[This article was published in The
Journal of Social, Political and Economic Studies, Fall 2003, pp. 325-353.]
Understanding
Contemporary
Dwight D. Murphey[1]
More than forty years have passed
since Martin Luther King, Jr.'s speech at the Lincoln Memorial on
Key
Words: Martin Luther King, Jr; nonviolence;
civil disobedience; racial relations in America; King's plagiarism; King's
adultery; New Politics Convention (1967); affirmative action; race in American
history; myth and American racial issues.
Today's Image of Martin Luther King, Jr.
Peggy
Noonan, the superbly talented speech writer for President Ronald Reagan, wrote
a column a few years ago for The Wall Street Journal about "the
seven unifying myths" that bind Americans together. She feels they should be taught to the
children of all new immigrants. In this,
she uses "myth" in its favorable connotation, not as a word of
disparagement. One of the seven gives an
enthusiastic picture of "the civil rights struggle." She describes that struggle as "a massive
peaceful resistance to a tradition that was a sin... – and all because
King's
image is a major part of the myth to which she refers. There is no greater personification of the
civil rights struggle as seen today than King.
M. Stanton Evans is no doubt accurate in saying that during the years
since King's death in 1968 he has been elevated to "secular
sainthood." Seeking something of a
sainthood for him beyond even the "secular," American Catholic
bishops in January 2000 asked the Vatican to name King (though a Baptist) a
"martyr for the Christian faith."
Everywhere
there are streets, boulevards and highways named after him; his picture hangs
on the walls of countless classrooms and university offices across the United
States; and since Congress declared the holiday in 1983, Americans have
celebrated "Martin Luther King Day" on January 15 to commemorate his
birthday, even as the traditional holidays marking the birthdays of Washington
and Lincoln have been compressed into one considerably lesser observance. Time magazine named King the
"Person of the Year" in 1963, five years before he was killed. In 1964, he received the Nobel Peace
Prize. President Jimmy Carter presented
him posthumously the Presidential Medal of Freedom on
Components of the Myth
Today's
image of Martin Luther King, Jr., consists of several discrete ideas:
· That King was a man of superb qualities: high-minded,
given to love and nonviolence, eloquently expressing dreams of equality and
justice.
· That his actions as the principal leader of the civil
rights movement involved a whirlwind of activity that used "nonviolent
direct action" and "massive civil disobedience" as levers to
move American society.
· That until acted upon by the civil rights movement, and
to a considerable degree even today, the American people and their institutions
were unresponsive, racist and fundamentally unjust.
· That massive civil disobedience is a legitimate and
sometimes necessary part of democratic process.
· That, accordingly, King stood at the forefront of a
progressive movement that has led
Questions About the Myth
The
idealizations that a people live and die by – prominent among what we call the
"myths" of a given culture – are almost indispensable as cements to
give a people a sense of cohesion, meaning and direction. As simplifications and large symbols of
reality, they are to be expected in every society. So it is not the existence of a myth that is
to be questioned, but whether a given myth simplifies by capturing the essence
of its subject-matter rather than falsifying it, and whether it occupies a
constructive rather than destructive role.
With
these questions in mind, we see that there are considerable problems about the
image that today's
We
will divide this discussion into two parts.
The first will deal with the specific facts of King's image; the second
will explore the broader societal issues that are suggested by the myth and its
hold on American society.
Problems Most
Directly Involved in the Myth Itself.
This
first part suggests several issues:
1.
Was the myth freely adopted?
Is the image one that came about because of its obvious appeal to
people's hearts and minds; or is it one that constitutes a mental conquest of
sorts, imposed coercively on any sizable portion of the public?
These
questions are important to understanding the role a myth plays, but an answer
that the myth was coercively imposed does not necessarily discolor it. Many of the ideal images revered within
societies are the result of victors' having imposed their view of personalities
and events to the exclusion of the perspectives held by opposing but defeated
elements. During the American
Revolution, for example, the contrasting views of "patriots" and
"loyalists" were very real; but the victory for those who favored independence
has long-since elevated the revolutionary leaders to the sanctified position of
"Founding Fathers," while in the
Thus,
the acceptance of an ideal image depends on time, place and circumstance. We see this also in what has been occurring
with
As
is true of so many other idealizations, the King myth was not freely
adopted. It didn't spring spontaneously
from the universal sentiments of the American people. King's idealized image was imposed on the
American people by the various organs of contemporary ideology that have
fashioned what in recent years has been known as "political
correctness." This is a phenomenon
in which 80% of the public can think a certain way, only to see the opposite
put into effect by the cultural elite that actually governs the country and establishes
what is acceptable opinion.
