Martin Luther Ling

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Myths of Martin Luther King

by Marcus Epstein

There is probably no greater sacred cow in America than MartinLuther King Jr. The slightest criticism of him or even suggesting thathe isnt deserving of a national holiday leads to the usual accusationsof racist, fascism, and the rest of the usual left-wing epithets not onlyfrom liberals, but also from many ostensible conservatives andlibertarians.

This is amazing because during the 50s and 60s, the Right almostunanimously opposed the civil rights movement. Contrary to theclaims of many neocons, the opposition was not limited to the JohnBirch Society and southern conservatives. It was made by politicianslike Ronald Reagan and Barry Goldwater, and in the pages ofModern

Age, Human Events,National Review, and theFreeman.

Today, the official conservative and libertarian movement portraysKing as someone on our side who would be fighting Jesse Jackson andAl Sharpton if he were alive. Most all conservative publications andwebsites have articles around this time of the year praising King anddiscussing how todays civil rights leaders are betraying his legacy.

Jim Powells otherwise excellent The Triumph of Liberty rates Kingnext to Ludwig von Mises and Albert J. Nock as a libertarian hero.Attend any IHS seminar, and youll read "A letter from a BirminghamJail" as a great piece of anti-statist wisdom. The Heritage Foundationregularly has lectures and symposiums honoring his legacy. There arenearly a half dozen neocon and left-libertarian think tanks and legalfoundations with names such as "The Center for Equal Opportunity"and the "American Civil Rights Institute" which claim to modelthemselves after King.

Why is a man once reviled by the Right now celebrated by it as a

hero? The answer partly lies in the fact that the mainstream Right hasgradually moved to the left since Kings death. The influx of manyneoconservative intellectuals, many of whom were involved in thecivil rights movement, into the conservative movement alsocontributes to the King phenomenon. This does not fully explain the

picture, because on many issues King was far to the left of even theneoconservatives, and many King admirers even claim to adhere to

principles like freedom of association and federalism. The main reasonis that they have created a mythical Martin Luther King Jr., that theyconstructed solely from one line in his "I Have a Dream" speech.

In this article, I will try to dispel the major myths that the conservativemovement has about King. I found a good deal of the information forthis piece inI May Not Get There With You: The True Martin Luther

Page 1 of 6Myths of Martin Luther King by Marcus Epstein

1/17/2012http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig/epstein9.html


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Kingby black leftist Michael Eric Dyson. Dyson shows that Kingsupported black power, reparations, affirmative action, and socialism.He believes this made King even more admirable. He also dealsfrankly with Kings philandering and plagiarism, though he excusesthem. If you dont mind reading his long discussions about gangsta rap

and the like, I strongly recommend this book.

Myth #1: King wanted only equal rights, not special privileges andwould have opposed affirmative action, quotas, reparations, andthe other policies pursued by todays civil rights leadership.

This is probably the most repeated myth about King. Writing onNational Review Online, There Heritage Foundations MatthewSpalding wrote a piece entitled "Martin Luther Kings ConservativeMind," where he wrote, "An agenda that advocates quotas, counting

by race and set-asides takes us away from King's vision."

The problem with this view is that King openly advocated quotas andracial set-asides. He wrote that the "Negro today is not struggling forsome abstract, vague rights, but for concrete improvement in his wayof life." When equal opportunity laws failed to achieve this, Kinglooked for other ways. In his bookWhere Do We Go From Here, hesuggested that "A society that has done something special against the

Negro for hundreds of years must now do something special for him,to equip him to compete on a just and equal basis." To do this heexpressed support for quotas. In a 1968 Playboy interview, he said, "Ifa city has a 30% Negro population, then it is logical to assume that

Negroes should have at least 30% of the jobs in any particularcompany, and jobs in all categories rather than only in menial areas."King was more than just talk in this regard. Working through hisOperation Breadbasket, King threatened boycotts of businesses thatdid not hire blacks in proportion to their population.

King was even an early proponent of reparations. In his 1964 book,Why We Cant Wait, he wrote,

No amount of gold could provide an adequate compensation forthe exploitation and humiliation of the Negro in America down

through the centuriesYet a price can be placed on unpaidwages. The ancient common law has always provided a remedyfor the appropriation of a the labor of one human being byanother. This law should be made to apply for American

Negroes. The payment should be in the form of a massiveprogram by the government of special, compensatory measureswhich could be regarded as a settlement in accordance with theaccepted practice of common law.

