The preacher in him would have continued speaking out against injustice, war and maybe even pop culture. He would likely not have run for president. He probably would have endured more harassment from J. Edgar Hoover.
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(Photo: AP Images / Greg Campbell)People gather at the National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis, Tenn., Friday, April 4, 2008, the site of the Lorraine Hotel and where Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated forty years ago, for a tribute to Dr. King.
Four decades after the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. fell to an assassin's bullet, colleagues and biographers offer many answers to the question: What if he had lived?
For his children, however, the speculation is more personal. They know their lives would have turned out differently had they had their beloved father to guide and teach them.
Instead, history moves on, remaking the world in myriad ways. The nation has grappled with issues of race and inequity without the benefit of King's evolving wisdom. A generation has come of age celebrating him in a national holiday, like other figures of the frozen past.
But given the trajectory of his life — from his appearance on the national scene during the Montgomery, Ala., bus boycott of 1955 to his death on a second-floor balcony of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tenn., on April 4, 1968 — some of those closest to him have a good idea what King might be doing now, and where we might be as a country.
In the months before his death, King was speaking out against the growing U.S. involvement in Vietnam and was working with other civil rights leaders on a Poor People's Campaign, with a march on Washington scheduled for that May. He was in Memphis that spring day to support striking sanitation workers.
Were King alive today, he would most certainly be speaking out against the Iraq War, says King biographer David J. Garrow. However, citing the famous "Drum Major Instinct" sermon King delivered from the pulpit of Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta just two months before his death, Garrow says people might be surprised to hear echoes of presidential candidate Barack Obama's controversial former pastor.
"God didn't call America to engage in a senseless, unjust war," King said of the fighting in Vietnam. "And we are criminals in that war. We've committed more war crimes almost than any nation in the world, and I'm going to continue to say it."
While King didn't go as far as the Rev. Jeremiah Wright in suggesting that God "damn America," he predicted that the almighty might punish this country for "our pride and our arrogance."
"And if you don't stop your reckless course," he imagined the deity admonishing, "I'll rise up and break the backbone of your power."
Garrow and others feel comfortable saying that King would not have sought elective office.
In 1967, King was being courted by the "New Left" to make a third-party run for president on an anti-war ticket with the renowned pediatrician, Dr. Benjamin Spock. FBI wiretaps reveal that King gave serious thought to running, but ultimately decided that his role lay outside the political arena.
The Rev. Joseph Lowery, who co-founded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference with King and marched alongside him, doesn't think time would have changed his friend's mind.
"I think Martin was a preacher, and I doubt very much if he would have wanted to subject himself to the need to compromise and play certain games that are requisite to political candidacy," says Lowery. "I think he would have preferred to do what he did best, and that was point out to ALL candidates and ALL officials ... `Thus sayeth the Lord.'"
Had he chosen that path, his enemies — chief among them FBI Director Hoover — would have laid bare potentially embarrassing details of King's personal life. Continue >>
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King like all the men of God spoke as they were moved by the Holy Spirit. God tells us to judge a man by the content of his character not by the color of his skin or the clothes on his back. When we fail to listen to God's word, we are lost and confused wondering what to do next. King like all men are destined to die. But God's Word will live forever. Thus let us not ask, "What if he had lived?", but let us ask what is God saying and wanting us to do.
In like manner, we could ask the same question of Christ. What if he had lived?
But we know that it was God's will that Christ should be crucified.
The message of the Kingdom was meant to be carried on by others who believe and are prepared to give all for the sake of that message.