Martin Luther King And His Times

W. E .B. DuBois gave an account of the intangible effect of the nature of the Black experience and the Black perception of it in his classic book. The Souls of Black Folk, published at the beginning of this century. DuBois believed such Black men lived behind and within a veil. He described how his son was born behind the barrier, and how the almost immutable nature of the experience would give shape to the child's life. DuBois' description is in Victorian style, but his sentiment is stated clearly enough for the modern reader to understand:

Within the Veil he was born, said I; and there within he shall live--a Negro and a Negro's son. Holding in that little head ... the unbowed pride of a hunted race, clinging with that tiny dimpled hand ... to a hope not hopeless but unhopeful, and seeing with those bright wondering eyes that peer into my soul a land whose freedom is to us a mockery and whose liberty a lie. I saw the Shadow of the Veil as it passed over my baby. I saw the cold city towering above the blood-red land. I held my face beside his little cheek, showed him the star-children and the twinkling lights as they began to flash, and stilled with an even-song the unvoiced terror of my life. The idea of the veil, as the way a man sees his life, is frightening and horrible. It cries out and angers you. Imagine such a limitation, such a prison for oneself or one's children. It was an indication of the distress under which this Black man lived, and many other Black men and women as well. The veil was both an image and an accurate description of the condition of Black life in America, a cover of the rage and desperation of Black people. It was then the tearing of this veil in the mid-1950's that we see with the two movements led by Martin Luther King and the radical activist Malcolm X. A comparison of the two movements will set King's contribution more clearly in relief. A great deal had changed since DuBois' observations.

There are two traditions of rebellion against racism in Black history, and they contain the origins of our two movements. One is a tradition of protest, which Martin Luther King took up. With this approach, one seeks to change some aspect of the society, but fundamentally the protestor accepts the basic framework of the social order and the first principles of the nation; in our case, with King, he reasserted, in fact, the principles and freedoms found in the American Constitution. King often spoke of a rededication to these ideals. He even saw civil disobedience as derived from the American tradition of Thoreau and others. The other tradition of rebellion sought separation from the larger society. The separation might well be temporary, and have as its goal the gaining of personal and political strength as an intermediate step on the way toward equality or equity or integration. The separatist approach might also be an end in itself. Malcolm X and his teacher, Elijah Muhammad, believed in theory at least, that total separatism was the ultimate goal of their Black nationalist movement. Malcolm X was to modify this view toward the end of his career.

Martin Luther King saw Black history as the record of suffering, endurance, and change. It was a history of courage and of restraint. Malcolm X presented Black history as the terrible epic of constant war between Black and white. It was a history of conflict. King had accepted Hegel's view of history, namely, that there was a dialectical process of progress and growth through pain. But the dialectical idea for King, the notion of struggle, was also taken over from Gandhi and Thoreau, especially from the latter's essay on Civil Disobedience. King believed in struggle, in a kind of war, if you like, but a war in Gandhi's terms, "without violence." But King's view of history required that the large mass of men be led by leaders who believed in the highest ideals. Yet, he added a democratic notion to his theory of leadership. At the time of the Montgomery crisis he thought his authority derived from religious sources and from the people: "I would rather spend ten years in jail than desert the people in this crisis." The leader, he added, had special responsibilities and in times of crises he could make a difference. His primary responsibility was to articulate the relationship between means and ends.

King's view of history was also futuristic. He looked ahead to how things might be. "I have a dream," he said at the March on Washington. August 1963, "that one day the state of Alabama .. will be transformed into a situation where little Black boys and Black girls will be able to join with little white boys and little white girls and walk together as sister and brothers. "History would also see a reestablishment of the original idea of the American republic. "This will be the day." King continued, "when all of God's children will be able to sing with new meaning. "My country 'tis of Thee, sweet land of liberty, of Thee I sing. Land where my fathers died, land of the pilgrims' pride, from every mountainside, let freedom ring.'" The key words of many of Martin Luther King's speeches were taken from the vocabulary of America's Revolutionary War. As with the words that ended his famous speech at the March on Washington, "free at last," King sought to reclaim the old ideas for a nation divided by race as she had once been divided by loyalties to independence and allegiance to England.

