American Civil Rights Leadership - Essay Example

?Running Head: LEADERSHIP PROFILE Profile of Martin Luther King Jr American civil rights leadership that inspired proactive, peaceful behaviours for social demonstration Name University Class Profile of Martin Luther King Jr.: American civil rights leadership that inspired proactive, peaceful behaviours for social demonstration Background Introduction Martin Luther King Jr. was an inspirational leader who helped the group of people in the United States identified as belonging to the African American race to emancipate their segregation from the privileges of the general population. Many of the events in King’s life led him to become a leader, and the events of discriminatory behaviour towards African Americans led him to his position as someone who inspired the behaviours of those who wanted to protest the social disparities. He spoke to other leaders and shared with them knowledge that he was able to pull into his own public leadership in order to enhance the effectiveness of his movement. The challenges that he faced were met with the preparation that he had made towards becoming an effective leader, although he had expected to lead a church rather than a nation. King was a well educated man who focused a portion of his education on the oratory aspects of leadership. He learned to become an effective speaker, exploiting his own natural ability to deliver a public message. His core method of leadership was in focusing his charismatic talents so that his followers believed in his message. Biography of King Martin Luther King Jr. was born on January 14, 1929 to Reverend Martin Luther King and his wife Alberta in Atlanta, Georgia within the United States. At the age of fifteen, Martin Luther King Jr. entered Morehouse College in Atlanta before graduating from high school where he studied sociology. At the age of nineteen in 1948 he finished his undergraduate Bachelor of Arts degree in sociology and became a minister. In 1951, King graduated with a second Bachelor of Arts degree in divinity before going on to study systematic theology as a graduate student at Boston University. He married Coretta Scott in Marion, Alabama in 1953 before being appointed a minister as a pastor to Dextor Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery Alabama. In 1955, King received his doctorate in systemic theology from Boston University, giving him the title of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr (Bruns, 2006, p. xii). King rose to national prominence when he was made the spokesperson for the Montgomery bus boycott. The boycott started 1955 when Rosa Parks refused to move to the back of the bus, a white bus driving insisting that she make the move as African Americans were segregated from seating at the front which was reserved for Caucasians. The boycott lasted for more than a year, financially crippling the public transportation of the city as African American users were the larger portion of the public transportation using public. The organisation that was created to support the movement was the Montgomery Improvement Association of which King was elected president. In 1956, the Supreme Court ruled that segregation was not a legal and this victory provided King a platform of success from which to further his intentions to abolish segregation policies and discrimination in the United States. In January of 1957, King formed the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in order to provide a resource for organized protests for civil rights (Bruns, 2006, p. xii). At this point, King’s career begins to move at a quick pace, his public accomplishments adding up to a powerful momentum as a leader, his choices promoting larger and larger successes that were filled with activity and progress towards civil rights. He was given audience by prominent leaders and taken seriously for the strength of the numbers of his followers, creating a movement that would eventually find success in abolishing legal separation between the rights of Caucasians and the rights of African Americans. He met with President Eisenhower in June of 1958 and Mahatma Gandhi in February of 1959. He met with President Kennedy in 1961 (Bruns, 2006, p. xii). His theories about social protest defined by peaceful demonstration, won him respect and followers from both sides of the issue, thus bringing together the needs of the people and the law in order to head towards a more equitable nature of law within the United States. King was a prolific writer and was a very effective speaker. His most famous speech was the “I Have a Dream” speech, given at the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom on 28 August 1963. His “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” provides an inspirational message and was written from inside a Birmingham, Alabama jail where he was incarcerated after his participation in a protest (Bruns, 2006, p. xiii). His followers were instructed in the methods of peaceful protest in order to provide legitimacy to their demands. The protesters would not strike out against those who would strike them, their aim to gather attention, not revilement or proof that their citizenry was anything but honourable. If the protests and disintegrated into African American violence, these protests would have put them into a position that was unsympathetic. However, by protesting through non-violent methods that put them in a position that made their presence in conflict with laws that were not fair nor righteous, their protest could be given respect and therefore promote change. At the age of 35 King was the youngest man to ever receive the Nobel Peace Prize which he received in 1964. On 3 April 1968, King gave his last speech while participating in a march by sanitation workers in Memphis, Tennessee. The speech, “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop” was given at the Mason Temple for a rally that was given in support of the workers. King had expanded his social protests promoting civil rights to include a variety of issues that were a continuation of the problems that were facing the United States. On 4 April 1968, King was shot and killed at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis. While his killing was never fully explained by the conviction of James Earl Ray, he is the man who is