Lest we forget Martin Luther King’s fight for the poor

This April marked the 50th anniversary of the death of slain civil rights stalwart Martin Luther King, a commemoration that remarkably went largely unnoticed in much of Africa. July marks the centennial of the birth of his fellow Nobel peace laureate, Nelson Mandela.

The civil rights and antiapartheid struggles were symbolically linked in 1994 in Washington DC, when Mandela echoed King’s 1963 March On Washington words: “Free at last, free at last, thank God Almighty we are free at last!” Both struggles were about racial injustice and social inequality. The US’s black ghettos mirrored SA’s black townships.

King and his fellow Nobel peace laureate, Albert Luthuli, issued a joint declaration condemning apartheid in 1962, and during his Nobel prize speech two years later King honoured Luthuli.

King also championed decolonisation in Africa, and he attended Ghana’s independence celebrations, in 1957. He was the youngest winner of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964 at 35.

King was a prophetic troubadour and a religious griot who tirelessly preached the gospel of black liberation across the vast expanse of the US.

He was assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee, in 1968, where he had gone to support a strike by sanitation workers. His martyrdom at the age of 39 was tragic. A day before his death, King had, like a black Moses, warned his disciples that he had seen the Promised Land, but might not get there with them. He marched towards his painful destiny with the grace and dignity of a Christ-like figure.

Through the dog days of countless demonstrations, bus boycotts and freedom rides that marked one of the most violent epochs in US history, King demonstrated a fearlessness that was almost unnerving. Charismatic, he remains one of the greatest orators of all time.

India’s Mahatma Gandhi lived in SA between 1893 and 1914, where he developed the satyagraha non-violent resistance methods to fight discrimination against the Indian community. He returned to India and launched the struggle that eventually brought down the British Empire.

King was inspired by Jesus Christ’s love ethic and felt that through Gandhi, Christ’s teachings had been actualised. He thus unwaveringly adopted Gandhi’s methods in the US’s civil rights struggle.

King viewed “passive resistance” as a “philosophy of life”, arguing that “I’m committed to nonviolence absolutely”. He argued that violent riots would lead to a more brutal backlash against blacks and relieve whites of their guilt while intensifying their fears. King instead sought to “transmute the inchoate rage of the ghetto into a constructive and creative channel”.

Like a post-1990 Mandela, he preached racial reconciliation. As with the early Mandela, King’s radicalism has often been erased from history. He was, however, heavily criticised for his pacifism by Malcolm X, the Black Panthers and black youth groups.

Though King is now often portrayed solely as a civil rights icon, he waged a lonely “poor people’s campaign” in his final years. This made him widely unpopular but he saw economic equality as the next phase of the struggle. He argued that the political kingdom was not enough; the US also had to seek the economic kingdom.

King described his approach as “militant nonviolence”. He was scathing about the hypocrisy of whites in the US’s north, condemning southern white racism while they themselves had segregated housing and schools.

He opposed the US’s war in Vietnam, arguing the country needed more butter than guns. The civil rights establishment criticised King’s stance as they felt it would harm their cause.

It is significant that King’s national holiday each January is one of only three in the US that honour an individual: the others being Christopher Columbus and George Washington. A 9mtall granite statue of King has been erected in Washington DC across from the Lincoln and Jefferson memorials.

It was King’s struggles that made it possible for Barack Obama to serve as the first black president of the US. More recent US civic struggles such as Black Lives Matter and the Living Wage campaign also owe a great debt to him.

MARTIN LUTHER KING WAS INSPIRED BY JESUS CHRIST’S LOVE ETHIC, HE FELT THAT THROUGH GANDHI, CHRIST’S TEACHINGS HAD BEEN ACTUALISED. KING ARGUED THAT THE POLITICAL KINGDOM WAS NOT ENOUGH; THE US ALSO HAD TO SEEK THE ECONOMIC KINGDOM