ATLANTA (KRT) — Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday was celebrated across the country Monday in typical fashion: glittery parades, fiery ecumenical services and a proclamation signed by President Bush. But beneath the surface of this year’s tribute to King, a man who devoted his life to non-violent social change, there was a rumbling of discontent among civil rights activists who believe the war in Afghanistan is wrong.
Though King supporters refused to use the holiday as a platform for their stance, there is a growing sentiment among those who believe in King’s philosophy that war under almost any circumstance is unacceptable and that the military use of force in Afghanistan must stop.
“I believe that (King) would feel the same as I do, that we would like to see our country take the moral high ground and try to bring those people to justice and address the issue of terrorism through diplomatic and law-enforcement channels rather than so much bombing and killing,” said Rev. Joseph Lowery, who co-founded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference with King. “The government has the responsibility to make the nation safe, but the means by which we respond defines us more than what our enemies do to us.”
Since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, some high-profile civil rights leaders have engaged in a delicate balancing act, weighing their longtime commitment toward non-violence with the nation’s overwhelming support for the president’s call to war against those nations that support terrorism.
During an ecumenical service at Atlanta’s Ebenezer Baptist Church, attended by First Lady Laura Bush, there was barely a mention of the war on terrorism. However, Coretta Scott King, the civil rights leader’s widow, as well as former U.N. Ambassador Andrew Young and others have quietly stated in recent months that war conflicts with King’s teachings.
King, a recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964, preached the philosophy of non-violence as a way of life. And many of his supporters said those words are as relevant today as they were when King spoke out against the Vietnam War in the 1960s, drawing the ire of President Lyndon Johnson as well as many prominent African-Americans.
“I thought we made progress on war, but it looks like the situation with us is getting worse,” Young, a King protégé, said during a televised fireside chat with civil rights leaders in Atlanta in September. “Dr. King said the bombs you drop in Vietnam will explode at home. The bombs we drop on the Middle East will explode at home quicker.”
On the same program, Coretta King, an acknowledged pacifist, said: “I shudder to think of the prospect of war, an endless cycle of war is what we will be getting into.”
Lowery, who worked at King’s side during the civil rights movement, said the slain leader would be “saddened by the fact that we still resort to so much violence both domestically and internationally.”
Groups in Atlanta have protested against expanded racial profiling supported by the Bush administration, fearing that it could be unjustly applied to blacks.
In Washington, Black Voices for Peace on Monday held a five-hour assembly of community organizers at the Metropolitan AME Church to plan a national campaign seeking a new U.S. foreign policy promoting permanent peace and organizing support for those unemployed because of the Sept. 11 terrorist attack and the anthrax crisis.
Martin Luther King III, head of the SCLC, said during a King celebration in Knoxville, Tenn., last week that more than 33 years after his father’s death, his goal of eliminating racism, poverty and violence remains a dream. He urged Americans to observe his father’s holiday by “doing something that will uplift the dream and make the dream become a reality.”
In Boston, King’s eldest daughter, Yolanda, told 1,500 people at the city’s largest annual MLK Memorial Breakfast, that Sept. 11 had erased racial differences — for now.
“Skin color was covered by the ash of burning towers,” she said. “Perhaps the best response to this tragedy is not to go back to normal.”
Chicago Tribune correspondent Glen Elsasser and Tribune news services contributed to this report.