Martin Luther King, Jr.:
Charismatic Leadership in a Mass Struggle
The legislation to establish
Martin Luther King, Jr.'s birthday as a federal holiday provided official
recognition of King's greatness, but it remains the responsibility of those
of us who study and carry on King's work to define his historical significance.
Rather than engaging in officially approved nostalgia, our remembrance
of King should reflect the reality of his complex and multifaceted life.
Biographers, theologians, political scientists, sociologists, social psychologists,
and historians have given us a sizable literature of King's place in the
Afro-American protest tradition, his role in the modern black freedom struggle,
and his eclectic ideas regarding nonviolent activism. Although King scholars
may benefit from and may stimulate the popular interest in King generated
by the national holiday, many will find themselves uneasy participants
in annual observances to honor an innocuous, carefully cultivated image
of King as a black heroic figure.
The King depicted in serious
scholarly works is far too interesting to be encased in such a didactic
legend. King was a controversial leader who challenged authority and who
once applauded what he called "creative maladjusted nonconformity." He
should not be transformed into a simplistic image -designed to offend no
one -a black counterpart to the static, heroic myths that have embalmed
George Washington as the Father of His Country and Abraham Lincoln as the
Great Emancipator.
One aspect of the emerging
King myth has been the depiction of him in the mass media, not only as
the preeminent leader of the civil rights movement, but also as the initiator
and sole indispensable element in the southern black struggles of the 1950s
and 1960s. As in other historical myths, a Great Man is seen as the decisive
factor in the process of social change, and the unique qualities of a leader
are used to explain major historical events. The King myth departs from
historical reality because it attributes too much to King's exceptional
qualities as a leader and too little to the impersonal, large-scale social
factors that made it possible for King to display his singular abilities
on a national stage. Because the myth emphasizes the individual at the
expense of the black movement, it not only exaggerates King's historical
importance but also distorts his actual, considerable contribution to the
movement.
A major example of this distortion
has been the tendency to see King as a charismatic figure who single-handedly
directed the course of the civil rights movement through the force of his
oratory. The charismatic label, however, does not adequately define King's
role in the southern black struggle. The term charisma has traditionally
been used to describe the godlike, magical qualities possessed by certain
leaders. Connotations of the term have changed, of course, over the years.
In our more secular age, it has lost many of its religious connotations
and now refers to a wide range of leadership styles that involve the capacity
to inspire - usually through oratory- emotional bonds between leaders and
followers. Arguing that King was not a charismatic leader, in the broadest
sense of the term, becomes somewhat akin to arguing that he was not a Christian,
but emphasis on King's charisma obscures other important aspects of his
role in the black movement. To be sure, King's oratory was exceptional
and many people saw King as a divinely inspired leader, but King did not
receive and did not want the kind of unquestioning support that is often
associated with charismatic leaders. Movement activists instead saw him
as the most prominent among many outstanding movement strategists, tacticians,
ideologues, and institutional leaders.
King undoubtedly recognized
that charisma was one of many leadership qualities at his disposal, but
he also recognized that charisma was not a sufficient basis for leadership
in a modern political movement enlisting numerous self-reliant leaders.
Moreover, he rejected aspects of the charismatic model that conflicted
with his sense of his own limitations. Rather than exhibiting unwavering
confidence in his power and wisdom, King was a leader full of self-doubts,
keenly aware of his own limitations and human weaknesses. He was at times
reluctant to take on the responsibilities suddenly and unexpectedly thrust
upon him. During the Montgomery bus boycott, for example, when he worried
about threats to his life and to the lives of his wife and child, he was
overcome with fear rather than confident and secure in his leadership role.
He was able to carry on only after acquiring an enduring understanding
of his dependence on a personal God who promised never to leave him alone.
Moreover, emphasis on King's
charisma conveys the misleading notion of a movement held together by spellbinding
speeches and blind faith rather than by a complex blend of rational and
emotional bonds. King's charisma did not place him above criticism. Indeed,
he was never able to gain mass support for his notion of nonviolent struggle
as a way of life, rather than simply a tactic. Instead of viewing himself
as the embodiment of widely held Afro-American racial values, he willingly
risked his popularity among blacks through his steadfast advocacy of nonviolent
strategies to achieve radical social change.
