Harry Belafonte: Art and the Human Soul

“Some who’ve controlled institutions of culture and commentary have at times used their power to not only distort truth but to punish the truth-seekers…. And on occasion, I have been one of its targets.”

So said actor and singer Harry Belafonte in a November 8, 2014 speech in Hollywood, California while accepting the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award. He spoke at the sixth Governors Awards ceremony. Belafonte spoke of art’s ongoing struggle, for and against racism. He reminded us that art has power, and that art can direct its power either to good or ill. He reminded us of the resolution needed to challenge injustice. Using the basic organizational method of comparison and contrast, Belafonte showed that art changes lives, and that artists make a choice when they use that power. As Black History Month continues in February 2024, let us remember Belafonte’s courageous insight.


The Birth of a Nation: Art for Evil Power

So, Belafonte began by talking about the powerful 1915 film, The Birth of a Nation. Belafonte began by noting the film’s astonishing creativity:

“By all measure this cinematic work was considered the greatest film ever made.”

Of course, we all know that The Birth of a Nation offered a radically conservative view of the American Civil War and celebrated the rise of the murderous Ku Klux Klan.

To Belafonte, The Birth of a Nation treated art’s awesome power to affect human behavior. After Americans watched the movie’s stunningly inaccurate and immoral version of Confederate history, violent anti-Black race riots swept across the United States of America:

“The power of moving pictures to impact on human behavior was never more powerfully evidenced than when, after the release of this film, American citizens went on a murderous rampage. Races were set one against the other. Fire and violence erupted. Baseball bats and billy clubs bashed heads. Blood flowed in streets of our cities; and lives were lost.”

Belafonte pointed out that President Woodrow Wilson was one of The Birth of a Nation’s biggest fans. Wilson’s powerful endorsement made The Birth of a Nation, with all of its racist tropes, even more persuasive to a gullible public:

“The film also gained the distinction of being the first film ever screened at the White House. The then-presiding President Woodrow Wilson openly praised the film, and with the power of this presidential anointing, validated the film’s brutality and its grossly distorted view of history.”

Tarzan, the "Porcelain Adonis"

The Birth of a Nation was not the only racist film in the United States’ history. Belafonte remarked on his 1935 viewing of a Tarzan movie. He was stunned by Tarzan’s supposed racial superiority:

“Tarzan was a sight to see. This porcelain Adonis, this white liberator, who could speak no language, swinging from tree to tree, saving Africa from the tragedy of destruction by a black indigenous population.”

Recognizing movies’ power to alter racial attitudes, Belafonte remarked on the brazen, anti-African racism that Tarzan conveyed:

“Through this film, the virus of racial inferiority, of never wanting to be identified with anything African, swept into the psyche of its youthful observers. And for the years that followed, Hollywood brought abundant opportunity for black children in their Harlem theaters to cheer Tarzan and boo Africans.”

To broaden things out, Belafonte noted the broad racism of American filmmaking:

“Native American[s], our Indian brothers and sisters, fared no better. And at the moment, Arabs ain’t lookin’ so good.”

Young Harry Belafonte Singing

Art and the Moral Encounter

Films like The Birth of a Nation and Tarzan the Fearless inspired too many viewers toward racism and evil. However, to Belafonte, they were springboards (reactions, maybe) to moral rebellion:

“It was an early stimulus to the beginning of my rebellion, rebellion against injustice and human distortion, and hate. How fortunate for me that the performing arts became the catalyst that fueled my desire for social change.”

Belafonte cited his mentor, Paul Robeson, and authors Langston Hughes, Maya Angelou, and James Baldwin, among others, as artists who “inspired me” and became his “moral compass.

This led Belafonte to quote Robeson that "Artists are the gatekeepers of truth. They are civilization’s radical voice."


Is Art Now Speaking in a More Inspiring Voice?

Belafonte expressed his gratitude that he had lived long enough to see more positive filmmaking. Talking about recent films, he explained that:

“…today’s cultural harvest yields a sweeter fruit: Defiant Ones, Schindler’s List, Brokeback Mountain, 12 Years a Slave, and many more.”

Belafonte emphasized the power that art has to help us understand human nature:

“… all of this [is] happening at the dawning of technological creations that would give artists boundless regions of possibilities to give us deeper insights into human existence.”

So, overall, Belafonte condemned the harsh racism of past filmmaking, while praising the deeper, more discerning films that have appeared recently.


