Martin Luther King Jr.’s Original New York Times Obituary
The obituary, which was published on April 5, 1968, celebrated the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. as a prophet of a crusade for racial equality and a voice of anguish for millions of people.
Image
Dr. King being congratulated after the presentation of the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo in 1964.CreditGlobe Photos/Zumapress, via Alamy
By Murray Schumach
April 2, 2018
To many millions of American Negroes, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was the prophet of their crusade for racial equality. He was their voice of anguish, their eloquence in humiliation, their battle cry for human dignity. He forged for them the weapons of nonviolence that withstood and blunted the ferocity of segregation.
And to many millions of American whites, he was one of a group of Negroes who preserved the bridge of communication between races when racial warfare threatened the United States in the nineteen-sixties, as Negroes sought the full emancipation pledged to them a century before by Abraham Lincoln.
To the world Dr. King had the stature that accrued to a winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, a man with access to the White House and the Vatican; a veritable hero in the African states that were just emerging from colonialism.
Between Extremes
In his dedication to non-violence, Dr. King was caught between white and Negro extremists as racial tensions erupted into arson, gunfire and looting in many of the nation’s cities during the summer of 1967.
Militant Negroes, with the cry of, “burn, baby burn,” argued that only by violence and segregation could the Negro attain self-respect, dignity and real equality in the United States.
Floyd B. McKissick, when director of the Congress of Racial Equality, declared in August of that year that it was a “foolish assumption to try to sell nonviolence to the ghettos.”
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Two days later, however, Dr. King said he would stage another demonstration and attributed the violence to his own “miscalculation.”
At the time he was assassinated in Memphis, Dr. King was involved in one of his greatest plans to dramatize the plight of the poor and stir Congress to help Negroes.
He called this venture the “Poor People’s Campaign.” It was to be a huge “camp-in” either in Washington or in Chicago during the Democratic National Convention.
In one of his last public announcements before the shooting, Dr. King told an audience in a Harlem church on March 26:
“We need an alternative to riots and to timid supplication. Nonviolence is our most potent weapon.”
His strong beliefs in civil rights and nonviolence made him one of the leading opponents of American participation in the war in Vietnam. To him the war was unjust, diverting vast sums away from programs to alleviate the condition of the Negro poor in this country. He called the conflict “one of history’s most cruel and senseless wars.” Last January he said:
“We need to make clear in this political year, to Congressmen on both sides of the aisle and to the President of the United States that we will no longer vote for men who continue to see the killing of Vietnamese and Americans as the best way of advancing the goals of freedom and self- determination in Southeast Asia.”
Image
IN HARLEM: Firemen fighting a blaze in a 125th Street furniture store that was looted and set afire after news of the slaying of Dr. King spread through the area last night.CreditAssociated Press
Object of Many Attacks
Inevitably, as a symbol of integration, he became the object of unrelenting attacks and vilification. His home was bombed. He was spat upon and mocked. He was struck and kicked. He was stabbed, almost fatally, by a deranged Negro woman. He was frequently thrown into jail. Threats became so commonplace that his wife could ignore burning crosses on the lawn and ominous phone calls. Through it all he adhered to the creed of passive disobedience that infuriated segregationists.
The adulation that was heaped upon him eventually irritated some Negroes in the civil rights movement who worked hard, but in relative obscurity. They pointed out — and Dr. King admitted — that he was a poor administrator. Sometimes, with sarcasm, they referred to him, privately, as “De Lawd.” They noted that Dr. King’s successes were built on the labors of may who had gone before him, the noncoms and privates of the civil rights army who fought without benefit of headlines and television cameras.
The Negro extremists he criticized were contemptuous of Dr. King. They dismissed his passion for nonviolence as another form of servility to white people. They called him an “Uncle Tom,” and charged that he was hindering the Negro struggle for equality.
Dr. King’s belief in nonviolence was subjected to intense pressure in 1966, when some Negro groups adopted the slogan “black power” in the aftermath of civil rights marches into Mississippi and race riots in Northern cities. He rejected the idea, saying:
“The Negro needs the white man to free him from his fears. The white man needs the Negro to free him from his guilt. A doctrine of black supremacy is as evil as a doctrine of white supremacy.”
The doctrine of “black power” threatened to split the Negro civil rights movement and antagonize white liberals who had been supporting Negro causes, and Dr. King suggested “militant nonviolence” as a formula for progress with peace.
At the root of his civil rights convictions was an even more profound faith in the basic goodness of man and the great potential of American democracy. These beliefs gave to his speeches a fervor that could not be stilled by criticism.
Scores of millions of Americans — white as well as Negro — who sat before television sets in the summer of 1963 to watch the awesome march of some 200,000 Negroes on Washington were deeply stirred when Dr. King, in the shadow of the Lincoln Memorial, said:
“Even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal.’”
And all over the world, men were moved as they read his words of Dec. 10, 1964, when he became the third member of his race to receive the Nobel Peace Prize.
