Reflections On Martin Luther King Jr. On His Birthday and On The Fiftieth Anniversary Of His Death

I was two years old when Martin Luther King Jr. died. I should say “when Martin Luther King Jr. was murdered”, am tempted to say “when Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated. But in my youngest memories, political and social leaders being shot was just a way people died. Martin Luther King, John F. Kennedy, Bobby Kennedy, Malcom X, they were all gunned down within a span of five years. Violence was just a way of life, though thankfully it was only something I ever saw on the TV screen.

King’s death meant nothing to me, couldn’t mean anything to me. In some way I was taught that he was one of the good guys, that he was part of some change that was taking place. It was a change that frightened a lot of my elders but excited and energized the younger generation, of which many of my relatives were a part.

Looking back now I can’t help wonder why I didn’t know more about Martin Luther King than I did. He was a Christian preacher in a supposedly Christian nation, not only speaking the words of Jesus, but living the Gospel as taught by Christ. With all the fear in our society at that time, why was a man who repeatedly talked about peace and love so ignored?

I must admit that in my youth I didn’t think much about the man. Oh, I agreed with civil rights issues, was myself a Christian, but somehow the idea of non-violence did not appeal to me. Muhammad Ali, Joe Frazier, George Foreman, and the like combatted in the ring to prove through strength and violence who was the manliest. I grew up watching war movies and war documentaries. I played with fake guns, had countless toy soldiers which I would spend hours setting up in order to conduct mock battles. My father had been in World War 2, and the idea of a just and necessary war was a constant reminder that freedom had to be protected. Peaceful resistance was all right as a theory, it’s just there were times when more was needed. Who would have saved us from Hitler, otherwise?

So Martin Luther King remained a person of acclaim and yet not a person very well known by me. What I knew about him I learned from the media, which is never a very good way to learn about anyone. I learned that he protested for the rights of Blacks in America, which was a very good thing. But there was a bigger struggle going on in the world, and King was already starting to slip into the irrelevance of history for me.

Until I happened to watch the PBS documentary, Eyes On The Prize, in my early twenties. It told the story of the civil rights movement and for the first time in my life I was given some perspective of not only the injustices Blacks faced, but the incredible movement they were able to put together and keep together in order to advance the cause of justice and equality for people of color. There were moments that made me cry, not only at the ugliness but of the beautiful acts of courage and faith and commitment by so many in pursuit of a higher cause. I’m not sure if there is anything comparable in American history, precious few in all the world’s history.

And yet the point I took away from watching this 14-hour documentary was not the greatness of a leader but of the commitment of so many people working in disciplined fashion to achieve progress. As much as King was a driving force in the movement, I was yet more impressed with the ability of so many to work together for such a noble cause.

And so it went for many years. I did not delve into the writing or speeches of Dr. King, and the society I was a part of was not eager to share the brighter aspects of his teaching and example. He was still a black man whose main usefulness was in the advancement of black rights. All very good, but not especially relevant to my life.

But through diligent searching we in time discover what it is we are searching for. By circuitous routes and by lesser travelled paths, I chanced upon Henry David Thoreau’s essay Civil Disobedience. In time it led me to The Kingdom of God Is Within You by Leo Tolstoy, to Mahatma Gandhi who gained independence for his country from England through non-violent means. In short, I followed a path not too different than the one Martin Luther King himself must have travelled, though in thought only and not in action. And that path led me eventually, inevitably to Martin Luther King. My path of learning led to Dr. King because there is no other path that leads forward. The road humanity walks now goes nowhere but merely circles back around itself. It is a road strewn with the corpses of war, leading to eventual nuclear annihilation. Dr. King saw a path that led to the Promised Land, and no other will do. Any road that was not highlighted on the map by King himself is a dead end.

There is no doubt in my mind that the future of human life on Earth is dependent upon the values Martin Luther King Jr. espoused. We need not give him all the credit since it is obvious his primary influence was The Bible, but we damned well better embrace the values and principles which King was able to draw from it and apply to the injustices he confronted. King’s fight for racial equality was not even the primary gift that he gave humanity but the way he went about it. He taught us—and even more importantly, he exemplified—that hatred could be fought and defeated by love, that violence could be bested by non-violence. He taught us that peace was not the absence of violence but a power unto itself. He demonstrated that non-violence was not an impotent turning away from conflict but a very brave and potent way of overcoming violence. 

Not to make too much of the man. He was but a human, after all. It is best we remember him as such, rather than try to build him up into some great leader. In realizing his humanity and imperfection, we can not only greater appreciate his struggles and successes, we can see we are made of the same stuff ourselves. We can understand that King’s life was not a moment in time or a part of history cut off from the present, but part of a chain that stretches not only to us but into our future. For history is a relay race, where our elders pass onto us the baton with the hope and expectation that we will carry it further than they were able to, even if they gave their every effort and even their lives to bring it as far as they did.

As I watch the final words he ever spoke to the world, I hear him speaking not to any one section of humanity but to humanity itself. The struggle of which Dr. King threw himself into so completely is not finished. Perhaps it will never be finished. Perhaps that is the very meaning and purpose of living, to take up the struggle for justice, love and peace. It is our turn. Maybe none of us will ever be the next Martin Luther King Jr., but each of us can surely be influenced by his words and deeds, and each of us in our small way can contribute to the struggle that will not only make a better society, but is necessary if we are to have a future at all.

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