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THE CONSERVATIVE EXAMPLE OF DR. KING
The Conservative Example of Dr. King By Patrick McAuliffe
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his past month of January, we took time off from everyday life (and started classes a day later than I originally anticipated) to honor the life’s work of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Civil rights activists to this day look up to Dr. King’s movement for integration and civil rights as a model for championing their own modern causes. How well they follow through on that example is up for debate, but the intentions are there. Luke argues that Dr. King is a Republican In Name Only, but I think this RINO still has something to offer conservatives in terms of providing a positive symbol for the right way to participate in the democratic process. The segregation and racism that Dr. King opposed was state-sponsored and state-enforced segregation. This was first passed through the gradual Democrat infiltration of Southern legislatures and the enactment of “Jim Crow laws” in the decades following Reconstruction. If Luke takes offense at the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and its regulation on private businesses’ actions, he should also understand Dr. King’s motivation for seeking to change a different kind of business regulation in the Jim Crow laws. In fact, it was a private business’ resistance to these laws that led to their strengthening, in the landmark case of Plessy v. Ferguson (1896). The doctrine of “separate but equal” would have doubled the cost to the East Louisiana Railroad Company for two sets of train cars for blacks and whites. This, in conjunction with the efforts of the Citizens’ Committee in Louisiana to purposefully place a ⅞ white, ⅛ black man (namely Homer Plessy) in the whites-only car to protest the discrimination,1 showed how private individuals, groups, and businesses, not the state, are the real catalysts for change in a society. As a civil rights leader with a non state-sanctioned movement - often getting into violent clashes with state enforcers like the police - Dr. King would certainly agree that this is the case. Luke brings up many criticisms of Dr. King that can be easily debunked by a quick search on Snopes. (The following evidence is being cited from “Four Things About King” on Snopes.com.) The “glorious and honorable right wing” is certainly worthy of using Dr. King as a moral example. Dr. King’s plagiarism of his academic dissertations does exist, but the academic committee that investigated such plagiarism did not decide to revoke his doctorate. They claimed that “despite its flaws, the dissertation ‘makes an intelligent contribution to scholarship’ ” (Snopes.com). In the Tillich work that Luke cites as plagiarized, that paper written by Dr. King was titled “A Comparison of the Conceptions of God in the Thinking of Paul Tillich and Henry Nelson Wieman”. King’s plagiarism was direct comparisons of these philosophers’ ideas about God to his own, and merely leaving out the citation of direct quotes and passages (Snopes.com). The committee reviewing Dr. King’s plagiarisms (convened in 1991, much closer to the “modern academic field” than his own time) did not consider them serious enough to bring charges for revoking his doctorate. The attacks on Dr. King’s political and sexual character that Luke also brings up can again be debunked by the same
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Snopes article and testimony by associates close to Dr. King. Fraternization with Communists, specifically Stanley Levison and Jack O’Dell, advisors to Dr. King and a branch manager of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference respectively, was a major scandal at the time of King’s work. Levison was taped and monitored by the FBI for the duration of his role in King’s movement, but the agency could observe no evidence that Levison was still involved with the Communist Party at that time. Levison claimed to have left the Party in the late 1950s, before his involvement with Dr. King. O’Dell’s reputation was slandered when the FBI planted stories in conservative-leaning papers that he had ties to the Communists, and in response Dr. King publicly stated that O’Dell was no longer in the employ of the SCLC. After it was revealed that O’Dell had not in fact been fired by King, O’Dell wrote a private letter to King disavowing his ties to the Communist Party. He was fired from his position in the SCLC anyway because the vast majority of the public still perceived him as a Communist and Dr. King did not want to endanger the reputation or validity of his movement. In regards to Dr. King’s alleged lucrative taste for prostitutes and extramarital affairs, it is for the most part hyperbole. Ralph Abernathy, the successor of Dr. King as the head of the SCLC, admits that they “understood and believed in the biblical prohibition against sex outside of marriage. It was just that he had a particularly difficult time with that temptation” (Snopes.com). Abernathy cites Dr. King’s courteous manner with women and his easy, pleasant company as possible reasons why such a temptation might have been hard for him. Dr. King may seem like a hypocrite, but as a Christian reverend, he believed in forgiveness from sin and ultimately redemption. As Abernathy states, Dr. King “was...a man who attracted women, even when he didn’t intend to,” and if his intentions were in conflict with his desires, it is only a sign of a willing spirit but a weak flesh (Snopes.com). Although Martin Luther King, Jr. never endorsed a Republican candidate or showed any sign that he consistently voted Republican, what he stood for is more than worthy of conservatism. Right-wing fascism and the authoritarian left would naturally take issue with Dr. King - civil disobedience over national cohesion, chances for forgiveness over strict punitive measures, attempts to find common ground over “us-versusthem” - but the modern conservative can comfortably claim Dr. King’s fight against an unjust establishment and his focus on content of character over color of skin as worthy examples of informed, active, and principled citizenship. References: Reckdahl, Katy, “Plessy and Ferguson unveil plaque today marking their ancestors’ actions”, The Times-Picayune, 11 February 2009. Mikkelson, David. “Four Things About King”, Snopes.com. 15 January 2017. 1
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