Change the Writings of Dr.

¶ … Change

The writings of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., are not as well-known to the public as his impassioned, widely publicized advocacy speeches and his Gandhi-like non-violent demonstrations that blazed trails for civil rights in the U.S. But to fully understand King's impact on the American society without reviewing his writings is to overlook some of his most compelling talents. In this paper King's brilliance as an author and writer will be brought to light through the examination and analysis of several of his more poignant and pertinent works.

This paper was researched using databases and available resources that contain speeches and other writings by Dr. King. There are many volumes of his writings; it was not a simple task to choose which writings to use. But his life and work stimulates no matter the date or subject.

Facts

The data that is presented in this paper is entirely factual; there are editorial embellishments and responses to King's themes and specific points -- such as his experience in receiving the Nobel Peace Prize -- but the narrative is based on the factual first-person writings of one of the greatest leaders in the history of the United States. The facts of his imprisonment are stirringly appropriate for this paper, and we will begin with that episode in his amazing life.

Meanwhile, among his most potent writings is the "Letter from Birmingham Jail." This brilliantly crafted letter was written by Dr. King on April 16, 1963, and it has not over the years been recognized as the most prominent of King's writings or his speeches. But it shows King's intelligence and scholarship in terms of testing the true meaning of Christianity against the backdrop of massive civil rights protests in the South.

The letter was (and is) more than a mere response to questions posed by eight members of the Birmingham clergy -- each of them Caucasian in ethnicity. The eight clergy consisted of priests, rabbis, and ministers, and all of them, in the opinion of this paper, stood on the wrong side of the road when it came to morality, human rights, the laws under the Constitution of the United States, and common sense.

King's "Letter from Birmingham Jail" is (and was) considered by scholars as a kind of manifesto for basic human rights under the Constitution. Indeed, scholars studying the Civil Rights Movement see King's letter as the most powerful justification, explanation, and motivation for the Civil Rights Movement. Probably King's "I Have A Dream" speech in Washington, D.C. is better known by the public -- it offered brilliantly written, memorable, soaring rhetoric that is frequently used in history lessons and news programs -- but the "I Have A Dream" speech cannot compare to the point-by-point scholarship and theological craftsmanship that went into the "Letter From Birmingham Jail" (hereafter referred to as Letter).

In the Letter, King explains to the Birmingham clergymen why, as "an outsider coming in," he made the decision to take part in the Birmingham demonstrations: "I cannot sit idly by in Atlanta and not be concerned about what happens in Birmingham. Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere," he stated. King wished that the clergy -- who were reported as having "deplored the demonstrations" in the newspaper accounts -- would express "a similar concern for the conditions that brought about the demonstrations."

King specifically rejected "a superficial kind of social analysis" that addresses "effects' and not "causes." He wrote that "…there have been more unsolved bombings of Negro homes and churches in Birmingham than in any other city in the nation." As to the lack of direct action by the clergy in Birmingham, King said, "I have been so greatly disappointed with the white church and its leaders." Rather than rabbis, priests, and ministers being "among our strongest allies," he continued, some have been "outright opponents…and too many others have been more cautious than courageous and have remained silent behind the anesthetizing scrutiny of stained glass windows" (King).

Bear in mind King is in jail as he writes this protest letter, and had little or no access to a thesaurus or a dictionary -- and obviously he wasn't given the ease of research writers have today with the Internet. The force of his intellect and creativity carried him through the darkest of times, including this period in his life.

"In the midst of blatant injustices inflicted on the Negro, I have watched white churchmen stand on the sideline and mouth pious irrelevancies and sanctimonious trivialities," he wrote. Although a New York Times article had previously quoted Birmingham clergy as commending Birmingham police for "preventing violence," King pounced on those quotes with sharpness in his narrative. "I doubt that you would have so warmly commended the police…if you had seen its dogs sinking their teeth into unarmed, nonviolent Negroes." The bottom line for King was that the church should live up to the message of Christianity. He recalled driving through the South and seeing "beautiful churches with their lofty spires pointing heavenward" and asking himself "over and over…What kind of people worship here? Who is their God? Where were their voices when bruised and weary Negro men and women decided to rise from the dark dungeons of complacency to the bright hills of creative protest?"

King went on to insist that the Christian church "…will lose its authenticity, forfeit the loyalty of millions, and be dismissed as an irrelevant social club with no meaning for the twentieth century" -- unless the church decides to truly live up to Christ's lessons for all. Standing up to entrenched Southern ministers, rabbis and priests while behind bars just added to King's legacy as a tough, but smart leader.

Discussion

There are many writings that King has to his literary credit, and one of the most interesting and well-known of his books is Strength to Love, in which he puts forth, in Christian terms, the reasons behind the struggle for justice.

On the subject of toughness, King had a strategy that he believed civil rights activists -- and all those pushing for human rights -- should adopt to achieve success. He presented that strategy boldly in his writings, which was later published in the first chapter of his book, Strength to Love. Published posthumously in 1981, as he often did King cited what Jesus Christ expected of his followers in that first chapter ("A Tough Mind and a Tender Heart") King quoted from The Gospel of Matthew (10:16): "Behold I send you forth a sheep in the midst of wolves…Be ye therefore wise as serpents, and harmless as doves" (King, p. 13). What Christ meant, according to King, was that the movement for justice must combine the "toughness of the serpent" and the "softness of the dove" (King, p. 14).

Among the many points he made in that first chapter was his universal call for people to get tough when they need to be tough. "Rarely do we find men who willingly engage in hard, solid thinking. There is an almost universal quest for easy answers and half-baked solutions," he explained. And this easy way out King called "softmindedness" -- which he further described as "gullibility" -- led to people being fooled by the press, advertisers, and "in many instances even the pulpit" (King. P. 15).

