I can hardly portray myself as a student of Dr. King’s teachings, although I did grow up with as much knowledge of him as was possible for a news-hungry, liberal White kid in the North who had access to television, newspapers and magazines. I even marched once with Dr. King, although it was not for civil rights but at an anti-Vietnam War demonstration he led in March, 1967, from Central Park to the United Nations (and which was nearly broken up by a pro-war march that was a precursor of today’s MAGA minions).
There seems to me to be a dualistic interpretation of Dr. King’s legacy that has crystallized over the decades. King scholars may differ from my version, but here it is: It traces Dr. King’s philosophical evolution from firm believer in Gandhi’s non-violent methods to a more militant style that may have been influenced by the radical Black power movement that arose in the mid-1960s and was particularly symbolized by Malcolm X and, a little later, the Black Panthers. According to this account, Dr. King was moving towards a more confrontational approach with, say, the police, when he was murdered on April 4, 1968.
In the intervening years the question “What would Dr. King do?” has been answered in various ways, depending on who is answering it and to which school they belong. One question that I frequently ask myself is “What would Dr. King think of the modern ‘progressive’ movement for Black rights, including the defund-the-police demand?” We can’t know for sure, obviously. He might well have moved Left enough on the spectrum to come down on the side of, say, Carroll Fife and Cat Brooks. On the other hand, he might not.
Until nearly his death, Dr. King was not shy about upbraiding Black activists who, in his opinion, were marching in the wrong, i.e. divisive, direction. In a powerful speech he gave in October, 1966—two years after he had won the Nobel Peace Prize and become one of the most famous men on Earth, and the same month and year in which Huey Newton and Bobby Seale founded the Black Panther Party here in Oakland—Dr. King rejected the violence and nihilism he saw in too many Black activists. And yet, reading his words today, one can sense a wobbliness in that rejection, as if Dr. King’s preference for non-violence was being undermined by both events and external influences. It’s as if a newer, more impatient part of him was appreciating the necessity for stronger, physical resistance to the system, while the older part of him, steeped in Gandhian nonviolence, found it virtually impossible to break away from it. In fact, so devasting were Dr. King’s accusations against White America in his speech that one wonders why, in that fecund moment, he didn’t simply admit that he had changed his mind and was now formally endorsing militancy.
But by March 1968, barely a month before his assassination, Dr. King had realized that his old approach of nonviolence was inadequate. That month, he gave an equally famous speech, which history has called “The Other America” speech, in which he uttered one of his most famous and oft-quoted phrases: “A riot is the language of the unheard.” The riots that followed his assassination were just months away, but Dr. King understood the barely-contained urgency seething in many Black communities, and realized that explosions of protest were not only justified, but likely.
So which Dr. King ought we to remember? The younger one, who was a serious student of Gandhi? Or the Black activist who, near the end of his life, was moving closer to the revolutionary ethos of the Black Panthers?
The question is relevant today because it still rings unanswered in the Black community. We have a faction inclined toward greater militancy and confrontational tactics with law enforcement—a faction that in fact perceives all law enforcement as the enemy. This faction is clearly represented by local politicians who tried to defund the Oakland Police Department, including Sheng Thao, Carroll Fife, Rebecca Kaplan and Pamela Price. They have faced opposition from nearly no one, except those of us who realized how suicidal such a radical approach would be. The fact that vast numbers of actual Black citizens of Oakland wish for increased police strength has been conveniently erased. The anti-cop radicals don’t care: they derive their support (and money) from catering to cop-haters, and God forbid this source of funding should be denied them, for then they’d have to get real jobs.
As for Dr. King, I can’t help but feel that he would strongly condemn Black-on-Black violence, which violates everything he stood for. I feel he would condemn people who drop out of society in order to live lives of drug-taking and -dealing, of squalor, and of homelessness. On the other hand, I believe Dr. King would speak out loudly against the wealth gap in America and the increasing (Republican) efforts to lower taxes on the rich, and to pay for these tax cuts by taking money away from Medicare and Social Security.
Steve Heimoff