To Harold Courlander
Author: King, Martin Luther, Jr.
Date: October 30, 1961
Location: Atlanta, Ga.?
Genre: Letter
Topic: Martin Luther King, Jr. - Political and Social Views
Details
In August 1961 Courlander, a writer sympathetic to the movement, sent King a letter criticizing the Freedom Rides as too dependent on publicity and outside support to succeed in the South.1 In response, King defends the strategy of the rides, noting that “in the absence of justice in the established courts of the region, non-violent protesters are asking for a hearing in the court of world opinion.” Courlander replied on 5 November 1961.
Mr. Harold Courlander
5523 Brite Drive
Bethesda 14, Maryland
Dear Mr. Courlander:
Thank you for your thoughtful letter of August 30. Certainly, one reason that you have not received an answer is that your letter deserved more time than my schedule of the past months would allow for an answer. Fortunately, I think that time has answered some of your questions, or has at least enabled us to be a bit more sure of our position.2 Might I say that we are never without some reservations in this struggle, but usually it is impossible to anticipage all the objections and misunderstandings of a movement such as this.
Public relations is a very necessary part of any protest of civil disobedience. The main objective is to bring moral pressure to bear upon an unjust system or a particularly unjust law. The public at large must be aware of the inequities involved in such a system. In effect, in the absence of justice in the established courts of the region, non-violent protesters are asking for a hearing in the court of world opinion. Without the presence of the press, there might have been untold massacre in the South. The world selfom believes the horror stories of history until they are documented via mass media. Certainly, there would not have been sufficient pressure to warrant a ruling by the ICC had not this situation been so well-publicized.
Your other question in regard to outside interference must be answered with the question whether any United States citizen is an outsider in any part of this nation.3 Especially is this true of Northern Negroes, most of whom are from the South with relatives still living there. You cannot imagine the pain that it causes when you are afraid to bring your children to the homes of their grandparents for fear of the abuse they might suffer due to their lack of acquaintance with ‘respected, time-honored Southern tradition’.
Local persons could never run the risk of rebelling against the laws of their states alone. It is difficult for many to express an interest in voting in elections, a situation well documented by the reports of the Civil Rights Commission.4 There are thousands of known cases of reprisal which never come to the attention of the world, and in some parts of the South there are persons who might even question your assumption that South African apartheid is catagorically different from the situation of the un-lettered Negro in the rural counties of the South of these United States.5
May I refer you to a new book by James Baldwin: NOBODY KNOWS MY NAME. It may provide some additional insights into the racial situation from the viewpoint of the oppressed. While I could not endorse all of Mr. Baldwin’s opinions, they do make very stimulating reading.6 I also enclose a lecture on Civil Disobedience by Harris Wofford.7
I trust that your book is going well. We look forward to its publication. Every viewpoint on this situation is certainly to be encouraged.8
Sincerely yours,
Martin Luther King, Jr.
Km
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1. Courlander wrote: “When demonstrations carry with them the flavor of Yankee interference, outside organization, Madison Avenue publicity, and an intent to ‘stir things up,’ the chances for strategic loss are as great as the chance of tactical gain” (Courlander to King, 30 August 1961). Despite the criticism, Courlander enclosed a donation to support the Freedom Rides. Harold Courlander (1908–1996) earned a B.A. in English at the University of Michigan in 1931. He farmed for several years before traveling to the Caribbean, Africa, the Pacific, and also the Deep South to document folk traditions. Courlander’s travels were the basis for many of his novels, including The African (1967), which he claimed had been plagiarized by Alex Haley in Roots.
2. In the time between Courlander’s August letter and King’s reply, the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC) relented to pressure by Attorney General Robert Kennedy and passed regulations enforcing a ban on segregated interstate travel (James E. Clayton, “Attorney General Asks ICC to Back Pledge to Abolish Bus Segregation,” Washington Post, 16 August 1961; ICC, Resolution MC-C-3358, “Discrimination in operations of interstate motor carriers of passengers,” 22 September 1961).
3. In his 30 August letter, Courlander recommended limiting the campaign to local involvement as in the sit-ins, writing that “it is a sad but hard fact that the Southern communities have for a long time had an extreme neurotic sensitivity to ‘interference’ from the outside. As unreasonable—stupid, if you will—as this attitude is, it is there and must be reckoned with.”
4. The Civil Rights Commission stated in its first report that “our investigations have revealed further that many Negro American citizens find it difficult, and often impossible, to vote” (U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, Report of the United States Commission on Civil Rights 1959 [Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1959], p. 134).
5. In Courlander’s 30 August letter he questioned the term “freedom rider,” contending that “the term signifies that the struggle here is identical with that in South Africa, that the United States is a mean and contemptible colonialist nation.” He added: “There are Africans and Asians today who equate the Freedom Riders with the guerrillas fighting the Portuguese authorities in Angola. Although both are fighting a good cause, as they see it, there is more than a subtle difference in those causes.”
6. Nobody Knows My Name (New York: Dial Press), published in 1961, is a collection of essays on race written during Baldwin’s stay in Europe. Courlander criticized Baldwin’s book in his reply, writing: “There is in his approach and manner an element of thinly disguised extremism which can only be deplored” (Courlander to King, 5 November 1961).
7. In his speech “The Law and Civil Disobedience,” Wofford uses his legal background to provide a defense of civil disobedience as a necessary corrective for unjust laws (Wofford, “The Law and Civil Disobedience,” 20 November 1959).
8. King refers to Courlander’s book The Big Old World of Richard Creeks (Philadelphia: Chilton, 1962), a fictional work set in Alabama that explores the impact of white racism on African Americans. Courlander enclosed a copy of the manuscript in his 5 November response to King.
Source: MLKP-MBU, Martin Luther King, Jr., Papers, 1954–1968, Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center, Boston University, Boston, Mass.