In our popular 12 on Tuesday series, we ask local community leaders and influencers 12 questions about themselves and about our community. In honor of Martin Luther King, Jr Day, today we aren’t asking any questions, but rather publishing 12 brief excerpts from interviews with Dr. King himself. The first interview is by the great writer Alex Haley and was published in Playboy in 1965; the second by the poet and writer Robert Penn Warren from 1964; and the third is by a young student whose name has been lost to history, who interviewed Dr. King for a class project. We are struck by how contemporary these answers still feel; it feels, sometimes, like not much has changed.
Alex Haley: Dr. King, are your children old enough to be aware of the issues at stake in the civil rights movement, and of your role in it? Yes, they are—especially my oldest child, Yolanda. Two years ago, I remember, I returned home after serving one of my terms in the Albany, Georgia, jail, and she asked me, “Daddy, why do you have to go to jail so much?” I told her that I was involved in a struggle to make conditions better for the colored people, and thus for all people. I explained that because things are as they are, someone has to take a stand, that it is necessary for someone to go to jail, because many Southern officials seek to maintain the barriers that have historically been erected to exclude the colored people. I tried to make her understand that someone had to do this to make the world better—for all children. She was only six at that time, but she was already aware of segregation because of an experience that we had had.
Your detractors in the Negro community often refer to you snidely as “De Lawd” and “Booker T. King.” What’s your reaction to this sort of Uncle Tom label? I hear some of those names, but my reaction to them is never emotional. I don’t think you can be in public life without being called bad names. As Lincoln said, “If I answered all criticism, I’d have time for nothing else.” But with regard to both of the names you mentioned, I’ve always tried to be what I call militantly nonviolent. I don’t believe that anyone could seriously accuse me of not being totally committed to the breakdown of segregation.
Can you recall any … mistakes you’ve made in leading the movement? Well, the most pervasive mistake I have made was in believing that because our cause was just, we could be sure that the white ministers of the South, once their Christian consciences were challenged, would rise to our aid. I felt that white ministers would take our cause to the white power structures. I ended up, of course, chastened and disillusioned. As our movement unfolded, and direct appeals were made to white ministers, most folded their hands—and some even took stands against us.
Relatively few dispute the justness of the struggle to eradicate racial injustice, but many whites feel that the Negro should be more patient, that only the passage of time—perhaps generations—will bring about the sweeping changes he demands in traditional attitudes and customs. Do you think this is true? No, I do not. I feel that the time is always right to do what is right. Where progress for the Negro in America is concerned, there is a tragic misconception of time among whites. They seem to cherish a strange, irrational notion that something in the very flow of time will cure all ills. In truth, time itself is only neutral. Increasingly, I feel that time has been used destructively by people of ill will much more than it has been used constructively by those of good will.
If I were to select a timetable for the equalization of human rights, it would be the intent of the “all deliberate speed” specified in the historic 1954 Supreme Court decision. But what has happened? A Supreme Court decision was met, and balked, with utter defiance. Ten years later, in most areas of the South, less than one percent of the Negro children have been integrated in schools, and in some of the deepest South, not even one tenth of one percent. Approximately 25 percent of employable Negro youth, for another example, are presently unemployed. Though many would prefer not to, we must face the fact that progress for the Negro—to which white “moderates” like to point in justifying gradualism—has been relatively insignificant, particularly in terms of the Negro masses. What little progress has been made—and that includes the Civil Rights Act—has applied primarily to the middle-class Negro. Among the masses, especially in the Northern ghettos, the situation remains about the same, and for some it is worse.
You categorically reject violence as a tactical technique for social change. Can it not be argued, however, that violence, historically, has effected massive and sometimes constructive social change in some countries? I’d be the first to say that some historical victories have been won by violence; the U.S. Revolution is certainly one of the foremost. But the Negro revolution is seeking integration, not independence. Those fighting for independence have the purpose to drive out the oppressors. But here in America, we’ve got to live together. We’ve got to find a way to reconcile ourselves to living in community, one group with the other. The struggle of the Negro in America, to be successful, must be waged with resolute efforts, but efforts that are kept strictly within the framework of our democratic society. This means reaching, educating and moving large enough groups of people of both races to stir the conscience of the nation.
Robert Penn Warren: Two weeks ago a prominent newspaperman said to me — a Southerner by birth — “Thank God for Dr. King; he’s our only hope.” He was worrying about violence. Now, this is very often said by white people. Dr. Kenneth Clark has remarked in print that your appeal to many white people is because you lull them into some sense of security. And I hear, too, that there is some resistance, automatic emotional resistance on the part of Negroes because they feel that your leadership has somehow given a, not “sellout,” but a sense of a soft line, a rapprochement that flatters the white man’s sense of security. Do you encounter this, and how do you, how do you think about this? How do you feel about these things, assuming they are true? I do not think violence and hatred can solve this problem. I think they will end up creating many more social problems than they solve, and I’m thinking of a very strong love. I’m not, I’m thinking, I’m thinking of love in action and not something where you say, “Love your enemies,” and just leave it at that, but you love your enemies to the point that you’re willing to sit-in at a lunch counter in order to help them find themselves. You’re willing to go to jail.
