Trump vs. MLK: Drawing inspiration for the struggle ahead

It is one the glaring ironies of modern American history that Donald Trump was sworn in as the 47th president of the United States at noon on the Martin Luther King Jr. national holiday. This was not the first time Inauguration Day and MLK Day coincided; but it certainly was the most contradictory and even cringeworthy.

The first convergence of these two significant days was Bill Clinton’s second inauguration in 1997. The most recent was Barack Obama’s second inauguration in 2013.

In early 1997, I was on the cusp on my final semester of undergrad and wasn’t paying much attention. In 2013, I distinctly remember feeling hopeful and reassured. The nation’s first African American president had been re-elected by the American people. King’s dream felt alive and well. Bigotry certainly wasn’t dead; but it had been chastened. Or so it seemed.

Trump’s return to office on MLK Day has felt like a rebuke of everything King stood for and fought for: his personal decency and dignity as well as his ethical, moral and spiritual nobility. Trump’s victory to succeed Obama in 2016 no longer can be considered an aberration; the U.S. electorate wants more of what Trump projects.

“Trump’s return to office on MLK Day feels like a rebuke of everything King stood for and fought for.”

And if he follows through on even a handful of his radical right-wing campaign promises, such as deporting tens of thousands of immigrants, turning the civil service into a hive of MAGA loyalists and retooling the FBI as retribution squad, he will stand as one of the most consequential political figures in American history, not just one of the most controversial. Transformation isn’t always from caterpillar to butterfly.

How did we, as a nation, vote for such a reversal in the span of a few short years? No doubt that question will be the focus of numerous studies, reports, books and dissertations.  There is no single simple answer, and attempting to formulate a comprehensive explanation is beyond the scope of a BNG article. We should, however, explore some of the forces and factors stoking Trump’s appeal before we decide how best to resist his authoritarian aspirations and go about reshaping a more equitable and less belligerent society.

Consider these facts

In November 2008, after Barack Obama’s historic first win, white supremacist leaders convened a national gathering of racists in Memphis to discuss how to respond to a Black man becoming president. Their strategy included taking white supremacy mainstream by rebranding it as a fight against political correctness, so-called reverse discrimination, and other less KKK-sounding endeavors. The key to their insurgency would be getting white nationalists elected to office.

Fox News continues to be America’s most widely watched cable news channel, despite its admission in court that it panders and lies to its audiences rather than informing them. Fox News’ popularity, especially when combined with the expansive reach of conservative talk radio, the podcast “manosphere” and the algorithmic proliferation of conspiracy theories on social media, means the U.S. is awash in “alternative facts.” To live in this media stream is to understand America as the kind of a crime-ridden, immigrant-infested, Antifa-infiltrated wasteland Trump portrays.

Increased (and increasingly voluntary) social isolation and the spread of solipsistic thinking have made Americans more prone to the kinds of conspiracy theories, “enemy within” narratives and uncompromising ideological positions right-wing media peddle. Americans now think about their lives and envision their futures from an increasingly solitary perspective. The concept of a common good has eroded.

“The concept of a common good has eroded.”

A number of older Americans, especially older white Americans who enjoy a comfortable standard of living, which they obtained through hard work and investment, tends to minimize the daunting economic landscape younger generations now face. These seniors are wont to flippantly dismiss their struggles by attributing them to laziness, entitlement and frivolity rather than exponential price increases and flatlined wages.

The real (inflation adjusted) median income for an individual in the United States was $42,220 in 2023. Meanwhile, the average minimum annual salary needed to rent a two-bedroom apartment stands at $54,480. A record number of Americans aged 18 to 34 continue to live with their parents because they cannot afford to live on their own.

The acceleration of wealth disparity in the United States, coupled with the 2012 Citizens United SCOTUS decision, has given the wealthiest Americans (who are overwhelmingly white, male and above the age of 50) grotesque influence over election outcomes and policy decisions. They are buying this influence to protect their own positions and advance their own agendas, not to build up the middle and lower classes.

With each passing election cycle, the ultra-wealthy are contributing more and more to campaigns across the country. Many contribute more to campaign war chests than they do to charitable causes. According to The Chronicle of Philanthropy, among the 100 biggest givers to political campaigns in 2024, only 44 of them also rank as major charity donors.

The acceleration of wealth disparity in the United States also means more Americans are inheriting rather than building their assets.Social mobility (the basis of “The American Dream”) in the United States now lags behind every other G-7 nation except Italy.

The overriding result of this confluence of socio-economic dynamics is that large swaths of the American public are angry, discouraged, afraid and increasingly isolated in their disillusionment and frustration. The vast majority of these Americans don’t understand how or why the system is broken; they just know it’s broken and they want somebody to fix it. Such a shift in the American ethos makes it easier to understand how the optimism of the Obama era has given way to the (r)age of Trump.

