Justice Van Devanter (left) and Chief Justice Hughes
This phrase was suggested in 1932 by the architectural firm that designed the building. Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes and Justice Willis Van Devanter
subsequently approved this inscription, as did the United States
Supreme Court Building Commission which Hughes chaired (and on which Van
Devanter served).
The architectural firm that proposed the phrase was headed by Cass Gilbert, though Gilbert himself was much more interested in design and arrangement, than in meaning. Thus, according to David Lynn who at that time held the position of Architect of the Capitol,
the two people at Gilbert's firm who were responsible for the slogan
"equal justice under law" were Gilbert's son (Cass Gilbert, Jr.) and
Gilbert's partner, John R. Rockart.
In 1935, the journalist Herbert Bayard Swope
objected to Chief Justice Hughes about this inscription, urging that
the word "equal" be removed because such a "qualification" renders the
phrase too narrow; the equality principle would still be implied without
that word, Swope said. Hughes refused, writing that it was appropriate
to "place a strong emphasis upon impartiality".
This legal soundbite atop the Court is perceived differently by
different people, sometimes as ostentatious, often as profound, and
occasionally as vacuous. According to law professor Jim Chen,
it is common for people to "suggest that disagreement with some
contestable legal proposition or another would be tantamount to
chiseling or sandblasting 'Equal Justice Under Law' from the Supreme
Court's portico."
The phrase may be perceived in a variety of ways, but it very
distinctly does not say "equal law under justice", which would have
meant that the judiciary can prioritize justice over law.
Based upon Fourteenth Amendment jurisprudence
The words "equal justice under law" paraphrase an earlier expression coined in 1891 by the Supreme Court. In the case of Caldwell v. Texas, Chief Justice Melville Fuller wrote on behalf of a unanimous Court as follows, regarding the Fourteenth Amendment:
"the powers of the States in dealing with crime within their borders
are not limited, but no State can deprive particular persons or classes
of persons of equal and impartial justice under the law." The last seven words are summarized by the inscription on the U.S. Supreme Court building.
Chief Justice Fuller (front center) wrote for a unanimous Court in Caldwell. In this 1899 photo, Justice Harlan is seated to his right, and Justice Peckham is standing to Harlan's right.
Later in 1891, Fuller's opinion for the Court in Leeper v. Texas again referred to "equal...justice under...law". Like Caldwell, the Leeper opinion was unanimous, in contrast to the Fuller Court's major disagreements about equality issues in other cases such as Plessy v. Ferguson.
In both Caldwell and Leeper, murder indictments
were challenged because they allegedly gave inadequate notice of the
crimes being charged. The Court upheld the indictments because they
followed the form required by Texas law. In a case nine years later (Maxwell v. Dow), the Court quoted the "equal...justice under...law" phrase that it had used in Caldwell and Leeper,
to make the point that Utah could devise its own criminal procedure, as
long as defendants are "proceeded against by the same kind of procedure
and ... have the same kind of trial, and the equal protection of the
laws is secured to them."
In the 1908 case of Ughbanks v. Armstrong, the Fuller
Court yet again discussed the Fourteenth Amendment in similar terms, but
this time mentioning punishments: "The last-named Amendment was not
intended to, and does not, limit the powers of a State in dealing with
crime committed within its own borders or with the punishment thereof,
although no State can deprive particular persons or classes of persons
of equal and impartial justice under the law."
Ughbanks was a burglary case, and the opinion was written for the Court by Justice Rufus Peckham, while Justice John Marshall Harlan
was the sole dissenter. The Court would later reject the idea that the
Fourteenth Amendment does not limit punishments (see the 1962 case of Robinson v. California).
In the years since moving into their present building, the
Supreme Court has often connected the words "equal justice under law"
with the Fourteenth Amendment. For example, in the 1958 case of Cooper v. Aaron,
the Court said: "The Constitution created a government dedicated to
equal justice under law. The Fourteenth Amendment embodied and
emphasized that ideal."
The words "equal justice under law" are not in the Constitution, which instead says that no state shall "deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws." From an architectural perspective, the main advantage of the former over the latter was brevity — the Equal Protection Clause was not short enough to fit on the pediment given the size of the letters to be used.
Following ancient tradition
Pericles, Greek statesman and general
In the funeral oration that he delivered in 431 BC, the Athenian leader Pericles encouraged belief in what we now call equal justice under law. Thus, when Chief Justice Fuller wrote his opinion in Caldwell v. Texas, he was by no means the first to discuss this concept. There are several different English translations of the relevant passage in Pericles' funeral oration.
Here is Pericles discussing "equal justice" according to the English translation by Richard Crawley in 1874:
Our constitution does not copy the laws of neighbouring
states; we are rather a pattern to others than imitators ourselves. Its
administration favours the many instead of the few; this is why it is
called a democracy. If we look to the laws, they afford equal justice to
all in their private differences; if no social standing, advancement in
public life falls to reputation for capacity, class considerations not
being allowed to interfere with merit; nor again does poverty bar the
way, if a man is able to serve the state, he is not hindered by the
obscurity of his condition.
The English translation by Benjamin Jowett in 1881 likewise had Pericles saying: "the law secures equal justice to all alike in their private disputes". And, the English translation by Rex Warner in 1954 had Pericles saying: "there exists equal justice to all and alike in their private disputes". The funeral oration by Pericles was published in Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian War, of which there are several other English translations.
As quoted above, Pericles said that a person's wealth or
prominence should not influence his eligibility for public employment or
affect the justice he receives. Similarly, Chief Justice Hughes
defended the inscription "equal justice under law" by referring to the
judicial oath of office, which requires judges to "administer justice without respect to persons, and do equal right to the poor and to the rich". Decades later, Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall
made a similar point: "The principles which would have governed with
$10,000 at stake should also govern when thousands have become billions.
That is the essence of equal justice under law."
The is–ought problem, as articulated by the Scottish philosopher and historianDavid Hume (1711–76), states that many writers make claims about what ought to be, based on statements about what is. Hume found that there seems to be a significant difference between positive statements (about what is) and prescriptive or normative
statements (about what ought to be), and that it is not obvious how one
can coherently move from descriptive statements to prescriptive ones.
The is–ought problem is also known as Hume's law, or Hume's guillotine.
Hume discusses the problem in book III, part I, section I of his book, A Treatise of Human Nature (1739):
In every system of morality, which I
have hitherto met with, I have always remarked, that the author
proceeds for some time in the ordinary way of reasoning, and establishes
the being of a God, or makes observations concerning human affairs;
when of a sudden I am surprised to find, that instead of the usual
copulations of propositions, is, and is not, I meet with no proposition that is not connected with an ought, or an ought not. This change is imperceptible; but is, however, of the last consequence. For as this ought, or ought not,
expresses some new relation or affirmation, 'tis necessary that it
should be observed and explained; and at the same time that a reason
should be given, for what seems altogether inconceivable, how this new
relation can be a deduction from others, which are entirely different
from it. But as authors do not commonly use this precaution, I shall
presume to recommend it to the readers; and am persuaded, that this
small attention would subvert all the vulgar systems of morality, and
let us see, that the distinction of vice and virtue is not founded
merely on the relations of objects, nor is perceived by reason.
Hume asks, given knowledge of the way the universe is, in what sense can we say it ought to be different?
Hume
calls for caution against such inferences in the absence of any
explanation of how the ought-statements follow from the is-statements.
But how exactly can an "ought" be derived from an "is"? The
question, prompted by Hume's small paragraph, has become one of the
central questions of ethical theory, and Hume is usually assigned the
position that such a derivation is impossible. This complete severing of "is" from "ought" has been given the graphic designation of Hume's Guillotine.
