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Martin Luther
King Jr.’s Radical Legacy
Martin Luther King
Jr. would have been 73 on January 15; this April, he will have been dead
for 34 years.
Yet in this dark
moment, with our country at war again as it was for so much of his career,
his words and his thoughts ring out: radical, nonviolent, antiwar and
as vital today as when he uttered them decades ago.
As the nation celebrates
his birthday, antiwar activists across the nation will be bringing his
words to audiences old and new in the hope that once again his spirit
will fortify a movement against a cruel war. (See www.warresisters.org/wrl_actions.htm
for listings.)
Here is a sampling
of them, from forums as diverse as a jail in Alabama, a radical pacifist
magazine, and the Nobel Prize rostrum in Sweden.
Violence
and Nonviolence 
There is more power in socially organized masses on the march than there
is in guns in the hands of a few desperate men. Our enemies would prefer
to deal with a small armed group than with a huge, unarmed but resolute
mass of people. However, it is necessary that the mass-action method be
persistent and unyielding. Gandhi said the Indian people must “never let
them rest,” referring to the British. —From “The Social
Organization of Nonviolence” Liberation
Magazine, October, 1959
War
Somehow this madness must cease. We must stop now. I speak … for those
whose land is being laid waste, whose homes are being destroyed, whose
culture is being subverted. I speak for the poor in America who are paying
the double price of smashed hopes at home and death and corruption in
Vietnam. I speak as a citizen of the world, for the world as it stands
aghast at the path we have taken. I speak as an American to the leaders
of my own nation. The great initiative in this war is ours. The initiative
to stop it must be ours. —The Trumpet of Conscience,
1967
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| Women
use a church vehicle as alternative transport in Montgomery, AL, in
1956. Martin Luther King Jr. rose to prominence as chief spokesperson
of the bus boycott that began when Rosa Parks refused to move to the
back of the bus. WRL files. |
Love Your
Enemies
Upheaval after upheaval has reminded us that modern man is traveling along
a road called hate, in a journey that will bring us to destruction and
damnation. Far from being the pious injunction of a Utopian dreamer, the
command to love one’s enemy is an absolute necessity for our survival.
—From “Loving Your Enemies” Christmas, 1957 Dexter Avenue
Baptist Church Montgomery, AL
The Human
Costs of War
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| Martin
Luther King Jr. speaks at WRL’s Annual Dinner, 1959. David
McReynolds . |
[T]he war was doing far more than devastating the hopes of the poor at
home. It was sending their sons and their brothers and their husbands
to fight and die in extraordinarily high proportions relative to the rest
of the population. We were taking the young black men who had been crippled
by our society and sending them 8,000 miles away to guarantee liberties
in Southeast Asia which they had not found in Southwest Georgia and East
Harlem. —From”Declaration of Independence from the War
in Vietnam” Riverside Church, New York City April 4, 1967
The Answer
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| King
receives Nobel Peace Prize. |
Nonviolence is the answer to the crucial political and moral questions
of our time: the need for man to overcome oppression and violence without
resorting to oppression and violence. Man must evolve for all human conflict
a method which rejects revenge, aggression and retaliation. The foundation
of such a method is love. —From King’s Nobel Prize acceptance
speech Stockholm, Sweden December 11, 1964
Creative
Tension
You may well ask, “Why direct action? Why sit-ins, marches,
etc. Isn’t negotiation a better path?” You are exactly right in your call
for negotiation. Indeed, this is the purpose of direct action. Nonviolent
direct action seeks to create such a crisis and establish such creative
tension that a community that has constantly refused to negotiate is forced
to confront the issue. … I am not afraid of the word tension. I have earnestly
worked and preached against violent tension, but there is a type of construction
nonviolent tension that is necessary for growth. —From
“Letter from a Birmingham Jail” April 1963
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| Firefighters
turn their water hoses on demonstrators in Birmingham, AL, as other
protesters sit on nearby sidewalk. WRL files. |
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