Martin Luther King and Communism

"During the Christmas holidays of 1949 I decided to spend my spare time reading Karl Marx to try to understand the appeal of communism for many people. For the first time I carefully scrutinized *Das Kapital* and *The Communist Manifesto.* I also read some interpretive works on the thinking of Marx and Lenin. In reading such Communist writings I drew certain conclusions that have remained with me as convictions to this day. First, I rejected their materialistic interpretation of history. Communism, avowedly secularistic and materialistic, has no place for God. This I could never accept, for as a Christian, I believe that there is a creative personal power in the universe who is the ground and essence of all reality-a power that cannot be explained in materialistic terms. History is ultimately guided by spirit, not matter.

Second, I strongly disagreed with communism's ethical relativism. Since for the Communist there is no divine government, no absolute moral order, there are no fixed, immutable principles; consequently almost anything-force, violence murder, lying-is a justifiable means to the 'millennial' end. This type of relativism was abhorrent to me. Constructive ends can never give absolute moral justification to destructive means, because in the final analysis the end is pre- existent in the means.

Third, I opposed communism's political totalitarianism. In communism, the individual ends up in subjection to the state. True, the Marxists would argue that the state is an 'interim' reality which is to be eliminated when the classless society emerges; but the state is the end while it lasts, and man is only a means to that end. And if man's so-called rights and liberties stand in the way of that end, they are simply swept aside. His liberties of expression, his freedom to vote, his freedom to listen to what news he likes or to choose his books are all restricted. Man becomes hardly more, in communism, than a depersonalized cog in the turning wheel of the state.

This deprecation of individual freedom was objectionable to me. I am convinced now, as I was then, that man is an end because he is a child of God. Man is not made for the state; the state is made for man. To deprive man of freedom is to relegate him to the status of a thing, rather than elevate him to the status of a person. Man must never be treated as means to the end of the state; but always as an end within himself."

Martin Luther King Jr., *Stride Toward Freedom: The Montgomery Story* (New York: Harper and Row, 1957), 92-93

That's a famous Supreme Court case, whose name escapes me right now. It helped establish the "disparate impact" theory of discrimination. It is against the law to discriminate deliberately. It is also against the law to discriminate by accident -- that is, to have policies that negatively impact one group more than another. In that particular supreme court case, if I remember correctly, a factory required all its workers to have a high school diploma. The courts held that there was no relationship between a high school education and the ability to do some of the jobs at the factory, for instance, janitorial work. Without proof of such a relationship, the high school diploma requirement was discriminatory because some protected minority groups had more high school dropouts than the white population.

Yes, but did Charles Evers come from the left or the right? He ran prostitutes back then, remains unrepentant about that, so he won't bear much referencing to.

Alveda King did have a minor role as a youngster swept up in the events: 'During the years of the Civil Rights Movement, led by her Uncle, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Alveda's family home was bombed in Birmingham, Alabama. During the heat of the struggle. "Daddy's house was bombed, then in Louisville, Kentucky his church office was bombed. I was also jailed during the open housing movement," she recalls.'

But again, she probably didn't join the Republican party back then.

Thanks for these two references though - I'd never heard of either before.

My specific response:

(1) King had to publicly reject Communism in 1957. Too many people associated with his movement were out-and-out Reds. In order to avoid trouble he made these statements.

I will add that in 1959 Fidel Castro made similar statements himself - and we know how that turned out.

(2) If King really despised Communism for its "moral relativism" why did he continue to associate with Communists like Bayard Rustin?

There are only three possible reasons: (a) He was a Communist posing as a non-Communist; (b) he was too stupid to realize that Rustin was a vocal Communist (doubtful) or (c) he was willing to use Communists to help in his movement while ignoring the fact that they were fighting against everything he claimed to believe in. If the latter were the case, then he stands as a proponent of the same moral relativism that he accused the Communists of practicing.

(3) The "Poor People's Movement" in its rhetoric and in its platform was identical with Bolshevik ideology.

(4) He talks about the divine order and God - but his sermons and speeches are famously devoid of any supernatural content - in all of King's work the Kingdom of God is here and now and is found in the form of creature comforts and political power. The supernatural is nonexistent for King except as a source of rhetorical fuel for his extremely secular fire.

Out and out Reds in King's movement? The only one I know is Levinson, who was a confirmed commie at the time and remained one. The rest is pure innuendo.

If Castro ever denounced the philosophical and applied basis of even theoretical communism is even close to the enthusiastic and thoughtful terms as King did, I would be curious to see your reference.

If King was a commie before 1956, he was certainly a strange one. He endorsed Ike in 1956 and often praised Vice President Nixon's civil rights record, two actions very much contrary the party line. I can provide the references if you wish.

King specifically and at length denied that he was a social gospelite in Stride for Freedom. He specifically criticized the Social Gospel overemphasis on worldly things and its view that society could be perfected.

Read the Collected Writings of King and you will find many sermons which stress the importance of spirituality. As Baptists go, King was something of a moderate doctrinally....but not a securalist or quasi-Unitarian. One of his most famous sermons, which discussed the dangers of avoiding churches which either "burn up" or "freeze up," stressed the need for churches to maintain spirituality while at the same tackling have application to the lives of parishioners.

Abernathy, even after he endorsed and campaigned for Reagan in 1980 and exposed King's affairs, always rejected the charge that King had been a commie. By endorsing Reagan, and discussing King's sexual habits, btw, Abernathy had been disowned by the civil rights establishment, and thus no incentive to cover up for King.

Charles Evers, who knew King well, has also rejected the Commie charge. King's niece Alveda, disowned by the family because of her support for vouchers, criticism of gays, and support for Bush, also defends her uncle on this issue. The same is true (I believe) with James Meredith who even endorsed David Duke and thus would have no reason to cover for King. Can you name *anyone* associated with King who now claims he was a commie?

Bayard Rustin had been a commie (so was Eugene Genovese and, so I remember, Irving Kristol) but had long since broken with the party and denounced it on many....many occasions. Long before he died, Rustin had become a died-in-the wool social Democrat. Hence, Rustin was closely associated with Norman Thomas, a social democrat who zealously avoided communist connections. I wouldn't call the Poor People's Movement "Bolshevik" but it was certainly a crazy, leftist, and extreme movement of moochers. Having said that, it was near the end of King's career. It was also during the late 1960s when a lot of otherwise sane people went crazy. King was a very different man in 1967 than he had been in 1957 or 1963.

Bayard Rustin had been a member of the CP in the 1930s but quit shortly after the Berlin/Moscow pact. He was a consistent critic of the Soviet Union after that.

Though he was a social democrat with pacifist inclinations, he was started to work closely with neo-cons in the 1970s. He condemned the PLO as terrorists, organized public campaigns against Soviet persecution of the Jews, spoke out against the Soviet Union's use of Cuban troops in Africa, and became a spokesman for the anti-Communist Freedom House which supported the view "that no matter the alternative was, Soviet domination could be worse." Daniel Levine, Bayard Rustin and the Civil Rights Movement (Rutgers University Press, 2000), 20, 237.

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