Aftermath
The assassination led to race riots in Washington, D.C.,
Chicago, Baltimore, Louisville, Kansas City, and dozens of other cities.
Presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy was on his way to Indianapolis for a
campaign rally when he was informed of King's death. He gave a short,
improvised speech to the gathering of supporters informing them of the tragedy
and urging them to continue King's ideal of nonviolence. The following day, he
delivered a prepared response in Cleveland. James Farmer Jr. and other civil
rights leaders also called for non-violent action, while the more militant
Stokely Carmichael called for a more forceful response. The city of Memphis
quickly settled the strike on terms favorable to the sanitation workers.
The plan to set up a shantytown in Washington, D.C., was
carried out soon after the April 4 assassination. Criticism of King's plan was
subdued in the wake of his death, and the SCLC received an unprecedented wave
of donations to carry it out. The campaign officially began in Memphis, on May
2, at the hotel where King was murdered. Thousands of demonstrators arrived on
the National Mall and stayed for six weeks, establishing a camp they called "Resurrection City".
President Johnson tried to quell the riots by making
telephone calls to civil rights leaders, mayors and governors across the United
States and told politicians that they should warn the police against the
unwarranted use of force. However, "I'm
not getting through," Johnson told his aides. "They're all holing up like generals in a dugout getting ready to
watch a war." Johnson declared April 7 a national day of mourning for
King. Vice President Hubert Humphrey attended King's funeral on behalf of the
President, as there were fears that Johnson's presence might incite protests
and perhaps violence. At his widow's
request, King's last sermon at Ebenezer Baptist Church, given on February 4,
1968, was played at the funeral:
I'd like somebody to
mention that day that Martin Luther King Jr. tried to give his life serving
others. I'd like for somebody to say that day that Martin Luther King Jr. tried
to love somebody.
I want you to say that
day that I tried to be right on the war question. I want you to be able to say
that day that I did try to feed the hungry. I want you to be able to say that
day that I did try in my life to clothe those who were naked. I want you to say
on that day that I did try in my life to visit those who were in prison. And I
want you to say that I tried to love and serve humanity.
Yes, if you want to
say that I was a drum major. Say that I was a drum major for justice. Say that
I was a drum major for peace. I was a drum major for righteousness. And all of
the other shallow things will not matter. I won't have any money to leave
behind. I won't have the fine and luxurious things of life to leave behind. But
I just want to leave a committed life behind.
His good friend Mahalia Jackson sang his favorite hymn, "Take My Hand, Precious Lord",
at the funeral. The assassination helped to spur the enactment of the Civil
Rights Act of 1968. Two months after King's death, James Earl Ray—on the loose
from a previous prison escape—was captured at London Heathrow Airport while
trying to reach white-ruled Rhodesia on a false Canadian passport. He was using
the alias Ramon George Sneyd. Ray was quickly extradited to Tennessee and
charged with King's murder. He confessed on March 10, 1969, though he recanted
this confession three days later. On the advice of his attorney Percy Foreman,
Ray pleaded guilty to avoid the possibility of the death penalty. He was
sentenced to a 99-year prison term. Ray later claimed a man he met in Montreal,
Quebec, with the alias "Raoul"
was involved and that the assassination was the result of a conspiracy. He
spent the remainder of his life attempting, unsuccessfully, to withdraw his
guilty plea and secure the trial he never had. Ray died in 1998 at age 70.
Allegations of
conspiracy
Ray's lawyers maintained he was a scapegoat similar to the
way that John F. Kennedy's assassin Lee Harvey Oswald is seen by conspiracy
theorists. Supporters of this assertion said that Ray's confession was given
under pressure and that he had been threatened with the death penalty. They
admitted that Ray was a thief and burglar, but claimed that he had no record of
committing violent crimes with a weapon. However, prison records in different
U.S. cities have shown that he was incarcerated on numerous occasions for armed
robbery. In a 2008 interview with CNN, Jerry Ray, the younger brother of James
Earl Ray, claimed that James was smart and was sometimes able to get away with
armed robbery. "I never been with
nobody as bold as he is," Jerry said. "He just walked in and put that gun on somebody, it was just like
it's an everyday thing."
Those suspecting a conspiracy point to the two successive
ballistics tests which proved that a rifle similar to Ray's Remington
Gamemaster had been the murder weapon. Those tests did not implicate Ray's
specific rifle. Witnesses near King said that the shot came from another
location, from behind thick shrubbery near the boarding house—which had been
cut away in the days following the assassination—and not from the boarding
house window. However, Ray's fingerprints were found on various objects in the
bathroom where it was determined the gunfire came from. An examination of the
rifle containing Ray's fingerprints determined that at least one shot was fired
from the firearm at the time of the assassination.
