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by King Jr, Dr. Martin Luther :: Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community? (King Legacy)-Paperback
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About the author
Martin Luther King Jr.
436 books3,466 followersMartin Luther King, Jr. was one of the pivotal leaders of the American civil rights movement. King was a Baptist minister, one of the few leadership roles available to black men at the time. He became a civil rights activist early in his career. He led the Montgomery Bus Boycott (1955–1956) and helped found the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (1957), serving as its first president. His efforts led to the 1963 March on Washington, where King delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech. Here he raised public consciousness of the civil rights movement and established himself as one of the greatest orators in U.S. history. In 1964, King became the youngest person to receive the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts to end segregation and racial discrimination through civil disobedience and other non-violent means.
King was assassinated on April 4, 1968, in Memphis, Tennessee. He was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Jimmy Carter in 1977. Martin Luther King, Jr. Day was established as a national holiday in the United States in 1986. In 2004, King was posthumously awarded a Congressional Gold Medal.
King was assassinated on April 4, 1968, in Memphis, Tennessee. He was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Jimmy Carter in 1977. Martin Luther King, Jr. Day was established as a national holiday in the United States in 1986. In 2004, King was posthumously awarded a Congressional Gold Medal.
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June 15, 2024
KING’S FINAL BOOK, ADDRESSING TOPICS SUCH AS BLACK POWER, AND RIOTS
In the Introduction by Coretta Scott King to this 1967 book, she explains, “It was characteristic of my husband that in 1967 when confusion in the civil rights struggle abounded he would undertake [this] book… He not only took the responsibility for leadership, he toiled vigorously to offer discerning leadership. In this book he piercingly revealed the cause of our national discord, placing it squarely on the ingrained white racism of American society. He made discrimination and poverty the central focus of his attacks… In this work [he] stresses the common cause of all the disinherited, white and black, laying the basis for the struggles now unfolding around economic issues…
“The book is remarkably contemporary also in its treatment of international relations. The author here discusses poverty as a source of world instability and the arrogance of the wealthy nations toward the deprived world. It is our common tragedy that we have lost his prophetic voice but it would compound the tragedy if the lessons he did articulate are now ignored… The solutions he offered can still save our society from self-destruction. I hope that it will be seen as a testament, and … a universal determination to realize the economic and social justice for which he so willingly gave his life.” [NOTE: page numbers below refer to a 242-page paperback edition.]
King recalls, “After the march to Montgomery, there was a delay at the airport and several thousand demonstrators waited more than five hours… As I stood with them and saw white and Negro, nuns and priests, ministers and rabbis, labor organizers, lawyers, doctors, housemaids and shop-workers brimming with vitality and enjoying a rare comradeship, I knew I was seeing a microcosm of the mankind of the future in this moment of luminous and genuine brotherhood. But these were the best of America, not all of America.” (Pg. 10)
He suggests, “In the past year nonviolent direct action has been pronounced for the tenth time dead. New tactics have been proposed to replace it. The Black Power slogan was described as a doctrine that reached Negro hearts with so deep an appeal that no alternative method could withstand its magnetic force. Rioting was described as a new Negro form of action that evoked results when disciplined demonstration sputtered out against implacable opposition. Yet Black Power has proved to be a slogan without a program, and with an uncertain following… it is also true that no new alternatives to nonviolence within the movement have found viable expression.” (Pg. 20-21) He adds, “It is understandable that the white community should fear the outbreak of riots. They are indefensible as weapons of struggle, and Negroes must sympathize with whites who feel menaced by them. Indeed, Negroes are themselves no less menaced, and those living in the ghetto always suffer most directly from the destructive turbulence of a riot.” (Pg. 24)
He explains, “The Black Power advocates are disenchanted with the inconsistencies in the militaristic posture of our government… All of this represents disappointment lifted to astronomical proportions. It is disappointment with white moderates who feel that they can set the timetable for the Negro’s freedom… It is disappointment with the Christian church that appears to be more white than Christian, and with many white clergymen who prefer to remain silent behind the security of stained-glass windows. It is disappointment with some negro clergymen who are more concerned about the size of the wheel base on their automobiles than about the quality of their service to the Negro community. It is disappointment with the Negro middle class that has sailed… [into] the mainstream, and in the process has forgotten the stench of the backwaters where their brothers are still drowning.” (Pg. 41-42)
