The Academic Exchange - Gandhi/MLK links

The Academic Exchange

In 1947, black America joined in the celebrations of India's hard-earned Independence with a delegation led by Mordecai Johnson (of Howard) and Benjamin Mays (of Morehouse).

A generation of civil rights movement leaders--Martin Luther King Jr., Jesse Jackson, Whitney Young, Vincent Harding, and James Farmer--came under the spell of the powerful educator-cum-preacher in Thurman (whose personal library on Gandhiana was far ahead of any college library collection in the United States). Other recognizable names around metro-Atlanta who came under Gandhian influence were Ralph McGill (who had a photo of Kasturbai on his office wall), Richard Gregg, Devere Allen, Kirby Page, A. Philip Randolph, Roy Wilkins, and Bayard Rustin. African Americans were the first observers outside of India also to appreciate Kasturbai Gandhi's exemplary role as a woman in the struggle for justice. King had a virtual conversion to the Gandhian way after hearing the sermons of Johnson, who too had visited Gandhi's ashram-headquarters. King observed a fledgling group of student protesters (SNCC) versed in Gandhian tactics. Thus drawn to nonviolence, in 1959 he and Coretta Scott King traveled extensively in India, re-living Gandhi's memory.

King's absolute conviction in the efficacy of the Indian philosophy of nonviolence to achieve racial justice was set out in his 1958 book, Stride Towards Freedom. With young, nonviolent activists in tow, King eventually mobilized a mass movement, systematically enacting satyagraha-style sit-ins, nonviolent human barricades, civil disobedience, marches, rallies, noncooperation strikes, and pickets, spiced with passionate speeches, while risking arrests or police beating.