Introduction
An undeniable link connected Martin Luther King and Albert Luthuli, two
socially and politically active black leaders on separate continents in the
twentieth century. The former, American, and the latter, South African, lived
under the shadow of white supremacy in their nations. Both were members of
economically and politically disadvantaged populations and saw solutions for the
trials of their people in social and economic justice. For the two, the
liberation of their people lay in Christian ethic and in the employment of
non-violent methods of resistance. They were respectively committed to ending
the racially divisive systems of segregation (in the American South) and
apartheid (in South Africa), and replacing these with communities where racial
and ethnic equality and tolerance prevailed. At the same time, the two sprang
from the loins of unique cultures with particular socioeconomic and political
concerns, separated by an ocean. Their responses to the social and political
injustices their people faced were rooted in those culturally specific contexts.
Despite their differences, one cannot ignore the contact between their
distinct spheres and cultures, and even the possibility that the two had an
important influence on each other. Lewis Baldwin, a historian whose text,
Toward the Beloved Community, focuses on King’s influence on South
African politics, describes King’s return from an African visit in 1957,
determined to be a voice for South Africa’s oppressed population: “his knowledge
undoubtedly expanded to new levels as he studied the Defiance Campaign led by
Chief Albert J Luthuli and the ANC in1952-53” (Baldwin, 11). Baldwin goes on to
describe how “King and Luthuli communicated with each other, even as the latter
faced the rising challenges of Pan-Africanism and the scrutiny and harassment of
the South African government”(Baldwin, 20). Luthuli would later describe his
admiration for King to G McLeod Bryan, King’s friend, who would then recount the
conversation to King: “the greatest inspiration to him was your
Stride Toward
Freedom . . . Luthuli had been reading it in his cane fields the very day
that I visited him . . . His eyes were the brightest when I referred to him as
the “King” of South Africa” (Baldwin, 21). King’s reply to Luthuli expressed
similar sentiments: “may I say that I too have admired you tremendously from a
distance . . . I admire your great witness and your dedication to the cause of
freedom and human dignity” (Ibid.). Clearly then, the similarities between the
two were more than mere coincidence. This was, in time, evidenced when the two
leaders received Nobel Peace Prizes, Luthuli belatedly, in 1961, and King in
1964. Both occasions reflected world leaders’ recognition that the two were the
best hope for a global concern: peaceful, multiracial co-existence in their
countries (Baldwin, 34).
More evidence of the two leaders’ similarities exists in King’s
Stride
Toward Freedom and Luthuli’s
Let my People Go, both autobiographical
texts, authored during a time of great social and political transformation
globally. Authored in the time period between 1950 and 1965, and documenting
events of political import from the same era, the two texts reflect the
concurrent transition from explicit colonialism and imperialism to what many
believed would be independence. The explicit racial subjugation which had
governed relations between colonizers and their colonial subjects was
transforming into a more nuanced form of economic exploitation in which, to all
appearances, the emerging nations were equal partners with their former masters.
Naturally, King and Luthuli were aware of these transformations and recognized
that the winds of change could soon be blowing through their own nations. Just
as new nations appeared to be phasing out rigid, racialized economies and
political hierarchies, the two saw that the same could potentially happen in
their own nations. However, also aware of the stakes involved for the ruling
white communities, the two were conscious that their people’s struggles to
modify the political and economic systems could result in bloodshed. Their
efforts to prevent this eventuality by promoting non-violence and building
interracial bridges won them their Nobel Peace Prizes.
It is not possible to overemphasize that the two men’s ideas resonated on a
global scale because they reflected a global concern. In a sense, the black,
Indian and colored populations in South Africa continued to live under the
colonial yoke, even as the rest of the continent was emerging from this scene.
African Americans in the U.S. South also continued to live under a similar form
of oppression, and therefore, their struggles under this oppression could be
likened to the anti-colonial struggles on the African and Asian continents. The
two nations’ racial crises were part of a global racial crisis. By comparing
Luthuli’s and King’s autobiographical writings, I hope to reveal similarities
between the two men, their communities and their ideologies, reflecting that the
two fit into a larger global anti-colonial scheme. At the same time, the
comparison will unearth differences between the two, which I will view as
evidence that the leaders’ ideologies and methods developed out of their
specific local contexts and conditions. My overall aim is to underline the
importance of local contexts and of global trends in influencing specific
political movements and events.
