MLK Day 2022: The Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. on the Death Penalty

On Martin Luther King Day, DPIC looks at the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King’s views on capital punishment. 

In a November 1957 arti­cle in Ebony, Dr. King was asked ​“Do you think God approves the death penal­ty for crimes like rape and mur­der?” He respond­ed, ​“I do not think that God approves the death penal­ty for any crime, rape and mur­der includ­ed.… Capital pun­ish­ment is against the bet­ter judg­ment of mod­ern crim­i­nol­o­gy, and, above all, against the high­est expres­sion of love in the nature of God.” 

Several months lat­er, Alabama exe­cut­ed Jeremiah Reeves, a young black man who was 16 years old when he was charged with rap­ing a white woman. Tried before an all-white jury, Reeves was con­vict­ed and sen­tenced to death. In April 1958, Dr. King stood on the state capi­tol steps dur­ing a prayer pil­grim­age protest­ing what he called ​“a trag­ic and unsa­vory injus­tice.” Dr. King said: ​“A young man, Jeremiah Reeves, who was lit­tle more than a child when he was first arrest­ed, died in the elec­tric chair for the charge of rape. Whether or not he was guilty of this crime is a ques­tion that none of us can answer. But the issue before us now is not the inno­cence or guilt of Jeremiah Reeves. Even if he were guilty, it is the sever­i­ty and inequal­i­ty of the penal­ty that con­sti­tutes the injus­tice. Full grown white men com­mit­ting com­pa­ra­ble crimes against Negro girls are rare ever pun­ished, and are nev­er giv­en the death penal­ty or even a life sen­tence. It was the sever­i­ty of Jeremiah Reeves penal­ty that aroused the Negro com­mu­ni­ty, not the ques­tion of his guilt or innocence.” 

Later, in his ser­mon ​“Loving Your Enemies,” Dr. King preached a phi­los­o­phy that had no room for cap­i­tal ret­ri­bu­tion: ​“Returning hate for hate mul­ti­plies hate, adding deep­er dark­ness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness can­not dri­ve out dark­ness; only light can do that. Hate can­not dri­ve out hate; only love can do that. Hate mul­ti­plies hate, vio­lence mul­ti­plies vio­lence, and tough­ness mul­ti­plies tough­ness in a descend­ing spi­ral of destruction.”

[Originally pub­lished on Martin Luther King Day, January 2016.]