From the article of 'Petrel'
No.675 / April 26, 1998
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The 30th year from the assassination of King
He had denied the relation with class struggle.
He had also confronted to the radical movement.
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April 4 of this year was 30 anniversaries after the priest King, the leader of the american Black movement was assassinated. There were some mournful meetings and marchs in the King home Atlanta, the site assassinated Memphis, and New York, and the like on the day, and poeples sworn to succeed the King's dream and will. In United States now, the Black problem is far from solution and is increasing the complexity, deepening the confusion oppositly, that is, the separating tendency of the residential quarter of White and Black is becoming strong, nearly 30 percent of the Black are making their living below the poor line, furthermore, the "polarization" of Black to abundant person and poor person is proceeding, and the like. Let's think about the Negro problem by looking back to the life of King and the civil rights movement.
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The birth of leader of the civil rights movement
I want to look back to the history of the civil rights movement following the King's life referring to the writing of 'The priest King and the age.' (Kaname Saruya, NHK Books)(The quotation is from this book if there is no notice.)
King was born in the home of a comparatively affluent priest in 1929 in the state capital Atlanta in the American southern part Georgia state. He entered a college for the Black boys, Morhouse College, afterwards, advanced to Clother Theological School, and the Graduate School of Boston University Theological Department, and assumed a priest of Baptist charch in the state capital Montgomery in Alabama state when he was 25 old in 1954.
The bus boycott movement occued in December 1955 soon after King had assumed office, which made King name famous suddenly. The racial isolation policy having continued since the end of 19th century in the southern part reached the traffic organization. The bus was also not the exception, poeple gets on from the same entrance and the White sits forward, the Black sits backward. When White's guest comes to stand even by oneself the Black sitting most ahead should transfer the seat.
The event started from the arrest of a middle age Black woman named Rosa Parks who worked at a department store in the down town of Montgomery because she was not transferred the seat to the White passenger in the bus.
The symptom that the civil rights movement of the Black would rise had already seen in this age. Especially, it gave hopes to the Black people that the supreme court itself had judged the racial separating education in the public school to be unconstitutional in 1954 and reverced the sentences that the supreme court had admitted the racial isolation policy as "though separated but equal" in 1896. "Rosa Parks was arrested in such mood. The reaction different from up to now began to appear in the Black people."
Seditious air rose to the Black people who knew the event, and the Black priests, teachers, lawyers, and labor union leaders gathered in such situation, and they began the bussed boycott movement. King was chosen as a leader of this boycott movement. Starting with this, King received a variety of obstructions such as threatening telephone call and throwing of bomb to his house, however, the bus company as it was reached the deadlock because the large majority of bus passenger were Black people in this town and they boycotted it. (Nearly all Black people of 50 thousand persons participated.)
In addition, the decree of the supreme court that the law concerning the city bus of the Alabama state provided for racial isolation was unconstitutional was put out. Thus, the boycott movement continued for one year or more ended in the victory of the Black side and King who had led it became to be highlighted suddenly as a leader of the Black movement.
This bus boycott movement stirred up of Black people who had been compelled the endurance till then and heralded the explosive civil rights movement afterwards. And, King was deified as a character symbolizing the civil rights movement most and always existed at the center of the movement.
The Black leaders in the South established SCLC (The South Christianity Leaders Conference), the organization for the abolition of discrimination and King was appointed the chairman. King continued to act as the representative of SCLC after this.
King moved to Atlanta to lead the movement, led and developed the Sit-in (sit down) movement - get into the restaurant of no accept of Black, and keep sitting until meal is carried - and the Freedom-riders' movement (the getting on movement for freedom) - though the waiting room of the long distance bus was isolated by race in the South, so they boarded the long distance bus to abolish it - of students, and the civil rights movement expanded to the whole area of the South.
He standed on the top of glory.
In 1963, this year is the 100th anniversary from Lincoln's "Slave liberating declaration." The Black leaders such as King catched that year as a splendid chance to appeal the Black problem to all over the world and decided to develop the movement in Birmingham, the maximum town in Alabama state as a target for that.
The strategy that King adopted in this struggle was the "Direct mass action of non-violence," that is, the one "It is not that a part of elite defend Black's right as a lawyer in court but that the mass of the Black go out to the street and develop the fight of the discrimination abolition directly, furthewrmore, devote oneself to the soul of non-violence."
The struggle was reported to all over the world through television and newspaper. "The policemen strike at Black people marching in good order with brandishing their policemen's club, the large police dogs bite at and tear off the clothes, the policemen mow down the Black people's procession by the high pressure fire hose," and the like. This struggle extended to all US scale and "According to statistics of the Department of Justice, there were 758 times demonstration in total in the 186 city of all US in 2 and a half months after the Barmingham struggle. And, the number of arrested persons reached 14,733 persons in 8 months in 1963."
The Blacks concentrated people from all US and carried out "the large march in Washington" in the middle of this struggle. "The crowds of the persons who gathered far from various places expanded in a moment when the morning dawned. The person who rushed by airplane, the person who arrived with riding train and bus, the person who came with driving his car, though Washington fell into a large congestion it had already exceeded the number of 100 thousand that the sponsor side had forecasted. It had expanded to one large crowds of 200 thousand or more at noon."
