Was Martin Luther King a Communist?

This writer does not question that the late, great Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was deservedly one of the most monumental and pivotal figures of the 20th century. King's inspirational leadership, oratory, and profession of non-violence may have very well saved this nation from a race war. I am grateful that the Rev. Dr. King emerged as the most visible and influential leader of the civil rights movement as opposed to an advocate of violence such as Malcolm X or a radical communist.

No, the Rev. Dr. King was not a communist, however, he did business with communists and was influenced by them. While this is a delicate subject to broach, especially given the martyrdom and lionization of Dr. King to virtual sainthood status, the subject must nevertheless be broached for a better understanding of some of the darker forces that infiltrated and sabotaged an organically pro American, conservative, and Christian civil rights movement.

Martin Luther King surrounded himself with communists from the beginning of his career. The Southern Christian Leadership Conference, formed in 1957 and led by Dr. King, also had as its vice president Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth who was at the same time president of the Southern Conference Education Fund, an identified communist front according to the Legislative Committee on un-American Activities, Louisiana (Report April 13, 1964 pp. 31-38). The field director of SCEF was Carl Braden, a known communist agitator who also sponsored the Fair Play for Cuba Committee, which counted as a member Lee Harvey Oswald, the communist assassin of President Kennedy. Dr. King maintained correspondence with Carl Braden. Also on the board of SCLC was Bayard Rustin, a known communist.

In 1957, Dr. King addressed the Highlander Folk School in Monteagle, Tenn. which was originally called Commonwealth College until it was sited by the House Committee on un-American Activities as being a communist front (April 27, 1949). The committee found that Commonwealth, later the Highlander Folk School, was using religion as a way to infiltrate the African-American community by, among other techniques, comparing the texts of the New Testament to those of Karl Marx. Dr. King knew many of the known communists associated with the Highlander school.

In 1960, Dr. King hired Hunter Pitts O'Dell, a communist official to work at SCLC. According to the St. Louis Globe Democrat (Oct. 26, 1962) "A Communist has infiltrated the top administrative post in the Rev. Martin Luther King's SCLC. He is Jack H. O'Dell, acting executive director of conference activities in the southeastern states including Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana." Dr. King fired O'Dell when this information emerged but rehired him as head of the SCLC New York office.

Dr. King was praised by communists and promoted by fellow travelers. Communist official Benjamin J. Davis, in the Worker (Nov. 10, 1963) describes Dr. King as "a brilliant and practical leader who articulates the philosophy of the Negro people, for direct non-violent mass action." The Worker article goes on to describe Dr. King as "The foremost advocate of the solution of social problems through nonviolent methods of mass action."

In his own words, Martin Luther King expresses a communist outlook in his book "Stride Toward Freedom" He states that "in spite of the shortcomings of his analysis, Marx had raised some basic questions. I was deeply concerned from my early teen days about the gulf between superfluous wealth and abject poverty, and my reading of Marx made me even more conscious of this gulf. Although modern American capitalism has greatly reduced the gap through social reforms, there was still need for a better distribution of wealth. Moreover, Marx had revealed the danger of the profit motive as the sole basis of an economic system…"

It's strikes me as sad that Dr. King, the most influential leader of the civil rights movement wasn't an advocate of the capitalism that was already leading to such great economic strides amongst African-Americans in his day. By advocating a "better distribution of wealth" he meant state control over the economy. He sneered at "the profit motive" without explaining why African-Americans shouldn't seek to profit to the best of their ability. These ideas would later on open the floodgates to radical African-American leaders such as Stokley Carmichael, H. Rap Brown, the Black Panthers, and the burning and looting of African-American neighborhoods, the institutionalizing of welfare programs, the perpetuation of poverty, the destruction of the African-American family, drugs, violence, racism, and crime.

In "Stride Toward Freedom" Dr. King states that "In short, I read Marx as I read all of the influential historical thinkers – from a dialectical point of view, combining a partial yea and a partial no…My readings of Marx convinced me that truth is found neither in Marxism nor in traditional capitalism. Each represents a partial truth. Historically capitalism failed to see truth in collective enterprise and Marxism failed to see the truth in individual enterprise…The Kingdom of G-d is neither the thesis of individual enterprise nor the antithesis of collective enterprise, but a synthesis which reconciles the truths of both."

