The 50th Law (with 50 Cent)

13
Advance with a Sense of Purpose
The Law of Aimlessness
nlike animals, with their instincts to guide them past dangers, we
humans have to rely upon our conscious decisions. We do the
best we can when it comes to our career path and handling the
inevitable setbacks in life. But in the back of our minds we can sense
an overall lack of direction, as we are pulled this way and that way
by our moods and by the opinions of others. How did we end up in
this job, in this place? Such drifting can lead to dead ends. The way to
avoid such a fate is to develop a sense of purpose, discovering our
calling in life and using such knowledge to guide us in our decisions.
We come to know ourselves more deeply—our tastes and inclinations.
We trust ourselves, knowing which battles and detours to avoid. Even
our moments of doubt, even our failures have a purpose—to toughen
us up. With such energy and direction, our actions have unstoppable
force.
The Voice
Growing up in a staunchly middle-class black neighborhood in Atlanta,
Georgia, Martin Luther King Jr. (1929–1968) had a pleasant and
carefree childhood. His father, Martin Sr., was the pastor of the large
and thriving Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, so the Kings were
relatively well off. His parents were loving and devoted to their
children. Home life was stable and comfortable and included
Grandmother King, who doted on young Martin Jr. He had a wide
circle of friends. The few encounters he had with racism outside the
neighborhood marred this idyllic childhood but left him relatively
unscathed. Martin Jr., however, was exceptionally sensitive to the

---

feelings of those around him. And as he got older, he sensed something
from his father that began to trigger some inner tension and
discomfort.
His father was a strict disciplinarian who set solid boundaries of
behavior for the three King children. When Martin Jr. misbehaved in
any way, his father whipped him, telling the boy this was the only way
to turn him into a real man. The whippings continued until he was
fifteen. Once his father caught Martin Jr. at a church social dancing
with a girl, and his scolding of the boy in front of his friends was so
vehement, Martin Jr. strove to never repeat the experience by causing
his father’s displeasure. But none of this discipline came with the
slightest hint of hostility. Martin Sr.’s affection for his son was too real
and palpable for the boy to feel anything but guilt for disappointing
him.
And such feelings of guilt were all the more stressful for Martin Jr.
because of the high hopes the father placed on his son. As a boy,
Martin Jr. displayed an unusual way with words; he could talk his
friends into almost anything, and his eloquence was quite precocious.
He was certainly bright. A plan formed in Martin Sr.’s mind that his
elder son would follow in his father’s footsteps—attending Morehouse
College in Atlanta, becoming ordained as a minister, serving as
copastor at Ebenezer, and then eventually inheriting the father’s
position, just as Martin Sr. had inherited it from his father-in-law.
Sometimes the father shared this plan, but more than anything else
the boy could feel the weight of his father’s expectations in the prideful
way he looked at him and treated him. And it made him anxious. He
deeply admired his father—he was a man of very high principle. But
Martin Jr. could not avoid sensing the growing differences between
them in taste and temperament. The son was more easygoing. He
loved attending parties, wearing nice clothes, dating girls, and dancing.
As he got older, he developed a pronounced serious and introspective
side and was drawn to books and learning. It was almost as if there
were two people inside of him—one social, the other solitary and
reflective. His father, on the other hand, was not complicated at all.
When it came to religion, Martin Jr. had his doubts. His father’s
faith was strong but simple. He was a fundamentalist who believed in a
literal interpretation of the Bible. His sermons were aimed at the
emotions of his parishioners, and they responded in kind. Martin Jr.,

---

on the other hand, had a cool temperament. He was rational and
practical. His father seemed more concerned with helping people in
the afterlife, whereas the son was more interested in life on earth and
how it could be improved and enjoyed.
The thought of becoming a minister intensified these inner
conflicts. At times he could imagine himself following his father’s
career path. As someone deeply sensitive to any form of suffering or
injustice, serving as a minister could be the perfect way to channel his
desire to help people. But could he be a minister with such tenuous
religious faith? He hated any kind of confrontation with his father,
with whom it was impossible to argue. He developed the strategy of
always saying yes to whatever his father said. His way of dealing with
the tension inside him was to postpone any decision that might cause a
rift. And so, when he graduated from high school at the age of fifteen,
he decided to attend Morehouse, delighting his father. But in his mind
he had a plan—he would study everything that interested him and
decide on his own the path he would take.
In the first few months he thought of a career in medicine, then
sociology, then law. He kept changing his mind about a major, excited
by all the subjects now open to him. He took a class in Bible studies,
and he was pleasantly surprised at the profound, earthy wisdom in the
book. There were professors at Morehouse who approached
Christianity from a very intellectual angle, and he found this quite
appealing. By his last year at Morehouse he had changed his mind yet
again: he would become ordained as a minister, and he would enroll at
Crozer Theological Seminary, located in Pennsylvania, for a divinity
degree. Now his father was quite ecstatic. He understood it was best to
let Martin Jr. explore religion on his own, as long as he ended up at
Ebenezer.
At Crozer, Martin Jr. discovered a whole other side to Christianity,
one that emphasized social commitment and political activism. He
read all of the major philosophers, devoured the works of Karl Marx,
and became fascinated with the story of Mahatma Gandhi. Finding the
life of an academic a pleasant one, he decided to continue his studies at
Boston University, where he gained a reputation among his professors
as a brilliant scholar in the making. But as he prepared to graduate in
1954 from Boston University with a PhD in systematic theology, he
could no longer postpone the inevitable. His father had lined up for
him an irresistible offer—a position as copastor at Ebenezer and a part-

