How Do We Conquer Evil?

For centuries we have persistently tried to remove evil from the world - yet failed - until the transfiguration of an ordained minister from Atlanta, Georgia showed us the way.

The United States celebrates 11 paid federal holidays this year and only two of them honor individual American leaders. President George Washington, and a Baptist minister who became the greatest American leader of the twentieth century – the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. ("MLK").

The question is how will you celebrate this day? I invite you to honor this great American leader by committing to study his life. You will surely find some insights that he discovered that you can apply to your own life journey. 

An important insight for me, was to understand that MLK embraced a historical and critical interpretation of Christianity. This is important because we live in an age where fundamentalists use literal interpretations of the Bible to support bigotry and hate. Knowing the facts about his life, means that hopefully, we can use his life and teachings to advance a more reasoned approach to religion and social justice.

In 1964, at the age of 35, MLK became the youngest person to win the Nobel Peace Prize. His leadership was fundamental to ending legal segregation in the U.S. More importantly, he espoused a much different philosophy. He believed in non-violent resistance as the means to bring about political change. And he emphasized that spiritual principles guided by love can triumph over politics driven by hate and fear.  

While most people associate him with his "I Have a Dream" speech given at the March on Washington on August 28, 1963, I encourage you to dig much deeper into his life, and especially his deep intellect. As an aspiring leader, I gained valuable insights by reading each one of MLK’s books, including a few that compiled his speeches and sermons. I also enjoyed the biographies of his life by Taylor Branch, Clayborne Carson, David Garrow, and Stephen Oates. My favorite is the Taylor Branch trilogy America in the King Years which required more than twenty-four years of intensive research. The trilogy’s first book, Parting the Waters: America in the King Years, 1954-63, won the Pulitzer Prize and numerous other awards in 1989. Two successive volumes also gained critical and popular success, and were in the same league as Shelby Foote’s The Civil War and Robert Caro’s multi-volume biography of Lyndon Johnson. Finally, you can enjoy listening to over thirty of his greatest speeches and sermons (easily downloaded from iTunes).

MLK was spiritually and intellectually gifted. He memorized entire Bible passages when he was a child and entered college at the age of 15. Following his graduation from Atlanta’s Morehouse College, where he earned a degree in sociology, he enrolled at the Crozer Theological Seminary in Chester, Pennsylvania as one of only 11 African-American students in a class of about 100 students. MLK’s leadership abilities surfaced at Crozer when he was elected senior class president of a predominantly white senior class, no small feat during a time of racial segregation. 

MLK quickly proved to be a superior student, taking supplemental courses in philosophy at the nearby University of Pennsylvania. It was while studying at Crozer that MLK became an admirer of the teachings of Mahatma Gandhi. He also studied the works of Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, Aquinas, Machiavelli, Rousseau, Hegel, John Locke, Emanuel Kant, Reinhold Niebuhr, Martin Luther, John Mills, Jeremy Bentham, and many others. He won the Pearl Plafker Award for the most outstanding student; and he received the J. Lewis Crozer fellowship for graduate study at a university of his choice. Dean Charles Battan praised him as ‘‘one of our most outstanding students’’ and someone who exhibited ‘‘?ne preparation, an excellent mind, and a thorough grasp of the material.’’ He graduated with a Bachelor of Divinity and delivered the valedictory address.   

Below in his own handwriting is a course outline of key philosophers and their respective works for a Social Philosophy course MLK taught at Morehouse College during the 1961-1962 academic year.

In September of 1951, MLK began doctoral studies in Systematic Theology at Boston University, and he also took classes at Harvard University. In 1954, at the age of 25, he was finishing his doctoral dissertation when he was appointed as a local preacher at the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama. His father was a pastor. His grandfather had been a pastor. His great-grandfather had been a pastor. He was simply carrying on the family business, when a year later, he was awarded his Ph.D. degree.

In 1957, MLK was elected president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, an organization formed to provide new leadership for the now burgeoning civil rights movement. The ideals for this organization he took from Christianity; its operational techniques from Gandhi. In the next eleven-years, he traveled over six million miles and spoke over twenty-five hundred times, appearing wherever there was injustice, protest, and action; and meanwhile he wrote five books as well as numerous articles.

MLK’s writings give plenty of evidence that he enjoyed a rich intellectual life and drew upon many sources beyond the Christianity into which he was born. But of all of them, there is no doubt that the most important source beyond Christianity for his thought and for his life was the teaching of Mahatma Gandhi. In his speeches and his writings, MLK mentions Gandhi more often than any other historical person except Jesus. He increased his understanding of Gandhi’s ideas during a month-long visit to India sponsored by the American Friends Service Committee in 1959 . Writing after his return, MLK stated, “I left India more convinced than ever before that non-violent resistance is the most potent weapon available to oppressed people in their struggle for freedom”. Below is a picture in India at the memorial site for Mahatma Gandhi.

