Dr. Martin Luther King; Great Mobilizer. Organizer? Not so Much

Dr. King with Kwame Nkrumah in Accra, Ghana, on March 6, 1957, during Ghana's independence ceremony

There are more than a fair share of people who will be offended by the title of this piece.  The reason is the general default position is that its immoral to say anything less than 100% favorable about Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.  This is of course an entirely subjective argument that even Dr. King’s own political approach would demonstrate he wouldn’t have agreed with.  Besides, much of the negative reactions that would occur result from the fact most of us don’t have a clear understanding of what mobilizing work and organizing work is, and how they differ. 

Think of mobilizing work this way.  Have you ever attended a rally and/or demonstration?  Maybe you and people you know felt the need to go to the rally you heard about that was put together when one of the many Africans and other oppressed peoples were unarmed, yet shot down, by police.  Or, maybe it was an anti-war mobilization.  You went to this event without necessarily knowing who would be there, what would be happening, and how you would interact with the event.  You felt the need to be there, so you went.  All of this is absolutely wonderful, but the thing that defines it as mobilizing work is you came and probably listened to some speakers.  You probably marched somewhere and chanted.  Then, eventually, you dispersed and went on about your life until the next such gathering.  You received very valuable information at the event about the issue at hand.  You may have even invited others who received the same education.  You didn’t, however, make a decision/commitment to join and start doing any specific work around the topic at hand.  In fact, you probably didn’t get a clear picture from the event what, if any, work is even going to take place beyond the mobilization you attended.  That’s what makes it a mobilization because the purpose of such an event is to bring awareness to a problem and/or issue.  Mass awareness.  Since this is one of the most critical defining steps in movement building, mobilization work is very important, but obviously, its capacity has severe limitations. 

Dr. King was a proven and effective mobilizer, but he was not a strong organizer.  Think for a moment about the things Dr. King is known for.  The Montgomery Bus Boycott.  The March on Washington.  The protest at the Edmund Pettus Bridge (although Dr. King himself was not at the initial protest, his organization – the Southern Christian Leadership Conference – SCLC – facilitated that work), the poor people’s march, and the Memphis garbage worker’s strike.  What those actions have in common is they are all mobilizations.  They are all designed to bring awareness to issues like white supremacy, poverty, segregation, and social inequities in labor.  They are all very valuable and historically iconic actions.  They are all events that were the first of their kind for many of the people who participated.  They were also the last of their kind as well.  Many people who participated in one of those actions, never did so again.  Almost none of the participants were lured to the actions to make a broader commitment to engage in sustainable work (if they did that, there were invariably other factors like relationships, etc., that led to that happening, not the mobilizations themselves).  Actually, SCLC was so limited on its recruitment abilities throughout those years of its mass actions that it never developed the mechanisms to recruit into SCLC the masses of students who came from all over to participate in civil rights work.  For example, when a young James Forman, who would eventually become a central organizer in the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) came into the South following up on what he thought was a job secured for him with SCLC, he was sent running around in multiple circles that led nowhere, forcing him to seek out working for SNCC instead. 

Contrary to the all-important mobilizing work that SCLC, Dr., King, and others were doing, organizing work is quite different.  Unlike mobilizations, organizing work isn’t just about bringing awareness although that’s always a part of any social justice work being carried out.  With organizing work, the primarily focus is on using visibility events strictly to identify people who can be recruited in to take on roles in organizing specific capacity to address the problem being discussed.  Consequently, organizing organizations can be identified by their projects that are ongoing and designed to build the ability to wage sustained fights to solve the problem, not just bring awareness to it.  So, whereas SCLC mobilizes the March on Washington and walks away with no increased capacity, but a greater overall consciousness about the issues raised at that march, SNCC organized the Loundes County Freedom Organization (the original Black Panther Party) to create a local organization that would build the ability to fight for African empowerment.