The softminded person will be reticent to accept change because his security "is in the status quo, and he has an almost morbid fear of the new" (King, p. 15). Softmindedness "often invades religion," he asserted, and it is "one of the basic causes of race prejudice. The toughminded person always examines the facts before he reaches conclusions… [but] there are those who are sufficiently softminded to believe the superiority of the white race and the inferiority of the Negro race in spite of the toughminded research of anthropologists who reveal the falsity of such a notion" (King, p. 16). All that having been said, King dipped into his well of metaphors, which always proved pivotal drivers for his points, and added that "toughmindedness without tenderheartedness is cold and detached, leaving one's life in a perpetual winter devoid of the warmth of spring and the gentle heat of summer" (King, p. 17).

It was in fact in the frigid chill of Winter in Oslo, Norway, that King made his speech in acceptance of the 1964 Nobel Peace Prize. Like most of his speeches, which he wrote himself, it too exploded with beautiful images and powerful metaphors. He painted a picture for the Nobel gathering using brushstrokes of the Civil Rights movement in Birmingham: "…Our children, crying out for brotherhood, were answered with fire hoses, snarling dogs and even death."

And in Philadelphia, Mississippi, he continued, "young people seeking to secure the right to vote were brutalized and murdered…and only yesterday more than 40 houses of worship in the State of Mississippi alone were bombed or burned." King paused and told the audience that he seriously wondered by a peace prize would be awarded to a movement "which is beleaguered and committed to unrelenting struggle"; but "after contemplation, I conclude that this award which I receive on behalf of that movement is a profound recognition that nonviolence is the answer to the crucial political and moral question of our time…"

At this point in his one of the most important speeches of his career, King unleashed several passages of persuasive narrative that mesmerized his audience:

"Sooner or later all the people of the world will have to discover a way to live together in peace, and thereby transform this pending cosmic elegy into a creative psalm of brotherhood. If this is to be achieved, man must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression and retaliation. The foundation of such a method is love. The tortuous road which has led from Montgomery, Alabama to Oslo bears witness to this truth. This is a road over which millions of Negroes are traveling to find a new sense of dignity… [so] I accept this aware today with an abiding faith in America and an audacious faith in the future of mankind. I refuse to accept despair as the final response to the ambiguities of history…I refuse to accept the cynical notion that nation after nation must spiral down a militaristic stairway into the hell of thermonuclear destruction" (King, 1964).

On the subject of war, King received quite a bit of criticism when he came out against the war in Vietnam. On April 4, 1967, exactly one year to the day before he was to be assassinated, King spoke at a meeting of clergy and laity at the famous Riverside Church in New York City. The gathering in New York was part of the national movement against the war, and the fact that ministers, rabbis, priests and others in the public spotlight were organizing to put pressure on President Lyndon Johnson to end the war appealed to King.

The Civil Rights leader's speech was, as usual, full of passion, truth, and the writing that went into the speech had all the earmarks of the great man who penned those words. King quickly addressed the critics he knew would be out there: "Why are you speaking about war, Dr. King? Why are you joining the voices of dissent? Peace and civil rights don't mix, they say." He went on to deflect those who would say by coming out against the war he was aiding the communists that the South Vietnamese were battling against: This is not "an attempt to make North Vietnam or the National Liberation Front paragons of virtue," he firmly intoned. The speech offered several reasons why a major civil rights leader would break from his theme of racial justice and speak out against an American military policy.

First, King saw that by funding the expensive war in Vietnam, the poverty program that had begun in the U.S. was "broken and eviscerated as if it were some idle political plaything of a society that had gone mad on war" (McGee, 1999). Secondly, a "more tragic recognition of reality" hit King when we realized that the U.S. was "…taking the black young men who had been crippled by our society and sending them eight thousand miles away to guarantee liberties in Southeast Asia which they had not found in southwest Georgia and East Harlem."

His third reason came from his experience talking to "desperate, rejected and angry young men" in cities, whom he tried to convince not to use violence. He told them that change would not take place with guns and Molotov cocktails. Those men asked him in return what about the "massive does of violence" in Vietnam? "My own government," he asserted, is one of "the greatest purveyor[s] of violence in the world" and therefore, for the sake of the boys in "oppressed ghettos" he could not be silent.

The Nobel Prize he received brought him "a burden of responsibility," he mentioned. That prize was actually a "commission -- a commission to work harder than I had ever worked before for 'the brotherhood of man.'" It clearly bothered King that the South Vietnamese government was "singularly corrupt, inept and without popular support"; the people in South Vietnam "watch as we poison their water, as we kill a million acres of their crops. They must weep as the bulldozers roar through their areas preparing to destroy the precious trees" (McGee).

In his prepared speech King demanded an "End" to "all bombing in North and South Vietnam." Somehow, he cried out, "this madness must cease. We must stop now. I speak as a child of God and brother to the suffering poor of Vietnam."

Conclusion

It is fitting to conclude this paper with King's visit to India, home of Gandhi. The first attempt on his life is featured here, and while it delayed his trip to India, it was among the most frightening and yet poignant of his many experiences as a leader. Earlier in his career King had a chance to visit India, the place that Gandhi, using non-violence as a tactic, led to freedom and independence from the British Empire. King had used Gandhi's organizing strategies and non-violent approaches throughout his career as an advocate for justice, and it was his dream to visit India. King's writings about that trip were published in the book A Testament of Hope: The Essential Writings and Speeches of Martin Luther King, Jr. (James Melvin Washington, editor). Indian Prime Minister Pandit Jawaharlan Nehru, had visited the U.S. In 1956, and according to King's essay "…was gracious enough to say that he wished that he and I had met." So arrangements were being made through diplomatic channels to have Dr. King travel to India.