A Call to Moral Action

Concluding, Belafonte urged artists of every genre to become “visionaries” to uplift people’s souls and to influence the world to do what is good, to see the better side of human nature:

“Perhaps we, as artists and as visionaries for what’s better in the human heart and the human soul, could you influence citizens everywhere in the world to see the better side of who and what we are as a speci[es].”

What lessons can we learn from Belafonte’s speech? Yes, we learn brilliant artists can speak either for evil or for good, according to their preferences. Belafonte’s opening example, The Birth of a Nation, reminded us that art can shape reality and human behavior, equally for evil or for good. How will artists exercise their passions? That is a moral choice.

How can we understand Belafonte’s rhetorical approach? Belafonte made his point by contrasting the wickedness of two powerful movies against the hopefulness of a coterie of great artists. We can see the good most clearly only after evil's persuasive power has shocked us to the core. 

Was Belafonte too optimistic? He rightly pointed out newer films that take a broader, more humane perspective. Nevertheless, Tarzan has not disappeared from the screen, while female white goddesses like Sheena, Queen of the Jungle sometimes arise to rescue central Africa. I also wonder about 2005's Lord of War. Although that film places the onus on white Americans and Europeans, it continues the view that Black Africans live amidst unrelieved ignorance and corruption. So, I have not become totally optimistic. 

In this speech, Belafonte commissioned the nation’s—the world’s—artists to use their power to bring out the best that humanity has to offer. He documented a problem, and a promising solution followed. He warned us about the evil that art can produce, and yet he balanced that warning with hope. 

by William D. Harpine

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Remembering Black History Month, here are a few of my previous posts about historical African American Speakers: 

Frederick Douglass’ 1852 Fourth of July Speech and the Christian Right

Martin Luther King, Jr.'s Speech about Mountains

Fannie Lou Hamer, "Sick and Tired of Being Sick and Tired," Gave a Voting Rights Speech in Narrative Style

Stokely Carmichael in 1966: Civil Rights Laws Enforce Rights that Already Exist

Tyler Perry at the 2019 BET Awards: "Helping Someone Cross" as a Metaphor for Reaching Out to Help

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P.S. Harry Belafonte and Petula Clark caused a brief dustup in 1968 when they rendered a powerful duet of Clark's antiwar song "Path of Glory" on television; Clark touched Belafonte on the arm. This interracial touching aroused great offense in some quarters. Clark refused to delete the scene. 

Thanks to AmericanRhetoric.com for publishing a transcript of this great speech.

How racist was The Birth of a Nation? Well, in one series of scenes, the audience sees the Reconstruction-era South Carolina legislature dominated by African American lawmakers who drink moonshine on the legislative floor, stand up to speak while chewing on a chicken leg, and intimidate white women in the gallery. Is that racist enough?

The Tarzan movie that Belafonte viewed in 1933 was presumably Tarzan the Fearless, maybe Tarzan the Ape Man. Both films depict outrageously stereotypical views of Africans. 

Copyright © 2024 by William D. Harpine

Image: Library of Congress, Carl Van Vechten collection,

 public domain, not to be altered in any way

Were the Canadian Truckers Treated Worse than Martin Luther King, Jr? Jonathan Turley Made a Ridiculous Argument

Let’s talk about word games. Politically-minded people learn to say things that are literally true but completely misleading. Back in the 1960s, pop psychologists called this “speaking Martian.” Fox News legal analyst Jonathan Turley got on Fox News the other day to complain about what he thought was the horrible mistreatment of the demonstrators at the Canadian truckers blockade. Protesters had obstructed several border crossings. The police ticketed and sometimes towed the trucks for illegal parking. The more recalcitrant protestors were threatened with arrest. No one beat them with rubber hoses or baseball bats. The police did not burn their trucks. The protesters did not disappear to the back room of a jail, never to be seen again. Horrified that the police had suppressed the demonstrations, Turley told a Fox News reporter:

“By this rationale, they could have cracked down on the Civil Rights movement. They could have arrested Martin Luther King.”

