Doing better

Martin Luther King Jr. was born on Jan. 15, 1929, into a family of preachers. His grandfather was a Baptist preacher and his father was a pastor. King himself went on to receive his bachelor's in sociology at Morehouse in 1948 before enrolling in theological seminary, then commenced doctoral studies in systematic theology at Boston University, where he earned his Ph.D. in 1955. Influenced by Gandhi, he became an ardent believer in nonviolent resistance as a potent weapon in the struggle for freedom and equality. It earned him the Nobel Peace Price.

He is best known for a very moving 1963 speech, “I Have a Dream.”

The speech was uplifting and noncontroversial — a speech everybody could embrace. But King went beyond being the prominent leader of the civil rights movement. He opposed the excesses, greed and materialism of capitalism. He believed in democratic socialism and he accused our nation of waging an imperial war in Vietnam.

On April 4, 1967, King gave a speech at the Riverside Church in New York. He declared that “a time comes when silence is betrayal. That time has come for us in relation to Vietnam.” He concluded, “I knew I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today, my own government.”

Meanwhile, there was growing animosity between King and J. Edgar Hoover, head of the FBI. King criticized the powerful Hoover while Hoover considered King to be a racial agitator with communist leanings and a national security risk.

The FBI kept a file not only on King but also Eleanor Roosevelt, Albert Einstein, Lucille Ball, John Lennon, Paul Robeson, Jack London, T.S. Eliot, John Steinbeck, Groucho Marx, Leonard Bernstein, H.L. Mencken, Dr. Benjamin Spock, Norman Mailer and other prominent citizens. Hoover even kept secret files on some members of Congress.

For years the FBI carried out a patently illegal, secret war of intimidation, harassment and surveillance on King. They tapped his phone and opened his mail.   It was the 1960s: a time of marches, sit-ins, civil rights protests and the “red scare,” and our jails filled up with religious leaders, peace activists, students and others who had never been in jail before.

In 1968 King went to Memphis to lead sanitation workers who had gone on strike. As King stood on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel, a shot rang out and he fell to the ground, fatally wounded.

Even in death King remained a controversial figure. Although there were those who felt King did not merit a national holiday, a reluctant President Ronald Reagan finally declared King's birthday a national holiday.

In 1975, a few years after King's death and the assassinations of John and Robert Kennedy, Frank Church, senator from Idaho, formed a special committee to investigate the FBI and the CIA. That investigation exposed a trail of assassinations, extensive spying on social activists in this country and the full scope of anti-King activities.

“The American people need to be reassured that never again will an agency of government be permitted to conduct a secret war against those citizens it considers a threat,” Church promised at the time.

But that apparently was not good enough, because to this day some people feel that the FBI may have had something to do with King's assassination — including his widow, Coretta Scott King. We may never find out, largely because the FBI surveillance tapes have been ordered sealed until 2027.

When a citizen criticizes his government because he thinks that his country can do better, he is neither a traitor nor a communist, and he is certainly not a security risk. It is love of country — not hate — that motivates people to rebel.

In a democracy, you are encouraged to be politically active. In a dictatorship you risk your life trying. Today we could surely use another King, as well as another Frank Church, as the PATRIOT Act deprives us of our privacy and civil liberties, all in the name of national security.