Monday, January 17th, 2011 was the day we as Americans were called upon to remember the life and times of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.    Some Americans had the day off.   Others did not.  It is likely that some Americans gave not much more than a passing thought to Dr. King on his holiday.   Of the multitudes in America who did give at least some thought as to why we celebrate Dr. King’s life, most probably just simply recalled with nostalgia Dr. King’s “I have a dream” speech and then moved on with their day.

Probably few in America recognized, however, that Dr. King was instrumental (perhaps, theologically speaking, he was the instrument) in laying the ground work for America’s economic success over the past 40 years.

Granted, there are many in America who are still struggling to find their piece of the American Dream. But for all that has gone awry over the last three years it is useful to consider—if just for a couple of minutes—what our country might have looked like economically in 2010 had Dr. King never been born. As Clarence so effectively demonstrated to George Bailey in the film It’s a Wonderful Life regarding what life would have been like for the people of Bedford Falls had George Bailey never been born, so to shall this brief essay explore what our country might have looked like had Martin Luther King, Jr. never been born.

Dr. King was an extraordinary man. He led an extraordinary life and he set forth extraordinary ideas at a pivotal time in our nation’s history. But for all Dr. King’s accomplishments he was not, however, a perfect man. His personal failures are now well-documented. But it is not just his personal failures that have been highly scrutinized. Dr. King’s writings and speeches evince a certain amount of frustration—some would say hostility—to the American economic system. Indeed, Dr. King was not an advocate of free-market capitalism. Rather, he was an ardent supporter of a socially charged economic justice platform that favored affirmative action and unions. And, not surprisingly, he believed in the redistribution of wealth. David Garrow summarized Dr. King’s economic philosophy in his Pulitzer Prize winning biography as “democratic socialism”. There are still others who believed him to have been a Marxist. Irrespective of what label is applied the fact is that Dr. King was the right man at the right moment in history with exactly the right admixture of morality, philosophy, charisma, and economic policy to accelerate our country’s quest in becoming the “city on the hill”.

There are those that would grant Dr. King his due with regards to his civil rights accomplishments, but argue vociferously with the assertion that Dr. King’s economic philosophy was instrumental in moving forward the economy. This type of dichotomous thinking is flawed as it fails to recognize the indivisible nature of Dr. King’s body of work. It is all too easy to look back over the intervening 40 years and point to certain ineluctable facts as proof that Dr. King was right when it came to civil rights but wrong on the economy. But Dr. King’s Christian message of peaceful protest could only have been delivered and ultimately accepted alongside the economic message of “democratic socialism”. The African-American community—especially those living in the segregated South—did not want to hear about the merits of unrestricted free-market capitalism. The community wanted justice; justice in all its many forms. Dr. King advanced both social and economic justice for his community. The concomitant—some might say unintended—benefit that America received from his agitation for justice was that our economy grew—and continues to grow– because of those exact same efforts.

Simply stated, the advancement of the African-American community with regards to civil rights has had an incalculable positive impact on our nation’s economy. The number of small businesses that are today owned and operated by African-Americans is much larger than it was when Dr. King penned “Letters from Birmingham Jail”. The buying power of the African-American community is of an order of magnitude larger than it was when Dr. King led a civil rights march from Selma to Montgomery. While Dr. King might not have espoused the free-market economic philosophy held by so many in the small business community, the economic success that the African-American community has enjoyed over the last 40 years because of Dr. King has redounded to the direct benefit of nearly all in the small business community.

But to see it simply through such racially myopic glasses is misguided, however. For the success of the African-American community has not been sealed within racially segregated economic walls. To the contrary, as within any free-market economy, the more consumers there are the better. Consequently, all members of our American economic community have benefited from the rise of the buying power and increased net worth of the African-American community. And so to recur to the question that must be given some additional thought: what would America look like today had Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. never been born? More specifically, what would our economy look like? Would small businesses today be on the cusp of another greater economic run? Would the past 40 years have produced the various large companies that have grown from humble beginnings?

No country’s economic future is foreordained. Nothing is set in stone. The Venetians once had one of the greatest economies in the world. Now the City of Angles is not even the largest economy in Italy. More recently, the Irish had an economic future that looked as bright as the sun. Now, the European Union struggles to bail out its Celtic member. It is, of course, impossible to know what our country might be like today had the world not been graced with such an extraordinary individual as Dr. King. What we do know is that Dr. King was a man of the cloth who carried forth a message of civil justice that forever changed our nation. Given the economic success—albeit incomplete economic success– of the African-American community it is well-nigh impossible to make a convincing argument that our country would be in a better economic position today had Dr. King not risen to prominence in that critical time in our nation’s history. The economic life of a country cannot be separated from its religious, cultural, and social roots. Dr. King transformed our nation in ways that probably cannot be ever fully appreciated.

Dr. King did not support supply-side economic theory. He was most likely a bit to the left of John Maynard Keynes. Of what consequence is that now to us? Like his personal failings we must look not at his “errors”; but, rather we must recognize his supreme contributions. For it is in his contributions that we see why it is that American’s are called upon to celebrate this man’s life and to delve further into the ramifications of his body of work. The economic success of America might not been realized in the exact manner he intended. But for many in both the African-American community and the larger American population economic success came about in ways that Dr. King could not have dreamed. There is a theological saying that God writes strait with crooked lines. Dr. King was first and foremost a minister. And so it may well be that from Dr. King’s religious point of view he might concede that his crooked line of economic thought produced a strait-line in economic advancement for all Americans.

With that said, America finds itself again in a difficult economic situation. Dr. King remarked: “when our days become dreary with low hovering clouds of despair, and when our nights become darker than a thousand midnights, let us remember that there is a creative force in this universe, working to pull down the gigantic mountains of evil, a power that is able to make a way out of no way and transform dark yesterdays into bright tomorrows. Let us realize the arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice.”

For many in our country these are dreary days. We simply have too many people unemployed. We do not have enough consumer confidence, and as a result our economy is struggling to get back on its feet. Better times are ahead, however. If anything can be proven from Dr. King’s life it is that better times may well not come in the manner we now recognize, and, more importantly, that the guide showing us the path to these better times may not be the person we expect. Bright tomorrows lay ahead.