I have chosen to view Luthuli’s and King’s autobiographies as personal
histories. Autobiographical texts, like any other potential historical
references, are subject to their author’s biases and to their particular
perspectives of social and political situations. While this is a potential
setback in any form of research, it could also be the opposite, as it is in this
case. The two texts are primary sources; essentially the first-person accounts
of individuals who orchestrated and took part in non-violent protests, and who
were directly affected by their choices to do so. Because they are not
“objective” observations, they emphasize their authors’ subject positions,
revealing how the political and the personal intersect. The texts also provide
evidence of their authors’ worldviews, and of their subjectivities and contexts.
Furthermore, they document the legislation and political events of the era so
that a broader picture, simultaneously national and international, emerges.
The autobiographical accounts are not exhaustive of King’s and Luthuli’s
interests or of their efforts for social justice. King’s writing, for example,
does not indicate either his interest in South African politics, or white
poverty or US prison systems, although they are slightly touched on within.
Likewise, in his autobiography, Luthuli does not highlight his views on global
poverty, although he hints at them while describing his visit to India. These
points indicate the specialized nature of the texts, emphasizing that they
devote most of their attention to specific events in the leaders’ political
careers. King’s account describes the Montgomery bus protests that began in
1954, and the extent to which these mobilized the regional black population into
non-violent political action. Luthuli’s writing covers a much longer period.
Thus, in his case, I will primary focus on the Defiance Campaign of 1957 South
Africa, also a non-violent form of mass protest, which his account gives
prominence.
The men and their communities
Luthuli and King were both elite members of their respective communities.
Both were highly-educated individuals, distinguishing them from most members of
their racial communities. King descended from a line of ministers and, in
addition, married Coretta Scott, the daughter of a minister (King, 21). This is
significant, given that a lot of black political leadership evolved from
leadership positions in the Church during his era. It reveals that King already
occupied a position of potential leadership by virtue of his family ties. He had
a relatively privileged background, growing up in Atlanta, mixing with white
childhood friends before segregation set in, and eventually attending college
and university (King, 18). His educational career proceeded up to the PhD level
in Boston University, in the US North. He was still writing his dissertation
when he accepted a pastoral position at the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in
Montgomery, Alabama (King, 22). King’s education and his experience in the
Northern states exposed him to cosmopolitan life among American whites as their
intellectual and social equal. It is probable that this experience helped
develop his intuition that racial integration was an achievable goal.
Luthuli, on the other hand, was the son of Zulu converts to Christianity, and
grew up largely in Groutville, Natal in South Africa. His community was home to
Christians as well as believers in Zulu indigenous religious thought, two groups
that lived and interacted in harmony (Luthuli, 20). Luthuli was privileged
enough to receive the very education that white South Africans felt created
“Black Englishmen”, preparing them for positions in fields other than industrial
labor, mining and agriculture. Through his schooling, Luthuli saw his white
teachers, not primarily as white men, but as teachers (Luthuli, 29). His formal
education ended at Adams College, where he entered a Teachers’ Training Course,
and then stayed on to teach for more than a decade(Luthuli, 33). Luthuli married
Nokukhanya Bhengu, of royal Zulu blood, tying him to a traditional elite family.
In addition, his education as well as his Christian faith (the two were
inextricably linked) availed him opportunities that were not immediately
available to most people from his community. In1936, he became Chief of the
Umvoti Mission Reserve after democratic elections, thus beginning official
leadership in a position that his uncle had previously occupied (Luthuli, 55).
In both cases, the men came into leadership of their communities by virtue of a
combination of factors: their religion, their family ties and their education.
Both men also had exposure to situations in which their interactions with whites
were not explicitly racialized. This would have an impact on the ideas that they
developed.
The contexts in Alabama and South Africa differed. The majority race in South
Africa at the time that the autobiography is written is black. This community,
together with the minority Colored and Indian populations, live under the
oppressive rule of the white minority. Luthuli’s desire for cooperation between
different groups gives priority to cooperation among blacks of different ethnic
groups, and then to the cooperation of these with Indians and, finally, with
Colored people. He views this series of cooperative relationships as being
significant for the development of a unified national resistance to white rule.
