American Politics and the Legacy of Martin Luther King

By William H. Chafe

Thursday, January 17, 2008

Note to Editors:
Chafe is the Alice Mary Baldwin Professor of History at Duke and former president of the Organization of American Historians. He has written widely on issues of civil rights.

Durham, NC -- On this Martin Luther King Jr. holiday, the memory of the late civil rights hero is being tested by the front-running Democratic candidates. Barack Obama regularly evokes Dr. King in his speeches, often wrapping himself in the mystique of King’s soaring rhetoric and projecting visions of change reminiscent of King’s "I Have a Dream" speech. Hillary Clinton similarly places herself in the tradition of civil rights reform, but of late has run into trouble by emphasizing that it took practical political leadership by President Lyndon Johnson to make civil rights legislation a reality, thereby emphasizing her campaign slogan that experience in using power effectively is just as important as visionary idealism. The subsequent bickering by the Obama and Clinton camps over who "owns" the King legacy has been unseemly. More important, it has ignored the historical reality of the man they seek to honor.

This is not a new phenomenon. For more than two decades, American politicians have crafted an image of King that has made him into an all-American "moderate," safe for everyone to honor. King’s prophetic calls for radical change in the structure of America’s racial and economic life have been muted. Instead, politicians have trumpeted King’s demand that individuals be judged "by the content of their character," not the color of their skin. Such a construction of King’s life drastically diminishes his real message. In reality, every time King pleaded for reconciliation and redemption, he simultaneously demanded repentance and far-reaching change.

Clearly, John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson deserve credit for embracing civil rights reform. But they would never have arrived at that point were it not for the fact that the civil rights movement -– led by King –- gave them no alternative. The civil rights revolution, from the Montgomery bus boycott in 1955 to the Greensboro sit-ins in 1960 to the Birmingham Children’s Crusade in 1963, literally forced America’s white leaders, against their will, to confront the reality of American racism that for so long they had ignored.

What Senator Clinton failed to acknowledge is the degree to which Kennedy and Johnson had records prior to 1963 that were as shameful on issues of civil rights as that of many conservative white Southern legislators. Kennedy had never advocated civil rights legislation as a senator, and voted to weaken the 1957 Civil Rights Bill. He was endorsed in 1960 by reactionary segregationists like Alabama’s Governor John Patterson. And despite his promise in the 1960 campaign to end segregation in publicly financed housing by issuing an executive order, he signed that order (two years later) only after civil rights supporters sent the White House millions of pens, mocking the emptiness of his campaign pledge.

Lyndon Johnson was no better. As a senator, he refused to support federal anti-lynching legislation, subverted efforts to end Southern senators’ ability to filibuster civil rights bills to death and failed to support a Fair Employment Practices law in 1949, arguing that it would "inflame the passions and prejudices" of white folks. Repeatedly, and in public, he called his chauffeur the "n" word. Although he receives credit for shepherding a civil rights bill through Congress in 1957, Johnson in fact eviscerated that law of all substantive content, leading liberal senators to call it a "sham." In short, there is no basis for thinking that either Kennedy or Johnson would have voluntarily embraced civil rights reform if left to their own druthers.

This latest political debate ignores the prophetic radicalism of King’s fundamental message. The 1963 March on Washington was for "Jobs and Freedom," not just freedom. King insisted economic inequality had to be rooted out if racial inequality were to be solved. In his critique of the Vietnam War, he called America one of the worst "purveyors" of violence in the world. With growing insistence, culminating in the Poor People’s Campaign of 1968, he urged a revolution in the social order, not just in terms of the color line, but also in terms of eliminating poverty, war and disease.

On these issues there has been far less attention by the major candidates, with the possible exception of John Edwards and his call for universal health care, an end to "two Americas" and a major jobs program. As the candidates take up the cudgels about their relationship to King’s legacy, it might be helpful if they acknowledged the depth and breadth of his real vision, and paid more attention to implementing it.