Quote of the Day (Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., on Non-Violence and Oppressors)

“The non-violent way does not bring about miracles in a few hours, in a few days, in a few years, for that matter. I think the first reaction of the oppressor when oppressed people rise up against the system of injustice is an attitude of bitterness. But I do believe that if the non-violent resisters continue to follow the way of non-violence, they eventually get over to the hearts and souls of the oppressors, and I think it eventually brings about that redemption that we dream of. Of course, I can’t estimate how many people we’ve touched so far; this is impossible because it’s an inner process. But I’m sure something is stirring in the minds and souls of people and I’m sure people are thinking anew on this basic problem of human relations.”—American minister, civil-rights advocate, and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. (1929-1968), “Meet the Press” appearance transcript, Apr. 17, 1960, the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Research and Education Institute, Stanford University

Quote of the Day (Martin Luther King Jr., on Truths Forgotten About the Labor Movement)

“History is a great teacher. Now, everyone knows that the labor movement did not diminish the strength of the nation but enlarged it. By raising the living standards of millions, labor miraculously created a market for industry and lifted the whole nation to undreamed levels of production. Those who today attack labor forget these simple truths, but history remembers them.”—American civil-rights leader and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. (1929-1968), address to the AFL-CIO in Bal Harbour, FL, Dec. 11, 1961, in A Testament of Hope: The Essential Writings and Speeches of Martin Luther King, Jr., edited by James Melvin Washington (1986)

Martin Luther King’s leadership of the civil-rights movement hardly stopped with his successful campaigns against segregation and for voting rights. He recognized that a living wage was just as essential for African-Americans.

Nobody should forget that he reminded his audience at the AFL-CIO and the larger American public that unions, by raising wages, had created a mass market for industry in the postwar era.

His belief in the necessity of unions was so powerful that he was in Memphis to support striking sanitation workers when he was assassinated in April 1968.

One person today who has forgotten the “simple truths” that King identified 63 years ago—as well as that he lost his life while advocating for justice for striking workers—is Donald Trump. 

Then again, as a leader who sought to create coalitions for change through non-divisive rhetoric, Dr. King would have been appalled by Trump’s demagogic references these last few weeks to “black jobs.”

Even that doesn’t constitute a truly bizarre, unforced error by the GOP Presidential nominee. Instead, try his endorsement of firing striking workers in his recent X interview with Elon Musk—a mistake all the greater considering that union member votes may be more up for grabs than at any time since Labor Day was declared a federal holiday 140 years ago.

The GOP nominee’s observation unleashed widespread condemnation from union leaders. A typical denunciation— that Trump’s remarks constituted “economic terrorism”—came from Teamster head Sean O’Brien, who had addressed the Republican Convention only the month before.

The electronic Trump-Musk dialogue also prompted the United Auto Workers to file unfair labor practice charges against the GOP presidential nominee and the X impresario, alleging interference with workers who may want to exercise their right to join a union.

Even before the conversation between the tetchy ex-President and the tech billionaire, Trump had compiled a problematic labor-relations record dating back to his days in New York real estate, including a $1.4 million settlement for underpaying undocumented Polish workers who demolished the Bonwit Teller department store to make way for Trump Tower.

Without the Wagner Act of 1935—the so-called “Magna Carta” of organized labor—Trump would never have been called to account for that violation. 

Now, his loose remarks to Musk blatantly undercut another central tenet of this landmark legislation: that “no person shall be denied employment because of membership in or affiliation with a labor union."

That same legislation had previously benefited my father and maternal grandfather.

As Irish immigrants, their entry into the American middle class was eased by the benefits of union membership. When their way of life was threatened, it came via layoffs from bosses every bit as contemptuous (if not crude) as Trump.

If they were alive today, I’m sure they would have scoffed not just at Trump’s remarks but also his larger pretensions to being a working-class hero.

This Labor Day weekend, even with high-profile union victories in the last year involving the United Auto Workers and the Hollywood actors’ and writers’ strikes, it’s easy to forget that the position of most American workers remains tenuous.

But, if this country is serious about addressing income inequality and worker safety—and yes, as Dr. King noted, ensuring an adequate market able to pay for the products of American industry—then it will stop undercutting labor unions.