In fact, he traces the ANC’s eventual success as the voice of South African
resistance to its ability to collaborate with the Indian Congress, white liberal
groups, leftist whites, and various political groups covering a variety of
ethnicities and races (Luthuli, 101). The autobiography also notes that South
African legislation is the basis for the racialized hierarchies.
Racial cooperation in Montgomery, Alabama, as described by King, involves two
primary communities: black and white. Legislation in the Southern states,
including Alabama, supports institutionalized segregation. However, this is in
opposition to Federal legislation, and to legislation in the Northern States.
The result of this is that members of the minority black community, prevalent in
the South, potentially have the ability to move to the Northern states to escape
segregationist legislation and its limiting effects on their lives. Secondly,
black residents of Southern states could appeal to the Federal Judiciary system
if dissatisfied with Southern forms of justice (King, 160). In fact, the latter
is the method that King and his colleagues used to get bus segregation in
Montgomery declared illegal. The success of this endeavor illustrates the
effectiveness of this tool, which was unavailable to Luthuli and his South
African colleagues. In the South African case, the disenfranchisement of all
blacks, Coloreds and Indians strips them of any ability to influence policy.
Furthermore, they are unrepresented in the government, in parliament and in the
Judiciary.
Another important factor is the amount of Northern capital invested in the
Southern US states. King and his colleagues, aware of this, get in touch with
the Chicago-based parent company of the Buslines that they are protesting
against, reasoning that a Chicago office representative would be better able to
negotiate with them (King, 113). While this turns out not to be the case, it
sill represents an opportunity that was largely unavailable to the South
Africans. In the South African case, any change to legislature would have to
come from international pressure in the form of economic and diplomatic
sanctions. In this sense, the two struggles, while both against
institutionalized racism, are vastly different.
Another difference exists between the two situations. On the one hand, the
ANC is a nationwide movement, with the Defence Campaign held on a nation-wide
basis. Though urban-based, the association and its campaign still amass
significant rural support. The MIA, on the other hand, is very specific to the
Montgomery bus protest situation, created for the sole purpose of coordinating
the protests and unifying the black protesters. Both organizations receive
regional and international support and funding, but the scope of their efforts
is primarily regional in Montgomery, and national in South Africa.
Luthuli observes another difference between his country and the US during a
visit to the Southern states. He observes that black industrial and agricultural
colleges in the US South are similar to those created for black South Africans.
However, he notes that African Americans are able to get state financial aid,
which is not the case for his own community (Luthuli, 81). On another level,
Luthuli and King are similar. Both are visionaries, with the latter believing
that segregation would end, and making it a reality, and the former interpreting
the increasing brutality of the South African government as an indication that
their reign was coming to an end. Both turned out to be right, but it is likely
that their specific views of liberation were nowhere close to the present day
status quo in their nations: black populations are now enfranchised and
segregation is no longer an institutional reality (in theory), but their
communities remain at the bottom of the economic ladder.
Their Political and Religious Thought
King and Luthuli developed their ideologies in response to specific
circumstances. Both were firmly rooted in Christianity, and supported
non-violent forms of protest. At the same time, they both saw religion’s
applicability to the personal and the social, and tried to use this to achieve
social justice and economic justice for non-white populations. Interestingly,
their non-violent philosophies took a leaf from Mohandas Gandhi’s Satyagraha.
Gandhi was Hindu, and, thus, some might see the two men’s adoption of his
methods as a divergence from the “true” Christian path. However, as King
describes it,
satyagraha resonated with the Christian edict to turn the
cheek. Both ideals are in favor of non-violence, but while the latter was
personal, the former showed a way to translate it into the political (King, 96).
The two, fully aware of non-Christian faiths were not dismissive of this
possibility; they willingly borrowed from Gandhi’s ideology.
King was able to reconcile individuals from different denominations of the
Christian church and to get them to unite under the banner of integration. For
his part, Luthuli grew up in a community surrounded by traditional Zulu
believers as well as Christians. Later on, he would be one of the leaders of the
Defiance Campaign, which involved Christians, believers in indigenous African
religions, Muslims, Hindus and individuals of other religious persuasions. Faith
was a significant aspect of King’s political involvement. He saw God’s hand in
the occurrence of the bus protests in Montgomery at that specific time. He had a
concept of depersonalized love,
agape love, which he believed would allow
blacks to maintain their dignity and to overcome feelings of inferiority when
faced with white aggression (King, 104).
