RJN: MLK Today

Diverse ways of thinking about Martin Luther King Jr. and the ways in which his day is observed are discussed by Andrew Busch , professor of government at Claremont McKenna, over on National Review Online . Prof. Busch makes a sharp distinction between the “early” King and the “late” King. Of course, MLK was only thirty-nine years old when he was killed. Had he lived, he would have been seventy-six this January 15.

Busch suggests that the early King should be honored for (1) his affirmation of the ideals of the American constitutional order; (2) his commitment to a non-relativistic understanding of moral truth; and (3) his thoroughly American way of combining religious conviction and public advocacy. He deplores the later King’s advocacy of, among other things, affirmative action, identity politics, and opposition to U.S. policy in Southeast Asia. Busch’s evaluation will likely ring true for many conservatives who are ambivalent about MLK and the national holiday in his honor.

The glory years, so to speak, of King’s leadership were from the Montgomery bus boycott of 1956 to the 1965 rise of “black power” as a direct challenge to him and his philosophy. In addition, he never got over the debacle of the effort to extend “the movement” to the urban North. The futile 1966 confrontations in Chicago were the result of overt racism, the craftiness of Richard Daley the Elder’s political organization, and, above all, the lack of a coherent goal and plan of action on the part of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and its Chicago allies.

While I marched with him during the glory years, I had the opportunity of working more closely with Dr. King during the last three years before his death on April 4, 1968. See here and here for my reflections on that experience in the pages of First Things . The word prophetic is much debased by overuse in discussions of leadership, but I do believe that, despite all, King played a prophetic role in addressing what in the 1940s Gunnar Myrdal called “the American dilemma” of race relations.

Dr. King’s witness and some of his writings, notably A Letter from Birmingham Jail , are deservedly enshrined in the telling of the American story. In the rituals of that story, it is meet, right, and salutary that we observe this day with gratitude for Martin Luther King Jr.