An
example is that polls have shown that the overwhelming sentiment among Kansans
has long favored the death penalty. For
years, however, governors announced they would veto a bill installing it. When finally a governor was elected who said
she would sign a bill, several legislators switched their positions from
favorable to unfavorable so that the Legislature could no longer pass it. Eventually, the death penalty was enacted,
but several years have gone by and thus far no one has been executed. The whole history resembles a charade.
In
1990 the
The
national King holiday was approved by Congress in 1983, but only after
Congressman John Conyers, D-Mich., had made 16 consecutive annual attempts to
have it enacted. The approval was hotly
contested, and was made in an enforced informational vacuum. Shortly before the approval, the decision was
announced to seal for 50 years all FBI records relating to King's
activities. Senator Jesse Helms sought
to have the records opened, but a federal judge ruled to keep the records
sealed.[5] The records are thought to reflect “intense
FBI scrutiny because of his close association with Communist Party members,
especially Stanley D. Levinson, a major figure in the Communist Party”[6] They are also thought to contain considerable
detail about King’s sexual misconduct.
The enactment of the national holiday closed
debate by institutionalizing the myth, which thereafter has had the imprimatur
of official sanction. By now, King's
life and the civil rights movement are honored as though there is no other
respectable view. This constitutes, at
least for the present, the total victory of one segment of the population over
another. That other view is now eclipsed
in a way reminiscent of the "non-persons" who were air-brushed out of
official photographs in the
Even
after the King holiday has been given official sanction, coercive pressures
have been brought in an effort to force people to observe it. Prior to the holiday in 1994, it was reported
that "members of the
As we noted about the coercive
origins of many myths, it is true that the King myth is not unique in having
been institutionalized. A great many
images are in effect transformed into a part of a people's secular religion by
being made the subject of monuments, parades, prestigious museums, school essay
contests, and the like. This serves the
prevailing consensus well, but those who seek to analyze events intellectually
will need to realize that the deck has been stacked in favor of a particular
perception.
The
coercive imposition and then institutionalization of a myth should also be
understood as one of the society's exceptions to the process of on-going
democracy. Not all subjects are left for
discussion within what John Stuart Mill valued as an "open marketplace of
ideas." To that extent, modern
"democracy" has not come as far from the pre-modern
"closed" social systems as is generally believed.
2. Is the King myth based on the essential
truth about the man and his actions?
Where King's image truly runs aground is with respect to its
accuracy. It does not capture the
essence of its subject, but rather distorts it almost beyond recognition.
The
image is of a man of sterling qualities.
It has, however, become clearer over time that King was profoundly
dishonest both in his personal life and his eloquence. In response to this, it is argued, just as it
was for William Clinton during his presidency, that "his personal
misbehavior is far outweighed by his monumental achievements in the public
arena."[8] But this requires a certain view of King's
public role, one that gives him full credit as an apostle of
"nonviolence" and that chooses to overlook the moral support he gave
to Communist revolutions throughout the world.
People
from varied points of view acknowledge that King's public role is itself open
to question. These include some black
commentators. In a retrospective on King in 1996, black columnist Mark
McCormick asked "Have we watered down Martin Luther King?" He quotes a black pastor as saying that
"portrayals of King as a one-dimensional pacifist simply do not wash...
His message was a bit more challenging, it was a bit more piercing." The column comments that "the fact that
people seem to embrace only a portion of King's message may say a lot about
some of our deepest feelings. ‘Maybe we
don't love him as much as we say we do,' Montgomery [the pastor] said. ‘Maybe we are hypocrites... If we embrace the
man and reject his message, there has to be an element of hypocrisy
there.'"
These
particular objections may be said to come "from the left." There are, however, reasons to question
King's public role from other perspectives as well. The Abe Lincoln Foundation, for example, ran
an advertisement expressing J. A. Parker's opposition to the King holiday:
"I'm a black American and I oppose the Martin Luther King holiday...
because of King's dishonesty... because of King's immorality... because of
King's attacks on our capitalist free enterprise system... [and] because of
King's attacks on
King's
plagiarism. In
the academic and journalistic communities, plagiarism is condemned as a serious
form of dishonesty. Professors caught doing
it wind up resigning quietly from the faculty amid whispered ignominy. The problem is that it is a form of stealing:
the appropriation of someone else's intellectual work without attribution.