With time, the two would face accusations of involvement in communism from
their political opponents. It is not surprising that they both devoted part of
their writings to comments about Communism. King admitted to having read Karl
Marx’s writings in the context of his graduate studies. He indicated that he
studied the writings of a number of different thinkers and philosophers, and
described his reactions to them. King rejected Marx’s secularist non-religious
approach and saw his materialism as an insufficient analysis of the then state
of affairs in capitalist society. He also felt that Marx’s theory was too
depersonalized and elevated the collective at the expense of the personal. At
the same time, King was challenged by Marx’s works in that they addressed
economic inequalities in a way that capitalism and the Christianity espoused by
White supremacists did not. Thus, his reaction to Marxism and to Communist
thought was mixed (King, 95).
Luthuli never had the chance to read any of Marx’s writings, but he had the
intuition that a lot of the prevailing rhetoric about Communism amounted to
nothing more than witch hunts. Like King, he saw Communists as a misguided group
of people. He expressed his sympathy for them, but emphasized that there was no
need to depersonalize Communists and turn them into social pariahs: “until
things take a change for the better in South Africa, the resistance must be a
body of people of diverse outlook and religion (Muslims and Hindus co-operate
too) working together for one end . . . Resistance movements cannot afford the
luxury of McCarthyism, nor can they allow themselves to be divided up into
innumerable little homogenous groups. We are not playing at politics, we are
bent on liberation” (Luthuli, 154).
Luthuli’s rhetoric was for the integration of the different races and
ethnicities of South Africa into a united community. This was primarily in
response to the National Party’s proposal for separate development, which would
separate the different ethnic and racial groupings into homogenous groups (or so
the authorities wanted to believe) to prevent miscegenation and allow the white
minority to continue to exploit the other groups economically without having to
interact with them socially. Separate development implied that the different
races were on different positions on an evolutionary timeline, and that,
therefore, they had different cultural, social and political needs. This
amounted to inferior education and social services for non-whites, especially
for the black-majority. Furthermore, it supported the white supremacists claim
for permanent political primacy. The white rulers were fond of using the term
baaskap to refer to blacks’ supposed inability to help themselves. This
is somewhat reminiscent of white propagandists’ claims in the American South
that delinquency was inherent in blacks as evidenced by their communities’
conditions in Northern cities. Both leaders realized that the white authorities’
constant sabotage of their opportunities to improve themselves were having a
negative toll on the self-perception of black communities. As a result, both
wove their tactics around the view that they were fighting a system as opposed
to a race (Luthuli, 116). Hence, their movements welcomed the involvement of
other races, and were, in fact, designed to inspire involvement of this nature
(Luthuli,117).
The Movements
The African National Congress (ANC) came into being at the beginning of the
20
thcentury. However, it was a long time before the organization was
able to amass unified nationwide resources and support. Jan Smuts’ 1946 Asiatic
Land Tenure helped to unify Indians and Africans in protest, thus giving rise to
the first instance of cooperation between the ANC and the Indian Congress. After
1948, when the National Party came into power, conditions deteriorated for the
non-white populations. White hostility towards the other races increased,
swelling ANC ranks. This was the straw that broke the camel’s back. Under Dr
James Moroka, the new President-General of the ANC, a new Programme of Action
evolved. This consisted of new methods of protest. Instead of mere words and
apathy, the ANC conceived of nationwide demonstrations, civil disobedience and
strike action (Luthuli, 109). In 1952, the Defiance Campaign was born. It was a
large scale rejection of the color bar, with blacks, Indians and some coloreds
rejecting the inferior facilities accessible to them, and using white facilities
instead. They deliberately flouted curfew and pass regulations. The Defiance
Campaign occurred on a national scale and, despite Luthuli’s fears that the
participants were not prepared well enough, it was successful (Luthuli, 112).
The protesting groups were prepared to avoid all forms of violence protest and,
for this reason, there was little that the authorities could do beyond initially
arresting them en masse. The media response, which likely reflected white
popular sentiment at the time, was near hysterical (Luthuli 118).
