Martin Luther King Jr. - Conquering Fear

On September 20, 1958 a 29-year-old Martin Luther King, Jr. was in Blumstein’s department store in Harlem and I wonder if he realized that 24 years earlier, at Blumstein’s, it was the site of ground zero for a civil rights struggle similar to his own. In 1934 it was the place where the 'Buy Where You Can Work' campaign was going on. 75% of Blumstein store sales were to Black people. Yet they couldn't work as clerks or cashiers there. Now thousands protested. Needless to say they hired Black people soon after that.

So here sat King at this very same store signing copies of his book, Stride Toward Freedom. The book in all its detail was King's intimate account of how he himself and 50,000 others fought for civil rights with non-violent resistance and in 1955 how they staged the surprisingly successful Montgomery bus boycott. I still can't contain my fascination with the irony here that he now sat in a store that was boycotted for the very same thing that he boycotted for. Stop short on that interesting fact because there's a bigger reason that King's book signing wouldn't go as planned.

It was organized to be a light-hearted event. It's a book signing. One where he could kind of just relax for a minute from all of the civil rights struggles and engage with new readers and greet his fans and admirers. It would take a dark turn. As King was greeting and signing books an unassuming 42 year old woman approached him. She was wearing a smart suit, cat glasses, a necklace and earrings, and she was carrying a large black handbag. And she asked, 'are you Martin Luther King?' When he replied yes. She said, "you've been annoying me for a long time." Then she plunged a letter opener deep into his chest. This woman was later identified as Izola Curry, originally from Georgia, she had moved to New York for work.

Not much is known about her but she was later found to be schizophrenic. And she had thought for a long time that King and the NAACP had her under constant surveillance. She thought that they were her enemies. The pictures of Curry in the New York Daily News shocked me. She was deeply disturbed in her facial expressions, but by her appearance, I never would've even thought that she could murder anybody. She just looked like this unassuming, nice, slightly over a middle aged Black woman who was on her way to church. Not someone who is on the way to jail for attempted murder of Martin Luther King, Jr.

Now I can't begin to imagine what it's like to be stabbed but I've read accounts where people say they felt nothing at all, mostly from shock and adrenaline. And then the accounts also range to things like they felt every single millimeter of the steel entering their body and this painful experience. Police arrived on the scene to find King sitting in a chair. He was stunned and he had the letter openers' ivory handle still protruding just below his collar. He was rushed to the hospital and surgeons opened his chest and after a dangerous operation, completed just inches from his heart, he survived. And King says about it, "when I was well enough to talk with Dr. Aubre Maynard, the Chief of the Surgeons who performed the delicate, dangerous operation, I learned the reason for the long delay that proceeded the surgery.

He told me that the razor tip of the instrument had been touching my aorta and that my whole chest had to be open to extract it," "'if you had sneezed during all those hours of waiting, Dr. Maynard said your aorta would have been punctured and you would have drowned in your own blood.'" Curry would spend the rest of her life in mental institutions for the attempted murder of King. Dying only in 2015 and she's largely lost to history. King, in typical King fashion that we may take for granted now, he quickly let the offense go. He says to the surprise of many that he forgave Curry.

Now it's difficult for most of us to imagine this kind of letting go. And I think our natural reaction to getting stabbed would be resentment, right? Payback. Like that James Brown song Payback. That song is popular for a reason. That's how most of us think. But you have to imagine the moral fortitude, the courage, all of these things that will be needed to let go of these very powerful, emotional feelings that you would have towards someone if they stabbed you. And then to make that determination that forgiveness is the appropriate attitude to take. King did this. His philosophy of love allowed him to bypass the bitterness, the anger, the hate, the resentment that would have tormented many of us.

King regularly stood up to death with the firmest footing and with this profound sense of forgiveness. So I think that he is someone who was highly qualified to counsel others on overcoming fear. That is going to be the topic of today's program. Dr. King on overcoming fear. Welcome to The Humanity Archive where we explore the past, inform our present, looking at humanity's best and sometimes even our worst examples to see how we can situate ourselves in the now and move forward to a better and brighter future.

We don't just look at history as a static rock but an ever flowing presence in our daily lives and a way for us to move forward. I'm Jermaine Fowler and I feel so magnificent to be sitting here and talking to you right now on our topic for today, this idea of acknowledging and facing fear. I got the idea for this show when I was reading Martin Luther King, Jr.'s book, A Gift of Love. And who to put it better then the person who wrote the forward to the book, a Reverend by the name of Dr.

Raphael G. Warnock. And he says, "As Dr. King prepared for the Birmingham campaign in early 1963, he drafted the final sermons for Strength to Love, a volume of his best known homilies. King had begun working on the sermons during a fortnight in jail in 1962, having been arrested for holding a prayer vigil outside of Albany City Hall. King and Ralph Abernathy shared a jail cell for 15 days. That was, according to King, "dirty, filthy, and ill equipped, and the worst I'd ever seen." "While behind bars he spent uninterrupted time preparing the drafts for classic sermons, such as loving your enemies, love and action, and shattered dreams, and continued to work on the volume after his release."

