardines on the floor of Mr. Ziegler\u2019s modern brick house on a dusty street in the \u201ccolored section\u201d that the city fathers saw no need to pave;<\/p>\n
– An old woman pressing a few hard earned dimes and nickels into my confused and hesitant hands, blessing me for coming to her city for a day that, for too long, lived only in hope and faith;<\/p>\n
– Swaying to the low of \u201cWe Shall Overcome,\u201d sung with a spiritual intensity that only long-awaited justice can evoke;<\/p>\n
– The lasting images of the long line of marchers (my first of many) winding along the highway into Montgomery, especially noticeable for the religious diversity visible in religious garb: Priests and ministers wearing the Roman collar, nuns in their habits, men wearing the kippah (then more commonly called a yarmulke) and, as seen in the movie, a robed Eastern Orthodox prelate with cross and scepter, and the blue jean overalls favored by many of the young civil rights workers. Along the side of the road, again as in the movie, African-American children and older adults not joining in, but showing their support by smiling and waving at us.<\/p>\n
– The prickly sensation of fear, when a jackbooted motorcycle cop, spotting my illegal left turn, pulled me over, New Jersey license plates, unimpeachable evidence of my sin as \u201coutside agitator\u201d:<\/p>\n
\u201cYou boys comin\u2019 from thuh ralllihh?\u201d
\n\u201cNo, sir; we\u2019re on our way back from Spring Break in New Orleans,\u201d** were the timid words of discretion I heard myself speak.
\n\u201cYouuu broke thuh law back a ways with that ill-legal left turn, an offense against thuh laws of Mon’gom’ry, Alibammuh. Youuu will folluh me to the cawthouse. Heahhh?\u201d
\n\u201cYes, sir.\u201d<\/p>\n
With barely $20 between us, images of jail cells and the three recently murdered civil rights workers flashed through my mind.<\/p>\n
I don\u2019t really remember Martin Luther King\u2019s speech; oh, something about voting rights and the governor\u2019s refusal to protect the marchers. More meaningful than those forgotten words was his gift to me and countless others: A welcome into that great movement for justice and into the arms of humanity and the responsibilities that membership brings.<\/p>\n
The power of that movement for justice and his accomplishments are misunderstood, if reduced to an oversimplified advocacy of non-violence. Understanding that it was simultaneously a strategy does not devalue his personal belief. From Thoreau\u2019s writings on non-violent resistance to unjust laws to Gandhi\u2019s practical application in India and the strategy workshops at Highlander Folk School (attended also by Rosa Parks), King\u2019s vision was translated into Alabama reality by union veteran and NAACP leader E.D. Nixon. King\u2019s vision and strategy were grounded on the confluence of evolving global changes and domestic realities that began with Brown vs. Board of Education in 1954, the irreparable fissure in America\u2019s Berlin Wall of legalized segregation.<\/p>\n
Like Gandhi, George Washington and even Ho Chi Minh, King understood that those who appeared to benefit from privilege were no monolith. The movement for justice could win support not only from those under the heel of Jim Crow but also from those on the other side of the color line, capable of rejecting a \u201cjust us\u201d version of justice.
\nKing also understood another reality that often discomforts those who favor social justice, but not when imposed by the Federal Government: Opponents often yield, not out of moral enlightenment, but when continued resistance seems futile. And, as long as resistance festers, it may reassert itself when it no longer seems futile.***<\/p>\n
King understood the power of television. The brutal treatment of fellow Americans peacefully seeking to exercise constitutional rights long guaranteed on paper was witnessed daily in the nation\u2019s living rooms and now became increasingly intolerable. The strategy of non-violence made nation and world witness to the real source of violence.<\/p>\n
Then, too, the State Department had run out of red-faced explanations for the rude treatment and crude insults endured by African and Asian diplomats on Maryland\u2019s Route 40 when driving between Washington embassies and UN offices in New York. As America competed with the Soviet Union for world leadership, the message of democracy and freedom increasingly stumbled on the hypocritical contrasts of those embarrassing facts.<\/p>\n
Then there was that war in Viet Nam and Martin Luther King\u2019s powerful sermon announcing his public opposition \u2013 and break with President Johnson, delivered at New York\u2019s Riverside Cathedral on April 4th, 1967, a year to the day before violence born of hate stole his life.<\/p>\n
But wait!<\/strong> Didn\u2019t he receive the Nobel Peace Prize 3 years earlier – in 1964? And didn\u2019t the U.S. troop escalation begin in March 1965, two full years before the Riverside sermon, by which time over 10,000 Americans and tens of thousands Vietnamese had been killed! Two years of public silence!!<\/strong> Where were the public condemnations from the apostle of non-violence? Was he a hypocrite? If so, why not just overlook that flaw whenever the sainted, now forever muted, icon of non-violence can be invoked for the final word!<\/p>\n For King, the commitment to civil rights and economic opportunity compelled him to choose between his personal revulsion against the violence of war and his reluctance to alienate the president who had signed two civil rights bills and funded a war on poverty \u2013 as well as that much bigger one in Vietnam. Was the resulting conflict between the non-violence of personal conviction and the strategy of non-violence that won political support against seemingly unmovable odds just another instance of the hypocrisy?<\/p>\n When his advocacy of non-violence is torn from the historical context that gave it life and then reduced to a rigid slogan or dogma, the lessons to be learned from the real human dilemma lose meaning and instructive value.<\/p>\n For that reason, we should treat with caution efforts to invoke his blessing on present-day [2002] controversies:<\/p>\n Would he have condemned the U.S. military response to 9\/11? Before rushing to offer a politically convenient answer, we should remember that, as a leader breaking new ground, he took responsibilities upon himself that made rigid adherence to doctrine or philosophy a luxury. Before invoking his blessing for some partisan cause, we should recall how easy it is to summon gods and icons to legitimize both human cruelty and human kindness.<\/p>\n Oh – some stories do end well. The fine for the moving violation on the streets of Montgomery: \u201cCity of Montgomery vs. Erich Martel: $3.00,\u201d which, in 1965, was the price of 10 gallons of gas.<\/p>\n For Viola Liuzzo, however, a mother of five from Detroit who volunteered to drive marchers between Selma and Montgomery, a Klansman\u2019s drive-by shotgun blast ended her life, joining her name to the countless many who paid the ultimate price in pursuit of justice.<\/p>\n \u2014 Erich Martel [originally written, January 15, 2002]<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Notes: On a day when we remember Martin Luther King, I want to share a personal perspective on his advocacy of non-violence. When the wisdom of a great person is invoked, omission of the context that gave it meaning demeans the … Continue reading
\nWould he condemn the World Bank and International Monetary Fund?
\nWould he politely ignore South Africa President Thabo Mbeki\u2019s pseudo-scientific AIDS fantasies?
\nWould he condemn SAT tests as racist?<\/p>\n
\n* Core knowledge advocate E.D. Hirsch has pointed out that the 1960’s Black Panther Party newspaper employed correct grammar and used words like “imperialism,” “capitalism,” etc., assuming that its target audience would know or learn terms and concepts they were unlikely to hear at home.
\n** In fact, a mere 10 days earlier, a bunch of us had driven to New Orleans for Mardi Gras, which is probably why that came so quickly to mind.
\n*** We now see that this has come to pass. After the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2013 Shelby County decision weakened the enforcement provisions of the Voting Rights Act, many state legislatures began to enact restrictive voting laws.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"