MLK Spoke Out Against Black Emotional Enslavement

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It is well past time for black people to heed Martin Luther King Jr.’s call to build a movement for emotional emancipation.

By: Taasogle Daryl Rowe, Ph.D., and Enola G. Aird

There is a sad irony in the fact that we are celebrating what would have been the 85th birthday of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., just a month after the New York Times focused national attention on the gap in breast-cancer survival rates between black and white women. This news came on top of the disclosure that the income and wealth gaps between blacks and whites continue to grow, and the gap in standardized-test scores has scarcely budged.

The King holiday has been with us now for nearly 30 years. Every year we celebrate him as the Dreamer and the Drum Major. But the data on the disruptions within the black community continue to add up, and they are likely to keep getting worse until we pay attention to a forgotten yet crucial part of King’s legacy: his call for psychological liberation.

In August 1967, in his final presidential address to the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, King drew a powerful link between racism and the psychological health of black people. In answer to the question “Where do we go from here?” he said, “First we must massively assert our dignity and worth.” He talked about the “false sense of inferiority” that plagues the black community and pointed to the need for us to regain our “psychological freedom.”  “Any movement for the Negro’s freedom,” he said, “that overlooks this necessity is only waiting to be buried.”