You can well imagine how Twitter users responded. Martin Luther King, Jr. was, of course, arrested many times – sometimes brutally. He was not sipping tea in a diner when he wrote his famous “Letter from Birmingham Jail.” King repeatedly acknowledged that people who engage in civil disobedience should willingly accept legal punishment. In his famous “I Have a Dream,” King said:

“With this faith we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day.” (Italics added)

Even Fox News has posted a complete transcript of “I Have a Dream.” Has Turley ever read that famous speech? Or listened to it? Okay, well, that’s fine. Even famous lawyers make mistakes. Unfortunately, instead of admitting his error, Turley doubled down with this tweet:

“Not to feed the trolls, but I never said that Dr. King was not arrested. I said that the Canadian policy could be used to arrest MLK for the same acts of civil disobedience. The point is that such acts of civil disobedience are not viewed as ‘terrorism’ or ‘insurrection.’...”

The first part of what Turley said in that tweet was, of course, literally true. He never specifically said the exact words that “Dr. King was not arrested.” He had, however, said that “they could have cracked down on the Civil Rights movement.” He showed no awareness of history, no awareness that the Civil Rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s had been brutally suppressed. No listener could miss what Turley meant. And, Turley did say, “They could have arrested Martin Luther King.” No one who was aware that King had, in fact, been arrested – dozens of times – would have said that. Additionally, Turley’s claim that King’s work was “not viewed as ‘terrorism’ or ‘insurrection’” is dubious. King wrote his "Letter from Birmingham Jail" only after a group of White pastors accused him of inciting “hatred and violence.”

The idea of speaking Martian is to say things that are literally true but completely deceiving. And so, in my opinion, Turley was speaking Martian. Turley said something that was literally true but indescribably absurd. As best I can tell from browsing social media, Turley’s conservative fans are deliriously happy with his ridiculous denial.

Just think – with Black History Month 2022 halfway done – too many conservatives take advantage of every opportunity to show how little they know about Black history. While hordes of parents try to shout down anyone who wants to teach Black history to their children, people like Turley (who, by his impressive credentials, should be well-educated) demonstrate that the American public knows all too little about Black history. Or, for that matter, about any history. Since the whole idea of being a conservative is to learn from the past, ignorance of history defeats the point. Doesn’t it?

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Earlier Post: Martin Luther King's Speech “Love, Law, and Civil Disobedience:” The Radical Tradition

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Historical Note: If you want to read about the brutal way that police treated the Freedom Riders during the Civil Rights movement, check this link. If you would like to learn about Martin Luther King, Jr.’s many arrests, here is an excellent summary.

Word of Rhetorical Advice: There is an old saying that, when you are digging yourself into a hole, stop digging. Turley might want to think about that. 

“What, They Demand, Is Your Christianity?" Rev. Theodore S. Wright’s 1837 Speech against Racial Prejudice

Of all the places that should (in principle) be open to everyone, rich and poor, regardless of background or race, should not Christian churches (and, indeed, all religious institutions) be foremost? Yet, almost two centuries ago, Rev. Theodore S. Wright complained bitterly when his fellow ministers locked out African-American worshipers.

Wright, an African-American Presbyterian minster, spoke against racial prejudice. In his 1837 speech to the New York Anti-Slavery Society, he said that it was not just slaves who faced intense discrimination. Even free African-Americans were forbidden to study trades, locked out of colleges, and, he added, “oppressed by a corrupt public sentiment.” Wright pointed out the mistreatment that African-Americans often received in churches, complained that prejudice affected their ability to save their souls, and proposed to rectify the problem by shaming racist clergy. He noted that in evangelical revivals, “which have been blessed and enjoyed in this part of the country, the colored population were overlooked.” Wright explained:

“But sir, this prejudice goes further. It debars men from heaven. While sir, slavery cuts off the colored portion of the community from religious privileges, men are made infidels. What, they demand, is your Christianity? How do you regard your brethren? How do you treat them at the Lord’s table? Where is your consistency in talking about the heathen, transversing the ocean to circulate the Bible everywhere, while you frown upon them at the door? These things meet us and weigh down our spirits.”

We can allow Wright a bit of hyperbole. Obviously, his own church welcomed African-American worshipers. It remained true, however, that African-American worshipers were, as was the custom, often consigned to the balcony. Even worse, they were, as he explained, sometimes excluded from churches entirely.

Having shown the problem, Wright offered a bold solution. His idea was to awaken the consciences of White pastors. On one occasion, Wright himself went around to other church elders to inquire about this failing of theirs. He literally went door to door:

“We went and they humbled themselves. The Church commenced efficient efforts, and God blessed them as soon as they began to act for these people as though they had souls.”

