The Life of Martin Luther King, Jr. by Michael A. Schuman

Author:Michael A. Schuman [Schuman, Michael A.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780766061491
Publisher: Enslow Publishers, Inc.
Published: 2014-07-25T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 7

NO MORE WAITING

In spite of King’s successes, not all African Americans admired him. Some with comfort- able lifestyles believed he was moving too quickly.

Others were more militant and thought King was moving too slowly. They resented his willingness to cooperate with white people, whom they saw as oppressors.

One vocal critic was a flamboyant black Muslim minister who had changed his name from Malcolm Little to Malcolm X. He said that his last name, Little, was a slave name, given to his ancestors by white slave owners. He urged his followers to also drop their slave names. The letter “X” represented his long forgotten ancestral name.

Malcolm X was a member of the Nation of Islam, an offshoot of the religion of Islam. The Nation of Islam was founded by an African American named Elijah Muhammad. Malcolm X preached in favor of black nationalism and against integration. He was also against nonviolence. He said African Americans should fight violence with violence.

In response to such urgings King said, “Nothing can be accomplished by violence. It only leads to new and complex social problems. I think it is unfortunate for the black nationalist movement. I think it is unfortunate for the health of our nation.”1

Blacks who were submissive to whites were called “Uncle Toms” by militants, after a slave in the Harriet Beecher Stowe novel, Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Because King stressed nonviolence and cooperation with whites, militants called him an “Uncle Tom.”

This hurt King greatly.2 In response to one critic, King defended himself by saying, “I don’t want to talk about my personal suffering, but I’ve been in jail as much as anyone in the movement.”3

In addition, there were disagreements among the various civil rights groups. It was not as if King was not an elected official. Voters had not chosen King as leader of the civil rights movement in the way that people elected a president. There were well-meaning African Americans who did not see King as their leader.

Many were in the NAACP. Its members did not like the protests used by King and the SCLC. To the NAACP, King was a young upstart getting the credit while the NAACP had been doing the work for decades.

Meanwhile, some SCLC people looked upon the NAACP in the same manner that militants viewed King. To them the NAACP was filled with “Uncle Toms” who placed too much faith in a racist legal system.

King hated the bickering and tried to play the role of peacemaker. He publicly supported the NAACP. In spite of the disagreements, the combined energy of the different groups did have positive results. In a decision called Boynton v. Virginia in 1960, the Supreme Court ruled that segregation in bus stations was illegal. (The court had ruled in 1946 in Morgan v. Virginia that segregation on interstate buses and trains was illegal but said nothing about bus stations.)

Despite the rulings, bus stations all over the South were still segregated. The civil rights group CORE decided in 1961 it would test those Supreme Court decisions.

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