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From: rkoch@banmlkday.com

Review of The Martin Luther King. Jr., Plagiarism Story,
edited by Theodore Pappas, (Rockford, Illinois: The
Rockford Institute, 1994) 107 pages.
By T.E. Wilder
Contra Mundum, No. 11, Spring 1994

The fact that with our student body largely Southern in
constitution a colored
man should be elected to and be popular [in] such a position is
in itself no
mean recommendation. The comparatively small number of forward-
looking
and thoroughly trained negro leaders is, as I am sure you will
agree, still so
small that it is more than an even chance that one as adequately
trained as
King will find ample opportunity for useful service. He is
entirely free from
those somewhat annoying qualities which some men of his race
acquire when
they find themselves in the distinct higher percent of their
group.

The extract is from the letter of recommendation for Martin
Luther King which Crozer
Theological Seminary professor Morton Enslin wrote to Boston
University. (p. 87) As
one liberal to another, Enslin wanted to make clear that King
was their kind of negro. In it
we find the most significant key to understanding King's pre-
and post-mortem careers.
He was the liberals' boy.

This book is a collection of essays, letters and documents, most
of which appeared at
various times in Chronicles. The writers include the editor (of
both Chronicles and this
book), Theodore Pappas; journalist Frank Johnson of the London
Sunday Telegraph ;

Thomas Flemming; Jon Westling, Walter G. Muelder, and Peter Wood
of Boston
University; Peter Waldman of the Wall Street Journal; Charles
Babington (writing in The
New Republic); with a foreword by Jacob Neusner. The last, while
writing some of the
bluntest comments condemning the unprincipled publishing
industry and hypocritical
academy, is still typical of our time in his inability to come
to terms with actualities of
King's character and career. He speaks of “the authentic
achievements of Martin Luther
King, Jr.” and “the glories of his brief courageous life.” (p.
19)

What this book makes clear is that King, who came from a family
of shysters turned
preachers, began cheating, plagiarizing and otherwise lying when
in high school and
never gave it up. Lacking the aptitude for serious scholarly
work, in his passage through
various liberal schools, particularly theological seminary and
graduate school, he
expressed a devotion to the various icons of apostate theology
and socialist thought, and
the professors accounted this unto him for righteousness. There
were, as Enslin put it, few
“forward-looking and thoroughly trained negro leaders” (i.e.
churchmen processed and
accredited by apostate seminaries) and King showed that he knew
how to take direction
and fit into liberal circles. He was a man they could use.

It is easy to see the liberals' problem. While the black church
then was as replete with
scoundrels as it is today, they did not see liberal theology and
agitation as the basis for
their careers. As a result, the great mass of blacks in the
South were a barrier to the
liberals' social plans. Nor were there many leaders in the black
churches liberals could
use. (This has since been remedied, mainly by the enviable fame
and success of King and
his methods, but partly though lowering of academic standards to
augment the army of
properly indoctrinated and certified blacks). Men like King
could (and did, the liberals
were right) give the black churches a new direction, converting
them from obstacles to
liberal assets.

There are two things to be gained from reading this short book
for yourself. The first is an
appreciation of the massive scope of King's plagiarism, which
was certainly known in his
day. (The press did not think it would help the cause to report
it.) Presumably the
segregationists, since they did not capitalize on King's many
plagiarisms, were simply too
ignorant to recognize them.1

For it is not only in his dissertation that King plagiarized. He
did so as an undergraduate
in Morehouse College, and throughout his seven years of graduate
study, particularly in
papers in his major field, theology. King may simply have lacked
the talent to succeed

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