Martin Luther King Jr.’s voice has been stilled for too long, yet his ideas live on in the multitudes of ages, races and religions who took to the streets, peacefully acting together in revulsion against the murder of George Floyd. King (as well as the nonviolent warriors we lost this month: Congressman John Lewis, Professor Lucius Barker, and Reverend C.T. Vivian) taught America the philosophy and discipline to resist peacefully. By both changing the laws and speaking truth to power, American nonviolent resistance radically changed the lives of millions of people of color. We must resurrect these voices to light our way to reconciliation and peace not only for ourselves but for the broken world.
“This is the great new problem of mankind. We have inherited … a great ‘world house’ in which we have to live together – black and white, Easterner and Westerner, Gentile and Jew, Catholic and Protestant, Muslim and Hindu… Because we can never again live apart, we must learn somehow to live with each other in peace.”
King’s nonviolence brings love for all humanity; it channels rage into loving action; it shuns physical violence ; it embraces all faiths and colors; it holds a clear moral position; it excludes no one from love; it seeks the end all decent people seek: “the end is redemption, the end is reconciliation, the end is the creation of the beloved community.”
No one can say what he would have thought of this summer’s demonstrations except through his own words: I think he would have smiled at some aspects and wept at others.
He’d have smiled:
At the beloved communities of peaceful protestors, who came to mourn together with anger and love.
“It is this spirit and this type of love that can transform opposers into friends.”
“The end we seek is a society at peace with itself, a society that can live with its conscience. And that will be a day not of the white man, not of the black man. That will be the day of man as man.”
“Nonviolent resistance is a courageous confrontation of evil by the power of love.”
And Martin Luther King Jr. would have wept:
For what we’ve lost, forgotten, never learned, or erased in the half century since the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.
For the burners, who torch shops, schools, police stations.
For the destroyers, who deface and shatter statues.
“…it is wrong to use immoral means to attain moral ends.”
For those who attacked schools and houses of worship and sold their own souls for a moment of revenge.
“…the aftermath of violence is tragic bitterness.”
For the well dressed young man walking off with a 65” tv in downtown Washington, having bought into the worst materialism of our time but not the civic duty that binds us together.
For the attorneys who firebombed a police car in New York, only to have their lawyer suggest that their sentences should be cut because “no harm was done.”
“The way of violence leads to bitterness in the survivors and brutality in the destroyers..”
For the spray painters who diminish themselves through death wishes and curses.
For the nihilists who have decided that their goals can be achieved only through chaos, not love.
“Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.”
Martin Luther King III and older King partners interviewed for the Times June 26 issue speak of their sadness at the acts of violence, looting, arson, and defacement of statues: “…we…were demonstrating…the power of nonviolence… you don’t write people off as the enemy…When you enter a confrontation, it is with an intention to move to reconciliation.” – “deeply dismayed by the initial outbreak of violence…” These voices of peace, unity, and reconciliation mirror the voices of the Floyd family and must be heard in the conversation on how to end historic systemic racism in America.
When we see protestors kneel together, walk arm in arm, share water with police and each other, sing together, pray together, demand action, we see King’s vision. When we see the looters, arsonists, destroyers, and marchers who spout hate, we see a small dark but influential voice that masquerades as the voice of the people.
Martin Luther King Jr. was murdered, his colleagues are dying off, but their philosophy and discipline remain and must return to our cultural conversation. The substance and methods of peaceful resistance endure; indeed, they offer hope for revival of our American spirit and unity.
“The aftermath of nonviolence is the creation of the beloved community, so that when the battle is over, a new relationship comes into being between the oppressed and the oppressor..”