Throughout his life, civil rights leader Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. had more detractors than allies. MLK became a global hero after his assassination in 1968, and President Ronald Reagan added to his legacy in 1983 by making his birthday a national holiday.
MLK still had detractors. Most of them were academics who disagreed with his political beliefs, but these opinions were mostly found in publications that few people read. For the most part, MLK was widely embraced, from the religious right to democratic socialists, and for decades, no one questioned whether his legacy was worthy of celebration.
That has changed in recent years.
There’s a new breed of MLK detractors. They are a group of Black Christian conservative Republicans who promote capitalism and oppose progressive Christianity, the social gospel, and Black liberation theology. These individuals feel MLK was not a hero at all. They argue that MLK does not deserve any national recognition because America should not celebrate a Marxist sympathizer. Some go even further and point out the self-proclaimed communists in MLK’s inner circle and insist, like J. Edgar Hoover, that MLK was a communist too.
There’s one key question these new MLK detractors should have asked before attempting to make a name for themselves by attacking MLK. Should we fault a person for the affinities they developed during their formative years?
It’s important to understand that between 1848, when Marx published the Communist Manifesto, and 1922, when the Soviet Union became the world’s first Marxist-Communist state, Marxism/communism were just high-minded ideas that attracted a large number of people who wanted to put an end to the rich exploiting the poor and to redistribute industrial wealth for the benefit of humanity. These Marxist ideas also attracted religious leaders, who saw them as the “gospel in action” that would enable “the meek to inherit the earth.”
Since Marxism/communism had not yet been established in any country, those people who became Marxist/communist between 1848 and 1922 had no idea that once implemented, Marxism/communism would be an abject failure. Should we condemn them for being unable to predict the future? Of course, the answer is no.
When the Soviet Union became the world’s first communist state, idealists all over the world applauded the accomplishment and believed that its economic success would serve as a model for other countries seeking to replace capitalism. However, the Soviet Union did not need to flourish to become an appealing alternative economic system for millions of people around the world.
The stock market crashed in 1929, initiating a severe economic depression that lasted until World War II. Many who grew up during the Great Depression viewed the capitalist system as a failure, while they viewed the Soviet Union with optimism and admiration.
MLK was born in 1929. When the Great Depression ended after World War II, MLK was already in college. MLK was no different from anyone else in his generation who grew up distrustful of capitalism and fascinated by Marxism. For example, Thomas Sowell, the prominent Black conservative economist, was born in 1930. He acknowledges that he was a Marxist until he graduated from college. Sowell didn’t become disillusioned with Marxism until after he worked for the government and realized a free market was better than Marx’s planned economy.
However, the same Black Christian conservatives who argue that MLK should not be celebrated because he was a Marxist sympathizer ignore Sowell’s Marxist past and support Sowell’s conservative philosophy. Both MLK and Sowell developed the same affinity for Marxism during their impressionable years. The difference between the two is that Sowell lived long enough to reinvent himself after witnessing the failings of the first communist state, and MLK did not.
These Black Christian conservatives insist that MLK should not be remembered as a national civil rights hero simply because he didn’t lose his affinity toward Marxism before he died. That is just as ridiculous as blaming him for his own death because he didn’t dodge the assassin’s bullet.