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

“It is ironic to talk about civilization in this country. This country is uncivilized. It needs to be civilized. It needs to be civilized.”

So said the always-shocking civil rights leader Stokely Carmichael (later Kwame Ture), speaking at the University of California Berkeley on October 29, 1966. That was about two years after the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which was at that time only sporadically enforced. Carmichael, a former Freedom Rider and the leader of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, wanted his audience to look in a mirror and see the opposite side of their well-meaning but self-centered viewpoint.

Carmichael reidentified the civil rights problem. That is, he refocused his audience’s attention. The larger question that Carmichael implied (but never fully answered) was, can the United States reform racist practices? Those practices might have included Jim Crow, Voting rights? Lynching? Housing discrimination. He left the answer to history. Indeed, he left the question to history.

One of the civil rights movement’s more polarizing figures, Carmichael was, like Martin Luther King, Jr., shadowed by the FBI as a potential subversive. Although he shared King’s nonviolent approach, his speeches carried a bit of sting. 

_______________

"The Law Can't Change the Heart, but It Can Restrain the Heartless:" Martin Luther King, Jr.'s Speech about Churches and the Struggle for Justice

_______________

How did Carmichael argue for his point? All arguments start with premises. Here are two possible premises about the civil rights movement of the 1960’s. At the most, only one can be true.

Premise #1: The regular idea, right out of the history books, says that civil rights laws gave rights to minority people.

Premise #2: Carmichael instead insisted that everyone already has rights, while civil rights laws merely help white racists control their behavior.

If, like many of us today in 2024, we think the problem is Premise #1, we still put white people in charge. Only if we see Premise #2 do we understand universal civil rights. Do we believe in #1? Or #2? Not an easy question! If it is #1, the majority generously (or grudgingly) shares its rights. Suppose, however, that we agree with the United States of America’s Founders that rights are universal, given by God: “endowed by their Creator,” as the Declaration of Independence says, “with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” That would be Premise #2. Right?

Conventional Analysis:

In other words, Carmichael reversed our conventional vision. The conventional view says that civil rights laws opened doors that had blocked minority individuals from making economic, political, and social progress. As the History Channel explains:

“The Civil Rights Act of 1964, which ended segregation in public places and banned employment discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex or national origin, is considered one of the crowning legislative achievements of the civil rights movement.”

Lyndon Johnson Signs Civil Rights Act of 1964

See the point? In this dramatic photo, President Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 with an almost entirely white entourage. Now, by the conventional analysis, civil rights laws expanded human rights, protecting minority groups from oppression. “Ended segregation,” it says, and “banned employment discrimination.” We often think of civil rights legislation as a case of the majority voters, who were, in the mid-1960’s, mostly white, generously turning loose of their control and granting voting rights and other rights to African Americans and other minority groups. 

Carmichael, however, utterly denied that analysis. He said that those rights already existed.


Carmichael’s Analysis

Looking at the mirror image of civil rights, Carmichael’s point was that Black people—all people, actually—already have rights. After reviewing a vast intellectual tradition, including the founders of the American Republic and existentialist philosophers, Carmichael insisted that we all have rights by virtue of being human. We don’t, Carmichael insisted, have rights just because someone passed a law granting us rights that otherwise would escape us. That, he said, was a contradiction:

“The philosophers Camus and Sartre raise the question whether or not a man can condemn himself.”

Carmichael said no. Carmichael said that it makes no sense to think that a white racist society could pass laws condemning its own nature. Instead, he explained that society would never, could never, condemn itself.

A Horrifying Example

To illustrate that point, Carmichael gave a stark example from 1964’s infamous “Mississippi burning” case. In that horror (two short years before Carmichael’s speech), vigilantes, with unofficial support from the Neshoba County, Mississippi government, had murdered three civil rights workers. Carmichael showed that the people who elected a racist sheriff would never condemn that same sheriff for doing the evil things that they elected him to do:

“On a more immediate scene, the officials and the population—the white population—in Neshoba County, Mississippi—that’s where Philadelphia is—could not—could not condemn [Sheriff] Rainey, his deputies, and the other fourteen men that killed three human beings. They could not because they elected Mr. Rainey to do precisely what he did; and that for them to condemn him will be for them to condemn themselves.”

And Carmichael had a point! After the Mississippi trial, the judge gave the killers light sentences, commenting that “They killed one n*****, one Jew, and a white man. I gave them what I thought they deserved.”

In that example, racism vanquished justice, and the judge made a ruling that fit his racist beliefs.


Carmichael Sided with Thomas Jefferson!

