Martin Luther King: Uncensored

The Rev. Ron Sala

Unitarian Universalist Society in Stamford

Stamford, Connecticut, United States

January 19, 2003

The scene is a town in the American South. A soldier has come home for the last time from Vietnam. His body is refused burial at one cemetery because it has taken its fill of death. So this soldier, who had lately spent his “full measure of devotion,” is ushered to another cemetery and again refused. You see, the soldier was a black man. When the full colored cemetery sent him on to the white cemetery, white citizens would not allow him to be buried there. It seems segregation did not end even at The End.

The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. realized that blacks fought and died in Vietnam out of proportion to their part of the overall American population. And, it was painfully obvious that these many black men were ostensibly fighting for the freedom of a faraway populace—while they were denied freedom at home.

King was privately against the war virtually from the beginning. He did not speak out publicly, though, concerned, as were many other black leaders, including his father, that open criticism of U.S. foreign policy would detract from the civil rights struggle.

But the junior King would not hold his tongue forever. He saw that desegregation did little good for someone who could not afford food or who was sent to die in a war for which King could find no justification. He developed a concept of what he called the giant triplets: racism, materialism, and militarism. He became convinced that none of these menaces could be defeated alone as they were inextricably linked. In his book, The Trumpet of Conscience, King declares,

I knew that America would never invest the necessary funds or energies in rehabilitation of its poor so long as adventures like Vietnam continued to draw men and skills and money like some demoniacal destructive suction tube. And so I was increasingly compelled to see the war not only as a moral outrage but also as an enemy of the poor, and to attack it was such.¹

Elsewhere, Dr. King notes,

We must begin to ask, “Why are there forty million poor people in a nation overflowing with unbelievable affluence?” Why has our nation placed itself in the position of being God’s military agent on earth … ? Why have we substituted the arrogant undertaking of policing the whole world for the high task of putting our own house in order?²

And also, “Our government must depend more on its moral power than on its military power.”³

King regarded this rule by the giant triplets as more than a political question. He was burdened with the conviction that it was question of the deepest levels of our humanity. In his words, “A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual doom.”⁴

What were the costs to King for speaking his conscience? He and other civil rights leaders had long been under intense government scrutiny. A number of agencies, including Military Intelligence⁵ and even an “intelligence” branch of the Memphis police were using such methods as wiretaps, bugs, and informants to keep an eye and an ear on the movement. But it was the FBI, which seems to have been the most zealous. FBI chief J. Edgar Hoover proclaimed, “Martin Luther King is the most notorious liar in the country.”⁶ Hoover was convinced, contrary to the evidence brought back by his own agents, that King and those around him were under the sway of communism. In fact, King was a critic of both communism and capitalism, holding that communism needed to realize that life was personal and that capitalism needed to realize that life is social. All told, it’s been estimated that 10,000 hours of surveillance were devoted to King.⁷

The Bureau did not content itself with merely spying, but resorted even to a disinformation campaign⁸and attempted blackmail⁹

As early as John F. Kennedy’s assassination in 1963, King knew what he was up against, between his enemies in high places and low. As he watched the TV coverage of the President’s murder, King said to his wife, Coretta, “That’s going to happen to me.” He predicted that he would not live to see his 40^th birthday. Sadly, that turned out to be true.

As alluded to in the first reading Bonnie read for us this morning, the mainstream press tended to be supportive of King in his early days fighting against segregation and for voting rights. But when he also called for a radical reassessment of American values and government policy around the other “giant triplets” of materialism and militarism the press attitude tended to be quite different. In this recording of one of his speeches at the time, this is the way King describes his treatment:

They’ve applauded our total movement, and they’ve applauded me. America, in most of its newspapers, applauded me in Montgomery when I stood before thousands of Negroes getting ready to riot when my home was bombed and said, “We can’t do it this way.” They applauded us in the sit-in movement when we nonviolently decided to sit in at lunch counters. They applauded us on the freedom rides when we accepted blows without retaliation. They praised us in Albany and Birmingham and Selma, Alabama. Oh, the press was so noble in its applause and so noble in its praise when I was saying, “Be nonviolent toward Bull Connor,” when I was saying, “Be nonviolent toward Jim Clark.” There’s something strangely inconsistent about a nation and a press that will praise you when you say, “Be nonviolent toward Jim Clark,” but will curse and damn you when you say, “Be nonviolent toward little, brown Vietnamese children. There’s something wrong with that press.

Nevertheless, under enormous pressure, Martin Luther King carried on in his convictions. He continued to live with hope, despite a bleak personal future. In another of his speeches, he movingly describes a prayer at midnight after a caller to his home called him a racist name and threatened to kill him. King rededicated himself to his faith in the spiritual power that sustained him.

