In Black America; South Africa with Prof. Lewis V. Baldwin; Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Bye! From the Longhorn Radio Network, the University of Texas at Austin, this is in Black America. That always happens in the context of social struggle. They are always those who will turn a deaf ear to a struggle and won't see the dynamics of a struggle, and I think that's the best way to explain it.

We can only respond to that by pointing to that kind of pattern of neglect, and also by recognizing the fact that whenever a social struggle occurs in a particular context, it is not simply the struggle of those people, seeing our ways told us that the human struggle is interconnected, human struggles are interconnected, that injustice anywhere as a threat to justice everywhere. So I think that that's one of the major problems of humanity is that we've moved away from a sense of that, if we ever had it. Lewis V. Baldwin, Professor of religious studies, Vanderbilt University, and author of a new book entitled, Towards the Beloved Community, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and South African apartheid, published by University Press of America. Barry Lübel has been written regarding Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. significance in relations to international issues and concerns. Most of the writings on King has either explicitly or implicitly limited him to the American

context, presenting him as a Southern Black leader, a civil rights activist, an American gang day, or a national symbol. Professor Baldwin's book does not file the patterns of previous studies of Dr. King. It focuses on Dr. King's beloved community ideals and their implications for the struggle against South African apartheid. I'm John L. Hanson Jr. and welcome to another edition of In Black America. This week, Towards the Beloved Community, Martin Luther King Jr. and South African apartheid with author Professor Lewis V. Baldwin in Black America. Some efforts had to be made to relevantize King in terms of the South African situation, to say not only what he meant to that situation in the 1950s and 60s and 70s, but also what he has meant to that situation in the 1980s, 1990s, and beyond. So in my attempt to speak of the relevance of his ideas for South Africa, even today and for tomorrow, it was necessary to put him in context.

To put many of his speeches in context. To also talk about how many of the ideas he held in the 50s and 60s are still being advanced today by people like Bishop Desmond Tutu, Alan Bosaick, and leaders like Jesse Jackson. So that's why I took that approach. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s contribution to the uplift of the porn oppressed in South Africa in the 1950s and 60s, have found an important angle from which his global significance can be assessed. Given the time, energy and resources Dr. King devoted through the struggle of people of color against South African apartheid, it is strange that scholars have left this angle largely unexplored. Professor Baldwin believed Dr. King's concept of community provides a blueprint for South African seeking to dismantle apartheid and establish non-racial democratic rule. According to Dr. Baldwin, King believed that the civil rights movement in this country and the anti-apartheid struggle in South Africa were directed at the same enemy, racism.

Recently I spoke with associate professor Lewis V. Baldwin. Professor Baldwin has written three books and numerous articles on Dr. King. My father's a minister and I grew up in the South, the rural South, where religion was at the very center of culture. The black church was all we had, of course, it was the institution that we owned. The institution in which we felt a great sense of freedom and independence. So growing up in a culture where religion was so central, I naturally gravitated toward that in my studies. So for the last 12 or 13 years since receiving the doctorate degree, I've been teaching courses in the area of black church studies and American religion in general. And studying theology is their vast difference from what is taught in an academic setting versus what is taught to a lay person.

Yes, very much so we know that in local churches one is exposed to Sunday school teachings about Christ, about the Bible, etc. But in the college and university settings, we often engage in a critical study of religion. And that's very, very important. It means, of course, that you look at religion and philosophy very critically and that you analyze them on the basis of many liberal interpretations as revealed in various studies and various books, various articles. So the study of religion in the seminary and the college and university settings is always a more critical study rather than an effort to simply imbibe three night deals about how one should live, how one should think, etc.

And your opinion does the black church still occupy the point of importance within the African-American community? I would say so. The black church is still the only institution that African-Americans own on a wide scale in this country. It's still the one place that African-Americans can go to even the poorest among us and feel a sense of somebody'sness. So I think that the black church is still central, we do have the development of other institutions in our community, which has, to some extent, taken on responsibilities previously assumed by the church. But there's no question that the church is still important, it's still central to the culture, and it's still central to the lives of so many people in our community. And your opinion is the church adjusting, it's thinking, and it's openness to some of the eels that are currently plaguing our community and gang violence, single-parent households,

