Dr. King’s economic and social stances were more radical than we think. This lesson examines why.
In His Own Words
“. . . I consider [communism] basically evil, there are points at which I found it challenging. With all of its false assumptions and evil methods, communism grew as a protest against the hardships of the underprivileged. Communism in theory emphasized a classless society, and a concern for social justice, though the world knows from sad experience that in practice it created new classes and a new lexicon on injustice. The Christian ought always to be challenged by and protest against unfair treatment of the poor. . . . But in spite of the shortcomings of his analysis, Marx had raised some basic questions. I was deeply concerned from my early teen days about the gulf between superfluous wealth and abject poverty, and my reading of Marx made me ever more conscious of this gulf. Although modern America had greatly reduced this gulf through social reforms, there was still need for a better distribution of wealth. Moreover, Marx had revealed the danger of the profit motive as the sole basis of an economic system: Capitalism is always in danger of inspiring men to make a living instead of making a life. We are prone to judge success by the index of our salaries or the size of our automobiles rather than by the quality of our service to humanity . . . Truth is found neither in Marxism nor in traditional capitalism.
“I had also learned that the inseparable twin of racial injustice was economic injustice.”
– from The Autobiography of Martin Luther King, Jr.
“By any [legitimate non-violent] means necessary”
Altogether there were 75 major riots in 1967 in which 83 people were killed. Though King still believed in non-violence as the way to social change, he was even more critical of the conditions that led to violence. “When you have mass unemployment in the Negro community, it’s called a social problem; when you have mass unemployment in the white community, it’s called a depression.”
Socialism, Off the Record
King always made a point of having writers and reporters turn off their recorders when he talked about his economic beliefs. His 1966 statement calling for Democratic Socialism in America is a remarkable exception. Referring to his economic positions, King often said, “I can’t say this publicly, and if you said I said it, I’m gonna deny it!”
Black Power Was a Call to Manhood
One problem with the subsequent idolizing of his “I Have a Dream” speech is what we forget: King stated that his colorblind society could only come about when color conferred no benefit or drawback. He suggested the need for temporary segregation in order to consolidate power. “We don’t want to be integrated out of power; we want to be integrated into power.”
On Behalf of the Poor, Because We Are Black
When Martin Luther King, Jr., was assassinated, he was in the midst of preparing for a massive Poor People’s Campaign on Washington, D.C. to dramatize the economic plight of the underprivileged and to secure jobs or income for all. It seemed a radical departure from King’s earlier focus on civil rights for blacks. He actively sought the participation of Indians, Mexican Americans, Puerto Ricans, Appalachian residents, and other poor whites.
In earlier movements, the protests had been local; this was to be national. There was to be a massive mule train from every part of the country to Washington, where King planned to confront the very center of the national economic power structure and demand a radical redistribution of economic and political power — as Bayard Rustin said, “what they will kill you for.”
Evolution of an Economic Philosophy
King’s concern for the poor was not a recent development. He was born in 1929, at the beginning of the Great Depression. He remembered questioning his parents, when he was about five years old, about the many people he saw standing in breadlines. He said that the misery he witnessed contributed to his anti-capitalistic feelings. He was neither Communist nor Marxist, despite the assertions of J. Edgar Hoover and Jesse Helms. King did, however, recognize that the best aspects of socialism, blended with the best of capitalism, could offer a solution for the forgotten poor of this country.
The evolution in King’s economic philosophy dates to his engagements in northern ghettos. In 1965, he went to Chicago to establish a movement for fair housing. He saw that, in the absence of legal segregation, such as existed in the south, northern ghettos have their existence rooted in stark economic exploitation. Riots raged throughout the United States in 1967. King realized that the riots would continue if the conditions that kept people in inescapable poverty were not reformed.
In a 1966 statement to his staff, he said: “We are now making demands that will cost the nation something. You can’t talk about solving the economic problems of the Negro without talking about billions of dollars. You can’t talk about ending slums without first saying profit must be taken out of the slums. You’re really tampering and getting on dangerous ground because you are messing with folk then. You are messing with the captains of industry . . . Now this means we are treading in difficult waters, because it really means that we are saying that something is wrong . . . with capitalism . . . There must be a better distribution of wealth and America must move toward a Democratic Socialism.”
