Dr. King's Inconvenient Truth

Alan Jenkins

January 17, 2007

Alan Jenkins is executive director of The Opportunity Agenda, a communications, research and advocacy organization with the mission of building the national will to expand opportunity in America.

A powerful part of Martin Luther King’s legacy is the breadth of his vision for humanity. During his time on earth, he preached about human rights and democracy, racial equality and overcoming poverty, freedom and the transformative power of peace and nonviolence. Perhaps most remarkably, he understood the seamless moral connections that link those imperatives across peoples and continents. As he often said, “whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be. This is the interrelated structure of reality.”

That vision of universal interconnection and indivisible justice has extended Dr. King’s legacy around the globe. In my own work, I’ve met Dalit activists in India, peace workers in Israel and Palestine, Roma lawyers in Eastern Europe and black leaders in South and Central America, all of whom take inspiration from Dr. King’s dream. They each see slightly different things in his life and work, reflecting the fullness of his dream for humanity. In our own country, leaders across the political spectrum invoke Dr. King’s legacy in speeches and symbolic events.

Yet while Dr. King’s vision was expansive, it was not vague or ambivalent. His passion for peace, justice and brotherhood led him to take specific, often controversial positions on the issues of the day and on the future of our country and the world.

This year, it is propitious that the anniversary of Dr. King’s birth comes at a rare moment of introspection on our nation’s role in the world and, in particular, the war in Iraq. As on so many topics, Dr. King’s words provide moral clarity and courageous leadership that are much needed in today’s political discourse.

In a magnificent speech at New York’s Riverside Church exactly one year before his death, he voiced his opposition to the Vietnam War and his demand for peace in terms that are eerily relevant today.

Dr. King saw that the tremendous financial cost of the war made investment in ending poverty and expanding opportunity at home impossible. He saw, too, that: 

the 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 to die in extraordinarily high proportions relative to the rest of the population.”

He expressed deep concern about our troops, for it occurred to him:

that what we are submitting them to…is not simply the brutalizing process that goes on in any war where armies face each other and seek to destroy. We are adding cynicism to the process of death, for they must know after a short period there that none of the things we claim to be fighting for are really involved.”

He warned of the terrible toll that the war was taking on America’s reputation for defending freedom and justice in the world, quoting a Vietnamese Buddhist leader:

The Americans are forcing even their friends into becoming their enemies. It is curious that the Americans, who calculate so carefully on the possibilities of military victory, do not realize that in the process they are incurring deep psychological and political defeat. The image of America will never again be the image of revolution, freedom and democracy, but the image of violence and militarism.

And, most poignantly, he spoke of the corruption of our nation’s soul that the war was exacting, calling on everyday Americans, as well as our nation’s leaders, to chart a new path:

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 of 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 of this war is ours. The initiative to stop it must be ours.

Amidst this year’s King Day accolades and festivities, maybe someone in power will remember what it means to prioritize peace, justice and brotherhood on a global scale. Maybe someone will remember that protecting America means protecting our values and moral well-being as well as our people and our borders. Maybe someone will remember that pursuing true peace—not just the absence of violence, but the presence of justice—is rarely the easy thing to do, but always the right thing to do.