A lot of leaders and famous persons made a speech and the end was King turn. King made a famous speech "I have a dream" here. Afterwards, King was invited to White House with other leaders and met Kennedy. The civil rights low that is said as "the epoch-making Black relief measures since the civil war" was approved in the following year, 1964, they won the election low in 1965, and the civil rights movement came the hight period. And, King also won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964 and stood on the top of the glory as an individual.
King's failure and death
However, a large-scale Black riot occured in the harem in New York only two weeks or more after the civil rights low of 1964 came into effect. The riot leapt to various places and it was a start of the Black riot called 'Long, hot summer.' "The main stage of the civil rights struggle up to now was in the South. King also flied about the South and continued struggle. However, there existed substantial discrimination obstinately in shape not seeing though there was no discrimination provided by the law like the South in the slum street in the city of the North called "Black ghetto."
The struggle of King that was effective in the South and had obtained the result did not give any influence to the Black panted with poor in large city in the North. (At that time, it was Malcolm X who came from a poor home to have represented the shout of Black in large city. He was violently criticizing King as it did not be solved only by appealing to White's conscience with non-violence.)
It was the large riot in Los Angeles Watts district in 1965 that King received impacts most. "The Black was repeating arson, throwing storn, plunder for the outlet of dissatisfaction." "King rushed there, but there was no way to take measures already. He knew at that time that the strategy of non-violence direct mass movement with which they had struggled in the South until then was not available at all in the slum street in large city."
Though king moved to Chicago in the North and tried to continue the movement, the opinions such as "It is old-fashioned like non-violence" and "Do by us alone, we do not want the White to help" grew from the inside of Black, King who was explaining non-violence and the joint struggle with liberal White was driven into predicament.
Especially, the slogan "Black power" is shouted in young Blacks and they drew a line between King. The Black liberating struggle began to part from King's hand.
The problem to have shaken the United States as well as the Black problem in this age was about the Vietnam war. The Jonson regime gave oneself up to the Vietnam war as well as the welfare policy hoisting "Great Society" to the slogan and aiming at "Cannon and Butter." The American soldier in south Vietnam swelled up to 390 thousand persons at the end of 1966, kept increasing afterwards, and the huge war expenditure shook the base of American economy.
King knew that the Black problem related to the problem of poverty and economical difference inseparablly by living voluntarily in the slum street and came to criticize the American government as, "The mental death approaches the nation that keeps spending more gold to the military defense than to the plan of social improvement."
It called a big echo that King gave an opposite voice to the Vietnam war and attacked the Democratic Party's regime from the front. He was criticized by the civil rights group as it was a wrong strategy that distributed power and became observed from FBI as a man on the Black list. Moreover, the moderate liberal Whites came to part from King and he was looked by the Jonson regime with bloodless eyes, too. King did not back down even by one step, but he cannot show effective route for the Black liberation. It was only the preach "Mass action by nonviolence" as usual that King was able to have done.
King who felt own powerlessness strongly and was cornered made a speech in tears hinting own death and not dreading it as if he comprehended everything at the day before assassinated, there might already have been left only the road as the martyr for him. He was shut the life of 39 years old by assassin's bullet in Memphis on April 4, 1968.
King's limit and the liberating problem of the Black
King's failure and death were the deadlock of the civil rights movement as it is. Certainly, the civil rights movement was extremely effective and had produced remarkable results in fact in the South where the racial discrimination was legalized. Because the democratic problem still had the meaning in the South and the civil rights movement fought by King as a leader was able to accomplish part of the problem.
However, the democratic problem of legal equality has already been accomplished basically in the North even though it was very false one. the Black in large city had changed to the proletarian more and more, and though it appeared superficially as a racial problem the substance was posed as a capitalistic problem and a class problem.
For solving the Black problem in the United States, the viewpoint to pose the problem with connecting it to socialism and the worker's class struggle even when to point a democratic demand.
However, such a viewpoint was none at all also in the civil rights movement and King. King's thought as a religionist is carried out by the dislike to socialism and the Marxism. "Communism has declared to be a worldly materialism openly and has not try to acknowledge the seat of God. I have not been able to approve this. ..... The history is the one not to be led matter but exactry by spirit after all." "I have not been able to agree at all with communism that do not acknowledge free. ..... Human being is the Sun of God, so it is the purpose itself." "Though the war is the one to be feared, but it might be better than to surrender to totalitarianism system - The Nazi fascistic system and communism system." (King 'Great walking to freedom' Iwanami New Book)
We can quote such a word from the writing of King as much as we want. King who was a religionist was a thorough petty bourgeois individualist from the bottom of the mind, who was hating for socialism and felt fear for the class struggle of the worker. It exposes the reactionary petty bourgeois nature of King affirming the war of the imperialism of the monopolistic capital to describe that the wars are better than becoming communism with throwing off the own nonviolence principle.
The economic difference between races that extends more and more, the intensification of the confrontation between various races on the background, the difference of rich and poor in the Black, the repulsion of White to the preferential treatment to minority, The Black problem is still far from solution now (If anything, it is deteriorating). It is requested to relate hard to the class struggle of the worker who aims at the overthrow of the rule of the capital making all discrimination inevitable above all. It is necessary to advance getting over the King's limit.
(Takumi Yakuwa)