Malcolm X's view of history emphasized the special nature of the Black experience and the relevance of the past. He did not present a lesson to draw from it for whites in the nation. He spoke only to the Blacks, and for them. Instead of emphasizing the role of the leader. Malcolm X emphasized the role of the people themselves, he tried to say what they would have said and in the way they would have said it. It was Malcolm X's idea of Black history and the attractiveness of the tone in which he spoke that drew his constituency and gave his leadership power and influence among the more militant Blacks and those who were members of store-front Negro churches and isolated political organizations. Malcolm X, seeing Black history as a record of conflict between the races, used a dramatic language to portray a battle in order to get the Blacks to be aware of their grave situation. He thought their very lives were in danger.

A significant difference in approach between King and Malcolm X was the question of means and ends. Malcolm X argued that Blacks should demand and capture their separatist solution by any means necessary. And although we have no example that Malcolm X used violence himself, this strategy was taken up by groups that counted themselves in his constituency. Martin Luther King thought the question of means and ends quite central to the success of any movement for change because, he argued, in bringing about changes, one must consider the kind and quality of relationships and institutions that replace the old ways as well as the fact of change itself. It was indeed in discussion of the relation between means and ends that King's philosophy of non-violence was so persuasive for Blacks and whites. When faced with the new militancy among Blacks around 1963, especially among Birmingham. Alabama demonstrators, King tried to argue this new mood should not lead to violence. It was precisely in Birmingham that King's method of non-violent action was judged by Malcolm X and others to have failed. In Birmingham, King mounted a frontal attack upon the segregation and oppression of Blacks in Alabama. There, before the unbelieving eyes of millions of television viewers, and in the front pages of newspapers, he "exposed the evil of bigotry in all its viciousness. "King believed the Birmingham movement had thus been a success and as such was a turning point in the civil rights drive: now it was no longer possible for men of conscience to remain uncommitted. In light of this interpretation, it is important to know that President John F Kennedy '40 sent to Congress the strongest civil rights bill in history in June of 1963. In August of that same year. King led the famous March on Washington that brought an estimated 250,000 people. Black and white to hear his "I have a dream" speech. "I have no fear about the outcome of our struggle in Birmingham." King said in April, "even if our motives are presently misunderstood, we will reach the goal of freedom in Birmingham and all over the nation, because the goal of America is freedom. Abused and scorned though we may be, our destiny is tied up with the destiny of America... We will win our freedom because the sacred heritage of our nation and the eternal will of God re embodied in our echoing demands."

Malcolm X thought the raucous nature of the Birmingham marchers had signaled the entrance of a new breed of Black into the civil rights movement, turning it into an all Black revolution. Malcolm X was referring to the tendency of King's rearguard demonstrators, and Black spectators along the route of the Birmingham marchers to attack the police by using violence themselves. Malcolm X was more correct in his version of what happened in Birmingham. His sequence is the framework one needs to explain what happened there with respect to white and Black reaction and to establish the casual connection between Birmingham and the dramatic outpouring of people at the March on Washington. The traditional King supporters turned out in large numbers at the March on Washington, perhaps to forestall the emergence of a revolution with violent undercurrents that would soon bring the civil rights movement to impasse and schism.

Martin Luther King responded to the new mood of militancy he had observed at Birmingham and among Blacks as a whole. He took the occasion of a letter from a Birmingham jail, dated April 16, 1963, to warn the nation of what might happen if Black demands were not met. "I stand in the middle of two opposing forces in the Negro community. "King pointed out. "One is a force of complacency, made up in part of Negroes who also, as a result of long years of oppression, are so drained of self-respect and a sense of 'somebodiness' that they have adjusted to segregation, have become insensitive to the problems of the masses. The other force," he continued, "is one of bitterness and hatred, and it comes perilously close to advocating violence. It is expressed in the various Black nationalist groups... the largest and best known being Elijah Muhammad's Muslim movement. Nourished by the Negro's frustrations over the continued existence of racial discrimination, this movement is made up of people who have lost faith in America, who have absolutely repudiated Christianity, and who have concluded that the white man is an incorrigible 'devil'. "King had tried to represent something in the middle, as he put it, a "more excellent way of love and non-violent protest." He did so with a courage and eloquence that responded in quality to DuBois' poignant fear about his son's future. A great deal of social turmoil would erupt in the years following the Birmingham protests. The Black revolution that Malcolm X predicted held sway in riots, police confrontation, and in race relations strained to the breaking point. King himself sought to move closer to this revolution by heading street marches in Chicago and Memphis. Through the tumult rang his steady voice of courage and faith. It recalled the eloquence of the founders of this nation in its quest for the dignity of all men.

Archie C. Epps III is Dean of Students.