He was a profound and provocative
public speaker as well as an emotionally powerful one. Only those unfamiliar
with the Afro-American clergy would assume that his oratorical skills were
unique, but King set himself apart from other black preachers through his
use of traditional black Christian idiom to advocate unconventional political
ideas. Early in his life King became disillusioned with the unbridled emotionalism
associated with his father's religious fundamentalism, and, as a thirteen-year-old,
he questioned the bodily resurrection of Jesus in his Sunday school class.
His subsequent search for an intellectually satisfying religious faith
conflicted with the emphasis on emotional expressiveness that pervades
evangelical religion. His preaching manner was rooted in the traditions
of the black church, while his subject matter, which often reflected his
wide-ranging philosophical interests, distinguished him from other preachers
who relied on rhetorical devices that manipulated the emotions of listeners.
King used charisma as a tool for mobilizing black communities, but he always
used it in the context of other forms of intellectual and political leadership
suited to a movement containing many strong leaders.
Recently, scholars have begun
to examine the black struggle as a locally based mass movement, rather
than simply a reform movement led by national civil rights leaders. The
new orientation in scholarship indicates that King's role was different
from that suggested in King-centered biographies and journalistic accounts.
King was certainly not the only significant leader of the civil rights
movement, for sustained protest movements arose in many southern communities
in which King had little or no direct involvement.
In Montgomery, for example,
local black leaders such as E. D. Nixon, Rosa Parks, and Jo Ann Robinson
started the bus boycott before King became the leader of the Montgomery
Improvement Association. Thus, although King inspired blacks in Montgomery
and black residents recognized that they were fortunate to have such a
spokesperson, talented local leaders other than King played decisive roles
in initiating and sustaining the boycott movement.
Similarly, the black students
who initiated the 1960 lunch counter sit-ins admired King, but they did
not wait for him to act before launching their own movement. The sit-in
leaders who founded the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC)
became increasingly critical of King's leadership style, linking it to
the feelings of dependency that often characterize the followers of charismatic
leaders. The essence of SNCC's approach to community organizing was to
instill in local residents the confidence that they could lead their own
struggles. A SNCC organizer failed if local residents became dependent
on his or her presence; as the organizers put it, their job was to work
themselves out of a job. Though King influenced the struggles that took
place in the Black Belt regions of Mississippi, Alabama, and Georgia, those
movements were also guided by self-reliant local leaders who occasionally
called on King's oratorical skills to galvanize black protestors at mass
meetings while refusing to depend on his presence.
If King had never lived,
the black struggle would have followed a course of development similar
to the one it did. The Montgomery bus boycott would have occurred, because
King did not initiate it. Black students probably would have rebelled -even
without King as a role model -for they had sources of tactical and ideological
inspiration besides King. Mass activism in southern cities and voting rights
efforts in the deep South were outgrowths of large-scale social and political
forces, rather than simply consequences of the actions of a single leader.
Though perhaps not as quickly and certainly not as peacefully nor with
as universal a significance, the black movement would probably have achieved
its major legislative victories without King's leadership, for the southern
Jim Crow system was a regional anachronism, and the forces that undermined
it were inexorable.
To what extent, then, did
King's presence affect the movement? Answering that question requires us
to look beyond the usual portrayal of the black struggle. Rather than seeing
an amorphous mass of discontented blacks acting out strategies determined
by a small group of leaders, we would recognize King as a major example
of the local black leadership that emerged as black communities mobilized
for sustained struggles. If not as dominant a figure as sometimes portrayed,
the historical King was nevertheless a remarkable leader who acquired the
respect and support of self-confident, grass-roots leaders, some of whom
possessed charismatic qualities of their own. Directing attention to the
other leaders who initiated and emerged from those struggles should not
detract from our conception of King's historical significance; such movement-oriented
research reveals King as a leader who stood out in a forest of tall trees.
King's major public speeches
- particularly the "I Have a Dream" speech - have received much attention,
but his exemplary qualities were also displayed in countless strategy sessions
with other activists and in meetings with government officials. King's
success as a leader was based on his intellectual and moral cogency and
his skill as a conciliator among movement activists who refused to be simply
King's "followers" or "lieutenants."
