By Hal E. Runkel, LMFT

A week ago America celebrated the 78th birthday of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Along with the familiar celebrations, such as the annual memorial at King’s Ebenezer Baptist church, was the much anticipated first public viewing of the King personal papers. The Atlanta History Center began a five-month showing of these notes, journals, letters, and sermons that provide a revealing entrée into the mind, heart, and soul of a man who changed all our lives.

Yesterday I had the distinct honor of touring those papers with my wife and two children. It is a beautifully done exhibit, with video and audio selections that perfectly augment the pages of personal jots and writings of Dr. King, often found in his own script. Here you see his personal conviction, his private pain, and his public influence on display.

In tribute to the man and his legacy that is still saving the world, I’ve decided to print here a few of the quotes revealed in these private works, along with some of the other famous words of Dr. King. It is my hope that the further revelation of these thoughts and words will only serve to promote his nonviolent program for peace and equality.

“After one has discovered what he is called for he should set out to do it with all of the power he has in his system, do it as if God Almighty ordained you in this particular moment in history to do it.”

As a 25 year old auditioning for a preaching job in Montgomery, Alabama, Dr. King spoke these words. Well, he got the job, but little did he know that the church was not the only job God was calling him to there in Montgomery. It was one year later that Rosa Parks refused to move, and then Dr. King began to see just how important his ordination in history would become.

“Nonviolence is the answer to the crucial political and moral questions of our time; the need for mankind to overcome oppression and violence without resorting to oppression and violence. Mankind must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression and retaliation. The foundation of such a method is love.”
One of the misunderstandings about a nonviolent approach is that such a stance implies weakness, or inaction. This was the confusion about Jesus’ admonition to turn the other cheek, Gandhi’s nonviolent protests in South Africa and India, and Dr. King’s civil disobedience program here in America. All could come across as promotion of weakness, of laying yourself down and letting others beat you down further. To refuse to retaliate could only be the work of cowards.

I actually get asked similar questions all the time about my ScreamFree approach to parenting: “How can you just sit there calmly when your kid misbehaves? They need to know you mean business! They need you to be a strong parent!”

The truth is that I agree with all of that wholeheartedly. And so did Jesus. And Gandhi. And Dr. King. People do need to know that you mean business and should be considered a strong force. A principled commitment to nonviolence and nonreactivity is not a weak stance formed in passivity. It is instead a very active, very passionate response to the conflict at hand. Gandhi was absolutely furious when 1500 men, women, and children were gunned down by British troops for having a peaceful gathering. Dr. King was absolutely full of a passionate desire to fight social injustice. And I know that each of you has a burning desire to change the misdeeds of your children, and revolutionize your relationships with them. But such passion has to be disciplined, has to be contained and directed in order to have the actual effect you seek. Fire without boundaries is an out-of-control disaster, while that same fire contained and directed fuels the world.

"As usual, Coretta was calm and sweet, encouraging me at every point. God blessed me with a great and wonderful wife. ... How do you explain to a little child why you have to go to jail? Coretta has developed an answer. She tells them that daddy has gone to jail to help the people."

The personal threats and sacrifices the King family endured astound me. This quote is about his going to jail, buy Dr. King and his wife had to develop answers about even worse case scenarios. What characterized all these answers was calm.

One night during the Montgomery bus boycott, for instance, Dr. King received a late phone call just as he was dozing off to sleep. All he heard on the other line was violence. Namecalling, threats to his family, you name it. He got up, he recalled, paced the floor, and eventually warmed a pot of coffee. There he confessed to God that he could not see himself continuing his fight. He felt “all of [his] fears coming down upon him”, and he just knew it was time to give up. With his head in his hands, he recalls suddenly feeling a divine presence like never before, as if God were sitting right next to him, promising that Dr. King was not alone in this fight, and he never would be.

A couple of nights later, when the threats of violence were made a reality and his house was bombed, crowds came forth with outrage, demanding immediate retaliation. Dr. King responded with a newfound calm, instructing the crowds to go home, be with their families, and further their cause the next day by continuing the nonviolent boycott.

I shudder to imagine the challenges of pursuing a calling that could lead to arrests, endanger my family, and eventually get me assassinated. Yes, I’ll risk my financial future in order to start a business that hopefully changes relationships throughout the world. But that is embarrassingly minor compared to Dr. King’s calling. It must mean that he either didn’t care about himself or his family, or just the opposite— he cared so much for them that he had to risk everything in order to make possible a different reality, a different future for himself, his family, and all of us.

