The Developing Philosophy of Martin Luther King, Jr.

This research will examine the thought, life, and work of Martin Luther King, Jr. The research will set forth the conditions under which Dr. King's intellectual life was shaped and then discuss ways in which he made use of these ideas and teachings to form his views of the role of religion in fostering social justice.

Martin Luther King, Jr., had his roots deeply within what might be described as the black version of the American dream, in the sense that he was born into more comfortable economic circumstances than most other blacks in America in the 1930s. At the birth of Martin Luther King, Jr. in 1929, King, Sr. was pastor of the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, Georgia and also a member of what has been aptly called "black bourgeois Atlanta" (Lewis 8). In consequence, young King was "insulated against the most brutal aspects of Southern bigotry" (Lewis 11).

King, Sr. was prominent in civic affairs, serving in Atlanta's NAACP and various interracial alliances, as well as on the boards of directors of several organizations (C. King 82-3), including Citizens Trust Company, Morehouse College, Atlanta University (a historically black college), and the National Baptist Convention. As "proof positive" of black-bourgeoisie success, King would experience wonderment at the fact that his children "did not see things his way" (Reddick 76). This was largely true of King, Jr., particularly as

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his commitment to effecting social justice appears to have been bound up with a commitment to religious experience, as demonstrated by the 1956 Montgomery Bus Boycott, which transformed him into a national figure and which became the first of a series of projects aimed at claiming for American blacks the rights, privileges, and opportunities of full citizenship. Stride Toward Freedom is King's account of the boycott, which began after Rosa Parks was arrested for not surrendering, according to custom, her bus seat to a white man. King discusses the first of the mass meetings, held at his Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, in support of the boycott, in a way that fuses metaphor, social justice, and religion: The opening hymn was the old familiar "Onward Christian Soldiers," and when that mammoth audience stood to sing, the voices outside swelling the chorus in the church, there was a mighty ring like the glad echo of heaven itself (King 61). Beyond the specifically Christian emphasis of King's own ministry is his sense that spirituality was meant to be a hallmark of the whole civil rights movement. There is something about the protest that is suprarational; it cannot be explained without a divine dimension. . . . There is a creative

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