In 1997, King's son Dexter Scott King met with Ray, and
publicly supported Ray's efforts to obtain a new trial. Two years later, King's
widow Coretta Scott King and the couple's children, represented by William F.
Pepper, won a wrongful death claim against Loyd Jowers and "other unknown co-conspirators". Jowers claimed to have
received $100,000 to arrange King's assassination. The jury found Jowers to be
complicit in a conspiracy and that government agencies were party to the
assassination.
In 2000, the U.S. Department of Justice completed the
investigation into Jowers' claims but did not find evidence of conspiracy. The
investigation report recommended no further investigation unless new reliable
facts are presented. A sister of Jowers admitted that he had fabricated the
story so he could make $300,000 from selling the story, and she corroborated
his story to get money to pay her income tax.
In 2002, The New York Times reported that a church minister,
Ronald Denton Wilson, claimed his father, Henry Clay Wilson, assassinated King.
He stated, "It wasn't a racist
thing; he thought Martin Luther King was connected with communism, and he
wanted to get him out of the way." Wilson provided no evidence to back
up his claims.
King researchers David Garrow and Gerald Posner disagreed
with Pepper's claims that the government killed King. In 2003, Pepper published
a book about the investigation and trial, as well as his representation of
James Earl Ray in his bid for a trial. James Bevel also disputed the argument
that Ray acted alone, stating, "There
is no way a ten-cent white boy could develop a plan to kill a million-dollar
black man." In 2004, Jesse Jackson stated:
The fact is there were
saboteurs to disrupt the march. And within our own organization, we found a
very key person who was on the government payroll. So infiltration within,
saboteurs from without and the press attacks. ... I will never believe that
James Earl Ray had the motive, the money and the mobility to have done it
himself. Our government was very involved in setting the stage for and I think
the escape route for James Earl Ray.
Legacy
South Africa
King's legacy includes influences on the Black Consciousness
Movement and civil rights movement in South Africa. King's work was cited by,
and served as, an inspiration for South African leader Albert Luthuli, who
fought for racial justice in his country during apartheid and was later awarded
the Nobel Peace Prize.
United Kingdom
John Hume, the former leader of the Social Democratic and
Labour Party, cited King's legacy as quintessential to the Northern Ireland
civil rights movement and the signing of the Good Friday Agreement, calling him
"one of my great heroes of the
century".
The Martin Luther King Fund and Foundation in the UK was set
up as a charity on December 30, 1969, after King's assassination and following
a visit to the UK in 1969 by his widow, Coretta King. The Foundation's first
chairman, Canon John Collins, stated that the Foundation was to be an active UK
national campaign for racial equality, its work also to include community
projects in areas of social need, and education. International Personnel (IP),
an employment agency, was formed in 1970 out of the foundation's base in
Balham, to find employment for professionally qualified black people. In its
first year, the agency placed ten percent of its applicants in jobs equal to
their ability. The Balham Training Scheme operated an evening school with
lecturers in Typing, Shorthand, English and Math. The foundation was removed
from the Charity Commission list on November 18, 1996, as it had ceased to
exist. The Northumbria and Newcastle Universities Martin Luther King Peace
Committee still exists to honor King's legacy, as represented by his final
visit to the UK to receive an honorary degree from Newcastle University in
1967. Northumbria and Newcastle remain centers for the study of Martin Luther
King and the US civil rights movement. Inspired by King's vision, the committee
undertakes a range of activities across the UK to "build cultures of peace".
In 2017, Newcastle University unveiled a bronze statue of
King to celebrate the 50th anniversary of his honorary doctorate ceremony. The
Students Union also voted to rename their bar "Luther's".
United States
King has become a national icon in the history of American
liberalism and American progressivism. His main legacy was to secure progress
on civil rights in the U.S. Just days after King's assassination, Congress
passed the Civil Rights Act of 1968. Title VIII of the Act, commonly known as
the Fair Housing Act, prohibited discrimination in housing and housing-related
transactions on the basis of race, religion, or national origin (later expanded
to include sex, familial status, and disability). This legislation was seen as
a tribute to King's struggle in his final years to combat residential
discrimination. The day following King's assassination, teacher Jane Elliott
conducted her first "Blue Eyes/Brown
Eyes" exercise with her class of elementary school students to help
them understand King's death as it related to racism.
King's wife Coretta Scott King was active in matters of
social justice and civil rights until her death in 2006. The same year that
King was assassinated, she established the King Center in Atlanta, Georgia,
dedicated to preserving his legacy and the work of championing nonviolent
conflict resolution and tolerance worldwide. Their son, Dexter King, serves as the
center's chairman. Daughter Yolanda King, who died in 2007, was a motivational
speaker, author and founder of Higher Ground Productions, an organization
specializing in diversity training.