Grievance

Grievance is Trump’s primary appeal. This is what the ongoing autopsy of the 2024 presidential election continues to reveal. The Guardian recently interviewed several voters in Youngstown, Ohio — a major outpost in the American “Rust Belt” — to understand why they still backed Trump despite high-profile broken promises from campaigns past. Not only did factory jobs not return to Youngstown in droves, as Trump specifically and emphatically declared they would in 2017, 18 months later the last auto factory in the city also shut down and relocated to Mexico.

Such an outright betrayal should have put Trump on the defensive. Tragically, the Youngstown focus group feels even more thoroughly abandoned by the Democratic Party. When the East Palestine train derailment occurred 15 miles south of Youngstown in 2023, filling the air and water with 53 train cars’ worth of toxic chemicals, an entire year elapsed before President Joe Biden visited the area. Trump came within a month and handed out bottled water and campaign swag.

It wasn’t much but it was something. They felt seen.

Their disdain for “woke” elitism fueled by a profound disillusionment with the American Dream drives their support for Trump (but not necessarily MAGA as an ideology). They understand Trump is a liar and even a crook; but they think that’s true of all politicians.  Unlike other politicians, however, Trump doesn’t pretend to be something he’s not to curry favor. So, they believe him when he denounces the establishment, and they cheer when he says he wants to tear the status quo down.

“He’s the only candidate they hear railing against the system, which is what they crave.”

He’s the only candidate they hear railing against the system, which is what they crave: someone giving voice to their outrage.

Even if Trump himself doesn’t fix anything, this group of Youngstown residents figure the demolition will force something else to be built — and they have little reason to think it could be worse than what they currently have.

One man in Youngstown voted for Trump even though he anticipates Republicans will make his dialysis more expensive. His anger at the way Democrats specifically and the political establishment in general have ignored Youngstown and its white, working-class residents outweighs his health care anxiety.

Oedipean tragedy

Of course, the Oedipean tragedy of it all is that, in backing Trump, these voters have chosen to put America on a path more likely to prolong rather than re-write Youngstown’s fate.  Trump embraces the worst of America’s laissez-faire, trickle down approach to capitalism.

“The parties at Mar-a-Lago will get longer and more lavish while life for the vulnerable and marginalized grows bleaker and more precarious.”

He’s not going to bring factories back. He’s also not going to bring stability that allows businesses to start, grow and thrive. What he is bringing is the wealthiest and perhaps most unqualified cabinet in U.S. history.

Whatever these cabinet secretaries do in their respective roles, they will do nothing that compromises or limits their own financial opportunities, political influence (which is rooted in their immense personal wealth), or that of their fellow one-percenters. Trump will propose tax cuts (again), but those cuts will disproportionally benefit the rich (again, just like the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act) while further fraying America’s already threadbare social safety net.

The dejected voters of Youngstown are likely to receive little more than the policy equivalent of a few bottles of water and a parcel of MAGA merch, save perhaps the satisfaction of watching institutions in Washington burn. But in the flickering glow of the flames, the parties at Mar-a-Lago will get longer and more lavish while life for the vulnerable and marginalized grows bleaker and more precarious.

Is there hope?

Knowing all this makes watching Trump’s return to the White House a surreal and potentially paralyzing experience. With all three branches of the U.S. government in his ideological hands, the advance of a white nationalist oligarchy seems inevitable. Already the flurry of executive orders and the torrent of incessant vitriol and punitive rhetoric from him and his acolytes makes dissent, much less resistance, feel perilous if not futile.

But this is where the concurrence of Trump’s inauguration with Martin Luther King’s birthday potentially becomes a providential gift rather than a sick cosmic joke. If anyone can remind us that seemingly unassailable systems of violence, corruption, disparity and injustice not only can be faced but faced down, surely it is King.

When I pause to remember King and take inspiration from him, it is often to recall the circumstances under which the Civil Rights Movement began. King didn’t lead the Montgomery Bus Boycott because he was the revered iconic figure we know. In fact, he was chosen to lead precisely because, at the time, he was new to Montgomery and relatively unknown.

Nor were the conditions especially favorable to the cause. They never are. If they were, there would be no need for protest and resistance. In 1955, segregation and segregationists held sway across the South. Jim Crow was the law of the land. There were no African Americans in city, county or state office.

Before Rosa Parks, two other young women — 15-year-old Claudette Colvin and18-year-old Mary Louise Smith — had been arrested for refusing to give up their seats to white passengers without any public outcry. The one thing the soon-to-be campaigners had going for them was the Brown v Board of Education decision, which the Supreme Court issued in May 1954. If public school segregation was unconstitutional, other forms of public segregation could be challenged as well.