---

time teaching position at Morehouse, where he could continue the
academic studies he loved.
Martin had recently married, and his wife, Coretta, wanted them to
stay in the North, where life would be easier than in the troubled
South. He could get a teaching job at almost any university he wanted.
It was tempting to fall for either option—Ebenezer or teaching at a
northern university. They would certainly lead to a comfortable life.
In the past few months, however, he had had a different vision of
his future. He could not rationally explain where this came from, but it
was clear to him: He would return to the South, where he felt a primal
connection to his roots. He would become the minister of a large
congregation in a good-sized city, a place where he could help people,
serve the community, and make a practical difference. But it would not
be in Atlanta, as his father had planned. He was not destined to be a
professor or merely a preacher molded by his father. He would have to
resist the easy path. And this vision had become too strong for him to
deny it any longer—he would have to displease his father, breaking the
news as gently as possible.
Several months before graduating, he heard of an opening at Dexter
Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama. He visited the
church and gave a sermon there, impressing the church’s leaders. He
found the congregation at Dexter more solemn and thoughtful than at
Ebenezer, which suited his own temperament. Coretta tried to
dissuade him from such a choice. She had grown up not far from
Montgomery, and she knew how fiercely segregated the city was, and
the many ugly tensions below the surface. Martin would encounter
there a virulent racism he had never experienced in his relatively
sheltered life. To Martin Sr., Dexter and Montgomery spelled trouble.
He added his voice to Coretta’s. But when Dexter offered Martin Jr. the
job, he did not experience his usual ambivalence and need to think
things over. For some reason, he felt certain about the choice; it
seemed fateful and right.
Established at Dexter, Martin Jr. worked hard at imposing his
authority (he knew he looked a bit too young for the position). He
devoted a great deal of time and effort to his sermons. Preaching
became his passion, and he soon gained a reputation as the most
formidable preacher in the area. But unlike many other pastors, his
sermons were full of ideas, inspired by all of the books he had read. He

---

managed to make these ideas relevant to the day-to-day lives of his
congregation. The key theme he had begun to develop was the power of
love to transform people, a power that was desperately underused in
the world and that blacks would have to adopt in relation to their white
oppressors in order to change things.
He became active in the local chapter of the NAACP, but when he
was offered the position of president of the chapter, he turned it down.
Coretta had just given birth to their first child, and his responsibilities
as a father and as a minister were great enough. He would remain very
active in local politics, but his duty was to his church and family. He
reveled in the simple and satisfying life he was now leading. His
congregation adored him.
In early December of 1955, Dr. King (as he was now known)
watched with great interest as a protest movement began to take shape
in Montgomery. An older black woman named Rosa Parks had refused
to give up her seat on the bus to a white man, as prescribed by the local
law for segregated buses. Parks, an active member of the local NAACP
chapter, had spent years fuming at this treatment of black people and
at the abusive behavior of bus drivers. Finally she had had enough. For
her defiance of the law she was arrested. This served as a catalyst for
activists in Montgomery, and they decided upon a one-day boycott of
Montgomery buses to show their solidarity. Soon the boycott stretched
into a week, then several weeks as organizers managed to create a
substitute system of transportation. One of the organizers of the
boycott, E. D. Nixon, asked King to take a leading role in the
movement, but he was reluctant. He had so little time to spare from his
congregation work. He would do what he could to lend his support.
As the boycott gained momentum, it became clear to its leaders that
the local chapter of the NAACP was not big enough to handle it. They
decided they would form a new organization, to be called the
Montgomery Improvement Association. Because of his youth, his
eloquence, and what seemed to be his natural leadership skills, at a
local town meeting those who had formed the MIA nominated King to
be its president. It was an offer they half expected him to refuse—they
knew of his past hesitations. King, however, could feel the energy in
the room and their faith in him. Without his usual careful
premeditation, he suddenly decided to accept.

