Our Hero, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.                         

                                                                 Daniel Jo          

Every year we observe the third Monday of January as a national holiday to celebrate the birthday of Martin Luther King, Jr., who was the foremost champion of the civil rights movement for African-Americans.  In fact, he rebuilt our society in the United States of America as its own “New World” without segregation, racial discrimination, and with all human equal rights.  Furthermore, Dr. King’s greatest victory was that he achieved his goals by non-violent action with no blood shed. 

For his contributions to society and his commitment to the principle of non-violence, Dr. King received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964, and, at 35 years of age, was the youngest Nobel Laureate ever to have received the Peace Prize.  Until not long ago, we saw so much racial discrimination in our societies and it is hard to believe that King used just non-violent action to resist and to redress social injustice. I still have doubt that it was even realistic and effective. 

However, forty years ago, Dr. King declared,  “I have a dream” in his famous speech for over a quarter million people on the steps of the Lincoln Monument in Washington, D.C.  Today, we see an African-American president of United States of America, Barack Obama.  Dr. King’s dream, in many many ways, has come true. And it could not have been possible without his dream.. 

Martin Luther King, Jr., had a strong family background of religion. According to his own autobiography, his grandfather began the family’s long tenure as pastors of the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, serving from 1914 to 1931; his father served from then and Dr. King from 1960 until his death, acted as co-pastor. The book states, “My mother, Alberta Williams King, has been behind the scene setting forth those motherly cares, the lack of which leaves a missing link in life. She is a devout person with a deep commitment to the Christian faith, she is soft-spoken and easy going. She instilled a sense of self-respect in all of the children and also told about slavery and how it ended with the Civil War during his childhood.” According to Dr. King, his mother also tried to explain the divided system of the South such as segregated schools, restaurants, and lavatories, the white and colored signs on drinking fountains, waiting rooms as a social condition rather than a natural order.  She also made it clear that she opposed that system and she must never allow it to her to make her feel inferior.

By contrast, Dr. King described his father as strong with a dynamic personality and a physical presence that commanded attention.  He also admired his father in the book: “He has Christian character and he had quite an interest in civil rights and he was president of the NAACP in Atlanta and had great influence in the Negro community.”

Looking into his educational background, King was highly educated by the comparison to his fellow African-Americans at the time in the South. By his own account, he attended segregated public school in Georgia, graduating from high school at the age of fifteen; he received the B.A degree in 1948 from Morehouse College, a distinguished traditionally black institution of Atlanta from which both his father and grandfather graduated. After three years theoretical study at Crozer Theological Seminary in Pennsylvania where he was elected president of a predominantly white senior class, he was awarded the B.D in 1951 and later he received his Doctorate in Systematic Theology from Boston University.

During his study in Boston, Dr. King met and married Coretta Scott, a young intellectual with artistic attainments.  Even with such a solid educational background, he confesses in his autobiography that he was far from convinced of the practicability of non-violent action to resist social injustice.  Dr. King explains that, at the time, he thought the only way to solve the problem of segregation was an armed revolt.  However, he also mentions in the book that he was, for the first time, exposed to the pacifist position in a lecture by Dr. A. J. Muster and deeply moved by the talk. He also confesses in the book that he thought that the Christian ethic of love was confined to individual relationships only, not applicable to social conflict. 

Later, Dr. King was also influenced by Dr. Mordecai Johnson, who had just returned from a trip to India.  Dr. Johnson, then-president of Howard University, spoke of the life and teaching of Mahatma Gandhi who campaigned for nonviolent resistance and his numerous fasts.  Dr. King claims he studied seriously and became deeply fascinated by Gandhi’s idea.  He also mentions that he agreed that Gandhi was probably the first person in history to lift the love ethic of Jesus above mere interaction between individuals to a powerful and effective social force on a large scale. 

From that point, eventually, King’s skepticism concerning the power of love gradually diminished and he reached to see for the first time its potency in the social reform, again according to his book.  Dr. King insisted that the philosophical concept of non-violence is to love the enemy, or the realization of the humanity of all people, and that the goal of this nonviolence is not to defeat the enemy, but to win them over and create love and understanding between all.  We all remember that Jesus urges his followers to “love thine enemy.”  By the same token, the pragmatic fundamental concept of nonviolence is to create a social dynamic or political movement that can effect social change without necessarily winning over those who wish to maintain the status quo. 

