Martin Luther King%2C Jr..
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Duluth, Minnesota (OpEdNews) July 8, 2023: Slavery has been described as our American original sin. The Civil War was fought to bring slavery to an end. Slavery did end. However, it was replaced in the South by Jim Crow laws and practices of racial segregation. But the U.S. Supreme Court ruled against school segregation in its 1954 unanimous ruling in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas - the lawsuit brought by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). Subsequently, the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929-1968; Ph.D. in theology, Boston University, 1955) spearheaded the black civil rights movement of the 1950s and the 1960s that effectively brought Jim Crow laws and practices to an end. Nevertheless, white racism persists to this day in the United States - perhaps most notably in Trump's white supporters.
For an informed discussion of Trump's white Evangelical supporters, see Marcia Pally's 2022 book White Evangelicals and Right-Wing Populism: How Did We Get Here? (Routledge; scheduled to come out in a paperback edition soon).
Now, by a 6-to-3 vote, the U.S. Supreme Court has recently ruled unconstitutional the way in which Harvard University and the University of North Carolina have recently practiced affirmative action in their admissions policies. As a result, those two institutions of higher education will now have to alter their admissions practices to conform with the 6-to-3 ruling - and so will numerous other American colleges and universities.
Now, Dr. King's preaching and practice of nonviolent protest, starting with the 1955-1956 bus boycott in Montgomery, Alabama, won him national recognition and acclaim. As a result, Time magazine designated him "Man of the Year" in its first issue in January 1964. Subsequently in 1964, Dr. King received the Nobel Peace Prize. Later, however, he fell out of favor with white liberals when he started speaking out against the Vietnam War.
For further reading about King's philosophy of nonviolence, see the selection of readings under the subheading "Religious Nonviolence" in the 700-page book A Testament of Hope: The Essential Writings and Speeches of Martin Luther King, Jr., edited by James M. Washington of Union Theological Seminary in New York City (HarperCollins, 1986, pp. 5-72).
The white theologian Gary Dorrien of Union Theological Seminary in New York City has described Dr. King's life and work in detail in his 600-page book Breaking White Supremacy: Martin Luther King Jr. and the Black Social Gospel (Yale University Press, 2018), which I reviewed recently in my OEN article "Gary Dorrien on Martin Luther King, Jr.":
The prolific Dorrien has supplied the backstory of the black social gospel before King in his path-breaking 2015 book The New Abolition: W. E. B. Du Bois and the Black Social Gospel (Yale University Press).
I also discussed Dr. King in my recent OEN article "John J. Ansbro on Martin Luther King, Jr.":
In the spirit of 2 + 2 = 4, I would now like to draw together certain points I make in each of those two OEN articles to show here how those points are connected.
In my OEN article "Gary Dorrien on Martin Luther King, Jr." (dated July 3, 2023), I say, among other things, "I was inspired by King to devote ten years of my life to teaching writing (1969-1979) to about one thousand black inner-city youth, and about one thousand white youth, in the context of open admissions in the City of St. Louis and in New York City -- and I was inspired by [the American Jesuit Walter J.] Ong's work to see black inner-city youth in the City of St. Louis and in New York City as coming from a residually oral cultural background."
I also say, King's personalist orientation involves what the American Jesuit scholar Walter J. Ong (1912-2003; Ph.D. in English, Harvard University, 1955) refers to as belief "in" (a person), as distinct from belief "that" (a propositional statement is true), in his 1958 seminal essay "Voice as Summons for Belief: Literature, Faith, and the Divided Self" in the now-defunct Jesuit-sponsored journal Thought: A Review of Idea and Culture (Fordham University), volume 33, serial number 128 (Spring 1958): pp. 43-61.
"Ong reprinted his 1958 seminal essay in his 1962 book The Barbarian Within: And Other Fugitive Essays and Studies (Macmillan, pp. 49-67); it is also reprinted in An Ong Reader: Challenges for Further Inquiry, edited by Thomas J. Farrell and Paul A. Soukup (Hampton Press, 2002, pp. 259-275)."
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