October 14, 2007
Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Nobel Peace Prize II Posted by John Steele Gordon at 05:10 PM EST Joshua Zeitz helpfully clarifies that Martin Luther King, Jr., received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964 for his embrace of nonviolent means to achieve the goals of the civil rights movement, not for his opposition to the Vietnam War. Mr. Zeitz is, of course, entirely correct, and I never meant to imply otherwise. Let me add that I think Dr. King deserved the prize as much as anyone who has ever received it. The civil rights movement produced a profound social revolution in this country. A historically oppressed minority demanded justice and, after a long, intense, often bitter struggle, received it. I wonder if people under, say, 50, realize just how intense, protracted, and bitter the struggle was, how much it consumed the political attention of the country in the late forties, the fifties, and the early sixties. But considering its size and the depths of feelings on both sides, it was, I think, a remarkably bloodless struggle. It was by no means completely bloodless. Like all such movements, the civil rights crusade has its honored martyrs, many of them, including, of course, Dr. King himself. Compared to comparable struggles in other countries and at other times, however, the death toll was very low. I think that was due in part to the strength of American constitutional institutions and respect for the rule of law, but much was certainly due to Dr. King and the other leaders of the movement, who argued that moral force would win the day and sooner than physical force could. But for them, this country might have been drenched in blood in the middle decades of the twentieth century, and we are forever in their debt that it was not.
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