Implications
The apparent gap between "is" statements and "ought" statements, when combined with Hume's fork,
renders "ought" statements of dubious validity. Hume's fork is the idea
that all items of knowledge are either based on logic and definitions,
or else on observation. If the is–ought problem holds, then "ought"
statements do not seem to be known in either of these two ways, and it
would seem that there can be no moral knowledge. Moral skepticism and non-cognitivism work with such conclusions.
Critics of atheism have argued that the is–ought distinction threatens the validity of secular ethics, by, in the critics' view, rendering secular ethical systems subjective and arbitrary.
Responses
Oughts and goals
Few debate that one ought to run quickly if one's goal is to win a race. A tougher question may be whether one "morally ought" to want to win a race in the first place.
Ethical naturalists
contend that moral truths exist, and that their truth value relates to
facts about physical reality. Many modern naturalistic philosophers see
no impenetrable barrier in deriving "ought" from "is", believing it can
be done whenever we analyze goal-directed behavior. They suggest that a
statement of the form "In order for agent A to achieve goal B, A reasonably ought to do C" exhibits no category error
and may be factually verified or refuted. "Oughts" exist, then, in
light of the existence of goals. A counterargument to this response is
that it merely pushes back the 'ought' to the subjectively valued 'goal'
and thus provides no fundamentally objective basis to one's goals
which, consequentially, provides no basis of distinguishing moral value
of fundamentally different goals. A possible basis for an objective,
moral realist, morality might be an appeal to teleonomy.
This is similar to work done by moral philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre, who attempts to show that because ethical language developed in the West in the context of a belief in a human telos—an
end or goal—our inherited moral language, including terms such as good
and bad, have functioned, and function, to evaluate the way in which
certain behaviors facilitate the achievement of that telos. In an
evaluative capacity, therefore, good and bad carry moral weight without
committing a category error. For instance, a pair of scissors that
cannot easily cut through paper can legitimately be called bad since it
cannot fulfill its purpose effectively. Likewise, if a person is
understood as having a particular purpose, then behaviour can be
evaluated as good or bad in reference to that purpose. In plainer words,
a person is acting good when that person fulfills that person's
purpose.
Even if the concept of an "ought" is meaningful, this need not
involve morality. This is because some goals may be morally neutral, or
(if they exist) against what is moral. A poisoner might realize his
victim has not died and say, for example, "I ought to have used more
poison," since his goal is to murder. The next challenge of a moral
realist is thus to explain what is meant by a "moral ought".
Discourse ethics
Proponents of discourse ethics argue that the very act of discourse implies certain "oughts", that is, certain presuppositions
that are necessarily accepted by the participants in discourse, and can
be used to further derive prescriptive statements. They therefore argue
that it is incoherent to argumentatively advance an ethical position on
the basis of the is–ought problem, which contradicts these implied
assumptions.
Moral oughts
As
MacIntyre explained, someone may be called a good person if people have
an inherent purpose. Many ethical systems appeal to such a purpose.
This is true of some forms of moral realism, which states that something can be wrong, even if every thinking person believes otherwise (the idea of brute fact
about morality). The ethical realist might suggest that humans were
created for a purpose (e.g. to serve God), especially if they are an ethical non-naturalist. If the ethical realist is instead an ethical naturalist, they may start with the fact that humans have evolved and pursue some sort of evolutionary ethics (which risks “committing” the moralistic fallacy).
Not all moral systems appeal to a human telos or purpose. This is because it is not obvious that people even have any sort of natural purpose, or what that purpose would be. Although many scientists do recognize teleonomy (a tendency in nature), few philosophers appeal to it (this time, to avoid the naturalistic fallacy).
Even
if oughts can be understood in relation to goals or needs, the greater
challenge of ethical systems remains that of defining the nature and
origins of the good, and in what sense one ought to pursue it.
Goal-dependent oughts run into problems even without an appeal to an
innate human purpose. Consider cases where one has no desire to be
good—whatever it is. If, for instance, a person wants to be good, and
good means washing one's hands, then it seems one morally ought to wash
their hands. The bigger problem in moral philosophy is what happens if
someone does not want to be good, whatever its origins? Put simply, in what sense ought
we to hold the goal of being good? It seems one can ask "how am I
rationally required to hold 'good' as a value, or to pursue it?"
The issue above mentioned is a result of an important ethical relativist critique. Even if "oughts" depend on goals, the ought seems to vary with the person's goal. This is the conclusion of the ethical subjectivist, who says a person can only be called good according to whether they fulfill their own, self-assigned
goal. Alasdair MacIntyre himself suggests that a person's purpose comes
from their culture, making him a sort of ethical relativist.
Ethical relativists acknowledge local, institutional facts about what
is right, but these are facts that can still vary by society. Thus,
without an objective "moral goal", a moral ought is difficult to
establish. G. E. M. Anscombe
was particularly critical of the word "ought" for this reason;
understood as "We need such and such, and the only way to get it is this
way"—a person may need something immoral, or else find that their noble
need requires immoral action.
If moral goals depend on private assumptions or public agreement,
so may morality as a whole. For example, Canada might call it good to
maximize global welfare, where a citizen, Alice, calls it good to focus
on herself, and then her family, and finally her friends (with little
empathy for strangers). It does not seem that Alice can be objectively
or rationally bound—without regard to her personal values nor those of groups of other people—to act a certain way. In other words, we may not be able to say "You just should
do this". Moreover, persuading her to help strangers would necessarily
mean appealing to values she already possesses (or else we would never
even have a hope of persuading her). This is another interest of normative ethics—questions of binding forces.
There may be responses to the above relativistic critiques. As
mentioned above, ethical realists that are non-natural can appeal to
God's purpose for humankind. On the other hand, naturalistic thinkers
may posit that valuing people's well-being is somehow 'obviously' the
purpose of ethics, or else the only relevant purpose worth talking
about. This is the move made by natural law, scientific moralists and some utilitarians.
Institutional facts
John Searle also attempts to derive "ought" from "is".
He tries to show that the act of making a promise places one under an
obligation by definition, and that such an obligation amounts to an
"ought". This view is still widely debated, and to answer criticisms,
Searle has further developed the concept of institutional facts, for example, that a certain building is in fact a bank and that certain paper is in fact money, which would seem to depend upon general recognition of those institutions and their value.
Indefinables
Indefinables
are concepts so global that they cannot be defined; rather, in a sense,
they themselves, and the objects to which they refer, define our
reality and our ideas. Their meanings cannot be stated in a true
definition, but their meanings can be referred to instead by being
placed with their incomplete definitions in self-evident
statements, the truth of which can be tested by whether or not it is
impossible to think the opposite without a contradiction. Thus, the
truth of indefinable concepts and propositions using them is entirely a
matter of logic.
An example of the above is that of the concepts "finite parts"
and "wholes"; they cannot be defined without reference to each other and
thus with some amount of circularity, but we can make the self-evident
statement that "the whole is greater than any of its parts", and thus
establish a meaning particular to the two concepts.
These two notions being granted, it can be said that statements of "ought" are measured by their prescriptive truth, just as statements of "is" are measured by their descriptive
truth; and the descriptive truth of an "is" judgment is defined by its
correspondence to reality (actual or in the mind), while the
prescriptive truth of an "ought" judgment is defined according to a more
limited scope—its correspondence to right desire (conceivable in the
mind and able to be found in the rational appetite, but not in the more
"actual" reality of things independent of the mind or rational
appetite).