Another great example of an outstanding organizer is Malcolm X.  Unlike King, Malcolm never played a central role putting together any large scale awareness events.  Instead, he took the classic organizing approach, setting up on street corners, talking to people in one on one conversations.  Recruiting people into the Nation of Islam (NOI), and eventually the Organization of Afro-American Unity.  His work was centered on using Nation of Islam rallies to recruit so that more Mosques could be established with him helping the new Mosques gain stability.  The idea being the more members and Mosques, the greater the capacity of the organization to fight for its actual objectives.  All of the training involved with building Mosques like military drilling for the Fruit of Islam and Muslim Girls and General Civilization classes were designed to make stronger and more dedicated persons in the Nation of Islam.  The establishment of the Nation’s first newspaper – “Muhammad Speaks” was about building that capacity.  The organizing style of the NOI helped it produce many outstanding organizers.  Louis Farrakhan was able to use the organizing skills he learned in the NOI from 1955 through 1975, to rebuild the NOI after the death of Elijah Muhammad and the dismantling of the NOI by Elijah’s son Warith Deen Muhammad in favor of an Islamic organization more in line with Muslim organizations coming out of the Middle East.  Silas Muhammad, another former Elijah Muhammad disciple, rebuilt another NOI grouping in Atlanta and Khalid Abdul Muhammad helped Louis Farrakhan rebuild the post 1975 NOI only to be able to leave the NOI around 1997/98 and build the New Black Panther Party (NBPP) which is still active today in 2020, 19 years after Khalid Muhammad’s physical disappearance. 

Of course, Kwame Ture (Stokely Carmichael) was a principle organizer within SNCC and he was able to utilize those organizing skills to serve as Kwame Nkrumah’s political secretary in Guinea-Conakry after Nkrumah’s legitimately elected government in Ghana was overthrown by a Central Intelligence Agency inspired and directed coup in 1966.  After writing the classic “Handbook of Revolutionary Warfare” in 1968, Nkrumah asked young Stokely Carmichael to carry out the vision for the All African People’s Revolutionary Party (A-APRP) in the U.S. (while other initial members like Nkrumah and Amilcar Cabral did the same organizing work in Africa) by establishing and building the A-APRP in the Western Hemisphere.

Ture’s focus on making the work study process the foundation for A-APRP work contributed to building a sustainable infrastructure within the A-APRP which has permitted the party to continue to function today in Africa, the U.S., and all over the African world, 22 years after Kwame Ture’s physical disappearance. 

These are all examples of sustainable, organizing work.  This type of work was not the strength of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.  Where that has hurt King’s legacy is in not having the cadre to carry out the appropriate and correct history of that legacy.  Much of what King did is drastically misunderstood today.  Capitalism/imperialism of course, makes every effort to sabotage King’s image and distort his work, but part of the reason they are so successful with doing that is because of the unsustainable nature of mobilization work alone.  The organizing models used as examples for the work in the NOI and the A-APRP are effective because those are independent organizations.  With that and their organizing platforms, those organizations have never depended upon the power structure to tell their stories.  Instead, they built cadre and capacity to define their existence and that’s why they continue in the same line of work so many years after the personalities who initially defined their work ceased to physically exist.  Without that cadre, Dr. King’s legacy has fallen into the hands of the very capitalist corporate image makers who cheered for his assassination when it happened.  King’s positions on non-violent civil disobedience, Black power, the war in Vietnam, and everything else about his work has been distorted.  Without having organized a cadre of organizers, the parts of King’s legacy that aren’t controlled by capitalism are in the hands of his biological family, some of whom seem to have more in common with the corporations than anything King was working for. 

Again, nothing here is designed to discredit and disrespect mobilization work.  All of us came into our current levels of consciousness and work through initial involvement through mobilizations.  This work is necessary, but its equally as important that people realize that mobilization work has limited capacity.  At some point, we have to move to engaging organizing potential to recruit and build capacity in an organized fashion to sustain our enemies in resolute struggle until we are finally able to overpower them and seize what’s needed for everyone to be free.  When we honor Dr. King, its important to recognize these questions as food for thought to further enhance our capacities to build.