How Dr. King Defined Justice

By Justin Marschke, Creative Manager at Beneficial State Foundation

From the time this nation was founded, through the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s lifetime of activism against systemic oppression, and to today’s inauguration of a president who fueled his campaign on hate speech, it is clear that “We the People” have struggled to reach a consensus on the meaning of justice.

This Martin Luther King Jr. Day, let us all take a moment to reflect on how we define, recognize, and sustain justice.

Dr. King dedicated his life’s work to making justice a collective pursuit. His teachers, teachings, and actions helped reveal this nation’s hypocrisy and modeled the change needed to truly achieve justice for all.

“I have fought too long and too hard against segregated public accommodations to end up segregating my moral concerns. Justice is indivisible.”

—King, The Other America (March 14, 1968)

Dr. King showed the people of the nation that discrimination is disharmonious with the natural law referenced in its own Declaration of Independence and Constitution. Although he was despised by many people for challenging the status quo, his legacy has continued to guide people and policy closer to alignment with universal principles of morality, human dignity, and equality. Dr. King recognized justice as an immediate necessity, and he modeled the courage, collective responsibility and action required to achieve it.

“So even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream. I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.”

—King, “I Have a Dream,” March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom (August 28, 1963)

He recognized racial injustice as inseparable from economic injustice and violence as inseparable from Western materialism. He saw how the ruling class concentrated wealth in its own hands by extracting labor and material needs from the global majority and invented race  to divide the working class against its own interests. In response, Dr. King mobilized and supported collectively beneficial movements that embodied the moral universe bending towards justice.

“I do not think of political power as an end. Neither do I think of economic power as an end. They are ingredients in the objective that we seek in life. And I think that end or that objective is a truly brotherly society, the creation of the Beloved Community.”

—King, Christian Century Magazine (July 13, 1966)

The Beloved Community reflects a global vision in which:

• All people can share in the wealth of our planet with reverence.
• Systems and standards of human decency prevent poverty, starvation, and homelessness.
• All forms of prejudice, bigotry, discrimination, and supremacy are transformed into an all-inclusive spirit of togetherness. 
• Domestic and international disputes are addressed through conflict resolution and reconciliation of adversaries instead of physical force.
• People love peace and justice more than war and violence.
• Love and trust prevail over fear and hatred.

“The Beloved Community” was first coined in the early 1900s by the philosopher-theologian Josiah Royce, who founded the Fellowship of Reconciliation. The Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. (a member of the Fellowship of Reconciliation) popularized the term and imbued it with a deeper meaning that mobilized goodwill among people around the world.

For him, the Beloved Community was not a lofty utopian ambition outside the realm of possibility. It was an attainable goal achieved when a critical mass committed to the philosophy and methods of nonviolence. However, such a reality would not come without conflict. Dr. King knew conflict as an inevitability in human experience and conflict resolution as a methodology for co-creating just outcomes.

King’s Philosophy of Nonviolence draws from lifetimes of wisdom and academia—immersed in the teachings of Jesus, Socrates, Plato, Augustine, Aquinas, Locke, Kant, Hegel, Thoreau, Rauschenbusch, Gandhi, Tillich, Niebuhr, and others—in skillful application to help bend unjust systems of a war-ridden world towards a just future for a peace-loving people. King applied revolutionary teachings to the path before him, integrated lessons learned through his experience, and invested his life into a movement he knew would outlive him. The legacies that shaped King’s approach exposed violence as an ineffective strategy that perpetuates cycles of revenge and erodes moral conscience through retaliation. Together, they proved nonviolence is an effective strategy that breaks cycles of retributive violence and creates sustainable peace through reconciliation. Acknowledging the interrelatedness within racial, economic, and global injustice (forms of systemic violence), King’s philosophy serves as a blueprint to unite diverse liberation movements into an emergent collective perspective that uproots systemic oppression. Nonviolence is a path of justice for the oppressed and an opportunity of redemption for the oppressor. Nonviolence frees all from violence.

“The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral, begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy. Instead of diminishing evil, it multiplies it. Through violence you may murder the liar, but cannot murder the lie, nor establish the truth. Through violence you may murder the hater, but you do not murder hate. In fact, violence merely increases hate… Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.”

—King, Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community? (1967)

As early as 1956, Dr. King spoke of the Beloved Community as the end goal of nonviolent boycotts. At a victory rally following a favorable U.S. Supreme Court decision in Browder v. Gayle (which desegregated Montgomery buses and clarified the Brown v. Board of Education decision by extending the bar on “separate but equal” to all aspects of public life), King said:

“We must remember as we boycott that a boycott is not an end within itself; it is merely a means to awaken a sense of shame within the oppressor and challenge his false sense of superiority. But the end is reconciliation; the end is redemption; the end is the creation of the Beloved Community. It is this type of spirit and this type of love that can transform opposers into friends. It is this type of understanding goodwill that will transform the deep gloom of the old age into the exuberant gladness of the new age. It is this love which will bring about miracles in the hearts of men.”