To some, this may immediately suggest the question: "How can we
know what is a right desire if it is already admitted that it is not
based on the more actual reality of things independent of the mind?" The
beginning of the answer is found when we consider that the concepts
"good", "bad", "right" and "wrong" are indefinables. Thus, right desire
cannot be defined properly, but a way to refer to its meaning may be found through a self-evident prescriptive truth.
That self-evident truth which the moral cognitivist claims to
exist upon which all other prescriptive truths are ultimately based is: One ought to desire what is really good for one and nothing else.
The terms "real good" and "right desire" cannot be defined apart from
each other, and thus their definitions would contain some degree of
circularity, but the stated self-evident truth indicates a meaning
particular to the ideas sought to be understood, and it is (the moral
cognitivist might claim) impossible to think the opposite without a
contradiction. Thus combined with other descriptive truths of what is
good (goods in particular considered in terms of whether they suit a
particular end and the limits to the possession of such particular goods
being compatible with the general end of the possession of the total of
all real goods throughout a whole life), a valid body of knowledge of
right desire is generated.
Functionalist counterexamples
Several
counterexamples have been offered by philosophers claiming to show that
there are cases when an "ought" logically follows from an "is." First
of all, Hilary Putnam,
by tracing back the quarrel to Hume's dictum, claims fact/value
entanglement as an objection, since the distinction between them entails
a value. A. N. Prior points out, from the statement "He is a sea captain," it logically follows, "He ought to do what a sea captain ought to do." Alasdair MacIntyre
points out, from the statement "This watch is grossly inaccurate and
irregular in time-keeping and too heavy to carry about comfortably," the
evaluative conclusion validly follows, "This is a bad watch."
John Searle points out, from the statement "Jones promised to pay Smith
five dollars," it logically follows that "Jones ought to pay Smith five
dollars." The act of promising by definition places the promiser under
obligation.
Moral realism
Philippa Foot adopts a moral realist position, criticizing the idea that when evaluation is superposed on fact there has been a "committal in a new dimension."
She introduces, by analogy, the practical implications of using the
word "injury." Not just anything counts as an injury. There must be some
impairment. When we suppose a man wants the things the injury prevents
him from obtaining, haven’t we fallen into the old naturalist fallacy?
It may seem that the only way to
make a necessary connection between 'injury' and the things that are to
be avoided, is to say that it is only used in an 'action-guiding sense'
when applied to something the speaker intends to avoid. But we should
look carefully at the crucial move in that argument, and query the
suggestion that someone might happen not to want anything for which he
would need the use of hands or eyes. Hands and eyes, like ears and legs,
play a part in so many operations that a man could only be said not to
need them if he had no wants at all.
Foot argues that the virtues, like hands and eyes in the analogy,
play so large a part in so many operations that it is implausible to
suppose that a committal in a non-naturalist dimension is necessary to
demonstrate their goodness.
Philosophers who have supposed that
actual action was required if 'good' were to be used in a sincere
evaluation have got into difficulties over weakness of will, and they
should surely agree that enough has been done if we can show that any
man has reason to aim at virtue and avoid vice. But is this impossibly
difficult if we consider the kinds of things that count as virtue and
vice? Consider, for instance, the cardinal virtues, prudence,
temperance, courage and justice. Obviously any man needs prudence, but
does he not also need to resist the temptation of pleasure when there is
harm involved? And how could it be argued that he would never need to
face what was fearful for the sake of some good? It is not obvious what
someone would mean if he said that temperance or courage were not good
qualities, and this not because of the 'praising' sense of these words,
but because of the things that courage and temperance are.
Misunderstanding
Hilary Putnam
argues philosophers that accept Hume's "is–ought" distinction reject
his reasons in making this, and thus undermine the entire claim.
Various scholars have also indicated that, in the very work where
Hume argues for the is–ought problem, Hume himself derives an "ought"
from an "is".
Such seeming inconsistencies in Hume have led to an ongoing debate
over whether Hume actually held to the is–ought problem in the first
place, or whether he meant that ought inferences can be made but only
with good argumentation.
Martin Luther King Jr. (January 15, 1929 – April 4, 1968) was an American Baptist minister and activist who became the most visible spokesperson and leader in the civil rights movement from 1954 until his death in 1968. Born in Atlanta, King is best known for advancing civil rights through nonviolence and civil disobedience, tactics his Christian beliefs and the nonviolent activism of Mahatma Gandhi helped inspire.
On October 14, 1964, King won the Nobel Peace Prize for combating racial inequality through nonviolent resistance. In 1965, he helped organize the Selma to Montgomery marches. The following year, he and the SCLC took the movement north to Chicago to work on segregated housing. In his final years, he expanded his focus to include opposition towards poverty and the Vietnam War. He alienated many of his liberal allies with a 1967 speech titled "Beyond Vietnam". J. Edgar Hoover considered him a radical and made him an object of the FBI's COINTELPRO
from 1963 on. FBI agents investigated him for possible communist ties,
recorded his extramarital liaisons and reported on them to government
officials, and on one occasion mailed King a threatening anonymous
letter, which he interpreted as an attempt to make him commit suicide.
In 1968, King was planning a national occupation of Washington, D.C., to be called the Poor People's Campaign, when he was assassinated on April 4 in Memphis, Tennessee. His death was followed by riots in many U.S. cities. Allegations that James Earl Ray,
the man convicted and imprisoned of killing King, had been framed or
acted in concert with government agents persisted for decades after the
shooting. Sentenced to 99 years in prison for King's murder, effectively
a life sentence as Ray was 41 at the time of conviction, Ray served 29
years of his sentence and died from hepatitis in 1998 while in prison.
The high school that King attended was named after African-American educator Booker T. Washington.
King was born on Tuesday, January 15, 1929, in Atlanta, Georgia, to the Reverend Martin Luther King Sr. and Alberta Williams King.
King's legal name at birth was Michael King, and his father was also
born Michael King, but, after a period of gradual transition on the
elder King's part, he changed both his and his son's names in 1934. The elder King would later state that "Michael" was a mistake by the attending physician to his son's birth, and the younger King's birth certificate was altered to read "Martin Luther King Jr." in 1957. King's parents were both African-American, and he also had Irish ancestry through his paternal great-grandfather.
King was a middle child, between older sister Christine King Farris and younger brother A.D. King. King sang with his church choir at the 1939 Atlanta premiere of the movie Gone with the Wind,
and he enjoyed singing and music. His mother was an accomplished
organist and choir leader who took him to various churches to sing, and
he received attention for singing "I Want to Be More and More Like
Jesus". King later became a member of the junior choir in his church.
King said that his father regularly whipped him until he was 15; a
neighbor reported hearing the elder King telling his son "he would make
something of him even if he had to beat him to death." King saw his
father's proud and fearless protests against segregation, such as King
Sr. refusing to listen to a traffic policeman after being referred to as
"boy," or stalking out of a store with his son when being told by a
shoe clerk that they would have to "move to the rear" of the store to be
served.
When King was a child, he befriended a white boy whose father
owned a business near his family's home. When the boys were six, they
started school: King had to attend a school for African Americans and
the other boy went to one for whites (public schools were among the
facilities segregated by state law). King lost his friend because the
child's father no longer wanted the boys to play together.
King suffered from depression
through much of his life. In his adolescent years, he initially felt
resentment against whites due to the "racial humiliation" that he, his
family, and his neighbors often had to endure in the segregated South.
At the age of 12, shortly after his maternal grandmother died, King
blamed himself and jumped out of a second-story window, but survived.
King was initially skeptical of many of Christianity's claims. At the age of 13, he denied the bodily resurrection of Jesus during Sunday school. From this point, he stated, "doubts began to spring forth unrelentingly." However, he later concluded that the Bible has "many profound truths which one cannot escape" and decided to enter the seminary.
