Martin Luther King Jr and Gandhi review of Stride toward Freedom

Résumé du document

"The intellectual and moral satisfaction that I failed to gain from the utilitarianism of Bentham and Mill, the revolutionary methods of Marx and Lenin, the social contract theory of Hobbes, the ?back to nature' optimism of Rousseau, and the superman philosophy of Nietzche, I found in the nonviolent resistance philosophy of Gandhi? wrote King in Stride toward Freedom. Gandhi is not the only reference of King's philosophical background but Gandhi was the one who had made the most definitive contribution to developing civil disobedience as a method of political protest on a mass scale. King was encouraged to study Gandhi by Dr Johnson, the president of Howard University who considered that "Gandhi's theories and techniques deserved Negro's most careful consideration?. He started to read Gandhi in 1950-51.

Extraits

[...] It confirmed that violent resistance was unacceptable because it leads to temporary sucess : Love is the most durable power in the world He was also struck by the extent and depth of poverty in India but noticed the absence of crime and was surprised to see how little physical and verbal abuse took place between Indians toward a broad nonviolent movement Following the advices of his tutors, the SCLC (Southern Christian Leadership Conference) was created to make possible the emergence of a broad movement. The target of action in Montgomery had been specific and limited. The success of it suggested that other forms of direct action should be tried. The sit-ins method As 1960 ended students, mostly black but increasingly joined by white students, had sat-in to protest against the segregation in universities' lunch counters. This method gave the movement its mass base and regional reach. [...]

[...] That's when began what he called an ‘intellectual odyssey to nonviolence'. - Reading Gandhi, he more and more believed in the validity of a a philosophy based on Love : my skepticism concerning the power of love gradually diminished and i came to see for the first time its potency in the area of social reform Before reading Gandhi, King had been inclined to think of the ethics of Jesus as effective only in individual relationships and that other methods might be necessary for racial conflict. [...]

[...] As a result of the sit-ins another civil rights organization came into being the SNCC, which remained close to SCLC during all the movement. On May 1961, came the freedom rides the participants traveled through different states to test bus-company policies, according to the supreme court's decision that declares segregated seatings on interstate lines unconstitutional. As the freedom rides were a more daring form of civil disobedience than sit-ins, the reprisals against them were carried out more flagrantly too . [...]

[...] As well as Rustin, he reintroduced King to Gandhi's works and discussed books on nonviolent struggles. King reread The power of nonviolence, by Richard Gregg who had spent several years in india studying Gandhi's methods while he was still alive and tried to interpret Gandhi for western audiences. Another important book, often passed hand to hand within the civil rights movement, was War without violence by Krishnalal Shridharani, a young associate of Gandhi's. To India King left for India on february 1959 with his wife and a close friend of the couple. [...]

[...] - Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere and injust situations increase the risk of violent reactions. Gandhi had argued that the deshumanization of the untouchables corrupted all of India, and that every indian citizen was lowered by the cruelty shown to the outcasters. Some years later, King would proclaim that the American system of democracy was demeaned by the country's treatment of its black citizens. He would also emphasize that the achievement of the movement's goals would result not in victory for blacks but for all americans. [...]