17 January is Martin Luther King (MLK) Day in the United States of America. MLK Day is marked with tributes to the late Reverend Dr. King, and with reflections on the states of civil rights, i.e. minority group voting rights. This solemn anniversary has taken on greater importance in the past year with pending legislation to expand voting rights in the U.S.A., and with an active campaign to restrict such rights. Dr. King was assassinated 4 April 1968. Had he lived he would be 93 years old today.
MLK is best-known for his 28 August 1963 speech, “I Have a Dream,” delivered at the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom Rally from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. The speech was a rejuvenating moment for the Civil Rights Movement vitalizing tired campaign workers and gaining much sympathy for the plight of African Americans. MLK was named TIME Magazine Man of the Year in 1963 and he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964. He is regarded as a hero by many Americans and by many people around the World. Despite the respect which his name invokes today MLK had many enemies during his life, which led to his assassination. The question most pertinent for readers of this blog on resilience building might be “How did he stand the pressure?” and “Why Did He Succeed?”
There are numerous facets to resilience: knowing capabilities and limitations, knowing how to give meaning to your life by creating your existential projects, dealing with negative emotions, and knowing how to set emotional boundaries between yourself and your problems without isolating or ignoring them. Of course, self-confidence, the ability to balance one’s need for affection with the attitude of helping others, and a sense of humour also help to reframe difficulties as challenges rather than tragedies.
I offer that MLK’s greatest assets were Commitment: The ability to commit to values and to help others, and Morality and Ethics, i.e. maintaining coherence and unity between what you say and what you do, based on solid principles. Now in full transparency there are detractors who will mention marital infidelity on his part, however, the arena in which he led was civil rights, in which he truly did share the risks of his fellow Civil Rights organizers and his followers. MLK led the 385-day Montgomery Bus Boycott, he was the first President of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC),he led the Birmingham Campaign in which water cannons and attack dogs were used by police, and he was instrumental in organizing the Great March on Washington at which he delivered his “I Have A Dream” speech.
I see MLK’s leadership style as being similar to those of Mahatma Gandhi and Nelson Mandela, in that he knew that armed resistance was futile in the face of superior numbers – and police firepower. He could have become a violent revolutionary in the style of Ché Guevara as a leader in the Black Panthers. His decision to take the non-violent moral path embarrassed the United States on the world stage and led to the eventual expansion of the franchise. His phrase, “Love is the only force capable of transforming an enemy into a friend” proved to be the way forward in establishing voting rights for minorities.
Let us hope that the contemporary trend in the U.S.A. to limit voting rights under the banner of “voter fraud’ is seen for the canard that it is.