In the book I'm writing, The Agency of Art, I look at a 50-year span between 1915 and 1965, in which the Western World was pulled from the brink of mass destruction and perhaps even annihilation, and was instead given new a new path and direction - aspirations, hope and vision - by artists, educators and moralists, like Walter Gropius and John Dewey, MLK and others.
MLK is mostly remembered for his spiritual leadership and civil rights work, but he was also, like John Dewey, an advocate for the arts and a proponent of education reform, going all the way back to his college days where he wrote an essay while attending Morehouse College, entitled "The Purpose of Education."
Warning students and teachers that education must have noble objectives, MLK writes in the essay:
We must remember that intelligence is not enough. Intelligence plus character--that is the goal of true education. The complete education gives one not only power of concentration, but worthy objectives upon which to concentrate. The broad education will, therefore, transmit to one not only the accumulated knowledge of the race but also the accumulated experience of social living.
If we are not careful, our colleges will produce a group of close-minded, unscientific, illogical propagandists, consumed with immoral acts. Be careful, "brethren!" Be careful, teachers!
Most of MLK's work was focused on lifting African-Americans up from oppression in the Southeast. However, after many long campaigns that ended with legislative victories, especially the Voting Rights Act of 1965, MLK turned his attentions North, where he quickly found he was not welcome.
In Chicago, White women went out into the streets to beat Black protesters with their purses, and White men with swastika (Nazi) armbands threw bricks, says Taylor Branch, author of Parting the Waters: America in the King Years.
According to Branch, MLK said "We have to show America that there's a race problem in the North, because you'd be surprised how many millions of people think that there is no more race problem."
In a podcast at Democracy Now!, Amy Goodman talks with Branch and the film’s director Peter Kunhardt and writer Trey Ellis, about their new documentary entitled “King in the Wilderness.” .