AIDS. I think the church at that point has failed to a great extent, not to say that all churches are unaware of these problems, that all churches are not involved in dealing with these problems, but I will say that the church has a collectivity when you're speaking generally that many of our people have not come to a sense of what's going on in our communities. There are still the sense among many church people that the church should be concerned about salvation and that it should not get involved in too much of the worldly. And conception is still pervasive among church people, and there's also the problem of uneducated leadership in so many churches, where you have leaders who are not really open to what's going on in society, and who feel no responsibility for addressing black on black violence, teenage pregnancy, drugs, AIDS, these problems, a lot of people are caught up with their own

institutional maintenance, their own institutional structures, this is true of a lot of ministers and a lot of laypersons, and they have not gotten involved to the extent that they should in dealing with the multitude of problems that confront us as a community. Are you finding young people as concerned or committed to theology in the coming years? Well, there's been a problem, a recent study about Cyril Glinken and Lars Mamiya indicates that among the younger generations there's been a lessening of concern about theology about church, and that may be more of an indictment against the church than against them. I find that a lot of young people that I teach are becoming increasingly interested in Muslim thought, and the Muslim religion, there are still those who are interested in the church, yes, in my line of work, in my teaching, here I find so many students who are still

interested in theology, who are still interested in religion, but they tend also to be critical of the Christian church and of Christian theology, but that interest is still there. Okay, you've written three books that I know about, and numerous articles on the Lake Doctor Martin Luther King Jr. what particularly other than you are attending the same theological school, attracted your particular interest to Dr. King and his writings. Well, I participated in some of the demonstrations as a student that I was about, and high school and also at Talladega College, so I had a part also in the Civil Rights Movement I'm proud to say not a major part, but I was in some of the demonstrations. And I think exposure to what was happening in the 60s really inspired me to take a serious look in my scholarship and in my teaching at the role of the church, at the life of Martin

Luther King Jr. and others in the church, and what that means for us today as we continue to struggle for a peaceful, just, and more inclusive society and world. So I'd have to say that my background in the South and my involvement in the Civil Rights Movement, certainly had an impact over and aside from my respect and admiration for Dr. King. When did you become aware or familiar with Dr. King's writing and speeches on South Africa? Well, in the course of my research for my first two books on King, if you recall, my first book on Dr. King dealt with his roots in the black church, his roots in the black family and in the black south, and the second book of course dealt with his legacy for black Americans and for the world around the concepts of community and nonviolence and so forth. In the course of my research for those two books, I came across a lot of Dr. King's letters

and speeches and papers on South Africa. And I thought then that it would be great to put together an edited volume which brings all of his personal papers together with an introduction and a conclusion which looks at the relevance and implications of his thought for what's going on in South Africa today. So this is what I have done over the last 15 years in the course of my research for the first two books, I found a lot of papers for this third book and of course I recently completed it. Was it a monumental task in getting all these various speeches together? I had to go to a number of different places, the King Center in Atlanta, the Mughaw Memorial Library at Boston University which houses King's papers, the Armistead Research Center at Tulane University in New Orleans, so I had to go to a number of locations and a number of different libraries to find papers and spend a lot of time of course reading through

them and compiling them and also making footnotes which sort of establishes the context for the various materials that are discovered. Why do you feel that at this point in time we stopped limiting King to the US context and started viewing him as an international leader? Well I think that has been so much of the problem, not only with scholarship on King but with the way people view him generally in the society. We tend to limit him to the American context as you said, seeing him as an American leader, a Southern Black preacher, a Southern leader. And probably within a two decades span? Yes, yes but there's no question that Dr. King before his death had become a world leader. He was addressing apartheid in South Africa, he was addressing the Vietnam War, he was

speaking to the global problems of racism, not simply racism in America but racism in throughout the world, economic injustice, poverty, war. So he was a world leader and today he is the most respected American around the world, around the world. His birthday celebrated in over a hundred countries and I've had people from Eastern Europe and from various parts of the world, Africa, India to tell me that Dr. King's ideas are studied more than any other American in their countries. So I think we must begin to see him as a kind of international symbol. We must see that devote the national holiday to that, I mean the national holiday and reinforces the idea that King was simply a national leader. But I think we need to begin to see that his importance and his symbolism of course extend beyond that. Did you attest to the fact that of course mainstream media, someone limited his coverage of Dr.

