Today, Martin Luther King is arguably the closest thing we have in this country to a national saint. What I mean is, most of us think of him as someone who produced a miracle in achieving civil rights. He’s someone that all Americans feel like they can rally around. Politicians from both parties routinely quote him. A snippet from one of his speeches is supposed to settle debates by itself.
I’m sure this adulation would surprise Dr. King. I’m reminded of that when I read his letter from the Birmingham jail. I’ll never get over what a remarkable document it is—he produced something more cogent and more knowledgeable from a jail cell than many of us could do with a computer and internet access and unlimited time. The letter quotes from the Bible, theologian Reinhold Niebuhr, Abraham Lincoln, Thomas Jefferson, and Socrates. Anyway, at the time, clergy in Birmingham criticized Dr. King’s actions as untimely and called them extreme. That view didn’t disappear when Dr. King died in 1968. During the congressional debate over whether Dr. King should have a national holiday, Jesse Helms accused him of “action-oriented Marxism,” and claimed he harbored “radical political views.” The result (according to Helms) was that Dr. King’s “very name itself remains a source of tension, a deeply troubling symbol of divided society.”
What Dr. King did in his letter, among other things, was take on the idea that moderation was the highest good, unity the most important consideration. The ministers who had attacked him didn’t want him to rock the boat too much or cause too much division. They used the word “extreme” as an epithet to undermine his cause. No one wants to be seen as extreme, after all. But Dr. King reminds us that the same Jesus his clergy critics professed to worship gave his followers an extreme definition of love: that they were to love their enemies. He goes on to quote Lincoln’s admonition that America could not remain a nation half slave and half free, and Thomas Jefferson’s claim that all men were created equal, ideas that many saw as radical at one time.
After recounting our heartbreaking experience with slavery and the daily indignities racism inflicted on blacks, Dr. King demonstrated that the black community stood at a crossroads. For those who wanted change, there were those “who have lost faith in America” and “have concluded that the white man is an incorrigible ‘devil,’” and those in King’s movement. The question Dr. King posed is “not whether we will be extremists, but what kind of extremists we will be.” That is a question that should stay with us.
Dr. King teaches us that there is never a good time to demand justice. Frequently, calls for a more just society will strike those in power as “extreme.” Today, most of us take for granted that amusement parks shouldn’t close their doors to blacks and that blacks traveling should not be denied lodging at hotels because of their race. And yet those ideas were well outside the mainstream for much our history. So for those working towards a more just society, I hope Dr. King’s example gives you heart. If you’re willing to persist in the face of criticism, you may find that what is radical today will be conventional wisdom tomorrow.