Yet, he noted that even when African-American worshipers were allowed into the churches, they were relegated to the balconies, as if “the value of the pews would be diminished if the colored people sat in them.”

Wright gave his speech at a time of religious upheaval. White and Black churches tended to separate in the 1800’s in The Southern Baptist Convention, for example, was originally created as an act of racial discrimination. My own Methodist denomination split in the 1800s, after African-American worshipers were often rejected or consigned to the balconies. For example, Rev. Richard Allen founded the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church in 1816. Like many African-American Methodist churches, the AME shares doctrines, rules, and rituals with other Methodist Churches. The AME church formed because church ushers in Philadelphia literally dragged Allen off of his knees in the middle of prayer. And yet, even today in 2022, churches sadly remain among the most segregated institutions.

Thank you, Rev. Wright, for pointing out the monstrous injustice and hypocrisy that afflicted the Christian churches in 1837. How lamentable that the issue has not disappeared. Yes, today, it is rare for White-majority churches to expel people of color. Not universal, however, is to welcome them, not as guests, but as brothers and sisters. Rev. Wright was correct when he complained that “These things meet us and weigh down our spirits.”

Indeed, we cannot say today that African Americans are generally debarred from Christian churches. Furthermore, I enthusiastically praise denominations like the AME Church or African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church, which offer so much community and spiritual support. That is no excuse for churches that restrict themselves, however unconsciously. We might want to ask why churches, of all places, often remain highly segregated. 

Can speeches help with these problems? Speeches such as Wright’s might affect people’s attitudes and actions. Their effect is greatest if the message is repeated over, over, and over. Wright spoke a long time ago. Do we need to hear his message, updated to suit our times, repeated again?

Among their other functions, public speeches help people recognize social problems. We continue to recognize Black History Month because we look to the past for lessons. Wright complained about discrimination in employment, education, and most of all, religion. What has changed since 1837? What has not changed? If Wright spoke today, what would he say? Would he tell us that everything is fine? Would he complain that prejudice still restricts African-Americans? I think we all know the answer to that question. Don’t we?

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Earlier Posts:

Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Sermon on the Power of Love

John Wesley’s Sermon against Bigotry

Pope Francis' Sermon for the World Day of Migrants and Refugees

Rabbi Cahana’s Sermon on the Power of Love

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P.S. Wright spoke in cosmopolitan New York City. More western parts of New York state were called the “burned over district” in 1837 because of all the fire and brimstone preaching. Wright’s speech was probably tame compared with what his audience may have heard around the state. I may look into New York’s historical evangelism in upcoming posts. What do you think?

James Baldwin's 1963 Speech Ripped Away Two American Myths

Best-selling author James Baldwin started a brief 1963 speech with this sentence: “The beginnings of this country have nothing whatever to do with the myths we have created about it.” One reason people create myths is to make us feel comfortable about our uncomfortable past. Yet, Baldwin’s first sentence startles the conscience, for his speech sought to rip apart the comforting myths that substitute for history. Baldwin attacked two myths: the glorification of the Mayflower settlers and the minimization of slavery.

Baldwin did not just say that the myths distort history or that we should rethink the past. He went far beyond that. “Nothing whatever” is an absolute. Baldwin said that the myths were utterly wrong.

Making this argument, Baldwin gave his audience a new way to think about white supremacy and African-American history. He did not speak for a policy; instead, he smashed myths. His only weapons were common sense and powerful language. His claims seem self-evident once he explained them. Yet, Baldwin was right that we too often refuse to face obvious truths.

While other African-American leaders of the 1960s engaged in social activism, Baldwin undertook to make America recognize realities that myths had buried. He attacked two myths. The Mayflower Pilgrims soon became a symbol of white America’s greatness. Slavery was shoved into history’s background. These myths created a vision of America, a vision that Baldwin shattered like glass.

No, the Mayflower itself was no myth. Neither was slavery. What Baldwin meant is that American history twists them: the Pilgrims were desperate refugees, but myth turned them into triumphant heroes. Slavery was not, as history often teaches, an afterthought of American society. It was, Baldwin said, basic to early America’s economic triumphs.