Did you know that he survived his first serious assassination attempt at age 29?

On Sept. 20, 1958, he was in Blumstein’s Department Store in Harlem, signing copies of his first book Stride Toward Freedom, his account of the 1955 Montgomery Bus Boycott which he spearheaded. Izola Curry, a well-dressed 42-year-old African American woman, approached the reverend and asked if it was really him. When he replied yes, she said, “I’ve been looking for you for five years,” and plunged a letter opener into his chest. A bone deflected the thrust from his heart and lung. But, he instinctively raised his hand to ward off the blow, suffering an additional flesh wound.

When police arrived on the scene, they found him sitting in a chair with the letter opener’s ivory handle still protruding just below his collar. The New York Sunday News stated that: “In addition to the eight-inch steel letter opener which she drove into the clergyman’s chest, she was carrying a fully loaded Italian automatic concealed inside her clothing.”

While his assailant was taken into custody, MLK was carefully rushed to Harlem Hospital, where chief of thoracic and vascular surgery John W.V. Cordice, Jr. and trauma surgeon Emil Naclero were quickly summoned. Coming from a wedding, Naclero arrived still wearing a tuxedo, and prepared for surgery. The stabbing nearly cost MLK his life, requiring hours of delicate surgery to remove the blade, a eight-inch ivory-handled steel letter opener, which had lodged near his heart. If he had so much as sneezed, his doctors later told him, he would not have survived.

MLK gained national attention when he said afterward that he bore no animus toward Ms. Curry and did not want charges pressed. MLK could have reacted like most of humanity who are sleep walking through life as victims.  MLK did not believe that life was coming at him; rather, he believed that life was coming from within him. This beautiful state of mind represented a creative stage of his life showcased by the compassion he extended to his attacker. This is the same type of compassion, empathy, and forgiveness Nelson Mandela had towards his South African guards or that Gandhi had towards imperial Britain. 

MLK through his writing and sermons provide us a road map to his deep faith and superior intellect concerning how he personally deals with evil. For example, he gave a deeply moving sermon to his congregation on March 3, 1963 titled “Answer to a Perplexing Question”.  During this Sunday mass, he preached about the power of his faith, based on Matthew 17:14-20, and applies it to the Civil Rights Movement. He defines faith as cooperating with God by surrendering to His will so that God’s strength may act freely through us. He asserts that faith, intellect, and work must blend together.

He says that “one of the things that has characterized the human life through the centuries has been man’s persistent attempts to remove evil from the universe. But the problem that has always frustrated man has been his inability to conquer evil by his own power. He is constantly asking in pathetic amazement why can I not cast it out?” He focuses on our inability to remove evil from our own life and from society by pivoting to “an event that took place during the life of Jesus Christ.”

“Jesus comes down from the mount and finds a little boy in wild convulsion. Now you will remember that in those days when one had mental or emotional or physical disturbances it was believed that they possessed an evil spirit … lodged in their bodies and their souls and they could not be cured until the evil spirit had been removed,” said MLK to the congregation.   The child was in agony and pain, with the disciples desperately trying to cure the child. Jesus appears on the scene right when they are going to give up in despair.

Quoting from Matthew 17:14-20, MLK describes how the pleading boy’s father came to Jesus, knelt before him, and said, “Lord, have mercy on my son, for he is an epileptic and he suffers terribly; he often falls into the fire and often into the water. And I brought him to your disciples, but they could not cure him.” Jesus answered, “You faithless and perverse generation, how much longer must I be with you? How much longer must I put up with you? Bring him here to me.” And Jesus rebuked the demon, and it came out of him, and the boy was cured instantly. Then the disciples came to Jesus privately and said, “Why could we not cast it out?” Jesus said, “Because of your little faith. For truly I tell you, if you have faith the size of a mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move; and nothing will be impossible for you.” 

MLK then applies this Biblical lesson to the Civil Rights Movement. He defines faith as cooperating with God by surrendering to God's will so that His strength may act freely through us. He asserts that faith, intellect, and work must blend together. He is critical of our reliance on faith and science to focus on external solutions, instead of going on a journey inward. He is critical of churches and pastors “riding in big cars and living in big houses and not concerned about the people who made it possible for them to get these things.” And he is critical of religions that teach that to remove evil “man must wait on God to do everything.”  He said that “do-nothing” and “other-worldly” religions “separate religion from life. And they will separate the god of religion from the God of life; and religion will have no relevance in the everyday affairs and agonies of men.”