---

As the boycott continued, the white administrators who controlled
the city became increasingly adamant in their refusal to end the
segregated practices on the city’s buses. The tension was escalating—
several blacks involved in the boycott movement had been shot at and
assaulted. In the speeches he now delivered to large crowds at the MIA
meetings, King developed his theme of nonviolent resistance, invoking
the name of Gandhi. They would defeat the other side through peaceful
protests and justified boycotts; they would take the campaign further,
aiming at complete integration in Montgomery’s public places. Now
the local authorities saw King as a dangerous man, an interloper from
outside the state. They initiated a whispering campaign, inventing all
sorts of rumors to be spread about King’s youthful indiscretions,
insinuating he was a communist.
Almost every night he received phone calls threatening his life and
that of his family, and such threats were not to be taken lightly in
Montgomery. A normally reserved man, he did not like all of the
attention from the press, which had now become national. There was
so much bickering within the MIA leadership, and the whites in power
were so devilishly tricky. It was all so much more than he had
bargained for when he had decided to become the MIA leader.
Several weeks after assuming the leadership position, King was
arrested while driving, ostensibly for speeding, and placed in a cell full
of the most hardened criminals. Once bail was posted, a trial was set
for two days later, and who could guess what trumped up charges they
might come up with? The night before his trial he received yet another
phone call: “Nigger, we are tired of you and your mess now. And if you
aren’t out of this town in three days we’re going to blow your brains
out, and blow up your house.” Something in the tone of the caller’s
voice sent chills down his spine—this seemed more than just a threat.
He tried to sleep that night but couldn’t, the man’s voice on the
phone call replaying in his mind. He went into the kitchen to make
some coffee and calm himself down. He was shaking. He was losing his
nerve and his confidence. Couldn’t he just find a way to gracefully bow
out of his leadership position and return to the comfortable life of
being just a minister? As he examined himself and contemplated his
past, he realized that up until these weeks he had never really known
true adversity. His life had been relatively easy and happy. His parents
had given him everything. He had not known what it was like to feel
such intense anxiety.

---

And as he went deeper with these thoughts, he realized that he had
simply inherited religion from his father. He had never personally
communicated with God or felt His presence from within. He thought
of his newborn daughter and the wife he loved. He couldn’t take much
more of this. He couldn’t call his father for advice or solace—it was well
past midnight. He felt a wave of panic.
Suddenly it came to him—there was only one way out of this crisis.
He bowed over the cup of coffee and prayed with a sense of urgency he
had never felt before: “Lord, I must confess that I’m weak now. I’m
faltering. I’m losing my courage. And I can’t let the people see me like
this, because if they see me weak and losing my courage, they will
begin to get weak.” At that moment, clear as could be, he heard a voice
from within: “Martin Luther, stand up for righteousness. Stand up for
justice. Stand up for truth. And lo, I will be with you, even until the end
of the world.” The voice—that of the Lord, he felt sure—promised to
never leave him, to come back to him when he needed it. Almost
immediately he felt a sense of tremendous relief, the burden of his
doubts and anxiety lifted from his shoulders. He could not help but
cry.
Several nights later, while King was attending an MIA meeting, his
house was bombed. By sheer luck, his wife and daughter were
unharmed. When informed of what had happened, he remained calm.
He felt that nothing could rattle him now. Addressing an angry crowd
of black supporters who had congregated outside his home, he said,
“We are not advocating violence. We want to love our enemies. I want
you to love our enemies. Be good to them. Love them and let them
know you love them.” After the bombing, his father pleaded with him
to return with his family to Atlanta, but with Coretta’s support, he
refused to leave.
Over the following months there would be many challenges as he
struggled to keep the boycott alive and maintain the pressure on the
local government. Finally, toward the end of 1956, the Supreme Court
affirmed a lower court decision ending bus segregation in
Montgomery. On the morning of December 18, King was the first
passenger to board the bus and sit wherever he liked. It was a great
victory.
Now came national attention and fame, and with it endless new
problems and headaches. The death threats continued. The older black

