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Yesterday was Martin Luther King Jr Day in the United States, a public holiday since 1986. The day has special significance to me this year because it’s the first one I’ve observed since reading every significant speech, essay and book the man ever wrote while I was wrongfully imprisoned in Hong Kong.
I had a copy of King’s compiled works with me in prison. My prisoner number was written in black marker on top. The guards marked it in this way because sharing books in Hong Kong prisons is forbidden, absurdly enough, and the guards needed to easily be able to read my number so they could snatch the book away quickly if I dared to share the words of Dr. King with anyone else. In any case, the number is a good reminder of where I’ve been and what I did there.
King is best known for his work in the black civil rights movement, but his advocacy for political and economic justice extended well beyond any one movement. His words continue to inspire and challenge millions across the world as they fight for justice in their own countries—including here in Hong Kong.
King often found himself in jail cells, usually for unauthorized assembly and other civil disobedience efforts. He would serve the time with dignity and strength, writing and sending messages to followers through it all, then upon release go right back into the streets to continue leading the movement. At one point, Montgomery, Alabama police arrested him for disobeying a police order. To be released, he only had to pay a $14 fine. He refused on principle, choosing instead to serve two weeks in jail. In an indication of the power of nonviolent protest to move mountains, King’s refusal to pay so worried his opponents that the Montgomery Police Commissioner, a staunch opponent of King’s movement, personally paid the fine just to get King out of his custody.
King’s words helped me survive in prison. I read the 736 page book cover to cover. I read his Letter From Birmingham City Jail many more times, and managed to surreptitiously share it with other prisoners too (I know, I’m such a rebel). This particular letter drew me back so many times not only because of the obvious relevance to those of us living life behind bars but also because it is some of the most brilliant short writing I’ve ever read.
In just a few pages that King handwrote in a dank Birmingham, Alabama jail cell, it manages to be both spiritually soaring and intellectually hefty. It contains many of King’s best-known quotes as well as many of his lesser known persuasive, logical and downright radical arguments for structural and spiritual change in America. He wrote the open letter in response to a group of white moderate Southern clergy, nominally supportive of Black civil rights, who had called for an end to unauthorized protests, slowing down the movement, and working within the system for change. In one famous passage, King expresses his frustration with these views:
I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to "order" than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: "I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action"; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man's freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a "more convenient season." Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.
Some of my favorite portions of the letter are about the relationship between just laws and justice itself, and the way unjust laws actually undermine rule of law. As a lawyer who believes deeply in the duty lawyers have to stand not just for the law but for justice, one of my favorite points addresses the duty a person has when faced with an unjust law:
I submit that an individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and willingly accepts the penalty by staying in jail to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the very highest respect for law.
Expressing the very highest respect for the law. The converse of this point, of course, is that those who enforce unjust laws are expressing the very lowest contempt for the law.
I grew up, like many American kids of my generation, inspired by King’s spiritual leadership and ability to give a crowd goosebumps with soaring language. I also took pride in being aware, unlike the sanitized version that we are taught, that he was politically radical, heavily invested in the organized labor movement, anti-corporate and borderline Marxist. (Perhaps that last word is a trigger for some of you, and that’s exactly the sort of challenge to our preconceived worldviews that King brought to the table.) Yet he was never intimidated into backing down from these controversial positions. He was a political leader unlike we’ve seen in the US in a while, driven not by polls or focus groups but by conviction and a desire to persuade his followers and potential followers rather than the other way around.
But what I didn’t really understand until reading his works in prison is what an intellectual heavyweight he was. He was able to take complex matters like the power of non-violence, the imperative of a unified labor movement across races and nationalities, the US’s troublesome imperial war in Vietnam, the dangers of militant nationalism, and the complex causes of race rioting in the 60s, among others, and make it all easily understandable to the masses—with an incredible knack for persuading others to his point of view. The man was the real deal: a moral, rhetorical, and intellectual giant.
I’m not going to encourage people to go out and read 700 pages of King’s collected works (unless you end up in prison with a lot of free time, in which case I highly recommend it). But I will encourage you to skip the “I Have a Dream” speech this year—not that it isn’t wonderful in its own way—and instead go read his Letter from Birmingham City Jail. It’s not very long, though it does command your full attention for a half hour or so. Print it out if you can, sit in a comfortable place and witness a truly great communicator use rhetoric, logic, and a smattering of well-placed humor to take down moderate white clergy leaders resisting calls for radical change with brutal, yet respectful, finality. It’s truly inspired.
That phrase "who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice" sums up the ideal of "National Security" perfectly. Thanks again Samuel