For a man who never reached the age of 40, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., left a powerful and important body of thought. He was a preacher and orator, so rather than writing in the form of books or treatises, Dr. King spoke to the world in sermons and speeches and a few articles.
His impact and image as a social activist are so prominent that I think his contributions as a philosopher are underestimated. Here is a very brief tour of a few things he said worth noting.
In one of his earliest writings in 1958, he said, “Government action is not the whole answer to the present crisis, but it is an important partial answer. Morals cannot be legislated but behavior can be regulated. The law cannot make an employer love me, but it can keep him from refusing to hire me because of the color of my skin.”
Four years later he added, “It may be true that the law cannot make a man love me, but it can keep him from lynching me, and I think that’s pretty important.”
Among Dr. King’s historically significant contributions was his advocacy of and adherence to nonviolence, while at the same time engaging in the confrontation of and resistance to injustice. He often combined the powerful reasoning of a philosopher with the charismatic leadership and the stirring oratorical skills of a preacher to educate the nation about the nature of moral civil disobedience and the fallacy of “the end justifies the means” arguments.
“We will never have peace in the world,” he said in The Trumpet of Conscience (1967), “until men everywhere recognize that ends are not cut off from the means, because the means represent the idea in the making, and the end in process, and ultimately you cannot reach good ends through evil means, because the means represent the seed and the end represents the tree.”
His 1963 Letter from the Birmingham Jail lays out the case for civil disobedience: “I submit that an individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and willingly accepts the penalty by staying in jail to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the very highest respect for law.” What’s so important here is his recognition that morally justified civil disobedience requires the acceptance of consequences. He believed that if he was to make the point he wanted to make, he had to go to jail and he was willing to do so.
In Stride Toward Freedom (1958) he said: “Human progress is neither automatic or inevitable. Even a superficial look at history reveals that no social advance rolls in on the wheels of inevitability. Every step toward the goal of justice requires sacrifice, suffering and struggle, the tireless exertions and passionate concern of dedicated individuals.”
“And when we allow freedom to ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all God’s children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of that old negro spiritual, “Free at last! Free at last! Thank God almighty, we are free at last!”
“I have a dream,” he added, “That one day, on the red hills of Georgia, sons of former slaves and sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood. 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.”
Editor's note: This article first appeared in the Capital City Free Press on January 18, 2016.
About the author: Michael Josephson is one of the nation’s most sought-after and quoted ethicists. Founder and president of Josephson Institute and its CHARACTER COUNTS! project, he has conducted programs for more than 100,000 leaders in government, business, education, sports, law enforcement, journalism, law, and the military. Mr. Josephson is also an award-winning radio commentator.
This article was published by the Josephson Institute.
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