Dr. King’s Plan for Peace Did Not Die on April 4, 1968

 

King spoke to prisoners in Cuba and dissidents in Palestine; he spoke to laborers in Detroit and migrants in Honduras. He spoke to fishermen in Haiti and young Marxists in Moscow. He spoke to Baptists in Alabama and Catholics in Boston. Long before $15 an hr became a popular campaign slogan, King was talking about living wages, women’s rights in the workforce, affordable housing and access to healthcare. And long before George W. Bush launched a “War on Terror,” Dr. King was mobilizing an army of peacemakers to descend on the nation’s capital. There, they would stop the war machine in its tracks, and hold the engineers of terror accountable for their global destruction.

 

To say that he was a man ahead of his time would be a mistake. Dr. King was a man of his time and for his time. His message resonated then as it does today because it is an universal message of human rights and racial equality. That is what distinguished King as a prophet. All attempts to claim him or co-opt him failed (and continue to fail) because he did not belong to political parties, colonial systems, or imperial power structures. As a prophet, he belonged only to his God. At the cost of his own life, he spoke only God’s Truth.

 

From calling out CIA coups in Latin America to the incredible stupidity of nuclear war, King was a liberator because he was a resister. Categorically, he resisted all forms of intolerance, irrational thought, and invitations to use violence. Consequently, King did not resist foreign and domestic tyrants; he resisted tyranny and oppression. King did not resist the occupiers and slave owners; he resisted the hegemonic thinking that justified colonialism and slavery. And King did not resist police officers and soldiers; he resisted militarism, racism, and poverty.  These are the “triplets of evil” that bring about the need for armies and police departments in the first place.

 

In the end, what made King’s message not only powerful on a symbolic and spiritual level, but on a political and practical level as well, is that he truly believed in the triumphant sustainability of peace and nonviolence to change the world. He understood what rights were being oppressed, and he had a plan to gain them back. It was not a pan-African plan. It was not an anti-Apartheid plan. It was not even an anti-Capitalism plan. It was a peace and justice plan. It was God’s plan.

 

Thank God that this plan did not die with King on April 4, 1968. Today, thanks to his remarkable legacy, it is more relevant and available than ever before. As Dr. King said memorably: