King was an excellent book and I'm so glad I picked it up. Martin Luther King is obviously a very well-known figure, but sometimes his fame gets in the way of actually knowing who he was as a person. Eig starts and finishes the book by arguing for a fuller understanding of King not as some super hero of civil rights, but as a good but flawed man who made a massively positive impact on the country over a thirteen year career from age 26 to 39. Eig notes that King himself has been lost in the modern view of him--at the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial in Washington, D.C., Eig didn't find a single one of King's books in the gift shop. His age was a huge takeaway- King was so young, but his shar shone very bright during his short time of influence. I also picked up a Malcolm X biography while reading this, since I wanted to compare the two, so some comparisons will follow below, and I'll do a separate reflection on the Malcolm X book when I finish it.
This biography makes it clear that King's childhood primed him for church leadership and activism. Born an intelligent and thoughtful child, King's parents cultivated his intellect. But his father was also strict. This provided some discipline, but also fear. Bayard Rustin speculated that MLK's beatings from his father made him more fearful, and that even though King had no problems confronting white racists, he "could not bear conflict with older civil rights leaders." His father beat him severely as a child. King went on a trip north to Connecticut before college that really changed him and gave him perspective on the world outside of the South and segregation. King went to the northeast again after his time at Morehouse to attend Crozer, a theological seminary. During his time there, a white student pulled a gun on him, accusing him of pranking him by messing up his room. King refused to file a complaint, earning respect on campus. King also filed a suit against a tavern that refused to serve him in New Jersey while he was there.
King had two major faults in his life. The lesser fault was plagiarism. I feel like there are at least a half a dozen instances in this book where he plagiarizes something. Part of this is explained by the culture of preachers at the time, who freely borrowed phrases from one another. Scholar Keith D. Miller wrote, "words are shared assets, not personal belongings." The greater one was adultery. I had no idea about this side of him, but it seems like everywhere he went, he was dating women and constantly pursued by them. At Crozer, he even dated a white woman that he seriously considered marrying. Harry Belafonte called her his true love. This was all fine and good as a young man, but even after he was married to Coretta, he would travel a lot and see women wherever he was. He had a kind of magnetic personality and a lot of power, which drew women. On one trip he might call as many as five women and meet up with them. We known about this now thanks to the recollections of others and also because of the massive FBI wiretapping of King everywhere he went. But the press refused to report it, because at that time the thinking was, "If you print it about him, you can print it about any man," according to the editor of the Augusta Chronical. This rule wouldn't be broken until the Gary Hart saga in 1988.
MLK became the preacher at Dexter Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama, at the young age of 26. Later that year, he was already leading the bus boycott efforts. I was struck by how small the demands of Black people in Montgomery were. They only wanted riders to remain segregated without black riders forced to get up from their seats when white people arrived, for the city to hire black drivers, and no more name-calling or insulting black riders. They didn't even ask to sit in the front of the bus. But even so, that was unacceptable to whites. The mayor responded to the bus boycott by leading a campaign of harassment against black drivers, having police issue tons of citations and tickets to them for all sorts of trumped-up violations. There was also a grassroots opposition: King's home was bombed by unknown attackers, but noone was hurt. The Ku Klux Klan rode through Black neighborhoods trying to intimidate people. But after 381 days, the Supreme Court refused to reconsider its decision ordering desegregation, and the boycott ended. But instead of desegregating, the city discontinued bus service, a strategy that would be repeated over and over with public goods.
The Birmingham protests of 1963 were extremely significant for the movement. The response of “Bull” Connor to release dogs and use firehoses to attack protesters in full view of the press created horrific images that woke up the whole nation to who the savages were in the civil rights fight. It also lead to King’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” which became famous across the country. That year, the Kennedy Administration began drafting major civil rights legislation that would eventually become the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
The movement really peaked in August 1963 with the March on Washington. It was extremely disciplined and choreographed. Marchers could only bring pre-approved signed, and black police officers were hired to provide an extra buffer between marchers and park rangers and D.C. cops. The march was primarily black--about three-quarters--but TV broadcasts made it look closer to 50-50 by focusing on white marchers. It was the biggest gathering of black people in America's entire history. It should be noted, however, that is was still symptomatic of the sexism that ran rampant through the civil rights movement. No women were offered speaking slots, although six women were asked to stand and be recognized. Rosa Parks managed to merely say, "Hello, friends of freedom, it's a wonderful day." King's "I Have a Dream" speech was written at late the night before, King having only arrived to his hotel at 10pm. He outlined it for two hours and then took another hour and a half to make a finished project, finishing at 3:30am. And at the end of his speech, he improvised. The entire final portion was off-script, including the lines about the "red hills of Georgia" and children hand-in-hand. By the end of the year, King was named Time Person of the Year. This would be the peak of King's popularity, although he still received criticism from more radical ends of the spectrum, both white and black.