MLK warned of “the tragic misuse of prayer” where people feel that God must do everything. “And you know, for many people, God is little more than a ‘cosmic bell-hop’ that they will call on for every trivial need.” He challenged that congregation, saying there are “three ways that men cooperate with God. Through work. Through intelligence and through prayer and don’t you ever think that God gave us minds to think and hands and bodies to work and he’s going to allow us to use prayer as a substitute for these.” 

Referring again to the Bible, Exodus 14:1-15, when the children of Israel were trying escape from slavery in Egypt, “God said to Moses, “Why do you cry to Me? Tell the children of Israel to go forward. But lift up your rod, and stretch out your hand over the sea and divide it. And the children of Israel shall go on dry ground through the midst of the sea.”

Again, have faith, surrender to His will so that God’s strength may act freely through us. “God in his great love offers to do for us what we can not do for ourselves. The humble and willing acceptance of this offer is Faith. That’s all. Faith is just receiving something. It is leaving your whole nature wide open to God. It is the free gift offered to you and it is the reaching out – of accepting this free gift. And it is tied in a total surrender to God, saying that ‘I give my whole life to God.’ I give my whole being to God, so that God through Jesus Christ can work through us. Now we can see how this whole text has bearing on our personal lives.”

He discussed next how each person struggles with personal sins of all kinds, and that evil habits can’t be removed “by mere resolutions”. MLK believes “it can be done only when a man lifts himself up until he can put his will into the hands of God’s will as an instrument. This is the only way to be delivered from the accumulated weight of evil. It can only be done when we allow the energy of God to be let loose in our souls.” 

This philosophy is at the core of what made MLK a great man, a purposeful and authentic leader, and a creator of His will on his surroundings by surrendering to a much greater divine spiritual force inside him to repel the evil that was part of his daily life. It also guided his emotional reaction to being stabbed in the heart by a deranged woman.

He memorialized the attack where he nearly lost his life in a speech delivered in Memphis in 1968, “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop.”

That speech endures as one of his most famous. In it he said that:

You know, several years ago, I was in New York City autographing the first book that I had written. And while sitting there autographing books, a demented black woman came up. The only question I heard from her was, "Are you Martin Luther King?" And I was looking down writing, and I said, "Yes." And the next minute I felt something beating on my chest. Before I knew it I had been stabbed by this demented woman. I was rushed to Harlem Hospital. It was a dark Saturday afternoon. And that blade had gone through, and the X-rays revealed that the tip of the blade was on the edge of my aorta, the main artery. And once that's punctured, your drowned in your own blood -- that's the end of you.

It came out in the New York Times the next morning, that if I had merely sneezed, I would have died. Well, about four days later, they allowed me, after the operation, after my chest had been opened, and the blade had been taken out, to move around in the wheel chair in the hospital. They allowed me to read some of the mail that came in, and from all over the states and the world, kind letters came in. I read a few, but one of them I will never forget. I had received one from the President and the Vice-President. I've forgotten what those telegrams said. I'd received a visit and a letter from the Governor of New York, but I've forgotten what that letter said. But there was another letter that came from a little girl, a young girl who was a student at the White Plains High School. And I looked at that letter, and I'll never forget it. It said simply,

"Dear Dr. King,

I am a ninth-grade student at the White Plains High School."

And she said,

"While it should not matter, I would like to mention that I'm a white girl. I read in the paper of your misfortune, and of your suffering. And I read that if you had sneezed, you would have died. And I'm simply writing you to say that I'm so happy that you didn't sneeze."

And I want to say tonight -- I want to say tonight that I too am happy that I didn't sneeze.

He closed the speech with these prophetic words:

Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I'm not concerned about that now. I just want to do God's will. And He's allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I've looked over. And I've seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land!

And so I'm happy, tonight. I'm not worried about anything. I'm not fearing any man! Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord!!

The next day, April 4, 1968, MLK was at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee. He stayed at the motel numerous times while visiting the city, and again now, when he came to Memphis to support a strike by sanitation workers. He stepped out of Room 306 right before 6 p.m. and talked to friends in the parking lot below. As MLK turned to walk back into his room, a bullet struck him in the neck, taking his life instantly. Shortly after the shot was fired, witnesses saw a man believed to be James Earl Ray fleeing from a rooming house across the street from the Lorraine Motel.

MLK’s death shocked a country rocked by riots, civil discord, and a controversial war. It sparked nationwide protests, a two-month manhunt and an outpouring of grief for the slain civil rights leader who continues to stand for equal rights, peaceful protests and justice for all.