Within the King family, members disagree about his views
about LGBT people. King's widow Coretta publicly said that she believed her
husband would have supported gay rights. However, his youngest child, Bernice
King, has said that he would have been opposed to gay marriage.
Martin Luther King
Jr. Day
Beginning in 1971, cities and states established annual
holidays to honor King. On November 2, 1983, President Ronald Reagan signed a
bill creating a federal holiday to honor King. Observed for the first time on
January 20, 1986, it is called Martin Luther King Jr. Day. Following President
George H. W. Bush's 1992 proclamation, the holiday is observed on the third
Monday of January each year, near the time of King's birthday. On January 17,
2000, for the first time, Martin Luther King Jr. Day was officially observed in
all fifty U.S. states. Arizona (1992), New Hampshire (1999) and Utah (2000)
were the last states to recognize the holiday. Utah previously celebrated the
holiday under the name Human Rights Day.
Veneration
King was canonized by Archbishop Timothy Paul of the Holy
Christian Orthodox Church on September 9, 2016. His feast day was set as April
4, the date of his assassination. King is also honored with a Lesser Feast on
the liturgical calendar of the Episcopal Church on April 4 or January 15, the
anniversary of his birth. The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America
commemorates King liturgically on January 15.
Ideas, influences,
and political stances
Christianity
As a Christian minister, King's main influence was Jesus
Christ and the Christian gospels, which he would almost always quote in his
speeches. King's faith was strongly based in the Golden Rule, loving God above
all, and loving your enemies. His nonviolent thought was also based in the
injunction to turn the other cheek in the Sermon on the Mount, and Jesus'
teaching of putting the sword back into its place (Matthew 26:52). In his
Letter from Birmingham Jail, King urged action consistent with what he
describes as Jesus' "extremist"
love, and also quoted numerous other Christian pacifist authors. In another
sermon, he stated:
Before I was a civil
rights leader, I was a preacher of the Gospel. This was my first calling and it
still remains my greatest commitment. You know, actually all that I do in civil
rights I do because I consider it a part of my ministry. I have no other
ambitions in life but to achieve excellence in the Christian ministry. I don't
plan to run for any political office. I don't plan to do anything but remain a
preacher. And what I'm doing in this struggle, along with many others, grows
out of my feeling that the preacher must be concerned about the whole man.
King's private writings show that he rejected biblical
literalism; he described the Bible as "mythological,"
doubted that Jesus was born of a virgin and did not believe that the story of
Jonah and the whale was true.
Among the thinkers who influenced King's theological outlook
were L. Harold DeWolf, Edgar Brightman, Peter Bertocci, Walter George Muelder,
Walter Rauschenbusch, and Reinhold Niebuhr.
The Measure of a Man
In 1959, King published a short book called The Measure of a
Man, which contained his sermons "What
is Man?" and "The
Dimensions of a Complete Life". The sermons argued for man's need for
God's love and criticized the racial injustices of Western civilization.
Nonviolence
World peace through
nonviolent means is neither absurd nor unattainable. All other methods have
failed. Thus we must begin anew. Nonviolence is a good starting point. Those of
us who believe in this method can be voices of reason, sanity, and
understanding amid the voices of violence, hatred, and emotion. We can very
well set a mood of peace out of which a system of peace can be built.—Martin Luther King Jr.
African-American civil rights activist Bayard Rustin was
King's first regular advisor on nonviolence. King was also advised by the white
activists Harris Wofford and Glenn Smiley. Rustin and Smiley came from the
Christian pacifist tradition, and Wofford and Rustin both studied Mahatma
Gandhi's teachings. Rustin had applied nonviolence with the Journey of
Reconciliation campaign in the 1940s, and Wofford had been promoting Gandhism
to Southern blacks since the early 1950s.
King initially knew little about Gandhi and rarely used the
term "nonviolence" during
his early activism. King initially believed in and practiced self-defense, even
obtaining guns to defend against possible attackers. The pacifists showing him
the alternative of nonviolent resistance, arguing that this would be a better
means to accomplish his goals. King then vowed to no longer personally use
arms.
In a chapter of Stride toward Freedom, King outlined his
understanding of nonviolence, which seeks to win an opponent to friendship,
rather than to humiliate or defeat him. The chapter draws from an address by
Wofford, with Rustin and Stanley Levison also providing guidance and
ghostwriting.
King was inspired by Gandhi and his success with nonviolent
activism, and as a theology student, King described Gandhi as being one of the "individuals who greatly reveal the
working of the Spirit of God". King had "for a long time ... wanted to take a trip to India." With
assistance from Harris Wofford, the American Friends Service Committee, and other
supporters, he was able to fund the journey in April 1959. The trip deepened
his understanding of nonviolent resistance and his commitment to America's
struggle for civil rights. In a radio address made during his final evening in
India, King reflected, "Since being
in India, I am more convinced than ever before that the method of nonviolent
resistance is the most potent weapon available to oppressed people in their
struggle for justice and human dignity."
