Tag: Stanley Levison

Trump’s dream: A merit-based and color-blind society

His courage and oratory are almost enough to explain how he came to lead the Civil Rights Movement (CRM). We must not, however, overlook his profession: he was the Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King, an academically trained preacher in the Baptist tradition. Such titles bestow an odor of sanctity. They didn’t deflect the assassin’s bullet—ultimately set into motion by whom, we may never know[1]—but they shouldn’t inhibit us from questioning his message.

Unfortunately, the latter was the Social(ist) Gospel (SG), not the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the wolf of socialism in sheep’s clothing of biblical passages. King’s education was downstream to the theology of SG’s American fountainhead, Walter Rauschenbusch (1861–1918), who at Rochester Theological Seminary had studied under the orthodox Reformed Baptist theologian Augustus Hopkins Strong (1836–1921).[2]

The Rev. Howard Thurman

More immediately, King came under the influence of Reinhold Niebuhr (1892-1971) and Howard Thurman (1899-1981).[3] Neither man held Jesus’ view of Scripture. The Bible may be profound, insightful, inspiring, they thought, even “inspired,” but not breathed-out by God, the status which it claims for itself, and all that follows from that status.[4] Through reading Thurman the young King discovered the maverick Hindu Mohandas Gandhi.[5]

“So what?,” you may ask. Here’s what: King denied Jesus’ divinity[6] and resurrection[7]. The Bible was not, for King, the inerrant word of God. Such an opinion is nonsense, the product of a naïve, bygone era. For him, it was quite errant. Continue reading “Trump’s dream: A merit-based and color-blind society”

Besides race, what did Claude McKay, Langston Hughes, Richard Wright, Paul Robeson, Lorraine Hansberry, Bayard Rustin, W. E. B. Du Bois, Rosa Parks, and Martin Luther King have in common? Hugh Murray on the relationship between civil rights activists and Communists.

New Orleans Woolworth’s sit-in, September 9, 1960: Jerome Smith, Ruth Despenza, Joyce Taylor, Hugh Murray, Archie Allen, William Harrell

My friend Hugh Murray (b. 1938), a native New Orleanian, is a veteran of the African American civil rights movement (CRM), a critic of its betrayal by “affirmative action” (its latest incarnation being “diversity, equity, and inclusion”), and scholar of the 1931 trial of the Scottsboro Boys, the first international American civil rights cause célèbre. Our paths first crossed over a half-century ago in the reading room of the American Institute for Marxist Studies (AIMS) on East 30th Street in Manhattan. Its director, Herbert Aptheker (1915-2003), hired us (and others) as research assistants for the massive project of preparing for publication the correspondence, bibliography, and published writings of William Edward Burghardt Du Bois (1868-1963). For the past few years, Hugh and I have been preparing an anthology of Hugh’s writings for publication later this year, Deo volente.

On his blog, Murray recently explored the tension between the noble, justice-seeking motives of the CRM and the ignoble motives of the Communist movement to which some CRM activists were attracted to one degree or another. (For the CRM one could substitute the labor movement.) It’s a tension I’d rather ignore. It’s easier to concentrate on the horrors of Communism uncomplicated by the fact that many Communists were drawn to it to fight the horrors of lynching and other violence. It was easy for me to call them dupes (among whom I was once numbered) and leave it at that.

Continue reading “Besides race, what did Claude McKay, Langston Hughes, Richard Wright, Paul Robeson, Lorraine Hansberry, Bayard Rustin, W. E. B. Du Bois, Rosa Parks, and Martin Luther King have in common? Hugh Murray on the relationship between civil rights activists and Communists.”