St. Louis CofCC Blog

We’re quickly approaching the 40th Anniversary of the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Augusta Chronicle recalls that he was in Augusta in late March of 1968, right before he went to Memphis.  We find out this revelation from one of King’s local proteges:

Dr. King’s death also stopped him from carrying through on a plan that would have charted a new and highly controversial course for the civil rights movement, according to Mr. Watkins. In his book, he wrote that Dr. King shared his frustrations about the economic inequities blacks faced in America over dinner at a hotel after his speech. He then whispered to Mr. Watkins what he hoped to eventually do, something the former Augustan decided not to put in his book.

But after 40 years of secrecy, and initially saying he would probably take it to his grave, he revealed what it was: Dr. King was going to propose a separate state for blacks so they could eventually achieve economic parity that he believed wouldn’t happen on its own in America.

It’s surprising, but not shocking.  After making a career and a reputation out of lobbying white governments and people to embrace diversity, equality, integration and civil rights, his ultimate goal was black separatism.  Of course, it wouldn’t have been a genuinely separate state.  As we found out in the September 2006 issue of American Renaissance:

It is not just individuals who may not be black enough. The same standards apply in larger contexts. Most whites do not realize that many blacks have given up on integration. Blacks are incensed if they are kept out of white institutions or neighborhoods, but many view integration only as a tool for specific purposes and not as an end itself. If they can reach economic or political goals through exclusively black means, that is preferable.

Roy Brooks, who teaches at the University of San Diego Law School, makes this case in Integration or Separation? which was published by Harvard University Press. “There is nothing intrinsically good about racial mixing,” he writes. “Its appeal comes from its social utility.” He continues: “African Americans need to spend less time trying to live next to whites and employ more energy striving to live together.” One reason for this is that “[c]learly the homogeneous community rather than the larger white society is the environment in which the personal self-esteem of African Americans develops positively.” In his view, integration is an endlessly wearying struggle for blacks because they must deal with whites who can never be made to understand black reality: “[M]any African American students believe it is futile to attempt to educate white people, and they do not see the races ever living together in harmony.”

He proposes what he calls “limited separation.” Blacks must always have the right to live in the white man’s world if they want, but they should have their own schools, neighborhoods, workplaces, churches, and amusements, so that they can live completely apart from whites if that is their choice. Working-class blacks, he explains, will almost certainly choose separation.

Thanks to this revelation, we now know that Martin Luther King was an advocate of “limited separation.”  In other words, they want what white people have, and want to be able to integrate with white society, and make it illegal for whites to have anything on their own and for themselves alone, but they want to be able to have their own legal enclaves as an option.  Of course, white governments would have to pay for these “separate states,” (especially their health, welfare and education), and would be responsible for these states’ predictable failures, though the blacks that govern them would get to take credit for the fleeting successes.