Against the Grain
King was once again going against the desires of his SCLC colleagues, his peers and supporters in the civil rights movement, the nation in general, and the very heart of the power structure in America.
Why?
The answer lies within one of King’s most popular phrases: “Through our airplanes we were able to dwarf distance and put time in chains, through our submarines we were able to penetrate oceanic depths. It seems to me that I can hear the God of the universe saying ‘Even though you’ve done all of that, I was hungry and you fed me not.’”
Yes, King shrewdly realized that blacks would continue to suffer without economic equality, but he also profoundly identified with the message of Jesus, who came to minister to the poor and broken hearted. King said that Jesus “. . . was concerned about bread, he opened and started the Operation Breadbasket a long time ago. He initiated the first sit-in movement. The greatest revolutionary that history has ever known. And when people tell us when we stand up that we got our inspiration from this or that, go back and tell them where we got our inspiration.”
At the same time that King was evolving his economic agenda, his racial consciousness was developing. After his efforts in Chicago, home base of the Black Muslims, King became even more aware of the black nationalistic leanings of many young black people. When Stokely Carmichael coined the phrase “Black Power,” King responded that it was very important to engage in a black power movement that produced results, not just slogans.
Those people who said that King was an integrationist sellout had only to consider that the man gave his life defending black folk. As King himself said, “Black Power, in its broad and positive meaning, was a call to black people to amass the political and economic strength to achieve their legitimate goals. No one could deny that the Negro was in dire need of this kind of legitimate power. Indeed, one of the great problems that the Negro confronted was his lack of power . . .”
King went on to say that he saw that there were times when temporary segregation was necessary to produce an integrated society. When King said that America must “put something back into the ghettos,” he was clearly reflecting and linking the influences of black nationalism and economic radicalism into a synthesis that made the FBI tag King the “most dangerous and effective Negro in America.”
Before he could spearhead the revolutionary Poor People’s Campaign, King went to Memphis to help striking sanitation workers. He said their struggle was the blueprint for the Campaign, in miniature.
A Closer Look
“. . . the easy equation of integration with late model cars and first class flights reproduces the concentration of capital into the hands of the privileged — even if they are black — that King so opposed. Such blacks may indeed be carrying on a laudable struggle for economic security, necessarily carrying on the struggle: for economic justice, for racial parity, for democratic access to capital for poor citizens,” writes Michael Eric Dyson in I May Not Get There With You. “The creation of hundreds more minority millionaires who care little for the poor and despised is but doubling the devil’s force.”
There are — and actually always have been — black millionaires who have access to capital. Their number is growing — but not as fast the numbers of those who are among the working poor. King’s retooled dream, what he termed his “last, greatest dream,” was the radical redistribution of wealth so that the poor of every hue would have access to the wealth of the country.
The increase of wealth that occurred during the Clinton administration rendered nearly invisible the plight of the working poor — millions more of whom were created with his welfare reform program. The very economic inequities that King died trying to fight are even more entrenched in America today.
Assignment: Democratic Socialism and Black Power: Rethinking the Obvious
In King’s 10th annual Presidential address to the SCLC, he talked about the need to restructure American society. He also spoke of the need for blacks to develop genuine “Black Power.”
He said: “Now we must develop progress, or rather, a program — and I can’t stay on this long — that will drive the nation to a guaranteed annual income.
“I want to say to you as I move to my conclusion, as we talk about ‘Where do we go from here?’ that we must honestly face the fact that the movement must address itself to the question of restructuring the whole of American society . . .
“Now another basic challenge is to discover how to organize our strength into economic and political power. Now no one can deny that the Negro is in dire need of this kind of legitimate power. Indeed, one of the great problems that the Negro confronts is his lack of power . . . Yes, yes, we must stand up and say, ‘I’m black, but I’m black and beautiful.’ This, this self-affirmation is the black man’s need, made compelling by the white man’s crimes against him.”
Visit http://www.mlkday.com/theman_index.html and read the text of the speech. Contrast it with the excerpts of speeches that you normally heard from Martin Luther King, Jr.