Arrested for holding a prayer vigil. If that doesn't jump out to you, I don't know what will. But in his book King talks about it a lot. But the section on antidotes for fear jumped out at me because I've often wondered why 40 million Americans suffer from some anxiety disorder. Like why are we afraid? OCD (obsessive compulsive disorder), PTSD (post traumatic stress disorder), phobias, stress, and so on and so forth. I've heard a theory that says as we shift more and more to a status seeking, money motivated, material driven society consumer culture, all of these things cause our anxiety to increase.

But when we focus on community, family, a meaningful philosophy our anxiety decreases. So there's a correlation there. So as I was reading this, I saw where King guides readers on four steps to overcoming fear. I think that's something that will be helpful to many in the audience, helpful to me, something that I try to incorporate into my daily philosophy. Again, here we try not to only look at history like it's a movie, but to see how we can use history, philosophy, thoughts, and help them to inform our actions in the present. And I know King is somebody who was greatly admired, but I don't hear many people talk about his thoughts much, his philosophy much or his worldview much.

And that's kind of what we're going to do here. We're going to look a little bit more into the man and his philosophy for life. So again, he guides readers on the first step to overcoming fear. And he says, "first we must unflinchingly face our fears and honestly ask ourselves, why are we afraid? This confrontation will, to some measure, grant us power. We shall never be cured of fear by escapism or repression. For the more we attempt to ignore and repress our fears the more we multiply our inner conflicts. By looking squarely and honestly at our fears, we learn that many of them reside in some childhood need or apprehension by bringing our fears to the forefront of consciousness we may find them to be more imaginary than real.

Some of them will turn out to be snakes under the carpet." That was a man under relentless attack by segregationists, white supremacists and at times those of his own race. Dr. Martin Luther King embodied courage under fire as someone who had acknowledged real fears. At one point in time he was savagely punched and kicked by a white man when he was angry about him registering as the first Black guest of a historic Alabama hotel. Did he respond with the strength of love? Another instance, he was marching in Chicago. He was swarmed by about 700 white protesters, hurling bricks, and bottles and rocks at him. And he was struck in the head. He fell nearly unconscious.

There is a picture of it. You can find online right now. Then he regained his composure and he courageously continued to lead the protest with a resolute nerve. Imagine marching through a sea of fury and hate. People threatening real anti-black violence at even the mere thought of economic empowerment for Black people. This is what he had went there to contribute to, the very thought of desegregation. King said, "I have never seen, even in Mississippi and Alabama, a mob as hateful as I've seen here in Chicago." A lot of people like to think of the North as a more liberal part of the country, not so much so in King's eyes.

He took off his tie and he promised to keep demonstrating. Then he said, "yes, it is definitely a closed society. We're going to make it an open society." Talking of the separation that he saw between the races in Chicago. Talking of the lack of opportunity that he saw for Black people in Chicago. Talking of the lack of upward mobility of the Black people that he saw in Chicago. He said he is going to make it open for them. This was his dream and vision there. And there's many of these instances of King facing fear in which he would have had to acknowledge his fear. Years earlier his house was bombed in 1956 and it detonated on the porch of his home in Montgomery, Alabama, and his wife Coretta was inside.

No one was hurt but imagine the type of fear after something like this that could be so debilitating. At the time he was 10 weeks into leading a bus boycott, one that his enemies vowed to crush. Yet not even this downed his spirit. Now try to think about what he was up against. To look death in the face like this. To go up to organizations like one called The Anti Negro White Citizens Council. Imagine The Anti Negro White Citizens Council. This was a group of the mayor and the police chief and all of these government officials were a part of this group openly. Imagine the courage to go up against this type of enemy.

And that gets into his second point that courage is always necessary whenever you want to face fear. Like all of us, I'm sure King, he had to have an inward struggle with fear. Nobody is fearless unless you're a sociopath or a psychopath or someone with no feeling. But even if he had this fear inside, outwardly he seemed steadfast. He seemed unmoved. He seemed ready to face an overwhelming hate in America. And in this spirit he considers as a second way that we can deal with this fear and it is through courage. He says, "we can master fear through one of the supreme virtues known to man, courage.

Courage is the power of the mind to overcome fear. Unlike anxiety, fear has a definite object which may be faced, analyzed, attacked and if need be endured. Courage, the determination to not be overwhelmed by an object, however frightful, enables us to stand up to any fear. Many of our fears are not mere snakes under the carpet. Trouble is a reality in the strange medley of life. Dangers lurk within the circumference of every action. Accidents do occur. Bad health is an ever-threatening possibility. And death is a stark, grim and inevitable fact of human experience. Courage is a resolution to go forward in spite of obstacles and frightening situations.

Cowardice is a submissive surrender to circumstance. Courageous men never lose the zest for living, even though their life is zestless. Cowardly men overwhelmed by the uncertainties of life, lose the will to live. We must constantly build dykes of courage to hold back the flood of fear." Think of those three solid examples that I just gave you of King facing his fears and living the advice that he is giving us himself. I imagine many of you face your own set of fears daily.

