From the editor: Saluting all of King’s legacy

>Archive - PWW Print Edition Archive - 2006 Editions - Jan. 14, 2006


 

“We cannot talk of Dr. Du Bois without recognizing that he was a radical all of his life. Some people would like to ignore the fact he was a Communist in his later years. ... It is time to cease muting the fact that Dr. Du Bois was a genius and chose to be a Communist. Our irrational obsessive anticommunism has led us into too many quagmires to be retained as if it was a mode of scientific thinking.”

— Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Feb. 23, 1968

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. is arguably the most important American thinker and leader of the 20th century. This weekend millions of people in the U.S. and around the world will honor his birthday and his contributions to the African American freedom struggle, voting and civil rights for all, workers’ rights, peace, democracy and human dignity. The People’s Weekly World/Nuestro Mundo adds its continuing salute to King and the freedom movement he led (click here related editorial, “Celebrate Dr. King’s birthday with action).

It took a mass struggle to honor such an American hero with a national holiday. Still, today, some states refuse to honor the day and few corporations provide a paid King holiday.

Many this weekend will rightfully celebrate King’s courageous stance against the Vietnam War, and link it to today’s struggle to end the Iraq war.

Many will look to King’s leadership of the movement that brought about a revolution in civil rights and equality, and contrast it with the current administration’s attack on these rights — the nomination of extremist Judge Samuel Alito, the criminal response to the victims of Hurricane Katrina and the blatant efforts to disenfranchise African Americans, Latinos, Native Americans, Asians, immigrants and others.

The labor movement will certainly celebrate King’s linking of civil rights and labor rights, connecting it to the struggles of workers today.

Others will recall the White House/FBI efforts to destroy King and the movement he led, along with other people’s organizations and leaders, through COINTELPRO and other illegal programs. They will compare it with the current White House/NSA/Pentagon illegal spying on Americans.

All important reasons why celebrating King’s birthday is highly relevant today.

But there is a less-known but equally important reason. King refused to bow to McCarthyite anticommunism, even though he emerged as a leader at the height of the Cold War witch-hunts. That really infuriated the racist, pro-corporate, far right forces.

Just months before he was murdered, King spoke the words quoted above at a Freedomways magazine banquet honoring Dr. W.E.B. Du Bois.

Du Bois, in his 90s, joined the Communist Party USA, writing, “I have come to the conclusion that capitalism cannot reform itself. Communism — the effort to give all men what they need and to ask of each the best they can contribute — this is the only way of human life.”

In a 1983 Senate speech, racist Sen. Jesse Helms of North Carolina used red-baiting to argue against passage of the King holiday bill. His speech is still used by white supremacists to oppose the King holiday.

On page 13 we publish the latest “Ask the Communists” column. It makes the point that anticommunism is a tool against not only communists, but the whole movement for workers’ rights and social progress, which is why it has to be struggled against. Communists contribute mightily to the struggle for freedom and democracy.

Recently the movement lost two fighters for democracy: “Salt of the Earth” union organizer Clinton Jencks and civil liberties leader Frank Wilkinson. Both were persecuted during the “Red Scare” days and both refused to buckle. Their example, like King’s, took a special kind of progressive nerve. (Obituaries will appear in forthcoming editions.)

Standing defiant against witch-hunts, whether in the Cold War or now, is as American as purple mountain majesties.

Dr. King, we salute you!

In struggle and peace,

Terrie Albano