Growing up in Atlanta, King attended Booker T. Washington High School. He became known for his public-speaking ability and was part of the school's debate team. When King was 13 years old, in 1942, he became the youngest assistant manager of a newspaper delivery station for the Atlanta Journal. During his junior year, he won first prize in an oratorical contest sponsored by the Negro Elks Club in Dublin, Georgia.
On the ride home to Atlanta by bus, he and his teacher were ordered by
the driver to stand so that white passengers could sit down. King
initially refused but complied after his teacher told him that he would
be breaking the law if he did not submit. During this incident, King
said that he was "the angriest I have ever been in my life." An outstanding student, he skipped both the ninth and the twelfth grades of high school.
Morehouse College
During King's junior year in high school, Morehouse College—a respected historically black college—announced
that it would accept any high school juniors who could pass its
entrance exam. At that time, many students had abandoned further studies
to enlist in World War II. Due to this, Morehouse was eager to fill its classrooms. At the age of 15, King passed the exam and entered Morehouse.
The summer before his last year at Morehouse, in 1947, the 18-year-old
King chose to enter the ministry. He had concluded that the church
offered the most assuring way to answer "an inner urge to serve
humanity." King's "inner urge" had begun developing, and he made peace
with the Baptist Church, as he believed he would be a "rational"
minister with sermons that were "a respectful force for ideas, even
social protest."
Crozer Theological Seminary
In 1948, King graduated at the age of 19 from Morehouse with a B.A. in sociology. He then enrolled in Crozer Theological Seminary in Chester, Pennsylvania, from which he graduated with a B.Div. degree in 1951. King's father fully supported his decision to continue his education and made arrangements for King to work with J. Pius Barbour, a family friend who pastored at Calvary Baptist Church in Chester. King became known as one of the "Sons of Calvary", an honor he shared with William Augustus Jones, Jr. and Samuel D. Proctor who went on to become well-known preachers in the black church.
While attending Crozer, King was joined by Walter McCall, a former classmate at Morehouse. At Crozer, King was elected president of the student body.
The African-American students of Crozer for the most part conducted
their social activity on Edwards Street. King became fond of the street
because a classmate had an aunt who prepared collard greens for them,
which they both relished.
King once reproved another student for keeping beer in his room,
saying they had shared responsibility as African Americans to bear "the
burdens of the Negro race." For a time, he was interested in Walter Rauschenbusch's "social gospel."
In his third year at Crozer, King became romantically involved with the
white daughter of an immigrant German woman who worked as a cook in the
cafeteria. The daughter had been involved with a professor prior to her
relationship with King. King planned to marry her, but friends advised
against it, saying that an interracial marriage would provoke animosity
from both blacks and whites, potentially damaging his chances of ever
pastoring a church in the South. King tearfully told a friend that he
could not endure his mother's pain over the marriage and broke the
relationship off six months later. He continued to have lingering
feelings toward the women he left; one friend was quoted as saying, "He
never recovered."
King married Coretta Scott on June 18, 1953, on the lawn of her parents' house in her hometown of Heiberger, Alabama. They became the parents of four children: Yolanda King (1955–2007), Martin Luther King III (b. 1957), Dexter Scott King (b. 1961), and Bernice King (b. 1963). During their marriage, King limited Coretta's role in the civil rights movement, expecting her to be a housewife and mother.
Decades later, an academic inquiry in October 1991 concluded that portions of his dissertation had been plagiarized and he had acted improperly. However, "[d]espite
its finding, the committee said that 'no thought should be given to the
revocation of Dr. King's doctoral degree,' an action that the panel
said would serve no purpose."
The committee also found that the dissertation still "makes an
intelligent contribution to scholarship." A letter is now attached to
the copy of King's dissertation held in the university library, noting
that numerous passages were included without the appropriate quotations
and citations of sources. Significant debate exists on how to interpret King's plagiarism.
In March 1955, Claudette Colvin—a fifteen-year-old black schoolgirl in Montgomery—refused to give up her bus seat to a white man in violation of Jim Crow laws, local laws in the Southern United States that enforced racial segregation. King was on the committee from the Birmingham African-American community that looked into the case; E. D. Nixon and Clifford Durr decided to wait for a better case to pursue because the incident involved a minor.
Nine months later on December 1, 1955, a similar incident occurred when Rosa Parks was arrested for refusing to give up her seat on a city bus. The two incidents led to the Montgomery bus boycott, which was urged and planned by Nixon and led by King. The boycott lasted for 385 days, and the situation became so tense that King's house was bombed. King was arrested during this campaign, which concluded with a United States District Court ruling in Browder v. Gayle that ended racial segregation on all Montgomery public buses.
King's role in the bus boycott transformed him into a national figure
and the best-known spokesman of the civil rights movement.
On September 20, 1958, King was signing copies of his book Stride Toward Freedom in Blumstein's department store in Harlem when he narrowly escaped death. Izola Curry—a
mentally ill black woman who thought that King was conspiring against
her with communists—stabbed him in the chest with a letter opener. King
underwent emergency surgery with three doctors: Aubre de Lambert Maynard, Emil Naclerio and John W. V. Cordice; he remained hospitalized for several weeks. Curry was later found mentally incompetent to stand trial. In 1959, he 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.
Harry Wachtel joined King's legal advisor Clarence B. Jones in defending four ministers of the SCLC in the libel case New York Times Co. v. Sullivan; the case was litigated in reference to the newspaper advertisement "Heed Their Rising Voices".
Wachtel founded a tax-exempt fund to cover the expenses of the suit and
to assist the nonviolent civil rights movement through a more effective
means of fundraising. This organization was named the "Gandhi Society
for Human Rights." King served as honorary president for the group. He
was displeased with the pace that President Kennedy was using to address
the issue of segregation. In 1962, King and the Gandhi Society produced
a document that called on the President to follow in the footsteps of Abraham Lincoln and issue an executive order to deliver a blow for civil rights as a kind of Second Emancipation Proclamation. Kennedy did not execute the order.
The FBI was under written directive from Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy when it began tapping King's telephone line in the fall of 1963.
Kennedy was concerned that public allegations of communists in the SCLC
would derail the administration's civil rights initiatives. He warned
King to discontinue these associations and later felt compelled to issue
the written directive that authorized the FBI to wiretap King and other
SCLC leaders. FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover
feared the civil rights movement and investigated the allegations of
communist infiltration. When no evidence emerged to support this, the
FBI used the incidental details caught on tape over the next five years
in attempts to force King out of his leadership position, in the COINTELPRO program.
King believed that organized, nonviolent protest against the system of southern segregation known as Jim Crow laws
would lead to extensive media coverage of the struggle for black
equality and voting rights. Journalistic accounts and televised footage
of the daily deprivation and indignities suffered by Southern blacks,
and of segregationist violence and harassment of civil rights workers
and marchers, produced a wave of sympathetic public opinion that
convinced the majority of Americans that the civil rights movement was
the most important issue in American politics in the early 1960s.
King and the SCLC put into practice many of the principles of the Christian Left
and applied the tactics of nonviolent protest with great success by
strategically choosing the method of protest and the places in which
protests were carried out. There were often dramatic stand-offs with
segregationist authorities, who sometimes turned violent.
King was criticized by many groups during the course of his
participation in the civil rights movement. This included opposition by
more militant blacks such as Nation of Islam member Malcolm X. Stokely Carmichael was a separatist and disagreed with King's plea for racial integration because he considered it an insult to a uniquely African-American culture. Omali Yeshitela urged Africans to remember the history of violent European colonization and how power was not secured by Europeans through integration, but by violence and force.
