The Domestication of Martin Luther King Jr.: Clarence B. Jones, Right-Wing Conservatism, and the Manipulation of the King Legacy

Contributors

Lewis V. Baldwin is a historian in the Department of Religious Studies at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee. He is the author of There is a Balm in Gilead: The Cultural Roots of Martin Luther King, Jr. (1991); To Make the Wounded Whole: The Cultural Legacy of Martin Luther King, Jr. (1992); Toward the Beloved Community: Martin Luther King, Jr. and South Africa (1995); Between Cross and Crescent: Christian and Muslim Perspectives on Malcolm and Martin (with Amiri YaSin Al-Hadid, 2002); The Legacy of Martin Luther King, Jr.: The Boundaries of Law, Politics, and Religion (with Rufus Burrow, Jr., Barbara A. Holmes, and Susan Holmes Winfield, 2002); Never to Leave Us Alone: The Prayer Life of Martin Luther King, Jr. (2010); The Voice of Conscience: The Church in the Mind of Martin Luther King, Jr. (2010); and Thou, Dear God: Prayers that Open Hearts and Spirits – The Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (edited and introduced, 2012).

Rufus Burrow Jr. is the Indiana Professor of Christian Thought and Professor of Theological Social Ethics at Christian Theological Seminary in Indianapolis, Indiana. Among his publications are Personalism: A Critical Introduction (1999); Daring to Speak in God’s Name (with Mary Alice Mulligan, 2002); God and Human Responsibility: David Walker and Ethical Prophecy (2003); God and Human Dignity: The Personalism, Theology, and Ethics of Martin Luther King, Jr. (2006); and Martin Luther King, Jr. for Armchair Theologians (2009).

Adam Fairclough is The Raymond and Beverly Sackler Professor of American History at Leiden University in the Netherlands. Among his publications are To Redeem the Soul of America: The Southern Christian Leadership Conference and Martin Luther King, Jr. (1987); Martin Luther King, Jr. (1990); Race and Democracy: The Civil Rights Struggle in Louisiana, 1915–1972 (1995); Teaching Equality: Black Schools in the Age of Jim Crow (2001); and Better Day Coming: Blacks and Equality, 1800–2000 (2002).

Walter Earl Fluker is the Martin Luther King, Jr. Professor of Ethical Leadership at Boston University, Boston, Massachusetts, and is editor of the Howard Thurman Papers Project. His publications include They Looked for a City: A Comparative Analysis of the Ideal of Community in the Thought of Howard Thurman and Martin Luther King, Jr. (1989); Strange Freedom: The Best of Howard Thurman on Religious Experience and Public Life (co-edited with Catherine Tumber, 1998); and Ethical Leadership: The Quest for Character, Civility, and Community (2009).

Shirley T. Geiger is a retired Professor of Political Science at Savannah State University, Savannah, Georgia, and the editor of Race and Politics in the United States, in a special issue of the journal, Politics and Policy (2001). She is completing a biography, Isaiah DeQuincey Newman and the Politics of Race in South Carolina, 1911–1985. Her publications include Understanding Gender at Historically Black Colleges and Universities (2006); and Black Women Mayors: Local Political Leadership at the Intersection of Race, Gender, and Class (2004).

Cheryl A. Kirk-Duggan is a Professor of Theology and Women’s Studies at Shaw University in Raleigh, North Carolina. Among her publications are African American Special Days (1996); Exorcizing Evil: A Womanist Perspective on the Spirituals (1997); The Undivided Soul: Helping Congregations Connect Body and Spirit (2001); Misbegotten Anguish: A Theology and Ethics of Violence (2001); Refiner’s Fire: A Religious Engagement with Violence (2001); Wising Up: Bible Study for Women on Proverbs (2005); Violence and Theology (2006); The Sky is Crying: Racism, Classism, and Natural Disaster (editor, 2006); The Africana Bible: Reading Israel’s Scriptures from Africa and the African Diaspora (co-edited with Hugh R. Page, Jr., Randall C. Bailey, Valerie Bridgeman, Stacy Davis, Madipoane Masenya, Nathaniel S. Murrell, and Rodney S. Sadler, 2009); Women and Christianity (2009); and Wake Up!: Hip Hop Christianity and the Black Church (2011).