That is why Carmichael said the nation was “uncivilized.” His harsh idea was not new. Thomas Jefferson, his words now engraved on the Jefferson Memorial in Washington, DC, stated:

“Can the liberties of a nation be secure when we have removed a conviction that these liberties are the gift of God?”

Likewise, said Carmichael, it was white people who needed a civil rights law, precisely to restrain racist behavior:

“You need a civil rights bill, not me. I know I can live where I want to live.” [italics added]

Sometimes, an exceptional speaker like Carmichael, like Jefferson, turns a controversial issue around, showing us a new light, giving us a new way to think.

Black people, Carmichael insisted, already understood the issue:

“I knew that I could vote and that that wasn’t a privilege; it was my right. Every time I tried, I was shot, killed or jailed, beaten or economically deprived. So somebody had to write a bill for white people to tell them, ‘When a Black man comes to vote, don’t bother him.’ That bill, again, was for white people, not for Black people; so that when you talk about open occupancy, I know I can live anyplace I want to live. It is white people across this country who are incapable of allowing me to live where I want to live.”

Yet, Carmichael pointed out the contradiction: civil rights laws, passed by a white majority, could never condemn the people who wrote and passed them. So, could civil rights laws, in any important sense, undo racism’s basic wickedness? Or is it Carmichael, who, wrapped up in his existentialist pessimism, could not see the nation make progress? As we work through the year 2024, those vital questions remain on the books. 


Don’t Civil Rights Already Exist?

So, didn’t that Mississippi burning judge miss the point? For, if Carmichael was right, if the Declaration of Independence is correct, if the 14th Amendment is still valid, Black people already had rights. This led Carmichael to call civil rights legislation incoherent to the core. For, he insisted, American society could never turn against itself:

“So that the failures to pass a civil rights bill isn’t because of Black Power, isn’t because of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee; it’s not because of the rebellions that are occurring in the major cities. It is incapability of whites to deal with their own problems inside their own communities. That is the problem of the failure of the civil rights bill.”

Was Carmichael’s attitude cynical to the extreme? Obviously yes. But the real question is, do we in 2024 have a better attitude? Is there a way to move forward toward the United States of America’s ideals of freedom without ripping down the entire system, as Carmichael threatened to do? I certainly hope so, but Carmichael’s challenge has not been answered, not conclusively, even today, has it?


Do We Still Ask the Same Questions?

Is Premise #1 true? Or is it Premise #2? For it cannot be both. Do we agree with Premise #1, smugly saying that freedom is a gift, generously bestowed by the laws that benevolent rulers adopt? Or do we side with Premise #2, that we all have rights? That is the challenge that Stokely Carmichael offered in this dramatic speech.

And that, I suppose, is why Carmichael concluded his speech with two opposing prongs. He offered a prong of hope:

“We are tired of trying to explain to white people that we’re not going to hurt them.”

Then, he ended with a prong of threat:

“Will white people overcome their racism and allow for that to happen in this country? If that does not happen, brothers and sisters, we have no choice but to say very clearly, ‘Move over, or we’re going to move on over you.’”

So many speakers over the centuries offer simple, glib solutions to overwhelming problems. Can simple, glib solutions solve our civil rights problems? Given the Donald Trump revolution, I have my doubts. The Republican Party’s ongoing battle against what they call “woke” policies and diversity initiatives suggests ongoing negative attitudes. The Trump-era brings back the question of whether nonwhite people have rights, too.

The key problem is that, if we govern by Premise #1, the country can take away people’s rights as easily as it grants them. Is there a solution? Voters elected Donald Trump in 2016 and might elect him again in 2024. Will Trump’s voters condemn themselves for Trump’s actions? Carmichael would say that it would be impossible for Trump’s voters to condemn him, for they would have to condemn themselves.

Carmichael’s speech didn’t offer solutions. Instead, he stated stark problems in stark terms. He asked people to think. He challenged his audience. The answers to his challenge are the answers to the United States’ future.

By William D. Harpine

________________  

Earlier Civil Rights Posts:

Malcolm X at the University of California: Striking at America's Myths

James Baldwin's 1963 Speech Ripped Away Two American Myths

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

Copyright © 2024, William D. Harpine

Image: Cecil Stoughton, White House Press Office, public domain

Martin Luther King, Jr.'s Speech about Mountains

Metaphors push people to see hidden insights, to uncover difficult truths, to investigate our own minds. As people, we can move away from old mountains and build mountains. People face challenges and sometimes abandon traditional evils. Speaking at Temple Israel Hollywood, a Reform Jewish synagogue, on February 26, 1965, Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. talked about the mountains we all face. In this sermon, King’s metaphor of mountains told us about challenges that the world faces, obstacles that humanity needs to overcome, magnificent goals to seek, and triumphs to achieve, as, King explained, people work toward a biblical Promised Land of love and justice. This magnificent speech presaged 1968’s triumphant culmination, “I Have Been to the Mountain Top.” 