Albany Movement, 1961
The Albany Movement was a desegregation coalition formed in Albany, Georgia,
in November 1961. In December, King and the SCLC became involved. The
movement mobilized thousands of citizens for a broad-front nonviolent
attack on every aspect of segregation within the city and attracted
nationwide attention. When King first visited on December 15, 1961, he
"had planned to stay a day or so and return home after giving counsel."
The following day he was swept up in a mass arrest
of peaceful demonstrators, and he declined bail until the city made
concessions. According to King, "that agreement was dishonored and
violated by the city" after he left town.
King returned in July 1962 and was given the option of forty-five
days in jail or a $178 fine (equivalent to $1,400 in 2017); he chose
jail. Three days into his sentence, Police Chief Laurie Pritchett
discreetly arranged for King's fine to be paid and ordered his release.
"We had witnessed persons being kicked off lunch counter stools ...
ejected from churches ... and thrown into jail ... But for the first
time, we witnessed being kicked out of jail." It was later acknowledged by the King Center that Billy Graham was the one who bailed King out of jail during this time.
After nearly a year of intense activism with few tangible
results, the movement began to deteriorate. King requested a halt to all
demonstrations and a "Day of Penance" to promote nonviolence and
maintain the moral high ground. Divisions within the black community and
the canny, low-key response by local government defeated efforts. Though the Albany effort proved a key lesson in tactics for King and the national civil rights movement,
the national media was highly critical of King's role in the defeat,
and the SCLC's lack of results contributed to a growing gulf between the
organization and the more radical SNCC. After Albany, King sought to
choose engagements for the SCLC in which he could control the
circumstances, rather than entering into pre-existing situations.
Birmingham campaign, 1963
King was arrested in 1963 for protesting the treatment of blacks in Birmingham.
In April 1963, the SCLC began a campaign against racial segregation and economic injustice in Birmingham, Alabama. The campaign used nonviolent but intentionally confrontational tactics, developed in part by Rev. Wyatt Tee Walker. Black people in Birmingham, organizing with the SCLC, occupied public spaces with marches and sit-ins, openly violating laws that they considered unjust.
King's intent was to provoke mass arrests and "create a situation
so crisis-packed that it will inevitably open the door to negotiation."
The campaign's early volunteers did not succeed in shutting down the
city, or in drawing media attention to the police's actions. Over the
concerns of an uncertain King, SCLC strategist James Bevel changed the course of the campaign by recruiting children and young adults to join in the demonstrations.
Newsweek called this strategy a Children's Crusade.
During the protests, the Birmingham Police Department, led by Eugene "Bull" Connor,
used high-pressure water jets and police dogs against protesters,
including children. Footage of the police response was broadcast on
national television news and dominated the nation's attention, shocking
many white Americans and consolidating black Americans behind the
movement.
Not all of the demonstrators were peaceful, despite the avowed
intentions of the SCLC. In some cases, bystanders attacked the police,
who responded with force. King and the SCLC were criticized for putting
children in harm's way. But the campaign was a success: Connor lost his
job, the "Jim Crow" signs came down, and public places became more open
to blacks. King's reputation improved immensely.
King was arrested and jailed early in the campaign—his 13th arrest out of 29. From his cell, he composed the now-famous Letter from Birmingham Jail that responds to calls on the movement
to pursue legal channels for social change. King argues that the crisis
of racism is too urgent, and the current system too entrenched: "We
know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given
by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed." He points out that the Boston Tea Party, a celebrated act of rebellion in the American colonies, was illegal civil disobedience, and that, conversely, "everything Adolf Hitler did in Germany was 'legal'." King also expresses his frustration with white moderates and clergymen too timid to oppose an unjust system:
I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the
Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the
White Citizen's Councilor or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white
moderate, who is more devoted to "order" than to justice; who prefers a
negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which
is the presence of justice; who constantly says: "I agree with you in
the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct
action"; who paternalistic-ally believes he can set the timetable for
another man's freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who
constantly advises the Negro to wait for a "more convenient season."
St. Augustine, Florida, 1964
In March 1964, King and the SCLC joined forces with Robert Hayling's
then-controversial movement in St. Augustine, Florida. Hayling's group
had been affiliated with the NAACP but was forced out of the
organization for advocating armed self-defense alongside nonviolent
tactics. However, the pacifist SCLC accepted them. King and the SCLC worked to bring white Northern activists to St. Augustine, including a delegation of rabbis and the 72-year-old mother of the governor of Massachusetts, all of whom were arrested.
During June, the movement marched nightly through the city, "often
facing counter demonstrations by the Klan, and provoking violence that
garnered national media attention." Hundreds of the marchers were
arrested and jailed. During the course of this movement, the Civil
Rights Act of 1964 was passed.
Selma, Alabama, 1964
In December 1964, King and the SCLC joined forces with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) in Selma, Alabama, where the SNCC had been working on voter registration for several months.
A local judge issued an injunction that barred any gathering of three or
more people affiliated with the SNCC, SCLC, DCVL, or any of 41 named
civil rights leaders. This injunction temporarily halted civil rights
activity until King defied it by speaking at Brown Chapel on January 2, 1965. During the 1965 march to Montgomery, Alabama,
violence by state police and others against the peaceful marchers
resulted in much publicity, which made Alabama's racism visible
nationwide.
New York City, 1964
On February 6, 1964, King delivered the inaugural speech of a lecture series initiated at the New School
called "The American Race Crisis." No audio record of his speech has
been found, but in August 2013, almost 50 years later, the school
discovered an audiotape with 15 minutes of a question-and-answer session
that followed King's address. In these remarks, King referred to a
conversation he had recently had with Jawaharlal Nehru in which he compared the sad condition of many African Americans to that of India's untouchables.
March on Washington, 1963
The March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom (1963).
Bayard Rustin's open homosexuality, support of democratic socialism, and his former ties to the Communist Party USA caused many white and African-American leaders to demand King distance himself from Rustin, which King agreed to do.
However, he did collaborate in the 1963 March on Washington, for which
Rustin was the primary logistical and strategic organizer.
For King, this role was another which courted controversy, since he was one of the key figures who acceded to the wishes of United States President John F. Kennedy in changing the focus of the march.
Kennedy initially opposed the march outright, because he was concerned it would negatively impact the drive for passage of civil rights legislation. However, the organizers were firm that the march would proceed.
With the march going forward, the Kennedys decided it was important to
work to ensure its success. President Kennedy was concerned the turnout
would be less than 100,000. Therefore, he enlisted the aid of additional
church leaders and Walter Reuther, president of the United Automobile Workers, to help mobilize demonstrators for the cause.
The march originally was conceived as an event to dramatize the
desperate condition of blacks in the southern U.S. and an opportunity to
place organizers' concerns and grievances squarely before the seat of
power in the nation's capital. Organizers intended to denounce the
federal government for its failure to safeguard the civil rights and
physical safety of civil rights workers and blacks. The group acquiesced
to presidential pressure and influence, and the event ultimately took
on a far less strident tone.
As a result, some civil rights activists felt it presented an
inaccurate, sanitized pageant of racial harmony; Malcolm X called it the
"Farce on Washington", and the Nation of Islam forbade its members from
attending the march.
The march made specific demands: an end to racial segregation in
public schools; meaningful civil rights legislation, including a law
prohibiting racial discrimination in employment; protection of civil
rights workers from police brutality; a $2 minimum wage for all workers (equivalent to $16 in 2017); and self-government for Washington, D.C., then governed by congressional committee. Despite tensions, the march was a resounding success.
More than a quarter of a million people of diverse ethnicities attended
the event, sprawling from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial onto the National Mall and around the reflecting pool. At the time, it was the largest gathering of protesters in Washington, D.C.'s history.
