THE STRATEGY AND PHILOSOPHY OF MARTIN LUTHER KING
A. KING: EARLY LIFE AND EDUCATION
Martin Luther King, Jr. was born on January 15, 1929, in Atlanta, GA. His name at birth was Michael. Later it was changed to Martin. His closest friends called him Mike, in private. King was from a middle class family, from the Atlanta black elite. Of course his father, Martin Luther King Sr., was a minister. So King was a minister's son. As a member of the black middle class, King Jr. had been shielded from the crudest and most naked manifestations and humiliations of white racism. MLK, Jr. studied at Morehouse (A-Phi-A) and the Crozer Theological Seminary in Chester, PA (graduated 1951). He had gotten a doctorate at Boston University. He was highly educated, for any American. And he was probably one of the best educated Afro-Americans of his time. But for present purposes, King's main constituency was Southern, middle class, church-going blacks. King's power base was SCLC. King built a foundation on the bedrock of the black church, which combines elements of ethnic identity with religious identity. King was like a general commanding an army. SCLC was his power base. His regiments and divisions came from the congregations of the black church.
B. INTELLECTUAL INFLUENCES
Martin Luther King's strategy is known as non-violent mass direct action. King borrowed from, and adapted, the ideas of Mahatma Gandhi of India. He adapted the ideas of Henry David Thoreau concerning civil disobedience and breaking the law in the name of conscience. And he adapted the ideas of St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas.
1. MAX WEBER: POWER AND AUTHORITY
The great German sociologist Max Weber made a distinction between power and authority. According to Weber, power is merely brute force and coercion. But power that is regarded as legitimate, and "clothed with legitimacy" is authority. Power plus legitimacy equals authority. If we believe that the power that a person exercises is just, earned, deserved or proper, it becomes authority. Ideally, authority is power that is admired and respected. Sometimes authority is based on the possession of specialized knowledge or skill. Thus we defer to the power or opinion of a doctor or surgeon in medical matters; or that of a dentist in dental matters, because we believe that they are experts in their field. We even willingly submit to painful and invasive procedures. We defer to the lawyer in legal matters. We may believe that a minister has been called by God and anointed to pastor, or that the prophet has received a special divine revelation. We may perceive the power that parents exercise over their children as proper and fitting, because they gave birth to the child and care for their children.
A robber or a mugger with a gun may have POWER. Any hoodlum or thug with a weapon can threaten and intimidate and coerce people. The robber has power, but no genuine legitimacy or authority. His power is not clothed with legitimacy. Power does not become authority if it is not perceived to have legitimacy. This is a sociological distinction. Power without justice and legitimacy is merely gangsterism; and tyranny; and despotism.
Authority can also be de-legitimized. The ruler who abuses and misuses his power loses his legitimacy. Police officers who take bribes, plant evidence, shoot unarmed civilians, brutalize people because of bigotry may lose their legitimacy.
The issue is WHY people may voluntarily obey, even in the absence of brute force or violent compulsion. The answer is the perception of legitimacy. People do not obey the law merely because it is the law. Rather, they obey because they concur that the law is fair or just or equitable. Otherwise they may feel justified in DISOBEYING the law.
2. THE THEORY OF CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE
In the Western, Christian, catholic tradition, the theory of civil disobedience was articulated by St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas. Later, Protestants would embrace it. In the 1840s, in America, Henry David Thoreau popularized the idea. In the 1950s and 1960s the civil rights movement advanced the idea.
a) CATHOLIC THEOLOGIANS
St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas taught that an unjust law is no law at all. Again, people do not obey rules simply because they are "the rules." People obey because they believe that the law is fair, just, reasonable, logical. People do not just blindly obey. They comply, usually, because they believe the law is just and moral. Laws should be just. Otherwise they are not worthy of our respect. If the law is supposed to be just, and it is not, then it does not meet the criteria for genuine law. If the law is not just, then it is nor a true law to begin with.
b) THE PROTESTANT DISSENTERS
Protestant dissenters such as the Anabaptists and Quakers in the Reformation, in the 1500 and 1600s, took this a step further. They said that the highest authority is God, not man, and people must obey their conscience, not worldly rulers. If there is a conflict between individual conscience and society, individual conscience should take precedence. It was a religious duty to disobey unjust laws.
c) THOREAU
In 1846 Thoreau opposed the Mexican War. He did not want to pay taxes, as a protest against the war. He was thrown into jail. He preferred to go to jail as a conscientious objector. A relative paid the tax, and he was released. But in his Essay on Civil Disobedience Thoreau articulated the doctrine that it is permissible to break unjust laws in the name of a higher law. The higher law is God’s law and individual conscience. Thoreau believed that if a person willingly went to jail and suffered punishment for DISSENT, this was not ordinary rebellion but CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE. The rebel denies the authority of government. Civil disobedience usually acknowledges the power and authority of government, but dissents against a PARTICULAR law or policy as unjust. The disobedience is a SYMBOLIC PROTEST. The purpose is not to OVERTHROW government, but to prick the conscience of the community so that it will be moved to CHANGE the unjust law. Ideally, this kind of dissent, even to the point of breaking the law, would move the conscience of the community and public opinion. And then the community might change its mind or see the error of its ways. This is peaceful dissent, not violent protest, or a riot, or a revolt (but it may skirt the edge of disorderly conduct). A hunger strike is another form that civil disobedience can take.
d) SUMMARY
(1) that an unjust law is no law at all, and
(2) one has a moral duty and imperative to disobey an unjust law. Obedience to an unjust law is itself immoral, because it is complicity with evil.