King's
rampant plagiarism has received widespread comment, but is for ideological and
political reasons relegated to what astronomers call a "black
hole." Its role offers a good
example of the compartmentalizing that allows two contradictory things to
co-exist without the one disturbing the other.
This is, of course, a form of public hypocrisy. To the extent they allow themselves to be
conscious of the plagiarism, those who value the King myth (and they are
overwhelmingly powerful in opinion-making circles in the
The
most extensive example of King's plagiarism is almost certainly his doctoral
dissertation at
Pappas
sets out many passages in Boozer's and King's dissertations, showing they are
identical. We won't repeat that here,
but some illustration will give a feel for it:
From
page 265 of Boozer's 1952 dissertation: "Correlation means correspondence
of data in the sense of a correspondence between religious systems and that
which is symbolized by them. It is upon
the assumption of this correspondence that all utterances about God's nature
are made. This correspondence is actual
in the logos-nature of God and the logos-nature of man." [Italics
in the original.]
From
page 21 of King's 1955 dissertation: "Correlation means correspondence of
data in the sense of a correspondence between religious symbols and that which
is symbolized by them. It is upon the
assumption of this correspondence that all utterances about God's nature are
made. This correspondence is actual in
the logos nature of God and the logos nature of man." [The only difference is in King's dropping of
the hyphen in the reference to "the logos-nature of man."]
The
Chronicles article is preceded in the same issue by a letter from Jon
Westling, at that time president ad interim of
This
was contradicted, of course, by a simple reading of the two dissertations, and
also by the later findings of a panel of scholars appointed by
Not
surprisingly in the climate of the day, the panel did the politically wise
thing, recommending against a revocation of King's doctoral degree. The news report cited their reason as being
that a revocation "wouldn't affect ‘academic or scholarly practice,'"
whatever that means. It is to be noted
that the panel's findings, though meaningful as academic admissions, minimized
the plagiarism by managing to avoid reporting King's copying of long passages,
including even the mistakes.
King
is perhaps best remembered for his peroration concluding his Lincoln Memorial
speech on
King's
oration ends with the following:
"This
will be the day when all of God's children will be able to sing with new
meaning – ‘my country, 'tis of thee; sweet land of liberty; of thee I sing;
land where my fathers died, land of the pilgrims' pride; from every mountain
side, let freedom ring' – and if America is to be a great nation, this must
become true.
"So
let freedom ring from the prodigious hilltops of
"Let
freedom ring from the mighty mountains of
"Let
freedom ring from the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania.
"Let
freedom ring from the snow-capped Rockies of Colorado.
"But
not only that.
"Let
freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia.
"Let
freedom ring from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee.
"Let
freedom ring from every hill and molehill of
"And
when we allow freedom to ring, when we let it ring from every village and
hamlet, from every state and city, we will be able to speed up that day when
all of God's children – black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Catholics
and Protestants – will be able to join hands and to sing in the words of the
old Negro spiritual,
"‘Free
at last, free at last; thank God Almighty, we are free at last.'"
Compare
this with the ending of Carey's 1952 speech:
"We,
Negro-Americans, sing with all other Americans: ‘My country, 'tis of thee,
Sweet land of liberty, Of thee, I sing.
Land where my fathers died, Land of the pilgrims' pride. From every mountain-side Let freedom ring.'
"That
is exactly what we mean, from every mountain side, let freedom ring. Not only from the Green Mountains of Vermont
and the White Mountains of New Hampshire; not only from the Catskills of New
York; but from the Ozarks in Arkansas, from the Stone Mountain in Georgia, from
the Great Smokies of Tennessee, and from the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia –
not only for the minorities of the United States, but for the persecuted of
Europe, for the rejected of Asia, for the disenfranchised of South Africa, and
for the disinherited of all the earth.
May the Republican Party, under God, from every mountain side, Let
Freedom Ring!"[11]
King's
adultery.
