On Bayard Rustin and Martin Luther King, Jr.

by Lonnie Valentine, Associate Professor of Peace and Justice Studies

Editor's note: Lonnie Valentine presented a paper on Martin Luther King and the Quakers to the Quaker Theological Discussion Group during the American Academy of Religion annual meeting last fall in Atlanta, GA. Here is a summary of his remarks.

The Quaker Bayard Rustin was a conscientious objector during World War II and served over two years in prison. When the Montgomery bus boycott began in 1955, Rustin was sent by the Fellowship of Reconciliation to help train leaders and activists in nonviolence. During this time, Martin Luther King had his home shot at several times and received death threats. In response, King had armed guards watching his home and had a gun in his home for protection. Rustin challenged King on the contradiction between having weapons and armed guards while advocating nonviolence during the boycott. King had the guards and the guns removed.

Near the end of his life, King came out against the war in Vietnam and for conscientious objection, and this cost him support in many ways. In taking on this cost, King challenged people to see conscientious objection as a vital form of protest rather than as only a way to get away from participating in the war. King called upon ministers and leaders to "challenge (young men) with the alternative of conscientious objection." It seems that King saw such action not just in terms of moral, philosophical or religious objection to personal participation in war, but rather as a form of "revolutionary" action. King said that "every (one) of humane convictions must decide on the protest that best suits (their) convictions, but we must all protest" because these "are revolutionary times." That is, King was advocating seeing conscientious objection not as personal withdrawal from war but rather as engaged opposition to war. In this way, King then--and now--challenges Friends about both maintaining their conscientious objection to war, which we as a body have not done well, and expanding our understanding of conscientious objection so that it is "revolutionary."