Tag Archives: Martin Luther King

Spiritual Depth of Martin Luther King

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Holidays have a way of taming and diluting the real importance of the legacies and events they are meant to commemorate. This tendency is particularly true of today’s holiday celebrating the legacy of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. These efforts reflect some discomfort with the true level of sacrifice and commitment involved in fighting for freedom. Resisting this tendency requires some real thinking and soul-searching.

Sometimes, a very good author helps us regain some needed perspective on what matters. Fortunately, a few months ago, Jonathan Eig issued a new, deeply researched biography of King that helps us understand better not only what King did in his short life, but why he did it and what forces made him who he was. Admirably, Eig does not shy away from any of the ugly difficulties that kept King in danger throughout a 13-year ministry that began in 1955 at Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama. The son of Martin Luther King, Sr., who was then the pastor of Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, outgrew his father’s legacy but also benefited enormously from his father’s self-made path from the son of Georgia sharecroppers to a prominent leader in the Black churches of the South.

Over the past two weeks, I have been leading a discussion of this remarkable book—King: A Life—in the Adult Forum of Augustana Lutheran Church of Hyde Park, in Chicago. The participation has been lively, and people have taken turns reading passages that I thought were especially illuminating. There is not room in one blog post to cover all that territory, so I highly recommend reading the book, but I will make what I think are some salient points about the King legacy.

First, I think it is hard for many people today, especially whites, to imagine the level of intimidation that racist thugs, including but hardly limited to the Ku Klux Klan, used in the post-Reconstruction South to suppress the Black vote, Black rights, Black dignity, and thus any semblance of true democracy. Eig relates one instance of family history in 1910, in which King’s ten-year-old father, then named Michael, was kicked by a white mill owner and sent home bleeding. His mother demanded to know who did that, then marched back to attack the mill owner with her own fists when he admitted doing this to her son. But her husband had to flee when a white mob arrived at their home. Black men who fought back, Eig notes, could pay with their lives.

The father remained bitter and became alcoholic even after returning home. King Sr., however, distilled the lesson that faith in God was the way out of that trap. He gained an education at Spelman College while working as a coal shoveler for a railroad company and became a preacher, ending up at Ebenezer. Later, in a 1934 visit to Germany, he was inspired by the legacy of Martin Luther to adopt that name in place of his birth name of Michael, and changed his son’s name, forever attaching the family to the legacy of the German religious reformer. Eig notes:

“He really related to Martin Luther,” said Isaac Newton Farris Jr., King’s grandson. “He had that same fighting spirit in him.”

His son would need that fighting spirit once he became the de facto and then real leader of the bus boycott that followed the arrest of Rosa Parks on December 1, 1955, in Montgomery for refusing to give up her seat to a white passenger. Just four days later, King, at the invitation of other Black leaders in the city, gave a powerful speech to an overflow rally at the Holt Street Baptist Church that ignited the spirit of the Black community. It led thousands to spend the following year walking to work instead of riding the bus.

All that made King a huge target for an increasingly angry white community, or at least that large part of the white community that was resistant to justice. The White Citizens’ Council, which included police commissioner Clyde Sellers, claimed it grew from 800 members to nearly 14,000 as a result of the boycott. King was arrested and thrown in jail following a trivial traffic stop when he picked up Black passengers as part of an effort to provide rides for Black workers at designated carpool locations. Mayor Tacky Gayle had instructed police to tail and harass Black motorists who provided such rides. On January 30, 1956, while Coretta Scott King was hosting a friend at their home, they heard footsteps on the front porch, after which a bomb exploded, damaging the front of the house. King gave a speech that is remarkable for self-restraint while nonetheless demanding justice, instructing the crowd that assembled to “love your enemies” but also noting that he did not ask to lead the movement, but “if I am stopped this movement will not stop. If I am stopped, our work will not stop. For what we are doing is right, what we are doing is just. And God is with us.”

