Growing up in the South Bronx, my community and I were accustomed to watching headlines of “police brutality” against Blacks and Latinos on the evening news. Every time there was a televised protest against racist police violence, we pumped our fists up in support.
The Black Lives Matter movement was born in 2013, following George Zimmerman being acquitted of murdering Trayvon Martin. Recent tragedies, such as the deaths of Eric Garner and Michael Brown, continue to kindle the flame of the movement. Among the Black community there is an underlying sentiment that the Black Lives Matter Movement is a continuation of the Civil Rights Movement in the spirit of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. The reasoning is that to this day, Blacks are still peacefully demanding the social equality and justice that King once advocated for. However, there are critics who discredit the current movement by arguing that it departs from what King started.
This past October, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie rebuked the Black Lives Matter movement for promoting violence against law enforcement. In an interview with “Face the Nation,” he claimed that murder rates have increased because President Barack Obama encourages “lawlessness” such as the Black Lives Matter movement as opposed to the police.
We cannot blindly accept allegations that the Black Lives Matter movement is a farce, but we also can’t assume that this movement is in the spirit of King solely based on the fact that both groups advocate the same goal. We must investigate and reflect by returning to foundational documents, such as King’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” to ground our reasoning.
Today, it is known that King promoted patience in his non-violent public demonstrations. But while he was in that Birmingham jail in 1963, he received a letter from eight white Alabama clergymen who scrutinized his methods of protesting. The clergymen asked him: “Why don’t you give the new administration time to act?”
In his “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” King explains why he and his supporters cannot wait, even though he was filled with patience. The words “patience” and “wait” are so synonymous that to the reader, this may pose as a contradiction. But in order to fully understand the spirit of King’s movement, we have to define and understand how King balanced waiting and patience to attain equal rights.
King did not wait. Waiting is remaining inactive until a particular time in the future. King acted out through marches, sit-ins, protests and other forms of public demonstrations. Even while in jail, he wrote letters to secure that his voice remained. In his own words, King declared, “Justice too long delayed is justice denied.” To him, endlessly waiting for something is the same as never attaining it. In this state of waiting, you are not gaining anything.
King was indeed patient in all of his actions. Being patient is a state of mind where one is able to tolerate an unpleasant situation or circumstance without anger or complaint. In all of his marches, sit-ins and protests, King never lashed out against his oppressors in rage and urged his followers to do the same. They had the mental fortitude to keep a level head and tolerate physical and verbal abuse in the face of violence. Even when confronted with the pure terror of police dogs, water hoses, the burning of their homes, death and other brutalities, King prohibited anyone from retaliating with violence.
King declared, “I’m grateful to God that through the Negro church, the dimension of nonviolence entered our struggle. If this philosophy had not emerged, I am convinced that by now many streets of the South would be flowing with floods of blood.” Had they not gone down this path and returned violence with violence, death would have engulfed the movement and taken center stage.
King did not just sit back and wait, but when he acted out, he did so with patience. He was active in the struggle towards equal rights, but he was not violent. It is how King was able to father a movement based on patience and not wait. That’s the method to the madness and the clarification to a seeming contradiction.
Today, the Black Lives Matter movement is accused of departing from King’s methods. In his interview, Christie claimed he doesn’t “believe that that movement should be justified when they’re calling for the murder of police officers … That’s what the movement is creating.”
This claim, that the movement promotes violence, separates the Black Lives Matter movement from the spirit of King’s peaceful protest. But upon further investigation, it is clear that’s not the case. In their homepage, Black Lives Matter states, “This movement is not an anti-people movement; therefore it is not an anti-police-officer movement … Thus the Black Lives Matter movement is not trying to make the world more unsafe for police officers; it hopes to make police officers less of a threat to communities of color.”
While advocating for the rights of minorities, the movement promotes patience, nonviolent action and respects all life. But just like King, the movement does not wait idly for change to just happen. Rallies, protests, marches and die-ins (a tactic where protesters lay on the ground and simulate being dead) are peaceful but compelling actions that make people address the issue.
Through nonviolent action, activists are able to create a safe space. During the Civil Rights Movement, seeking the white community in a civil plane, demonstrated that minorities were indeed capable of having intelligent conversation, had legitimate claims and were worthy of attaining equal rights (even though this is self-evident and shouldn’t have had to been proven). Today, the same sentiment of peaceful protest echoes throughout the Black Lives Matter movement. While there will always be outliers who take it upon themselves to react violently, the movement as a whole promotes peaceful action. The Black Lives Matter movement does indeed continue to further the Civil Rights Movement in the spirit of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