He continues, “Black Power is a nihilistic philosophy born out of the conviction that the Negro can’t win. It is, at bottom the view that American society is so hopelessly corrupt and enmeshed in evil that there is no possibility of salvation from within… it nonetheless carries the seeds of its own doom.” (Pg. 51) He adds, “In all the speaking that I have done in the United States before varied audiences, including some hostile whites, the only time that I have been booed was one night in a Chicago mass meeting by some young members of the Black Power movement.” (Pg. 52) He concludes, “The Black Power movement of today, like the Garvey ‘Back to Africa’ movement of the 1920s, represents a dashing of hope, a conviction of the inability of the Negro to win and a belief in the infinitude of the ghetto…. Today’s despair is a poor chisel to carve out tomorrow’s justice.” (Pg. 55)
He points out, “In a multiracial society no group can make it alone. It is a myth to believe that the Irish, the Italians and the Jews… rose to power through separatism. It is true that they stuck together. But their group unity was always enlarged by joining in alliances with other groups such as political machines and trade unions. To succeed in a pluralistic society, and an often hostile one at that, the Negro obviously needs organized strength, but that strength will only be effective when it is consolidated through constructive alliances with the majority group.” (Pg. 58)
He argues, “Arguments that the American Negro is a part of a world which is two-thirds colored and that there will come a day when the oppressed people of color will violently rise together to throw of the yoke of white oppression are beyond the realm of serious discussion. There is no colored nation, including China, that now shows even the potential of leaving a violent revolution of color in any international proportions. Ghana, Zambia, Tanganyika and Nigeria are so busy fighting their own battle against poverty, illiteracy and the subversive influence of neo-colonialism that they offer little hope to Angola, Southern Rhodesia and South Africa, much less to the American Negro.” (Pg. 66)
He observes, “Probably the most destructive feature of Black Power is its unconscious and often conscious call for retaliatory violence… The 1965 Selma movement brought enactment of the Voting Rights Law. Our nonviolent marches in Chicago last summer brought about a housing agreement… Most significant is the fact that this progress occurred with minimum human sacrifice and loss of life. Fewer people have been killed in ten years of nonviolent demonstrations across the South then were killed in one night of rioting in Watts.” (Pg. 63, 67)
He notes, “because among Negroes anti-Semitism is a particularly freakish phenomenon, it warrants examination… the amount of anti-Semitism found among Negroes is not greater than is found among white groups of the same economic strata… Negro anti-Semitism is substantially a Northern ghetto phenomenon; it virtually does not exist in the South. The urban Negro has a special and unique relationship to Jews. He meets them in two dissimilar roles. ON the one hand, he is associated with Jews as some of his most committed and generous partners in the civil rights struggle. On the other hand, he meets them daily as some of his most direct exploiters in the ghetto as slum landlords and gouging shopkeepers… They operate with the ethics of marginal business entrepreneurs, not Jewish ethics, but the distinction is lost on some Negroes who are maltreated by them.” (Pg. 108-109)
He states, “Negroes were brought here in chains long before the Irish decided VOLUNTARILY do leave Ireland or the Italians thought of leaving Italy. Some Jews may have left their homes in Europe involuntarily, but they were not in chains when they arrived on these shores. Other immigrant groups came to America with language and economic handicaps, but not with the stigma of color. Above all, no other ethnic has been a slave on American soil, and no other group has had its family structure deliberately torn apart. This is the rub.” (Pg. 123) He laments, “The shattering blows on the Negro family have made it fragile, deprived and often psychopathic. This is doubly tragic because nothing is so much needed as a secure family life for a people seeking to rise out of poverty and backwardness.” (Pg. 127)
He acknowledges, “While I strongly disagree with [Black Muslims’] separatist black supremacist philosophy, I have nothing but admiration for what our Muslim brothers have done to rehabilitate ex-convicts, dope addicts and men and women who, through despair and self-hatred, have sunk to moral degeneracy. This must be attempted on a much larger scale, and without the negative overtones that accompany Black Muslimism.” (Pg. 148)
This book should be “must reading” for nearly everyone---but particularly for those wanting to study the intellectual and theological development of King’s thought and tactics.
