“Nonviolent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and foster such a tension that a community which has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue. It seeks so to dramatize the issue that it can no longer be ignored. My citing the creation of tension as part of the work of the nonviolent resister may sound rather shocking. But I must confess that I am not afraid of the word ‘tension.’ I have earnestly opposed violent tension, but there is a type of constructive, nonviolent tension which is necessary for growth. Just as Socrates felt that it was necessary to create a tension in the mind so that individuals could rise from the bondage of myths and half truths to the unfettered realm of creative analysis and objective appraisal, so must we see the need for nonviolent gadflies to create the kind of tension in society that will help men rise from the dark depths of prejudice and racism to the majestic heights of understanding and brotherhood.”
So said Dr. King in his Letter from Birmingham Jail.
This letter would be important to remember when the Financial Elite and corporate America try to convince us that Dr. King was just a dreamer.
Dr. King had studied Gandhi at Boston University’s School of Theology. He had thought about Black empowerment and liberation practically all his life starting in church at the Auburn Ave. Baptist Church in Atlanta.
Dr. King had a very sophisticated and well thought understanding and strategy of nonviolent direct action.
By the time of the Birmingham Movement Dr. King was the established leader of the Civil Rights Movement. And he was a movement veteran still as a young man. He was a brilliant tactician and strategist, thinker, a charismatic and courageous leader and negotiator.
And Dr. King was a tireless warrior chief of justice and love.
No, Dr. King was not just a dreamer. He was probably the most brilliant and successful freedom fighter in American history, our best practitioner of political and social jiu-jitsu using the words and stated values of American history and American myth as a political weapon against the oppressors who valued those words and stated values and history more than any other.
That is the brilliance of the Birmingham letter. As he so often did, he went right at the hearts and the souls with the teachings those clergy claimed to hold so dear.
Don’t disgrace Dr. King with the label Dreamer.
Photo source: Matt Lemmon on Flickr (CC BY-SA 2.0)