Reread those last five words, for I think they are key to what is often missing from people’s recollection of who King really was. How did he succeed in leading a successful nonviolent revolution for major social change in America? I think it is worth quoting a whole paragraph from Eig, in which he nails the point that is often missing from discussion of the King legacy, the fact that he was committed to a life of deep faith despite all his fears that his life could be cut short:

In years to come, journalists, historians, and biographers would speculate about what made King special, about what gave him the courage and vision to lead. Some observers have stressed the competitive nature of King’s relationship with his father. Other have focused on cultural factors, noting the guilt he felt about his middle-class upbringing and pointing out that he arrived in Montgomery when liberation battles were erupting in Africa and Asia and when radio and television made it possible for a brilliant young preacher to be seen and heard in millions of homes. But the Reverend James Lawson, one of King’s contemporaries, has argued that those interpretations miss an obvious and powerful explanation—that of King’s calling from God. “That was my case, that was King’s case,” Lawson said. “It’s not . . . boasting . . . it’s the deep-down-inside awareness that connects your life up with the life force of the universe, the God who created the heavens and the earth, to quote the Hebrew poets. So, anyone who has that kind of a calling, that’s something that profoundly alters their way of thinking and behavior.”

There is a great deal of depth and detail in Eig’s book. Last September, at the Harold Washington Public Library in Chicago, in a program co-sponsored by the Society of Midland Authors (Eig lives in Chicago), I had the pleasure of hearing Eig speak and relate how he got turned on to working on this biography. The very next day, I acquired the book at a local store. After a major surgery two weeks later, which I related in my January 1 blog post, I had ample recuperation time to tackle a long book. I immediately turned to this biography, plowing through it day after day in rapt fascination, thinking about how I would have faced the challenges in King’s life, which ultimately ended in his assassination at age 38 in Memphis in April of 1968, an event that triggered a wide range of reactions including, unfortunately, urban riots.

In those 13 years that followed his assignment, at age 25, as pastor at Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, he not only watched the world change, but helped change it. The bus boycott ended with an NAACP victory before the U.S. Supreme Court in Browder v. Gayle, which effectively outlawed segregation in intrastate transportation. Later, he would deliver the famous “I Have a Dream” speech at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., watch as President Lyndon Johnson signed major civil rights and voting rights legislation, march in the face of insults and brickbats for fair housing in Chicago, and support the garbage workers strike in Memphis that ended with his assassination. Profoundly aware of his own fears, flaws, and shortcomings, his faith nonetheless bolstered his courage and helped him refashion American democracy in a way that still enriches us today, even when we face new domestic threats to its preservation.

It is critical that we get in touch with the roots of that courage, so that we do not squander all that was won at such a high cost. It is critical that we believe that God meant us to be so much better.

Jim Schwab

FOBOTS

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Photo from Shutterstock

Over the past weekend, two legendary quarterbacks who may be outlasting their time in the spotlight went down to defeat with their teams. Neither Aaron Rodgers, of the Green Bay Packers, nor Tom Brady, recently with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, will be headed to the Super Bowl. At their current salary level and respective ages, there is also the question of whether they can find a National Football League team that wants to spend what is necessary to keep them on the field. If not, retirement may be involuntary for either or both.

Rodgers earned some well-deserved opprobrium when he dishonestly claimed to have been vaccinated, even though he was not, putting his team and others at risk because of his own arrogance. The NFL probably buttressed that arrogance with a modest penalty that was largely a slap on the wrist for a man with an eight-figure income. He has enjoyed a secondary stage hawking State Farm insurance, but for superstars, such ads are merely an auxiliary revenue stream. They can, however, last a lifetime. Just ask Joe Namath. For some, there is a new career in sports announcing, a legitimate second career for people like John Madden. Such alternatives require a different set of talents from sports itself, so not everyone can make the transition. Honorably, some athletes have used their celebrity power to advance charitable causes and social justice; LeBron James comes to mind. Endorsements, of course, require little more than lending one’s name to a product or project, a process commonly known as branding. But that does not always put one in the limelight, at least not directly.

That is the question I wish to raise here because the desire for attention is a matter of personal psychology. There is nothing inherently wrong with continuing in a position as long as one is capable. However, there are issues involving personal maturity and perspective that are worth exploring. For example, does your reluctance to step away from the limelight betray the lack of any larger focus in life than simply being the center of attention, or do you have a larger sense of purpose? Conversely, is your determination to remain on stage a function of narcissism or an oversized ego?

Merriam-Webster states that the earliest known use of the acronym FOMO—fear of missing out—dates to 2004. Merriam-Webster defines FOMO as “fear of missing out: fear of not being included in something.” Because I jokingly refer to myself as a “compulsive extrovert,” I can relate somewhat to the idea, which long ago went viral, but emotional and professional maturity must at some point prevail. One cannot be everywhere, and priorities are essential. We can all stop and ask ourselves why something matters. In many if not most cases, we must also ask whether it matters.

