The death of a student

April 4, 2023

In 1951, three years after his assassination, Mohandas Gandhi gained a student in America.

While he was away at college, Martin Luther King attended a speech about the life and lessons of Gandhi, delivered by Mordecai Johnson, who had just returned from India. After further study, King wrote that he ‘became deeply fascinated by his campaigns of nonviolent resistance.’

An opportunity to put these ideas to work came in 1955, with the Montgomery Bus Boycott. For 381 days, the city’s segregated buses were boycotted by Montgomery’s Black population. The nonviolent action frustrated prominent city leaders. King’s house was bombed while his wife and daughter were inside, but he refused to consider any thoughts of reprisal, remaining committed to nonviolence until the boycott ended after a Supreme Court decision struck down segregation on public buses. Perhaps this was what Gandhi had in mind when he said, “It may be through the Negroes that the unadulterated message of nonviolence will be delivered to the world.”

A few years later, in 1959, King and his wife traveled to India. There, they met with Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, Gandhi’s political heir, as well as other followers of Gandhi, who welcomed them with open arms. He later wrote that as a result of his visit, his understanding of nonviolence, and his commitment to it, became greater than ever. Afterward, King began the practice of fasting his first two days in jail, both for internal focus and to honor his mentor.

His continued leadership in the Civil Rights Movement led to his naming as Time magazine’s “Man of the Year” for 1963, as Gandhi had been in 1930, and he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964. King began to speak out against the growing Vietnam War, stepping up his emphasis on nonviolence across the globe.

On April 4, 1967, he delivered his Beyond Vietnam speech and condemned the war and the countless civilian deaths it had caused. “We must speak for them and raise the questions they cannot raise. These too are our brothers,” he told the crowd of 3,000 who had gathered to hear him speak.

He also laid out a challenge which would lead to a better America. “Our only hope today lies in our ability to recapture the revolutionary spirit and go out into a sometimes hostile world declaring eternal hostility to poverty, racism, and militarism. With this powerful commitment we shall boldly challenge the status quo…” This is the challenge that the American Union seeks to answer, using his principles of nonviolence.

Exactly one year later, on April 4th, 1968, Dr. King’s message of peace and unity was silenced the way Gandhi’s had been twenty years earlier; by the barrel of a gun. He was 39 years old.

If Martin Luther King had lived another 39 years, like Gandhi did, how do you think his ideas would have evolved?