most often associated as the assassin who shot King. King was killed with one shot that severed the carotid artery as he walked on the balcony of the motel towards his room (Rosen, 2005, p. 254). Influences One of the first influences that provided a framework from which he developed his theories on social conflict was Howard Thurman. Thurman had hope for “an ideal of community and the hope for a transformed American society” (Thurman, Fluker, & Tumber, 1998, p. 185). Thurman had been an alumni with King’s father from Morehouse College and had acted as a mentor to the young King Jr. during his time in his secondary education. He was a member of the faculty at Boston University when King was attending. Thurman was a spiritual advisor to King, helping him to form his belief systems which would eventually evolve into social gospel Christianity from which King supported his social reform campaigns (Fluker, 2009, p. 203). Mahatma Gandhi was also a great influence on King. After the boycott in Montgomery, King was encouraged by Bayard Rustin, Stanley Levinson, and Harris Wofford to visit Gandhi in India in order to gain more insight into how to effectively lead his social reform campaigns. In the process of forming his own theories on how to create the best possible social atmosphere for change, he met with Gandhi’s disciples, India’s political figures, throughout India in order to more fully understand the way in which Gandhi’s principles of peaceful protest affected the social order. Primarily, of course, King got to know Gandhi and to understand the social framework in which he performed his protests and promoted his beliefs in change. From that point on, King used the example of Gandhi in order to create a foundation for the actions and words that he used to create social reform through civil disobedience rather than through violent or reactive demonstration (Hill, 2007, p. 129). There has been much written about the idea that King did not promote or create original ideas in his writings. There is much that has been discussed about how his theories were not fully formed through his own concepts. However, because of the radical and successful nature of his work, there are many who will try to negate the impact that he had on society. King used the ideas of those who had work that would promote the causes in which he strongly believed. Whether or not all of his writing or his speaking was original was immaterial to the effect that was desired. He was seeking social change, not to become known for original thought or to be thought of as a man who did not need the advice or inspiration of others. He was driven by the needs of his time to act in such a way to create change, and that is what he led his followers towards in his lifetime. Leadership Oratory Mastery King may have had a natural talent for public speaking and through his experiences in growing up as the son of a reverend most likely had a great many opportunities to be in the public eye within the church during services and events. However, King studied the oratory arts when he was in college taking at least nine courses in the topic and studying under Professor Robert Kreighton. He studied the works of St. Augustine for the use and power of cliche within a speech and read the works of English poets which he used when he wrote his speeches. In college, he was popular with his fellow students and he drew crowds when it was time for his weekly student sermon which he referred to as ’religious speeches’ (McElrath & Andrews, 2008, p. 33). King put effort into becoming an effective speaker, while he seemed to also have a talent for moving others in evidence by the crowds he pulled during his educational period. One of the most powerful ways in which King was able to influence people was through the use of his voice and the charismatic way in which he delivered his message. The “I Have a Dream” speech is one of the most famous speeches given in American history and created King as symbolic icon for the people he represented. According to Bobbitt (2007), “this speech is more than just another Burkean representative anecdote that provides a text through which to study a movement and it is more than just the most famous speech of a famous American orator. King and the speech are contemporary cultural icons, symbols of the civil rights movement and the great American promise of freedom, justice, and equality” (p. 102). The power of the delivery of the speech and the nature of the uplifting message provided a framework from which to promote the cause and inspire his followers. Bobbitt (2007) discusses the speech through the lens of the rhetorical theories of Kenneth Burke. Burke theorized that a form of a message can be through guilt, purification, and then redemption. Bobbitt (2007) believes that this form can be applied to King’s most famous speech as it can be seen as the ’redemption drama’ that acts as a conclusion to the formation of the message that King was representing. The speech creates guilt through the existence of social problems and the purification is rendered through igniting the fires of change within those listening to the speech. Redemption is gained through the dream of transcendence; the belief that dream could come true. While the writing of the speech is often considered plagiarism of work done by Archibald Carey, a preacher from the America’s south, it was the delivery of the speech and the choice of the venue that had the impact on the American public (Gottfried, 1995, p. 115). The speech, though not perhaps a resource of original King thought, is an example of the power of words when spoken to listeners who are ready hear a message and a message that is formed with the intent of creating a cascade of changes in social thought. While the writing of the speech was brilliant and though some of it may not be original to King, it is the delivery of the speech to a quarter million listeners in a large scale protest that provides the iconic history of the event. The speech accelerated the movement because of the power of the delivery of the message. One of his other more famous forms of communication was in the writing of essays that inspired his followers. His “Letter from Birmingham City Jail” was written as he sat waiting in a cell after being arrested during a protest. Eight Caucasian clergymen had