A term paper written in 1970 suggesting the paralleling states of the human soul transcended by Martin Luther King, Jr. as an outgrowth of William Blake's poem, "The Little Black Boy."

Rella W. Hawkins

(Innocence is the state of the soul which is represented by the naive outlook of the child who believes what he is told by his elders, and takes the appearance for reality and the best aspect of things for the whole truth. Innocence needs to yield to experience, which sees as real the world of materialism, disease, poverty, prostitution, oppression, and war. Innocence must pass through and assimilate the opposing state of experience if it is to move on to the third state of transcendence, this is done by the act of imagination, comprehending but transcending both Innocence and Experience, which Blake called, "Organized Innocence.")

For Innocence –I will use William Blake's poem, "The Little Black Boy" written in 1789. For Experience - excerpts from a letter written by King while in the Birmington jail.

King:
My dear fellow clergymen:

Blake:
My mother bore me in the southern wild,
And I am black, but O! My soul is white;
White as an angel is the English child:
But I am black as if bereav'd of light.

King:
While confined here in the Birmington city jail I pause to answer criticism of my work and ideas. I am compelled to carry the gospel of freedom beyond my particular home. I am cognizant of the interrelatedness of all communities and states. The injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. What ever effects one directly effects all indirectly. You deplore the demonstrations? But where is your concern that brought on the demonstrations? Go beyond the superficial social analyst who merely look at affects, who does not grapple with the underlying causes. The white power structure left the black community with no alternative.

In any non-violent compaign there area four basic steps:

1) Collections of the facts to see where the injustices are alive.
2) Negotiation.
3) Self-purification.
4) Direct Action.

JUSTICE TOO LONG DELAYED IS JUSTICE DENIED!

Blake:
Look on the rising sun: there God does live,
And gives his light, and gives his heat away;
And flowers and trees and beasts and men
Receive Comfort in morning, joy in the noon day.

King:
We have waited 340 years for our constitutional and God-given rights. You express a great deal of anxiety over our willingness to break laws. The fact is, there are two types of laws. There are the "Just" laws. There are the "Unjust" laws. I would agree with St. Augustine that, "An unjust law is no law at all." According to St. Thomas Aquinas, and unjust law is a human law that is not rooted in eternal or natural law. Any law that uplifts the human personality is just. Any law that degrades the human personality is unjust.

All segregation statutes are unjust because segregation distorts the soul and damages the personality. It gives the Segregator a false sense of superiority. It gives the Segregated a false sense of inferiority.

Martin Buber said, "Segregation substitutes as "I–it" relationship for the "I–thou" relationship– this regulates the persons to the state of things."

Paul Tillich said, "Sin is separation." Isn't segregation an expression of man's tragic separation?

Blake:
And I am black, but O! My soul is white;
But I am black as if bereav'd of light.
When I from black and he from white cloud free,
Thus did my mother say, and kissed me;

King:
You spoke of our activity in Birmington as extreme.

With love and non-violence I stood between two black forces; one is a force of complacency complete drained of self-respect and nobaddyness. The other force is one of bitterness and hatred advocating violence.

Blake:
I'll shade him from the heat till he can bear
To lean upon our Father's knee;

King:
Oppressed people will not be oppressed forever. Something within the black man reminded him of his birthright of freedom. Something without him has reminded him he can gain it. He is moving with a sense of cosmic urgency toward the promised land of racial justice.

Blake:
For when our souls have learn'd the heat to bear,
The cloud will vanish: We shall hear his voice,
Saying, ‘Come out from the grove, my love and care,
And round my tent like lambs rejoice.'

King:
We set up workshops on non-violence.

Blake:
And I am black, but O! My soul lis white:
But I am black as if bereav'd of light.
And we are put on earth a little space,
That we may learn to bear the beam of love,
And these black bodies and this sun-burnt face
Is but a cloud, and like a shady grove.

King:
After many months of negotiations we realized that we were victims of broken promises. We were confronted with blasted hopes, but the dark shadow of disappointment settled upon us. We had no alternatives. We would present our very bodies to lay our case before the consciousness of local and national communities. We knew the difficulties.

Blake:
For when our souls have learn'd the heat to bear,
The cloud will vanish: we shall hear His voice,

King:
Non-violent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and establish such a creative tension that a community is forced to confront the issues. Our creative constructive non-violent tension is the type that is necessary for growth in a society that will help men to rise from the dark depths of prejudice and racism to the majestic heights of understanding and brotherhood.

Blake:
And this I say to little English boy,
It is but a cloud, that will vanish;

King:
Let us all hope that the dark cloud of radial prejudice will soon pass away, and the deep fog of misunderstanding will be lifted from our fear-drenched communities, and in some not too distant tomorrow the radiant stars of love and brotherhood will shine over our great nation with all their scintillating beauty.

Blake:
My mother bore me in the southern wild,
And I am black, but O! My soul is white;
White as an angel is the English child:
But I am black as if bereav'd of light.

My mother taught me under neath a tree,
And sitting down before the heat of day,
She took me on her lap and kissed me,
And pointing to the east, began to say:

"Look on the rising sun: There God does live,
And gives his light and gives his heat away;
And flowers and trees and beasts and men receive
Comfort in morning, joy in the noon day.

"And when our souls have learn'd the heat to bear,
The cloud will vanish; we shall bear his voice,
Saying, ‘Come out from the grove, my love and care,
And round my golden tent like lambs rejoice.'"

And we are put on earth a little space,
That we may learn to bear the beams of love;
And these black bodies and this sun-burnt face
Is but a cloud, but like a shady grove.

Thus did my mother say, and kissed me;
And this I say to little English boy:
When I from black and he from white cloud free,
And round the tent like lambs we joy.

I'll shade him from the heat till he can bear
To lean in joy upon our Father's knee:
And then Ill stand and stroke his silver hair,
And be like him, and he will then love me.

Rell:
The innocent state of the soul of the little black boy which is represented by Martin Luther King, Jr. took on the appearance for reality. King's assimilation of unselfish visions yielded to experience in his attempts to deal with the real world. In the opposing state of experience the affirmative imagination of King resulted from the appearance of reality in the little black boy; But that reality killed King. The transcendence of innocence to experience of the organized imagination of non-violence has immortalized Martin Luther King, Jr..

In peace and love...rell

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