Dr King as Business Writer: Restrained Power

--> Scholars have anatomized Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s peerless speeches and other public prose.  Little attention has gone to Dr. King as business writer.  

Below is a letter he wrote in December 1955 to the National City Lines. It persuaded them to send a negotiator to Montgomery, Alabama. The business goal was to change the racist policies of their affiliate, Montgomery City Lines.

I have put all the verbs in italic type.

8 December 1955   

The National City Lines, Inc.

616 South Michigan Ave.

Chicago, IL

Over a period of years the Negro passengers on the Montgomery City Lines, Inc. have been subjected to humiliation, threats, intimidation, and death through bus driver action.

The Negro has been inconvenienced in the use of the city bus lines by the operators in all instances in which the bus has been crowded. He has been forced to give up his seat if a white person has been standing.

Repeated conferences with the bus officials have met with failure.  Today a meeting was held with Mr. J. H. Bagley and Attorney Jack Crenshaw as representatives of the bus company, and Mayor W. A. Gayle and Associate Commissioners Frank Parks and Clyde Sellers. At which time as an attempt to end the Monday through Thursday protest, the following three proposals were made:

1. Courteous treatment by bus drivers.

2. Seating of Negro passengers from rear to front of bus, and white passengers from front to rear on “first-come-first serve” basis with no seats reserved for any race.

3. Employment of Negro bus operators in predominantly Negro residential sections.

The above proposals, and the resolutions which will follow, were drafted and adopted in a mass meeting of more than 5,000 regular bus riders.  These proposals were denied in the meeting with the city officials and representatives of the bus company.

Since 44% of the city’s population is Negro, and since 75% of the bus riders are Negro, we urge you to send a representative to Montgomery to arbitrate.

The Montgomery Improvement Association

The Rev. M. L. King, Pres.

The Rev. U. J. Fields, Sec’y

Until the end, 75% of verbs are in the passive voice.*  Passive verbs create a tone of objectivity and avoid blame.  

Dr King surrounds his passive verbs with nouns that, similarly, subdue outrage and instead pursue the letter's business goal.   He brackets racist behavior inside the nouns “humiliation, threats, intimidation, and death” and where he could have named the perpetrators, he substitutes the masterful understatement “bus driver action.”  

Then, in this business letter’s very last sentence, his power emerges.  We hear the ringing, personal monosyllables of “we urge you.”   

In other words, following the letter's restrained description of racism, its businesslike litany of implacable white leaders, and its equally businesslike statistics of the firm's African American customer base, Dr. King hits home.

Of course, the unseen dimension of a business letter is its choice of recipient.  Dr. King knew that when you are ill-served, you go to the firm's owner. 

I could go on to elaborate how Dr. King used his mastery of English in the format, the length, and every other aspect of this letter.  But you get the idea.  



*One active verb (have met) is there to frame the noun “failure,” which tactfully heads off the question of who failed whom.  The second active verb “has been standing” is scarcely avoidable; being intransitive, this meaning of "to stand" has no passive form.  "Will follow" is active voice; it promises proposals without specifying who will send them.