written open letters to the public citing King’s civil disobedience as an invitation to violence and called for King to stop non-violent protests in order to allow the courts to take the battle to its conclusion. King responded in this letter. He called upon the Christian heritage as a foundation for creating a society of equality. He informed his accusers that his desire for change required action, citing the reasons why the action was necessary. He did not claim himself to be of power, nor did he admonish them for their voice in the events, but he worked to develop rhetoric to change their hearts on the matter. He chose to lead by bringing them into the flock, offering to include them in the struggle, rather than to alienate them from the events of change. Personal Centred Leadership One of the ways in which a leader will establish his following is by creating a strategy of the organization of a large personal following. This type of leadership is developed around the charisma of the leader, the message finding a focal point in the power of the individual to attract people to his or her cause. King used his own magnetism to create a following of people who believed in what he said. The charisma of King allowed for his voice to be used in order to create a large body of people who would follow him through the strategies that he and his people developed to support social change. According to Conger and Kananga (1987), charismatic leaders use their own convictions in order and voiced expressions of the desire to lead in order to create a gathering of others who will follow their belief. They often do this through an “Expression of high energy, persistence, unconventional and risky behaviour” (p. 643). King had strong convictions about his beliefs and was able to create a sphere of belief in which to envelop his followers. King’s followers, however, were very focused on him, perhaps more so than on the message. According to Burns (1978), ‘Political personalism is a promising strategy for dynamic, charismatic leadership: its great weakness for those interested in realizing political goals and achieving real social change is that the movement rises and falls with the success of a less than immortal leader” (p. 267). When leadership was to pass to his successor, the message survived as it had been well spread, but the leadership of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference lost some of its effectiveness. With the use of the opinion leadership strategy as focused on a the charisma of a single individual, as in the case of King, falls when that leader is not longer available to the cause. Transformational Leadership Theories that emphasize charisma as the core of the leadership of an individual tend to discuss the importance of value and emotion in regard to the way in which the leader handles his mission. In looking at the way in which King developed his personally centred strategy, it can be observed that he also used theories of transformational leadership. According to Yukl (2002), transformational leadership motivates followers through the use of task outcomes in order to get them to transcend their own personal interests for the sake of the cause. The emphasis becomes on the rewards of the changes intended by the organization which usurps the needs of the followers and inspires them to work towards the collective goals rather than focus on individual goals. When this is combined with a charismatic leader, the followers can be motivated to move beyond what might seem as a limitation to a place where extraordinary possibilities can take place. Through the power of his oratory skills and the development of a movement that focused on his beliefs, King was able to create transformational leadership in which social change could be promoted and enacted. In the process of making social change, King was able to transform the beliefs, the behaviors, and the goals of his followers so that they would do things that could accomplish tasks towards the needs of the movement. As an example, he inspires his followers to deny lawful segregation rules while denying their own instincts to react to humiliation and violence that were reactions of some of the Caucasians to their staged protest events. He inspired civil disobedience which required a great deal of self-control as dignity had to be set aside in order to enact the protest. This kind of protest was not created by King, although he promoted it as the best method of protest for his movement. An example of this kind of protest can be seen in the lunch counter protests of 1944 where forty African American women and fifteen Caucasian women went to the department store lunch counters of St. Louis where the policies were to only serve Caucasian women. Organized by Pearl Maddox of the Citizen’s Civil Rights Committee, this served as one of the first civil rights protests and found national coverage of the event a very powerful tool. While the lunch counters did not change their policies at that time, the event was given enough press to help to launch the civil rights movement (Corbett, 1999, p. 264). However, the concept of civil disobedience is often attributed to Martin Luther King Jr. The power of his leadership in the civil rights movement is such that often all the aspects of the movement are attributed to his leadership. Histories attribute much of the peaceful protests to the leadership of King, and while not his original idea; his leadership provided the level of inspiration needed to make national change possible. Being a powerful leader is as important, if not more important, than having a good idea for creating change. Through the words that King gave to his followers, the belief systems and organization of tasks, King was able to create an environment of change that benefited the entire nation. Once his goals were primarily accomplished in regard to civil rights, King transformed the beliefs of his followers in order to address his own beliefs of social injustice that was being experienced through a multitude of problems within the United States. Workers rights, militarism, and the war were all topics that King wanted to address once the civil rights movement was successful and had started a momentum of social change. Economic problems with workers wages and the conditions of working for the lower classes became