CLASSIC WHO: MARTIN LUTHER KING ALSO HAD A NIGHTMARE
January 16, 2017
artin Luther King, Jr. Photo credit: LBJ Library / Wikimedia
In honor of Martin Luther King Day, WhoWhatWhy presents — through a fascinating collection of pictures — a brief history of American racism, a look at the kind of hatred, atrocities, and soul-searing humiliation that spurred King into action. We published these pictures last year, and the year before that, and we will probably do it again next year. Will anyone learn from them?
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The life of Martin Luther King, Jr. was short. He was born in 1929 into a racist, hate-filled society with entrenched bigotry enforced by uncivilized laws. But, like Mohandas Gandhi, who took back his country from the British, Martin Luther King forced change on the United States through his inspired use of nonviolent resistance.
King had guts. Think of the courage it took for him, and for those who were with him, to work the front lines. As he explained in 1957 in the journal Christian Century:
This is not a method for cowards; it does resist. The nonviolent resister is just as strongly opposed to the evil against which he protests as is the person who uses violence…
Nonviolent resistance does not seek to defeat or humiliate the opponent, but to win his friendship and understanding. The nonviolent resister must often express his protest through noncooperation or boycotts, but he realizes that noncooperation and boycotts are not ends themselves; they are merely means to awaken a sense of moral shame in the opponent. The end is redemption and reconciliation. The aftermath of nonviolence is the creation of the beloved community, while the aftermath of violence is tragic bitterness…
This method is that the attack is directed against forces of evil rather than against persons who are caught in those forces…
Nonviolent resistance avoids not only external physical violence but also internal violence of spirit. At the center of nonviolence stands the principle of love.
Six years later, on August 28, 1963, he gave one of the greatest, most electrifying speeches ever delivered in America. This is how his rousing oration ended:
I say to you today, my friends, so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.