King to the realms of the civil rights movement and being a Southern Baptist preacher? That's right, the media has had a lot to do with the way we view him, it happened on his lifetime. But also the black press in this country, were they also limited in their vision and perception of Dr. King? I certainly think so, yes, I have been through a lot of newspapers, a lot of newspapers, the New York Amsterdam News King wrote articles for that newspaper known his lifetime, the Pittsburgh Courier, other black news papers in his day and after his death, had I think the same problem that predominantly white news papers had and that was the tendency not to seek King in an international context. What group of individuals influenced King to look at the struggles that were happening

here in America and equate that to a global community, the beloved community in which he spoke of, the individuals that somewhat cultivated his thinking? Well, I would say first of all that you have to understand black culture and I know you do, before we can understand King's thinking on beloved community and how it applies to the global context. King grew up in the black south and the black family and the black church, where he was always told that he was connected through his humanity to all other humans, that he learned that in the black church, that creative activity of God, all persons, irrespective of a race, creed, nationality, have dignity and way. So I think that was the basis for that concept though he did attend a Mohouse College and what exposed to the ideas of Benjamin Mays and others who also had a global focus in

their ministries. He went to close the theological seminary where he was exposed to the ideas of Walter Rosh and Bush and then Ryan Hooniba and other important thinkers in the theological world. And then these kinds of intellectual sources and also the experiential sources back home sort of gave him this vision of a beloved community which extended beyond the south, beyond the nation to embrace the entire world. How did you come to the conclusion that King believed that the civil rights movement in this country, in the south and the anti-apartheid movement struggle in South Africa, were directed at the same enemy and that enemy was racism? Well King says that over and over himself in his own papers and in his own speeches on South Africa. He never really, he never made a speech on South Africa and rarely did interviews on South Africa where he didn't make a connection between the African American struggle and the struggle

against apartheid on the part of Black South Africans. He always saw them as essentially one in the same struggle and that is the point of my book is that if you're going to understand King's attack on racism you can't limit him to the American context. You must understand that when he spoke of racism as an evil, as one of the three great evil along with economic injustice and war, he had in mind not only what was going on in America but also what was going on in South Africa, what was going on with racism against West Indians and England, he had the global view in focus. Although King was unable to actually visit South Africa due to apartheid restrictions, who were the individuals he had direct communication with in formulating ideas and strategies. Okay, now he communicated a great deal with Chief Albert LaTouli, who was the head of the African National Congress in South Africa in the 50s.

They exchanged letters, Dr. King actually said that many of the letters that he wrote to LaTouli intercepted by the South African authorities because they never reached him. The same I'm sure occurred in the case of letters that were sent to King by LaTouli. So he corresponded with LaTouli, Albert LaTouli. There was some exchange between King and the late Oliver Tombow, who was one of the most recent presidents of the agency. King corresponded also with the South African Dennis Brutus concerning South African prisoners because Brutus of course was involved in raising funds for the families of South African prisoners. Is he now a professor at the University of Pittsburgh? Oh, yes. Okay. I think he's only not the University of Colorado, but in contact about that. King communicated with him. There was some communication with Adelaide Tombow, the wife of Oliver Tombow. King also worked with Albert LaTouli in promoting the appeal for action against apartheid in 1962.

The King and LaTouli were the initial sponsors of that document. So there was some communication with South Africans, in spite of the fact that restrictions were placed on him and he was not able to enter South Africa, to receive a visa to visit South Africa. The book is divided up into certain parts and it includes certain units in which there are speeches, correspondence, and etc. But you also made the attempt to put those particular parts in a constructive context and how they should actually be understood. Why did you feel that was important to this particular work and the total intellectual thought process? Okay. That's a very good question. I, in preparing this book, always remembered that some effort had to be made to relevantize King in terms of the South African situation, to say not only what he meant to that situation

in the 1950s and 60s and 70s, but also what he has meant to that situation in the 1980s, 1990s, and beyond, so in my attempt to speak of the relevance of his ideas for South Africa even today and for tomorrow, it was necessary to put him in context, to put many of his speeches in context, to also talk about how many of the ideas he held in the 50s and 60s are still being advanced today by people like Bishop Desmond Tutu, Alan Bosaic, and leaders like Jessica. So that's why I took that approach. In taking that approach, I know it was difficult for you to decide what to include and what not to include. Is there a possibility of a volume 2 because I'm quite sure everything couldn't fit into this particular volume?

That's right. And this volume is 425 pages long. Correct. But there are still a few scattered documents that I have not located. I do think that a small book could be written beyond what has already been done in my volume. South Africa is now going through a lot of changes. Elections are scheduled for April 1994. Do you think there's a correlation between King's influence and what's happening in South Africa today? Yes. I do think so. I think there's not only a connection with King, but a connection to the African American civil rights movement in this country because South Africans, even today, are looking back on the black movement in this country for inspiration and for ideals. They are following many of the nonviolent tactics, say, in aspects of society that we followed in the 60s in this country, though you do have those who are embracing more tactics of counterviolence.

