50 Years Later: What Would Dr. King Say?

The year 1967 was an important one. It was the year Ronald Reagan was elected governor of California, ushering in a philosophy of education as a private good rather than a public one, which he was to amplify as president in the 1980s. It was the year the social scientists Christopher Jencks and David Riesman published their controversial study “The American Negro College” in the Harvard Educational Review. Under the guise of scholarship, they assaulted historically black colleges and universities as “ill-financed, ill-staffed caricature[s] of white higher education” that were “academic disaster areas.”

It was the year Benjamin Elijah Mays retired as president of Morehouse College. Mays warned in his final commencement address that discrimination in the future would come from liberals who believe in desegregation, and that the future of Morehouse would depend on its ability to buy intellectually gifted students, as predominantly white institutions had begun doing in the 1960s.

Some weeks before Mays retired, I was born. As I reflected on my 50th birthday last year, I read Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community?, written in 1967 by Mays’s most famous student, Martin Luther King Jr. This book was the prelude to the last year of Dr. King’s life, because on April 4, 1968, he would die in Memphis.

I was moved by the insights and often startled by the precision with which King described not 1967 but today. His daughter Bernice often describes her father as a prophet. Reading this particular text, I became a believer. It was a prophecy on race relations, including on college campuses. And recent events reveal that we have quite a ways to go to create a beloved community.

The past few years have seen a rise of white nationalists on campus, creating chaos under the guise of intellectual discourse. We stereotype what racists look like, but King never bought into that caricature. He wrote:

“Generally we think of white supremacist views as having their origins with the unlettered, underprivileged, poorer-class whites. But the social obstetricians who presided at the birth of racist views in our country were from the aristocracy: rich merchants, influential clergymen, men of medical science, historians and political scientists from some of the leading universities in the nation.”

So the Richard Spencers of today fit the description offered by King, especially their presence at top-ranked institutions. While 2018 hasn’t yet seen the same white-supremacist presence on campuses as last year, college officials remain vigilant about the potential of an unwelcomed guest choosing their campus to preach hate.

The lessons of Charlottesville, where last August torch-bearing white supremacists invaded the campus of the University of Virginia in a melee that, on campus and off, left one person dead and many more injured, are still being learned. King would no doubt be troubled by that and other violent incidents, but he would also have a message for liberal whites who claim to value diversity: Despite the diversity statements of colleges, their theme months and events, and even chief diversity officers, many students of color rightfully question the commitment of those on campus to create a beloved community. King made it plain:

“The white liberal must see that the Negro needs not only love but also justice. It is not enough to say, ‘We love Negroes, we have many Negro friends.’ They must demand justice for Negroes. Love that does not satisfy justice is no love at all. It is merely a sentimental affection, little more than what one would have for a pet.”

Black students in particular have said they are not pets. Since the University of Missouri at Columbia became the epicenter of a new movement in the fall of 2015, they have been demanding not to just be seen, but to be heard as well. Their sense of urgency had been building since the fatal shooting of Trayvon Martin, in 2012, in Sanford, Fla. and amplified by the 2014 shooting death of Michael Brown, in Ferguson, Mo., and the 2015 death of Sandra Bland, in a Waller County, Tex., jail. Black Lives Matter was a rallying cry that came with students to campus, a mantra that made many people uncomfortable.

Fifty years ago, King struggled with the idea of black power. He understood the sentiment; saying the “cries of black power and riots are not the causes of white resistance, they are the consequences of it.” But King thought the slogan was an unfortunate choice of words that carried the wrong connotations. He called it “a nihilistic philosophy born out of the conviction that the Negro can’t win.” The younger generation knew he felt that way, and they let him know it.

He wrote, “In all the speaking that I have done in the United States before varied audiences, including some hostile whites, the only time that I have been booed was one night in a Chicago mass meeting by some young members of the black-power movement.” So I wonder if King would even be listened to today. Would his alleged marital infidelity cause King’s speeches on campus to be met with protesters? I have to think this is in the realm of possibility.

As we commemorate the 50th anniversary of King’s assassination, I reflect not just on his legacy, or even on his prophetic vision. I’m drawn back to the man who gave his eulogy, King’s college president and mentor, Benjamin Mays, who in 1951 wrote in Negro Digest a challenging piece, “What’s Wrong With Negro Leaders?” I wonder if I am leading by example, as Mays did, speaking truth to power even when I am afraid. I question if I sacrifice my values because of public pressure for political “respectability” when being respectable has never guaranteed support. I wrestle with being comfortable, for — as Mays wrote in 1951 — “social, intellectual, and economic security tends to make leadership conservative and complacent.”

We now find ourselves in the same struggle with race on campus. The question is whether we have college presidents, like Benjamin Mays, of every race and gender, mentoring a new generation of prophets — young men and women who will confront the issues of today while providing insights and guidance for a better future.

Walter M. Kimbrough is president of Dillard University.