Ralph David Abernathy was for many years a close associate of
King's. So we have reason to think him a
credible source when in his 1989 autobiography And the Walls Came Tumbling
Down he revealed, with some evident reluctance, King's voracious
extramarital sexual appetite.[12] It is interesting, in this connection, that
Taylor Branch, in his book America in the King Years, 1954-1963, tells
of both King's and Abernathy's extramarital sexual behavior: "King
confided to a colleague that he not only had known of Abernathy's extramarital
liaisons in Montgomery but had joined in some of them himself."[13]
Columnist
Walter Scott has written that King "was a charismatic personality who
attracted women of all races to his hotel rooms."[14]
In
1995, the Associated Press reported that "the first black to serve in
A
news report one day later said "Former Kentucky state Sen. Georgia Powers
is lying about having an affair with Martin Luther King, Jr., one close
associate of King's said Thursday. ‘I
hope God will forgive her,' said the Rev. Hosea Williams.[16]
There
was a time in the American past when serial adultery would have been thought
extremely serious: as a flagrant breach of sexual morality, as a betrayal of
spouse and family, and as cheating. In
today's moral climate, we will allow those features to pass without comment,
leaving it to each reader to judge according to the reader's own
standards. What is worth adding to the
discussion is a reflection about what King's adultery tells us about his
psychology. One of the salient features
of the elite that has long prevailed in American life is that so many
individuals within it see themselves as separate from, and above, the main body
of the population and its norms, even while they present themselves to the
public as "men (or women) of the people." Such a quality is salient in the lives, say,
of John F. Kennedy and William Clinton.[17] Here, we see it with King, who presented
himself to the world as a pastor and "man of God," and then on
perhaps the same day lived in a way that spurned the values that entailed. This suggests arrogance, elitism, duplicity
and a profound devaluation of the very people who invested their emotions in
him. Is it possible that the
consciousness such leaders have had of their almost instantaneous shift in
roles does not suggest a certain bemused contempt for those who have adored
them?
King's
role as a leader. The image of Martin Luther King, Jr., as a
man of love and peace tells the American people nothing about his deep
alienation against American life, his close ties with the radical Left that was
so active in the United States in the 1960s, and his support for Communist
"wars of national liberation" throughout the world. In a speech a few months before his death,
King declared "these are revolutionary times. All over the globe men are revolting... We in
the West must support these revolutions."
He spoke of Americans' "morbid fear of Communism," and went on
to say that "the fact is that capitalism was built on the exploitation and
suffering of black slaves and continues to thrive on the exploitation of the
poor – both black and white... We must recognize that the problems of neither
racial nor economic injustice can be solved without a radical redistribution of
political and economic power."[18]
After
King received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964, he turned his attention
successively to new areas. He led a
voter registration drive in Alabama and then broadened his efforts beyond the
black civil rights struggle by championing the claims of the poor in Chicago
and, finally, throwing himself into the anti-war movement opposing the American
war effort in Vietnam.
Probably
nothing better illustrates the temper of that time and King's role in it than the
New Politics Convention in 1967. Over
the Labor Day weekend,
Some
commentators have sought to diminish King's role, despite his having been the
keynoter. They say, as James Ridgeway
did in the New Republic, that the speech "was a bore to the
delegates."[19] But the New York Times's story the day
following the speech reported that "Dr. King was warmly applauded by the
3,500 people in the steaming Chicago Coliseum." Gary Allen's first-hand report says "the
audience broke into a hurricane of applause" when King made the statements
quoted above.
It
was an audience unlike any other in American history. Andrew Kopkind in the New Statesman
reported that "the Trotskyists were there, the Maoists, the Independent
Socialists, the New Left, the community organizers, the academics, the
peaceniks, the pacifists, the rich fellow-travellers, the angry liberals."[20] A black caucus, which despite its small
numbers towered over the entire convention, met "continuously in
secrecy," The Nation reported, "with shaven-headed bodyguards
at the doors." The New York
Times spoke of "fiercely mustached students in dungarees,
straight-haired sandaled girls in microskirts and Negroes in African
attire...."[21]
This
was the convention at which Ronald Lockman, a member of the Communist W.E.B.
DuBois Club, made a sensation when he stood in his infantry uniform and
declared his intention to violate his orders to go to
After
days of separate deliberation, the black caucus emerged with its demand that
the convention approve without amendment a 13-point resolution, which the
delegates then did, by a 3-1 margin. The
New York Times reported in its magazine feature on September 24 that the
supporters of these 13 points "took their lead" from a certain
Septima Clark, "an elderly lady associated with (Martin Luther King's)
Southern Christian Leadership Conference."