When receiving the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964, King hailed
the "successful precedent"
of using nonviolence "in a
magnificent way by Mohandas K. Gandhi to challenge the might of the British
Empire ... He struggled only with the weapons of truth, soul force, non-injury
and courage."
Another influence for King's nonviolent method was Henry
David Thoreau's essay On Civil Disobedience and its theme of refusing to cooperate
with an evil system. He also was greatly influenced by the works of Protestant
theologians Reinhold Niebuhr and Paul Tillich, and said that Walter
Rauschenbusch's Christianity and the Social Crisis left an "indelible imprint" on his thinking by giving him a
theological grounding for his social concerns. King was moved by
Rauschenbusch's vision of Christians spreading social unrest in "perpetual but friendly conflict"
with the state, simultaneously critiquing it and calling it to act as an
instrument of justice. However, he was apparently unaware of the American
tradition of Christian pacifism exemplified by Adin Ballou and William Lloyd
Garrison. King frequently referred to Jesus' Sermon on the Mount as central for
his work. Before 1960, King also sometimes used the concept of "agape" (brotherly Christian
love).
Even after renouncing personal use of guns, King had a
complex relationship with self-defense in the movement. He publicly discouraged
it as a widespread practice but acknowledged that it was sometimes necessary.
Throughout his career King was frequently protected by other civil rights
activists who carried arms, such as Colonel Stone Johnson, Robert Hayling, and
the Deacons for Defense and Justice.
Criticism within the
movement
King was criticized by other black leaders in the civil
rights movement. This included more militant thinkers such as Nation of Islam
member Malcolm X. Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee founder Ella Baker
regarded King as a charismatic media figure who lost touch with the grassroots
of the movement as he became close to elite figures like Nelson Rockefeller.
Stokely Carmichael, a protégé of Baker's, became a black separatist and
disagreed with King's plea for racial integration because he considered it an
insult to a uniquely African-American culture. He also took issue that King's
non-violence approach depended on appealing to America's conscience, feeling
America had none to appeal to.
Activism and
involvement with Native Americans
King was an avid supporter of Native American rights and
Native Americans were active supporters of King's civil rights movement. The
Native American Rights Fund (NARF) was patterned after the NAACP's Legal Defense
and Education Fund. The National Indian Youth Council (NIYC) was especially
supportive in King's campaigns especially the Poor People's Campaign in 1968.
In King's book Why We Can't Wait he writes:
Our nation was born in
genocide when it embraced the doctrine that the original American, the Indian,
was an inferior race. Even before there were large numbers of Negroes on our
shores, the scar of racial hatred had already disfigured colonial society. From
the sixteenth century forward, blood flowed in battles over racial supremacy.
We are perhaps the only nation which tried as a matter of national policy to
wipe out its indigenous population. Moreover, we elevated that tragic
experience into a noble crusade. Indeed, even today we have not permitted
ourselves to reject or to feel remorse for this shameful episode. Our literature,
our films, our drama, our folklore all exalts it.
In the late 1950, the remaining Creek in Alabama were trying
to completely desegregate schools. Light-complexioned Native children were
allowed to ride buses to previously all-white schools, while dark-skinned
Native children from the same band were barred from the same buses. Tribal
leaders, hearing of King's desegregation campaign in Birmingham, contacted him
for assistance. Through his intervention the problem was quickly resolved.
In September 1959, after giving a speech at the University
of Arizona on the ideals of using nonviolent methods in creating social change,
King stated his belief that one must not use force in this struggle "but match the violence of his opponents
with his suffering." King then went to Southside Presbyterian, a
predominantly Native American church, and was fascinated by their photos; he
wanted to go to an Indian Reservation to meet the people so Casper Glenn took
King to the Papago Indian Reservation. He met with all the tribal leaders,
visited another Presbyterian church near the reservation, and preached there,
attracting a Native American crowd. He later returned to Old Pueblo in March
1962 where he preached again to a Native American congregation. King would
continue to attract the attention of Native Americans throughout the civil
rights movement. During the 1963 March on Washington there was a sizable Native
American contingent, including many from South Dakota and from the Navajo
nation.
King was a major inspiration, along with the civil rights
movement, of the Native American rights movement of the 1960s and many of its
leaders. John Echohawk, a member of the Pawnee tribe who was the executive
director and a founder of the Native American Rights Fund, stated:
Inspired by Dr. King,
who was advancing the civil rights agenda of equality under the laws of this
country, we thought that we could also use the laws to advance our Indianship,
to live as tribes in our territories governed by our own laws under the
principles of tribal sovereignty that had been with us ever since 1831. We
believed that we could fight for a policy of self-determination that was
consistent with U.S. law and that we could govern our own affairs, define our
own ways and continue to survive in this society.