Michael G. Long is an Associate Professor of Religious Studies and Peace and Conflict Studies at Elizabethtown College, Elizabethtown, Pennsylvania. Among his publications are Against Us, But For Us: Martin Luther King, Jr. and the State (2002); Martin Luther King, Jr. on Creative Living (2004); Billy Graham and the Beloved Community: America’s Evangelist and the Dream of Martin Luther King, Jr. (2006); Marshalling Justice: The Early Civil Rights Letters of Thurgood Marshall (2010); I Must Resist: Bayard Rustin’s Life in Letters (2012); and Beyond Home Plate: Jackie Robinson on Life after Baseball (2013).

Rosetta E. Ross is Professor of Religious Studies at Spelman College in Atlanta, Georgia. Her research and scholarship examine the role of religion in black women’s activism, particularly in the civil rights movement. She is the author of Witnessing and Testifying: Black Women, Religion, and Civil Rights (2003); and The Status of Racial and Ethnic Clergywomen in the United Methodist Church (co-authored with Jung Ha Kim, 2004).

George Russell Seay Jr. is an Assistant Professor of Theology and Ethics at Oakwood College, Huntsville, Alabama. His PhD dissertation, titled Theologian of Synthesis: The Dialectical Method of Martin Luther King, Jr. as Revealed in His Critical Thinking on Theology, History, and Ethics (2010), is currently being revised for publication.

Traci C. West is Professor of Ethics and African American Studies at Drew Theological Seminary, Madison, New Jersey. She is the author of Wounds of the Spirit: Black Women, Violence, and Resistance Ethics (1999); Disruptive Christian Ethics: When Racism and Women’s Lives Matter (2006); and Defending Same-Sex Marriage: Our Family Values, Same-Sex Marriage and Religion (editor, 2006).

Foreword

When President Barack H. Obama spoke at the official dedication of the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial on October 16, 2011, the notion that King should be commemorated by a gigantic granite statue on the National Mall in Washington DC evoked little public opposition. Not that the monument failed to evoke controversy—far from it. But the most heated arguments swirled around the design of the monument, the nationality of the sculptor, and the financial demands of the King family, not the propriety of thus honoring the slain civil rights leader. This had not been the case twenty-eight years earlier, in October 1983, when Congress passed a bill designating the third Monday in January a federal holiday, or Martin Luther King Jr. Day. That proposal had evoked vocal opposition from influential politicians. President Ronald Reagan, who signed the bill through proverbially gritted teeth, had expressed skepticism. And for years after its passage, several states dishonored King by naming the holiday something else or, in the case of Virginia, calling it Lee-Jackson-King Day, a title that gave priority to two white men, both slaveholders, who had waged war against the Union in a struggle to preserve human bondage.

As often happens in history, however, time cools political passions, and leaders once damned as radicals or traitors—and King was frequently called both—are absorbed into a patriotic narrative that stresses consensus rather than conflict. Abstracted from the specific circumstances of their history, they come to function as symbols of the nation as a whole. The iconic status testifies to the permanence of the changes they wrought and the broad acceptance of certain ideas and values, once bitterly resisted, that they had espoused. A mythologized Martin Luther King Jr. has been admitted to that select group of national heroes that peoples the pantheon of America’s civil religion. The location of the King Memorial, on federal parkland near memorials to Thomas Jefferson and Franklin D. Roosevelt, underlines the fact that King stands in the company of the nation’s demigods. I Have a Dream may well be the best known and the most widely quoted speech in American history. Like Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, which King consciously evoked, it has come to represent the quintessence of American democratic idealism.

