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Toward a Better World: Following the Way of Martin
Luther King
By Michael K. Honey
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6 hrs
Dr. King speaking during “phase one” of the civil rights movement at the 16th Street Baptist Church
in Birmingham, Alabama. (Joe Chapman)
Happy publication day to Citizen Schools founder Eric Schwarz! In THE OPPO
reducing inequality by pairing successful adults with low-income students. Fin
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Recently, I returned to my home town and found myself flipping through a fake “yearbook” students
assembled that asked students who they thought their peers wanted to be like. Someone wrote “to be like
Martin Luther King” for me. It’s true that I grew up as a follower of Dr. King, though I hadn’t realized how
obvious it must have been to others.
I grew up in the small town of Williamston, Michigan, where the only person “of color” I knew of was
Mexican American. While I wasn’t exposed to racial or ethnic diversity, I’m grateful to my parents who
taught me to be open minded, to treat others as I wished to be treated, to read and reflect—and, also, to
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pay attention. Like many others, I still vividly recall those images of vicious dogs and fire hoses turned on
black children in Birmingham, Alabama, and troopers on horseback, riding people down in Selma. I had spent
happy summers in Detroit, where my parents grew up, but not after the summer of 1967, when police
brutality set off an unbelievably turbulent inner-city rebellion that makes today’s revolt in Ferguson,
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Missouri look tame. Detroit had experienced a horrific white race riot in 1943 and most whites in the 1960s
still seemed terrified of black folks moving into their neighborhoods or taking their jobs.
To address the poverty of the inner cities like Detroit, in 1968 Dr. King started the Poor People’s Campaign.
He sought to take the poor to the nation’s capitol to demand that money for war be spent instead on jobs,
housing, health care, and education. As an Oakland University college student, I helped recruit a busload of
people to go to Washington DC. But King never made the journey: an assassin’s bullet cut him down. I will
never forget the despair my parents, Keith and Betty, and my brother, Charles, and sister, Maureen, felt at
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All of Dr. King’s early books, now published by Beacon Press, remain on our bookshelf. MLK helped to inspire
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Martin Luther King, Jr.’s death. My mother’s tearful comments echoed the title of his last book, Where Do
my participation in and support of the struggle for equality for all people, both as a teenager and for the
rest of my life. But he had another profound effect on me. In 1965, at age eighteen, I did what King urged
all young men to do: I became a conscientious objector against the Vietnam War and against all wars. I
began to understand that one could not hold on to ideals without also taking action. Several of my high
school classmates were drafted and at least one of them died in Vietnam; my best childhood friend also
went and later died from an illness caused by Agent Orange poisoning. King’s speech “Beyond Vietnam,”
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given on April 4, 1967, one year to the day before his death, clearly analyzed the deep immorality of this
war and the awful truth that America had become “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today.”
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I decided that I preferred to go to prison for resisting the draft and, again, Dr. King helped me understand
why. In my coming-of-age, one of the most shocking things to me was the cold militarism of most of my
fellow students who swallowed the lie that we had to fight Vietnamese peasants because they would
somehow show up, threatening our “way of life” here if we didn’t annihilate them. How could a young
person find his or her way forward when lies reigned, from the top of the federal government down to local
news media? King led the way for me, but I had another set of influences that helped set the record
straight. My Dad, raised as a Christian Science follower, and my mother, raised as a Catholic, both broke
June 2014
May 2014
April 2014
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February 2014
ranks and raised us as Unitarian Universalists.
January 2014
When I was drafted in 1969, I travelled to Boston’s Beacon Street and the Unitarian Service Committee,
December 2013
which sponsored me to do alternative service to the draft. My college professor Henry Rosemont, a Korean
War veteran, and my World War II veteran father backed me up before the draft board, and in 1970 I went
down South to do two years of alternative service to the military, sponsored by the Unitarian Universalist
Association. Not for two years, but for the next six, I worked at poverty wages in the southern peace and
freedom movement in what today we call the “post civil rights era.” Of course, there was nothing “post”
about it: we fought the same difficult struggles for equality, as well as the Nixon administration’s illegal
wiretapping, breaking and entering, dirty tricks, and police murders coordinated by the FBI against Black
Panther Party members and others.
During all that time—and still today—I have kept The Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s teachings in the
forefront of my mind: an injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere; the arc of the moral universe
is long but it bends toward justice; an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth leaves everybody toothless
CAT EG ORI ES
A City So Grand A Disability History of the United
States A Gift of Love A History of Religion in 5 ½
Objects A House for Hope A Queer and Pleasant
Danger A Queer History of the United States A Time
to Break Silence A Twist of Faith Aaron BobrowStrain
Activism
Acts of Faith Adam Wolfberg
Adele Barker Alan Michael Collinge Alexis Rizzuto
Alfie Kohn All Labor Has Dignity All Souls American
and blind; the best thing to make out of an enemy is a friend; justice and peace are indivisible. But only
Plastic American Privacy
when I went to graduate school (at Howard University and then Northern Illinois University) to research
Society
African-American and labor history did I truly learn the full scope of King’s teachings. This research led me
back to Memphis, Tennessee, where I had worked for six years as a civil liberties and community organizer.