In the Introduction by Coretta Scott King to this 1967 book, she explains, “It was characteristic of my husband that in 1967 when confusion in the civil rights struggle abounded he would undertake [this] book… He not only took the responsibility for leadership, he toiled vigorously to offer discerning leadership. In this book he piercingly revealed the cause of our national discord, placing it squarely on the ingrained white racism of American society. He made discrimination and poverty the central focus of his attacks… In this work [he] stresses the common cause of all the disinherited, white and black, laying the basis for the struggles now unfolding around economic issues…
“The book is remarkably contemporary also in its treatment of international relations. The author here discusses poverty as a source of world instability and the arrogance of the wealthy nations toward the deprived world. It is our common tragedy that we have lost his prophetic voice but it would compound the tragedy if the lessons he did articulate are now ignored… The solutions he offered can still save our society from self-destruction. I hope that it will be seen as a testament, and … a universal determination to realize the economic and social justice for which he so willingly gave his life.” [NOTE: page numbers below refer to a 242-page paperback edition.]
King recalls, “After the march to Montgomery, there was a delay at the airport and several thousand demonstrators waited more than five hours… As I stood with them and saw white and Negro, nuns and priests, ministers and rabbis, labor organizers, lawyers, doctors, housemaids and shop-workers brimming with vitality and enjoying a rare comradeship, I knew I was seeing a microcosm of the mankind of the future in this moment of luminous and genuine brotherhood. But these were the best of America, not all of America.” (Pg. 10)
He suggests, “In the past year nonviolent direct action has been pronounced for the tenth time dead. New tactics have been proposed to replace it. The Black Power slogan was described as a doctrine that reached Negro hearts with so deep an appeal that no alternative method could withstand its magnetic force. Rioting was described as a new Negro form of action that evoked results when disciplined demonstration sputtered out against implacable opposition. Yet Black Power has proved to be a slogan without a program, and with an uncertain following… it is also true that no new alternatives to nonviolence within the movement have found viable expression.” (Pg. 20-21) He adds, “It is understandable that the white community should fear the outbreak of riots. They are indefensible as weapons of struggle, and Negroes must sympathize with whites who feel menaced by them. Indeed, Negroes are themselves no less menaced, and those living in the ghetto always suffer most directly from the destructive turbulence of a riot.” (Pg. 24)
He explains, “The Black Power advocates are disenchanted with the inconsistencies in the militaristic posture of our government… All of this represents disappointment lifted to astronomical proportions. It is disappointment with white moderates who feel that they can set the timetable for the Negro’s freedom… It is disappointment with the Christian church that appears to be more white than Christian, and with many white clergymen who prefer to remain silent behind the security of stained-glass windows. It is disappointment with some negro clergymen who are more concerned about the size of the wheel base on their automobiles than about the quality of their service to the Negro community. It is disappointment with the Negro middle class that has sailed… [into] the mainstream, and in the process has forgotten the stench of the backwaters where their brothers are still drowning.” (Pg. 41-42)
He continues, “Black Power is a nihilistic philosophy born out of the conviction that the Negro can’t win. It is, at bottom the view that American society is so hopelessly corrupt and enmeshed in evil that there is no possibility of salvation from within… it nonetheless carries the seeds of its own doom.” (Pg. 51) He adds, “In all the speaking that I have done in the United States before varied audiences, including some hostile whites, the only time that I have been booed was one night in a Chicago mass meeting by some young members of the Black Power movement.” (Pg. 52) He concludes, “The Black Power movement of today, like the Garvey ‘Back to Africa’ movement of the 1920s, represents a dashing of hope, a conviction of the inability of the Negro to win and a belief in the infinitude of the ghetto…. Today’s despair is a poor chisel to carve out tomorrow’s justice.” (Pg. 55)