In modern industrial democracies, nonviolence has been used extensively by political sectors without mainstream political power such as labor unions, environmental advocates, and the women’s movement.  In the 21st century, the world has been made aware of the impact of Aung San Suu Kyi of Myanmar and the Dalai Lama of Tibet, each of whom has been used non-violence action to resist in their political purposes.  Both of them received the Nobel Peace Prizes  in 1991 and 1989, respectively. 

Gandhi’s emphasis on love and nonviolence was the method for social reform that Dr. King had been seeking.  Gandhi’s true pacifism is not nonviolence to evil, but nonviolent resistance to evil.  According to Gandhi’s famous book Non-Violent Resistance, Gandhi resisted evil with as much vigor and power as the violent resister, but he resisted with love instead of hate.  Gandhi insisted that true pacifism is not unrealistic submission to evil power.  Similarly, Dr. King defines in his autobiography that non-violent resistance is courageous confrontation of evil by the power of love, in the faith that it is better to be the recipient of violence than the inflictor of it, since the latter only multiplies the existence of violence and bitterness in the universe, while the former may develop a sense of shame in the opponent.  We now know that Dr. King’s philosophy and theology of non-violent resistance emanate from Gandhi and Christian love.

Just after Dr. King finished his study in Boston and returned to the church of his hometown,  Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama, Rosa Parks, a 42-year-old civil rights worker, happened to be arrested in Montgomery for refusing to vacate her seat on a bus for a white man as required by the segregation law.  Since she was well-educated and worked as a secretary of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), the community thought she was the right person to protest against segregation. And Dr. King’s autobiography relates that he happened to represent Ms. Parks as the leader of the Montgomery Improvement Association to resist with the Montgomery Bus Boycott. 

The meeting of Rosa Parks and Dr. King in the same area and at the same time was indeed highly fortuitous.  Certainly, on this occasion, the black community leaders decided to organize and protest.  The bitterness against white people and racial discrimination had accumulated for a long time and this protest movement was the first explosion of blacks at that time. With the full support of Montgomery’s blacks, the first boycott was successful and they got what they wanted such as employment of African-Americans to drive buses and desegregation in transportation and so on. 

As the autobiography says, actually the boycott protest was the beginning of the long civil rights movement of American blacks in the 20th century of America and Dr. King became the main leader of the movement. Among his many activities, one of the actions to be mentioned was the Washington D.C protest with the mobilization of 250,000 people in front of the Lincoln Memorial Monument and the famous “I Have a Dream,” which inspired both black and white people who agreed with Dr. King regarding social injustice and human equality.  Now it is considered one of the three most famous American speeches, along with President Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg address and President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s First Inaugural address. 

King said that he had never seen such enthusiasm for freedom and his heart was full.  Dr. King expressed that the inspiration of Mahatma Gandhi began to exert its influence and he realized that the Christian doctrine of love, operating through the Gandhian method of nonviolence resistance were the most potent weapons available to the African-American in his struggle for freedom.  He also claims in his book that people responded to his philosophy with amazing ardor.  We could assume easily there were so many difficulties in civil rights movements out of our imaginations at those time.

Today, our society is a totally different country from the one Dr. King lived in, with no racial segregation, no discrimination, and no racism.  Dr. King and all the principals of the civil rights movement literally created a new world without any bloodshed, except, ironically and tragically, Dr. King’s own. The change was done only by nonviolent action. Mahatma Gandhi was able to attain the independence of India from the British monarchy and Dr. King remodeled not only our society but the whole world as well without racism.  Only a very few people believed that nonviolent resistance is such a powerful, potent weapon in changing social injustice. We can tell clearly the efficiency of no violent resistance and even how greatly it worked.  Once Dr. King had a dream and we have seen the consequence of the dream now, the first African-American president of United States of America, Barack Obama.  He is a hero and the champion of 20th century civil rights movement of America and the whole world.

Allen, Reniqua. “ The Montgomery Bus Boycott.” Home. att. April 1st 2009
             http://home.att.net/`reniqua/
Clayborne Carson. The autobiography of Martin Luther King, Jr. Warner Book
Harding, Vincent. The inconvenient hero Martin Luther King
Gandhi Mohandas, “ NON-VIOLENT RESISTANCE  SCHCKEN BOOKS. New York