But they had to be challenged.

The Women’s Political Council, E.D. Dixon and area pastors, including Ralph Abernathy and King, decided to launch the boycott because, as Frederick Douglass so eloquently framed it, “If there is no struggle, there is no progress. … Power will concede nothing without a demand.”

A boycott of the segregated city buses was organized and publicized to begin on Dec. 5, 1955, four days after Rosa Parks’ arrest. The response was greater than expected. On Monday, Dec. 5, 90% of Montgomery’s African American citizens refused to ride the buses, which made their routes virtually empty.

That afternoon, the boycott organizers met and formed the Montgomery Improvement Association with an eye to potentially extending the protest, electing Martin Luther King Jr. as its president. The one-day boycott was certainly sending a message, but it would not affect change if things went right back to normal.

That evening, several thousand people gathered at Holt Street Baptist Church to celebrate and strategize. It was agreed the boycott should continue. King told the crowd, “I want it to be known that we’re going to work with grim and bold determination to gain justice on the buses in this city. And we are not wrong. … If we are wrong, the Supreme Court of this nation is wrong. If we are wrong, the Constitution of the United States is wrong. If we are wrong, God Almighty is wrong.”

“The rest is what we need to remember for the trials that lie ahead if we do not wish to capitulate to Trump’s vision for America.”

It would be easy at this point to say, “Amen!” and conclude with, “And the rest is history,” But that won’t do. The rest is what we need to remember for the trials that lie ahead if we do not wish to capitulate to Trump’s vision for America.

Three days later, on Dec. 8, the MIA issued a list of demands. The bus company and city officials refused. So, the boycott continued. The city began to sanction and fine taxi drivers who helped Black citizens avoid the bus. In response, the MIA organized an intricate carpool to help get people where they needed to go. Talks with the bus company and city officials continued, but no agreement could be reached. So, the boycott continued.

E.D. Nixon and King had their homes bombed. Still, the boycott continued. The city invoked a 30-year-old law prohibiting conspiracies that interfered with the operation of a lawful business (the bus company). King was charged, convicted, fined $500 (almost $6,000 in today’s money) and sentenced to a year in jail. Still, the boycott continued.

The MIA and its allies then took the issue of segregation in public transportation to court. In June 1956, a federal district court ruled such segregation was unconstitutional. The decision was appealed, so the boycott continued. Even after the city issued an injunction against the MIA’s carpools, the boycott continued.

Montgomery’s African American community stayed determined to stay off the buses. In November, the U.S. Supreme Court affirmed the lower court’s decision. But even still, the boycott continued. The MIA vowed African American ridership would not resume until desegregation was enacted.

At last, on Dec. 20, 1956, King announced an end to the protest. That morning, he, Ralph Abernathy, E.D. Nixon and Glenn Smiley boarded a fully desegregated Montgomery city bus.

For more than a year (54 weeks, 380 consecutive days), housekeepers, janitors, gardeners, teachers, store clerks — men, women and children of all ages and strata of life — found alternative forms of transportation and walked when they couldn’t. Those who had cars drove others as well as themselves, all to help bend the arc of their city more toward justice and human dignity.

And bend it they did — not just for the people of Montgomery, but eventually for all Americans in ways that inspired the world.

Here’s hope

Recalling this shining moment in American history reassures me that whatever darkness comes out of Washington in the next days, months and years, it can be resisted and overcome. There is certainly much to mourn about America’s present and dread about its future now that Trump and a cadre of white nationalists have attained the highest offices in the land for a second time. The strategy those white supremacists hatched in 2008 has come to fruition. But if Jim Crow can be felled, so can Trump’s brand of white authoritarian crony nationalism.

We can cast an alternative vision, write a different story for America if we pull together, be clear about the outcomes we wish to see and summon “a grim and bold determination” to weather the blowback that will surely come. We must stand firm until change is realized. Already there is resistance from the courts and from at least one pulpit. Even if it seems small in comparison to the onslaught, we have that going for us. It is there and can be built upon.

So let us take hope and courage from Martin Luther King and the throngs of anonymous marchers and boycotters who stood up for justice and human dignity 70 years ago in the face of an even more entrenched injustice. And let us hold strong to the conviction that the arc of the universe bends toward justice because the Spirit of the Lord inspires brave, faithful people to bend it.

 

Todd Thomason is a gospel minister and justice advocate who has served as pastor of churches in Virginia, Maryland and Canada. He holds a doctor of ministry degree from Candler School of Theology at Emory University and a master of divinity degree from McAfee School of Theology at Mercer University. Currently, he is a Ph.D. candidate in New Testament and Christian origins at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland.  In addition to Baptist News Global, Todd writes at viaexmachina.com. 

 

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