---

leaders in the MIA and the NAACP came to resent the attention he now
received. The infighting and the clash of egos became almost
intolerable. King decided to start a new organization, to be called the
Southern Christian Leadership Conference, its purpose to take the
movement beyond Montgomery. For King, however, the infighting and
envy only followed him.
In 1959 he returned to his hometown to serve as copastor at
Ebenezer and to lead various SCLC campaigns from the headquarters
in Atlanta. For some in the movement he was too charismatic, too
domineering, and his campaigns too ambitious; for others he was too
weak, too willing to compromise with white authorities. The criticism
from both sides was relentless. But what added most of all to King’s
burdens was the slippery and infuriating tactics of the whites in power,
who had no intention of accepting any substantial changes in
segregation laws or in practices that discouraged blacks from
registering to vote. They negotiated with King and agreed to
compromises, then as soon as the boycotts and sit-ins stopped, they
found all kinds of loopholes in the agreements and backtracked.
In one campaign King led in Albany, Georgia, to desegregate the
city, the mayor and police chief made a show of exaggerated calmness,
making it seem as if King and the SCLC were the unreasonable group,
just stirring up trouble from the outside.
The campaign in Albany was largely a failure, and it left King
depressed and exhausted. It was now the pattern in his life that in such
moments he yearned for the simpler, easier days of the past—his happy
childhood, his pleasant years at the university, the first year and a half
at Dexter. Perhaps he should retire from the leadership role and devote
his time to preaching, writing, and lecturing. Such thoughts tugged
him at him with greater frequency.
Then, toward the end of 1962, he received yet another request for
his services: Fred Shuttlesworth, one of the leading black activists in
Birmingham, Alabama, begged King and the SCLC to help him in his
efforts to desegregate stores in the downtown area. Birmingham was
one of the most fiercely segregated cities in the country. Rather than
comply with federal laws to desegregate public places, such as
swimming pools, they merely closed them down. Any form of protest
against the segregation practices was met with powerful violence and
terrorism. The city had come to be known as “Bombingham.” And

---

overseeing this bastion of the segregated South was the police chief,
Bull Connor, who seemed to relish the chance to use force—whips,
attack dogs, high-pressure fire hoses, billy clubs.
This would certainly be the most dangerous campaign so far.
Everything inside King leaned toward turning it down. The old doubts
and fears returned to him. What if people were killed, and the violence
touched him and his family? What if he failed? He suffered more
sleepless nights as he agonized over this.
Then the voice from seven years before returned to him, as loud and
clear as ever: he had been tasked to stand up for justice, not to think of
himself but to think of the mission. How foolish to be afraid again. Yes,
it was his mission to go to Birmingham. But as he mulled this over, he
could not help thinking more deeply about what the voice had told
him. Standing up for justice meant bringing it about in some real and
practical way, not talking or settling for useless compromises. His fears
of disappointing people and failing had made him too cautious. He
would have to be more strategic and more courageous this time. He
would have to raise the stakes and he would have to win. No more fears
or doubts.
He accepted Shuttlesworth’s offer, and as he planned the campaign
with his team, he made it clear to them they would need to learn from
past mistakes. King laid out to them the nature of the predicament
they faced. The Kennedy administration had proven to be incredibly
cautious when it came to civil rights. The president feared alienating
congressional southern Democrats, upon whom he depended. He
would make great promises but keep dragging his feet.
What they needed to do in Birmingham was to provoke a national
crisis, one that was bloody and ugly. The racism and segregation in the
South were largely invisible to moderate whites. Birmingham seemed
like just another sleepy southern town. Their goal must be to make the
racism so visible to the whites watching television that it would strike
their consciences, and with a growing sense of outrage, pressure would
be placed on the Kennedy administration that it could no longer resist.
Most of all, King was counting on the cooperation of Bull Connor in his
plans—his overreaction to the intensity of their campaign would be the
key to the whole drama they were hoping to enact.
In April 1963 King and his team put their plan into action. They
attacked on multiple fronts with sit-ins and demonstrations. Although

---

reluctant because of his fear of jails, King got himself arrested. This
would garner more publicity and stir the local population to emulate
him. But the campaign had a fatal weakness that became apparent only
as it evolved: local black support for the movement was tepid. Many
blacks in Birmingham resented Shuttlesworth’s autocratic style; others
reasonably feared the violence Connor would unleash. King depended
on large and boisterous crowds, but what he got was far from that. The
national press, not smelling a story, started to leave.
Then one of the leaders on his team, James Bevel, had an idea—they
would enlist the participation of students in local schools. King had his
fears and argued they should not bring in anyone under the age of
fourteen, but Bevel reminded him of the high stakes and the need for
numbers, and King relented. Many of those inside the organization and
sympathizers were shocked that King could be so pragmatic and
strategic in using such young people, but the campaign had a higher
purpose, and it was no time to be so delicate.
The students responded with great enthusiasm. It was just what the
movement needed. They filled the streets of Birmingham, more daring
and boisterous than their parents. Soon they were filling up the jails.
The press returned en masse. Out came the high-pressure fire hoses,
the attack dogs, and the night sticks, striking teenagers and even
children. Soon television screens around America were broadcasting
the tense, dramatic, and bloody scenes that ensued. Enormous crowds
now showed up for King’s speeches, drumming up support for the
cause. Federal authorities were forced to intervene to lessen the
tension.
King had learned his lesson from before—he had to keep up the
pressure to the very end. Representatives of the white power structure
reluctantly opened negotiations with King. At the same time, he
sanctioned the demonstrators to continue their downtown marches,
coming from all directions and stretching Connor’s police force to the
breaking point. Frightened local merchants had had enough and asked
the white negotiators to work on a comprehensive settlement with the
black leaders, essentially desegregating the downtown stores and
agreeing to the hiring of black employees.
It was his greatest triumph so far; he had realized his ambitious
goal. It did not matter now if the white authorities backtracked, as they
inevitably would; Kennedy was caught in the trap, his own conscience

