King on the Death of Evil upon the Seashore
Thomas Allen
In “The Death of Evil upon the Seashore,” Strength to Love (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1963, 2010), pages 75–86, Martin Luther King, Jr. discusses evil, Israelites gaining their freedom from the Egyptians, colonialism, slavery, and segregation. The following is a critical review of King’s essay.
King begins by discussing the reality of evil and comments on the Biblical description of evil. Evil exists; it is real. He remarks, “We see it [evil] expressed in tragic lust and inordinate selfishness. We see it in high places where men are willing to sacrifice truth on the altars of their self-interest.” (P. 76.) Evil is seen “in imperialistic nations crushing other people with the battering rams of social injustice.” (P. 76.) It is also seen in war.
Next, King discusses the Israelites held as slaves in Egypt. “Egypt symbolized evil in the form of humiliating oppression, ungodly exploitation, and crushing domination, and the Israelites symbolized goodness in the form of devotion and dedication to the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.” (P. 77.) (King uses the Israelite enslavement in Egypt as an analogy. Egypt represents the South, which is evil, and the Israelites represent the Negroes, who are holy.) “Pharaoh [Southerners] stubbornly refused to respond to the cry of Moses [King]. . . .” (P. 77.) When the Israelites were freed from their slavery, they left Egypt. (Here, King departs from his analogy of the Egyptians enslaving the Israelites. When the Israelites gained their freedom from Egyptian oppression, they left Egypt. They did not integrate with the Egyptians. If King were true to his analogy, when he freed the Negroes from the oppression of segregation and discrimination, he would have led them out of the South. Instead, he led them to integrate with their oppressors [Southerners].)
Then, King notes “that evil is recalcitrant and determined, and never voluntarily relinquishes its hold short of a persistent, almost fanatical resistance.” (P. 77.)
Continuing, King notes that the story of the enslavement of the Israelites and their subsequent freedom “is revealed in the contemporary struggle between good in the form of freedom and justice and evil in the form of oppression and colonialism.” (P. 79.) Then, he comments on colonialism. According to King, “most of the Asian and African peoples were colonial subjects, dominated politically, exploited economically, and segregated and humiliated by foreign powers.” (P. 77.) (Most Asian and African countries subjected to European imperialism have a higher standard of living today than they would have without European imperialism.) With a focus on India, he comments on the colonies freeing themselves from European powers.
Next, King discusses the Negro’s struggle for freedom and justice. “In America the Negro slave was merely a depersonalized cog in a vast plantation machine.” (P. 80.) (Southern compassion brought down the South. When the Jewish Dutch slavers brought their leftover slaves that they failed to sell in the Caribbean to Virginia to sell, the Virginians should have refused to buy and let the Dutch dump their unsold slaves in the ocean. Instead, being compassionate, they bought the Negroes and treated them as indentured servants. When they had worked off their purchase price, they were set free. However, one Negro, Anthony Johnson, refused to let his Negro servant go free and got the court to declare him a lifetime servant, i.e., a slave. [See, “Two Great Black Leaders” by Thomas Allen.] Thus, a Negro brought Negro slavery to what would later become the United States.)
King writes, “For more than two hundred years Africa was raped and plundered, her native kingdoms disorganized, and her people and rulers demoralized.” (P. 80.) (He gives the impression that Europeans did the plundering. On the contrary, Negroes did the plundering. Negroes would raid neighboring tribes and sell their captives to Europeans and Arabs.)
King comments on Jefferson’s opposition to slavery and the agony that it caused him. (However, King does not comment on Jefferson’s recommended solution, which was the physical separation of the races — the Biblical solution.)
Then, King comments on Lincoln and his Emancipation Proclamation. According to King, the Emancipation Proclamation freed the slaves. (Like most people, King fails to understand that the Emancipation Proclamation freed no slaves. It only applied to slaves in areas beyond the control of the Union army. Slaves in the Union States and slaves in the parts of the South controlled by the Union army remained slaves. Moreover, slaves in the South gained their freedom before slaves in the Union States gained theirs.)
Continuing, King declares that although “Negroes enjoyed certain political and social opportunities during the Reconstruction,” Southerners were determined to keep them in slavery. (During Reconstruction, many Southerners were stripped of their political rights. [About the Battle of Gettysburg and Reconstruction, H.L. Mencken wrote, “The Confederates went into battle free; they came out with their freedom subject to the supervision and veto of the rest of the country — and for nearly twenty years that veto was so effective that they enjoyed scarcely more liberty, in the political sense, than so many convicts in the penitentiary.”] To cope with the sudden flood of ignorant, gullible, freed Negroes on the labor market, the Southern States enacted labor codes modeled after those in the North. However, the federal government quickly voided these codes in the South. Before Lincoln’s War, both free and enslaved Negroes were more integrated in the South than they were in the North. Negro collaboration with carpetbaggers and scalawags during Reconstruction to plunder the South is a root cause of the racial problems in the South. Also, because of the large number of Negroes in the South, the South resorted to statutory regulation of race relations. Because of the small numbers of Negroes in the North, the North could rely on customs, deed restrictions, labor unions, etc. to regulate race relations.) King considers segregation a new form of slavery.
King writes, “Despite the patient cry of many a Moses, they refused to let the Negro people go.” (P. 81.) (When Pharaoh let the Israelites go, they left Egypt. Never did King have any intention of leading the Negroes out of the country. If they were going to leave the country, they would have received a great deal of support and almost no opposition. However, even if King had tried to lead them to another land, most Negroes would not have followed him. Despite segregation, discrimination, and oppression, they knew that life in the United States, even in the South, was better for them than anywhere else that they could go. Nevertheless, the Pharaoh-Moses approach would have solved America’s race problems.)
King approves the Supreme Court’s desegregation ruling. However, the ruling is just the beginning; more is needed. (The more needed was forced integration. The desegregation ruling quickly turned into forced integration. Desegregation allows a student to go to the school of his choice, i.e., a Negro child could go to a White school if he so chooses and vice versa. Integration, like segregation, assigns students to a school based on race. Desegregation quickly degenerated into integration because the only way that a school could prove that it was fully desegregated was to be fully integrated.)
Continuing, King notes, “that evil carries the seed of its own destruction.” (P. 82.) (Being contrary to God’s law, integration is evil and carries the seed of its own destruction. The deterioration of the United States is evidence of this seed of destruction.)
Next, King states, “Because sin exists on every level of man’s existence, the death of one tyranny is followed by the emergence of another tyranny.” (P. 83.) (We are currently living in the tyranny of the civil rights movement, Zionism, and fascism in its various forms.) People in the civil rights movement must “avoid a superficial optimism [and] . . . a crippling pessimism.” (P. 83.)
Then, King comments on God working in the world. He is convinced that God is on his side. (Except for atheists and perhaps agnostics, most evil-doers are convinced that God is on their side. That God was on King’s side is questionable because what he promoted is contrary to what the Bible teaches. If God were on his side, it is in the sense that He was on the side of the Assyrians and Babylonians when He sent them to punish Israel and the Jews by removing them from their homelands.)
In closing, King discusses some of the evils that Negroes have endured. (First, despite all the evils that have been inflicted on Negroes in America, Negroes in Africa have endured worse evils. Second, all races have suffered from evil.)
Throughout this essay, King uses the analogy of Moses (King) freeing the Israelites (Negroes) and leading them across the Red Sea (out of the country). However, King had no intention of completing the analogy. He was not going to lead the Negroes out of America or even the South. On the contrary, he wanted to do what God would have prevented Moses from doing. Unlike Moses, who wanted to lead his people from the evils of Egypt, King wanted to integrate his people into the evils of the South. (For King, everything was evil in the South except the Negro and Communists.)
King often implies, if not right out states, that the Bible commands integration and condemns segregation. However, the opposite is true. The Bible contains stories promoting segregation and separation — the Exodus story, which King uses in this essay, is the best known. I know of no stories in the Bible supporting integration and amalgamation. On the contrary, there are stories condemning such acts.
Copyright © 2024 by Thomas Coley Allen.
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