King delivered a 17-minute speech, later known as "I Have a Dream". In the speech's most famous passage—in which he departed from his prepared text, possibly at the prompting of Mahalia Jackson, who shouted behind him, "Tell them about the dream!"—King said:
I say to you today, my friends, so even though we face the
difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream
deeply rooted in the American dream.
I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the
true meaning of its creed: 'We hold these truths to be self-evident:
that all men are created equal.'
I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of
former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit
down together at the table of brotherhood.
I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state
sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of
oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.
I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a
nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by
the content of their character.
I have a dream today.
I have a dream that one day, down in Alabama, with its vicious racists,
with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of
interposition and nullification; one day right there in Alabama, little
black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white
boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.
I have a dream today.
"I Have a Dream" came to be regarded as one of the finest speeches in the history of American oratory.
The March, and especially King's speech, helped put civil rights at the
top of the agenda of reformers in the United States and facilitated
passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
The original typewritten copy of the speech, including King's
handwritten notes on it, was discovered in 1984 to be in the hands of George Raveling, the first African-American basketball coach of the University of Iowa.
In 1963, Raveling, then 26, was standing near the podium, and
immediately after the oration, impulsively asked King if he could have
his copy of the speech. He got it.
Selma voting rights movement and "Bloody Sunday", 1965
Acting on James Bevel's call for a march from Selma to Montgomery,
King, Bevel, and the SCLC, in partial collaboration with SNCC, attempted
to organize the march to the state's capital. The first attempt to
march on March 7, 1965, was aborted because of mob and police violence
against the demonstrators. This day has become known as Bloody Sunday
and was a major turning point in the effort to gain public support for
the civil rights movement. It was the clearest demonstration up to that
time of the dramatic potential of King's nonviolence strategy. King,
however, was not present.
On March 5, King met with officials in the Johnson Administration in order to request an injunction
against any prosecution of the demonstrators. He did not attend the
march due to church duties, but he later wrote, "If I had any idea that
the state troopers would use the kind of brutality they did, I would
have felt compelled to give up my church duties altogether to lead the
line." Footage of police brutality against the protesters was broadcast extensively and aroused national public outrage.
King next attempted to organize a march for March 9. The SCLC
petitioned for an injunction in federal court against the State of
Alabama; this was denied and the judge issued an order blocking the
march until after a hearing. Nonetheless, King led marchers on March 9
to the Edmund Pettus Bridge
in Selma, then held a short prayer session before turning the marchers
around and asking them to disperse so as not to violate the court order.
The unexpected ending of this second march aroused the surprise and
anger of many within the local movement. The march finally went ahead fully on March 25, 1965.
At the conclusion of the march on the steps of the state capitol, King delivered a speech that became known as "How Long, Not Long."
In it, King stated that equal rights for African Americans could not be
far away, "because the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends
toward justice" and "you shall reap what you sow".
In 1966, after several successes in the south, King, Bevel, and
others in the civil rights organizations took the movement to the North,
with Chicago
as their first destination. King and Ralph Abernathy, both from the
middle class, moved into a building at 1550 S. Hamlin Avenue, in the
slums of North Lawndale
on Chicago's West Side, as an educational experience and to demonstrate their support and empathy for the poor.
The SCLC formed a coalition with CCCO, Coordinating Council of Community Organizations, an organization founded by Albert Raby, and the combined organizations' efforts were fostered under the aegis of the Chicago Freedom Movement.
During that spring, several white couple/black couple tests of real estate offices uncovered racial steering:
discriminatory processing of housing requests by couples who were exact
matches in income, background, number of children, and other
attributes. Several larger marches were planned and executed: in Bogan, Belmont Cragin, Jefferson Park, Evergreen Park (a suburb southwest of Chicago), Gage Park, Marquette Park, and others.
King later stated and Abernathy wrote that the movement received a
worse reception in Chicago than in the South. Marches, especially the
one through Marquette Park on August 5, 1966, were met by thrown bottles
and screaming throngs. Rioting seemed very possible.
King's beliefs militated against his staging a violent event, and he negotiated an agreement with Mayor Richard J. Daley to cancel a march in order to avoid the violence that he feared would result.
King was hit by a brick during one march but continued to lead marches in the face of personal danger.
When King and his allies returned to the South, they left Jesse Jackson, a seminary student who had previously joined the movement in the South, in charge of their organization.
Jackson continued their struggle for civil rights by organizing the Operation Breadbasket movement that targeted chain stores that did not deal fairly with blacks.
A 1967 CIA document declassified in 2017 downplayed King's role
in the "black militant situation" in Chicago, with a source stating that
King "sought at least constructive, positive projects."
Opposition to the Vietnam War
King was long opposed to American involvement in the Vietnam War,
but at first avoided the topic in public speeches in order to avoid the
interference with civil rights goals that criticism of President
Johnson's policies might have created. At the urging of SCLC's former Director of Direct Action and now the head of the Spring Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam, James Bevel, King eventually agreed to publicly oppose the war as opposition was growing among the American public.
During an April 4, 1967, appearance at the New York City Riverside Church—exactly one year before his death—King delivered a speech titled "Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence."
He spoke strongly against the U.S.'s role in the war, arguing that the U.S. was in Vietnam "to occupy it as an American colony" and calling the U.S. government "the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today." He also connected the war with economic injustice, arguing that the country needed serious moral change:
A true revolution of values will
soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth. With
righteous indignation, it will look across the seas and see individual
capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa and
South America, only to take the profits out with no concern for the
social betterment of the countries, and say: "This is not just."
King also opposed the Vietnam War because it took money and resources that could have been spent on social welfare at home. The United States Congress was spending more and more on the military and less and less on anti-poverty programs
at the same time. He summed up this aspect by saying, "A nation that
continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than
on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death."
He stated that North Vietnam "did not begin to send in any large number
of supplies or men until American forces had arrived in the tens of
thousands", and accused the U.S. of having killed a million Vietnamese, "mostly children."
King also criticized American opposition to North Vietnam's land reforms.
King's opposition cost him significant support among white allies, including President Johnson, Billy Graham, union leaders and powerful publishers.
"The press is being stacked against me", King said,
complaining of what he described as a double standard that applauded his
nonviolence at home, but deplored it when applied "toward little brown
Vietnamese children."
Life magazine called the speech "demagogic slander that sounded like a script for Radio Hanoi", and The Washington Post declared that King had "diminished his usefulness to his cause, his country, his people."
King speaking to an anti-Vietnam war rally at the University of Minnesota in St. Paul, April 27, 1967
The "Beyond Vietnam" speech reflected King's evolving political
advocacy in his later years, which paralleled the teachings of the
progressive Highlander Research and Education Center, with which he was affiliated.
King began to speak of the need for fundamental changes in the political
and economic life of the nation, and more frequently expressed his
opposition to the war and his desire to see a redistribution of
resources to correct racial and economic injustice.
He guarded his language in public to avoid being linked to communism by his enemies, but in private he sometimes spoke of his support for democratic socialism.
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
claimed, "There must be a better distribution of wealth, and maybe
America must move toward a democratic socialism."
King had read Marx
while at Morehouse, but while he rejected "traditional capitalism", he
also rejected communism because of its "materialistic interpretation of
history" that denied religion, its "ethical relativism", and its
"political totalitarianism."
King also stated in "Beyond Vietnam" that "true compassion is
more than flinging a coin to a beggar ... it comes to see that an
edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring."
King quoted a United States official who said that from Vietnam to
Latin America, the country was "on the wrong side of a world
revolution."