The points started with the preamble that "We, as black people,
believe that the United States system that is committed to the practice of
genocide, social degradation, the denial of political and cultural
self-determination of Black people, cannot reform itself; there must be
revolutionary change." It went on
to "demand that this conference: ...give total and unquestionable support
to all national people's liberation wars in Africa, Asia and Latin America,
particularly Vietnam, Mozambique, Angola, South Africa, and Venezuela."
[I have added the emphasis.]
It
should be noted that despite Ms. Clark's leading role, the King forces didn't
fully control the convention; there was a move on to create a third-party
presidential ticket with King as the nominee for president and Dr. Spock for
vice-president; but, according to the Times feature, this was abandoned
when black militants who thought King “accommodationist” made it clear they
wouldn't support King. The manifesto ran into some trouble with the
King forces over its condemnation of "the imperialistic Zionist war,"
even though the points were quick to add that the condemnation "does not
imply anti-Semitism." The Nation
reported that "Rev. Martin Luther King himself sent a secret last-minute
appeal through his aide, Jose Williams... to significantly modify the
statement."[22] It is noteworthy that the rest of the points,
including the support for Communist insurgencies around the world quoted in
italics above, did not seem to King to require modification; and the debate for
them, as we have seen, was led by one of his people.
The
convention was significant, too, for welcoming the first public outing of the
Communist Party in several years. After
World War II, a split had occurred in American left-liberalism over whether to
include Communists in their activities.
The Americans for Democratic Action (ADA) was formed explicitly to
repudiate such collaboration. This
involved a principle of great importance, since the post-World War II history
of the
Students
of comparative ideology have often commented on the similarities of the Far
Left and fascism. Parallels in style and
substance were everywhere in evidence during the New Politics Convention. James Forman (referred to about equally in
the literature as "Foreman") of SNCC, flanked by bodyguards, included
in his speech a cry of "One Africa, One People!" This is eerily reminiscent of Hitler's
"Ein Volk, Ein Reich, Ein Fuhrer!"
When a delegate cried out "That's dictatorship" after Forman
instructed the delegates to stand up if they favored his call for a boycott of
General Motors and then immediately announced it had carried, Forman yelled
back "Yes, and I'm the dictator."
(After some delegates walked out, he said he had just been joking.)
Richard
Blumenthal in The Nation reported that Carlos Russell was chosen as
leader by the black caucus without a vote, through what Blumenthal referred to
as "African consensus." This
is not unlike the fuhrerprinzip that was a common feature of the German
Youth Movement before and after World War I and that was incorporated into Nazi
ideology. The theory was that powerful
personalities would naturally rise to the top and would embody within
themselves the sense of the group. This
was the basis for the Nazis' claim to have been more truly democratic than the
parliamentary systems.
When
Floyd McKissick of
But
these things had to do with the style of fascism. Its substance appeared in the intimidation
imposed by the Black Caucus and the conformity of virtually all others. The votes in the convention had originally
been allocated according to the number of activists back home a delegate
represented. This had led to 28,498
votes going to white radicals, some 5,000 to blacks. But the Black Caucus demanded that it be
given 28,498 votes, too, to make it equal to all the rest of the convention,
and an equal number of seats on all committees.
The convention, eager to show its "solidarity," agreed to this
by a 2-1 margin. The members of the
Black Caucus segregated themselves, sitting in a special section marked off
with a red sash. As each resolution came
up for a vote, "a lad in the front row of the black Caucus," the New
York Times reported, "raised the large pink card that represented
28,498 votes."
This
continued even though some blacks who favored explicitly violent action left
the convention eventually to hold their own conference (from which whites were
excluded) at a South Side church. The New
York Times tells us that when this happened "representatives of
[Martin Luther King's] Southern Christian Leadership Conference took over"
the original convention. The ensuing
direction by SCLC caused no repudiation of the overall scene, nor any
renunciation of the bitterly anti-American and pro-revolutionary resolutions
enacted earlier.
King's
"nonviolent direct action." Martin Luther King, Jr., was in principle
committed to the philosophy of Mohandas Gandhi, famous for his use of
"nonviolent civil disobedience" to hasten the British departure from
There
is much in King's utterances that gives articulate support to nonviolent
protest, both on philosophical grounds and for pragmatic reasons. In an article written by King that was
published after his death, he said "We are not going to tolerate
violence. And we are making it very
clear that the demonstrators who are not prepared to be nonviolent should not
participate in this." His
organization held workshops on nonviolence, and used those who attended as
marshals to oversee the demonstrations.[24] In his final presidential address to SCLC,
King said "I'm concerned about justice.
