Thursday, January 10, 1985
The Pendulum
Page 3
Other Opinions
King’s birthday reminds all of racism problems
book The Will To Power caused
King much deliberation. The
result of this reading was his
near despair of his belief in the
power of love for solving social
problems. He was puzzled by
the value of love for social good
and began to question whether
Jesus’ ethical messages were
only good for individual con
flict resolutions, not for racial
groups or nations resolutions.
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
By Bobby Drakeford
Born into a society that
associated blacks with “in
ferior” and whites with “super
ior,” Martin Luther King Jr.,
through self-discipline, de
veloped a philosphy that
awakened millions to the injus
tices caused by the segregation
of the races.
Growing up in the middle-
class black neighborhood in
Atlanta, the young King was
protected from the extreme
forms of racism most blacks ex
perienced. His religious up
bringing in his father’s church
taught him that all men were
created equal, although he wit
nessed many incidents that
suggested otherwise.
A shoe store attendant’s re
fusal to serve his father in the
front of the store, the forbid
ding of friendship by his white
playmates, parents, and the
slapping of his face by a white
woman all rankled deeply in
his mind.
However, not even these bit
ter racist experiences caused
him to turn his resentment into
violence. He believed his
mother when she told him,
“Don’s let these things impress
you. Don’t let it make you feel
you’re not as good as white peo
ple, and don’t you forget it.”
Puzzled by the contradictions
of his parent’s teachings, and
the lessons taught by a racist
Society, King sought to under
stand the causes of racism.
1 When King graduated from
Morehouse College in 1948 at
the age of 19, a growing discon
tent of black people with seg
regation was forming the roots
of the forecoming civil right
movements.
Unexpected ally
The National Association for
the Advancement of Colored
People (NAACP) and other
organizations fought for equal
ity. They found an unexpected
friend in President Truman
throughout the middle and late
1940s. Truman created various
interracial committees to
study civil rights.
While the nation experi
enced the early stages of the
Civil rights movement during
the early 1950s, King experi
enced an intellectual and emo
tional crisis himself As a stu
dent at the intergrated Crozer
Theological Seminary in Ches
ter, Pa., King became con
vinced that a love for all men
must exist in every successful
crusade of nonviolent ressist-
ance.
The combination of exten
sively reading the works of
many of the world’s greatest
Nonviolent methods
In the midst of his bewilder
ment, King was inspired to
read about the life and philoso
phy of Mahatma Gandhi. This
reading soon restored his ori
ginal faith in the power of love.
He realized that when love per
vades nonviolent methods, it is
not a sign of weakness, but it is
a potent force for social trans
formation.
From this point on, God, Gan
dhi and a love for mankind
were the driving forces in
King’s march toward freedom.
In a sermon at The Riverside
Church in 1967, King said, “We
will return good for evil. We
will love our enemies. Christ
showed us the way and Gandhi
showed us it could work.”
Before graduating in 1951 as
class valedictorian King stu
dies and critiqued the writings
of Carl Marx, Anders Nygren,
Henry David Thoreau and Paul
Tillich. He also did extensive
studies on pacifism and mean
ings of the three Greek words
for love: eros, philia and agage.
boycott of the city bus system
was in order. The boycott even
tually lead to the Supreme
Court ruling that segregation of
buses was unconstitutional.
The Rev. Ralph Abernathy and
King were two of the first peo
ple Nixon approached with the
idea. The Montgomery Im
provement Association (MIA)
was the product of their deli
berations.
At 3 p.m. on Dec. 5,1955, King
was appointed the head of the
MIA by Abernathy, Nixon and
other community leaders. By 7
p.m. that night, he aroused a
crowd of more than 4,000 with
an unrehearsed speech. Few, if
any one, realized that they
were witnessing the beginning
of an era that would open the
eyes of millions to the injus
tices caused by segregation.
It was an era that would
watch him win the Nobel Peace
Prize, form the Southern
Christian Leadership Confer
ence, write half dozen books,
and deliver many inspirational
speeches, that would be the
driving force behind a national
civil rights movement. The
most memorable of his
speeches was given before
more than 250,000 people on
Aug. 28,1963 at the Washington
monument his famous, “I Have
a Dream” speech.
He stated in his speech that:
“I have a dream that my four
little children will one day live
in a nation where they will not
be judged by the color of their
skin but by their character."
He closed by saying:
“When we let freedom ring,
when we let it ring from every
tenement and every hamlet,
from every state and every city,
we will be able to speed up that
day when all of God’s children,
black men and white men, Jews
and Gentiles, Protestants and
Catholics, will be able to join
hands and sing in the words of
the old spiritual. Free at last,
Free at last! Thank God
Almighty, we are free at last’’
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
Power of love
When King began his doctor-
atal study at Boston University
in 1951, he had laid the founda
tion of his philosophy of the
power of love for mankind, just
as the foundations of the civil
rights movement had been
laid.
In January of 1954, Dr. King
and his new wife Cloretta Scott
King traveled to Montgomery
Ala., where he had just been
hired as the pastor of Dexter
Avenue Baptist Church. It was
the same year that the U.S. Sup
reme Court banned segrega
tion in public schools.
The following year witnessed
the next major step of the civil
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philosophers and authors, and rights movements. Religious,
his religious background all political and community lead-
shaoed his beliefs and philo- ers of Montgomery rallied in
sophies.
Martin Luther King Jr.
Inspired by God, Love, Gandhi
Friedrich Nietzsche s critic
ism of Christian ethics in the
support of Mrs. Rosa Parks,
Mrs. Parks, a black woman, had
been jailed because she re
fused to sit in the back of a city
bus.
Ed Nixon, a respected leader
in the compiuiiity,,decided a
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