King condemned America's "alliance with the landed gentry of Latin
America", and said that the U.S. should support "the shirtless and
barefoot people" in the Third World rather than suppressing their attempts at revolution.
King's stance on Vietnam encouraged Allard K. Lowenstein, William Sloane Coffin and Norman Thomas, with the support of anti-war Democrats, to attempt to persuade King to run against President Johnson in the 1968 United States presidential election.
King contemplated but ultimately decided against the proposal on the
grounds that he felt uneasy with politics and considered himself better
suited for his morally unambiguous role as an activist.
On April 15, 1967, King participated and spoke at an anti-war march from Manhattan's Central Park to the United Nations. The march was organized by the Spring Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam and initiated by its chairman, James Bevel. At the U.N. King also brought up issues of civil rights and the draft.
I have not urged a mechanical
fusion of the civil rights and peace movements. There are people who
have come to see the moral imperative of equality, but who cannot yet
see the moral imperative of world brotherhood. I would like to see the
fervor of the civil-rights movement imbued into the peace movement to
instill it with greater strength. And I believe everyone has a duty to
be in both the civil-rights and peace movements. But for those who
presently choose but one, I would hope they will finally come to see the
moral roots common to both.
Seeing an opportunity to unite civil rights activists and anti-war activists, Bevel convinced King to become even more active in the anti-war effort. Despite his growing public opposition towards the Vietnam War, King was also not fond of the hippie culture which developed from the anti-war movement. In his 1967 Massey Lecture, King stated:
The importance of the hippies is
not in their unconventional behavior, but in the fact that hundreds of
thousands of young people, in turning to a flight from reality, are
expressing a profoundly discrediting view on the society they emerge
from.
On January 13, 1968 (the day after President Johnson's State of the Union Address), King called for a large march on Washington against "one of history's most cruel and senseless wars."
We need to make clear in this
political year, to congressmen on both sides of the aisle and to the
president of the United States, that we will no longer tolerate, we will
no longer vote for men who continue to see the killings of Vietnamese
and Americans as the best way of advancing the goals of freedom and
self-determination in Southeast Asia.
Poor People's Campaign, 1968
A shantytown established in Washington, D. C. to protest economic conditions as a part of the Poor People's Campaign.
In 1968, King and the SCLC organized the "Poor People's Campaign"
to address issues of economic justice. King traveled the country to
assemble "a multiracial army of the poor" that would march on Washington
to engage in nonviolent civil disobedience at the Capitol until Congress created an "economic bill of rights" for poor Americans.
The campaign was preceded by King's final book, Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community? which laid out his view of how to address social issues and poverty. King quoted from Henry George and George's book, Progress and Poverty, particularly in support of a guaranteed basic income. The campaign culminated in a march on Washington, D.C., demanding economic aid to the poorest communities of the United States.
King and the SCLC
called on the government to invest in rebuilding America's cities. He
felt that Congress had shown "hostility to the poor" by spending
"military funds with alacrity and generosity." He contrasted this with
the situation faced by poor Americans, claiming that Congress had merely
provided "poverty funds with miserliness."
His vision was for change that was more revolutionary than mere reform:
he cited systematic flaws of "racism, poverty, militarism and
materialism", and argued that "reconstruction of society itself is the
real issue to be faced."
The Poor People's Campaign was controversial even within the
civil rights movement. Rustin resigned from the march, stating that the
goals of the campaign were too broad, that its demands were
unrealizable, and that he thought that these campaigns would accelerate
the backlash and repression on the poor and the black.
After King's death
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 for the purpose of
carrying 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 established a camp they called "Resurrection City." They stayed for six weeks.
On March 29, 1968, King went to Memphis, Tennessee, in support of the
black sanitary public works employees, who were represented by AFSCME Local 1733. The workers had been on strike
since March 12 for higher wages and better treatment. In one incident,
black street repairmen received pay for two hours when they were sent
home because of bad weather, but white employees were paid for the full
day.
On April 3, King addressed a rally and delivered his "I've Been to the Mountaintop" address at Mason Temple, the world headquarters of the Church of God in Christ. King's flight to Memphis had been delayed by a bomb threat against his plane.
In the propheticperoration of the last speech of his life, in reference to the bomb threat, King said the following:
And then I got to Memphis. And some
began to say the threats, or talk about the threats that were out. What
would happen to me from some of our sick white brothers?
Well, I don't know what will happen now. We've got some difficult
days ahead. But it doesn't matter with me now. Because I've been to the
mountaintop. And I don't mind. Like anybody, I would like to live a
long life. Longevity has its place. But I'm not concerned about that
now. I just want to do God's will. And He's allowed me to go up to the
mountain. And I've looked over. And I've seen the promised land. I may
not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a
people, will get to the promised land. So I'm happy, tonight. I'm not
worried about anything. I'm not fearing any man. Mine eyes have seen the
glory of the coming of the Lord.
King was booked in Room 306 at the Lorraine Motel (owned by Walter Bailey) in Memphis. Abernathy, who was present at the assassination, testified to the United States House Select Committee on Assassinations that King and his entourage stayed at Room 306 so often that it was known as the "King-Abernathy suite."
According to Jesse Jackson, who was present, King's last words on the balcony before his assassination were spoken to musician Ben Branch, who was scheduled to perform that night at an event King was attending: "Ben, make sure you play 'Take My Hand, Precious Lord' in the meeting tonight. Play it real pretty."
King was fatally shot by James Earl Ray
at 6:01 p.m., April 4, 1968, as he stood on the motel's second-floor
balcony. The bullet entered through his right cheek, smashing his jaw,
then traveled down his spinal cord before lodging in his shoulder.
Abernathy heard the shot from inside the motel room and ran to the balcony to find King on the floor.
Jackson stated after the shooting that he cradled King's head as King
lay on the balcony, but this account was disputed by other colleagues of
King; Jackson later changed his statement to say that he had "reached
out" for King.
After emergency chest surgery, King died at St. Joseph's Hospital at 7:05 p.m.
According to biographer Taylor Branch,
King's autopsy revealed that though only 39 years old, he "had the
heart of a 60 year old", which Branch attributed to the stress of 13
years in the civil rights movement.
Aftermath
King's friend Mahalia Jackson (seen here in 1964) sang at his funeral.
The assassination led to a nationwide wave of 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.
President Lyndon B. Johnson declared April 7 a national day of mourning for the civil rights leader.
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 was played at the funeral,
a recording of his "Drum Major" sermon, given on February 4, 1968. In
that sermon, King made a request that at his funeral no mention of his
awards and honors be made, but that it be said that he tried to "feed
the hungry", "clothe the naked", "be right on the [Vietnam] war
question", and "love and serve humanity."
His good friend Mahalia Jackson sang his favorite hymn, "Take My Hand, Precious Lord", at the funeral.
Two months after King's death, James Earl Ray—who was on the loose from a previous prison escape—was captured at London Heathrow Airport
while trying to leave England on a false Canadian passport. He was
using the alias Ramon George Sneyd on his way to white-ruled Rhodesia. Ray was quickly extradited to Tennessee and charged with King's murder.
He confessed to the assassination 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 a trial conviction and thus the possibility
of receiving 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.
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 charges of 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. Jerry Ray said that he had assisted his brother
on one such 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 in the assassination 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 at the moment of his death said that the shot came
from another location. They said that it came 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 (a rifle, a
pair of binoculars, articles of clothing, a newspaper) that were left in
the bathroom where it was determined the gunfire came from.
An examination of the rifle containing Ray's fingerprints also
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 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 of six whites and six
blacks found in favor of the King family, finding Jowers to be
complicit in a conspiracy against King and that government agencies were
party to the assassination.
William F. Pepper represented the King family in the trial.
