Lerone Martin on MLK - by Kristin Du Mez
I spent the day on campus today to attend Lerone Martin’s MLK Day lecture, “Soul Force: The Challenge of Martin Lulther King.” It was such an excellent talk that I wanted to share it with you as well.
You can access it here (and also receive access to the rest of the January Series lectures, if you’d like).
If the name Lerone Martin sounds familiar, it may be because I’ve written about his book The Gospel of J. Edgar Hoover here recently. The FBI did come up in passing in today’s talk, but the focus was on what motivated MLK—particularly his religious faith, and his commitment to seeing the imago dei in others.
Lerone is the director of the Martin Luther King Jr. Research and Education Institute at Stanford University and is currently working on a book on King, and in today’s talk, Lerone brought to light not just King’s anti-racism, but also his campaigns against poverty and militarism. The talk was both informative and inspiring. What I especially loved was how he articulated the process behind King’s nonviolent campaigns.
Civil Rights activists didn’t just decide on a whim to protest or engage in disruptive behavior. They were disciplined. They gathered the facts around any sitution first, and spent time educating participants about those facts. Then, they spent time in negotiation. Protest wasn’t their first line of attack. They talked to the people they needed to change, no matter how disrepsectful or resistant they might appear to be. Sometimes, the conversations worked. If not, they moved to the next step. But this, too, wasn’t protesting. Instead, they underwent “self purification,” preparing themselves spiritually and emotionally to engage nonviolently. Only then did they take the step to direct action. Even then, that wasn’t the end. The final step was reconciliation.
It strikes me that much of this process has been lost among activists and reformers today, perhaps particularly the work of negotiation, self-purification, and reconciliation. I wonder what it might look like to have these steps reinserted in our campaigns for social change.
I’ll be taking this thought with me, and I’d urge you to listen for yourself, and consider what might be gleaned from remembering the lessons of MLK in our present moment.
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