Mayflower Myths

Descendants of the Mayflower’s Pilgrims can join a club that, by reputation, includes New England’s blue bloods. “Our members," the Mayflower Society says, “have formed lifelong bonds together while honoring the sacred legacy of our ancestors.” American history often teaches that the early settlers were heroes. We know, of course, that they were white heroes. That is so obvious that it goes unsaid. Baldwin explained:

“The people who settled the country, the people who came here, came here for one reason – no matter how disguised – they came here because they thought it would be better here than where they were. That’s why they came, and that’s the only reason that they came.”

Once he said that, it was just common sense. Nobody risks a sea voyage to go to an unsettled nation with an uncertain future because everything was going well at home. We knew that, did we not? And Baldwin’s inescapable corollary is that the Mayflower’s Pilgrims had struggled in England:

“Anybody who was making it in England did not get on the Mayflower. [Laughter and applause.] This is important. It is important that one begin to recognize this because part of the dilemma of this country is that it has managed to believe the myths it has created about its own past.”

As Baldwin pointed out, the English settlers succeeded because they massacred Massachusetts’s native people:

“We did several things in order to conquer the country. There was, at the point we reached these shores, a group of people who had never heard of machines, or as far as I know, of money, and we promptly eliminated them. We killed them. I’m talking about the Indians.”

So, that was the first myth. (As Nick Bryant points out, the Pilgrims set up an active trade to export Native American slaves and import African slaves. Is that horror the “scared legacy of our ancestors” of which the Mayflower Society boasts?) Having summarily dispatched the myth of the noble Pilgrims, Baldwin moved on to the myths that underestimated African slavery.


Myths about Slavery

Instead of dwelling on the evils of slavery – which he took as obvious – Baldwin pointed out that slavery is inherently an economic and political tool. America’s economic triumphs only occurred, he said, because Africans were kidnapped and brought to the New World to perform unpaid labor. It was on the backs of their work, he reminded his audience, that the American economy came to flourish:

“Now slavery, like murder, is one of the oldest human institutions. So we cannot quarrel about the fact of slavery; that is to say we could, but that’s another story. But we enslaved him because in order to conquer the country, we had to have cheap labor. And the man who is now known as the American Negro, who is one of the oldest of American citizens, and the only one who never wanted to come here, [applause] did the dirty work.”

America needed, Baldwin said, to recognize the people who did the involuntary, unpaid hard work to make its founding possible.

Why Baldwin Is Important Today

Baldwin did not speak for any particular policy. He did not commemorate anything. Instead, his speech ripped away the myths, exposing the reality behind them. We need to see clearly before we can solve our problems.

It is no wonder that book-banning campaigns sometimes target Baldwin’s work. His first novel, Go Tell It on the Mountain, has been banned from Virginia to New York. A documentary film about Baldwin was banned in central Pennsylvania. The ban was reversed after student protest.

No, people don’t try to ban James Baldwin’s books because they mention sexual practices. They would also have to ban the Holy Bible. The Bible, after all, tells how Lot’s daughters got him drunk so he could get them pregnant (Gen. 19). Are book-burners banning the Bible? No. Baldwin’s books get banned because he tore down comfortable myths and exposed raw reality. Were Baldwin’s truths inarguable? Of course. That is precisely why people fear him.

Amazing, isn’t it? It becomes so easy for people to ignore the obvious, and sometimes so unpleasant to face reality. Myths comfort us, but truth frees us. That’s in the Bible, by the way: “the truth shall make you free” (John 8:32).

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In "The FIre Next Time," Baldwin Warned America Not to Hide from Evil

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Research Note: When I say that history twists the past, I don’t meant to disparage the work of professional historians. Most of them know and report the truth. I mean, instead, history as taught in schools, covered in high school textbooks, and discussed on television. The issues I describe are covered accurately in any number of excellent history books. As a straightforward starting point, I recommend the New York Times 1619 Project, which gives a disturbing account of American heritage, and which really should not be controversial.

In "The Fire Next Time," James Baldwin Warned America Not to Hide from Evil

James Baldwin’s book The Fire Next Time, a 1963 bestseller, attacked American racism in devastating language. Eschewing moderate expressions, Baldwin lashed out against a country that closed its eyes to racial discrimination.

Yet, the fire still burns – even today. The book-burning, book-banning campaigns of 2022 echo the evils against which Baldwin wrote. As people across the United States attack the teaching of Black history, they repeat the evils that Baldwin condemned. Yet, Baldwin argued that people who ignore evil – who refuse to see evidence of evil – are just as guilty as any criminal. He forced the United States of 1963 to face itself. By blaming the entire nation, he forced people to think about American racism in a new way.