Politics
As the leader of the SCLC, King maintained a policy of not
publicly endorsing a U.S. political party or candidate: "I feel someone must remain in the position of non-alignment, so
that he can look objectively at both parties and be the conscience of both—not
the servant or master of either." In a 1958 interview, he expressed
his view that neither party was perfect, saying, "I don't think the Republican Party is a party full of the
almighty God nor is the Democratic Party. They both have weaknesses ... And I'm
not inextricably bound to either party." King did praise Democratic
Senator Paul Douglas of Illinois as being the "greatest of all senators" because of his fierce advocacy
for civil rights causes.
King critiqued both parties' performance on promoting racial
equality:
Actually, the Negro
has been betrayed by both the Republican and the Democratic party. The
Democrats have betrayed him by capitulating to the whims and caprices of the
Southern Dixiecrats. The Republicans have betrayed him by capitulating to the
blatant hypocrisy of reactionary right-wing northern Republicans. And this
coalition of southern Dixiecrats and right-wing reactionary northern
Republicans defeats every bill and every move towards liberal legislation in
the area of civil rights.
Although King never publicly supported a political party or
candidate for president, in a letter to a civil rights supporter in October
1956 he said that he had not decided whether he would vote for Democrat Adlai
Stevenson II or Republican Dwight D. Eisenhower at the 1956 presidential
election, but that "In the past, I
always voted the Democratic ticket." In his autobiography, King says
that in 1960 he privately voted for Democratic candidate John F. Kennedy: "I felt that Kennedy would make the
best president. I never came out with an endorsement. My father did, but I
never made one." King adds that he likely would have made an exception
to his non-endorsement policy for a second Kennedy term, saying "Had President Kennedy lived; I would
probably have endorsed him in 1964."
In 1964, King urged his supporters "and all people of goodwill" to vote against Republican
Senator Barry Goldwater for president, saying that his election "would be a tragedy, and certainly
suicidal almost, for the nation and the world."
King rejected both laissez-faire capitalism and communism;
King had read Marx while at Morehouse but rejected communism because of its "materialistic interpretation of
history" that denied religion, its "ethical
relativism", and its "political
totalitarianism". He stated that one focused too much on the
individual while the other focused too much on the collective. The American
philosopher Tommie Shelby has described King as a social democrat who advocated
for advocating economic and social interventions to promote social justice
within the framework of a liberal-democratic polity and a capitalist-oriented
mixed economy. However, he was often reluctant to speak directly of this
support due to the anti-communist sentiment being projected throughout the
United States at the time, and the association of social democratic ("socialist") movements with
communism. King believed that a laissez-faire economic system would not
adequately provide the necessities of many American people, particularly
African Americans.
In a 1952 letter to Coretta Scott, he said: "I imagine you already know that I am
much more socialistic in my economic theory than capitalistic ..." In
one speech, he stated that "something
is wrong with capitalism" and said, "There must be a better distribution of wealth, and maybe America
must move toward a democratic socialism." King further said that "capitalism has outlived its
usefulness" and "failed to
meet the needs of the masses".
Compensation
King stated that black Americans, as well as other
disadvantaged Americans, should be compensated for historical wrongs. In an
interview conducted for Playboy in 1965, he said that granting black Americans
only equality could not realistically close the economic gap between them and
whites. King said that he did not seek a full restitution of wages lost to slavery,
which he believed impossible, but proposed a government compensatory program of
$50 billion over ten years to all disadvantaged groups.
He posited that "the
money spent would be more than amply justified by the benefits that would
accrue to the nation through a spectacular decline in school dropouts, family
breakups, crime rates, illegitimacy, swollen relief rolls, rioting and other
social evils." He presented this idea as an application of the common
law regarding settlement of unpaid labor but clarified that he felt that the
money should not be spent exclusively on blacks. He stated, "It should benefit the disadvantaged of
all races."
Television
Actress Nichelle Nichols planned to leave the
science-fiction television series Star Trek in 1967 after its first season. She
changed her mind after talking to King, who was a fan of the show. King
explained that her character signified a future of greater racial cooperation.
King told Nichols, "You are our
image of where we're going, you're 300 years from now, and that means that's
where we are and it takes place now. Keep doing what you're doing, you are our
inspiration." As Nichols recounted:
Star Trek was one of
the only shows that [King] and his wife Coretta would allow their little
children to watch. And I thanked him and I told him I was leaving the show. All
the smile came off his face. And he said, 'Don't you understand for the first
time we're seen as we should be seen. You don't have a black role. You have an equal
role.'
The series' creator, Gene Roddenberry, was deeply moved upon
learning of King's support.