He also used humor as a way to deflect the pressure. For instance, he used to tease Ralph Abernathy, one of his closest advisors, about his alleged snoring. Once, during a demonstration, King said, looking at Abernathy, “If I have to get arrested, let me get arrested with people who don’t snore.”¹⁰

As Bonnie alluded to earlier, I was at a demonstration myself yesterday. Janet Cory, Leslie Weinberg, and I went down to Washington, DC to protest a possible war with Iraq. It was good to see so many people there, many of whom said how glad they were to be among those of shared convictions. It was also good to see such a UU presence at the rally. It seemed every few minutes you’d see a Unitarian Universalist sign or a flaming chalice.

I’m glad to see more coverage of this demonstration than the last one. At the November rally, there were between 100,000 and 200,000 people. Yet the New York Times reported merely that “thousands” protested. After much criticism of their misleading coverage, they published another article a few days later, with a figure of 100,000-200,000. There were reports yesterday that up to 500,000 may have protested. The Associated Press said tens of thousands. If the press began by reporting thousands and are now reporting tens of thousands, perhaps by the next demonstration they begin by saying hundreds of thousands right away….

You don’t have to agree with me on Iraq. I can respect any well-reasoned, emotionally sound position, even if it may differ from my own. In fact, it’s been said that the Unitarian Universalist idea of hell is a discussion group in which everyone agrees! But I do urge you to look critically at the issues of the day. We are all part of this world. Especially, we in America, part of a nation so affluent and so influential politically around the world, need to play a part in what is going on.

King said that most people are like thermometers. They tell you what the temperature is in the room. But some people, he said, were like thermostats. They change the temperature.

King called on people to be “transformed nonconformists,”¹¹ Not just transformed within ourselves, turning our backs on the world. Not just nonconformists for the sake of nonconformity, but transformed nonconformists, acting from and supported by a deep spirituality and the power of love.

Like the King quote in our order of service today, “Every [person] of human convictions must decide on the protest that best suits his convictions, but we must all protest.” In an early speech, King declares, “The great glory of American democracy is the right to protest for right.”¹²

One parallel between King’s time and our own is that we’re beginning to see growing government harassment of activists. Members of the Green Party, Greenpeace, and Amnesty International have been harassed at airports. Some have been denied the right to fly domestically or internationally. There are a thousand people on a “threat to aviation” list, many of these for no other reason than their nonviolently held beliefs. The list is currently being appealed by a class action lawsuit.

Sociologist Gunnar Myrdal writes of an “American Creed” of freedom and democracy. Myrdal also writes, though, of an American Dilemma, in which our country is always torn between its high ideals and the flawed institutions we build to serve them.¹³

I’d encourage you attend the showing of the documentary A Crisis of Faith: The American Dilemma, which will be shown here Friday night. The film takes on this American Dilemma.

King said, “Growth requires connection and trust. Alienation is a form of living death. It is the acid of despair that dissolves society.” We must stay engaged, not allowing despair to rob us of our say.

Clergyman and author Clayborne Carson, testifies,

For me and many of his youthful critics, King became wiser as we grew older…. If King were alive today, he would doubtless encourage those who celebrate his life to recognized their responsibility to struggle as he did for a more just and peaceful world…. He would probably be the unpopular social critic he was on the eve of the Poor People’s campaign rather than the object of national homage that he became after his death. His basic message would be the same as it was when he was alive, for he did not bend with the changing political winds.¹⁴

King had his Gethsemane moments, but he knew how to live with hope. On the day that he was killed, he engaged in a pillow fight. Then, he played a practical joke on his mother on the phone.¹⁵ King knew how to live in joy.

At the protest yesterday, the Rev. Al Sharpton said, “Mr. Bush hung Dr. King's picture up in the White House last year but he need to hang up Dr. King's words.” Not only Mr. Bush, but the rest of us, need to honor all of King’s legacy.

¹ The Trumpet of Conscience (Harper and Row, 1967), 22-23.

² Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community? (Harper and Rowe, 1967), 133.

³ Ibid.

⁴ The Trumpet of Conscience, 123.

⁵ Gerald D. McKnight, The Last Crusade: Martin Luther King, Jr., the FBI, and the Poor People’s Campaign (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1998), 7.

⁶ The Wisdom of Martin Luther King, Jr. ed. Alex Ayres (New York: Meridian, 1993), 108.

⁷ McKnight, 6.

⁸ Ibid., 26.

⁹ Ayres, 109.

¹⁰ Ayres, 209-10.

¹¹ Ayres, 164.

¹² Ayres, 11.

¹³ Michael Friedly and David Gallen, Martin Luther King, Jr.: The FBI File

¹⁴ Ayres, xi.

¹⁵ Ibid., 6.