“The saving of our world from pending doom will come, not through the complacent adjustment of the conforming majority, but through the creative maladjustment of a nonconforming minority.”

I have often used Rosa Parks as an example of what it means to be a true revolutionary, Her statement, “You do what you’re going to do, but this is what I’m going to do” is at the heart of nonconformity. A nonconformist is one who is not automatically swayed by the herd of popular opinion or practice. A nonconformist is also one who does not need a herd’s support in order to move in her own direction, a direction that she believes is the right way to go. That’s what Rosa Parks bravely embodied. That the revolution she started came from the weakest social position in the South at the time, that of a black woman, is even more testimony to the power of nonconformity.

Incidentally, this is how I believe that true reform within Fundamentalist Muslim countries will come about. It will be led by a small minority of oppressed Muslim women whose creative maladjustment will lead them to honor both the highest principles of Islam and the highest principles of human equality and justice. This certainly does not excuse any of us from doing what we can to speak out against injustice in those societies (as well as our own). But there is such a truth in Dr. King’s words here that it is worth hoping that such a small minority of intelligent, brave, and self-respecting women is beginning to awaken. And actually, it already is. Go read Reading Lolita in Tehran to see what I’m talking about.

“I think the greatest victory of the [Civil Rights] period was...something internal. The real victory was what this period did to the psyche of the black man. The greatness of this period was that we armed ourselves with dignity and self-respect. The greatness of this period was that we straightened our backs up. And a man can’t ride your back unless it’s bent.”

One of the hardest things I’ve ever had to deal with in my therapy/coaching practice is domestic violence. Once that line has been crossed, it is very, very difficult to ever repair the relationship. That doesn’t mean the relationship ends, mind you, for very often that violence actually sets in place a pattern that actually, miserably, holds a couple stuck together. And that’s what is so hard about working with domestic violence—seeing it as a pattern. See, it’s much easier to see it as simply the workings of an abusive jerk. He’s a monster, and as a therapist, it’s my job to work on his anger issues and get him to change.

Dr. King’s quote here reflects that the greatest change is not the change in the abuser’s behavior. The greatest change is in the victim’s newfound self- respect. If I work to “change” the abuser, then the victim would still feel just as helpless as before. She would just become dependent upon me to keep her husband in line. If she were to discover her own spine, however, then everything would change. “If you even look at me like you’re going to hit me, then I am leaving with the kids forever,” she would say. Most of the time, unless he were part of the small percentage of pure snakes who belong locked up, the abusive husband would respond in amazingly respectful ways to his newly upright wife. Then his apologies became genuine. Then he would come to me asking for help for himself.

During the height of Gandhi’s influence in India’s struggle for self-government, a British official once scoffed at him, saying, “Surely, you don’t just expect us to turn around and walk out of India!” The Mahatma’s reply: “Sir, when you see the error of your ways reflected in our refusal to comply, that is exactly what you will do.” And that's exactly what they did do.

So often we pray that God remove the burden from our backs, when the more effective prayer would be for a stronger back.

“Let us not wallow in the valley of despair, I say to you today, my friends. And so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream. I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: 'We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.'"

These words come from Dr. King’s most famous speech of all, the so-called “I Have a Dream” speech he delivered in the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom in 1963. It was here that he politically, religiously, philosophically, and above all, emotionally tied together 400 years of black struggle and American ideals into one idyllic dream. And it has become the most famous speech in American history.

And hopefully, it will someday be known as the most influential as well. Dr. King’s vision for our society is rooted in the highest principles ever espoused in human history. Like the brotherhood and equality of all humankind.

Touring the exhibit with my family yesterday, I caught a glimpse of hope that Dr. King’s dream may indeed be coming true. Looking at all the works, books, and photographs, my son quickly gravitated toward one picture in particular, a famous shot of Dr. King playing catch with one of his sons. Seeing this scene prompted him to proclaim, “Hey Dad—look at them throwing the baseball, just like us.”

“Just like us.” My boy wasn’t seeing color, he was seeing baseball. My boy wasn’t seeing race, he was just seeing a father and son.

Alas, the King is Dead. Long Live the King.

I owe a great debt to CNN for their work on the newly revealed King papers. Please go to this link to see their extensive, and worthy, work.