Predicting that critics would note that many whites were equallydisadvantaged, King claimed that his program, which he called the"Bill of Rights for the Disadvantaged" would help poor whites as well.This is because once the blacks received reparations, the poor whiteswould realize that their real enemy was rich whites.




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Myth # 2: King was an American patriot, who tried to get

Americans to live up to their founding ideals.

InNational Review, Roger Clegg wrote that "There may have been abrief moment when there existed something of a national consensus

a shared vision eloquently articulated in Martin Luther King, Jr.'s "IHave a Dream" speech, with deep roots in the American Creed,distilled in our national motto,E pluribus unum. Most Americans stillshare it, but by no means all." Many other conservatives haveembraced this idea of an American Creed that built upon Jefferson andLincoln, and was then fulfilled by King and libertarians like ClintBolick and neocons like Bill Bennett.

Despite his constant invocations of the Declaration of Independence,King did not have much pride in Americas founding. He believed"our nation was born in genocide," and claimed that the Declaration of

Independence and Constitution were meaningless for blacks becausethey were written by slave owners.

Myth # 3: King was a Christian activist whose struggle for civilrights is similar to the battles fought by the Christian Right today.

Ralph Reed claims that Kings "indispensable genius" provided "thevision and leadership that renewed and made crystal clear the vitalconnection between religion and politics." He proudly admitted thatthe Christian Coalition "adopted many elements of Kings style andtactics." The pro-life group, Operation Rescue, often compared their

struggle against abortion to Kings struggle against segregation. In aspeech entitled The Conservative Virtues of Dr. Martin Luther King,Bill Bennet described King, as "not primarily a social activist, he was

primarily a minister of the Christian faith, whose faith informed anddirected his political beliefs."

Both Kings public stands and personal behavior makes thecomparison between King and the Religious Right questionable.

FBI surveillance showed that King had dozens of extramarital affairs.Although many of the pertinent records are sealed, several agents who

watched observed him engage in many questionable acts includingbuying prostitutes with SCLC money. Ralph Abernathy, who Kingcalled "the best friend I have in the world," substantiated many ofthese charges in his autobiography,And the Walls Came Tumbling

Down. It is true that a mans private life is mostly his business.However, most conservatives vehemently condemned Jesse Jacksonwhen news of his illegitimate son came out, and claimed he was unfitto be a minister.

King also took stands that most in the Christian Right would disagreewith. When asked about the Supreme Courts decision to ban school

prayer, King responded,

I endorse it. I think it was correct. Contrary to what many have




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said, it sought to outlaw neither prayer nor belief in god. In apluralistic society such as ours, who is to determine what prayershall be spoken and by whom? Legally, constitutionally orotherwise, the state certainly has no such right.

While King died before the Roe vs. Wade decision, and, to the best ofmy knowledge, made no comments on abortion, he was an ardentsupporter of Planned Parenthood. He even won their Margaret SangerAward in 1966 and had his wife give a speech entitled FamilyPlanning A Special and Urgent Concern which he wrote. In thespeech, he did not compare the civil rights movement to the struggleof Christian Conservatives, but he did say "there is a striking kinship

between our movement and Margaret Sanger's early efforts."

Myth # 4: King was an anti-communist.

In another article about Martin Luther King, Roger Clegg ofNationalReview applauds King for speaking out against the "oppression ofcommunism!" To gain the support of many liberal whites, in the earlyyears, King did make a few mild denunciations of communism. Healso claimed in a 1965Playboy that there "are as many Communists inthis freedom movement as there are Eskimos in Florida." This was a

bald-faced lie. Though King was never a Communist and was alwayscritical of the Soviet Union, he had knowingly surrounded himselfwith Communists. His closest advisor Stanley Levison was aCommunist, as was his assistant Jack ODell. Robert and later John F.Kennedy repeatedly warned him to stop associating himself with such

subversives, but he never did. He frequently spoke before Communistfront groups such as the National Lawyers Guild and Lawyers forDemocratic Action. King even attended seminars at The HighlanderFolk School, another Communist front, which taught Communisttactics, which he later employed.

Kings sympathy for communism may have contributed to hisopposition to the Vietnam War, which he characterized as a racist,imperialistic, and unjust war. King claimed that America "hadcommitted more war crimes than any nation in the world." While heacknowledged the NLF "may not be paragons of virtue," he nevercriticized them. However, he was rather harsh on Diem and the South.He denied that the NLF was communist, and believed that Ho ChiMinh should have been the legitimate ruler of Vietnam. As acommitted globalist, he believed that "our loyalties must transcend ourrace, our tribe, our class, and our nation. This means we must developa world perspective."

