Reconstructing the King Legacy:
Scholars and National Myths
The modern black freedom struggle transformed, my
life, as it did the lives of many other young people. Because
of it I became aware that young black students such as myself
might transform America and assume new, previously unimaginable
social roles. This awareness inspired my own political activism
and altered my sense of racial identity and destiny. My understanding
of the black struggle changed as I absorbed its emergent values
and became aware of a rich African-American protest tradition
I knew little about.
I am sometimes asked whether my previous participation in
the struggle interferes with my ability to write about it. The
question seems meaningless to me because the struggle revealed
the kind of history I wanted to write. The experiences that brought
me to the Capitol Historical Society's conference on Martin Luther
King, Jr., can be traced back to another day more than two decades
ago when I participated in my initial civil rights demonstration
and saw King for the first time.
In August 1963, after completing my freshman year in college,
I joined the multitudes at the March on Washington. It was a wonderful
introduction to the struggle, culminating in a major historical
event -King's "I Have a Dream" speech -but also punctuated with
those unrecorded occurrences that forever separate history as
lived from history as reconstructed by historians. My initial
encounters, a few days earlier, with the brash young activists
of SNCC heightened the March's impact on my undeveloped political
consciousness. Participating in the March was the most politically
unconventional thing I had ever done, but Stokely Carmichael of
SNCC reshaped the meaning I attached to my involvement when he
gratuitously informed me that the event was only a sanitized,
middle-class version of the real black movement, which was occurring
in places such as Albany, Georgia, Cambridge, Maryland, Danville,
Virginia, and the Mississippi Delta.
Having just emerged from the racial isolation of growing up
in New Mexico, I was not yet ready to venture into the battlefields
of the deep South where Carmichael and other SNCC workers confronted
racist authorities. For me the Washington "picnic" was an epiphany.
During that one day I saw more black people than I had seen in
my life. Exposed to the constantly widening range of views among
activists, I saw black politics differently from before. I will
never forget King's oration, but the militancy of the SNCC workers,
exhibited at the March in John Lewis's caustic warm-up to King's
speech, tempered my enthusiasm. That SNCC existed revealed to
me that King was only one aspect of a multifaceted social movement.
Today, after years of political activism and ivory-tower reflection,
I have now come full circle, returning to the nation's capital
to take part in another occasion dominated by King's ideas. After
spending the first years of my professional life studying SNCC,
I have now--as editor of King's papers--turned my scholarly attention
to the person who was the antithesis of SNCC's notion of leadership
from the bottom up. Having once sympathized with the young SNCC
militants who were my age when they challenged King (who was then
fifteen years my senior), I find my sympathies have shifted somewhat
as I study King, who, when he died, was younger than I am now.
During the last half of the 1960s, my own youthful impatience
and a measure of arrogance led me to agree with some of SNCC's
criticisms of King's moderation and firm commitment to integration
and nonviolence as a way of life. In later years, acknowledgment
that the black power movement failed to achieve the power, or
even the racial unity we anticipated, has fostered a greater degree
of humility in my assessment of King's alternative course. For
me and for many of his youthful critics, King became wiser as
we grew older. My changing views of the modern black struggle
have continued to reflect the enduring tension between the ideas
of King and those of its little-known shock troops.
Martin Luther King's status as the main symbol of the modern African-American
freedom struggle has now been sanctioned by the creation of a federal
holiday honoring his birth. Given this formal recognition of his
historical importance, it becomes more difficult, yet also more
necessary, for those of us who study and carry on his work to counteract
the innocuous, carefully cultivated image that we honor in these
annual observances. The historical King was far too interesting
to be encased in simplistic, didactic legends designed to offend
no one -a black counterpart to the static, heroic myths that have
embalmed George Washington as the Father of His Country and Abraham
Lincoln as the Great Emancipator. King was an exceptionally gifted,
fascinating, and courageous individual who challenged authority
and took such controversial stands as opposing American intervention
in Vietnam and mobilizing the Poor People's Campaign of 1968. He
was also a leader best understood in the context of African-American
history and as the product of the social movements that he has come
to symbolize.
