The Great Leader Series No. 4 - Rev. Martin Luther King

After much thought and many ideas I have decided to introduce my hero as a great leader. Not that he needs an introduction as he is the hero of so many people and has been since 1955.

Born 15 January 1929 in Atlanta, Georgia he was named Michael (his name was changed when he was six years old). He was the second child and first son of Martin Luther King Sr. and his wife Alberta. Yes, my all time hero is Martin Luther King Jnr.

King went to the local grammar school and high schools before becoming a student at Moorehouse College, Atlanta. He decided to become a pastor after meeting Dr Benjamin Mays who showed him that joining the ministry could be intellectually satisfying. By joining the ministry he was following in the footsteps of his maternal grandfather and his father, his paternal grandparents were sharecroppers on a farm in Stockbridge, Alabama. After he graduated with a bachelor’s degree in Sociology in 1948, he enrolled at Crozer Theological Seminary, Chester, Pennsylvania where he won the Pearl Plafker Award for the most outstanding student and the J. Lewis Crozer fellowship for graduate study at a university of his choice. He was awarded his doctorate after completing his course work in 1953 and his dissertation in 1955. He married Coretta Scott on 18 June in the same year. He became the pastor of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery.

It was here in 1955 that the actions of a softly spoken dressmaker named Rosa Parks started King on his path of glory. Mrs Parks, a member of the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People, refused to move to the back of a bus to allow white people to sit in the middle. For breaking the law in this way she was arrested and the Montgomery Bus Boycott began.

Martin Luther King became one of the leaders of an organised movement to organise a one day bus boycott. The black people were the main users of the buses but they were prepared to walk miles to work in order to protest about their treatment. After the initial one day boycott the black people wanted to continue their protest despite the hardship it would cause them. The Montgomery Improvement Association was formed, with King as its leader.

In King’s first speech to the MIA he said that “We have no alternative but to protest”

 The NAACP took the city leaders to court to fight the case that segregation on the buses was illegal. The final decision was made by the Supreme Court of the United States when it rejected the city’s final appeal and the segregation of Montgomery buses ended. The black people of Montgomery waited until the paperwork reached them before ending the boycott.

It had lasted 381 days!
.

The boycott made King a national figure. It was under his leadership that the MIA pursued a policy of non violent protest despite grave antagonism from their white opponents and their leaders. The non violence was a precedent set by Ghandi in his struggle to gain independence for India.

The legal victory set the civil rights movement on its course.

Martin Luther King became a powerful leader in this movement. In 1957 he formed the Southern Christian Leadership Conference to fight segregation and achieve civil rights. He was elected its president and started helping communities organise protests against discrimination.

In 1962 there were differences in the movement. The Student Non-Violent Co-ordinating Committee, formed by black students, wished to remain independent from the SCLC. When King went to assist its protests in Albany, Georgia he was accused of attempting a takeover. He was not allowed to lead the protests but his belief in non-violent protest held firm.

Three years later, after a trip to India and writing a book, King’s non-violent tactics were tested severely. In Birmingham, Alabama there was a mass protest against unfair recruitment practices and segregation within department stores. The protestors faced police brutality. King was arrested. He answered his critics in a “Letter from a Birmingham Jail”.

The Birmingham campaign proved to be the turning point in the conflict to end segregation in the South. King was arrested on 12 April 1963 and by 10 May the stores, schools and restaurants announced the end of segregation.

1963 became a momentous year in the civil rights campaign. On 12 June King led 125,000 people on a Freedom Walk in Detroit, Michigan. This was followed by the March on Washington on 28 August. This proved to be the largest civil rights demonstration in history. Nearly 250,000 people attended. It was here that King made his “I have a dream speech”.

On 22 November 1963 John Fitzgerald Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Texas. King had lost one of his allies.

In January 1964 King appeared on the cover of Times Magazine and July of that year he attended the signing of the Civil Rights Act at the White House.

But it was now that King felt his first real opposition from his fellow black citizens. He was stoned by Black Muslims in Harlem because of his opposition to violent methods of protesting.

The Klu Klux Klan was ever active, making blacks live in fear for their lives, but the protests went on.

On 21 June three civil right workers, one black and two white, were reported missing in Mississippi. Their bodies were found, in August, by the FBI buried near where they went missing. An all white jury found the county sheriff and his deputy to be implicated in their murders.

King was jailed again in the summer for joining a demonstration for the integration of public accommodation in St. Augustine, Florida.

Riots took place in Harlem, New York, New Jersey, Illinois and Pennsylvania.

But it was in 1964 that King’s efforts were recognised globally. He visited West Berlin and had an audience with Pope Paul VI at the Vatican, but it was in December that he travelled to Oslo to receive the Noble Peace Prize. This was truly a momentous occasion and his non-violence policy had been recognised.

What kind of man can lead such an enormous movement in such a large country and hold it together and succeed in maintaining non-violence? Against all odds and with the laws holding legal protest back, King did this!

But there was still more for him to achieve

1965 was a year when other black leaders had to battle in the midst of racial violence. Demonstrators were beaten by state highway patrolmen when marching from Montgomery to Selma, Alabama. Unitarian minister, James Reeb was beaten by white segregationists in Selma. He died two days later. Sheriff’s deputies and police beat black and white protesters. Three thousand protest marchers had to be protected by federal troops on a march from Selma. Viola Liuzzo was shot and killed whilst driving marchers home.

But on 6 August President Lyndon Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act.

Sadly ten days later riots in Los Angeles riots left thirty five, twenty eight of whom were black, dead.

After the signing of the Voting Rights Act King felt that much had been achieved for the black people but many of them remained poor.

22 January 1966 saw him move into a Chicago tenement slum to advertise the living conditions of the poor and, later that year he announced a campaign to end discrimination in housing, employment and schools in Chicago. In November 1967 he started another campaign, the Poor People’s Campaign for jobs and freedom for the poor of all races.

King then added his voice to those of dissenters to the Vietnam War. He could not support peaceful protest for blacks and his country advocating war. Monies being spent on the war should be spent on programmes of help for the poor and underprivileged. He quoted John Kennedy “Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.” 

On 28 March 1968 King led a march in Memphis, Tennessee in support of sanitation workers. For the first time the protest became violent, with young people ignoring marshals’ instructions and inflicting a large amount of damage to shops on the route. King believed that the violence was caused by government agents and he returned to Memphis to organise a non-violent march to prove that the SCLC could still be seen to carry out a non-violent campaign in Washington. On 3 April 1968 he delivered his “I’ve been to the Mountain speech.”

It was in this speech that Martin Luther King Jnr foretold his own death and in the evening of the following day, 4 April 1968, the great man died from a gunshot wound.

He left so much work undone but he inspired so many to pick up the baton and continue with his work. His funeral, on 9 April 1968, was an international event with the President of the USA proclaiming a day of mourning and Flags were flown at half mast. Within a week of his murder the Open Housing Act was passed by Congress.

There followed riots and disturbances in 130 American cities with 20,000 arrests. Violence begets violence!

In 1986 Ronald Reagan declared 15 January each year, the anniversary of King’s birth, a public holiday.

But the story doesn’t end here. In December 1999 twelve jurors of Memphis, Tennessee, concluded that Loyd Towers and governmental agencies including the City of Memphis, the State of Tennessee, and the federal government were party to the conspiracy to assassinate Dr Martin Luther King Jnr.

But what was it that made King such a good leader?

According to Dr Peter J Ling, “For King…..leadership meant standing up for what he believed in, and, for being a drum major for justice.”

But King’s supporters knew that King’s pacifist stand was not an outlook everybody shared.

Despite his feet of clay, he was accused of having extramarital affairs, for me, King’s great leadership came from his ability to stand up and be counted. In the face of huge opposition, Martin Luther King Jnr. was able to show hundreds and thousands of people all over the world that he cared and this inspired those people to fight for justice in a world that condemned black people because their skin was a different colour.

His non violent response in the face of opposition and his ability to lead tens of thousands of people along that route says much about his abilities as an orator. The protestors faced years of violent harassment at the hands of officials, and still they acted peacefully.

Date : 16-04-2006