From Reformer to Revolutionary------------------------
Martin Luther King, Jr.1» path from reformer to revolutionary was short
but unfaltering. When he became involved in the civil rights movement in
Montgomery, Alabama in 1957 he spoke of redemptive suffering and love
that would change the hearts and souls of the society that denied to black
Americans the rights of citizenship.
By 1968, the year of his death, King had publically connected the war in
Vietnam with poverty at home; the American corporations with oppression
in the Third World; and U.S. imperialism with the revolutionary fervor
abroad. He had extended his quest for brotherhood to a call for peace and
disarmament. He had advocated a basic restructuring o f economic and
political power in the United States and had called for a massive nonviolent
movement to bring about this change.
When a theology student at Crozer Seminary, King described himself as a
Marxist economically, believing that the capitalist system was predicated on
exploitation, prejudice and poverty and that conditions would not improve
without a new economic order.
As years passed he realized how extensive these changes must be. He
realized that moral pleas to white businessmen brought limited results while
the effect of boycotts and pickets that hurt income brought results.
“ For the last twelve years we have been in a reform movement . . .” , he
said in 1967 “ But after Selma and the voting rights hill (1965) we moved
into a new era, what must be an era of revolution. I think we must see the
great distinction here between a reform movement and a revolutionary
movement.” A revolution raises questions about the whole society. " . . .
this means a revolution of values and other things . . . the whole structure of
American life must be changed.”
" I f the church in the South would stand up for the Rights of Negroes,
there would be no murder or brutality," he worte for Ebony shortly before
his death. “ The awful thing about the South is that Southerners are making
the Marxist analyses of history more accurate than the Christian hope that
men can be persuaded through teaching and preaching to live a new and
better life. In the South businessmen act more quickly for economic
considerations than do churchmen from moral considerations."
King told his SCLC staff in 1967 that “ we must recognize that we can't
solve our problems now until there is a radical redistribution of economic
and political power.”
As King's Movement made gains in the South and he looked to (he North
he realized that even after shattering segregation in the South, blacks who
lived in the large industrial cities of the North would still be caught in the
hopeless horror of poverty. "W h a t good does it do to be able to eat at a
lunch counter if you can't buy a hamburger?” he asked.
" I n the N orth there are brothers and sisters who are suffering
discrimination that is even more agonizing, in a sense, than in the South. In
the South, at least, the Negro can see progress, whereas in the North all he
sees is retrogression.”
In the cities of the North, black people were sunk in the mire of poverty
with few avenues of escape. They had lost their faith in the churches and the
ministers and were caught in an apathy that exploded into violence.
They were faced with white middle class "moderates” who agreed with
their goals of jobs, better education and housing, but resisted every effort to
implement those goals. The reaction of the poor whites was even more
distressing. It was they who reacted violently, viewing blacks as a threat to
their economic existence.
King realized that the poor blacks and the poor whites were in the same
situation and were being used against each other In 1968 he said that issues
of economic class were more crucial and less susceptible to change than the
issue of race and ethnicity. “ We are dealing in a sense with class issues;
we’re dealing with problems of the gulf between the haves and the have-
nots." And, "we are engaged in a class struggle.”
The Vietnam War
King's last great crusade was against the war in Vietnam. During the last
year of his life he spoke repeatedly against the war. He saw it not only as an
act o f U .S. imperialism but as a direct threat to the poor at home and
abroad.
His stand against the war not only brought (he anger of the government
but separation from and condemnation by other black leaders— Roy W il-
kens, Whitney Young, Carl Rowan, Ralph Bunchc, and others—who con­
sidered foreign policy to be beyond the proper realm of a civil rights leader.
“ I cannot speak about the great (hemes of violence and nonviolence, of
social change and hope for the future, without reflecting on the tremendous
violence o f Vietnam."
King saw a direct impact o f the war on the poverty program. " T h e
promises of the Great Society have been shot down on the battlefield o f
Vietnam," he said. There were some small beginnings, he said, "Then came
the build-up in Vietnam, and I watched the program broken and eviscerated
as if it were some idle political plaything of a society gone mad on war. and
I knew that America would never invest the necessary funds or energies in
rehabilitation o f its poor so long as adventures like Vietnam continued to
draw men and skills and money like some demonical destructive suction
tu b e." He reiterated his conviction that "fa ilu re to deal positively and
fo rth rig h tly with the trip le evils o f racism, extreme m aterialsim and
m ilitarism ” and called on (he peace movement to organize. "W e must
demonstrate, teach and preach until the very foundations of the nation are
shaken."
Black men made up 20 per cent of the combat troops in Vietnam, where
they were fighting under the slogan of democracy. " A t home they know
there is no democracy for their people, and on their return thev will be
restored to a grim life of second-class citizens even if they are bedecked with
heros’ medals."
The U.S. was in Vietnam to bring freedom to the Vietnam people, our
government said. " N o w they languish under our bombs and consider
us— not their fellow Vietnamese- the cruel enemy
. They move sadly and
apathetically as we herd them o ff the land o f their fathers into
concentration camps where minimal social needs are rarely met . . . They
watch as we poison their water, as we kill a million acres of their crops, and
the wander into the hospitals with at least twenty casualties from American
fire power to one Vietcong-inflicted injury. They wander into the towns and
see thousands o f children homeless, without clothes, running in packs on
the streets like animals They see children selling their sisters to our soldiers,
soliciting for their mothers."