Serious students of Martin Luther King and of the black struggle
have recognized their responsibility to understand, on the one hand,
the nature and sources of his ideas and, on the other, the historical
significance and social impact of his life. Contemporary biographers,
theologians, political scientists, sociologists, philosophers, social
psychologists, and historians, a number of whom participated in
this symposium, are in the process of constructing a more
balanced, comprehensive assessment of King. The recent works of
David J. Garrow and Taylor Branch have illustrated the benefits
of studies that combine thorough biographical investigation with
efforts to understand larger issues of social and historical context.
These and other contemporary writers may benefit from and stimulate
the popular interest in King spurred by the national holiday, but
their probing research and critical analyses serve as a necessary
corrective to the mythmaking. This volume provides a valuable opportunity
to acknowledge and assess this outpouring of reflective and critical
works about King and allows us to place them within the broader
literature of African-American freedom struggles.
The initial King biographies were, for the most part, laudatory
accounts written by his acquaintances. Although they benefited from
their authors' firsthand knowledge of the man, these early accounts
were not based on extensive research in primary documents. More
recent biographies have taken on the task of critically assessing
King's leadership and intellectual qualities. August Meler's 1965
essay on King and David Lewis's King: A Critical Biography, published
in 1970, broke new ground in their acknowledgment of King's limitations
as well as his achievements as a civil rights leader. Both scholars
saw him as part of a broader social movement that included important
factions forcefully challenging his leadership.
Neither Meier nor Lewis placed much emphasis on King's intellectual
orientation-the latter explicitly derided his intellectual credentials
-but their inattention has been more than rectified by numerous
studies focusing on King's religious and political ideas. One line
of research has focused on his contribution to Christian thought.
Although he received his doctorate in systematic theology, he published
no significant writing in this field, and most scholars recognize
that his main intellectual contribution was in the area of Christian
social practice. That King saw himself primarily as a religious
leader is clearly evident in his graduate school and later religious
writings, which have been closely examined in the pioneering work
of Kenneth L. Smith and Ira G. Zepp, published in 1974, and in later
efforts by Harold L. DeWolf (King's advisor at Boston) and John
Ansbro. Recently, even scholars who seek primarily to explicate
King's thought have recognized that it was not shaped simply by
his academic training but derived as well from the emergent ideas
of social movements. In addition, rather than solely emphasizing
King's graduate school experiences and readings, scholars have begun
to acknowledge his indebtedness to African-American sources and,
in particular, to the tradition of black Christian activism. James
P. Hanigan's work, for example, marked an important departure in
this respect.
The essays in this volume by Richard H. King and Cornel West provide
interesting and contrasting approaches to the study of King's thought.
Professor King's explication of the meaning of freedom for Martin
Luther King is, from one point of view, narrowly conceived intellectual
history, locating the sources of King's ideas in his earlier readings.
But while viewing Martin Luther King as an intellectual, Professor
King also shows an awareness that these ideas should be evaluated
in light of other strategies of struggle, such as SNCC's anticharismatic
model. Although Cornel West is similarly concerned with King's intellectual
life, his emphasis on the African-American church as a source for
King's ideas suggests a promising area of research for other scholars
moving beyond the internalist-ideas as sources for other ideas-approach
of traditional intellectual biography and history. The relationship
between King's Christian ministry and black religious traditions
and practices has attracted the attention of other scholars as well,
including Lewis V. Baldwin, James H. Cone, and David J. Garrow.
The danger is that studies linking King to African-American religious
thought may underestimate the extent to which, as a religious liberal,
he departed from the mainstream of that tradition. Although, like
many black clergymen, King used his well-developed oratorical skills
to strengthen his appeal to blacks, he set himself apart from other
black preachers through his use of traditional black Christian homiletics
to advocate unconventional political ideas and to extend the boundaries
of African-American religious thought. King's autobiographical writings
reveal that early in his life he became disillusioned with the unbridled
emotionalism associated with his father's religious fundamentalism.