This process of figurative and literal monument building, however, exacts a price in terms of historical understanding. The actual historical record is pruned and even sanitized. Mark Antony may have been right when, burying Caesar, he noted that The evil men do lives after them; the good is oft interred with their bones. Historical commemoration, however, invariably entails the opposite kind of effect. We celebrate Thomas Jefferson the forward-seeing advocate of equality and liberty, not the pitiless slaveholder and hypocritical racist. We remember Winston Churchill the foe of Nazi tyranny, not the admirer of Mussolini and ruthless imperialist. Whatever evils King may have authored were minor when compared with Jefferson’s practice of slavery or Churchill’s indifference to millions of starving Indians. Nevertheless, the King of American civil religion is a highly selective version of King the historical actor. This is why conservatives can commemorate King with as much sincerity as liberals. Judging people not by the color of their skin but by the content of their character is entirely consistent with the individualism that provides the ideological underpinning of American capitalism. Conveniently forgotten is the man who berated America for its excessive materialism and militarism, who stated qualified admiration for Karl Marx and who regarded Sweden’s social democracy as a model that the United States of America would do well to follow. This image of King is resurrected to a considerable degree on the pages of this work.

Serious students of King’s life and work recognize the difference between the King of history and the King of American civil religion. They know, to quote Lewis V. Baldwin’s essay in this collection, that to understand King demands a serious engagement with King’s own words, writings, and actions in the 1950s and 60s. By the same token, they appreciate that the memories of eyewitnesses must be subjected to the same critical analysis that scholars bring to bear on all historical documents. The memoirs of King’s colleagues, such as Ralph D. Abernathy, Andrew J. Young, and Clarence B. Jones, provide valuable evidence, but each had a partial—in both senses of that word—view of King, and their testimony is filtered through the lens of time. Eyewitnesses to history they may have been, but, as any lawyer knows, the evidence of eyewitnesses is notoriously unreliable. Although Ralph Abernathy was King’s constant companion throughout King’s civil rights career, he was prone to nod off during staff meetings and strategy debates. Andrew Young did not join the staff until 1961. Clarence Jones, a member of King’s circle of New York–based advisors, saw the civil rights leader close up; yet his main contact with King fell between the years 1962 and 1966. The man who might have shed the most light on King, his intimate friend and counselor Stanley Levison, who was also a member of King’s New York circle, died in 1979 without writing a memoir or leaving a body of papers. Fortunately, and ironically, the transcripts of FBI wiretaps afford us a good idea of what these advisors said to King, and with whom King most often consulted.

It is with justifiable skepticism, therefore, that the contributors to this volume approach recent claims by Jones, published half a century after King’s death, regarding the positions that King might take on present-day issues. To state the obvious: King died before women’s liberation, the gay rights movement, the collapse of communism, and the end of the cold war. One can speculate how King, who described himself as a realistic pacifist, might have judged US-led military interventions in Panama, Iraq, Serbia, and Kosovo, or the more recent Anglo-French-American intervention in Libya. But it would be only that: speculation. Given King’s public and, particularly, his private statements, the left can claim him as a kindred spirit. Given King’s search for coalitions and consensus, liberals can also regard him as one of their own. The truth is that we can only guess at King’s political evolution had he lived on into the present. He might even have moved to the political right—highly unlikely, in this writer’s opinion, but not beyond the realm of possibility. In short, any attempt to infer King’s position on current issues is fraught with difficulty, and many would regard it as futile. Moreover, Jones’s claim that his close relationship with King gives him a special, even unique, insight into what Martin would say cannot withstand serious scrutiny, as this volume concludes.

Nevertheless, we should be grateful to Clarence Jones for indirectly causing these essays to be written and published. As historian Hugh Trevor-Roper once observed, a fertile error can be more useful than a sterile truth. Bold claims, however dubious, provoke debate and stimulate research; knowledge and understanding are thereby advanced. It is a process that King himself, with his fondness for the Hegelian dialetic, fully appreciated. Relishing debate, he encouraged his staff to engage in spirited, even furious, argumentation. On any given issue—Vietnam, Black Power, poverty, presidential politics—King heard a variety of views, strongly expressed. One could never be certain, moreover, what position he would ultimately take, or which policy he would actually adopt. Moral principles were only a rough guide to action: King had to adapt those principles to politics and practicality. A coalition builder by both instinct and philosophy, King regarded compromise as creative synthesis, not betrayal. His ethics were guided by realism. All this underlines the difficulty in estimating where King might stand on the burning issues of today. This thought-provoking collection not only examines Jones’s claims but also extends the debate over King’s legacy. Lewis V. Baldwin and Rufus Burrow Jr. are to be congratulated for commissioning and contributing, along with other scholars, to this interesting, timely, and provocative work.

Adam Fairclough

The Raymond and Beverly Sackler

Professor of American History

University of Leiden

The Netherlands

Acknowledgments

This volume would have never been completed without the help of colleagues and friends. We acknowledge with gratitude the assistance of Cynthia Lewis and Elaine Hall, who work in the library and archives at the Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change, Inc. For years they have made the efforts of King scholars easier by providing sources and bibliographic information. Some of the chapters in this volume benefitted immensely from their help.

We are equally grateful for the contribution of Clayborne Carson, the Senior Editor of the Martin Luther King Jr. Papers Project, and his wonderful staff at Stanford University. Having collected, compiled, and published the six extant volumes of the King Papers, they provided a rich and enduring resource on which we could draw in advancing our many claims and conclusions.

Sincere thanks go to Peter J. Paris, the Elmer G. Homrighausen Professor of Christian Ethics Emeritus at Princeton Theological Seminary, for his kindness and encouragement. We had a number of contacts with Peter in the course of our research and writing, and he was always kind, considerate, and generous. Peter was particularly helpful when it came to the question of the organization of the chapters included in this book.

We appreciate the patient encouragement and editorial assistance of Christian Amondson and others at Cascade Books. Thanks for guiding us through the writing and formatting processes with sage advice and constant encouragement. You were most understanding and generous, even when we failed to grasp and follow instructions, asked the most difficult and probing questions, and failed miserably to meet the proper deadlines.

Particularly helpful in the final stages was Anthony Sandusky, a recent graduate of the Vanderbilt University Divinity School. Anthony helped prepare the book’s manuscript for publication. This process included a lot of reading and some typing and formatting, and Anthony handled the challenge well. We hope he realizes his dream of becoming and finding a place among the next generation of King scholars.

A hearty word of gratitude is extended to Adam Fairclough, the British King scholar who teaches American history at Leiden University in the Netherlands, for writing the foreword. We exchanged numerous e-mails with Dr. Fairclough while completing this work, and he was always willing to ask questions and to provide critical feedback. The first two chapters bear the marks of his influence at points.

A number of scholars in various disciplines contributed their time, resources, and expertise in the planning, researching, and writing of the chapters that comprise this volume. The twelve chapters in The Domestication of Martin Luther King Jr. were contributed by scholars who have taken the risk of thinking with King beyond King. They are not afraid or hesitant to think with King in and beyond his own time and space. They actually reevaluate King in his own day on into the twenty-first century. A special thanks to all of the contributors, for both your hard work and your willingness to donate the proceeds from this work to the Martin Luther King Jr. Collection at Morehouse College in Atlanta, Georgia. Consider yourselves worthy contributors to the promotion of the King legacy.

It was truly a delight to gather and edit these chapters, and to write the general introduction. As King scholars, we have long discussed the need for new and multidisciplinary approaches to the study of King. There is at present no single volume in which scholars from various fields explore King’s meaning from the standpoint of sources on the religious and political right. Undoubtedly, this anthology fills a conspicuous gap in King studies, and we hope it will stimulate thoughtful discussion and debate, not only in academic settings, but in religious and political circles as well. We would be even more pleased and honored if it becomes a model for future scholarship on King. If any of this happens, everyone who contributed to The Domestication of Martin Luther King Jr. will have much for which to be thankful and to celebrate.

