A Cause Worth Life Itself

Once, in 1960, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was asked to describe his views on suffering, given his own experiences as a civil rights leader and the numerous threats against his life. He responded tersely, concerned that his remarks would be misinterpreted as a plea for sympathy or as a sign that he was developing a “martyr complex.” “I have known very few quiet days in the last few years. I must admit that at times I have felt that I could no longer bear such a heavy burden,” he said, referring to several arrests, threats against his family, a near-fatal knife attack and two bombings of his home. “If only to save myself from bitterness, I have attempted to see my personal ordeals as an opportunity.”

The portrait that emerges from his words and from brief references throughout the rest of his life is one of a man who did not leap fondly into leadership. But once there, at the head of the storm, there was no choice but to go forward toward perhaps a violent and untimely demise.

“The end of life is not to be happy,” King had preached years earlier. “The end of life is not to achieve pleasure and avoid pain. The end of life is to do the will of God, come what may.”

It was a sacrifice that many were unwilling to make in the decades-long struggle for civil rights, but it was that reticence on the part of others that seemed to strengthen King’s resolve.

Later, in an interview, King would describe what made him able to travel to a city to march or protest or deliver a speech or sermon despite warnings of assassination attempts. His reaction was not so much resignation as bemused speculation.

“After a while, if your life is more or less constantly in peril, you come to a point where you accept the possibility philosophically. I must face the fact . . . that America is a sick nation, and that something could well happen to me at any time. I feel, though, that my cause is so right, so moral, that if I should lose my life, in some way it would aid the cause.”

Years passed. “Now,” he would say prophetically, just days before his assassination in 1968, “we’ve got to go on to Memphis just like that . . . we’re got to give ourselves to this struggle until the end. Nothing would be more tragic now than to stop, at this point, in Memphis. We’ve got to see it through.”

On this King holiday, it is worth remembering that it was King’s courage, his unwillingness to “seek a more serene life” that brought America closer to its promise and inspired a world.