The success of the black
movement required the mobilization of black communities as well as the
transformation of attitudes in the surrounding society, and King's wide
range of skills and attributes prepared him to meet the internal as well
as the external demands of the movement. King understood the black world
from a privileged position, having grown up in a stable family within a
major black urban community; yet he also learned how to speak persuasively
to the surrounding white world. Alone among the major civil rights leaders
of his time, King could not only articulate black concerns to white audiences,
but could also mobilize blacks through his day-to-day involvement in black
community institutions and through his access to the regional institutional
network of the black church. His advocacy of nonviolent activism gave the
black movement invaluable positive press coverage, but his effectiveness
as a protest leader derived mainly from his ability to mobilize black community
resources.
Analyses of the southern
movement that emphasize its nonrational aspects and expressive functions
over its political character explain the black struggle as an emotional
outburst by discontented blacks, rather than recognizing that the movement's
strength and durability came from its mobilization of black community institutions,
financial resources, and grass-roots leaders. The values of southern blacks
were profoundly and permanently transformed not only by King, but also
by involvement in sustained protest activity and community-organizing efforts,
through thousands of mass meetings, workshops, citizenship classes, freedom
schools, and informal discussions. Rather than merely accepting guidance
from above, southern blacks were resocialized as a result of their movement
experiences.
Although the literature of
the black struggle has traditionally paid little attention to the intellectual
content of black politics, movement activists of the 1960s made a profound,
though often ignored, contribution to political thinking. King may have
been born with rare potential, but his most significant leadership attributes
were related to his immersion in, and contribution to, the intellectual
ferment that has always been an essential part of Afro-American freedom
struggles. Those who have written about King have too often assumed that
his most important ideas were derived from outside the black struggle-from
his academic training, his philosophical readings, or his acquaintance
with Gandhian ideas. Scholars are only beginning to recognize the extent
to which his attitudes and those of many other activists, white and black,
were transformed through their involvement in a movement in which ideas
disseminated from the bottom up as well as from the top down.
Although my assessment of
King's role in the black struggles of his time reduces him to human scale,
it also increases the possibility that others may recognize his qualities
in themselves. Idolizing King lessens one's ability to exhibit some of
his best attributes or, worse, encourages one to become a debunker, emphasizing
King's flaws in order to lessen the inclination to exhibit his virtues.
King himself undoubtedly feared that some who admired him would place too
much faith in his ability to offer guidance and to overcome resistance,
for he often publicly acknowledged his own limitations and mortality. Near
the end of his life, King expressed his certainty that black people would
reach the Promised Land whether or not he was with them. His faith was
based on an awareness of the qualities that he knew he shared with all
people. When he suggested his own epitaph, he asked not to be remembered
for his exceptional achievements--his Nobel Prize and other awards, his
academic accomplishments; instead, he wanted to be remembered for giving
his life to serve others, for trying to be right on the war question, for
trying to feed the hungry and clothe the naked, for trying to love and
serve humanity. "I want you to say that I tried to love and serve humanity."
Those aspects of King's life did not require charisma or other superhuman
abilities.
If King were alive today,
he would doubtless encourage those who celebrate his life to recognize
their responsibility to struggle as he did for a more just and peaceful
world. He would prefer that the black movement be remembered not only as
the scene of his own achievements, but also as a setting that brought out
extraordinary qualities in many people. If he were to return, his oratory
would be unsettling and intellectually challenging rather than remembered
diction and cadences. He would probably be the unpopular social critic
he was on the eve of the Poor People's Campaign rather than the object
of national homage he became after his death. His basic message would be
the same as it was when he was alive, for he did not bend with the changing
political winds. He would talk of ending poverty and war and of building
a just social order that would avoid the pitfalls of competitive capitalism
and repressive communism. He would give scant comfort to those who condition
their activism upon the appearance of another King, for he recognized the
extent to which he was a product of the movement that called him to leadership.
The notion that appearances
by Great Men (or Great Women) are necessary preconditions for the emergence
of major movements for social changes reflects not only a poor understanding
of history, but also a pessimistic view of the possibilities for future
social change. Waiting for the Messiah is a human weakness that is unlikely
to be rewarded more than once in a millennium. Studies of King's life offer
support for an alternative optimistic belief that ordinary people can collectively
improve their lives. Such studies demonstrate the capacity of social movements
to transform participants for the better and to create leaders worthy of
their followers.
Source and copyright: "Martin
Luther King Jr.: Charismatic Leadership in a Mass Struggle." Journal
of American History 74, (September 1987): 448-454. All rights
reserved.
|