MLK, Environmentalist?

Today's Lion Lamb blog is a reflection on a book I read recently on the legacy of Martin Luther King Jr, who was assassinated fifty years ago. I had not realized that President Lyndon Johnston did not attend King's funeral, in no small part because the Civil Rights leader became a vocal opponent of the Viet Nam war. Young black men were over-represented in the US military while many white college kids figured out exemptions from service, including the current president. King saw the injustice of people of colour being sent to kill people of colour.

Since I wrote that blog a few days ago I came upon an article in the New York Times asking whether MLK would have become vocal about environmental issues if he had lived. Currently Rev. William Barber,  a black religious leader in the States is reviving King's Poor People's Campaign with a focus on the effects of environmental degradation on the poor, who often live near toxic sites or drink poisoned water. 

GREENSBORO, N.C. — The air in the Shiloh Baptist Church was thick with the heat of human bodies. The crowd, a mix of black and white faces, filled the pews in what was ostensibly the black side of town, straining the capacity of this good-sized church.

On the dais stood the Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II, draped in a black robe, a black vest and a cream stole emblazoned with the credo “Jesus was a poor man.” Al Gore, the former vice president, sat behind him.

Dr. Barber’s message to the community members in the church last week would have been largely recognizable to civil rights leaders of generations past, addressing issues of poverty and racism. But he and Mr. Gore were here in Greensboro to focus on another concern that many in the audience believed was just as insidious: pollution from North Carolina’s coal-powered electrical plants.

 “Jesus said love your neighbor,” Dr. Barber told the crowd. “I don’t care how many times you tell me you love me, if you put coal ash in my water you don’t love me. Because if there was nothing wrong with the coal ash, then put it in the wealthy communities.”

Fifty years after the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. started a movement known as the Poor People’s Campaign, Dr. Barber has been working to revive it. He is perhaps best known as the architect of the Forward Together Moral Movement protests in North Carolina that opposed voting-rights restrictions and helped defeat the Republican governor in 2016. Now he is making environmental justice, and climate change, a pillar of a modern-day war on poverty.

 

This is an intriguing and worthwhile discussion about King, and of course Rev. Barber's campaign is both prophetic and necessary. In every era leaders look to the "signs of the times" and call those in power to account. MLK paid the ultimate price, but it is good to see that there is a legacy for what really is the most pressing issue of our time.