As we near the anniversary of the birthday of Martin Luther King, Jr. on January 15, I was reminded once again of what I share with the civil rights giant. We share January 15- his day of birth and my wedding anniversary, and both of us were graduate students at Boston University, he in theology in the 1950s and me in education two decades later. Those are flimsy connections, to be sure, but I realized a sturdier connection to King through a most unlikely man- William Bennett- while writing my first book. (Bennett also shares a Boston University connection.)
It is no secret that Bennett is one of my
intellectual heroes. Born in the Bronx
during World War II, he was a “street-wise” kid. His father abandoned the
family and his mother took him and his older brother Robert to Washington DC to
live. After graduating high school, Bennett went on to Williams College to
study philosophy and play football as an offensive lineman. Robert had to
convince him not to join the radical SDS organization during his college days.
Bennett
then studied political philosophy at the University of Texas receiving his PhD
under the mentorship of John Silber. After teaching at the University of Southern
Mississippi for a year, he enrolled at Harvard Law School. He then worked as Silber’s
assistant for several years when Silber was appointed president of Boston
University. Bennett went on to hold several high government jobs including Secretary
of Education and Drug Czar before becoming a prominent conservative public
intellectual. He is known as a feisty, combative advocate for his causes.
In
contrast, King was a “preacher’s kid” with all the privileges and responsibilities
associated with that position, especially when his father was “Daddy King,” one
of the most prominent black Baptist ministers not only in Atlanta, but
throughout the South. King entered Morehouse College, one of the HBCU schools,
and then he headed north first to Crozier Theological Seminary and then to
Boston to further study theology at BU.
After
Boston, King was a pastor in Montgomery, Alabama when the bus boycott began. He
was selected by other black leaders in the city to be their leader in the boycott
and what began in Montgomery grew to become the Civil Rights Movement with King
becoming the most prominent leader because of his leadership and oratory skills.
King’s assassination in Memphis in April
1968 did not end his influence through the spread of his ideals of racial
justice and equality. Although Bennett never met King in person, he engaged
with those ideals perhaps first as a PhD student in political philosophy at
Texas. This meeting of ideals produced surprising results. Bennett’s subsequent
writings and public speeches reveal a deep and consistent admiration for
King—an admiration rooted not in political convenience but in Bennett’s
conviction that King embodied the highest ideals of the American democratic
tradition. Thus, King emerges, in Bennett’s estimation, to be an heir of the
Western canon.
In 1984, as chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities, Bennett released To Reclaim a Legacy, a widely circulated report lamenting the erosion of Western civilization in the undergraduate curriculum. The report famously included a list of works that, in Bennett’s view, “virtually define the development of the Western mind.” Among the expected names—Plato, Augustine, Shakespeare, Madison—Bennett placed two works by Martin Luther King Jr.: the “Letter from Birmingham Jail” and the “I Have a Dream” speech. King was the only twentieth‑century American besides William Faulkner to appear on the list.
For
Bennett, King is not a figure of protest alone but a figure of
inheritance—someone who drew deeply from the well of Western moral philosophy
and Christian theology and returned those resources to the nation with renewed
force.
Bennett’s
later writings reinforce this conviction. In Our Children and Our Country
(1988), a collection of speeches from his tenure as Secretary of Education,
Bennett repeatedly invokes King as one of the “towering figures” of American
history, placing him alongside Washington and Lincoln as the greatest champions
of the American Dream in their respective centuries. This is not casual praise.
Bennett is making a claim about the continuity of American moral leadership:
Washington articulated the principles, Lincoln preserved them, and King renewed
them.
Bennett’s
affinity for King is grounded in shared moral commitments. Though their
political temperaments differed, both men were animated by a vision of human
dignity. King’s commitment to nonviolence was not merely tactical but moral. It
required discipline, self‑control, and the cultivation of virtues such as
courage, patience, and love. Bennett’s lifelong project—articulated in works
like The Book of Virtues—is the recovery of precisely these qualities.
He sees in King a model of moral formation: a man who embodied the virtues he
preached.
King’s
vision of the Beloved Community—a society rooted in justice, love, and the
eradication of racism, poverty, and militarism—was both prophetic and deeply
American. Bennett, though more cautious about structural critiques, shares
King’s belief that America is a moral project requiring continual renewal.
Both
men reject cynicism. Both believe that America’s founding ideals are noble and
that the nation must strive to embody them more fully. Bennett sees King as the
figure who most powerfully re‑articulated the American creed in the twentieth
century
King’s
nonviolence demanded the ability to suffer without retaliation, to love one’s
enemies, and to remain steadfast in the pursuit of justice. Bennett repeatedly
highlights these qualities, presenting King as a paragon of moral seriousness
in an age of relativism.
Bennett’s
inclusion of King in the Western canon is part of his broader critique of
academic fragmentation. He argues that students need exposure to works that
shape the moral imagination, and King’s writings—especially the “Letter from
Birmingham Jail”—are exemplary in this regard. They combine theological depth,
philosophical rigor, and historical insight. For Bennett, King’s writings teach
students how to reason morally, how to argue from principle, and how to
integrate faith, ethics, and public life.
Finally, Bennett sees King as a model of civic courage. King confronted injustice without hatred, combined prophetic critique with patriotic hope, and called the nation to live up to its founding ideals. Bennett repeatedly emphasizes that King’s greatness lies not only in what he opposed but in what he affirmed: the dignity of all people, the promise of America to all people, regardless of skin color.
King’s
vision of the Beloved Community, his commitment to nonviolence, and his
insistence on human dignity resonate deeply with Bennett’s own intellectual
commitments. For Bennett, King is not merely a historical figure but a
teacher—a man whose words and life illuminate the path toward a more just,
virtuous, and unified society.
In
elevating King within the canon, Bennett is making a claim about the nature of
American civilization: that its greatest voices are those who call the nation
back to its highest ideals. King, in Bennett’s view, is one of those voices—a
prophet of justice whose legacy belongs not only to the civil rights movement
but to the enduring moral tradition of the West.
King
and Bennett’s “meeting of the minds” demonstrates that good things can occur when
people of good faith come together to share their ideals. Across barriers of
race, religion (Bennett is Catholic), and politics, King spoke and Bennett
listened, and our nation is better off because of this unlikely duo.
[1] King was born Michael King, Jr. During a trip to Europe “Daddy” King became so impressed with Martin Luther upon his return to Atlanta he legally changed their names to honor the great church reformer. Nevertheless, his friends still referred to him as “Mike” throughout his life.