____________

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

____________

Mount Sinai

A skilled rhetorician, King used the mountain metaphor to make one point after another. He posed moral challenges that still confront us, as too many Americans seek to turn back to the old mountains of oppression and indignity.

King’s thesis connected his powerful metaphor to the scriptural story of Israel escaping from Egypt, a story that reminded the congregation of their shared history of human bondage:

“Tonight I would like to have you think with me from the subject, Keep Moving from this Mountain. I would like to take your minds back many, many centuries into a familiar experience so significantly recorded in the sacred Scriptures. The Children of Israel had been reduced into the bondage of physical slavery.”

Let us look at all the twists King gave to the mountain metaphor.

First, mountains pose terrible obstacles, which must be faced and overcome. As they fled slavery in Egypt, the people of Israel, King said they:

“… had to realize that before they could get to the Promised Land, they had to face gigantic mountains and prodigious hilltops.”

This challenge divided the people into three camps. The first two groups feared the challenges:

“One group said in substance that ‘We would rather go back to Egypt.’ They preferred the flesh pots of Egypt to the challenges of the Promised Land. A second group that abhorred the idea of going back to Egypt, and yet they abhorred the idea of facing the difficulties of moving ahead to the Promised Land and they somehow wanted to remain stationary and choose the line of least resistance.”

The third group, however, after the Promised Land was spied out, decided, according to King, that the land would be a difficult goal to reach, but they could achieve it all the same:

“There was a third group…who admitted that there were giants in the land but who said, ‘We can possess the land.’”

That last group saw the challenges, but determined to overcome them:

“This group said in substance that ‘We will go on in spite of...,’ that ‘We will not allow anything to stop us,’ that ‘We will move on amid the difficulties, amid the trials, amid the tribulations.’”

By now, King was not just talking about physical mountains, but about dangers and conflicts that awaited the people. The metaphor had grown.

Second, King explained that people sometimes must stop climbing one mountain and turn to another:

“The first chapter of the book of Deuteronomy said, ‘Ye have been in this mountain long enough. Turn you and take your journey and go to the mount of the Amorites.’”

In King’s interpretation, God always wants us to look ahead, not behind. This means to face new and different mountains:

“Whenever God speaks, he says, ‘Move on from mountains of stagnant complacency and deadening pacifity.’ So this is the great challenge that always stands before men.”

Third, advancing on the Hebrew scriptures, King talked about mountains that America faced in his own time:

“Tonight, I would like to suggest some of the symbolic mountains that we have occupied long enough and that we must leave if we are to move on to the promised land of justice, peace, and brotherhood.”

Toward that end, King said that, instead of pursuing crass materialism and greed, we must aim at spiritual goals:

“We must move on to that mountain which says in substance, ‘What doth it profit a man to gain the whole world of means -- airplanes, televisions, electric lights -- and lose the end: the soul?’”

Moving toward the mountain that leads us to our souls? That might be the steepest of all climbs. We must, he said, move away from the “mountain of racial injustice:”

“Now the other mountain that we’ve occupied long enough, and certainly it is quite relevant to discuss this at this time when we think of brotherhood -- we’ve been in the mountain of racial injustice long enough. And now it is time for us to move on to that great and noble realm of justice and brotherhood.”

King then spun the globe to discuss world-wide injustice. He found yet another mountain that faced the world: “the mountain of indifference:

“And we’ve been in the mountain of indifference too long and ultimately we must be concerned about the least of these; we must be concerned about the poverty-stricken because our destinies are tied together.”

Nearing his sermon’s end, King said that we must leave “the mountain of violence and hatred.” He said that “violence is both impractical and immoral.” Indeed, he warned, “We’ve been in the mountain of violence and hatred too long.”

Returning to scriptural themes, King concluded by quoting the prophet Isaiah. The prophet said that every mountain must be leveled, and every plain must be raised. Metaphorically, everything evil that society praises must be laid down, and justice must rise, and only then will be see God’s glory:

“Every valley shall be exalted and every mountain and hill shall be made low. The rough places will be made plain and the crooked places straight, and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed and all flesh shall see it together.”