Quote of the Day (Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., on ‘The Ultimate Weakness of Violence’)

“Are we seeking power for power’s sake? Or are we seeking to make the world and our nation better places to live? If we seek the latter, violence can never provide the answer. The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral, begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy. Instead of diminishing evil, it multiplies it. Through violence you may murder the liar, but you cannot murder the lie, nor establish the truth. Through violence you may murder the hater, but you do not murder hate. In fact, violence merely increases hate. So it goes. Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.” ― American civil-rights activist and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. (1929-1968), Why We Can't Wait (1964)

Quote of the Day (Martin Luther King Jr., on Courage in the Face of Disaster)

“God, remove all bitterness from my heart and give me the strength and courage to face any disaster that comes my way.” —American civil-rights activist and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Martin Luther King Jr. (1929-1968), Thou, Dear God: Prayers That Open Hearts and Spirits, edited by Lewis V. Baldwin (2012)

Quote of the Day (Taylor Branch, on MLK and the March on Washington)

“[Martin Luther] King's ‘I Have a Dream’ speech abides. Contrary to popular impression then and lingering insistence today, he did not win favor by promising that African Americans would behave like white people. He said nearly the opposite, quite plainly. His ringing conclusion invited polyglot America — ‘all God's children’ — to join hands and sing a Negro spiritual, so that everyone, for that moment, could share inspirations forged during slavery. King invoked a larger patriotism in which people of every stripe reach from tiptoe stance across divisions between them. Free citizenship requires meeting each other halfway to build ties of comfort and strength. King's burden was not the tiptoe stance itself but flat-footed disregard on the other side. His reward was small miracles of common purpose that made ‘movement’ the watchword of national politics.”—Historian Taylor Branch, “Pulitzer Prize Winner Taylor Branch Reflects on 1963 March,” USA Today, Aug. 27, 2013

Spiritual Quote of the Day (Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Reproving the Contemporary Church as ‘An Archdefender of the Status Quo’)

“There was a time when the church was very powerful--in the time when the early Christians rejoiced at being deemed worthy to suffer for what they believed. In those days the church was not merely a thermometer that recorded the ideas and principles of popular opinion; it was a thermostat that transformed the mores of society. Whenever the early Christians entered a town, the people in power became disturbed and immediately sought to convict the Christians for being ‘disturbers of the peace’ and ‘outside agitators.’ But the Christians pressed on, in the conviction that they were ‘a colony of heaven,’ called to obey God rather than man. Small in number, they were big in commitment. They were too God-intoxicated to be ‘astronomically intimidated.’ By their effort and example they brought an end to such ancient evils as infanticide and gladiatorial contests. Things are different now. So often the contemporary church is a weak, ineffectual voice with an uncertain sound. So often it is an archdefender of the status quo. Far from being disturbed by the presence of the church, the power structure of the average community is consoled by the church's silent--and often even vocal--sanction of things as they are.

“But the judgment of God is upon the church as never before. If today's church does not recapture the sacrificial spirit of the early church, it will lose its authenticity, forfeit the loyalty of millions, and be dismissed as an irrelevant social club with no meaning for the twentieth century. Every day I meet young people whose disappointment with the church has turned into outright disgust.”—Civil-rights leader and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. (1929-1968), “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” Apr. 16, 1963

Sixty years ago today, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., jailed for participating in a nonviolent civil rights protest in Birmingham, Ala., read a statement in a local newspaper from eight fellow clergymen, taking him to task for “unwise and untimely” direct action rather than pursuing justice through the courts. Veering between profound disappointment and righteous anger, the civil-rights leader began to scribble his response—at first in the margins of the original article itself, then in paper provided by a black jail trusty, even on toilet paper.

After the scraps were smuggled out by aides and reassembled in a nearby hotel into 20 typed pages, the resulting “Letter from Birmingham Jail” proved as startling in content as in composition. It transcended its origin as an open letter to the seven Protestant ministers and one rabbi to become a seminal document of the civil-rights movement.

Many passages have become among the most famous in King’s entire eloquent output, including:

* “History is the long and tragic story of the fact that privileged groups seldom give up their privileges voluntarily”;

* “Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will”; and especially

* “We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly.”

The letter is filled with allusions to religious figures, providing a common frame of reference with the ministers who criticized him and laying the groundwork for a powerful rhetorical answer to them: Jesus, St. Paul, Martin Buber, and Paul Tillich.

Most pointedly, he cited St. Thomas Aquinas to prove that “An unjust law is a human law that is not rooted in eternal and natural law”—part of his justification for the necessity of civil disobedience against segregation.

Read even in the context of its own time, King’s letter demonstrates an aspect of his career that often is forgotten today: his radicalism, even when it came to criticizing Southern white moderates, such as the eight clergymen who sympathized with his goals but disagreed with his tactics.

