The Path of Martin Luther King, Jr.

Remembering Martin Luther King, Jr.

Today the USA is on holiday in recognition of Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968). I know only a little of Dr King’s life and thought. But I wanted to take the occasion to meditate a little on his life — and death — and what it might mean to us today.

The Path

Dr King followed a path that paralleled the path other thinkers and activists in America have taken. The path begins with some awareness of an evil in the land — one particular injustice. In opposing this one injustice, the activist meets resistance by the authorities who have won wealth and power, some of them by profiting from the injustice, and fear lest any change in how things work will threaten their wealth and power. At this point the activist, in trying to right the injustice, can’t understand why this injustice is allowed to flourish when it is so clearly wrong. And they begin to see that they are struggling against not one injustice, but several, all inter-connected and inter-related. The activist then begins to speak out against those other injustices and he faces even stronger opposition. At this point he comes near the end of the path, and the yawning chasm, the frightening suspicion that injustice is deep-rooted and systemic in his society, and that the only sure way to right one wrong is to right all of the chronic wrongs. And the only way to right all the wrongs is to overturn the system itself.

(For a contemporary example of someone on this path, look at Professor Lawrence Lessig, the legal scholar. Prof. Lessig has for some years tried to reform the system of copyright, which is being extended and fortified by a handful of giant media companies. Last year, Prof Lessig reached the conclusion that trying to reform the copyright system to undo the abuses of these giant companies would be fruitless so long as the political system, which seems to represent the interests of these half-dozen companies against the interests of its 300 million citizens, remained tainted by corruption. So now he works to uncorrupt political systems.)

From Racial Justice to Economic Justice

In the case of Dr King, from the little I know of it, he began by opposing legal segregation against nonwhites. He went on to oppose discrimination, a more basic, insidious and widespread variant. He then began to oppose the imperialism of US foreign policy, much of it directed against non-European, non-white peoples — not only in the war in Viet Nam but also in Sough America, where US foreign policy sustained wealthy landowners in oppressing and dispossessing the poor multitudes.

From opposing racial injustice at home and abroad, Dr King began to speak out against economic injustice, and look for economic restitution, in the form of higher wages and better working conditions for black and poor white workers alike. And he began to express a belief that the abuse of slavery, murder, and oppression in America’s past needed to be redressed by monetary restitution in the present.

Dr King found, when he spoke out against these other injustices, that many powerful people in government and press — the white ‘liberal’ men who had supported the struggle to end segregation — began to criticize and oppose him.

And in his turn, Dr King began to wonder if there could be any justice at all in his country so long as it was run under capitalism.

From the surface to the root, where does the evil lie, and how can we best strike it out? ‘Radicalism’ is the bent of mind that the only sure cure is to dig the evil out at its root.

Honored, But for What?

America today honors Dr King almost with one voice, outside the conservative camp, many of whom revile him. But even those of us who praise and honor Dr King do so in the name of only two concerns, so far as I can see:

1. for his non-violent approach
2. for his struggle against segregation

Segregation is today considered to lie in the past, an injustice revealed, undone, and put to rest. It is quite safe and bland today to decry segregation, if all you mean by segregation is a series of laws that have been overturned and stricken out. And I wonder if, in praising Dr King for embracing the non-violence of Thoreau and Gandhi, many white Americans do not mean less to honor Dr King and more to condemn Stokely Carmichael, Malcolm X, and others who would not rule out violence, if violence was what it took to end injustice.

And people, most of white America, do not choose to recall Dr King’s work on behalf of unions, the poor generally, or his speculations on what money ought to be paid to compensate for slavery and oppression — let alone his growing unease with and distrust of free market capitalism itself.

The Last?

What saddens me in remembering Dr King is that in many ways he and his colleagues in the struggles 40 years ago were the last generation to fight for, and win, the redress of social injustices in America. The generations that followed either failed in their goals or gained what they gained, and it was not trivial, by working within the political and economic system as they found it.

But when you work within the system you become yourself a part of it, and you cannot work to upend the system, and often cannot even imagine that the system itself might need to be upended.

For those who dwell upon the stalk dare not tear out the root of the plant that upholds them.

Dr King in his last years seemed to be looking down at that root, and wondering. He was condemned himself, by Malcolm X and others in black America, for being too close to the system as it was, and trying to work from within it too deeply, and not reaching or daring far enough.

Then he was murdered. And we’ll never know, had he lived, how far he would have followed that path, or what he would have thought and said and done when faced with the yawning chasm at its end.

(Composed with pen on paper on Monday, January 21, 2008)