He points out, “In a multiracial society no group can make it alone. It is a myth to believe that the Irish, the Italians and the Jews… rose to power through separatism. It is true that they stuck together. But their group unity was always enlarged by joining in alliances with other groups such as political machines and trade unions. To succeed in a pluralistic society, and an often hostile one at that, the Negro obviously needs organized strength, but that strength will only be effective when it is consolidated through constructive alliances with the majority group.” (Pg. 58)
He argues, “Arguments that the American Negro is a part of a world which is two-thirds colored and that there will come a day when the oppressed people of color will violently rise together to throw of the yoke of white oppression are beyond the realm of serious discussion. There is no colored nation, including China, that now shows even the potential of leaving a violent revolution of color in any international proportions. Ghana, Zambia, Tanganyika and Nigeria are so busy fighting their own battle against poverty, illiteracy and the subversive influence of neo-colonialism that they offer little hope to Angola, Southern Rhodesia and South Africa, much less to the American Negro.” (Pg. 66)
He observes, “Probably the most destructive feature of Black Power is its unconscious and often conscious call for retaliatory violence… The 1965 Selma movement brought enactment of the Voting Rights Law. Our nonviolent marches in Chicago last summer brought about a housing agreement… Most significant is the fact that this progress occurred with minimum human sacrifice and loss of life. Fewer people have been killed in ten years of nonviolent demonstrations across the South then were killed in one night of rioting in Watts.” (Pg. 63, 67)
He notes, “because among Negroes anti-Semitism is a particularly freakish phenomenon, it warrants examination… the amount of anti-Semitism found among Negroes is not greater than is found among white groups of the same economic strata… Negro anti-Semitism is substantially a Northern ghetto phenomenon; it virtually does not exist in the South. The urban Negro has a special and unique relationship to Jews. He meets them in two dissimilar roles. ON the one hand, he is associated with Jews as some of his most committed and generous partners in the civil rights struggle. On the other hand, he meets them daily as some of his most direct exploiters in the ghetto as slum landlords and gouging shopkeepers… They operate with the ethics of marginal business entrepreneurs, not Jewish ethics, but the distinction is lost on some Negroes who are maltreated by them.” (Pg. 108-109)
He states, “Negroes were brought here in chains long before the Irish decided VOLUNTARILY do leave Ireland or the Italians thought of leaving Italy. Some Jews may have left their homes in Europe involuntarily, but they were not in chains when they arrived on these shores. Other immigrant groups came to America with language and economic handicaps, but not with the stigma of color. Above all, no other ethnic has been a slave on American soil, and no other group has had its family structure deliberately torn apart. This is the rub.” (Pg. 123) He laments, “The shattering blows on the Negro family have made it fragile, deprived and often psychopathic. This is doubly tragic because nothing is so much needed as a secure family life for a people seeking to rise out of poverty and backwardness.” (Pg. 127)
He acknowledges, “While I strongly disagree with [Black Muslims’] separatist black supremacist philosophy, I have nothing but admiration for what our Muslim brothers have done to rehabilitate ex-convicts, dope addicts and men and women who, through despair and self-hatred, have sunk to moral degeneracy. This must be attempted on a much larger scale, and without the negative overtones that accompany Black Muslimism.” (Pg. 148)
This book should be “must reading” for nearly everyone---but particularly for those wanting to study the intellectual and theological development of King’s thought and tactics.
February 15, 2025
It was difficult to read a book written in the late 60’s that speaks on racism, marginalization, discrimination, and poverty only to realize most things he spoke on are still issues in our country and the world today. He does speak on solutions and I learned several things about history that I hadn’t already known. I did finish the book feeling a touch of hope in the world because of his pointer. Nevertheless, a completely worthwhile read. I’m moved by this man in all the ways that I anticipated.
February 21, 2025
Required reading.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews