Martin Luther King Jr.—MLK was a Fact, Not a Theory

We make a book recommendation with MLK in mind and offer a fresh reminder that facts matter even more in a critical year.

• We observe MLK Day with a book recommendation for those who like to look back at factual history or might take a week off and dare to do so (then again, this book might take a month).

• One of the best reads on post-Civil War civil rights history is the award-winning book From Jim Crow to Civil Rights: The Supreme Court and the Struggle for Racial Equality by Michael Klarman (Yes, brother of the asset management kingpin).

• The book lives in the trenches of the civil rights legal battles and is a history of documented decisions, events, rules, and statements of opinion in legal context.

• The book covers the struggles from the individual households (esp. the formerly enslaved) and then across state and local institutions, all the way across the legislative agendas of Congress and the White House, shifting political party allegiances, but in the end with the Supreme Court as the ultimate decision maker for so much of the civil rights evolution and devolution.

The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.

- Martin Luther King Jr.

In the critical year of 2024 and in very intense times, it is not a bad idea to step back from the talking cable heads and read something well researched by leading minds. I am not talking about a rapid page turner, but one that does not let you hide from the rigors of the history of facts, key events, and outcomes. Klarman’s book is one of those.

Every now and then it is worth the effort to make yourself come away from an effort smarter than you were before you opened the book. This book will not end up on the Hallmark Channel (or show up on the shelf of anyone at Fox News). It spares no one with the facts—including unions and the Progressive era, or the North or the South.

The MLK quotation above does not speak well of many politicians these days.  Washington has always been a power-seeking whorehouse of the morally and ethically flexible, but too many state and local figures these days have joined the party. This will be a year when the mere ability to be uncompromising and state clear facts might earn a chapter in the next edition of Profiles in Courage. As I reread the quote, I appreciate Liz Cheney more and the same for Joe Manchin.

Like most things these days, some types might read that MLK quote and embrace the idea of speaking truth to power.  Another person (example: An angry, tattooed knucklehead on a high protein diet putting Wild Turkey on his cheerios and polishing his Ka-Bar) might read the quote, strap on his helmet, grab his gas mask, and go sack the capital. Of course, then he (or she) should not whine when he (or she) gets thrown in jail.

For the typical person, you read it and ask:

 “Do I embrace the truth, facts, and the reality of what is in front of me and reject those that refuse to do so for selfish reasons?”

A bigger worry as we get closer to the election is that Donald Trump might operate in a way that calls the military out to prevent the sort of demonstrations that Martin Luther King Jr. used to such great success. The picture above is from his last speech on the way to his assassination the next day. It is food for thought.  

Lessons from MLK for Washington…

Those in the GOP who stood up to Trump measured up to MLK’s standards. It was easy for Democrats.   The same is true for those in the Democratic party who stand up for their own convictions to the more extreme progressive elements hammering them to do their bidding.  It does not seem all that risky in most cases. If you lose the election, you can go get a real job. A lot more voting across party lines would be a return to saner times. It cuts both ways.

Who knew that better times and operational functionality in Washington included the days of Johnson (rioting in the streets) and Nixon (rioting + impeachment hearings).  The Reagan era was a time of peace and solitude grading on the curve. No one rejected elections or attempted to sack the capital. He shook off the assassination attempt. Reagan was against saturating the nation with assault rifles. Maybe I did not appreciate him enough.

The book in a nutshell…

From Jim Crow to Civil Rights: The Supreme Court and the Struggle for Racial Equality is one of those books that you read for the unforgiving nature of historical facts. That includes Constitutional Amendments, court decisions with case names, federal and state legislative acts, election outcomes, and the approval and repeals of various laws from the state level to federal.

The author is Michael Klarman, who wrote and published it in 2004 when he was a Professor of Law and History at the University of Virginia (Note: he is the brother of Seth Klarman of asset management fame who was a longstanding GOP supporter until Trump…serious gene pool in that house). The author Michael Klarman is now a Harvard Law professor after his Virginia years.

Topic sampler from the book…

Voting:  This is a huge topic obviously, but the history of postwar (Civil War) voting is a factual story and not one that is tied into any race theory. The book delves into race facts and race history.  Theories (such as the dreaded label “Critical Race Theory” or CRT) are too easily rebutted and ignored. Some things are just factual – like election outcomes (ooops). The disenfranchisement laws after reconstruction running the course over decades cannot be refuted since they are part of the factual record.

 A notable example of disenfranchisement in the book was Louisiana. Black voter registration fell from 95.6% before 1896 disenfranchisement laws were passed to 9.5% right after that and then down to 1.1% (not a typo) in 1904. Alabama voter registration fell from 180,000 in 1900 to 3,000 in 1903. Florida election law changes in 1888 saw black voter turnout fall from 62% to 11% in 1892 and to 5% by 1896. Black voter turnout in Mississippi was 29% in 1888, 2% in 1892, and 0% in 1895. You get the idea. There are a lot of examples.

Disenfranchisement laws and practices: The right to vote was promptly crushed as reconstruction was dialed back and then ended.  Civil rights were already maimed but was just much worse after reconstruction.  Legal setbacks were the rule and the civil rights abuses just found new ways around the intent of the 15^th amendment (black men get the right to vote; women still out of luck). The ability to keep blacks out of voting was sometimes creative, resilient, and of course had racism and bitterness over the war as its driving force. The wide range of cases and nuances of the laws across states included blunt instruments (poll taxes, literacy requirements, etc.). Violent coercion (Klan, etc.) was an off-the-books mainstay but always omnipresent.