Part One
The obituary, which was published on April 5, 1968, celebrated the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. as a prophet of a crusade for racial equality and a voice of anguish for millions of people.
Image
Dr. King being congratulated after the presentation of the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo in 1964.CreditGlobe Photos/Zumapress, via Alamy
By Murray Schumach
April 2, 2018
To many millions of American Negroes, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was the prophet of their crusade for racial equality. He was their voice of anguish, their eloquence in humiliation, their battle cry for human dignity. He forged for them the weapons of nonviolence that withstood and blunted the ferocity of segregation.
And to many millions of American whites, he was one of a group of Negroes who preserved the bridge of communication between races when racial warfare threatened the United States in the nineteen-sixties, as Negroes sought the full emancipation pledged to them a century before by Abraham Lincoln.
To the world Dr. King had the stature that accrued to a winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, a man with access to the White House and the Vatican; a veritable hero in the African states that were just emerging from colonialism.
Between Extremes
In his dedication to non-violence, Dr. King was caught between white and Negro extremists as racial tensions erupted into arson, gunfire and looting in many of the nation’s cities during the summer of 1967.
Militant Negroes, with the cry of, “burn, baby burn,” argued that only by violence and segregation could the Negro attain self-respect, dignity and real equality in the United States.
Floyd B. McKissick, when director of the Congress of Racial Equality, declared in August of that year that it was a “foolish assumption to try to sell nonviolence to the ghettos.”
You have 4 free articles remaining.
Subscribe to The Times
Two days later, however, Dr. King said he would stage another demonstration and attributed the violence to his own “miscalculation.”
At the time he was assassinated in Memphis, Dr. King was involved in one of his greatest plans to dramatize the plight of the poor and stir Congress to help Negroes.
He called this venture the “Poor People’s Campaign.” It was to be a huge “camp-in” either in Washington or in Chicago during the Democratic National Convention.
In one of his last public announcements before the shooting, Dr. King told an audience in a Harlem church on March 26:
“We need an alternative to riots and to timid supplication. Nonviolence is our most potent weapon.”
His strong beliefs in civil rights and nonviolence made him one of the leading opponents of American participation in the war in Vietnam. To him the war was unjust, diverting vast sums away from programs to alleviate the condition of the Negro poor in this country. He called the conflict “one of history’s most cruel and senseless wars.” Last January he said:
“We need to make clear in this political year, to Congressmen on both sides of the aisle and to the President of the United States that we will no longer vote for men who continue to see the killing of Vietnamese and Americans as the best way of advancing the goals of freedom and self- determination in Southeast Asia.”
Image
IN HARLEM: Firemen fighting a blaze in a 125th Street furniture store that was looted and set afire after news of the slaying of Dr. King spread through the area last night.CreditAssociated Press
Object of Many Attacks
Inevitably, as a symbol of integration, he became the object of unrelenting attacks and vilification. His home was bombed. He was spat upon and mocked. He was struck and kicked. He was stabbed, almost fatally, by a deranged Negro woman. He was frequently thrown into jail. Threats became so commonplace that his wife could ignore burning crosses on the lawn and ominous phone calls. Through it all he adhered to the creed of passive disobedience that infuriated segregationists.
The adulation that was heaped upon him eventually irritated some Negroes in the civil rights movement who worked hard, but in relative obscurity. They pointed out — and Dr. King admitted — that he was a poor administrator. Sometimes, with sarcasm, they referred to him, privately, as “De Lawd.” They noted that Dr. King’s successes were built on the labors of may who had gone before him, the noncoms and privates of the civil rights army who fought without benefit of headlines and television cameras.
The Negro extremists he criticized were contemptuous of Dr. King. They dismissed his passion for nonviolence as another form of servility to white people. They called him an “Uncle Tom,” and charged that he was hindering the Negro struggle for equality.
Dr. King’s belief in nonviolence was subjected to intense pressure in 1966, when some Negro groups adopted the slogan “black power” in the aftermath of civil rights marches into Mississippi and race riots in Northern cities. He rejected the idea, saying:
“The Negro needs the white man to free him from his fears. The white man needs the Negro to free him from his guilt. A doctrine of black supremacy is as evil as a doctrine of white supremacy.”
The doctrine of “black power” threatened to split the Negro civil rights movement and antagonize white liberals who had been supporting Negro causes, and Dr. King suggested “militant nonviolence” as a formula for progress with peace.
At the root of his civil rights convictions was an even more profound faith in the basic goodness of man and the great potential of American democracy. These beliefs gave to his speeches a fervor that could not be stilled by criticism.
Scores of millions of Americans — white as well as Negro — who sat before television sets in the summer of 1963 to watch the awesome march of some 200,000 Negroes on Washington were deeply stirred when Dr. King, in the shadow of the Lincoln Memorial, said:
“Even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal.’”
And all over the world, men were moved as they read his words of Dec. 10, 1964, when he became the third member of his race to receive the Nobel Peace Prize.
Part One