Martin Luther King Jr. had the rare ability to meld the rhetoric of black Christianity with that of the academic world. He could touch the souls of downtrodden African Americans at the very same time he was awakening well-meaning but sheltered white people, such as my own parents, to the hard realities of racism.
King also showed an unusual capacity for growth in leadership. Thrust, during the Montgomery bus boycott of 1955-1956, into a leading role he hadn’t sought, King soon developed a deep and abiding philosophical commitment to non-violent direct action. Later, his conscience led him to oppose the Vietnam War, even though that meant breaking with the President who had pushed through the great civil rights acts of the 1960s. King’s growing understanding of economic injustice eventually led him to embrace a social democratic vision.
In our own era, we celebrate Martin Luther King’s national day while largely ignoring his searing indictment of policies and behaviors that favor the wealthy over the poor. We fabricate a diametric opposition between the King of our fantasies and his contemporary, Malcolm X, overlooking Malcolm’s peaceful efforts to change America for the better and concealing King’s radicalism behind a screen of self-congratulatory platitudes.
King was a prophetic Gospel voice. In certain streams of Christianity, the word sanctification denotes a constant striving to become the kind of people God calls us to be. Martin Luther King Jr. offered up his life in the struggle to sanctify America.
Melvin Patrick Ely is the William R. Kenan Jr. Professor of Humanities and History at the College of William and Mary, where his research focuses on the history of African Americans and of the South. He was a Fulbright Senior Scholar at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem in 1998-1999.
Photo credit: Elizabeth Wood.
Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X. Photo accessed HERE.
Martin Luther King Jr., Photo accessed HERE.