State surveillance
and coercion
FBI surveillance and
wiretapping
FBI director J. Edgar Hoover personally ordered surveillance
of King, with the intent to undermine his power as a civil rights leader. The
Church Committee, a 1975 investigation by the U.S. Congress, found that "From December 1963 until his death in
1968, Martin Luther King Jr. was the target of an intensive campaign by the
Federal Bureau of Investigation to 'neutralize' him as an effective civil
rights leader."
In the fall of 1963, the FBI received authorization from
Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy to proceed with wiretapping of King's phone
lines, purportedly due to his association with Stanley Levison. The Bureau
informed President John F. Kennedy. He and his brother unsuccessfully tried to
persuade King to dissociate himself from Levison, a New York lawyer who had
been involved with Communist Party USA. Although Robert Kennedy only gave
written approval for limited wiretapping of King's telephone lines "on a trial basis, for a month or
so", Hoover extended the clearance so his men were "unshackled" to look for
evidence in any areas of King's life they deemed worthy.
The Bureau placed wiretaps on the home and office phone
lines of both Levison and King, and bugged King's rooms in hotels as he traveled
across the country. In 1967, Hoover listed the SCLC as a black nationalist hate
group, with the instructions: "No
opportunity should be missed to exploit through counterintelligence techniques
the organizational and personal conflicts of the leaderships of the groups ...
to insure [sic] the targeted group is disrupted, ridiculed, or discredited."
NSA monitoring of
King's communications
In a secret operation code-named "Minaret", the National Security Agency monitored the
communications of leading Americans, including King, who were critical of the
U.S. war in Vietnam. A review by the NSA itself concluded that Minaret was "disreputable if not outright illegal".
Allegations of
communism
For years, Hoover had been suspicious of potential influence
of communists in social movements such as labor unions and civil rights. Hoover
directed the FBI to track King in 1957, and the SCLC when it was established.
Due to the relationship between King and Stanley Levison,
the FBI feared Levison was working as an "agent
of influence" over King, in spite of its own reports in 1963 that
Levison had left the Party and was no longer associated in business dealings
with them. Another King lieutenant, Jack O'Dell, was also linked to the
Communist Party by sworn testimony before the House Un-American Activities
Committee (HUAC).
Despite the extensive surveillance, by 1976 the FBI had
acknowledged that it had not obtained any evidence that King himself or the
SCLC were actually involved with any communist organizations.
For his part, King adamantly denied having any connections
to communism. In a 1965 Playboy interview, he stated that "there are as many Communists in this freedom movement as there
are Eskimos in Florida." He argued that Hoover was "following the path of appeasement of
political powers in the South" and that his concern for communist
infiltration of the civil rights movement was meant to "aid and abet the
salacious claims of southern racists and the extreme right-wing elements."
Hoover replied by saying that King was "the
most notorious liar in the country". After his "I Have A Dream" speech, the FBI described King as "the most dangerous and effective Negro
leader in the country". It alleged that he was "knowingly, willingly and regularly cooperating with and taking
guidance from communists."
The attempts to prove that King was a communist was related
to the feeling of many segregationists that blacks in the South were content
with the status quo but had been stirred up by "communists" and "outside
agitators". King said that "the
Negro revolution is a genuine revolution, born from the same womb that produces
all massive social upheavals—the womb of intolerable conditions and unendurable
situations."
CIA surveillance
CIA files declassified in 2017 revealed that the agency was
investigating possible links between King and Communism after a Washington Post
article dated November 4, 1964, claimed he was invited to the Soviet Union and
that Ralph Abernathy, as spokesman for King, refused to comment on the source
of the invitation. Mail belonging to King and other civil rights activists was
intercepted by the CIA program HTLINGUAL.
Allegations of
adultery
The FBI attempted to discredit King through revelations
regarding his private life. FBI surveillance of King, some of it since made
public, attempted to demonstrate that he had numerous extramarital affairs. The
FBI distributed reports regarding such affairs to the executive branch, friendly
reporters, and potential coalition partners and funding sources of the SCLC,
and King's family. The bureau also sent anonymous letters to King threatening
to reveal information if he did not cease his civil rights work. The FBI–King
suicide letter sent to King just before he received the Nobel Peace Prize read,
in part:
The FBI–King suicide
letter, mailed anonymously by the FBI
The American public,
the church organizations that have been helping—Protestants, Catholics and Jews
will know you for what you are—an evil beast. So will others who have backed
you. You are done. King, there is only one thing left for you to do. You know
what it is. You have just 34 days in which to do (this exact number has been selected
for a specific reason, it has definite practical significant [sic]). You are
done. There is but one way out for you. You better take it before your
filthy fraudulent self is bared to the nation.
The letter was accompanied by a tape recording—excerpted
from FBI wiretaps—of several of King's extramarital liaisons. King interpreted
this package as an attempt to drive him to suicide, although William Sullivan,
head of the Domestic Intelligence Division at the time, argued that it may have
only been intended to "convince Dr.