The U.S. began the war by subverting the Geneva Accords to prevent the
election of Ho Chi Minh and it was the U.S. that continuously escalated the
violence, he said. The U.S. was responsible for the war and the U.S. must
end it.
" I speak as a child of God and a brother to those suffering poor of Viet­
nam. I speak for those whose land is being laid waste, whose homes are be­
ing destroyed, whose culture is being subverted. I speak for the poor of Am­
erica who are paying the double price of smashed hopes at home and death
and corruption in Vietnam. I speak as a citizen of the world, for the world
as it stands aghast at the price we have taken."
Toward Revolution
King's vision of peace extended beyond Vietnam to the liberation of the
Third World. Too often, he said, the U.S military is deployed "to maintain
social stability for our investments” not only in Vietnam, but in "counter­
revolutionary action" in Guatemala. Peru, Columbia and elsewhere.
King said the Vietnam war was really a symptom of a far deeper problem
in the American spirit— that of continuously supporting the dictators of the
world rather than the liberation movments.
He saw the need for a “ radical revolution of values". A true revolution
of values would cause the American people to question the fairness and
justice o f its foreign policy; would question the great contrast between
poverty and wealth. "W ith righteous indignation it will look across the sea
and see individual capitalists in the West investing huge sums of money in
Asia, Africa and South America only to take the profits o f the countries
and say, ‘This is not just*. It will look at our alliance with the landed gentry
of Latin America and say, 'This is not just’ . . . "
Nonviolent Maaa Action
King sought to bring what he described as three types of youth together:
The largest group was struggling to adapt to the prevailing values o f
society—the system of government, (he social stratification, the economic
relationships— but were still searching for answers to ethical questions. The
second group wanted to alter the system, agreeing that only by structural
change can current evils be eliminated. The third group was the "hippies,”
who were attempting to reject society, but had a dream of peace.
A nonviolent active resistance movement, including massive civil
disobedience, could unite the three groups taking peaceful vision from the
hippies, a sense o f urgency from the radicals, and draw the undecided
through a sense of purpose.
There was not much time. King said, in December of 1967. "The revolu­
tionary spirit is alaready world wide. I f the anger of the peoples o f the
world at the injustice of things is to be channeled into a revolution of love
and creativity, we must begin now to work, urgently, with all the peoples, to
shape a new world.”
Poor People s Cam paign
King planned to show that nonviolent direct-action and massive civil
disobedience can be effective when waged on a national scale.
The dispossessed o f the nation— black and w hite— must organize a
revolution against this society, "not against the lives of the persons who are
their fellow citizens, but against the structures . . . "
Beginning in January of 1964, he began recruiting three thousand of the
poorest citizens from ten rural and urban areas to lead a "sustained,
massive, direct-action" campaign in Washington, D .C . A poor people's
caravan would begin in Roxbury, Mass., and proceed through northern
cities; another would begin in the Mississippi delta. They were scheduled to
arrive in Washington on April 22nd.
These three thousand, trained in nonviolence, would live in a tent city in
Washington and repeatedly place their demands before Congress, the
President and the government. M any people would come and play a
supporting role "d ecid in g to be poor for a time right along with the
dispossessed who arc asking for their right to jobs or income—jobs, income,
the demolition of slums, the rebuilding by the people who live there of new
communities in their place, in fact, a new economic deal for the poor."
The campaign, which was conceived in the Birmingham jail, would grow
into a nation-wide movement that would include economic boycotts, selec­
tive buying, rent refusal and other methods including mass demonstrations.
An International Paaca Movement
Could nonviolence bring about an international revolution and peace?
King believed it could. He was well aware that the U.S. economic system
was responsible for poverty at home and oppression and war abroad and
believed an international nonviolent movement coming out o f the U .S.
could force change.
King said in 1968 that the crisis faced by the poor in the United States is
inseparable from an "international emergency which involves the poor, the
dispossessed, the exploited of the whole world."
He felt the next stage for the Movement was to create an international
movement in the developed nations to make it politically necessary for those
nations to assist the developing nations. "W e in the West must bear in mind
that the poor countries are poor primarily because we have exploited them
through political and economic colonialism. Americans in particular must
help their nation repent of her moderp economic imperialism." *
He advocated a unity with the people of Latin America specifically, since
many of Latin America's problems have roots in the U.S. A solid, united
movement would bring pressure both on the U.S. government and on the
governments o f Latin America.
Even the entrenched racism o f South A frica could be tackled on this
level. Massive pressure on the governments of the U.S. and Great Britain
could bring them to the decision to end all economic interaction with South
Africa. Almost every corporation in the two nations that has ties with South
Africa also is economically dependent on its own government. Action by
those two nations alone could bring South Africa to its knees.
In his Christmas sermon of 1967, King repeated his call for international
ism: " . . the time has come for men to experi ent with nonviolence in all
areas o f human conflict, and that means nonviolence on an international
scale.”
Loyalites must become ecumenical, he said. " O u r loyalties must
transcend our race, our tribe, our class, our nation; and this means we must
develop a world perspective."
"I refuse to accept the cynical notion that nation after nation must spiral
down the militaristic stairway into the hell of thermonuclear destruction. I believe
that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. . . .
I still believe that we shall overcome___ "
—Oslo, 1965
Portland Obaarvar, January 26,1963 Paga 3