General Introduction

Martin Luther King Jr.’s name and image are currently being invoked in defense of every conceivable religious, political, and cultural agenda and point of view. Indeed, King has become a convenient symbol and resource for scholars, persons of faith, social activists, politicians, media moguls, TV hosts, radio personalities, and newspaper columnists, who routinely appeal to his authority when addressing the most pressing moral issues of this age. Polemicists and propagandists across the ideological spectrum frequently use King as a sort of blank screen onto which they project their own biases, insecurities, hopes, dreams, and aspirations. The many uses and abuses of King’s legacy have become all too common, especially in right-wing, conservative circles, thus increasing the necessity for more accurate portrayals of the man and his ideas and activities.

This explains in part the publication of The Domestication of Martin Luther King Jr. The conceptual framework for this book developed gradually as we read and responded to Clarence B. Jones’s What Would Martin Say? (2008), a work that makes sweeping claims about what would be King’s perspectives on contemporary black civil rights leadership, affirmative action, illegal immigration, anti-Semitism, global terrorism, and the war in Iraq. Generally speaking, Jones suggests that King would be bitterly disappointed with the thinking and activities of present-day black civil rights leaders such as Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, that he would call for the abolishment of affirmative action as we know it, that he would oppose those who violate this country’s immigration laws, that he would denounce anti-Semitism as the most virulent form of racism, and that he would ultimately support the use of violence as the most practical strategy in the struggle against Islamic terrorists and Saddam Hussein’s Baathist regime in Iraq.

Knowing that Clarence Jones was one of King’s legal advisors and confidants in the 1960s, we, as established King scholars, greeted such claims with a sudden feeling of wonder and, in some instances, even alarm, for they projected an image of King that has no resemblance to the Georgia-born black prophet who became a drum major for justice, peace, and righteousness. We were literally consumed with the urge to defend King against what we see as misrepresentation and distortion in many cases.

Jones’s apparent mischaracterizations of King actually triggered reminders of William Styron’s controversial, Pulitzer-Prize winning novel, The Confessions of Nat Turner (1966), which we had both read earlier. Styron, a white southerner, actually reduced the real historical Nat Turner, a black slave who led a revolt in Southampton County, Virginia in 1831, from an audacious prophet and rebel to an establishment Negro. In William Styron’s Nat Turner: Ten Black Writers Respond (1968), edited by John Henrik Clarke, Clarke, Lerone Bennett Jr., Alvin F. Poussaint, Vincent Harding, John O. Killens, John A. Williams, Ernest Kaiser, Loyle Hairston, Charles V. Hamilton, and Mike Thelwell challenged Styron’s domestication of Turner, and set out to restore Turner’s rightful place as a slave insurrectionist and hero of his people. We have a similar purpose and mission in The Domestication of Martin Luther King Jr., as we respond to Clarence Jones’s portrayal of King. Although we are not driven by the deep anger that characterized the ten black respondents to Styron, we do feel a sense of urgency in challenging Jones’s effort to make King’s image more acceptable to the current status quo, and especially to the powerful religious and political establishments.

As we conceptualized The Domestication of Martin Luther King Jr., Jones issued a second volume on King, titled Behind the Dream: The Making of the Speech That Transformed a Nation (2011). This book offers a behind-the-scenes account of the activities that culminated in the great March on Washington in 1963, and especially King’s celebrated I Have a Dream speech. Behind the Dream further advances Jones’s questionable image of King, suggesting at points that King would have much in common with the likes of Glenn Beck and the Tea Party phenomenon. We believe that Jones’s What Would Martin Say? and Behind the Dream, which are exceptionally readable and engaging volumes, constitute an enormous challenge not only for King scholars and black intellectuals in general, but for all who honor King’s memory and his rich and powerful legacy of ideas and struggle. We decided that we had a moral responsibility, as King scholars and as keepers of the dream, to subject Jones’s image of and claims about King to historical scrutiny and rigorous analysis and critique. In this modern culture of deception and propaganda, we cannot afford to ignore or dismiss Jones’s Martin Luther King Jr. out of hand. This would be not only a betrayal of King, but a blatant denial of the values for which he lived, struggled, and died.