Many of Kings conservative admirers have no problem callinganyone who questions American foreign policy a "fifth columnist."While I personally agree with King on some of his stands on Vietnam,it is hypocritical for those who are still trying to get Jane Fonda triedfor sedition to applaud King.

Myth # 5: King supported the free market.




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OK, you dont hear this too often, but it happens. For example, FatherRobert A. Sirico delivered a paper to the Acton Institute entitled CivilRights and Social Cooperation. In it, he wrote,

A freer economy would take us closer to the ideals of the

pioneers in this country's civil rights movement. Martin LutherKing, Jr. recognized this when he wrote: "With the growth ofindustry the folkways of white supremacy will gradually passaway," and he predicted that such growth would "Increase the

purchasing power of the Negro [which in turn] will result inimproved medical care, greater educational opportunities, andmore adequate housing. Each of these developments will resultin a further weakening of segregation."

King of course was a great opponent of the free economy. In a speechin front of his staff in 1966 he said,

You cant talk about solving the economic problem of the Negrowithout talking about billions of dollars. You cant talk aboutending the slums without first saying profit must be taken out ofslums. Youre really tampering and getting on dangerous ground

because you are messing with folk then. You are messing withcaptains of industry Now this means that we are treading indifficult water, because it really means that we are saying thatsomething is wrongwith capitalism There must be a betterdistribution of wealth and maybe America must move toward aDemocratic Socialism.

King called for "totally restructuring the system" in a way that was notcapitalist or "the antithesis of communist." For more information onKings economic views, see Lew Rockwells The Economics ofMartin Luther King, Jr.

Myth # 6: King was a conservative.

As all the previous myths show, Kings views were hardlyconservative. If this was not enough, it is worth noting what King saidabout the two most prominent postwar American conservative

politicians, Ronald Reagan and Barry Goldwater.

King accused Barry Goldwater of "Hitlerism." Hebelieved thatGoldwater advocated a "narrow nationalism, a crippling isolationism,and a trigger-happy attitude." On domestic issues he felt that "Mr.Goldwater represented an unrealistic conservatism that was totally outof touch with the realities of the twentieth century." King said thatGoldwaters positions on civil rights were "morally indefensible andsocially suicidal."

King said of Reagan, "When a Hollywood performer, lackingdistinction even as an actor, can become a leading war hawk candidatefor the presidency, only the irrationalities induced by war psychosiscan explain such a turn of events."




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Despite Kings harsh criticisms of those men, both supported the Kingholiday. Goldwater even fought to keep Kings FBI files, whichcontained information about his adulterous sex life and Communistconnections, sealed.

Myth # 7: King wasnt a plagiarist.

OK, even most of the neocons wont deny this, but it is still worthbringing up, because they all ignore it. King started plagiarizing as anundergraduate. When Boston University founded a commission tolook into it, they found that that 45 percent of the first part and 21

percent of the second part of his dissertation was stolen, but theyinsisted that "no thought should be given to revocation of Dr. Kingsdoctoral degree." In addition to his dissertation many of his majorspeeches, such as "I Have a Dream," were plagiarized, as were manyof his books and writings. For more information on Kings plagiarism,The Martin Luther King Plagiarism Page and Theodore Pappas

Plagiarism and the Culture Warare excellent resources.

When faced with these facts, most of Kings conservative andlibertarian fans either say they werent part of his main philosophy, orusually they simply ignore them. Slightly before the King Holiday wassigned into law, Governor Meldrim Thompson of New Hampshirewrote a letter to Ronald Reagan expressing concerns about Kingsmorality and Communist connections. Ronald Reagan responded, "Ihave the reservations you have, but here the perception of too many

people is based on an image, not reality. Indeed, to them theperception is reality."

Far too many on the Right are worshipping that perception. Ratherthan face the truth about Kings views, they create a man based upon afew lines about judging men "by the content of their character ratherthan the color of their skin" something we are not supposed to do inhis case, of course while ignoring everything else he said and did. IfKing is truly an admirable figure, they are doing his legacy adisservice by using his name to promote an agenda he clearly wouldnot have supported.

January 18, 2003

Marcus Epstein [send him mail] is an undergraduate at the College ofWilliam and Mary in Williamsburg, VA, where he is president of thecollege libertarians and editor of the conservative newspaper, TheRemnant.A selection of his articles can be seen here.

Copyright 2003 LewRockwell.com

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