In 1963, Time magazine featured civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr on the cover. But the portrait of King was not of a triumphant orator but a man with worried eyes and slanted shoulders, bearing the visible weight of his calling.

That image offers a truth about King and his legacy, that the path to justice demands more than just inspiring speeches, it calls for a willingness to carry profound burdens.

In the United States, an emboldened Donald Trump took charge as president on January 20, a day that also commemorated Martin Luther King Jr this year. On January 26, India will celebrate its 75th Republic Day. Both nations face a crucial challenge of transforming democratic ideals into lived reality. In this present moment, King’s life and non-violent resistance to arbitrary power speaks to us with uncomfortable clarity.

Imagining a just future

In 1950s America, the idea that people of all races could live together seemed radical, even dangerous to many. When King began the Montgomery bus boycott in Alabama in December 1955 – for racial segregation on public transport – he faced a country where most white citizens, including judges and legislators, had little sympathy for the struggles of Black Americans. But the young preacher knew that appealing to people’s higher conscience could create the very public that would support his cause.

King wasn’t just speaking to the America that existed but was calling forth an America that could be. This moral imagination eventually materialised into broad support and finally resulted in the passage of the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964 outlawing racial discrimination and segregation.

Here lies King’s crucial lesson for contemporary movements: the public that will embrace a cause may not even exist at the start. It must first be imagined and then summoned into being through persistent moral challenge and hope.

Personal cost of change

The history of the Civil Rights movement is a reminder that the path to justice exerts a public and private toll. The internal struggles and external battles in King’s life are inseparable. What is instructive is that King managed to channel his private struggles into public momentum for change.

During the year-long Montgomery bus boycott, as he faced several death threats and his home was bombed, King had a spiritual crisis. Late one night at the kitchen table, he experienced what he later called his most critical moment – a moment when he was about to give up, questioning his ability to lead, transformed into a revelation. He found strength in the idea of a personal god who demanded courageous action. This fusion of inner conviction and outer necessity would define his leadership.

But a few years later, the 1961 desegregation movement in Albany, Georgia, tested King’s non-violent strategies and his faith. As Albany’s police chief Laurie Pritchett suppressed the protests, King wrestled with failure and deeper doubts about nonviolent resistance itself. Yet, his study of MK Gandhi during this period, especially after his 1959 trip to India where he learned about satyagraha, helped him understand how personal suffering could become a catalyst for social transformation.

Martin Luther King, Jr being arrested in Montgomery, Alabama, for “loitering”, in 1958. Credit: The Associated Press, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
Martin Luther King, Jr being arrested in Montgomery, Alabama, for “loitering”, in 1958. Credit: The Associated Press, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

By the time of the desegregation protests and anti-racism movement in Birmingham, Alabama in 1963, King had transformed this understanding into action. When police commissioner Eugene “Bull” Connor violently quelled the protests by turning fire hoses on young protesters, King channelled his private anguish over their safety into a powerful moral witness: his emotional public speeches helped expose the brutality to the wider American public.

The images of young Black protesters, including children, being pummeled by high-pressure fire hoses shocked the nation precisely because they revealed what King had learned: that there is an intimate link between personal sacrifice and collective liberation.

Beyond legal victories

In 1954, a decade before the Civil Rights Act was passed, the US Supreme Court ruling in the case of Brown vs Board of Education declared segregation in schools unconstitutional. Yet, the practice persisted stubbornly in American life. Even in 1963, when King had already become the country’s most prominent civil rights leader, his own son was denied admission to a private Atlanta school. It was a painful reminder that legal victories alone do not transform societies and that court decisions must be matched by changes in hearts and institutions.

The strength of the Civil Rights movement, thus, was in combining legal challenges with direct action. While lawyers fought in courts, activists staged counter sit-ins. As cases moved through the Supreme Court, communities organised boycotts. This dual strategy, transforming both laws and societal norms, is essential for contemporary movements.

Today, India witnesses several movements for fundamental rights, such as the right for equal housing and the right to clean air. King’s approach is a reminder that lasting change requires strong legal frameworks and sustained public movements. Constitutional guarantees find their full meaning only when they are coupled with grassroots activism that transforms public consciousness.

Schoolchildren and students demonstrate in the streets of Birmingham, Alabama, in May 1963, during a civil disobedience campaign to protest against racial segregation. Credit: AFP.

Promised land as practice

Cultural writer Byung Chul-Han calls politeness an “as-if” ritual: an active choice that elevates the social sphere – for instance, when we bow to an opponent even when we feel no deference, we are participating in a ritual that transcends our immediate feelings and reinforces social bonds. Similarly, King’s nonviolence can be seen as elevating the political sphere, from mere power struggles to moral confrontation. His nonviolent methods manifested as resistance against arbitrary power and a fierce aspiration for justice.

King’s nonviolent resistance was in stark contrast to the methods of his opponents: police commissioner Eugene Connor unleashed dogs and fire hoses on young protesters, including children, in Birmingham; police chief Laurie Pritchett weaponised arrests to break up protests in Albany; Federal Bureau of Investigation chief J Edgar Hoover put King under surveillance and tried to discredit the civil rights leader.

King responded with a politics of dignified resistance: against brutality, he chose moral force. Against coercion, he demonstrated the power of conscience.

In Memphis on April 3, 1968, a day before he was assassinated, King spoke of a promised land. Looking back at King’s life suggests that the promised land was not merely a destination but a way of being, a commitment to elevating politics above the profane struggles for power. To stay on the path of truth, to resist violence with nonviolence, to meet hatred with love, itself becomes the promised land.

As India marks its 75th republic day this month, caste-based violence persists as do other issues that King fought against: poverty, militarism and economic inequality.

Every day is a reminder that the promised land remains elusive. Yet, King’s life, alongside the activism and endeavours of contemporaries such as James Baldwin, Lorraine Hansberry, and Medgar Evers, are a lesson that the moment for action is always now. The light at the end of the tunnel may remain out of our reach, but perhaps we can find our way to its glimmers and reflections. King is long-gone, yet his call to conscience rings clear across time and space, an intimation of things to come.

Anshul Rai Sharma is an urban researcher, his work engages with urban policy, law and sustainability.