King to resign from the SCLC." King refused to succumb to the FBI's
threats.
In 1977, Judge John Lewis Smith Jr. ordered the recorded
audiotapes and written transcripts resulting from the FBI's electronic surveillance
of King between 1963 and 1968 to sealed from public access in the National
Archives until 2027.
In May 2019, an FBI file emerged on which a handwritten note
alleged that King "looked on,
laughed and offered advice" as one of his friends raped a woman.
Historians of the period who have examined this notional evidence have
dismissed it as highly unreliable. David Garrow, author of an earlier biography
of King, wrote that "the suggestion
... that he either actively tolerated or personally employed violence against
any woman, even while drunk, poses so fundamental a challenge to his historical
stature as to require the most complete and extensive historical review possible".
Garrow's reliance on a handwritten note addended to a typed report is
considered poor scholarship by several other authorities. The professor of
American studies at the University of Nottingham, Peter Ling, pointed out that
Garrow was excessively credulous, if not naive, in accepting the accuracy of
FBI reports during a period when the FBI was undertaking a massive operation to
attempt to discredit King. Experts in 20th-century American history, including
Distinguished Professor of Political Science Jeanne Theoharis, the professors
Barbara Ransby of the University of Illinois at Chicago, Nathan Connolly of
Johns Hopkins University and Professor Emeritus of History Glenda Gilmore of
Yale University have expressed reservations about Garrow's scholarship.
Theoharis commented "Most scholars I
know would penalize graduate students for doing this." It is not the
first time the care and rigor of Garrow's work has been called into serious
question. Clayborne Carson, Martin Luther King biographer and overseer of the
Dr. King records at Stanford University states that he came to the opposite
conclusion of Garrow:
None of this is new.
Garrow is talking about a recently added summary of a transcript of a 1964
recording from the Willard Hotel that others, including Mrs. King, have said
they did not hear Martin's voice on it. The added summary was four layers
removed from the actual recording. This supposedly new information comes from
an anonymous source in a single paragraph in an FBI report. You have to ask how
could anyone conclude King looked at a rape from an audio recording in a room
where he was not present.
In his 1989 autobiography And the Walls Came Tumbling Down,
Ralph Abernathy stated that King had a "weakness
for women", although they "all
understood and believed in the biblical prohibition against sex outside of
marriage. It was just that he had a particularly difficult time with that
temptation." In a later interview, Abernathy said that he only wrote
the term "womanizing", that
he did not specifically say King had extramarital sex and that the infidelities
King had were emotional rather than sexual. Abernathy criticized the media for
sensationalizing the statements he wrote about King's affairs, such as the
allegation that he admitted in his book that King had a sexual affair the night
before he was assassinated. In his 1986 book Bearing the Cross, David Garrow
wrote about a number of extramarital affairs, including one woman King saw
almost daily. According to Garrow, "that
relationship ... increasingly became the emotional centerpiece of King's life,
but it did not eliminate the incidental couplings ... of King's travels." He
alleged that King explained his extramarital affairs as "a form of anxiety reduction". Garrow asserted that
King's supposed promiscuity caused him "painful
and at times overwhelming guilt". King's wife Coretta appeared to have
accepted his affairs with equanimity, saying once that "all that other business just doesn't have a place in the very
high-level relationship we enjoyed." Shortly after Bearing the Cross
was released, civil rights author Howell Raines gave the book a positive review
but opined that Garrow's allegations about King's sex life were "sensational" and stated that
Garrow was "amassing facts rather
than analyzing them".
Police observation
during the assassination
A fire station was located across from the Lorraine Motel,
next to the boarding house in which James Earl Ray was staying. Police officers
were stationed in the fire station to keep King under surveillance. Agents were
watching King at the time he was shot. Immediately following the shooting,
officers rushed to the motel. Marrell McCollough, an undercover police officer,
was the first person to administer first aid to King. The antagonism between
King and the FBI, the lack of an all-points bulletin to find the killer, and
the police presence nearby led to speculation that the FBI was involved in the
assassination.
Awards and
recognition
King was awarded at least fifty honorary degrees from
colleges and universities. On October 14, 1964, King became the youngest winner
of the Nobel Peace Prize, which was awarded to him for leading nonviolent
resistance to racial prejudice in the U.S. In 1965, he was awarded the American
Liberties Medallion by the American Jewish Committee for his "exceptional advancement of the principles
of human liberty." In his acceptance remarks, King said, "Freedom is one thing. You have it all
or you are not free."