In Montgomery, the bus protests developed in a similarly unprecedented
manner. After years of segregation and abuse of blacks on the bus lines, one
Rosa Parks, exhausted after a long day on her feet at work, refused to stand up
to allow a white man to seat. She was arrested, and charged with breaking the
law (King, 43). This action precipitated the Women’s Political Council to
suggest the boycotting of the buses, a process which soon followed. Acting under
the direction of the Montgomery Improvement Association, under King’s
leadership, black residents of Montgomery boycotted the buses for over five
months, developing, instead, an efficient car-pool. The movement united members
of different denominations and rejected all forms of aggression on the part of
the black community.
In both cases, the movements’ actions seem to have sprung into action by
chance, given that both contexts were characterized by decades of brutality and
racial oppression. However, it is actually the case that the accumulation of
several different factors such as desegregation legislation in the US, and
increased oppressive legislation in South Africa, combined with spreading waves
of political consciousness, jumpstarted the protests. Opposition to the protests
was similar in the two contexts. Bombings and Ku Klux Klan appearances were
among the white reactions to the bus boycott. However, as these turned out to be
ineffectual, the authorities began to rely on legislation to delegitimize the
boycotters’ actions (King, 149).
In South Africa,
agents provocateurs were used to provoke violence,
which was then used to justify a violent counter-attack on the protesters. At
the same time, the focus turned to the leaders of the ANC, who included Albert
Luthuli. The government banned them, charged them with treason, and kept them
under constant surveillance. In the South African case, the Defiance Campaign
became the symbol for a larger conspiracy that the authorities imagined existed
and had to be unearthed. Thus, at one given time Luthuli was in jail for his
role in organizing other forms of protest and testifying at the Treason trial
(Luthuli, 225).
Conclusion
As similar as the two protests were, they had drastically different endings.
The MIA’s efforts resulted in the end of segregation on Montgomery’s buses, both
in legislation and in reality. They would give rise to similar victories across
the region. King’s involvement and his anti-violence stance contributed to
racial integration in the region (for the period that the book covered). The
South African struggle went a different way. The government clamped down on all
forms of protest, arresting many opposition leaders and forcing the ANC and the
Pan-Africanist Congress (PAC) to go underground. Apartheid’s noose tightened
around the necks of the South African majority. In a sense, the opposition was
forced to adopt violent methods.
The differences in the two endings are rooted in the particulars of each
case. The scales of the protests were significant. The South Africa one was
nationwide, meaning that there was more at stake for the power-holders. The
MIA’s action was largely regional and, because it was not fighting a national
legal battle, support from federal branches of government and from the Northern
states were possible. South Africa’s whites were also in a more precarious
situation than those in the American South because they were a population
minority. Thus, their techniques were more extreme and more violent. The two
societies were clearly at different stages in the evolution of racial
relationships. Thus, the outcomes of non-violent protest were necessarily
different between them.
It is important to mention that the end of the two accounts did not signal
the end of the political movements described. Neither did the accounts provide a
comprehensive look at the political totality of the South African and American
pictures. To date race relations in the two countries, though nowhere close to
the segregation of the fifties and sixties, point to the persistence of
racialized economic hierarchies. Black communities in South Africa and the US
are technically integrated into multiracial communities today. However, it is
unlikely that they reflect King’s Beloved Community model or Luthuli’s hopes for
a united South Africa.
Luthuli’s and King’s accounts have contributed to the development of global
understandings of economic exploitation and violence. This is especially
relevant at present, with the rise of globalization and the need to understand
the interconnectedness of world communities’ destinies. The existence of
large-scale currents and trends does not, however, do away with our need to
understand and respect the specifics of local communities’ experiences. It is
these contextual differences that make it possible to speak of a larger picture
and, consequently, to develop a nuanced understanding of inter-racial
cooperation and of historical writing.
Works Cited
Baldwin, Lewis V.
Toward the Beloved Community: Martin Luther King and
South Africa. Cleveland: The Pilgrim Press. 1995.
King, Martin Luther Jr.
Stride Toward Freedom: the Montgomery Story.
New York: Harper Collins Publishers. 1986.
Luthuli, Albert.
Let my People Go. New York: McGraw Hill Book Company,
Inc. 1962.
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