—King, “Facing the Challenge of a New Age,” Address Delivered at the First Annual Institute on Nonviolence and Social Change (1956)

In the following year, he expanded upon this vision in another context:

“The aftermath of nonviolence is the creation of the Beloved Community. The aftermath of nonviolence is redemption. The aftermath of nonviolence is reconciliation. The aftermath of violence is emptiness and bitterness… Let us fight passionately and unrelentingly for the goals of justice and peace. But let’s be sure that our hands are clean in this struggle. Let us never fight with falsehood and violence and hate and malice, but always fight with love, so that when the day comes that the walls of segregation have completely crumbled in Montgomery, that we will be able to live with people as their brothers and sisters. ”

—King, “The Birth of a New Nation,” Sermon Delivered at Dexter Avenue Baptist Church (1957)

Dr. King aimed to defeat the evils of adversaries (not the adversaries themselves) through integrity and respect for shared humanity. The core value of this quest for the Beloved Community is agape [agápē; pronounced “ah-gah-pay”], which is one of several Greek words that translate to different forms of love. Agape is the kind of love Dr. King defined as an “understanding, creative, redeeming goodwill for all” and “the love of God operating in the human heart.” This love is not to be misconstrued as other forms of love such as eros (desire) and philia (fondness). This love is justice at its best.

“Agape is not a weak, passive love. It is love in action. Agape is love seeking to preserve and create community. It is insistence on community even when one seeks to break it.”

—King, “An Experiment in Love,” A Testament of Hope: The Essential Writings and Speeches, by Martin Luther King (1958)

Now is the time for the collective of humanity to update our understanding of justice—to define it as the embodied expression of agape, to recognize it as our formation of the Beloved Community, and to sustain it through principled practice of nonviolence.

Justice is change. It is “the only lasting truth” that dismantles the lies upholding oppression, and it guides our planet’s inevitable trajectory toward collective liberation.

Acknowledgments

Dr. King’s achievements were not his alone. His wife, Mrs. Coretta Scott King, significantly influenced this work and organized demonstrations for economic justice, social equity, and global peace. Together, they contributed to the movements of their time among fellow revolutionaries, including Albert Luthuli, Amelia Boynton Robinson, Andrew Young, A. Philip Randolph, Bayard Rustin, Benjamin Mays, Bernard Lee, Clarence Jones, C. T. Vivian, Diane Nash, Dorothy Cotton, Ella Baker, Howard Thurman, James Baldwin, James Bevel, Jo Ann Robinson, Joseph Lowery, Fannie Lou Hamer, Fred Shuttlesworth, Gloria Richardson, John Lewis, Kwame Nkrumah, Kwame Ture, Mahalia Jackson, Malcolm X, Medgar Evers, Nnamdi Azikiwe, Prathia Hall, Ralph Abernathy, Rosa Parks, Thich Nhat Hanh, and many more. Their combined efforts brought forth significant systemic change, catalyzed momentum toward a just future, and paved tremendous ground for movements that continue today.

Additional Resources

Included below are resources for continued learning. Let us all engage with Dr. King’s teachings, study his six principles and six steps of nonviolence, and apply them in everyday life. Whatever roles we have in each of our paths, everyone’s participation matters in this “interrelated structure of reality.” Whether we are raising families, resolving conflicts, reconciling adversaries, or championing justice, King’s teachings help cultivate sustainable interpersonal/international relationships that advance our collective realization of the Beloved Community.

These graphics summarize Dr. King Fundamental Philosophy of Nonviolence and the Six Steps for Nonviolent Social Change. Their content is sourced from The King Center—which embraces the conviction that the Beloved Community can be achieved through an unshakable commitment to nonviolence. Established in 1968 by Mrs. Coretta Scott King, The Martin Luther King, Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change (“The King Center”) is a global destination, resource center, and community institution.

For more information and resources, please visit: thekingcenter.org/about-tkc/the-king-philosophy

“We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline. We must not allow our creative protest to degenerate into physical violence. Again and again, we must rise to the majestic heights of meeting physical force with soul force. The marvelous new militancy which has engulfed the Negro community must not lead us to a distrust of all white people, for many of our white brothers, as evidenced by their presence here today, have come to realize that their destiny is tied up with our destiny. And they have come to realize that their freedom is inextricably bound to our freedom. We cannot walk alone. And as we walk, we must make the pledge that we shall always march ahead. We cannot turn back.”

—King, “I Have a Dream,” March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom (August 28, 1963)