Joseph Louw, a young South African photographer and filmmaker at work on a documentary about MLK, was eating dinner in a Memphis restaurant an hour before tragedy struck. The photographs that captured the horror of MLK’s assassination may never have surfaced had Joseph not felt a sudden urge to watch the NBC nightly news, which brought him back to the Lorraine Motel, where he soon heard a single shot fired.

He was staying three doors down from MLK, and he immediately rushed onto the balcony, where he saw MLK collapse to the ground. After realizing there was nothing he could do to help, he ran inside to get his camera. “At first,” he told LIFE magazine the following week, “it was just a matter of realizing the horror of the thing. Then I knew I must record it for the world to see.”

He captured the chaos and emotion that hovered over that April evening. He shot four rolls of film, but one image remains emblazoned on the memories of those alive to see it at the time. In the moments following the shot, as MLK lay unconscious on the balcony, his friends turned their attention to a sight in the distance: the assassin, getting away. They pointed their fingers in concert in the direction of his flight. The next day, the pictures were on the front pages all over the world.

The bullet entered through his right cheek smashing his jaw and then traveled down his spinal cord before lodging in his shoulder. According to Jesse Jackson, who was present, King's last words on the balcony were to musician Ben Branch, who was scheduled to perform that night at a mass MLK was attending:

“Ben, don’t forget, I want you to play ‘Precious Lord’ tonight like you’ve never played before. Play it for me. Play it real pretty.”

It was MLK’s favorite song, and he often invited gospel singer Mahalia Jackson to sing it at civil rights rallies to inspire crowds. He made her promise that if he died before she did, that she would sing it at his funeral – which she did.

Tommy Dorsey the composer of “Precious Lord Take My Hand” was a jazz pianist and composer born in 1899 and died in 1993. The son of a preacher, he is regarded by many as the father of gospel music. After a successful career as a blues musician, he switched to gospel music. For more than 40 years, he was the choir director Chicago’s Pilgrim Baptist Church.

In an account in his own words written for Guideposts Magazine, Dorsey said he was scheduled to be in St. Louis to sing for a revival. He had anxiety about going because his wife was in her 9th month of pregnancy. When he left his home to head for St. Louis, he realized that he had forgotten his music case, so he returned to get it and found his wife sleeping.

He stood next to her and felt that something was telling him to stay home. He decided to leave and headed back to his car for the drive to the meetings. The next night at the revival and after he had finished singing, a telegram was handed to him that said his wife had just died.

He returned home to learn that his wife had given birth to a baby boy before she died. Before the night was over, the baby had died as well. Dorsey went through a difficult period of depression after that. He said he wanted to give up serving the Lord and go back to jazz. 

One of the thoughts that haunted him was whether his reluctance to leave his pregnant wife had been a leading from God and whether he had been disobedient by ignoring it. He vowed that he would never be insensitive to such a leading again.

It was during a subsequent visit to a friend that he sat down at a piano and found himself at peace and a melody being played. That became the song “Precious Lord Take My Hand.” Dorsey wrote, “As the Lord gave me these words and melody, He also healed my spirit. I learned that when we are in our deepest grief, when we feel farthest from God, this is when He is closest, and when we are most open to His restoring power. And so I go on living for God willingly and joyfully, until that day comes when He will take me and gently lead me home.”

The Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. adored Thomas Dorsey's plea for divine intervention and to surrender to God's spirit. "Take my hand, precious Lord, lead me home" was a prayer of surrender to Him to guide MLK's life forward to fulfill his life's purpose to achieve racial reconciliation in America through non-violent resistance. MLK frequently requested this song of the gospel greats he ran across at benefits and other gatherings, and told Jackson she should sing it at his funeral if he died before she did. The song is fatefully linked to his last night when he called out to Ben Branch to play it “real pretty” at the evening mass. It is the song that plays at the MLK memorial at the Lorraine Motel.

Jackson did end up wailing the hymn at his funeral, and Aretha Franklin did so at his memorial service. In the narrative he left behind, MLK lived, died, and was spiritually resurrected through Dorsey's glorious hymn.

“Precious Lord” became a universally beloved song because it grasped the heart. As you hear Mahalia Jackson sing it, you can hear how it inspired MLK. It enabled him to weave a civil rights message to a white audience over the growling police dogs, shouted racial slurs, and the segregated lunch counters to change America forever for the better. 

To honor the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., I have written these words in a place that I can read every day to remind me that this great man of faith, this great American leader did know that to defeat evil, we must first make a journey inward:

“Only through an inner spiritual transformation do we gain the strength to fight vigorously the evils of the world in a humble and loving spirit.”