I know many people want to put my father in a ‘Love & Civility’ box. I get it. It makes him more palatable and it allows people to think that the evils he worked to eradicate don’t exist anymore. It also invites use of his words and image to oppose any current activism. But...

He doesn’t fit in that box. His nonviolent philosophy/strategy is rooted in love, but not as some define love. He believed that love is active; that it is pouring yourself out for the well-being of others. And he was not a civility-worker, but a drum major for justice and peace.

However, he believed that “True peace is not merely the absence of tension; but the presence of justice.” That’s why he spoke truth to power and, when negotiation with an opponent concerning an issue of injustice failed, facilitated direct action.

He was not teaching and living mere civility. He was living love, which joins with power to make justice happen. Justice, he said, is “Power (in one quote)/ love (in another) correcting everything that stands against love.” He won’t fit in that box because...

Love, for him, wasn’t passive; love searches for truth and cultivates justice. That’s why he said “A riot is the language of the unheard.” He was a nonviolent practitioner, but he would not condemn riots without condemning unjust systems and practices.

Because he knew that some would call for civility to avoid true peace, which includes justice. In fact, in ‘Letter From Birmingham Jail,’ he shared that the white moderate (“more devoted to "order" than to justice”) was/is Black people’s great stumbling block to freedom.

So pay attention to his language:

“I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. This is why right, temporarily defeated, is stronger than evil triumphant.”

“Nonviolence is not sterile passivity, but a powerful moral force which makes for social transformation.”

“You deplore the demonstrations taking place in Birmingham. But your statement, I am sorry to say, fails to express a similar concern for the conditions that brought about the demonstrations.”

When you study him in full and earnestly connect the Six Principles and Six Steps of Nonviolence, you get the comprehensive King.

A King who did not accept injustice under the banner of ‘Love & Civility,’ but who, rooted in Love, which seeks no harm, pursued Justice.