At the same time, it points to his understanding of the need for broad-based activism beyond simply voting rights and de jure segregation. In our time, that concern has been given the unfortunate, academic-sounding coinage “intersectionality.”

But King, with his typical pungency, expressed the matter more memorably: “I am cognizant of the interrelatedness of all communities and states….Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”

In the last years of his short life, King took a stance that, again, many activists—including longtime allies—regarded as a bridge too far by assailing the Vietnam War. He took his fateful trip to Memphis in 1968 to aid a sanitation workers’ strike that had been sparked by low wages and appalling working conditions. (In early February two black employees, forbidden by city policy from taking refuge from storms by standing on porches and forced to take refuge in the barrel of their garbage truck, died when the vehicle malfunctioned.)

Today, he would protest inadequate health care, environmental injustice, and gun laws that rip apart people of all races, ethnicities, and classes—all operating under the conviction, like the demonstrators sitting down at segregated lunch counters in his time, that they would be “standing up for the best in the American dream and the most sacred values in our Judeo-Christian heritage.”

(Asking whether an “email, tweeted press release or lengthy text message from Birmingham Jail [would] carry the same gravitas,” Vanecia Carr’s thoughtful January 2022 blog post considers “The Power of a Paper Letter.”)

Quote of the Day (Martin Luther King Jr., on When ‘A Man Dies’)

“A man dies when he refuses to stand up for that which is right. A man dies when he refuses to stand up for justice. A man dies when he refuses to take a stand for that which is true."—Civil rights leader and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. (1929-1968), sermon on courage, delivered Mar. 8, 1965, Selma, AL

Quote of the Day (Martin Luther King Jr., on God’s Laws ‘Planted in the Fiber of the Universe’)

“God has planted in the fiber of the universe certain eternal laws which forever confront every man. They are absolute and not relative. There is an eternal and absolute distinction between right and wrong.” — American civil-rights leader and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. (1929-1968), qualifying examination answers, “Theology of the Bible,” quoted in The Papers of Martin Luther King, Jr., Volume II: Rediscovering Precious Values, July 1951-November 1955 (Senior Editor: Clayborne Carson; Volume Editors: Ralph E. Luker, Penny A. Russell, and Pete Holloran), 1994

Quote of the Day (Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., on God’s Love ‘Seeking to Preserve and Create Community’)

“Agape [i.e., God-originated love]  is not a weak, passive love.  It is love in action.  Agape is love seeking to preserve and create community…. The Holy Spirit is the continuing community creating reality that moves through history.  He who works against community is working against the whole of creation…. In the final analysis, agape means a recognition of the fact that all life is interrelated…. Whether we call it an unconscious process, an impersonal Brahman, or a Personal Being of matchless power and infinite love, there is a creative force in this universe that works to bring the disconnected aspects of reality into a harmonious whole.”— American civil-rights leader and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. (1929-1968), Stride Toward Freedom: The Montgomery Story (1958)

(The image accompanying this post shows Dr. King receiving the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964.)

Quote of the Day (Martin Luther King Jr., on ‘The Good Neighbor’)

“The good neighbor looks beyond the external accidents and discerns those inner qualities that make all men human and, therefore, brothers.”—American civil-rights leader and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. (1929-1968), Strength to Love (1963)

Quote of the Day (Martin Luther King, Jr., on the ‘Shackles of Prejudice’)

“There is little hope for us until we become toughminded enough to break loose from the shackles of prejudice, half-truths, and downright ignorance...A nation or a civilization that continues to produce softminded men purchases its own spiritual death on an installment plan.”—American civil-rights activist and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929-1968), Strength to Love (1963)

In memory of the 11 Pittsburgh synagogue massacre victims…Never again…

Quote of the Day (James Baldwin, on MLK and Malcolm X)

“I don’t think that any black person can speak of Malcolm [X] and Martin [Luther King Jr.] without wishing that they were here. It is not possible for me to speak of them without a sense of loss and grief and rage; and with the sense, furthermore, of having been forced to undergo an unforgivable indignity, both personal and vast. Our children need them, which is, indeed, the reason that they are not here: and now we, the blacks, must make certain that our children never forget them. For the American republic has always done everything in its power to destroy our children’s heroes, with the clear (and sometimes clearly stated) intention of destroying our children’s hope. This endeavor has doomed the American nation: mark my words.”—African-American novelist-essayist James Baldwin (1924-1987), “Malcolm and Martin,” in No Name in the Street (1972)

(I took the image accompanying this post over four years ago, while visiting the memorial to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in Washington, DC.)