In 1957, he was awarded the Spingarn Medal from the
NAACP.[449] Two years later, he won the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award for Stride
Toward Freedom: The Montgomery Story. In 1966, the Planned Parenthood
Federation of America awarded King the Margaret Sanger Award for "his courageous resistance to bigotry
and his lifelong dedication to the advancement of social justice and human
dignity." Also in 1966, King was elected as a fellow of the American
Academy of Arts and Sciences. In November 1967, he made a 24-hour trip to the
UK to receive an honorary Doctorate in Civil Law from Newcastle University,
becoming the first African American the institution had recognized in this
way.[310] In an impromptu acceptance speech, he said:
There are three urgent
and indeed great problems that we face not only in the United States of America
but all over the world today. That is the problem of racism, the problem of
poverty and the problem of war.
In addition to his nominations for three Grammy Awards, King
posthumously won for Best Spoken Word Recording in 1971 for "Why I Oppose the War in Vietnam".
In 1977, President Jimmy Carter posthumously awarded the
Presidential Medal of Freedom to King. The citation read:
Martin Luther King Jr.
was the conscience of his generation. He gazed upon the great wall of
segregation and saw that the power of love could bring it down. From the pain
and exhaustion of his fight to fulfill the promises of our founding fathers for
our humblest citizens, he wrung his eloquent statement of his dream for
America. He made our nation stronger because he made it better. His dream
sustains us yet.
King was second in Gallup's List of Most Widely Admired People
of the 20th Century. In 1963, he was named Time Person of the Year, and, in
2000, he was voted sixth in an online "Person
of the Century" poll by the same magazine. King placed third in The
Greatest American conducted by the Discovery Channel and AOL.
Five-dollar bill
On April 20, 2016, Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew announced
that the $5, $10, and $20 bills would all undergo redesign prior to 2020. Lew
said that while Lincoln would remain on the front of the $5 bill, the reverse
would be redesigned to depict various historical events that had occurred at
the Lincoln Memorial. Among the planned designs are images from King's "I Have a Dream" speech.
Memorials
Many memorial sites, buildings and sculptures have been created
to honor Martin Luther King Jr, including the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library
in Washington, D.C., the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Library in San Jose,
California, and the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial in West Potomac Park next
to the National Mall in Washington, D.C.
Honorary doctorates
King has received several honorary doctorates.
1957: Doctor of Humane Letters, Morehouse College; Doctor of
Laws, Howard University; Doctor of Divinity, Chicago Theological Seminary
1958: Doctor of Laws, Morgan State College; Doctor of
Humanities, Central State College
1959: Doctor of Divinity, Boston University
1961: Doctor of Laws, Lincoln University; Doctor of Laws,
University of Bridgeport
1962: Doctor of Civil Laws, Bard College
1963: Doctor of Letters, Keuka College
1964: Doctor of Divinity, Wesleyan College; Doctor of Laws,
Jewish Theological Seminary; Doctor of Laws, Yale University; Doctor of
Divinity, Springfield College
1965: Doctor of Laws, Hofstra University; Doctor of Humane
Letters, Oberlin College; Doctor of Social Science, Amsterdam Free University;
Doctor of Divinity, St. Peter's College
1967: Doctor of Civil Law, University of Newcastle upon
Tyne; Doctor of Laws, Grinnell College
Works
Stride toward Freedom: The Montgomery Story (1958) ISBN
978-0-06-250490-6
The Measure of a Man (1959) ISBN 978-0-8006-0877-4
Strength to Love (1963) ISBN 978-0-8006-9740-2
Why We Can't Wait (1964) ISBN 978-0-8070-0112-7
Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community? (1967) ISBN
978-0-8070-0571-2
The Trumpet of Conscience (1968) ISBN 978-0-8070-0170-7
A Testament of Hope: The Essential Writings and Speeches of
Martin Luther King Jr. (1986) ISBN 978-0-06-250931-4
The Autobiography of Martin Luther King Jr. (1998), ed.
Clayborne Carson ISBN 978-0-446-67650-2
"All Labor Has
Dignity" (2011) ed. Michael Honey ISBN 978-0-8070-8600-1
"Thou, Dear
God": Prayers That Open Hearts and Spirits. Collection of King's
prayers. (2011), ed. Lewis Baldwin ISBN 978-0-8070-8603-2
MLK: A Celebration in Word and Image (2011). Photographed by
Bob Adelman, introduced by Charles Johnson ISBN 978-0-8070-0316-9
Discography
Albums
Charted albums by Martin Luther King Jr.
The Great March to Freedom 1963 141
The March on Washington 102
Freedom March on Washington
119
I Have a Dream 1968 69
The American Dream 173
In Search of Freedom 150
In the Struggle for Freedom and Human Dignity 154
Singles
Charted singles by Martin Luther King Jr.
"I Have a Dream"
(Gordy 7023 – b/w We Shall Overcome, Liz Lands)
1968 88 I Have a Dream (1968)
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