I'm concerned about brotherhood.
I'm concerned about truth. And
when one is concerned about these, he can never advocate violence."[25]
Nevertheless,
King's words and actions offer reason to question the nature of his
nonviolence. It is worth remembering
that his keynote address to the New Politics Convention called for support for
the "wars of national liberation," most of them under Communist
leadership and sponsored by either the Soviet Union or Communist China or both,
around the world. This was far removed
from a rhetoric of nonviolence, unless we are to suppose that he was unaware
that people were being killed in such wars or that Communist powers had already
butchered many millions of people. Thus,
his rhetoric (and his moral concern) was by no means consistent.
Even
if King's utterances had been consistent, there is reason to question how much
an activist is to be credited for "nonviolence" when he conducts mass
marches and boycotts, as well as speaks a language of bitter recrimination, in
the midst of burning cities and militants who are calling for
violence. Lionel Lokos speaks to this in
his book House Divided: The Life and Legacy of Martin Luther King when
he says, "King never hurled a Molotov cocktail, but he never stopped
faulting society for those who did. King
never looted a store, but he never stopped defending those who felt that
poverty gave them a license to steal.
King never hid on a roof with a rifle and sniped at the police, but he
never stopped picturing the police department as a sort of home-grown
Gestapo."[26] "We must ask ourselves," Lokos
said, "if the doctrine and dogma of Martin Luther King's campaigns
unwittingly created a fertile breeding ground in which the urban riots could
flourish."[27] When he uses the word
"unwittingly," Lokos is being charitable; the incendiary context was
so clear that the causal nexus between "nonviolent massive
disobedience" and the burning of cities was inescapable. That King understood the context is clear
from his statement in April 1968 that "we also know, as official
Nor
is that all. It isn't simply that King
knew the incendiary context. Lokos cites
the comments by Dr. Jerome D. Frank, professor of psychiatry at
Frank's
point is sensible. It is illustrated in
a totally different context by an incident in the Arab-Israeli conflict. The Israelis objected to a letter by King
Hussein of
In
early 1968, Dr. King told an audience that "we seek to say to the nation
in our campaign that if you don't straighten up, then you're writing your
obituary."[31] When King turned to economic issues, he made
a demand for virtually total economic and social reconstruction, which he is
certain to have known would involve, at the very least, a long political
process: universally guaranteed jobs or a guaranteed annual wage. After making this improbable demand, he wrote
that "if it fails, nonviolence will be discredited, and the country may be
plunged into holocaust...." He
added: "If nonviolent protest fails this summer [of 1968], I will continue
to preach it [nonviolence] and teach it... But I'm frank enough to admit that
if our nonviolent campaign doesn't generate some progress, people are just
going to engage in more violent activity, and the discussion of guerrilla
warfare will be more extensive."[32]
From
this, we see that the idealized image of King as an apostle of "love"
and "nonviolence" is a sanitized version of King's actual
position. This makes the myth
comfortable for the public's consumption, but hides the reality, which is very
different.
Thought
must also be given to the very concept of "civil disobedience." Civil disobedience as a doctrine validates
lawlessness, and thus runs contrary to a free society's adherence to the Rule
of Law. Lokos comments that "his
concept of civil disobedience was exquisitely embroidered with ‘love" and
‘good will," but stripped to its essentials it was the concept that every
man could be his own judge and jury and legislator... It was the concept that a
minority had the right to flout the law... to force its will upon the
majority."[33] Vital Speeches carried an address in
1967 by retired Supreme Court Justice Charles E. Whittaker that argued
persuasively that the Rule of Law constitutes, in fact, an essential bulwark in
the defense of minorities themselves.
Whittaker said:
Minority
groups, in preaching and practicing defiance of the law, are in fact,
advocating erosion and destruction of the only structure that can assure to
them, or permanently maintain for them, due process of law, and the equal
protection of the laws, and that can thus protect them from discriminations and
abuses by minorities.[34]
It seems hard to imagine that black
leaders could forget that lynching, which they abhorred, had itself been a
departure from organized legal institutions by frontier-like communities that
thought it justifiable to take the law into their own hands. Once there is a departure from law, even for
reasons those doing it consider valid, the direction that extralegal action
takes can vary greatly from one circumstance to the next.
Underlying Issues
Suggested by the King Myth
It
remains for us to discuss certain underlying issues that don't pertain directly
to King or his actions, but that anyone who is reflecting on the myth will want
to consider.