By stating that he views things "from a dialectical point of view" Dr. King is thinking like communists such as Marx, Lenin, or Stalin. The dialectic always and can only lead to authoritarianism. Man cannot, for example, be half free and half slave, either he is free or he is a slave. Dr. King's imperious stand toward his own people would stand in contrast to an advocacy of genuine freedom, the development of self-rule, self-sufficiency, private ownership, and the accumulation of capital resulting from achievement. Dr. King was not advocating the American system of free market capitalism. Instead, he stood for a system that has stunted the growth of African-Americans as well as the rest of us.

Much remains to be said regarding the communist infiltration of the civil rights movement as a whole. The communists sought to use African-Americans as cannon fodder in their revolution by stoking hatred and racial division. Much blood and suffering is on the hands of these communist agitators. The story of how the left-wing predominantly white establishment promoted communists in the African-American community as a means of continuing an informal system of oppression also cries out to be told.

Chaplin may, or may not, have been a party member but he the nearest closest thing: an outright apologist for Stalin.

King, by contrast, often criticized Communism *as a philosophy and as applied." Chaplin never did. In fact, King powerful anti-Communist quotation which I posted many, many, times here is a more effective indictment of the philosophical basis of Communism than any penned by most freepers.

Unfortunately, every time I post this quote (taken from original sources not secondary hatchet jobs), it is greeted with total silence by the King bashers. They don't even want to consider that they have misjudged the man.

As I have said many times, King had his flaws and politically went off the deep end in the late 1960s. The claim that he was a communist, however, is pure fantasy.

Horowitz a leftist? Is there anyone who is not part of the grand communist conspiracy, other than you, of course?

A leftist is not necessarily a communist. Sometimes it's difficult to tell however. Who would want to bet Pete Seeger isn't one?

As to fn 37, let me try again and frame the question another way. Have you read the Glen book and, if so, what is your response to his evidence that Highlander was not a Communist training school?

I don't normally run to Barnes & Noble to purchase a $25 book just to argue with someone who has an "obscure-professor" fetish. The Web is a better resource. For example, consider the testimony of a real leftist which I found at trumanlibrary.com. Here's what one-time US congressman (1949-1983) and a founder of the Americans for Democratic Action (ADA), Richard W. Bolling, had to say:

Well, for some reason, I've forgotten why, I guess the year between my graduation in '37 and the beginning of my masters, which was in English literature--I got my bachelor's in French literature and my masters in English--I went to a Quaker school, a Quaker camp, at a place called the Highlander Folk School. The Highlander Folk School was famous in those days for being dominated by the Stalinists. But there were also people like the Friends; the camp was a Friends camp at this school. I got exposed to all of that. I had a couple of people that are relatively well-known in Washington, one that was there, and we each remember the other as relatively sympathetic to their anti-Stalinist view. They were the ones that were most interested in the anti-Stalinist view. The guy I'm talking about is Adam Yarmalinsky, an intellectual with considerable potency.
JOHNSON: This Quaker school would be inherently anti-Stalinist, would it not, since they do not believe in dictatorship?
BOLLING: They didn't believe in it, but they were at the same school.
JOHNSON: They were at the same school--or on the same grounds?
BOLLING: No, they were there as guests of and paying their way at Highlander. In those days there was a large amount of infiltration into liberal groups that didn't know they were infiltrated.
[Emphasis added] http://www.trumanlibrary.org/oralhist/bolling.htm

Funny how terms like "dominated by the Stalinists" and "infiltration into liberal groups" and "communist-led" makes one wonder if there might just be just the slightest outside chance that the Highlander School was a "Communist training school" -- even, maybe, part of the "grand communist conspiracy?"

And, remember, I didn't say it. Two leftists did.

America's Fifth Column ... watch Steve Emerson/PBS documentary JIHAD! In America
New Link: Download 8 Mb zip file here (60 minute video)

Who is Steve Emerson?

"What would this tell us except that communists can sometimes do righteous things?"

Perhaps...

But supporting civil rights in America - wasn't a demonstration of their righteousness or "humanity", it was a wedge issue they attempted to hammer into a schism in America....

"Civil Rights" and HUMAN RIGHTS were unknown in much of the good ole "Soviet Union" of the big guy -- Joseph Stalin....

One can apply lipstick on a pig -- but on Communist pigs - it doesn't make them anything but a silly looking pig.

Even a broken clock - is correct twice a day...
The Communists couldn't even come close to matching that standard.

Semper Fi

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