---

pricked by what he had seen in Birmingham. Shortly after the
settlement, he addressed the nation on television, explaining the need
for immediate progress in civil rights and proposing some ambitious
new laws. This led to the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which paved the way
for the Voting Rights Act of 1965. It made King the undisputed leader
of the civil rights movement, and soon a winner of the Nobel Peace
Prize. Money now poured into the SCLC, and the movement seemed to
have ineluctable momentum. But as before, the troubles and burdens
for King only seemed to increase with each new victory.
In the years following Birmingham he sensed a powerful reaction
forming among conservatives and Republicans against the gains of the
movement. They would work to halt further progress. He learned that
the FBI had placed listening devices in his hotel rooms and had spied
on him for years; they were now leaking stories and rumors to various
newspapers. He watched as America descended into cycles of violence,
starting with the assassination of Kennedy.
He saw a new generation of black activists emerge under the banner
of Black Power, and they criticized his adherence to nonviolence as
weak and antiquated. When King moved the campaign to Chicago to
try to stop discriminatory housing practices there, he brokered a
settlement with local authorities, but black activists around the country
harshly criticized him—he had settled for far too little. Shortly after
this, an audience at a Chicago Baptist church loudly booed him,
drowning out his talk with chants of “Black Power.”
He grew depressed and despondent. In early 1965, he saw images of
the Vietnam War in a magazine, and it sickened him. Something was
deeply wrong with America. That summer he toured the Watts
neighborhood in Los Angeles after the violent riots that had scorched
the area. The sight of so much poverty and devastation overwhelmed
him. Here in the heart of one of the most affluent cities in America, the
center of the fantasy industry, was an enormous neighborhood where
large numbers of people lived in poverty and felt no hope for the
future. And they were largely invisible. America had a cancer in its
system—extreme inequalities in wealth, and the willingness to spend
vast sums of money on an absurd war, while blacks in inner cities were
left to rot and riot.
His depression now mixed with growing anger. In his conversations
with friends, people noticed a new edge to him. In one retreat with his

---

staff, he said, “All too many people have seen power and love as polar
opposites. . . . [But] the two fulfill each other. Power without love is
reckless, and love without power is sentimental.” At another retreat, he
talked of new tactics. He would never abandon nonviolence as the
means, but the civil disobedience campaign would have to be altered
and intensified. “Nonviolence must mature to a new level . . . mass civil
disobedience. There must be more than a statement to the larger
society, there must be a force that interrupts its functioning at some
key point.” The movement was not about integrating blacks into the
values of American society but about actively altering those values at
their root.
He would add to the civil rights movement the need to address
poverty in inner cities and to protest the Vietnam War. On April 4,
1967, he expressed this widening of the struggle in a speech that got
lots of attention, almost all negative. Even his most ardent supporters
criticized it. Including the Vietnam War would only alienate the public
from the cause of civil rights, they said. It would anger the Johnson
administration, whose support they depended upon. It was not part of
his mandate to speak so broadly.
He had never felt so alone, so attacked by his many critics. By early
1968 his depression had become deeper than ever. He felt the end was
near—some among his many enemies were going to kill him for all that
he had said and done. He was exhausted by the tension and felt
spiritually at a loss. In March of that year, a pastor in Memphis,
Tennessee, invited King to his city, hoping he could help support a
strike by black sanitation workers, who had been treated horribly.
There had been marches, boycotts, and protests, and the police had
responded brutally. The situation was explosive. King put them off—he
felt depleted. But as so often happened in these circumstances, he
realized it was his duty to do what he could, and so he agreed. On
March 18 he addressed an enormous crowd in Memphis, and their
enthusiastic response cheered him up. He heard that voice once again
supporting and urging him forward. Memphis would have to be a key