Some more challenging than others. And I challenge you to remember this next time you face your next set of challenges and fears. To build up the dyke of courage against a flood of fears as King says. Now the next point is that love is stronger. And he acknowledges that fear has many manifestations, right? Inward ones such as jealousy, hate, self-loathing, and depression, as well as outward ones such as segregation, human persecution, and war. With ongoing fear of death threats to his family, he admitted that he was tempted to carry a firearm.

Think about Martin Luther King pistol packing, toting a gun. Could anybody have blamed him if he did do this? I don't think so, but he knew it was against his nonviolent philosophy. He firmly asserted that the only counter to these fears was love even when much of America hated him. I don't know if you've heard, but King wasn't as popular in his time as he is now, but he always maintained that even his detractors were his brothers and his sisters. He never let the extreme hate separate him from his belief that peaceful assertiveness was the only means to social change. Love at the foundation of his every action. Love causing him to criticize but not demonize.

Love causing him to shed tears but not let those tears turn into a rage filled anger. Love at the basis of his conquering of fear. He says, "fear is mastered through love. Hate is rooted in fear. And the only cure for fear and hate is love. Is not fear one of the major causes of war? We say that war is a consequence of hate, but close scrutiny reveals this sequence. First fear, then hate, then war and finally deeper hatred. We are afraid of the superiority of other people, of failure, and of scorn, and disapproval of those opinions.

So we most value envy, jealousy, a lack of self-confidence, a feeling of insecurity and a haunting sense of inferiority are all rooted in fear. Is there a cure for these annoying theories that pervert our personal lives? Yes. A deep and abiding commitment to the way of love. Perfect love casts out fear, hatred and bitterness can never cure the disease of fear, only love can do that." I once heard someone say that, imagine if the people of the Civil Rights Movement let their anger take hold. Let their outrage take hold. Let their bitterness take hold.

Let their resentment take hold. Picked up firearms. Let there resentment continue to be fueled. If this were to happen we may have a Black Al Qaeda in America. Terrorist cells everywhere in a continuous war against the American government. This didn't happen. It's due in part to this resounding principle of love that flowed throughout the movement. This ability to take that resentment and make a different decision about it. Let that resentment bathe in the bath of love and then come forward as critical examination of America in a steadfast commitment to dialog, to protests, to boycott, to these other means that would affect change.

Imagine if those of the Civil Rights Movement would have done otherwise. America would not be the same as it is today. Now Martin Luther King, as we know, was a religious leader and he was someone with robust faith. He had a religious zeal and unflinching commitment to revolutionary Christianity. These are parts of King that are entrenched in his legacy and in his personality and in his movement. As a Baptist minister, he fought racism through a mixture of scripture and a hyper-social consciousness. And it's no wonder that his final antidote for fear is faith.

And secular or non-secular, religious or non-religious, I think this idea can be applied to anyone. He isn't really talking about a blind uncritical faith. I don't think he is talking about that. He's talking about an acknowledgement of letting whatever your source of good, whether it be spiritual or philosophical, or even the love of your family be the wind at your back. With this idea that humans need faith that comes through spirituality he writes, "fear is mastered through faith. A common source of fear is an awareness of deficient resources in the consequent inadequacy for life. Abnormal fears and phobias that are expressed in neurotic anxiety may be cured by psychiatry, but the fear of death, non being and nothingness expressed in existential anxiety may be cured only by a positive religious faith.

A positive religious faith does not offer an illusion that we shall be exempt from pain and suffering, nor does it imbue us with the idea that life has a drama of a unalloyed comfort and untroubled ease. Rather it instills us with the inner equilibrium needed to face strains, burdens, and fears that inevitably come, and assures us that the universe is trustworthy and a God is concerned. Religion endows us with the conviction that we are not alone in this vast uncertain universe beneath and above the shifting sands of time. The uncertainties that darken our days and the vicissitudes that cloud our nights as a wise and loving God. That above the manyness of times stands the one eternal God with wisdom to guide us, strength to protect us, and love to keep us."

Though it almost seems blasphemous even mentioning the word of God in any form in today's times in this technological, scientific era that we live in, most people favor the intellectual over the spiritual these days. I think this has been the reality throughout history. This is ebbing and flowing between the rational versus the spiritual, but at any rate King, he believed in God. And he thought that this religious faith was such an important part of facing fear that he read his Bible daily, preach sermons, committed his life to Christianity as a way of mitigating his fears.

And it brings me to the question, who do you believe in? Do you believe in yourself? Do you believe in God? Do you believe in Buddha? Do you believe in Mohammed? Whoever you believe in or even if it's just in a common good or your family, King is saying that this faith can help you overcome fear. Now, certainly we will never fully eradicate our fear, nor should we. It is a nature given response. It heightens our awareness. It helps us stay alive in dangerous situations. But the question then becomes is our fear paralyzing us or is it motivating us? I think that those deemed the greatest people in human history faced fear head-on.

They kept it at bay. And in Martin Luther King's case, they conquered it. And his book, A Gift of Love is a magnificent read in its entirety but the section on facing fear is a call to each and every one of us to live a life of courage and a life of fulfillment that we can only have if we face our fears.