King’s metaphors pushed his audience to face deep, even frightening, moral challenges. He spoke of how people move away from old mountains; people build mountains; people face challenges, and, most important, how people can abandon traditional evils. In this speech, King challenged the world’s moral foundation (or lack thereof). Such powerful truths. Truths that emerged from the metaphor of mountains. Is it any wonder that so many people hated and feared the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.? For truth is the most terrifying threat of all.

Quotations from this speech are from AmericanRhetoric.com, an outstanding website established by my  former classmate, the late Martin J. Medhurst. Marty was one of the top scholars in the history of United States public speaking, and his remarkable contributions are deeply missed. 

____________

Earlier Posts about Martin Luther King, Jr.'s Rhetoric 

Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" Made Biblical Morality a Public Imperative

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

Did Donald Trump Turn Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. into a Conformist Right-Wing Fanatic? I Don’t Think So, but He Tried. Let’s Look at the Mount Rushmore Speech

"The Law Can't Change the Heart, but It Can Restrain the Heartless:" Martin Luther King, Jr.'s Speech about Church and the Struggle for Justice

For a complete list, enter "Martin Luther King" in the search box on the right. 

By William D. Harpine

Copyright © William D. Harpine

Image: photo by Mohammed Moussa, Creative Commons license, not edited 

How Did "I Have a Dream" Matter to My Neighbors in 1963?

Lincoln Memorial

On this date in history, August 28, 1963, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered his immortal speech, “I Have a Dream,” from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington DC. So many people have written and said so many things about this great speech. The speech was not really about a dream. King’s powerful images shook people’s hearts, but metaphors were not his point. His point was freedom. Let me back up and tell a story.

On August 29, 1963, the morning after the speech, I was an 11 (almost 12) year old boy waiting for the school bus on the corner a half-block from my house. The Lincoln Memorial was less than 20 miles from my parents’ almost new split-level. I was excited to start seventh grade at Sidney Lanier Intermediate. My biggest fear was to wonder how I would navigate the seemingly huge school.

The neighborhood was buzzing with commentary, not only about King’s speech, which disturbed and frightened almost everyone I knew, but also the massive demonstration on the Washington Mall. At the time, the crowd’s size and impatience dominated my neighbors’ thinking. Folks shook their heads at what they perceived to be a chaotic mess. And, indeed, my young friends at the bus stop shared in the excitement—and the concern. It is no secret that King terrified many white people. As should surprise no one, my neighborhood was (like almost all Virginia neighborhoods at the time) strictly segregated.

For the most part, my friends and their parents were not racists in any of the usual senses, at least not as white people understood racism in 1963. My schoolmates were nice kids who grew up in loving homes. They did not seethe with ill will. They were not angry.

Yet, one of my bus-stop companions asked, with disgust in his voice, “What do they want?” My best friend, Duncan, calmly replied, “They want their freedom.” I was never so proud to know him. Duncan grew up in a conservative home, much more conservative than my own, but he understood human dignity with a wisdom that belied his youth, his crewcut, and his traditional Oxford shirt. Somehow, I had never before understood civil rights with such simplicity, such clarity.

No one responded. Not even me. Awkward silence continued until the bus showed up a few minutes later. It was a learning moment for me, maybe for all of us. Yes, the clips of King’s speech on the news the night before thrilled the ears. In the long run, however, it is the audience, not the speaker, that makes a speech successful. What message did the audience need to hear? “They want their freedom.”

Dreaming was King’s metaphor, but it was not his main point. No, instead, his point was freedom. His thrilling conclusion talked about the centuries-long struggle for freedom:

“And when this happens, and when we allow freedom to ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual:

“Free at last! Free at last!

“Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!”

Did the struggle for freedom end in victory? On the one hand, yes. Congress soon passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. On the other hand, no. It seems that every few weeks in 2022 we hear about a police officer shooting an unarmed Black person. Mistakenly thinking that the struggle for civil rights was over, the United States Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act. Even the freest nation is never more than one election from tyranny. King’s message: People want their freedom.


Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" Made Biblical Morality a Public Imperative

Three Warnings about Political Action From Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “I Have a Dream Speech”


P.S. Of course, as times change, we notice that King didn’t mention freedom for women: “black men and white men.”

Image: National Park Service

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?

__________________

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

__________________

  

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. 

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. 

__________________

Previous Posts for Black History Month:

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

Oprah Winfrey's Eulogy for Rosa Parks

__________________

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.

_____________________________

“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.”

_____________________________

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?

_____________________________

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?

_____________________________

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