MLK’s vision of love as a moral imperative still matters

By Joshua F.J. Inwood, Penn State More than 50 years after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., the United States remains divided by issues of race and racism, economic inequality as well as unequal access to justice. These issues are stopping the country from developing into the kind of society that Martin Luther King, Jr. fought for during his years as a civil rights activist. As a result King’s words and work are still relevant. I study the civil rights movement and the field of peace geographies. Peace geographies thinks about how different groups of people approach and work toward building the kind of peaceful society King worked to create. Americans faced similar crises related to the broader civil rights struggles in the 1960s. So, what can the past tell us about healing the nation? Specifically, how can we address divisions along race, class and political lines? Martin Luther King Jr.’s understanding of the role of love in engaging individuals and communities in conflict is crucial today. For King, love was not sentimental. It demanded that individuals tell their oppressors what they were doing was wrong. King’s vision King spent his public career working toward ending segregation and fighting...