How do you interpret the assaults on you in Harlem? Well, the first one, (the stabbing by a mentally ill woman) I don’t know if we’ll ever know what the cause or basis was because here you had a demented mind who really didn’t know why she was doing it. I, I really don’t, really don’t think, it may be that she had been around some of the meetings of these groups in Harlem, black nationalist groups, that have me all the time as a favorite object of scorn. and hearing this over and over again, she, she may have responded to it when I came to Harlem. Or it may be that she was just so confused that she would’ve done this to anybody whose name was in the news. We, we’ll never know. But now on the other one where they threw eggs at a car, I think that was really a, a result of the black nationalist groups, and a feeling, you know, they’ve heard all of these things about my being soft and my talking about ‘love the white’ man all the time, and I, I think a real feeling that, that, that this kind of approach is far from, it, it’s a cowardly approach. And they transfer that bitterness toward the white man to me because they began to see, I mean, they began to fear that I’m saying love this person that they have such a bitter attitude toward. I think it’s, I think it grows right out of that. In fact Malcolm X had a meeting the day before and he had talked about me a great deal and said, told them that I would be there the next night and said, “Now, you all are to go over there and let old King know what you think about him.”
And he had said a great deal about nonviolence, criticizing nonviolence, and saying that I approved of Negro men and women being bitten by dogs and the fire hoses, and I say, say go on and not defend yourself. So I think this kind of response grew out of the build up and the, all of the talk about my being a sort of polished Uncle Tom. I mean this is the kind of thing they say in those groups. Now my feeling has always been, again, that they have never understood what I’ve said, I’m, I’m saying they confuse, they don’t see that there’s a great deal of a difference between nonresistance to evil and nonviolent resistance.
And certainly I’m not saying that you sit down and patiently accept injustice. I’m talking about a very strong force, where you stand up with all your might against an evil system, and you, you, you are not a coward.
You, you, you are resisting, but you’ve come to see that tactically as well as morally, it is better to be nonviolent. I can’t see anything but, even if one would, didn’t want to deal with the moral questions, it would just be impractical for the Negro to talk about making his struggle a violent one.
(Why is your work so important now?) We have lived so long with this idea with people saying it takes time and wait on time, that I find it very difficult to, to adjust to this. I mean, I, I get annoyed almost when I hear it, although I know it takes time. But the people that use this argument have been people so often who, who really didn’t want the change to come, and gradualism for them meant a do nothing-ism, you know, and the standstill-ism, so that it has been a revolt, I think, against the idea of a feeling on the part of some that you can just sit around and wait on time, when, actually, time is neutral. It can be used either constructively or destructively.
Student: What was your ambition (in your youth)? I always wanted to be a minister. My father is a minister , as you know. My grandfather and my great-grandfather was also a minister. I was also influenced by several individuals in my younger life.
Dr. Benjamin Mays, president of Morehouse College and Dr George Kelsey , one of my teachers there, influenced me greatly because of their ability to interpret the Christian Gospel . I admired them very much.
How did you become interested in Civil Rights? My home influenced me because my father, as a minister, was always interested in helping people who had been treated unjustly or unfairly. As a young college student I was concerned about segregation and I always felt that one of the important roles of a minister is leadership in getting rid of segregation and discrimination. Then when I began my ministry I went to Montgomery, which, by the way, was my first church. There the people were protesting the situation on the busses. On this problem I was asked to serve as spokesman. Thus I was lifted to a leadership role. My first civil rights job, you might say, was with the Montgomery Improvement Association and I have been in civil rights ever since.
What do you think of children participating in racial demonstration? Children suffer as much or more as a result of the existence of segregation as adults do , therefore, children have the right and a responsibility to participate in racial demonstrations, if they are well disciplined . Those who participate in demonstrations must be disciplined in non-violence.
In Birmingham, the children were very well disciplined. In the right circumstances , children should participate . I do think children should be taught how to behave and what they are demonstrating for before they demonstrate .
What comments do you have being nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize? I am honored to be considered for the highest award in the world. It is not a personal tribute to me. It is more of a tribute to thousands of gallant people who have participated in the struggle for equality , and who have done it in a peaceful , courageous manner. Any honor I receive is a way of saying to all those that i represent that this is all for you.