an integral part of his campaigns (Bruns, 2006). Using the power of his leadership methods, he was able to shift some of the beliefs about the movement to focus on other aspects of the problems that the nation was experiencing. The power of his leadership strategies allowed him to use the personal admiration of his followers in order to shift their attention to a larger picture of social injustices that followed naturally with the path of his original message. Conclusion Leadership Leadership strategies can be developed through the focus upon a single individual’s vision. This does not mean that his or her theories and beliefs are original, necessarily, but that he or she has the skills to motivate a collective who are moved towards his or her thinking. Personalism is a theory of leadership that uses an opinion leadership strategy in which one person is the symbol of an entire organization and acts as a focus for the development of a group who will focus on the tasks that will be needed rather than their own personal goals, in order to achieve the goals of the collective. Great social change can be achieved when a leader is able to motivate followers in a mutual direction. Through the use of transformational leadership, the personalism that galvanized a massive group of people could be moulded towards beliefs that were to the benefit of the movement. Through transforming beliefs, King was able to create a movement that could change the social structure of a nation. Transformational leadership has the capacity to change people and make a new direction feasible when the original attractions to a movement are then expanded upon and directed in a multitude of directions. Ford and Ford (2009) discuss the ways in which to handle resistance to change. Through techniques of persuasion as opposed to those in which resistance is developed and enhanced, King was able to create more and more followers to his cause, while transforming the ideas of opponents to his mission in order to create a social shift in the attitudes of people throughout the country. Rather than declaring his opponents as enemies, he viewed them as the yet unconvinced and used his oratory skills and his personal charisma as a position from which to try to gather a flock, rather than to scare them off. Martin Luther King Jr. Martin Luther King Jr. was an inspirational leader who used transformational and personal leadership strategies in order to promote social change. While not all of his strategies or even his writing are original to him, his personal charisma accounts for much of the inspiration that allowed him to lead hundreds of thousands of people. He moved a nation towards change, his legacy living in the integration of races and the attempts at eliminating the differences that prevented African Americans to enjoy the same opportunities as their fellow citizens of different ethnic heritages. Kempster (2006) uses critical grounded theory in order to examine the ways in which a leader becomes capable of leading. Experiences in life will provide the framework in which a leader emerges, his or her strategies being formed through the belief systems that are developed through a lifetime of experience. King exhibit’s the culmination of his lifetime, his early childhood and then his education preparing him for the calling he would have to answer. In being prepared, he was able to step up to the challenge and use what he knew in order to develop a successful campaign against social injustices that he faced during his lifetime. The events of King’s life, including his end through martyrdom, have given him an iconic place in the history of the United States. His leadership allowed for the change of a nation and his death placed him in the position of martyr, a powerful position that continues to lead past the mortality of the leader. While his leadership and the historical value of his words created a legacy that still inspires the cause of the continuation of pursuing equality, his death meant that the direct leadership of his organization could no longer depend on his charismatic attraction to expand the cause. In this type of leadership, the end of the leader can mean the end of the event of change. However, the momentum of change had created enough of a wave to last, the central changes of legal issues accomplished, and the wave of change left to create tides that would shift the attitudes of the public. Concluding Thoughts Leadership is not an easy event to establish and it does not come through forcing power over those who would be lead. While that has been a method of leadership, more often it is the charisma of a leader who believes in his cause that will galvanize a public towards true social change. King accomplished this goal, his leadership creating a value that lasted long after his death. Through personalism and transformational leadership, Martin Luther King Jr. changed the beliefs of a nation, his legal changes promoting social attitudes to change. It was his ability to use words that was his greatest power and he used them for positive change. References Bobbitt, D. A. (2007). The rhetoric of redemption: Kenneth Burke's redemption drama and Martin Luther King, Jr.'s "I have a dream" speech. Lanham, Md: Rowman & Littefield Publishers. Bruns, R. (2006). Martin Luther King, Jr: A biography. Westport, Conn: Greenwood Press. Burns, J. M. G. (1978). Leadership. 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Lexington, Ky: University Press of Kentucky. Kempster, S.J. (2006) Leadership Learning Through Lived Experience: A Process of Apprenticeship? Journal of Management & Organization, 12 (1), pp. 4-22. King, M. L., & Washington, J. M. (1986). A testament of hope: The essential writings of Martin Luther King, Jr. San Francisco: Harper & Row. McElrath, J., & Andrews, D. P. (2008). The everything Martin Luther King Jr. book: The struggle, the dream, the legacy. Avon, Mass: Adams Media. Rosen, F. (2005). The historical atlas of American crime. New York: Checkmark Books. Thurman, H., Fluker, W. E., & Tumber, C. (1998). A strange freedom: The best of Howard Thurman on religious experience and public life. Boston: Beacon Press. Yukl, G. A. (2002) An evaluation of the conceptual weaknesses in transformational and charismatic leadership theories. The Leadership Quarterly. 10 (2), pp. 285-305. Read More