Martin Luther King Jr. Didn’t Just Have A Dream. He Radically Promoted Peace.

Remembering the ‘entire’ Dr. King.

Photo by Unseen Histories on Unsplash

Yes, today is Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day because irony never takes a holiday. I won’t waste my time calling out hypocritical Republicans or misguided white moderates and liberals who only know that one line from that one speech. I’m not interested in refuting the trolls who’d insist that if Dr. King were alive today, he’d have voted for Donald Trump while wearing a MAGA hat. I won’t discuss the national disgrace that’s occurring right now.

However, I do think it’s important to reinforce today, more than ever, that Dr. King advocated non-violence consistently and often defiantly. That’s perhaps difficult to accept for those of us who might support warfare and militarism when we believe the cause is just. Judging people by the “content of their character” is far easier than truly “turning the other cheek” while retaining our dignity. It’s not a surprise that Republicans and Democrats alike prefer the former message.

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Dr. King was not naive. He didn’t oppose violence from the security of privilege. He endured a lifetime of institutional segregation and violent discrimination. If anyone ever had cause to throw up their hands and declare war on his enemies, it was Dr. King. If anyone could rationalize his enemies’ collective dehumanization, it was Dr. King. Yet, he remained true to his beliefs. It wasn’t easy.

On January 30, 1956, just a month after the Montgomery bus boycott began, Dr. King’s home was bombed while his wife Coretta Scott King and seven-year-old daughter Yolande were inside. He still urged non-violence to his supporters. Now, maybe I could remain true to my beliefs if I were the only one at risk, but if racist thugs ever targeted my family, I’d go full Michael Corleone on them. But that’s why no one has a long weekend around my birthday.

From a History of Racial Injustice:

"If you have weapons," he pleaded, “take them home; if you do not have them, please do not seek them. We cannot solve this problem through violence. We must meet violence with nonviolence.” The crowd dispersed peacefully after Dr. King assured them, “Go home and don't worry. We are not hurt, and remember, if anything happens to me there will be others to take my place.”

The white supremacist power structure in Montgomery continued to terrorize the Black community. State-sanctioned domestic terrorists bombed the People’s Service Station and Cab Stand in January 1957, as well as the home of a 60-year-old Black hospital worker. The intent was to deny Black people their hard-fought gains from the year-long bus boycott.

An unexploded bomb, slapped together from 12 sticks of dynamite, was found still smoldering on Dr. King’s front porch. Fortunately, no one was injured. He’d later write:

At home I addressed the crowd from my porch, where the mar of the bomb was clear. “We must not return violence under an condition. I know this is difficult advice to follow, especially sinc we have been the victims of no less than ten bombings. But this the way of Christ; it is the way of the cross. We must somehow believe that unearned suffering is redemptive.” Then, since it was Sunday morning, I urged the people to go home and get ready for church. Gradually they dispersed. 

Dr. King wasn’t a saint, as no such creature exists. He was a man. He felt rage, but he never channeled it into a call for violence, which certainly would’ve been understandable. This was a choice Dr. King made daily, as so many Americans and the government itself tested the limits of his compassion.

Today, politicians will quote Dr. King’s message of peace when they are often the swiftest to invoke violence as a solution. They praise peace but only as unilateral disarmament from those they would otherwise oppress. Few can comprehend Dr. King’s radical empathy. This was a man who could’ve raised an army against a deserving America. He wielded immense power without ever abusing it.

Vietnamese author Viet Thanh Nguyen wrote in 2019 that “What made King truly radical was his desire to act on this empathy for people not like himself, neither black nor American.”

King argued for an ever expanding moral solidarity that would include those we think of as the enemy: “Here is the true meaning and value of compassion and nonviolence, when it helps us to see the enemy’s point of view … For from his view we may indeed see the basic weaknesses of our own condition, and if we are mature, we may learn and grow and profit from the wisdom of the brothers who are called the opposition.”

When younger Americans, especially Black youth, express concerns over how the US government can quickly support military action abroad while actual domestic progress (especially for marginalized groups) is often maddeningly slow, they are usually dismissed as not seeing the “big picture.” Once they fully mature, they’ll better understand reality. (If that sounds condescending, it’s probably meant to be. )

Yet, Dr. King shared a similar sentiment in 1965, when he said that “millions of dollars can be spent every day to hold troops in South Vietnam and our country cannot protect the rights of Negroes in Selma.” He also believed civil rights gains were ultimately hollow if Black people still felt the crushing weight of income inequality: “What good is having the right to sit at a lunch counter,” he observed, “if you can't afford to buy a hamburger?” He would’ve understood concerns about the price of eggs.

On April 4, 1968, at 6:50 p.m., Dr. King was shot dead while standing on a balcony outside his second-floor room at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee. A man who committed his life to non-violent social change eventually lost his life to violence. It was the ultimate price for his beliefs that he knew he’d eventually pay, but he never balked at the cost.

Dr. King was not a simple man, and if his message doesn’t personally challenge us, we aren’t truly listening.