Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. is again in the international news headlines, also here in Venezuela. Recently, on January 30, at the 2005 edition of the World Social Forum in Porto Alegre, Brazil, Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez Frías hailed the United States of America, as " ... as a country of heroes, dreamers, and fighters, the people of Martin Luther King, ... ."

But, who was King really, what was his political, social philosophy all about? In our revolutionary struggles, what can we learn from him? Did he form part of a special type of American "theology of liberation" underlined with Gandhist non-violence and civil disobedience touches? Is such a liberatory policy still valid today in the epoch of world fascism in the making, in the aggressive attacks of the USA against Venezuela and Latin America?

Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. is again in the international news headlines, also here in Venezuela. Recently, on January 30, at the 2005 edition of the World Social Forum in Porto Alegre, Brazil, Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez Frías hailed the United States of America, as " ... as a country of heroes, dreamers, and fighters, the people of Martin Luther King, ... ."

But, who was King really, what was his political, social philosophy all about? In our revolutionary struggles, what can we learn from him? Did he form part of a special type of American "theology of liberation" underlined with Gandhist non-violence and civil disobedience touches? Is such a liberatory policy still valid today in the epoch of world fascism in the making, in the aggressive attacks of the USA against Venezuela and Latin America?

For those in Venezuela, even in the USA itself, and elsewhere, who know very little about Martin Luther King, Jr. (January 15, 1929 – April 4, 1968), about his life and political struggles, critically, we will summarize here some biographical data concerning his liberatory political endeavors. In the 60's, during the epoch of anti-imperialist demonstrations against the War in Vietnam and against social discrimination, against racism and apartheid in the USA and on a global scale, King was an international icon adored by many liberals, democrats and revolutionaries across the planet.

Certainly, King has his rightful place in the historical freedom struggles of America, and we honor him for all his humanist, peace-loving contributions towards a happy future for humanity. As Christian minister, he tried to stop the North American homo homini lupus, with human warmth, with benevolent prayers, even by genuflecting in front of the Yankee lords, overlords and warlords. He did his utmost best, and we did not expect him to have done less. He terminated an epoch of non-violent liberation, and ushered in the era of modern emancipatory self-defense.

However, the fact that he did not and could not study profoundly and scientifically global political economy, revolutionary philosophy, permanent world revolution, class consciousness, class struggles, capitalism, colonialism and imperialism, does not mean that we must do likewise, must commit the same fatal errors, and hence become blinded with pacifist, reformist daily actions and become blind-folded with idealist, ossified world views and absolute truths.

In the case of King, once more, concrete, capitalist, historical reality has confirmed that the noble, humane, political experiment of Gandhism simply has no revolutionary future in modern globalization, not in Venezuela, not in India, not even in the USA itself.

King was born in Atlanta, Georgia. and his parents were: Alberta Williams King and Martin Luther King, Sr., by profession a minister. At the age of fifteen he enrolled at Morehouse College, where he graduated in 1948 with a bachelor's degree in Sociology. Later studying at the Crozer Theological Seminary in Chester, Pennsylvania, he became acquainted with Gandhi's nonviolent philosophy; there he acquired the bachelor's degree in Divinity, in 1951. At Boston University, he studied Systematic Theology, and received his Ph.D. in 1955.

Since 1955, his real political struggle against Apartheid segregation in the USA began with the famous Montgomery bus boycott, when King and other ministers founded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), that organized civil rights protests throughout the South.

When he was attacked the US State did not defend him, on the contrary, in spite of his Gandhist nonviolent protests, King received numerous violent threats from rightist, radical, terrorist groups. In fact, his very home was once bombed. In 1960, when the international radical student movements were born, King himself participated in non-violent peaceful student "sit-in" demonstrations. In October, 1960 he was arrested and sentenced to prison. After nationwide protests, eventually the presidential candidate John F. Kennedy intervened, and King was released from prison.

On August 28, 1963, a huge "March on Washington D. C. for Jobs and Freedom" was organized, and at the Lincoln Memorial, King gave his famous “I have a dream