The “grandfather clauses” were favorites from the East Coast to Oklahoma given how many whites would flunk the voter requirements (literacy especially). Basically, if your grandfather could vote, then you could vote. Obviously, if your grandfather was a slave or could not vote, then you can’t vote. The subtlety around how institutions finessed the letter of the laws to navigate the 15^th amendment are covered in detail. These are documented legal and legislative events and printed laws and rules. Not theories.

Jury participation:  The disenfranchisement in voting rights was a first cousin of denying the right to be on a jury. That jury exclusion travesty has made it into enough movies with stories of all-white juries letting the lynchers and the “men in hoods” crowd off the hook. That was even during the 1960s – not just the 1860s.  Prosecution was seldom even tried by most at the turn of the century. The book covers these timelines with legalistic fact histories around how the laws evolved.  The analysis is dispassionate and realistic. 

Peonage and surrogate slavery:  Peonage is essentially a substitute for slave labor in the form of punitive, restrictive contract labor laws. There was quite a battle in the former Confederate States over this topic back in the postwar years.  In pop culture, some aspects of it were captured in the movie Free State of Jones (Matthew McConaughey).  The book shows “this ain’t no movie” but in fact was part of a lot of legal battles and court actions. Labor laws were a short walk from “Simon Legree, JD” and the next round of physical abuse.

Progressive era and ongoing immigration: The book details some of the issues around the desire to win over poor white elements in the North and South that led to a lot of backpedaling to win those votes. That drove years of deemphasis of civil rights activism and dropped opposition to Jim Crow in the north down the priority list.  The Great Migration from the South to Northern cities overlapped with the influx of European migrants into northern cities.  Xenophobia blurred with ethnophobia. Some of the anti-Asian histories (Japanese and Chinese on the West Coast) saw some detail in the book around voting rights, labor, and residential rules, etc. Unions had some troubling segregation histories as well.

The voting restrictions and related oppression in the South thus met with a growing base of sympathy in the North.  That is less about the courtroom and more about the election trends in the factual histories.  The interpretation of motives there gets more subjective.  The election year 1912 got some focus with Teddy Roosevelt and Taft fighting it out and Woodrow Wilson sneaking in. Wilson is now known to be a notorious racist (screened Birth of a Nation in the White House in 1915) and the arrival of WWI set off the Jim Crow military base naming exercises (“famous Confederate Generals for a thousand, Alex”) to its peak years as so many were constructed.  More Confederate named Forts arrived for WWII.  The challenges to segregation laws and rights of returning black soldiers from WWI had plenty of examples of institutional racism in the 20^th century that also tied into facts – not theories.

Facts matter N+1

In an age when Bull Connor gets reinvented as Andy of Mayberry (just google some footage of that gentle soul Bull Connor), Lester Maddox as an affable diner owner (he sold pickaxes in his diner to use on anyone who tried to make his restaurant allow black patrons in some high-profile moments…he was elected Governor of Georgia after that). In some corners of the US today, the guys in pointed hats and white sheets are redefined as just friendly, nonviolent good old boys who liked toasting marshmallows by the burning cross.  They weren’t “bad guys.”  

Recent days revisits the apologists and delusionists.  This approach has now moved on to the Jan 6 “political prisoners” with some of the low wattage bulbs of Washington (see 2024 Must be a Year when Facts Matter: The Significance of Jan 6 1-6-24).

We even have DeSantis pitching slavery as a skill development training program. He missed the part where, instead of flunking out, you get the lash or the rope. The tuition is the owners get to sell your children and rape your wife. (What is with these people calling it a training program?) “Socially woke” vs. “factually comatose” are not the only choices on the menu.

In a world like that, more objective facts can be useful.

Revisionist history used to be a healthy thing…until facts fell out of it.

Historical revisionism is a longstanding academic tradition as fresh looks at history get reinterpreted. It got big after Vietnam as more “radical historians” got busy. They tended to work with facts and interpreting those inputs to develop a thought process in their opinions. That sort of work sets off debates and gets the theme flow working. It is a valuable exercise. That is NOT what is going on today.

Some of the revisionists were often looking through the eyes of socialist leanings or came from those with Marxist mindsets. Big deal. Get your facts straight and hammer them with facts. We skip that part now in fact-free discourse. In this new age, today’s revisionist tends to be more Western European in their theories (think Germany and Italy in the 1920s and 1930s). Of course, most do it the easy way by skipping the facts and research and get the thought process from angry white guys in search of profit, power, and influence.

Excluding facts or “busting” the other side of the debate on omissions or lack of factual support is a good drill. The painful recent habit of using “alternative facts” is where it gets tricky.  Even on the far right, Ayn Rand spoke often of “absolutes.”  We would put slavery as the cause of the Civil War in the fact and absolute bucket, but the past week saw Trump pitch the idea that the Civil War could have been “negotiated.”

Trump’s motives are more of an opinion in the eye of the beholder (Does he really think that or just another base pitch?), but he continues to deepen his appeal to a certain element that also has signed onto fact rejection. He did not mention whether anyone black in chains would get a seat at the civil war negotiating table (Frederick Douglass maybe?). Perhaps Trump missed the part where slavery was “not negotiable” to the slave states for decades and compromise had already been attempted as new states entered the nation.  South hardliners just got harder. I’m willing to bet Trump does not know the location of Fort Sumter.  His ignorance of history used to be legend, but at this point it is simply a fact.

Martin Luther King Jr. faced much worse than Trump in his days. So, this can’t be that hard for that middle 20% that will set the path of the US ahead (remember when it was a middle 80% and only 10% were on the right and left extremist side of the ledger?).