HONORING DR. MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR.
measuring king’s nobel Peace Prize, today
Have times really changed? Is his vision for peace relevant in the 21st Century?
T
he
Rev.
Martin
Luther King Jr. dedi-
cated his life to much
more than achieving racial
equality. That goal, he said
again and again, was insep-
arable from alleviating
poverty and stopping war.
And he reiterated this theme
after being awarded the
Nobel Peace Prize 50 years
ago in October, 2014.
“I refuse to accept the
view that mankind is so
tragically bound to the star-
less midnight of racism and
war, that the bright day-
break of peace and
brotherhood can never
become a reality,” he said in
his
Nobel
acceptance
speech.
“Sooner or later, all the
people of the world will
have to discover a way to
live together in peace.”
Half a century later, it’s
obvious that enormous
progress has been made
toward overcoming racial
discrimination -- that King
was right in his vision about
race. Yet widespread pover-
ty remains, in America and
beyond, and bombs still fall
as brutal wars rage on.
Was King naive? Was his
full vision simply unobtain-
able — do free markets
require poor people to func-
tion, and will war always
assert itself as a defining
human habit?
Is King’s Nobel vision rel-
evant five decades later?
Absolutely, insist some
who study King’s life and
philosophy. They say his
racial proclamations and
strategies, so controversial
back then but now part of
the American cultural
canon, can and should apply
to today’s stubborn issues of
poverty and war.
“I don’t think his vision
has ever been more rele-
vant,” says Paul Chappell, a
West Point graduate who
served in Iraq and now
teaches and writes books
about peace. “The problem
is, people don’t realize how
prophetic King was.”
Chappell, the Peace Lead-
ership Director for the
Nuclear Age Peace Founda-
tion, which seeks a world
without nuclear weapons,
says a close examination of
King’s life and work shows
he
predicted
today’s
protests
over
income
inequality and trillions of
war dollars drained from
America’s budgets.
“He realized that Ameri-
can military intervention is
not only harmful to people
around the world, it’s also
harmful to the American
people,” Chappell says.
The peace prize for King,
then just 35 years old, hon-
ored a Southern preacher
whose philosophy, courage
and oratory galvanized the
civil rights movement, on
whose behalf he said he
accepted it. It gave a unique
international recognition to
approached all-out war in
Vietnam. King accepted the
award in Oslo, Norway, on
December 10, and the fol-
lowing day delivered the
traditional Nobel lecture.
‘Sooner or later, all the people
of the world will have to
discover a way to live together
in peace’
The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.
the movement’s accom-
plishments at a pivotal time.
The prize was announced
on October 14, 1964,
against a backdrop of the
Civil Rights Act, whose
passage earlier that year
finally granted black Ameri-
cans full citizenship. But it
also came as the nation
In his remarks, King
returned to a lifelong theme
of describing a world where
love and compassion could
conquer poverty and con-
flict. His strategies were
based on nonviolence —
“the need for man to over-
come
oppression
and
violence without resorting
WIKIPEDIA
By Jesse
Washington, AP
National Writer
President lyndon B. Johnson, martin luther king, Jr., and rosa Parks at the
signing of the Voting rights act on august 6, 1965.
to violence and oppression,”
as he said in his speech.
“The foundation of such a
method is love,” he said.
“The Nobel speeches real-
ly are neglected gems of
how long-term progress
against these evils requires a
great commitment of mind
and spirit and cooperation
See NOBEL on page 15
January 14, 2015 The Portland and Seattle Skanner Page 5