I propose that we apply the same logic to what I will now label FOBOTS: the fear of being off the stage. As Merriam-Webster’s definition states, FOMO simply relates to a desire to be included. FOBOTS is about being the center of attention. Much more ego is involved. The maturity equation here is different and far larger. The question is whether the person in the limelight is hogging (or hugging) it because of a deep need to feel important, or has some larger purpose for which he or she is uniquely suited. In the latter category, I would suggest that, while Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was frequently in the limelight, it was not often complimentary in his day, he suffered a good deal of withering criticism for taking principled positions on hugely significant issues of human rights, and he was clearly more interested in moving the agenda on civil rights than in self-glorification. He also left behind a very strong bench of independent thinkers in the civil rights movement who have continued to carry the banner long after he was assassinated. Moreover, he was still very young (39) and capable when the assassination occurred. He knew it was a possibility because of the racial hatred and violence that still exists in the United States of America, but there is no evidence that it is the outcome he wanted. No one with his skills and vision wants to be murdered. Such people do want the satisfaction of moving the moral arc of the universe, to use the biblical metaphor. To care about that, they must care about others.

So, who really suffers from FOBOTS? Certainly, plenty of politicians. The sickness today is clearly rampant because the former president, refusing to concede loss in the 2020 election despite an absolute dearth of evidence of voter fraud, cannot abide departing the stage, even when he is harming the prospects of his own Republican party by supporting primary candidates whose agenda is to help Trump exact revenge on his perceived enemies and those who refused to participate in his scheme to overturn the election. In contrast, former President George W. Bush, having served his two terms, virtually disappeared from the public stage and launched a new avocation as a portrait painter. His father, President George H.W. Bush, willingly departed the White House to allow a peaceful transfer of power to President Bill Clinton. And most notably, President Jimmy Carter, who lost re-election to Ronald Reagan, has used his post-presidency to advance a variety of humanitarian causes in a dignified manner consistent with his own Christian principles.

With Trump, however, we have the spectacle of a defeated president who refuses to concede and refuses to honor the results, and simply manufactures false accusations by the wagon load to justify his position. What is best for the country matters little; it is the loss of the limelight, the fear of being off the stage, that dominates his psyche, which was shaped by early successes in life in being able to garner public and media attention as a glamorous son-of-wealth businessman and reality television star. Sorry, Trump followers, there is nothing more there. This is not about your welfare or any agenda that benefits anyone other than Trump himself. It never has been.

If the damage were limited, however, to a continued presence of Trump in the political quarrels of the day, that would be one thing. But the sickness runs deep enough, and the mass paranoia wide enough, to allow him to intimidate hundreds of other Republican politicians who also suffer FOBOTS. The fear of being primaried by a Trump wannabe is so pervasive that almost an entire generation of Republican leadership has lost its moral stature to the point of fearing losing their own smaller stages—as Senators, U.S. Representatives, governors, and now even as Secretary of State in swing states. Only a handful of Republican leaders, notably including Reps. Liz Cheney of Wyoming and Adam Kinzinger of Illinois—are willing to defy him and seek to build the badly needed new leadership that can guide the Republican party out of its moral wilderness. Notably, Kinzinger, while choosing not to run again this year, is launching a new organization to fight what he considers right-wing extremism in the Republican party.

The underlying question of FOBOTS is the emotional intelligence and maturity it takes to realize when it is time to make room for others who can follow in your wake. This requires having had some sense of a larger professional and moral purpose in life. To avoid FOBOTS, it is necessary to think through, in both moral and practical terms, what legacy you wish to leave behind. For many people around the world, that vision is focused on family, on creating opportunities for children, modest goals that do not require oversized egos, and those people should be admired. For the rare few, at various levels of public attention, the public stage is an opportunity to advance a good cause, to elevate humanity, to make life better for others who follow. FOBOTS is an indicator of narcissistic personality disorder.

There is nothing wrong with being in the public spotlight. I have occasionally enjoyed being there myself. But the question always remains: Why are you there, and what larger positive purpose will your presence serve? If you cannot answer that question with honesty and integrity, it may be time to find the exit. Use your time in the shadows to search your soul.

 

Jim Schwab

Weep for America, but Build Leadership

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I weep for my neighborhood. I weep for Chicago.

I weep for the state of criminal justice in America when a police officer, hand in his pocket, a look of utter indifference on his face, feels the sense of impunity that empowers him to kneel on a black man’s neck in broad daylight for more than eight minutes until he dies.

