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GEORGIA BULLETIN, THURSDAY, APRIL 11,1968
9
NOT HOW LONG ONE LIVES
...BUT HOW WELL
ATLANTA, (RNS) - “I don’t
think it is how long one lives, but
how well one lives,” Dr. Martin
Luther King once told an
interviewer.
“Not the quantity of one’s life,
but the quality of one’s life.”
“If physical death is a price I
must pay...I don’t think anything
can'be more redemptive.”
The life which an assassin’s
bullet ended abruptly in Memphis-
had crammed an extraordinary
quality and quantity of action
into its 39 years.
“I don’t think a man can be
fully free until he conquers the
fear of death,” Dr. King said in
the same interview, “and I really
feel that I have conquered this
fear.”
HE HAD conquered it as most
fears are conquered, by facing it
repeatedly and willingly for 12
years before he finally
experienced it. The penalty for
his first act of civil
disobedience,organizing a Negro
boycott of segregated buses in
Montgomery, Alabama, was a
$500 fine levied in March, 1956.
By launching Martin Luther King
into his historic national role, it
also proved to be a death
sentence - a fact of which Dr.
King was fully aware.
The campaign that began in
Montgomery, when a Negro
seamstress, Rosa Parks, refused to
give up a seat on a segregated bus,
expanded to national and even
international dimensions.
Embodying two basic ideas, the
non-violent resistance of
Mahatma Gandhi and the civil
disobedience principles of Henry
Thoreau, Dr. King’s campaign
included the boycott, sit-ins and
freedom rides, speeches and
demonstrations.
The mass march, with
integrated participation, became
his chief technique, climaxed by
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a peaceful march of more than"
200,000 in Washington, D.C., on
Aug. 28, 1963 and by a series of
violently-resisted marches in
Selma, Ala., in 1965.
FROM HIS original goal of
integration, Dr. King moved on
gradually to include the problem
of poverty and opposition to the
war in Vietnam.
He encountered opposition
from many quarters and was
accused of being, among other
things, a Communist, an “Uncle
Tom” and a liar.
Whether the opposition came
from black militants or the John
Birch Society, fellow clergymen
or Southern politicians, Dr. King
pursued his policies with a calm
that appeared imperturbable.
Before his death, Dr. King had
mourned the violent deaths of
others who had marched with
him or had been inspired by his
example.
Personally, he had been the
object of death threats too
numerous to count and at least
five known attempts had been
made on his life.
HE LAY CLOSE to death in
1957 after being stabbed with a
nail file by a mentally deranged
woman in Harlem.
He had been punched and spat
upon.
His home was partially
destroyed by a bomb.
His telephone was allegedly
tapped by the federal
government.
He was imprisoned at least 18
times, most recently in October,
1967 in Birmingham.
But while he met obstacles, his
success was also impressive. The
1964 Civil Rights Law was
written basically in response to
his demands.
His famous refrain, “I have a
dream...” spoken at the Lincoln
Memorial during the 1963 March
on Washington, moved a
nationwide television audience.
He had the openly expressed
admiration of two U.S. Presidents
and a cordial statement of
support from Pope Paul VI, given
during a private audience.
INTERNATIONAL acclaim for
his work was climaxed by the
award Qf the Nobel Peace Prize in
December, 1964. At that time, he
was called “the first person in the
Western world to have shown us
that a struggle can be waged
without violence.”
Dr. King gave the Nobel cash
award, amounting to more than
$50,000, for the assistance of the
civil rights movement.
A very different form of
acclaim was the offer (which he
declined) of a small role in the
film, Advise and Consent, which
dealt with the U.S. Senate.
Archbishop of Boston, Dr. King
was sharply criticized by one
Catholic bishop.
IN 1965, during the Selma
demonstrations, Archbishop
Thomas J. Toolcn of
Mobile-Birmingham said that Dr.
King was “trying to divide the
people” and “hyrting the cause
of the Negro rather than
helping.” Archbishop Toolen
praised Mobile for handling racial
problems “sensibly” and said that
priests and nuns were “out of
place” in demonstrations.
Dr. King’s “departure from
orthodox Christian tradition”
was criticized in 1962 by the
Rev. John B. Morris of the
unofficial Episcopal Society for
Cultural and Racial Unity. Christ,
not Gandhi, should be the “Lord
of even the sit-in and the
freedom-ride,” he said.