We struggled with many questions as The Domestication of Martin Luther King, Jr. took shape in our minds: What should a book on this subject cover? What title should we use to best convey our thesis and purpose? How can we respond to Jones in ways that are charitable and also analytical and critical? Should Jones’s claims about King be treated in isolation from those of that larger phenomenon of right-wing conservatism, or does it make more sense to approach them as an extension of what has too often been advanced by a certain highly visible and vocal cadre of religious and political conservatives? Is it really worthwhile for us, like Jones, to explore questions about what King would say about anything today, or would this be pure or fruitless conjecture, or perhaps even a waste of time? Is it really unfair for us, like Jones, to overburden King in a study of his life’s work with the role of the great man with the answers to many of today’s social problems? Should the book be a coauthored volume, or a collaborative effort involving a stellar cast of King scholars? Should only King scholars be involved, or should we make this a more inclusive effort involving black and white intellectuals who have a special interest in the study of King and the civil rights movement? Should we strive for a fifty-fifty male and female mix of contributors? We came to an agreement on how each of these questions should be answered before committing our ideas and thoughts to paper.

Inspired by John H. Clarke’s edited piece on Nat Turner, we had initially planned to confine our focus to Clarence Jones’s books on King, using, as a title for our work, Clarence B. Jones’s What Would Martin Say?: Ten King Scholars Respond. But we decided against this approach for two important reasons. First, we felt that a book about Jones and his writings about King would be too narrowly focused and would not provide the nexus we need to struggle with the more general question of King’s on-going relevance for contemporary times. In other words, we hoped to situate more accurately the content of this book on King and his legacy of ideas and activism, while also taking an approach that is both analytical and critical of parts of Jones’ writings. It was clear to us that what is of the utmost significance is not so much what Jones says about King, but the fact that our nation as a whole is suffering from amnesia when it comes to the question of King’s legacy, and particularly what he taught and believed. We are part of a culture that has been and continues to be unwilling to come to grips with the radicality of King’s ideas and social praxis, and is therefore more comfortable with a domesticated King, or one who is harmless, gentle, and a symbol of our own confused sense of what it means to be Americans. This book’s title, The Domestication of Martin Luther King, Jr., is, in and of itself, really a commentary on what much of our society thinks and believes about King. It speaks to this nation’s determination to make King something other than who and what he actually was. Our purpose is to somehow break through the mass public confusion and to present a more realistic King based on a careful study of his own words and actions.

Second, in the earliest stage of our research and writing, it occurred to us that Jones’s portrayal of King squares in more precise ways with that put forth by many right-wing religious and political conservatives over the last three decades, beginning with Jerry Falwell’s suggestion that he was acting in the tradition of King when he protested against abortion, homosexuality, pornography, and other so-called social ills in the early 1980s. From Jerry Falwell to Newt Gingrich, Dick Armey, Clint Bolick, Cal Thomas, Glenn Beck, and Sarah Palin, right-wing conservatives have manipulated King’s image and words to fit their own narrow ideological and political agenda. This is not entirely surprising in a culture in which many different images of iconic figures like King are circulated, and in which heroes and sheroes (to use Maya Angelou’s neologism) tend to remain mutable symbols. We understand the need for views of King that cover a wide span of diversity, and this, to be sure, is what scholarship should entail. Even so, no portrayal of King should go unexamined and unchallenged. With this in mind, we decided to go beyond the portrait of King provided by Jones to explore the larger question of how King is viewed and used by right-wing religious and political conservatives. It is our contention that Jones is part of this conglomerate of right-wing conservatives who are bent on making King’s image more palatable, acceptable, and useful for their own self-serving purposes. Indeed, his books have done much to reinforce the right-wing, conservative use and abuse of King’s words, image, and legacy.

