When Peace Becomes Obnoxious

Getty Image, Stephen Maturen

Maria J. Stephan April 19, 2021, Waging Non-Violence

Amid Chauvin trial and more police killings, calls for ‘peaceful’ protests sound obnoxious. But as Martin Luther King Jr. preached, we must reject peace that prioritizes calm over justice — and work toward building a positive peace instead. Maria J. Stephan explores the options.

In his March 1956 sermon “When Peace Becomes Obnoxious,” Martin Luther King, Jr. responded to a headline in a local Alabama newspaper that read, “Things are quiet in Tuscaloosa today. There is peace on the campus of the University of Alabama.”

The headline was referring to the day after the university expelled its first Black student, Autherine Lucy. Since setting foot on campus days earlier, Lucy had become the target of a white mob, which attacked her and started a riot. Wanting to restore the so-called peace, the university responded to the violence by making Lucy leave.

While delivering the sermon just one day before his trial for violating Alabama’s anti-boycott law, King called the newspaper’s idea of peace “an obnoxious peace.” He said, “It is the type of peace that stinks in the nostrils of the almighty God” and went on to say:

“If peace means accepting second class citizenship, I don’t want it.”

• “If peace means keeping my mouth shut in the midst of injustice and evil, I don’t want it.”

• “If peace means being complacently adjusted to a deadening status quo, I don’t want peace.”

• “If peace means a willingness to be exploited economically, dominated politically, humiliated and segregated, I don’t want peace.”

King called for a nonviolent revolt against the kind of negative peace that prioritizes calm and tranquility over justice and human dignity, laying out a vision of a “positive peace” grounded in respect for the basic rights, freedoms and dignity of all people.