(3) Civil disobedience differs from ordinary revolt in that the individual peacefully and voluntarily and willingly submits to punishment by the authorities. The rebel rejects the authority of the power structure, and holds that they lack any legitimate right to punish him or her
e) GANDHI
In India, Mahatma Gandhi had practiced a Hindu version of civil disobedience. He prayed, fasted and went on hunger strikes. The Hindus believe in a concept called SATYAGRAHA. It means something like holding firmly to truth. The Hindus believe that God created human beings. And each person has a remnant or ember of God within him or her, a divine spark. By peacefully and nonviolently enduring undeserved suffering or abuse, a person who is oppressed can MOVE or reach or communicate with the divine spark within others and within the oppressor. This can bring about a change of consciousness in the oppressor, and get him to see the error of his ways. It can bring about a moral transformation. The sight of undeserved suffering (suffering that the victim feels is undeserved) can affect people emotionally and morally. Violent resistance by the oppressed just provokes more violence by the oppressor.
In the 1950s Martin Luther King combined all of these elements together to create a philosophy of nonviolent social change and mass direct action. Peaceful boycotts and symbolic actions, hopefully, would move the heart of the oppressor and get them to see that segregation was wrong and immoral. The Montgomery Bus Boycott was one of the first examples of King becoming involved in nonviolent direct action.
f) IMAGO DEI
King and the Afro-American church also believed in the philosophy of Imago Dei. It means the image or likeness of God. The belief is that God created all of humanity in His likeness, which is to say with a soul. Thus humanity is created in the spiritual image of God, not a physical image (as in a particular color). The Christian belief in a soul may be equivalent to the Hindu belief in a divine spark within each person. If we are all the children of God, and we are all valuable in His sight, it is immoral for one race to say that it is superior to another and to mistreat or abuse some of God’s children. Indeed, doctrines of racial superiority contradict the equality of all of God’s children as "precious in His sight." King believed that all of God’s children should be treated with dignity and respect. One ought to honor all of human personality. Otherwise, shall we beleive that God plays favorites? Does He love some of His children more than others?
Not to treat all of human personality with dignity and respect is blasphemy. From this perspective, racism and ideologies of the superiority of one group of people over another are an abomination. It seemed as if white supremacists did not worship God. Rather, they thought that God was white, and they were white, and therefore they were God (or gods). In effect, they worshipped and glorified and exalted THEMSELVES. The religion of white supremacy was an idolatrous form of self-worship.
Martin Luther King did not say that we should not judge. Rather, he said the standard by which we should judge is God’s justice. Justice is POWER with love. It is power with respect for the dignity of all human personality. King felt that the world made two horrendous mistakes. One mistake was power without love. This led to tyranny and oppression. The second mistake was love without power. This was slavery. And King did not just preach about pie in the sky when we die. he took the church out into the world to seek a better world right here on earth, in this life.
C. SYNTHESIS
King adapted the Hindu concept of satyagraha. This is the idea that by peacefully, passively, non-violently enduring undeserved suffering you can bring about a moral transformation in the oppressor. Undeserved suffering means suffering that the victim or the abused person feels that he or she does not deserve and did not earn or merit. This is also sometimes called non-violent persuasion. It involves only two parties, the oppressor and the oppressed.
D. DURAGRAHA
However the use of the tactics of satyagraha for political purposes, as a means to an end, is called duragraha. This involves three parties, and is also called non-violent coercion (see David Garrow, Protest at Selma).
The Oppressor "Neutral" third party
The Oppressed
In the U.S. context in 1963, this was perceived as
Southern white supremacists/ the Northern public
segregationists
Southern Afro-Americans
Someone once asked Gandhi if a communist could practice satyagraha. His answer was "no." He said that a communist cannot really practice satyagraha because communists are atheists who do not believe in God. You cannot worship God if you do not believe in Him. You cannot worship Him if you do not believe that He exists. You cannot attempt to reach the "divine spark" within another person if you do not believe that God created everyone and gave them a divine spark in the first place. But Gandhi agreed that a communist or a nonbeliever could DO the same things and perform the same acts and go through the motions, and practice the techniques of satygraha as a means to a political end. But that is duragraha, not satyagraha. True satyagraha requires BELIEF and FAITH.
E. MARTIN’S FAITH
All of this may seem extraordinarily philosophical or "intellectual." But King WAS an intellectual, and an activist. He had studied Kant and Hegel and Rauschenbusch and Tillich and Buber. He was a theologian. He was conversant with the Zeitgeist and dialectics and satyagraha and ahimsa (soul force), etc. He was intellect joined to action. And he was a pastor who would lead his congregation out of the church and into struggle on the streets. He placed his body and his life on the line. And from the Montgomery Bus Boycott of 1955 forward, he knew that he might die for his beliefs. His home had been dynamited in 1956. But he had the strength of his convictions. And he was prepared to die, if necessary, to force America to change. He did not eagerly seek death and martyrdom. But if that was the price he had to pay to achieve his objective, he was willing to pay that price.* But Martin’s faith was not in government, or Dwight Eisenhower, or John or Robert Kennedy, or Lyndon Johnson, or white liberals, or black innocence. In the Afro-American church there was a saying: that God has the power to make right what white people have made wrong. Or, to say it more precisely, God has the power to make right what white supremacists have made wrong. In other words, "God can fix it." Martin had that faith. And it sustained him, and made it possible for him to take risks that other people did not dare to take, and to do things that other people could not or would not do. It also sustained the thousands of other people in the movement, the Rosa Parks's, the Jo Ann Robinsons, the Aurelia Browders.