Unlike Jones, we decided not to focus so much on what King would say about contemporary social issues and problems, but on what he would be likely to say based on words he spoke and positions he took in the 1950s and ’60s. At the same time, we realize that both approaches require risk-taking and a venture into the realm of the unknowable. However, we are convinced that any discussion of how King might address contemporary social ills should be based not simply on conjecture or what was once the nature of one’s relationship to King in King’s own time, as is the case with Jones, but on a serious reading of King in his own time. For example, if King vehemently opposed violence in the 1950s and 1960s, then it is only logical to assume that he would take the same position today, especially in light of his oft-repeated contention that violence is intrinsically immoral and impractical, and that it no longer serves a useful purpose. We agree with Jones’s insistence that King would have changed with the times, or that he would be in some ways a different person today, but it is highly doubtful that he would reach the point of abandoning his most sacred and cherished beliefs, especially in an age in which bigotry, intolerance, violence, and oppression have become even more corrosive or destructive in world cultures. As well-meaning as Jones is in his effort to contemporize King, he, despite his relationship to the civil rights leader, should not have the last word on the subject. This applies as well to others who interpret King through the lenses of a narrow, right-wing conservatism.

We abandoned our earlier plan to bring together a distinguished team of King scholars for the writing of this book. The Domestication of Martin Luther King Jr. is actually the product of a unique collaboration between scholars who have studied and written about King and various dimensions of the civil rights movement. They represent a range of academic disciplines and interests, which means that our approach to King is not only scholarly—with contributions from six male and four female scholars—but interdisciplinary as well. The issues treated range from right-wing, conservative images of King to Jones’s relationship to King to the more general question of what King said and might still say today about black leadership, affirmative action, illegal immigration, anti-Semitism, and violence and human destruction. Some of the contributors also reflect on issues not raised by Jones, such as King’s sex life, his relationship to women, and gay rights. Strangely enough, Jones, in both his books, says essentially nothing about positions King might take on issues such as women’s liberation, classism, white supremacy, poverty, and gay rights—issues which figure prominently in both the national and global public consciousness in contemporary times.

This book consists of some twelve chapters. Chapter 1 traces images of King in right-wing religious and political circles from the 1950s and ’60s to the present. Written by Lewis V. Baldwin, a historian by training and a King scholar, this chapter views right-wing religious and political conservatism as the source of so much of the distortion and manipulation surrounding King’s image, words, and legacy. At the same time, Baldwin is sensitive to the fact that right-wing conservatives have never been monolithic or one-dimensional in their approaches to King; that some have categorically rejected and castigated King as a tool of communists and a symbol of un-Americanism, while others have distorted and manipulated his image and words to promote their own moral and political agenda for what they envision as the reform and ultimate salvation of America.

This first chapter concludes with a discussion of the mass rally led by the conservative radio and TV pundit Glenn Beck on 28 August 2010, the forty-seventh anniversary of the great march on Washington, which is most often associated with Martin Luther King Jr.’s I Have a Dream speech. Baldwin highlights the irony and absurdity surrounding Beck’s and Sarah Palin’s evocation of King’s memory on that occasion, and carefully explains how the views and agenda of these right-wing conservatives conflict with the vision and mission of King. Baldwin concludes that the actions of Beck and Palin at the 2010 rally were actually a more glaring and massive effort to do what those on the right have always done with King; namely, distort and manipulate his image, words, and legacy. For Baldwin, praise for King by the likes of Beck and Palin, coupled with the conservative right’s use of the civil rights leader to justify civil disobedience, and even uncivil disobedience, raise all sorts of questions, the most important of which are addressed in a very lucid fashion in this chapter. Baldwin’s reflections are clearly a challenge to Clarence Jones’s suggestion that King, were he alive today, would have no serious problem with the Beck rally and the larger right-wing conservative agenda.

