India 1

In February 1959, King, a devotee of Mahatma Gandhi, journeyed to India to examine the world’s most visible example of nonviolent resistance to colonial power. His travels from the populous New Delhi to the Harijan (Untouchables) villages, to the southern tip of India, showed him the results of Gandhi’s ideology and fortified King’s commitment to nonviolent action.

Dr. King traveled with scholar Dr. Lawrence D. Reddick to India. On their way to India, Dr. King met Richard Wright, the African American novelist (Native Son) who was an expatriate living in Paris, France. King’s affability was full on display as he and Wright traded intellectual wits and camaraderie over race and politics. Wright, with new insight into King’s personality, later remarked to Reddick that King lacked “that preacher fakery that I always look for in those sermon-on-the-mount boys.” 

Exhibition Note:

Recent discussion surrounding the hashtag #GandhiMustFall has challenged Ghandi's legacy. Ghandi made derogatory remarks against Black Africans during his formative years (1893-1914) as a young lawyer opposing discrimination against Indians in South Africa. At the Schomburg Center, historical literacy comes from a living, evolving archive that sits at the intersection of the past and the present.  As new information is uncovered and recovered, and disparate voices added to reflections on the past, both can serve to interrogate dominant narratives of history and of lionized figures like Gandhi. Consider these questions: What willingness do you have to ask questions of history in the face of new information and changing societies? How do you confront mythologies created for and/or by figures you revere?

Share your thoughts with us at: [Twitter] @schomburgcenter [Instagram] @schomburglive. Use the hashtag #CrusaderatSchomburg