As a thirteen-year-old, he questioned the bodily resurrection of
Jesus in his Sunday School class and subsequently struggled to free
himself from "the shackles of fundamentalism." King's search
for an intellectually satisfying religious faith stemmed from his
reaction against the emphasis on emotional expressiveness that he
saw in Christian evangelicalism. His preaching manner derived from
the traditions of the black church, while his subject matter, which
often reflected his wide-ranging philosophical interests, distinguished
him from other preachers who relied on rhetorical devices that manipulated
the emotions of their listeners. A religious liberal and pioneering
proponent of what is now called liberation theology, King carried
on a long and determined-though unsuccessful-struggle against the
conservative leadership of the National Baptist Convention. Instead
of viewing himself as the embodiment of widely held African-American
racial values, he willingly risked his popularity among blacks as
well as whites through his steadfast advocacy of Christian social
activism and militant nonviolent strategies to achieve radical social
change.
Recent scholarship of King's leadership has displayed a growing
understanding of the interplay between his exceptional oratorical
abilities and the expectations and understandings of his various
audiences. Aldon D. Morris notes in his essay in this volume that
the type of leadership exercised by King and other black leaders
developed within the institutional context of the black church,
where charismatic ministers "occupied strategic positions which
enabled them to become extremely familiar with the needs and aspirations
of blacks." It is misleading, however, to explain King's unique
role in the black struggle simply by referring to the supposedly
charismatic qualities he displayed in the pulpit. The term "charisma,"
which once referred to the godlike, magical qualities of an "ideal"
leader, has now, in our more secular age, lost many of its religious
connotations and refers to a wide range of leadership styles that
involve the capacity to inspire-usually through oratory-emotional
bonds between leaders and followers. Arguing, therefore, that King
was not a charismatic leader in the broadest sense of the term is
akin to arguing that he was not a Christian, but emphasis on his
charisma obscures other important aspects of his role in the black
movement. To be sure, King's oratory was exceptional, and many people
saw him as a divinely inspired leader, but he did not receive and
did not want the kind of unquestioning support associated with charismatic
leaders. He was a profound and provocative public speaker, not simply
an emotionally powerful one. Emphasis on his charisma conveys the
misleading notion of a movement held together by spellbinding speeches
and blind faith rather than by a combination of rational and emotional
bonds.
Not only did King's supposed charisma fall to place him above criticism,
but he was never able to gain mass support for his notion of nonviolent
struggle as a way of life, rather than as simply a tactic. Most
movement activists saw him not as their unquestioned commander but
as the most prominent among many influential movement strategists,
ideologues, theologians, and institutional leaders. King used charisma
as a tool for mobilizing black communities, but always in the context
of other forms of intellectual and political leadership that reflected
his academic training and that were appropriate for a movement containing
many strong leaders. He undoubtedly recognized that charisma could
not provide the only basis for leadership of a modern political
movement, one which enlisted the efforts of many other self-reliant
leaders. Moreover, he rejected aspects of the charismatic model
that conflicted with his sense of his own limitations.
King was a leader full of self-doubts, keenly aware of his own
limitations and weaknesses. He was at times reluctant to take on
the responsibilities suddenly and unexpectedly thrust upon him.
Scholars have only begun to understand the significance of his evolving
religious beliefs as a foundation for his leadership abilities and
political attitudes. David Garrow's paper, for example, stresses
the importance of the "kitchen experience" in 1956 during the Montgomery
bus boycott, when King was overcome with fear as a result of threats
to his own life and to the lives of his wife and child. Rather than
feeling confident and secure in his leadership role, he was able
to continue only after acquiring an enduring understanding of his
dependence on a personal God who promised never to leave him alone.
Although King biographies and King-centered studies of the black
struggle continue to appear, serious writers have moved beyond haglography
and have challenged the notion of King as the modern black struggle's
initiator and indispensable leader. This reflects a general historiographical
trend away from the notion of Great Men either as dec' sive elements
in historical processes or as sole causes, through their unique
leadership qualities, of major historical events. Because the King
myth emphasizes personality rather than social context, it exaggerates
his considerable contribution to black advancement without acknowledging
his indebtedness to other organizers and activists who set the stage
for his appearance in a leading role. Robert Moses's apt metaphor
of the movement as "an ocean of consciousness," which he offers
in his commentary, provides a useful framework for understanding
the surging wave that was King's leadership.
