MLK Jr. set an example we should all follow
There is much to admire about the apostle of nonviolence.
In 1968, the Jamaican government awarded Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. the Marcus Garvey Prize for Human Rights.
Two years earlier, he received the Jawaharlal Nehru Award for International Understanding; in 1964, the Nobel Peace Prize, making him only the twelfth American, third person of African descent and youngest person to be so honored.
In 1963, he was Time magazine’s Man of the Year as well as the Laundry, Dry Cleaning, and Die Workers International Union’s American of the Decade.
But what I admire most about King is not his bona fides, but that he was the consummate activist-intellectual.
The holder of a PHD in systematic theology from Boston University, King, unlike many Phds of my generation in particular, did more than just talk and write articles and books about the problems that plagued America.
He worked tirelessly to bring about the kind of democracy that the founding fathers envisioned for themselves, but that few were allowed to enjoy.
King stood up for the economically disadvantaged and all victims of injustice, from Black sanitation workers to poor whites in Appalachia to native peoples on reservations to the Latinx community in the nation’s barrios. He was a strong supporter of unions and workers’ rights.
King also took unpopular stands, which is something that relatively few people seem willing to do these days, regardless of the righteousness of the cause or the security that holding a tenured position affords them.
King’s most widely documented unpopular stance was his opposition to the Vietnam War.
Putting aside his good working relationship with President Lyndon B. Johnson—something that other bigwig civil rights activists were unwilling to do, King’s conscience would not allow him to stand idly by and watch America’s power brokers send thousands of young men more than 8,000 miles away to their deaths.
He believed the war to be morally wrong.
He supported Muhammad Ali’s refusal to be drafted, when others such as
Jackie Robinson did the opposite. Not only did King believe the war to be wrong, but misguided.
In his mind, the millions and millions of dollars and manpower being funneled to southeast Asia would be served best in the war on poverty here in America.
And about the Vietnam War: contrary to what has been written and lectured about in college classrooms across America, King’s speech at Riverside church in the Morningside Heights neighborhood of Manhattan in 1967 was not the first time he made his feelings known.
King had made his opposition clear as early as the summer of 1965 during a Southern Christian Leadership Conference in small town Petersburg, Virginia.
His was a popular position among his civil rights colleagues, as long as said discussions remained behind closed doors, however when King elected to go public, some of his closest associates and Black high-profile figures shunned him.
Among them was Ralph Bunche, former United Nation undersecretary-general for special affairs, and first African American Nobel Peace Prize winner, who years earlier negotiated a ceasefire and secured peace between the new state of Israel and regional Arab nations.
Having weathered the avalanche of criticism, King didn’t emerge unscathed, but his head remained unbowed and his spirit unbroken.
When it comes to standing up for what one believes, King set the kind of example we should all try to emulate. Celebrate him by doing that.
Judson L. Jeffries, PHD, is professor of African American and African Studies at The Ohio State University. He is a frequent Dispatch contributor.