And here is Baldwin's accusation:

“…this is the crime of which I accuse my country and my countrymen, and for which neither I nor time nor history will ever forgive them, that they have destroyed and are destroying hundreds of thousands of lives and do not know it and do not want to know it.

“But it is not permissible that the authors of devastation should also be innocent. It is the innocence which constitutes the crime.”

“It is the innocence which constitutes the crime,” Baldwin said. When many parents in 2022 want to shield their children Black history, they are protecting their child’s innocence. But not in a good way. They continue to commit the crime, for they refuse to face truth.

That sounds like a paradox, but Baldwin does not mean that Americans should be found “not guilty.” When Baldwin wrote that they are innocent, he meant that they were deliberately naïve. It was a crime precisely because Americans, on purpose, refused to know the truth.

Baldwin taught a basic lesson: it is our duty not to be naïve. It is our duty to inform ourselves. Germany’s 1933 voters, who convinced themselves that Hitler was not evil – were they not guilty? Was it not their duty to recognize what Hitler intended? It’s not as if he kept it a secret. Was it not the duty of 1963’s white racists to understand the dreadful effects of sending Black children to bad schools? Of forbidding Black people to sleep in the best hotels or to apply for good jobs, while restricting their right to vote and denying them the basic justice of a fair trial before being punished for a crime? Baldwin did not just accuse America of being guilty. He accused the nation of being unaware.

Hitler's Christian Nationalist Speech

Yet too many Americans still prefer to be unaware. The book-banners, the screaming mobs at school board meetings who seek to keep their children unaware of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Jim Crow are protecting their children from things that they need to know. Several states, including Idaho, Oklahoma, Iowa, and Tennessee, have already passed obviously unconstitutional laws to restrict the teaching of race relations. In Texas, librarians are responding to political pressure by pulling books that discuss race. The Florida legislature is, even as I write, contemplating a law that would make it illegal to teach history that makes people feel uncomfortable. Around the United States, some people are celebrating Black History Month by suppressing Black history. These acts of deliberate ignorance can only have one purpose: to make people unaware. To protect their deliberate innocence. 

Baldwin did not accuse individual people. He did not merely accuse the Ku Klux Klan, George Wallace, or any other particular group or person. Long before anyone invented the term “systemic racism,” Baldwin’s searing language accused the entire country: “my country and my countrymen.”

There is much good in the United States. I’m sure that Baldwin knew that. And the Civil Rights Movement accomplished much. The nation has made progress since 1963. That doesn’t mean that things are right today. It doesn’t mean that the reactionary forces at work across the land have suddenly become less dangerous.

So, when many people complain about “woke culture,” we should remember that Baldwin wanted to wake us up. Let us remember history. Let us learn, so we will not repeat the horrors of the past. Let us never protect our innocence by pretending that we do not see. Baldwin’s sharp accusation – “it is the innocence which constitutes a crime” – reminds us that we have a duty to know what is happening around us. It was not just that the United States practiced the evils of racism, but also that, as Baldwin said, the people “do not know it and do not want to know it.” Are the book-banning hordes of today any different? 

Baldwin, who was one of our nation’s greatest writers, was also known as an orator. Indeed, The Fire Next Time itself stands as powerful rhetoric. In 1963, while Martin Luther King, Jr. was organizing his nonviolent protests and Malcolm X threatened revolution, Baldwin made it his task to tear off the curtain and reveal what lay beyond. 

Rhetoric serves many purposes. Baldwin sought to make the nation aware of the horrors that African Americans faced daily. He changed the way the nation thought about civil rights. His writing demanded awareness. His words were so powerful that they could not be ignored. To forget what he said is to risk falling back into the abyss. 

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Previous Posts for Black History Month:

Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Sermon about the Power of Love

Oprah Winfrey's Eulogy for Rosa Parks

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P.S. If the Muses cooperate, I intend to post some comments about one of Baldwin's speeches. Stay tuned!

Image: copyright 2022, William Harpine

“Somebody Must Have Sense Enough to Dim the Lights:” Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Sermon about the Power of Love

Strength comes from love.