I cheer for America’s resilient sense of justice when bystanders train their cell phone cameras on this officer and refuse to back down in documenting injustice while they plead for the man’s life.

These mixed feelings have haunted me for more than a week now, as events have evolved across the nation. I am glad that the state of Minnesota has arrested and charged officer Derek Chauvin for murder, not out of a desire for revenge but because justice demands it. The sense of impunity that allowed him to ignore bystanders’ pleas to remove his knee from George Floyd’s neck must be the first casualty in this crisis. Serious police department reform is a necessity. As I write this, Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison has announced that the other three officers at the scene have been charged with aiding and abetting the crime.

But America also faces some serious lessons in civic leadership, from top to bottom. At the White House, for at least a few more months, we are stuck with a president who, facing the second major crisis of his final year in office after failing to prepare for or respond effectively to a pandemic, now is fanning the flames of hatred while throwing matches on the fire. Emerging from his protective bunker in the White House, he used National Park Service police to clear his path of peaceful protesters for the mere purpose of standing in front of St. John’s Episcopal Church, without invitation or permission to use it as a camera prop, to hold a Bible high while threatening violence against protesters and insulting the governors and mayors who have done the real hard work to bring calm to their communities. It is thankless work, lie-awake-at-night work, very unlike the simple-minded task of tweeting empty threats to violate the Constitution. Most presidents, while asserting their proper authority, have sought to unite the country. Trump prefers to drive a wedge with the help of a Bible he does not understand and seldom if ever reads.

Amidst this dearth of national leadership, there is a shortage of leadership on the streets that reflects both deep anger and a failure of our society to create a sense that everyone has a stake in the success and prosperity of our communities. And, to be sure, there are criminal elements that are only too happy to take advantage of these gaps in equity and leadership. That is where we find ourselves now, today, this week, this summer, this year, while still seeking to recover economically, medically, and emotionally from the toll of a coronavirus pandemic whose toll in America now exceeds 100,000 lives, and counting.

As most readers of this blog know, I live in Chicago. Over the weekend and into Monday evening, at bedtime, I could hear the sirens and fire trucks and helicopters in the distance and know that not all was well. I could see on local television channels the coverage of looting that damaged familiar areas of the city, as well as protests against police brutality. But I had not left the house, for a variety of reasons. However, it became clear that Wicker Park, an area less than a mile from us, was struck by looters Sunday evening, leaving windows smashed and property damaged. Small business owners have been waiting patiently, amid considerable financial angst, for the promised partial reopening from the pandemic on June 3, a few days after many state restrictions were lifted on May 29. And then this.

On Tuesday, after both a telemedicine meeting at 2 p.m., following up on my recent hospitalization, and a team meeting for a planning consulting proposal at 3 p.m., I decided it was time to find out what had happened. I walked down North Avenue to the six-way corner of North, Damen, and Milwaukee, the nerve center of Wicker Park, an area that gentrified in the 1980s and 1990s but retains an artsy demeanor, with independent bookshops, cafes, and art stores. I chose not to drive or even bicycle because being on foot seemed to me the best way to absorb a full sense of our tragedy and dilemma, even though I knew Wicker Park was far from being the most hard-hit area in the city. Those questionable labels belong to the downtown, temporarily cordoned off to all but essential workers, with many Chicago River bridges raised to prevent access, and to the South and West Sides, predominantly black areas where the torching of stores often exacerbated the food desert that had only recently been ameliorated with the opening of new grocery stores. One owner of Subway shops saw all six of his stores on the South Side destroyed.

The urologist with whom I spoke during the 2 p.m. appointment had recently moved to a high-rise near his downtown office in the Northwestern Memorial Hospital complex. I asked him about the situation. “It’s terrible,” he said flatly, then noted that he had walked down Michigan Avenue, and “it felt like Detroit.” Anyone who has spent time on the usually vibrant Magnificent Mile until recently knows what a stunning statement that is. Buildings are boarded up, many were looted, some were torched. At a recent mayoral press conference, the city buildings commissioner noted that her department was reaching out to the owners of at least 180 damaged buildings citywide to provide support for rebuilding. It may go without saying, but the damage harms not only the business owners, but employees who had fervently been hoping to return to work, many of them black, Latino, or Asian.