The historical significance of King's political ideas, furthermore,
especially his contributions to the Gandhian and African-American
traditions of nonviolent resistance, cannot be fully understood
without a determination of the extent to which activists adopted
his tactics and strategies. The importance of James H. Cone's essay
on Martin Luther King and Third World liberation movements is enhanced
by his decision not only to describe what King said about those
movements, but also to explore the impact of King's ideas on Third
World activists and leaders. Cone only begins to study an issue
that requires much further research, both abroad and at home: To
what extent did King's ideas actually guide the mass struggles he
sought to influence? Implicitly assuming that King's role in the
southern black movement was indispensable or at least crucial to
its success, King-centered scholarship has unfortunately contributed
to the popular but misleading notion that most movement activists
adopted his philosophy of nonviolence. Such scholarship has also
reinforced the tendency of many Americans to see him not only as
the exemplar of the modern black leader, at least in the pre-Jesse
Jackson era, but as a charismatic figure who single-handedly directed
the course of the civil rights movement.
Even the most perceptive King-centered studies will have limited
value unless they acknowledge that the black struggle was a locally-based
mass movement rather than simply a reform movement led by national
civil rights leaders. King was certainly not the only significant
leader of the civil rights movement, for sustained protest campaigns
developed in many southern communities with which he had little
or no direct involvement. In Montgomery, for example, local black
leaders such as E. D. Nixon, Rosa Parks, and Jo Ann Robinson started
the bus boycott before King became the leader of the Montgomery
Improvement Association. Thus, although he inspired blacks in Montgomery,
and black residents recognized that they were fortunate to have
such a spokesperson, talented local leaders other than King played
decisive roles in initiating and sustaining the boycott. Similarly,
the black students who initiated the 1960 lunch counter sit-ins
admired King, but they did not wait for him to act before launching
their own movement. The sit-in leaders who founded SNCC became increasingly
critical of his leadership style, seeing it as the cause of feelings
of dependency that often characterize the followers of charismatic
leaders. The essence of SNCC's approach to community organizing
was to instill in members of local communities the confidence that
they could lead their own struggles. A SNCC organizer had failed
if local residents became dependent on his or her presence; as the
organizers put it, their job was to work themselves out of a job.
Though King influenced the struggles that took place in the Black
Belt regions of Mississippi, Alabama, and Georgia, self-reliant
local leaders guided those movements. They occasionally called on
King's oratorical skills to galvanize black protesters at mass meetings,
but they refused to depend on his presence.
If King had never lived, the black struggle would have followed
a course of development similar to the one it did. The Montgomery
bus boycott would have occurred, because King did not initiate it.
Black students probably would have rebelled-even without him as
a role model-for they had sources of tactical and ideological inspiration
besides King. Mass activism in southern cities and voting rights
efforts in the deep South were outgrowths of large-scale social
and political forces rather than simply consequences of the actions
of a single leader. Though perhaps not as quickly and certainly
not as peacefully or with as universal a significance, the black
movement probably would have achieved its major legislative victories
without King's leadership, for the southern Jim Crow system was
a regional anachronism and the forces that undermined it were inexorable.
To what extent, then, did King's presence affect the movement?
Answering that question requires us to look beyond the usual portrayal
of the black struggle. Rather than seeing an amorphous mass of discontented
blacks acting out strategies determined by a small group of leaders,
we should recognize King as a major example of the emergent local
black leadership that developed as African-American communities
mobilized for sustained struggles. Directing attention to the other
leaders who initiated and emerged from those struggles should not
detract from our appreciation of King's historical significance;
such movement-oriented research reveals him to be a leader who stood
out in a forest of tall trees.
King's major public speeches-particularly the "I Have a Dream"
speech-have received much attention, but his exemplary qualities
were also displayed in countless strategy sessions and in meetings
with government officials. His success as a leader was based on
respect for his intellectual and moral cogency and his skill as
a conciliator among movement activists who refused to be simply
his "followers" or "lieutenants."
