The Radical and Unknown Side of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

The radical Dr. King is unknown to most because much of what we understand about Dr. King’s legacy was created for us by the very same people and interests that wanted to see Dr. King destroyed when he was alive.  Today, and every year around the time of the commemoration for Dr. King’s birthday (which is actually January 15th), we are overwhelmed with a constant barrage of repeated snippets of Dr. King’s 1963 “I Have a Dream” speech where he talks about “little black girls and little white girls…”
The corporate image making mechanisms that craft everything you believe from what mustard to like to what you know and think about Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., are forever hard at work crafting your vision of Dr. King as that of a religious pacifist who just wanted to be loved by racist white America.  And, their suggestion about Dr. King is that he would sacrifice anything for that love, even his life.  This is nothing except a shameless effort by the capitalist system to redefine Dr. King’s image to keep you from recognizing and understanding the significance of Dr. King’s courageous and uncompromising moral imperative against this wicked power structure. 

For example, Dr. King’s uncompromising position against the immoral war in Vietnam.  His position, of which he admittedly was pushed to take by the militant influences of the youthful Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee working around him, was not just some soft position of being un-dialectically against war.  His position developed from his increased understanding that the war was being fueled by the capitalist system’s desire to eradicate any threat (socialist development) to its political and economic hegemony over the world’s people and resources.  Dr. King stated as such in his iconic “Why I Oppose the War against Vietnam” speech given one year to the date of his assassination on April 4, 1967.  In that speech, Dr. King probably sealed his death warrant with terrorists who carry out intelligence work for this country when he explained, correctly, that a few people were using the war to consolidate their control of resources and the targeted bombing against the Vietnamese people was simply a manifestation of the rich trying to ensure the poor stayed that way.  Dr. King called for a “redistribution of wealth.”  And, by this he didn’t mean anyone giving anyone anything.  He meant pursuing justice for centuries of the economically developed capitalist countries stealing from the majority colonized people on earth. 

Another example is Dr. King’s position on non-violence.  The capitalist power structure, by continuing to repeat the one speech snippet over and over, is attempting to deceive you into ignoring Dr. King’s total approach to fighting for justice for all of humanity.   Without question, Dr. King believed completely in non-violence as a principle, meaning to him, there was really no other approach that could win us our liberation.  Still, Dr. King was a pragmatic person who recognized that the masses of African people, tired of racist exploitation, were never going to sit still and let our enemies brutalize us without fighting back.  Or, in other words, Dr. King knew, as most of you who rely on our enemies for your education about our movement don’t, that our people always fought back.  Not sometimes.  Not a few times.  We always fought back.  He knew that if the enemy shot at us, we would shoot back.  So, although Dr. King certainly had his individual convictions, he was practical enough to respect that the masses of our people would never accept non-violence as a principle, only as a tactic, as was evidenced by civil rights projects like the Loundes County Freedom Organization – the original Black Panther Party, in Alabama, in 1965.  No evidence exists to suggest that Dr. King didn’t exist, cooperate, and support the movement’s collective decision to engage in self defense against racist white terrorism, despite his personal position which everyone knew.  That means Dr. King was often in houses where he knew the occupants had guns.  He was in cars where people were armed.  He even accepted without resistance (and even relief) armed guards from the Deacons for Defense. 

Finally, much has been written about Dr. King’s position on the evolving Black power movement which had its most recent mass expression during the march against fear in June of 1966 in Mississippi, United States.  What has been written is that Dr. King vehemently opposed the concept of Black power.  This perspective has been advanced by biographers, documentary and film makers, etc. of Dr. King who wish to promote the belief that Black power was anti-white so by positioning Dr. King to be completely opposed to the movement, these people hope to discredit it.   Dr. King certainly expressed reservations about the movement, but even while doing that in public, he worked behind the scenes to ensure he maintained nothing except the most principled and respectful relationships with the younger proponents of Black power like Kwame Ture (Stokely Carmichael).  In fact, Kwame Ture indicated that King often warned him that he was going to make certain statements about Black power, but that it meant nothing as it related to King’s support of our desires to be free.  In other words, Kings approach was a strategic one designed to throw the power structure off base while our people continued to build our capacity. 

This weekend, as always, will be filled with a strong whipped cream version of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.  Just remember that all of that is designed to keep you from seeing King as he was.  A person who was willing to sacrifice his life for justice.  And for him, that justice increasingly meant challenging the capitalist system on every level using every tactic and resource necessary to change this backward system.  Although many of us refuse to see it, this power structure assassinated Dr. King because they clearly saw this happening.  If we now can begin to accept this, in order to truly commemorate Dr. King’s contributions, we recommend you take two actions.  One, read his April 4th, 1967 speech against the Vietnam war.  The second thing is organize groups to read that speech as a part of an organizational effort to educate and organize around the true movements for justice in this world as they are.  Not the annual sanitized versions released to us by the very people who actively sought to destroy Dr. King.