The Nobel Speech of MLK
By Jason Sibert
Our country will celebrate Martin Luther King’s birthday on Monday.
The media will be filled with stories on all that MLK did to end segregation in our country. These stories will emphasize the courage MLK displayed in his fight to end the white supremacist order in America, how he organized marches to promote his cause, and all of the personal trials – which included prison – he endured to promote civil rights for non-white Americans. However, and no less important, MLK also engaged our country and the world in the fight for peace.
MLK won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964. In his speech accepting the Nobel, he talked about the accomplishments of man in the material realm. MLK addressed our impressive bridges and infrastructure, our machines that think, and telescopes that peer into outer space. Although man accomplished much in the material realm he was still missing something important. MLK thought the more materially rich we became, the more spiritually poor we grew because affluence allowed us to lose touch with the spiritual realm – expressed in art, religion, and morals.
MLK said the problems of poverty, racial injustice and war were connected. He saw nonviolence as represented in the spiritual realm of man. MLK also said violence destroys our sense of community and that those who use nonviolence aim at a vision of community where peace is the ultimate end.
The civil rights leader stated in the Nobel speech that weapons of war had become so destructive that war as a means of solving problems had become obsolete. MLK said that if one believes that life is worth living then one must find an alternative to war. He wanted for us to concentrate on a positive affirmation of peace. In his Nobel speech, he talked of the need to move away from the nuclear arms race (the Cold War then) and to harness our creative energies toward productive ends.
If MLK were around today, he would not be proud of the narrow-minded nationalism seeping into the political systems of Western democracies. These movements keep nation-states with various types of governments from working together to solve the problem of nuclear proliferation. They also don’t allow citizens of nation-states to strike arms control agreements to reduce the number of conventional weapons in the world. Can we find the spirit of MLK in 2020?
Jason Sibert is the Executive Director of the Peace Economy Project