In his own public statements,
Dr. King sometimes linked the
two names as inspirations for
non-violence. “The non-violent
way is as old as Jesus Christ and
as modern as Mohandas Gandhi,
who said that non-cooperation
with evil is as much a moral
obligation as cooperation with
good.”
Between the extremes, tributes
to Dr. King came from people in
every walk of life,' in the U. S.
and abroad. In 1966, the Gallup
Poll announced that he was one
of the ten men most admired by
Americans.
In at least one case, tributes
and attacks came at different
times from the same person.
Adam Clayton Powell, the
perennial U.S. Congressman from
Harlem, in November, 1965
called Dr. King “my beloved
friend” and “the greatest living
American, black or white.”
“He is a humanitarian and
citizen of the world who has
made the entire globe his
pastorate,” Powell said.
quietness...in which moderation
prevails.”
Ralph Bunche, like Dr. King,
an American Negro Nobel
Prize-winner, said that the linking
of civil rights with opposition to
the Vietnam was “a very serious
tactical error which will do much
harm to the civil rights struggle.”
“IN MY VIEW, Dr. King
should positively and publicly
give up one role or the other,”
Mr. Bunche said. “The two
efforts have too little in Common
in any case.”
The National Association for
the Advancement of Colored
People took a similar position.
While he criticized some
Christians for “pious irrelevance
and sanctimonious trivialities,”
Dr. King defended Christianity
firmly against the Black Muslims
and other black nationalist
movements which have become
anti-Christian and
anti-integration. He criticized
both Cassius Clay, the former
world heavyweight champion
who joined the Muslims and the
late Malcolm X, black nationalist
leader who was assassinated in
1965.
IN TURN, he was the object of
increasing attacks by militant
leaders who had abandoned the
ideals of integration and
non-violence
The life which provoked such
controversy and ended so
A much more violent form of tragically began in Atlanta on
IN MARCH, 1968, returning to
Harlem briefly after a prolonged
stay on the Caribbean Island of
Bimini, Powell expressed a very
different view.
“I don’t call for violence or
riots,” he said, “but the day of
Martin Luther King has come to
an end... We are finished with the
NAACP and we are finished with
the Urban League, and we are
finished with Martin Luther King
unless he comes back home -
we’ll make a good man out of
him if he comes back home.”
A year earlier, Dr. King had
defended Powell when the U.S.
House of Representatives voted to
exclude him from his seat. The
action . was “unconstitutional”
and based on “racial motives,”
Dr. King said.
Others who were his friends
expressed various degrees of
opposition to him on some issues.
In 1963, evangelist Billy Graham
called Dr. King a “good personal
friend” but urged him to “put
the brakes on a little bit” on
demonstrations in Birmingham
and seek “a period of
opposition came from Robert
Welch, founder of the John Birch
Society. “How do you feel about
the Soviet Negro Republic?” he
once asked, “...With Atlanta,
perhaps, as its capital? And
Martin Luther King as its
‘president?’ ”
On another occasion, he called
Dr. King “more intimately
related to communism than
Christianity.”
Probably the best-known
federal official to criticize Dr.
King was J. Edgar Hoover, after
the integration leader said that,
the FBI had been “ineffective” in
civil rights cases.
Hoover called Dr. King, “the
most notorious liar in the
country.” Dr. King, refusing to
criticize Hoover, said that he
must have been “under extreme
pressure” and expressed “nothing
but sympathy for a man who has
served his country so well.”
Although he was frequently
praised by Roman Catholic
spokesmen, including Pope Paul
VI and Richard Cardinal Cushing,
Jan. 15, 1929.
Martin Luther King, Sr., was
the pastor of that city’s
prosperous iEbenezer Baptist
Church. His son attended
Morehouse College in Atlanta and
was ordained in 1947.
Martin, Jr., received a
doctorate in Systematic Theology
in 1954 from Boston University.
Prelates Attend
King Services
Among the Roman Catholic
prelates attending the services for
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. were
one cardinal and seven bishops.
They include Lawrence
Cardinal Shehan of Baltimore,
Archbishop John Dearden of
Detroit, president of the National
Conference of Catholic Bishops,
Bishop Victor Reed of Oklahoma
City, Bishop Charles Buswell of
Pueblo, Archbishop Terence
Cooke of New York, Bishop
Harold Perry of New Orleans,
Bishop Joseph Durick of
Nashville and Bishop Bernardin.