Who Was Martin Luther King, Jr.?

Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of racism and death.

King’s philosophy of nonviolence defined the developments and achievements of the civil rights movement in the 1950s and 1960s. Bader demonstrates King’s perspective on nonviolent protest as a powerful strategy to fight racial discrimination and injustice, as well as an alternative to armed conflict and violent uprisings.

In his early years as a college student, King resolved to work for Black people’s progress, finding inspiration in the ideas of Henry David Thoreau and Mahatma Gandhi. King valued Thoreau’s practice of civil disobedience, which Bader explains as people’s right “to disobey unjust laws” (14). Gandhi’s activism resonated with King because of its emphasis on the power of “peaceful protests” to demonstrate the wrongs of discrimination. King’s family’s Christian faith and ideas of love and peace grounded him. Such values defined King’s approach to activism and his leadership in the movement as key principles of social action and dismantling racism and inequality.

In tracing King’s work in the movement, Bader illustrates the methods of nonviolent direct action that its leaders and demonstrators practiced in the South. Using his sermons to educate and galvanize the community for the civil rights cause, King organized and participated in many protests, including boycotts, marches, sit-in protests, and petitions. For King, such protests “pointed out racial injustice” and were an effective form of resistance (43). Black people challenged racial discrimination, asserting their presence and demonstrating their crucial role in US society. While activists faced increasing state and mob violence, and even murders by racist groups like the Ku Klux Klan, King insisted that retaliation would thwart the movement’s progress. Despite white society’s resistance to change, King argued that people should “not return violence under any condition” (36). Even though such ideology was partly perceived as passivity at the time, King knew that peaceful protest demonstrated that the oppressors and not the oppressed were the perpetrators of violence.

Slow progress in social change and delays in implementing laws, however, caused Black people anger and frustration. Ongoing backlash and intimidation against activists instigated internal conflict in the movement: Malcolm X and his ideas on self-defense countered King’s philosophy of nonviolence. Malcolm X’s ideology characterized later civil rights developments that followed King’s and Malcolm X’s assassinations. Bader notes that the ideology of self-defense, which organizations like the Black Panther Party supported, conveyed the “message of fighting back with violence” (84). While this oversimplifies their approach and does not fully illuminate the work of the Black Power movement, Bader underscores the importance of King’s philosophy of peaceful conflict resolution. King fervently opposed riots as a self-destructive way to protest. While he understood that riots were an expression of “a neglected and voiceless people” (88), he considered them harmful to Black communities and an ineffective strategy in battling injustice. To assuage tensions, King always promoted peaceful protests. He fought to nonviolently address issues like poverty, police violence, and housing discrimination to break a cycle of retaliatory violence.

Thus, King demonstrated that nonviolence was the way to lasting peace and racial reconciliation. Even before his assassination, as threats on his life increased, King remained committed to nonviolence as the only means to counteract hatred and violence. Ultimately, nonviolence proved crucial to the movement’s achievements, exposing the inherent violence of institutionalized racism.