The walk down North Avenue was more routine than jarring, interrupted only by pedestrians passing in the opposite direction, some with dogs on leashes, some wearing masks, some not. It was at the six-way intersection that I began to see the impact of the past weekend. As I made the wide-right turn onto Milwaukee Avenue, it became clear that perhaps 80 percent of the businesses in the next half-mile southward toward Division St. were boarded up. Many businesses may have done so proactively, seeing the damage to others and wanting to avoid a similar fate on a subsequent night. Others, like Ragstock, had been attacked over the weekend, with windows smashed, merchandise stolen or destroyed, and equipment ransacked. It was hard to tell which was which, but the overall effect was that of significant lost opportunity and delayed reopening of a vital commercial district on Chicago’s North Side. For those that had been attacked and looted, the work of restoration could easily delay reopening by weeks.

Nonetheless, Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot, who toured the affected areas on Tuesday (June 2), reported that the overwhelming reaction of business owners when she asked about possible delays in reopening was to encourage her to move forward, which she is now doing. Not everyone is pleased because of the induced inequality of opportunity, with consequent job losses and lost incomes, due to the damages that were inflicted. The only way forward is to assist with cleanup and rebuilding, not to put everything on hold.

Nor would everyone be pleased with my focus on this question. There are many who would argue that the rioting is an expression of frustration and powerlessness, and for some, I am sure, that is true. As Chicago Tribune columnist Clarence Page notes, Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., in his 1967 book, Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community?, explained riots in the 1960s by saying, “A riot is the language of the unheard.” He was not condoning such activity but trying to impress upon white Americans that racial justice cannot forever be denied or delayed without serious social consequences.

A small crowd gathers in front of Walgreen’s in late afternoon for a peaceful protest.

But it is important to raise the issue of how the protests against police violence can and did, in some cases, go awry. One factor is the pent-up frustration of which King wrote. Another is the deliberate attempts by those of ill will to take advantage of unrest to advance their own purposes, which may be criminal or manipulative. The latter category would include all manner of provocative agents either seeking to undermine the protests by discrediting them or by bending and twisting them to the will of extremists who would not easily carry the day in an open, democratic discussion of protest goals.

It has never been hard to find examples of either motive. At 70, I am a veteran of the 1960s and 1970s who has joined his own fair share of marches for the environment, to oppose war, or for civil rights. I can easily remember learning, in my college years, how to identify agents provocateurs of any political stripe who would seek opportunities to redirect a discussion or a protest toward unfortunate ends. And I also know that it was the spiritual strength of leaders like King, or Nelson Mandela, or Mohandas Gandhi that helped to maintain a discipline of purpose in countless demonstrations and protests around the world. Gandhi used the Hindi word “satyagraha,” meaning “spirit power,” which he said gave otherwise beaten-down people a sense of self-respect, purpose, and moral strength. Christians may find such solace in the Holy Spirit, but the concept has its own universality.

Why do I raise this issue? Because, clearly, we need a way to move beyond the stigma of riots and looting to maintain the dignity of the cause for which George Floyd’s needless death has become a catalyst. We need a way to channel the power of the protests to make the provocateurs and the criminals unwelcome, and to harness the anger of those wayward souls easily led astray. That requires the sense of purpose that spirit power unleashes in making leaders of those who have felt left behind. It requires instilling vision.

Make no mistake. I am proud of the political leadership provided at this time in Illinois by both Gov. J.B. Pritzker and Mayor Lightfoot, as well as many others in lesser posts, as well as some mayors and governors elsewhere. But the leadership needed to save and redirect the protests will not come from politicians. It will come from neighborhood leaders like Jahmal Cole, with the sense of humility that comes of building movements from the ground up, and thus understanding how to reach and relate to people where it matters. Cole spoke at Mayor Lightfoot’s press conference last Sunday (May 31), along with clergy and other civic leaders, but his impassioned speech reappeared on the op-ed page of the Chicago Tribune two days later, under the headline, “Looting isn’t the answer, but organizing is.” He distinguishes between mobilizing people and organizing them, making the powerful case that organizing is the true hard work, with fundamentals, or basic rules. Leadership does not just happen. It is trained, but it also grows organically from heart-felt commitment.

Cole closes with a “message to the cops,” stating that a badge “gives you a platform that will elevate your true character.” It will either amplify your wickedness or amplify your platform to do good. Perhaps it can be said that, in a much less formal way, joining a movement can do the same. Every protester faces a moral choice. We need leaders who redirect wayward energy and identify and exclude evil intent. They will not succeed in every instance. Many instances of crime and looting will be out of their control and depend far more on police response and readiness. But their efforts will nonetheless help our nation reframe the debate over racial injustice.

Jim Schwab