The success of the black civil rights movement required the mobilization
of black communities as well as the transformation of attitudes
in the surrounding society, and King's wide range of skills and
attributes prepared him to meet both these internal and external
demands. He understood the black world from a privileged position,
having grown up in a stable, prominent family within a major black
urban community; yet he also learned how to speak persuasively to
the surrounding white world. Alone among the major civil rights
leaders of his time, King could not only articulate black concerns
to white audiences, he could mobilize blacks through his day-to-day
involvement in black community institutions and through his access
to the regional institutional network of the black church. His advocacy
of nonviolent activism gave the black movement invaluable positive
press coverage, but his success as a protest leader derived mainly
from his ability to mobilize black community resources.
Analyses of the southern movement that emphasize its nonrational
aspects and expressive functions explain the black struggle as an
emotional outburst by discontented blacks, rather than as a sustained,
politically effective mobilization of black community institutions,
financial resources, and grass-roots leaders. The values of southern
blacks were profoundly and permanently transformed not only by King,
but also by their own involvement in sustained protest activity
and in community-organizing efforts, mass meetings, workshops, citizenship
classes, freedom schools, and informal discussions. Rather than
merely accepting guidance from above, many southern blacks
became leaders in their communities as a result of their movement
experiences.
Although the literature on the black struggle has traditionally
paid little attention to the intellectual content of black politics,
movement activists of the 1960s made a profound, though often ignored,
contribution to political thinking. King's own most significant
leadership attributes did not derive from his academic training,
his philosophical readings, or even his acquaintance with Gandhian
ideas. Instead, his influence on the black struggle resulted mainly
from his immersion in, and contribution to, the intellectual ferment
that has always been an essential part of African-American freedom
struggles. Scholars are only beginning to recognize the extent to
which his attitudes and those of many other activists, white and
black, changed as a result of their involvement in a movement in
which tactical and strategic ideas disseminated from the bottom
up as well as from the top down.
Although such a movement-centered perspective on King's role in
the black struggles of his time reduces him to human scale, it also
increases the possibility that others may recognize his qualities
in themselves. Idolizing King lessens one's ability to exhibit some
of his best attributes or, worse, encourages one to become a debunker,
emphasizing his flaws in order to avoid embracing his virtues. Undoubtedly
fearing that some who admired him would place too much faith in
his ability to offer guidance and overcome resistance, King often
publicly acknowledged his own limitations and mortality. Near the
end of his life, he expressed his certainty that black people would
reach the Promised Land whether or not he was with them. His faith
grew from an awareness of the qualities that he knew he shared with
all people. When he suggested his own epitaph, he asked not to be
remembered for his exceptional achievements--his Nobel Prize and
other awards, or his academic accomplishments; instead he wanted
to be remembered for giving his life to serve others, for trying
to be right on the "war question," for trying to feed the hungry
and clothe the naked, for trying to love and serve humanity." Those
aspects of King's life did not require charisma or other superhuman
abilities.
If King were alive today, he would doubtless encourage those who
celebrate his life to recognize their responsibility to struggle
as he did for a more 'ust and peaceful world. He would prefer that
we remember the black movement not as the scene of his own achievements,
but as a setting that brought out extraordinary qualities in many
people. If he were to return, his oratory would be unsettling and
intellectually challenging rather than confining itself simply to
comforting diction and soothing cadences. He would probably be the
unpopular social critic he was on the eve of the Poor People's campaign
rather than the object of national homage that he became after his
death. His basic message would be the same as it was when he was
alive, for he did not bend with the changing political winds. He
would talk of ending poverty and war and of building a 'ust social
order that would avoid the pitfalls of competitive capitalism and
repressive communism. He would give scant comfort to those who condition
their activism upon the appearance of another King, for he recognized
the extent to which he was a product of the movement that called
him to leadership.
The notion that appearances by Great Men (or Great Women) are necessary
preconditions for the emergence of major movements for social change
reflects a poor understanding of history and contributes to a pessimistic
view of the possibilities for future social change. Waiting for
the Messiah is a human weakness that is unlikely to be rewarded
more than once in a millennium. Studies of the modern black freedom
struggle offer support for a more optimistic belief that participants
in social movements can develop their untapped leadership abilities
and collectively improve their lives.
Clayborne Carson
"Reconstructing the King Legacy: Scholars and
National Myths." In We Shall Overcome: Martin Luther King,
Jr., and the Black Freedom Struggle. New York: Pantheon Books,
1990.
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