But I do think, yes, that not only is King relevant, but also the movement in this country. In the 60s, that's why Mandela and Walter Sussouli and other South African leaders have made recent visits to Atlanta and have stated at the King's Center and also to the citizens of Atlanta and Mo House College that there's definitely a connection here. That King is always an inspiration, that the black movement in this country, not only the civil rights movement, but the movement dating back to Harriet Tubman and others who were fighting against slavery, that all of this inspires what is going on in South Africa today. Now I know this next question is a real touchy question because it directs relation to theology, the clergy were involved in these countries, and of course they had to have known what was going on, but for some reason they've turned a deaf ear or blind eye to the

situations around them and how as we as Americans or human beings, rationalize that train a thought. But you know that always happens in the context of social struggle. There are always those who will turn a deaf ear to a struggle, won't see the dynamics of a struggle, and I think that's the best way to explain it. We can only respond to that by pointing to that kind of pattern of neglect and also by recognizing the fact that whenever a social struggle occurs in a particular context, it is not simply the struggle of those people. King always told us that the human struggle is interconnected, human struggles are interconnected, that injustice anywhere as a threat to justice everywhere. So I think that that's one of the major problems of humanity is that we've moved away from a sense

of that if we ever had it. King Vision of a beloved community was relevant in South Africa and is relevant today. Is that relevancy can it be achieved through a nonviolent means in the future? Yes, I have dealt with the relevance of its thought on two levels. First of all, his concept of the beloved community, that is the idea that all humans are created by God and that we must learn to live together as brothers and sisters. I think that concept is always relevant because the world is always struggling for understanding, for a sense of brotherhood, sisterhood, so there's no question that King's concept of community is relevant. Now when it gets to the question of how do we achieve that community? I think there's some relevance also in his nonviolent approach. I don't want to say that nonviolence is absolutely the only approach because in South Africa, I think a violent and nonviolent

means will coexist in bringing about change. But there is certainly some merit in his philosophy of nonviolent violence for South Africans. And as evidenced by the fact that in South Africa today you have strikes, you have nonviolent activity, you have resistance in nonviolent form. So I think that speaks very clearly to the relevance of not only King but Gandhi and so many others who argue that nonviolence is always a moral approach that creates community. African Americans in this country are somewhat preoccupied with the existence in this country. In your opinion, why is it important that we understand and relate and appreciate the struggles in which our brothers and sisters are going through in South Africa? Yes, it's very important. I do think that African Americans appreciate the struggle for in South Africa for an example and that they identify with the struggle. It's just that

in our own country we are so caught up in survival issues, poverty and many cases, economic injustice, the problem of racism, still very clear, very blatant form, still exists. So often our preoccupation with our own problems makes it seem that like we're not interested in what goes on with our brothers and sisters in South Africa and other parts of Africa. But I don't think that's true. I think African Americans always have that sense about identification with South Africans who are fighting against racism. Though we don't always have the resources and the time we want to devote to that particular issue because of our own problems and our own concerns in this country. Professor Lewis V. Baldwin, author of the book entitled, Towards the Beloved Community, Martin Luther King, Jr. and South African apartheid, published by University Press of America. If you have a question or comment or suggestions asked in future in Black America programs,

write us. Views and opinions expressed on this program are not necessarily those of this station or the University of Texas at Austin. Until we have the opportunity again for a production assistant, Raker Hammond and IBA's technical producer David Alvarez. I'm John El Hansen, Jr. Please join us again next week. Cassette copies of this program are available and may be purchased by writing in Black America cassettes, Longhorn Radio Network, Communication Building B, UT Austin, Austin, Texas 78712. That's in Black America cassettes, Longhorn Radio Network, Communication Building B, UT Austin, Austin, Texas 78712. From the Center for Telecommunication Services, the University of Texas at Austin, this is the Longhorn Radio Network. I'm John El Hansen, Jr. Join me this week on in Black America.

Not only a connection with King, but a connection to the African-American civil rights movement in this country because South African-Z1 today are looking back on the black movement in this country for inspiration. Towards the beloved community, Martin Luther King, Jr. and South African apartheid this week on in Black America.