Chapter 1 provides the criteria for assessing or making judgments about Clarence B. Jones and his works in chapter 2. Chapter 2 examines the question of Clarence B. Jones’s relationship to King, and also Jones’s effort to redefine King for this current age. This chapter is also provided by Baldwin, whose approach is highly analytical and critical. Baldwin concludes that Jones’s treatment of King in both What Would Martin Say? and Behind the Dream does capture an important dimension of this fascinating figure; namely, his image as the face of the modern civil rights movement. The problem, Baldwin argues, is that Jones seemingly inflates his importance as part of King’s inner circle, shows little appreciation for the moral and religious bases of King’s thought, and actually echoes claims made over time by polemicists and propagandists on the right side of the religious and political spectrums, especially when it comes to issues such as the current black civil rights leadership, anti-Semitism, affirmative action, terrorism, and war. Baldwin also makes it clear that Jones goes much further than others on the right in his assessment of how King would address issues like illegal immigration, anti-Semitism, and violence and human destruction. Even so, Jones is treated as part of a much greater right-wing, conservative effort to use and misuse King for selfish purposes. This chapter, together with chapter 1, actually frames the general concern of The Domestication of Martin Luther King Jr., and how it has arisen in relationship to the ideas put forth by both Jones and right-wing conservatives concerning King. These first two chapters also open the way to more topic specific concerns raised by the other contributors to this volume—concerns prompted primarily by a careful reading of Jones.

King and the question of black leadership is the focus of chapter 3. Here Rosetta E. Ross, an ethicist who has written extensively on women in the civil rights movement, and Shirley T. Geiger, a political scientist who specializes in race and politics, consider the current state of social and political leadership and make assertions about what King might say to and about African American leaders. For Ross and Geiger, the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC), which stemmed from the electoral political process during the civil rights movement, is the logical representation of contemporary black leadership. They go on to establish points of agreement and disagreement between themselves and Jones around the question of what King might say about the qualities that current black leaders should embody.

Toward the end of chapter 3, Ross and Geiger explain what the life of King and of Ruby Hurley, a King contemporary who was active with the NAACP from the early 1940s until her death in 1980, might say to and mean for today’s black leaders. Ross and Geiger maintain that excellence in both leadership and followership was characteristic of both King and Hurley to some extent, and that both consistently demonstrated vision, commitment, and responsibility. Even so, Ross and Geiger conclude that a leadership model different from King’s and more like Hurley’s, who advocated and represented a more group-centered leadership model, is needed today. This conclusion evidently undermines Jones’s suggestion that King remains the quintessential model of leadership for our times. In any case, much of the strength and appeal of this chapter rest in Ross and Geiger’s own definition of leadership, and in how they use the leadership qualities highlighted by Clarence Jones as a lens through which to examine the life and contributions of King and Hurley.

Walter E. Fluker, an ethicist, King scholar, and authority in the area of ethical leadership, takes up the question of King and black leadership from yet another angle in chapter 4. Inspired by his reading of Touré’s Who’s Afraid of Post-Blackness?: What It Really Means to Be Black Now (2011), Fluker explores how we might understand King and his style of and attitude toward leadership in this age of postmodernism and postblackness. Fluker is particularly concerned about how Clarence Jones appropriates King in defense of what he sees as the essential black leadership qualities for this current age. Fluker concludes that leadership today must be understood as global, and we have to determine what this means in this postmodern, postblack era. Fluker goes on to critique Jones for his failure to understand this, and for being trapped in the discourse of the civil rights period, a discourse limited by race and identity politics.

Fluker’s chapter really confronts us with new ways of thinking not only about King but also about blackness and black leadership in this new century and millennium. In a provocative conclusion, Fluker argues that King’s concept of the great world house, set forth in his Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community? (1967), still has some meaning, particularly as we develop a sense of leadership that is logical, timely, and relevant in this age of globalization. The point is that we must not be constrained by Jones’s understanding and definition of black leadership, which is based on the model passed down from the civil rights movement. Indeed, the shifting realities of race and racial expectations demand something different.

Chapter 5 was written by Cheryl A. Kirk-Duggan, a theologian and authority in womanist and feminist studies, who is widely known for her scholarship on the intersection of theology, justice, and violence. Here Kirk-Duggan examines moral capital amid King’s plagiarism and acts of adultery, with some attention to the problematics these pose in the context of African American leadership. Kirk-Duggan takes a fourfold approach. First, she provides an overview of celebratory moments and of acts of plagiarism