#2 Not a Saint, but a Hero: Lessons from King Today

And one of the prayers that I pray to God everyday is: “O God, help me to see myself in my true perspective. Help me, O God, to see that I’m just a symbol of a movement. Help me to see that I’m the victim of what the Germans call a Zeitgeist and that something was getting ready to happen in history; history was ready for it. And that a boycott would have taken place in Montgomery, Alabama, if I had never come to Alabama. Help me to realize that I’m where I am because of the forces of history and because of the fifty thousand Negroes of Alabama who will never get their names in the papers and in the headline. O God, help me to see that where I stand today, I stand because others helped me to stand there and because the forces of history projected me there. And this moment would have come in history even if M. L. King had never been born.” –King, “Conquering Self-Centeredness,” 11 August 1957

Often when discussing King, I hear in some form a general wistfulness—looking back at the Sixties and that era as a season of change, created because of the uniquely talented leadership of King and others. As mentioned in my last post, there is a common conception of King as an American saint—and, paradoxically , how sanctifying him ends up in many ways weakening his potential power. And while we do need to recognize King’s talent and significant contributions, a closer look at the civil rights movement reveals just how many remarkable names and people there were.

I love this quote because it captures King’s sense of self—not as a messiah, but rather, as a symbol and someone who required the sacrifice and backing of others to actually gain his own place in status. There are countless heroes in the movement—from martyrs such as Andrew Schwerner to dedicated activists like Bayard Rustin and Ella Baker to remarkable students like Diane Nash and John Lewis to allies like Anne Braden. Looking at King in this context, it’s actually not all that hard to imagine that many of the changes in the ‘60s would have happened without him, nor is it all that hard to see that King was only part of a massive movement for change.

This argument has applications for our own day and age. Rather than wait for the next Martin Luther King, we have to recognize that people such as King aren’t so much born rather than they’re brought into prominence by their success. I personally think this is encouraging rather than discouraging—because, similarly, the civil rights movement is a story where dedicated individuals, who sacrificed personal gain for the greater good, were able to make concrete change. In nonprofit work, I think, it’s easy to lose sight of that big picture in the day to day grind—yet there’s no saying when the next nonprofit will find itself in the Zeitgeist—the spirit of the times—and reap the fruits of your labor.

By David Lai