In November 1957, Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. gave a sermon at Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama. His theme was Jesus Christ’s commandment to “love your enemies.” King applied that moral precept to the growing Civil Rights movement, insisting that hate must be met with love, and violence with peace. King laid out many of the themes that would come to mark the movement. He warned that hate endangered everyone. He advocated nonviolent resistance and called for the Western democracies to uphold their noble values. Centrally, he insisted on an attitude of compassion and love toward one’s enemies. His sermon delved deeply into Christian theology and political theory. His practical application – the philosophy of civil disobedience – would arise from moral imperatives.

King’s proposition must seem like a massive paradox: for he taught that true strength comes from love and goodness, never from violence and hatred.

King’s eloquence and depth of thought belies the fact that, defying his physician’s orders, he dragged himself out of a sickbed to give this speech. Like most good preachers, he based his sermon on a text, in this case, Matthew 5:43-45 from the Bible.

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“Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbour, and hate thine enemy. But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you; That ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven: for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust.”

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King felt that his argument was not only moral, but practical. To King, love overpowers hate by its very nature. He explained that by “love,” he meant what the ancient Greeks called agape, which is unselfish love. Such unconditional love often runs against our impulses. Instead, our impulses often drive us to respond harshly when someone wrongs us. This inclination, King told the congregation, only makes things worse:

“Hate for hate only intensifies the existence of hate and evil in the universe. If I hit you and you hit me and I hit you back and you hit me back and go on, you see, that goes on ad infinitum. It just never ends.”

King told a story about when he and his brother were driving across Tennessee. The other drivers were not dimming their lights. King’s brother threatened to shine his brights at the next car. But King protested that this could only cause an accident:

“Somebody must have sense enough to dim the lights, and that is the trouble, isn’t it? That as all of the civilizations of the world move up the highway of history, so many civilizations, having looked at other civilizations that refused to dim the lights, and they decided to refuse to dim theirs.”

That simple analogy led King to a powerful point. If nations respond to anger with more anger, if people respond to hate with more hate, we enter the down-ramp to mutual destruction. That is why King insisted that hate must be confronted with love. Hate does not defeat hate. That never works, he said. Instead, love was the universe’s greatest power:

“Somewhere, somebody must have some sense. Men must see that force begets force, hate begets hate, toughness begets toughness. And it is all a descending spiral, ultimately ending in destruction for all and everybody. Somebody must have sense enough and morality enough to cut off the chain of hate and the chain of evil in the universe. And you do that by love.”

African Americans in the 1950s suffered from horrible injustices. Especially in the states of the former Confederacy, African Americans lacked the most basic rights that other people took for granted. They could not stay in nice hotels or even drink at a cold water fountain. Laws excluded them from the best schools. A Black person in the South registered to vote only at the risk of her life. Emmitt Till had been lynched a scant two years before King’s sermon, and the Mississippi Burning murders awaited the future. By no stretch of the imagination was United States of 1957 a free country for African Americans.

Fannie Lou Hamer’s Voting Rights Speech, "Sick and Tired of Being Sick and Tired"

Yet, King insisted that monstrous injustices must be met by love.

King’s sermon gives us much to think about in 2022. Recently, people have been going to school board meetings, screaming in rage to stop their children from learning Black history. King’s message would be to confront such hatred with love, not anger.

Similarly, when people in 2022 give in to fear and vote for the angriest, meanest politician because they think that person is strong, do they not contradict King’s teaching? And was King not right? Strong leaders like Napoleon, Hitler, and Stalin did not keep their people safe. Did they?

King’s speech taught a powerful lesson. Isn’t that the best reason to give a speech? And will we listen to his lesson? Can we, as a nation, as a human species, learn that love truly is more powerful than hate? Or will we succumb to fear and ignorance? Can Christian believers find the courage to love their enemies? Not to give in to evil; that’s not what King meant, but to love their enemies? To face down evil with good? Many years later, King said that, “the arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice.” Can people summon the courage to believe that this is true?

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Martin Luther King, Jr. Said, "The Law Can't Change the Heart, but It Can Restrain the Heartless"

Martin Luther King, Jr.'s Speech, "Love, Law, and Civil Disobedience"

Martin Luther King, Jr. at the Mountaintop in Memphis, Tennessee: A Speech for the Ages

Rabbi Cahana's Sermon about the Summer of Love: Is Love the Answer to Nazism?

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P.S.: Dexter Avenue Baptist Church is now on the National Register of Historic Places