By Narayan Prasad Mishra
Martin Luther King, Jr (1929-1968) was one of the most prominent civil rights African-American leaders in the USA; he experienced the age-old problem of the Negros (African-Americans) with unequal treatment and unbearable injustice everywhere – schools, restaurants, theatres, and housing. He saw the white and black signs separately on drinking fountains, waiting rooms, lavatories, etc. He wrote he could not go swimming until there was a Negro YMCA and could not go to public parks and so-called white schools. He could not go to a lunch counter to buy a hamburger or a cup of coffee in many of the stores in downtown Atlanta. Inequality and injustice were in every step of life. He had a bitter experience when one of his white childhood friends stopped playing with him as his friend’s father demanded that the boy not play with him anymore after knowing of his company. As a kid, he also had an experience of being asked to move from the empty front seat of a shoe store to the rear when he and his father were there to buy shoes. They left without buying shoes. During his childhood, Negros, the blacks, were not supposed to sit in the front seats on the buses even if they were empty. So, he learned to abhor segregation and considered it both rationally inexplicable and morally unjustifiable. In this context, he fought against inequality and injustice throughout his life by peaceful means with the Gandhian philosophy of nonviolence until he was assassinated on April 4, 1968.
He was never in a position of power in the government but was in the hearts of millions of suppressed and oppressed people. He was the prime figure who could bring equal rights to all blacks in the USA. He is highly respected in the USA, and this country where people have only a few government holidays has a federal holiday on the third Monday in January to honor him and his achievements. I love him and his speeches. I always think of the following sentences of his famous speech, “I Have a Dream.” It may be a truthful guideline for anyone, especially political leaders, to be on the right path if they want to do their work honestly and in righteous ways.
“But there is something that I must say to my people, who stand on the warm threshold which leads into the palace of justice: In the process of gaining our rightful place, we must not be guilty of wrongful deeds.”
Throughout his life, he followed his above saying despite unbearable pain, suffering, inequality, and injustice. I was in Detroit, Michigan, with my daughter Pragya and family on June 7, 2023, to go to the Consulate of Italy for our visa to go to that country. When we were there, we went to the Henry Ford Museum of American Innovation in Dearborn. I took the following picture from the wall of the” With Liberty and Justice for All” Room in that museum, which illustrates the segregation during the time of Dr. Martin Luther King. But even in that crucial time, he did not move even an inch from his philosophy and did not commit any wrongful deeds.
Our country and people would not have suffered so much, and the thousands of people would not have been killed if the then Maosts had followed his above saying. Our unlimited infrastructures – bridges, roads, office buildings, and offices would not have been destroyed if they were like Martin Luther. We know even now, our leaders and their parties are following wrongful deeds to achieve not only rightful things but even wrongful things.
By studying Martin Luthet’s autobiography, edited by Clayborne Carson, it is known that King studied Karl Marx in 1949 and left his views about it with the following thoughtful and fascinating writings.
When you give your unbiased thoughts to King’s, mentioned earlier’s views about communism, you can hardly deny it. It is interesting to read about proletariat dictatorship, a nationalized economy, social ownership of the means of production, equal distribution of resources, elimination of class distinctions, and creation of a classless society in communism. Its picture looks beautiful and pleasant. But it looks like a house built in your imagination and dream, which is almost impossible to see in real life and nowhere seen in any part of the world. We have not seen even a sign of its rosy picture in the present communist countries – Russia, China, North Korea, or Cuba. When we evaluate the Communist party’s government in our country, we ever had and their leader’s lifestyle and conduct, we will be bound to say that communism is the medium to attract and cheat the poor and underprivileged people with some trick of excellent stories but not to see in reality. It is like a fishing rod to trap the people. We see our poor people becoming poorer, but the communist leaders are becoming super prosperous. People often talk about our communist leaders and say the same leaders who talk about the national economy and the nationalization of industries, own private industries, factories, and business houses, like private hospitals, schools, colleges, etc. We see many classes and levels of leaders, even within the communist party, emphasizing a classless society in its doctrines. There are many communist parties with various names, and they cannot even be one and stay under one umbrella, aiming to create one society without the distinction of caste, creed, color, level, or status. That is the funniest of it. Almost all are for themselves, their families, friends, and groups. Everybody can see it clearly. Everybody can experience it easily. The clear picture of communism is in front of our eyes. I am sad to see the unpleasant picture of communism, which does not give the rosy picture we see when we read about it.
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