King also evolved in his ideology over time. In Why We Can't Wait, his 1964 book, King initially included sections about a program for reparations for slavery and segregation. But after meeting with President Johnson, he decided to focus on poverty instead of race. The "Negro Bill of Rights" became the "Bill of Rights for the Disadvantaged," and called for the eradication of poverty, guaranteed full employment, and an unconditional income paid to everyone as a right of citizenship. He didn't forget about race, but in 1964, King was focusing on race-neutral solutions. As his career went on, King would add to his ideology a strong opposition to the Vietnam War, and greater emphasis on social democratic policies. He also started to feel that reforming existing institutions was not the answer. By 1967, King felt that there needed to be a "reconstruction of the entire society." King also felt after the Chicago campaign that "Most Americans are unconscious racists."
The Civil Rights Movement hit its peak in 1963 and crested until it fell in 1966. Two major national laws were passed in King's lifetime: the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. The Civil Rights Act of 1968, which contained the Fair Housing Act, was passed by both House and Senate while King was alive, and signed into law by President Johnson a week after King's assassination.
King was the target of frequent assassination attempts. There were bombings, stabbings, and beatings long before his actual assassination. That was just the last in a series. From 1957, King's house was bombed with his children inside, and there were countless more attempts on King's life. He became depressed and very frequently said that he expected he would be killed too. MLK's first words to Coretta after the JFK assassination were, "This is what is going to happen to me also." And Coretta couldn't find words to respond, saying later that, "I could not say, 'It won't happen to you. I felt he was right." At a time when he was asked about how a movie about his life would end, King replied, "It ends with me getting killed." King would talk about retiring sometimes, and often went to the hospital during bouts of depression. I think that more analysis of King's and other historical figures' mental health would be a really interesting field of future study.
Part of the problem with the Civil Rights movement after 1965 was that they had achieved their major goals. The Civil Rights Movement, as led by King, was a southern, Christian movement attempting to end segregation. When de jure segregation ended in the South, King and others turned north, but struggled. In these cities, the major issue to fight was housing discrimination, but there was less patience for non-violent techniques. Moreover, many blacks did not want to live in integrated communities as much as they just wanted to be treated equally, so support was not as strong for change. Despite this, the Movement found major success in the Civil Rights Act of 1968, which included the Fair Housing Act, ending housing discrimination. This was the final major piece of civil rights legislation of the movement.
Another major moment in ending the Civil Rights Movement was James Meredith's March Against Fear. Three weeks into a march through the South, Meredith was shot by a white man. Afterwards, Meredith swore he would not march unarmed again, and much of the non-violent movement was discredited. Meredith survived, and the picture taken just after he was shot (including his attacker to the left) won the Pulitzer Prize for photography in 1967. See below.
Civil rights organizations rallied to finish the march in Meredith's name, but it became incredibly divisive. The movement essentially disintegrated as Stokely Carmichael, the new SNCC chairman, introduced the phrase "Black Power," and disagreement ensued about the pace of change. It would be the last great march of the Civil Rights Movement. King's popularity was also declining. In 1964, King was the fourth most admired man in the world, but he slipped to sixth of ten in 1965 and by 1966, he was off the list entirely. In 1966, 63% of those polled viewed King negatively.
Miscellaneous Facts:
- King was also targeted for income-tax fraud in 1957, which he was acquitted of by an all-white jury.
- At an SCLC convention in Birmingham, a large white man rose from his seat and punched King twice in the face. Witnesses said King dropped his hands and let himself be punched and commanded, “Don’t touch him, don’t touch him,” as others brought the assailant to the ground. The man was a member of the American Nazi Party, and King said that they should pray for him instead. He declined to press charges and invited the man to listen to the rest of the program.
- When LBJ's family dog died, J. Edgar Hoover gave them another, which Johnson named J. Edgar.
- King and Malcolm X only met once, briefly in Washington, D.C. Malcolm X went to Selma and wanted to meet King in January 1965, but King was in jail, and Malcolm asked Coretta to "tell Dr. King that I'm sorry I won't get to see him? I want him to know that I didn't come to make his job more difficult. I thought that if the white people understood what the alternative was they would be willing to listen to Dr. King." Malcolm X was assassinated a month later.
No comments:
Post a Comment