How important was Martin Luther King in the fight for Civil Rights?

Protest Organiser, 1955-1963

In 1954 King was the young Baptist minister of a ‘rich folks’ church’ in Montgomery, Alabama. His vision was to follow that of the Indian Mahatma Gandhi, who advocated a non-violent campaign of passive resistance against British rule in India in the 1940s. He first came to public notice in 1955 when – as leader of the Montgomery Bus Boycott – his house was bombed, but he declared: ‘We must meet violence with non-violence’.

It is arguable that King was initially a failure. He faced opposition on every side. Black extremists accused him of being the white man’s lackey, white people claimed that he was advocating anarchy, and NAACP leader Roy Wilkins accused him of pride. The early successes of the Civil Rights Movement were achieved by CORE, the SNCC and the NAACP, and where King did intervene – as in Albany – he was often less than successful.

By 1963, however, King had learned his lessons. He had developed the tactics of ‘mass protests’, ‘civil disobedience’ and ‘direct action’. Albany taught him the importance of unity, and of a clear single goal. He also realised that it was useless negotiating with the white authorities.

In 1963 – after his successes at Birmingham and the Washington Freedom March – King was at the height of his influence, and in 1964 he won the Nobel Peace Prize for his fight against racial discrimination.

However, he had little in common with the radical black movements that grew up after 1966 – and by 1968, when he was assassinated, King had come to believe that he had failed and that ‘the day of violence is here’.

In 1983, the third Monday in January was made a national holiday: ‘Martin Luther King Day’.

The Civil Rights Act, 1964

Partly as a result of their respect for Martin Luther King, President Kennedy and his brother Robert became committed to Civil Rights. As Attorney General, Robert Kennedy was in the forefront of the action.

• In 1962, the government introduced an Act to reduce discrimination in housing.
• Also in 1962, Robert Kennedy sent 500 Federal Marshals to help James Meredith, a black student, enrol at the University of Mississippi.
• In 1963, Federal Marshals forced Alabama Governor George Wallace to desegregate the University of Alabama.

Finally, the Kennedys introduced the Civil Rights Bill, which became law after President Kennedy’s assassination.

The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was part of the new President Johnson’s ‘Great Society’ programme, designed to bring ‘an end to poverty and injustice’. The Act outlawed racial segregation in schools, public places and employment, and set up an Equal Opportunities Commission to enforce this. Johnson directed funding to those states which made fastest progress on desegregation, which encouraged states to work harder.

In 1964, after the murder of two young Civil Rights workers, Johnson ordered the FBI to hunt down the killers – leading to the arrest of 19 KKK men, including a sheriff and deputy. Next year, Johnson passed the Voting Rights Act (1965), which disallowed literacy tests and other tricks by which whites had stopped blacks registering to vote – now every person had a vote, as of right. In 1965, an Education Act provided funding for public schools; black students gained significantly, and the number of black pupils leaving with high school diplomas increased.

Affirmative Action

Johnson’s vision went further than simply civil equality, however. As early as 1962, James Farmer had recommended what he called ‘Compulsory Preferential Treatment’ – giving black people extra help to allow them to compete with more advantaged whites. Johnson adopted this idea, calling it: ‘affirmative action’. A Higher Education Act (1965) gave aid to black colleges. In 1968, the ‘Fair Housing Act’ banned discrimination in housing, and was designed to allow black Americans, if they wished, to move into areas where white Americans lived.

But President Johnson’s ‘Great Society’ programme was overtaken by the Vietnam War, because the government did not have the money to embark upon ambitious social reform. By 1967, average black income had risen, but only to 62% of the average white income. And by this time, black politics had radicalised, leading to the riots of 1964-68.

King and Black Power

After the Watts riots of 1965, King visited the area and was horrified at the ‘economic deprivation, social isolation, inadequate housing, and general despair’. In 1966, he went to live in the ghettoes of Chicago, to see how he might help.

King was not particularly successful in Chicago. He quarrelled with the Mayor, and he was not well-liked by the local black people. In the hot summer, the ‘Fire Hydrant Riots’ broke out (caused when police shut down a fire hydrant black youths had been playing in). The Mayor blamed King for the riots.

In 1966, King joined an SNCC march in Memphis (the ‘Meredith March’, because it was held in support of James Meredith, who had intended to do the march on his own, but had been shot and wounded on the second day). It was not a happy event. He argued with Stokely Carmichael (the new SNCC leader) about whether the march should be blacks-only. On the march, SNCC members sang: ‘Oh what fun it is to blast / a trooper man away’, and Carmichael used it as a platform to preach ‘black power’.

King had little in common with the new ‘black power’ leaders, most of whom despised him personally. He did not like talk of black power because he feared it would frighten his white supporters and provoke racial conflict. He said that he wanted ‘striped power’, in which black and white would share equally. Most of all, he was horrified by their open advocacy of violent protest.

How successful was Martin Luther King?

Despite his differences with the Black Power leaders, towards the end of his life, King realised that – now that desegregation and voting legislation was in place – what was needed was social action. The Civil Rights Movement had secured legal equality, but – as one writer puts it – this only gave black Americans: ‘an opportunity not a deliverance’.

In his book Where Do We Go From Here? (1967), King took up the idea of affirmative action. Giving black Americans the vote had cost white America nothing; now it was time for social and economic action.

A part of his new left-wing view of politics, in 1967, King began to speak out against the Vietnam War, declaring that it was immoral on social grounds: ‘It costs half a million dollars to kill a Vietcong soldier; but we are only spending $53 on every poor American back at home’, he said.

His assassination in 1968 cut short this stage in his career.