Sunday, January 16, 2022

Martin Luther King, Jr.'s Speech, "Love, Law, and Civil Disobedience:" The Civil Rights Movement’s Philosophical Foundation

What does it mean to be good? How do we resist evil? Where should we put our faith: in goodness, or in violence? Martin Luther King, Jr.’s carefully-reasoned speech, “Love, Law, and Civil Disobedience,” delivered to a group of civil rights workers, laid out the Civil Rights Movement’s profound values. King’s carefully-reasoned exposition gave the movement its philosophical underpinning. Drawing on his academic background in Christian theology, South Asian philosophy, and New England transcendentalism, King did not merely guide his workers. More importantly, he called the United States to its better nature.

King did not give his speech with the overall public in mind. He delivered this speech on November 16, 1961 in Atlanta, Georgia to a student group called the Fellowship of the Concerned. He did not instruct them about movement tactics. Instead, he delved into the morality on which the movement rested. That moral foundation is King’s eternal legacy.

Although most remembered for fiery heights of eloquence like his “Mountaintop” and “I Have a Dream” speeches, King also guided his movement with deep moral arguments. In “Love, Law, and Civil Disobedience,” King began with the idea that people are capable of great goodness. King also showed that it is never right to cooperate with evil, just as, in contrast, we should have boundless faith a future of justice. Let us look at each of those ideas in turn.


Are People Basically Good?

King’s first profound insight was that human beings are good. That insight was remarkable because the United States was, at the time, dominated by appalling racial wickedness. A few months earlier, a crowd of white people had fire-bombed a bus full of the Freedom Riders, viciously beating the men and women as they escaped.

Let us remember that, in 1961, racial discrimination was still the law of the land, particularly in the states of the former Confederacy. In my home state of Virginia, interracial marriage was still a serious crime. Not until I started my Master of Arts degree at Northern Illinois University did I attend an integrated school. (My high schools and undergraduate college enrolled only one or two token minority students.) The Supreme Court ruling in the case of Brown versus the Board of Education was merely a document on paper. It made little difference to education. John Birch Society stickers plastered my middle-class neighborhood.

Many people imagine that chain gangs are a relic of the distant past, but I often witnessed this horror as an adolescent in the 1960s. There were no body cams to bring justice to the victims of police brutality. Rural areas of the Deep South were still, for all practical purposes, police states. African-Americans who went to the voting booth feared for their lives, and people who were arrested and taken to southern jails were often never seen again. Lynching continued openly as late as 1981, when the Ku Klux Klan hanged Michael Donald in Mobile, Alabama. And, yet, King insisted that people are capable of great goodness. His ultimate point, his foundation, was to assume that the Civil Rights movement could appeal to kindness rather than hate. Love could replace anger. King explained it like this:
“I think this is what Jesus meant when he said, ‘love your enemies.’ I’m very happy that he didn’t say ‘like your enemies.’ because it is very difficult to like someone bombing your home; it is pretty difficult to like somebody threatening your children; it is difficult to like congressmen who spend all of their time trying to defeat civil rights. But Jesus says love them, and love is greater than like. Love is understanding, redemptive, creative, goodwill for all men. And it is this whole ethic of love which is the idea standing at the basis of the student movement.”
And he summed it up with this simple message of hope:
“There is within human nature an amazing potential for goodness.”
Are violence and hate the only ways to defeat our enemies? If so, King’s philosophy of civil disobedience comes to nothing. If we reach our opponents’ hearts, he suggested, people could hope for a better future.


Do Not Cooperate with Evil

Yet, King made another point, which was not to cooperate with evil. This principle applied to the movement’s followers, just as it applied to the racists and politicians who perpetuated evil. He did not say to “resist evil,” which we hear more often. Instead, he reached more deeply. He told his followers not to acquiesce to evil:
“It is as much a moral obligation to refuse to cooperate with evil as it is to cooperate with good. Noncooperation with evil is as much a moral obligation as the cooperation with good.”
My late mother, who loved to read history books, often commented that people like Hitler and Stalin could only come to power if a great number of people helped them. Even more so, of course, it is so easy to go along with injustices. Martin Luther King, Jr. warned the students to avoid that temptation.

It is from that principle, that we should not cooperate with evil, that led King to the idea that not to give in to unjust laws, such as Jim Crow laws and legalized racial discrimination. While conservatives value social order above all else, King asked the students to value morality above all else.


And Have Faith in the Future

Many people, in 1961 and 2022 alike, prefer to glory in a mythical past. Instead, King offered hope for a better future. The Christian concept of “faith” can equally be translated as “trust.” Thus, King asked the students to hope, expect, and, most of all, work for, a better future:
“This movement is a movement based on faith in the future. It is a movement based on a philosophy, the possibility of the future bringing into being something real and meaningful. It is a movement based on hope.”
The message of American conservativism is, obviously enough, that we don’t need to solve our problems if we pretend we don’t have any. Yet, never mentioning his opponents’ philosophy, King’s speech did not merely ask the students to recognize the horrors that racism had brought to the United States. He also asked them to hope and work toward a better day when justice could triumph:
“With this faith in the future, with this determined struggle, we will be able to emerge from bleak and desolate midnight of man’s inhumanity to man, into the bright and glittering daybreak of freedom and justice.”
In a later post, I’ll talk about this speech’s justification for civil disobedience. For now, however, let us remember that King’s speech showed faith in humanity’s goodness. He reminded his workers never to cooperate with evil. Still, while recognizing evil, he expressed profound faith – profound trust – that they could work toward a glorious future of just peace and human kindness. He presaged the vision that he would express two years later from the Lincoln Memorial, “With this faith, we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood.” As the United States somewhat reluctantly celebrates Martin Luther King, Jr. during this three-day holiday weekend, is his work finished? I think not. Should we still remember to deny cooperation with evil? I think yes. Do we still need to remember King’s message of love, hope, and faith? Obviously, we do.

Part of King’s genius is that he rarely bothered to refute the fallacious arguments that conservative racists made against him. Instead, he offered a powerful vision. That vision overcame whatever venom or false promises his opponents might talk about. He did not condemn his opponents; instead, he offered them a chance to reform. He did not fact-check the liars; he overwhelmed them with moral power. With the resurgence of brazen Jim Crow laws across the South, we still need his lesson today.

Peace to all.
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