In 2000, the U.S. Department of Justice
completed the investigation into Jowers' claims but did not find
evidence to support allegations about conspiracy. The investigation
report recommended no further investigation unless some 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 in turn corroborated
his story in order to get some money to pay her income tax.
In 2002, The New York Times
reported that a church minister, Rev. Ronald Denton Wilson, claimed his
father, Henry Clay Wilson—not James Earl Ray—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 William F. Pepper's claims that the government killed King.
In 2003, Pepper published a book about the long investigation and trial,
as well as his representation of James Earl Ray in his bid for a trial,
laying out the evidence and criticizing other accounts.
King's friend and colleague, 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
Martin Luther King Jr. statue over the west entrance of Westminster Abbey, installed in 1998.
King's 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 in the U.S.
Internationally, 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 Lutuli, who fought for racial justice in his country and was later awarded the Nobel Prize. The day following King's assassination, school teacher Jane Elliott conducted her first "Blue Eyes/Brown Eyes" exercise with her class of elementary school students in Riceville,
Iowa. Her purpose was to help them understand King's death as it
related to racism, something they little understood as they lived in a
predominantly white community.
King's wife Coretta Scott King followed in her husband's
footsteps and was active in matters of social justice and civil rights
until her death in 2006. The same year that Martin Luther 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.
Even within the King family, members disagree about his religious
and political views about gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender
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 publicly that he would have been opposed to gay marriage.
On February 4, 1968, at the Ebenezer Baptist Church, in speaking
about how he wished to be remembered after his death, King stated:
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.
Martin Luther King Jr. Day
Beginning in 1971, cities such as St. Louis, Missouri, and states established annual holidays to honor King. At the White House Rose Garden 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 three states to recognize the holiday. Utah
previously celebrated the holiday at the same time but under the name
Human Rights Day.
In the United Kingdom, The Northumbria and Newcastle Universities Martin Luther King Peace Committee
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.
The Peace Committee operates out of the chaplaincies of the city's two
universities, Northumbria and Newcastle, both of which remain centres
for the study of Martin Luther King and the US civil rights movement.
Inspired by King's vision, it undertakes a range of activities across
the UK as it seeks 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 'Luthers'.
Ideas, influences, and political stances
Religion
King at the 1963 Civil Rights March in Washington, D.C.
As a Christian minister, King's main influence was Jesus Christ
and the Christian gospels, which he would almost always quote in his
religious meetings, speeches at church, and in public discourses. King's
faith was strongly based in Jesus' commandment of loving your neighbor as yourself, loving God above all, and loving your enemies, praying for them and blessing them. 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 famous Letter from Birmingham Jail, King urged action consistent with what he describes as Jesus' "extremist" love, and also quoted numerous other Christian pacifist authors, which was very usual for him. 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 worked alongside Quakers such as Bayard Rustin to develop non-violent tactics.
Veteran 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 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 had initially known little about Gandhi
and rarely used the term "nonviolence" during his early years of
activism in the early 1950s. King initially believed in and practiced
self-defense, even obtaining guns in his household as a means of defense
against possible attackers. The pacifists guided King by showing him
the alternative of nonviolent resistance, arguing that this would be a
better means to accomplish his goals of civil rights than self-defense.
King then vowed to no longer personally use arms.
In the aftermath of the boycott, King wrote Stride Toward Freedom, which included the chapter Pilgrimage to Nonviolence.
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 Mahatma 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 to India affected King, deepening 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."
King's admiration of Gandhi's nonviolence did not diminish in
later years. He went so far as to hold up his example when receiving the
Nobel Peace Prize in 1964, hailing 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. 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. King also sometimes used the concept of "agape" (brotherly Christian love). However, after 1960, he ceased employing it in his writings.
Even after renouncing his personal use of guns, King had a
complex relationship with the phenomenon of 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.
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 over the years.
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 was undecided as to whether he would vote for Adlai Stevenson or Dwight Eisenhower, 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 supported the ideals of democratic socialism, although he
was 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 socialism with communism. King
believed that capitalism could not adequately provide the basic
necessities of many American people, particularly the African-American
community.
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."
Recently, the press has been filled with reports of sightings of flying saucers.
While we need not give credence to these stories, they allow our
imagination to speculate on how visitors from outer space would judge
us. I am afraid they would be stupefied at our conduct. They would
observe that for death planning we spend billions to create engines and strategies for war. They would also observe that we spend millions to prevent death by disease and other causes. Finally they would observe that we spend paltry sums for population planning, even though its spontaneous growth
is an urgent threat to life on our planet. Our visitors from outer
space could be forgiven if they reported home that our planet is
inhabited by a race of insane men whose future is bleak and uncertain.
There is no human circumstance more tragic than the persisting
existence of a harmful condition for which a remedy is readily
available. Family planning, to relate population to world resources, is possible, practical and necessary. Unlike plagues of thedark ages or contemporary diseases we do not yet understand, the modern plague of overpopulation is soluble by means we have discovered and with resources we possess.
What is lacking is not sufficient knowledge of the solution but
universal consciousness of the gravity of the problem and education of
the billions who are its victims...[283][284]
FBI and King's personal life
Memo describing FBI attempts to disrupt the Poor People's Campaign with fraudulent claims about King—part of the COINTELPRO campaign against the anti-war and civil rights movements
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.
According to the Church Committee, a 1975 investigation by the U.S. Congress,
"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. The Bureau informed President John F. Kennedy. He and his brother unsuccessfully tried to persuade King to dissociate himself from Stanley 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
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 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 (NSA) monitored the communications of leading Americans, including King, who criticized 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 about 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 as it was
established (it did not have a full-time executive director until 1960).
The investigations were largely superficial until 1962, when the FBI
learned that one of King's most trusted advisers was New York City
lawyer 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, Hunter Pitts O'Dell, was also linked to the Communist Party by sworn testimony before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC).
However, 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 did not believe King's pledge of innocence and replied by saying that King was "the most notorious liar in the country."
After King gave his "I Have A Dream" speech during the March on
Washington on August 28, 1963, 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 attempt to prove that King was a communist was related to the
feeling of many segregationists that blacks in the South were happy
with their lot but had been stirred up by "communists" and "outside
agitators."
However, the 1950s and '60s civil rights movement arose from activism
within the black community dating back to before World War I. 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, spokesman for subject,
refused to comment on the source of the invitation.
Having concluded that King was dangerous due to communist
infiltration, 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 also engaged in numerous
extramarital affairs.[291]Lyndon Johnson once said that King was a "hypocritical preacher."
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 original wording, Abernathy had claimed he saw King coming out
of his room with a lady when he awoke the next morning and later claimed
that "he may have been in there discussing and debating and trying to
get her to go along with the movement, I don't know."
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."
The FBI distributed reports regarding such affairs to the
executive branch, friendly reporters, 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.[311] The FBI–King suicide letter sent to King just before he received the Nobel Peace Prize read, in part:
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 give in to the FBI's threats.
In 1977, JudgeJohn Lewis Smith Jr.
ordered all known copies of the recorded audiotapes and written
transcripts resulting from the FBI's electronic surveillance of King
between 1963 and 1968 to be held in the National Archives and sealed from public access until 2027.
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 out of the station
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 showing his medallion, which he received from Mayor Wagner
Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, where King ministered, was renamed Dexter Avenue King Memorial Baptist Church in 1978.
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. Two years later, he won the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award for his book 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 United Kingdom to
receive an honorary degree from Newcastle University, being the first
African-American to be so honoured by Newcastle. In a moving 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.
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.
On April 20, 2016, Treasury SecretaryJacob 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 obverse
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 and the 1939 concert by opera singer Marian Anderson.
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