The conscience of the King

Charles J. Ogletree Jr.

There are times in life when individuals have to step outside their comfort zone to deal with issues of great significance and concern. Expressing firm opinions on moral issues, even when they generate an enormous amount of controversy and opposition, marks one of the most difficult challenges that a leader must face. Dr. King was a master at getting down to the moral foundations of problems dividing America in the 20th century — and he did so on many occasions, with great clarity of vision.

While most people describe Dr. King’s Aug. 28, 1963, “I Have a Dream” speech during the March on Washington as his greatest, I think such a conclusion misses some important decisions made by Dr. King after 1963. Perhaps his most significant and least appreciated address occurred in New York City at the Riverside Church on April 4, 1967. By the time Dr. King arrived at the Riverside Church, the 1964 Civil Rights Act had been passed. The 1965 Voting Rights Act had been adopted. He had marched with workers throughout America in the North and the South fighting against racial segregation. He had won the Nobel Peace Prize for his leadership of the civil rights movement.

And yet, despite King’s great successes, he was far from finished in pushing issues of moral consciousness. Indeed, when King took the podium at Riverside Church, he had a message that was deeply divisive, hopelessly controversial and in direct conflict with what many national political leaders hoped he would say. He talked about the Vietnam War in clear and unequivocal terms.

Talking about the Vietnam War was not an easy thing to do. Thousands of African Americans were drafted to participate in the war. The mounting casualties of all Americans captured enormous attention in the news. It was a colossal distraction for President Lyndon Baines Johnson, and deeply impacted his ability to seek and receive the nomination for a second term. Moreover, the war ultimately provided the pathway for Richard Nixon to be elected president in 1968.

When Dr. King gave his historic address at Riverside to a cross-section of those opposing the war, he understood that it was a difficult thing to do and that it was deeply divisive. Nevertheless, he felt compelled by conscience to do it.

His words are as powerful today as they were 40 years ago: “Some of us who have already begun to break the silence of the night have found that the calling to speak is often a vocation of agony, but we must speak. We must speak with all the humility that is appropriate to our limited vision, but we must speak. And we must rejoice as well, for surely this is the first time in our nation’s history that a significant number of its religious leaders have chosen to move beyond the prophesying of smooth patriotism to the high grounds of a firm dissent based upon the mandates of conscience and the reading of history. Perhaps a new spirit is rising among us.”

For King, opposing the war was a way to press for nonviolent solutions to conflict in a time of militarism and violence. He viewed those we were fighting as human beings deserving of respect, not simply as enemies. He realized that the forces of peace and hope were more powerful than the forces of war and destruction. His goals were clear. He argued that we should end the bombing in South Vietnam and declare a unilateral ceasefire to create a spirit of negotiation. He insisted that we remove our troops from Vietnam in accordance with the 1954 Geneva Agreement. He advised young men who were drafted in the service to enter as conscientious objectors. He classified that as an honorable and just thing to do. He urged clergy to become conscientious objectors as well, as a way of avoiding participating in an unjust war.

King’s clairvoyant voice forced us to see the war as reflective of a set of values that were neither democratic nor just. He understood the urgency to end the war in Vietnam and the wide-ranging implications for the world if it were prolonged. To make that clear, he stated: “We are now faced with the fact that tomorrow is today. We are confronted with the fierce urgency of now. In this unfolding conundrum of life and history, there is such a thing as being too late. Procrastination is still the thief of time. Life often leaves us standing bare, naked and dejected with a lost opportunity. The ‘tide in the affairs of men’ does not remain at the flood; it ebbs. We may cry out desperately for time to pause in her passage, but time is deaf to every plea and rushes on.”

He went further to say: “We must move past indecision to action. We must find new ways to speak for peace in Vietnam and justice throughout the developing world — a world that borders on our doors. If we do not act, we shall surely be dragged down the long, dark and shameful corridors of time reserved for those who possess power without compassion, might without morality, and strength without sight.”

Dr. King noted the hypocrisy of a country that engaged in a war to protect freedom and democracy in a foreign land while freedom and democracy eluded many of its citizens. Dr. King could not have been more eloquent or profound when he stated: “[W]e have been repeatedly faced with the cruel irony of watching Negro and white boys on TV screens as they kill and die together for a nation that has been unable to seat them together in the same schools. And so we watch them in brutal solidarity burning the huts of a poor village, but we realize that they would hardly live on the same block in Chicago.”

Dr. King was roundly criticized throughout the country for his remarks. Life magazine labeled his speech “a demagogic slander that sounded like a script for Radio Hanoi.” Despite these criticisms, his commitment to conscious resistance to war resonated in a way that ultimately led the United States government to withdraw from Vietnam.

In 1963, Dr. King had a dream of an America that would accept all its citizens and judge them by the content of their character and not the color of their skin. In 1967, he urged us to promote peace, not war. In 2008, it is our time to heed Dr. King’s dream and his plea for peace. He left us a message ahead of its time, one that continues to point the way to democracy and justice throughout the world.

Charles J. Ogletree Jr. is the Jesse Climenko Professor of Law at Harvard University and the executive director of the Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race & Justice at Harvard Law School.