American
Amie Klempnauer Miller Among
Chimpanzees Amy Alexander Amy Frykholm Amy
Seidl An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United
I have since published five books of labor and civil rights history. One of the
States Andrea Ritchie Anita Hill Ann Pellegrini
most rewarding is an edited collection of Dr. King’s Labor speeches, published
Anne K. Ream Are We Born Racist? Arms Wide
by Beacon Press in The King Legacy series: “All Labor Has Dignity”. Along
Open Arthur Waskow Aviva Chomsky Ayesha Mattu
with my introduction, it provides, chapter and verse, Dr. King’s message on
Back to Normal Banned in Boston Barron H. Lerner
economic justice. Speaking to union members all across this country from
Beacon Press News Before They're Gone Being
1957 to 1968, MLK asked us to move from civil rights, “phase one” of the
freedom struggle, to what he called “economic equality,” or “phase two.”
Reading these speeches forces us to reconsider what we think we know
about King, and to see anew how the struggles he led then so crucially
relate to our times now.
Both Beth Whitehouse Beyond (Straight and Gay)
Marriage Big-Box Swindle Bill Ayers Bill Fletcher, Jr.
Biocidal Biography and Memoir Blue Revolution
Bob Kosturko Brad Tyer Brokers of Deceit Bruce
Rich Cabin Fever Carl Elliott Carlos Ball Carol
Dr. King warned the AFL-CIO in 1961 that the reactionary right in coalition
Corbett Burris Carole Joffe Catherine Reid Charles
with big business would stop at nothing to turn back the clock on both the
Euchner Cheating Justice Chris Emdin Chris Finan
labor movement and the civil rights movement. In a speech called “All Labor
Chris Mercogliano Chris Stedman Chris Walton
Has Dignity,” given in Memphis in 1968, King told striking sanitation
Christine Byl Christopher M. Finan Chuck Collins
workers: you “are reminding not only Memphis, but you are reminding the nation that it is a crime for people
Claire Conner Closing the Food Gap Come Out and
to live in this rich nation and receive starvation wages.” Dr. King also told activists at the Highlander Center
in 1957, “I never intend to adjust myself to the tragic inequalities of an economic system which takes
necessities from the masses to give luxuries to the classes. I never intend to become adjusted to the
madness of militarism and the self-defeating method of physical violence.”
Win Cornel West Courting Equality Courtney E.
Martin Cynthia Barnett Cynthia Cooper Dan
McKanan Dana Sachs Daniel Barks Danielle Ofri
Danya Ruttenberg Dark Tide Dating Jesus David
Just so: if these themes sound familiar, it is because we are still fighting these battles over systemic
Bacon David Chura David D. Burstein David
economic and social injustice. If you follow the way of King long enough, you will find that it becomes a
Gessner David L. Hudson Jr. David Plante David R.
way of life. It is a way of life of which we can be proud. If Dr. King were alive today, he would tell us to
Dow David W. Moore Deborah Jiang Stein Defiant
stand up for your rights, stand up for dignity, stand up for peace, stand up for the poor and the working
Brides Devon Carbado Dirt Work Dispatches from
class. As he said at Highlander, “I call upon you to be maladjusted. Well, you see, it may be that the
the Abortion Wars Divided We Fail Do it Anyway
salvation of the world lies in the hands of the maladjusted.” Don’t give in or give up. And don’t forget to
Doctors of Conscience Donald Weise Dosed Eboo
read Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s writings from Beacon Press: they can help us to light our way to a better
Patel Educational Courage Elinor Lipman Elizabeth
world.
Holtzman Enrico Gnaulati
Conservation
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Environment and
Eric Mann Eric Schwarz Erika
Janik Ethical Chic Etta Kralovec Eva Saulitis
Michael K. Honey is the editor of “All Labor Has Dignity”. A former Southern civil rights and
Executed on a Technicality Faitheist Falling Into
civil liberties organizer, he is professor of labor ethnic and gender studies and American
Place Family Pride Fanpire Fast Future Feel-Bad
history, and the Haley Professor of Humanities, at the University of Washington-Tacoma.
Education
The author of five books on labor and civil rights history, including Going Down Jericho
Fiction, Literature, and the Arts Finding Higher
Road: The Memphis Strike, Martin Luther King's Last Campaign, he lives in Tacoma.
Ground Fist Stick Knife Gun Flashback Food
Rebels, Guerrilla Gardeners, and Smart-Cookin’
Feminism, Gender, and Sexuality
Mamas For All of Us, One Today Fragile Beginnings
Fran Hawthorne Frances Fox Piven Fred Pearce
Posted by Beacon Broadside on August 29, 2014 at 11:10 AM in A Time to Break Silence, All Labor Has Dignity,
Martin Luther King, Jr., Michael Honey, Race and Ethnicity in America, The King Legacy, Where Do We Go From
Here? | Permalink
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