What Martin Luther King Jr. Taught His Son About Protest

By Virginia Lowman


What translates as Martin Luther King III shares memories of his father, Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., is the gentle intimacy and admiration between a child and his parent. Once we speak in late December, he brings stories of a male whose teachings I’ve studied since I was a young girl, although who I've only known in a scholarly sense. It is both shocking and endearing to hear someone refer to the iconic civil rights leader as “Dad.”


On our Zoom call, King speaks warmly of playing baseball in the front yard with “Dad” and two of his siblings. He talks about traveling with his father as a boy in 1967 to organize for the Poor People's Campaign in the fight for fair wages. He recalls the family’s nightly routine, the “kissing spot,” where each child was given an appointed place on Dr. King’s face for their bedtime kiss. These intimate moments of parental love formed the generic principles for Dr. King’s culture-shifting speeches and groundbreaking organizing work.


This August will mark 58 years since Dr. King delivered his legendary “I Have a Dream'' speech at the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, which keeps it up and continues to resonate today, harkening for equity along with a higher class of world for all. As we near the close of a tumultuous four years, it’s key to remember that this unprecedented time not only highlighted the several deep-seated injustices in our country’s foundation although also compelled people of all ethnicities to champion change. “The very important thing [activists] can have is a calculated plan,” King suggests for the path forward.


In the aftermath of per year of protests against institutional racism, calls for police reform in the fight for Black lives, and the siege of the U.S. Capitol, Dr. King’s lessons and his tactical approach to enacting change are critical guideposts for a new generation called to action as America grapples with its roots. Here, Martin Luther King III shares what he learned from his father about life and protest for experienced and emerging activists alike.


Make love your foundation.


It should come as no surprise that love was a core value in the King household. Case in point, as King explains, the opening thing he learned from his father and mother, activist Coretta Scott King, was an age-old adage: “You can’t really love others up until you really, truly love yourself.” King notes that this was the “broad lesson” of his childhood, and it also was constantly reinforced. “My parents taught us to love ourselves, they taught us to love our families, they taught us to have a passion for our community, and so they taught us the passion of God,” he says.


This informs how King pursues his work and handles conflict. “You can disagree with someone without being disagreeable,” he adds, meaning without causing damage to someone or their property. Approaching life with compassion because the moral compass supports the assists to sustain a level of respect and dignity, two principles Martin Luther King Jr. Championed.


Strive to eradicate “triple evils.”


As King expounds love as a foundation, he also understands how it goes behind the individual. “[Self-love] extends to the community,” he says. “When you love your community, there really are things that you don’t accept. Poverty is one of them.” The legacy of his parents is rooted in that idea, and he describes how they hoped to eradicate the “triple evils” of poverty, racism, and violence.


“My dad and his team were ready to go to jail for [equality],” King says. “As a kid, I thought that if something was wrong in our society so you wanted to correct it, you go to jail, because that’s any time the scenario could be addressed.” The lesson isn’t that we should normalize breaking the law, nevertheless that any time the laws are not rooted in equity, we should lean into what the late Representative John Lewis called “good trouble, required trouble.”


Activism requires strategy.


For the oppressed and marginalized, King says, civil law does not change without strategy: “If you wish to be efficient and successful, you should have a plan,” he says. Perhaps one of the most profound plans of the civil rights movement was “Project C,” each year of plan of action and coordination across countless Southern states to engage in sit-ins, boycotts, and other peaceful demonstrations to combat segregation.


The “C” stood for confrontation. Moreover, the four pillars King’s father laid out in his 1963 “Letter From a Birmingham Jail” — fact-finding, negotiation, self-purification, and direct action — are still evident in the work of several activists today. Maybe the most interesting pillar is self-purification, which, as Dr. King wrote, deals with asking the inquiries, “Are you able to accept blows without retaliating? Are you about to endure the ordeals of jail?” King points to the peaceful protests of the contemporary Black Lives Matter movement, saying his parents could be overjoyed and that they “always applauded young people’s engagement and encouraged it.”


Factor economic disruption, patience, and rest into your plan.


Disrupting economics is often the long game of protest, often yielding the greatest return because of its relationship to capitalism. As fellow civil rights organizer Wyatt Tee Walker knew, demonstrators would have to “mess with the cash and make it inconvenient for the white community.” King considers this the greatest plan of action, though he notes that it requires “a degree of patience.” He also mentions that a question often posed in movements from his father’s time was: “After confrontation, then what?” King expenses present activists to “know as soon as to have patience and as soon as to be forthright,” and to acknowledge that one cannot be engaged in physical protest all the time.


Practice forgiveness.


King says practicing forgiveness is the primary lesson his father taught him by example. He does note, yet, that it was made manifest through his grandfather, Martin Luther King Sr. Despite his partner being gunned down in a Atlanta church just six years soon after their son was killed in Memphis, the eldest King mentioned, “I decline to hate [the people who] killed my spouse and my son,” his grandson remembers. It is here that Dr. King’s lessons came full-circle.


King says he learned that group in attempt to determine resist hatred, you have got to go forth in love. As people continue to take to the streets in pursuit of systemic change and execute their civic duty at the polls, it’s key to remember the lessons of these who came before us. Hold fast to compassion, honor plan of action and community, and remember that enacting change does not require violence — it takes accountability.