Disappointment is a persistent refrain in Martin Luther King Jr.’s writing and speeches. Some of King’s most memorable works—the “Letter from Birmingham Jail” (Reference King1963b), his “I Have a Dream” (Reference King and Washington1986b) speech, his sermons “Shattered Dreams” (Reference King and Carson2007b) and “Unfulfilled Dreams” (Reference King, Carson and Holloran2000b)—express both a deep desire for the realization of democratic ideals and the disappointment that results when that desire goes unfulfilled. Why does King return to disappointment so insistently? And, what role does he envision for this emotion in democratic life?
In this article, I argue that King offers a distinctive account of the nature, function, and value of democratic disappointment. While recent philosophical work has explored the role of emotions such as anger and hope in democratic life, disappointment has received less sustained attention.Footnote 1 This is a gap that King’s thoughts help to fill.Footnote 2 King wrote about disappointment across a wide canon of sermons, speeches, letters, and books rather than in a single treatise. This article brings together these texts to develop a coherent and novel argument regarding the nature and value of disappointment. This reconstructive work follows in the tradition of prominent philosophers such as Leonard Harris, Tommie Shelby, Robert Gooding-Williams, and Brandon Terry, who recognize that reconstructing a thinker’s argument and conceptual framework from a scattered corpus–showing that it is both coherent and philosophically sophisticated–is a form of philosophical argument in its own right (Harris Reference Harris1989; Shelby Reference Shelby2005; Gooding-Williams Reference Gooding-Williams2009, Terry and Shelby Reference Terry and Shelby2018)–and can lead us to fresh modes of thinking.
For King, disappointment is a cognitive-affective state: the belief that one’s legitimate expectations have not been met, together with the resultant feelings of being let down, saddened, and frustrated that that belief produces. In King’s view, disappointment is both intrinsically valuable as an appropriate emotional response to unmet and legitimate expectations and instrumentally valuable as a necessary precondition for sustained political action. I contend that King articulates his disappointment not merely to express it, but to cultivate it in his audience–to help Black Americans to feel their (legitimate and justified) disappointment and to channel this feeling into determined, constructive political action.
The article proceeds as follows. In section 1, I outline King’s democratic ideal—the “beloved community,” which he articulates most famously in his speech, “I Have a Dream” (1986b). In section 2, I explore how the failure to realize this ideal generates what King understands as legitimate Black democratic disappointment. In section 3, I develop King’s argument in favor of disappointment: disappointment is necessary for political action, and when paired with “dogged determination,” it becomes the engine of continued struggle for racial justice and democracy. In section 4, I explore King’s view of Black spirituals and freedom songs as ideal vehicles for expressing and sustaining productive disappointment—songs that acknowledge unfulfilled dreams while encouraging determination, through hope, to keep fighting. Here, I also examine the challenge posed by the Black Power movement, and King’s argument that bitterness and despair, rather than hope-infused determination, are the wrong responses to democratic disappointment.
1. The American Dream
For years before he delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech, in 1963, King had talked about the American dream in terms of unfulfillment—principles that existed in fantasy but not in practice. For example, in an early sermon, “the Negro and the American Dream,” he wrote:
In a real sense America is essentially a dream--a dream yet unf[u]lfilled. It is the dream of a land where men of all races, colors and creeds will live together as brothers. The substance of the dream is expressed in these sublime words: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” This is the dream. It is a profound, eloquent and unequivocal expression of the dignity and worth of all human personality (King, Reference King and Carson2005c, 508).
For King, the Declaration of Independence was best understood as a document that sought to create a new society that was based on a shared commitment to ensuring the freedom, equality, and dignity of all its citizens—a commitment that stemmed from a shared belief in the inherent worth of all Americans.
King saw the Emancipation Proclamation—a decree by President Abraham Lincoln on January 1, 1863 that declared all enslaved people in confederate states to be “forever free”–as an attempt to realize the American dream for all Americans, Black and white. In “I Have a Dream,” King begins by reminding us of the Proclamation:
Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand today, signed the Emancipation Proclamation. This momentous decree came as a great beacon light of hope to millions of Negro slaves who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice. It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of their captivity (King, Reference King and Washington1986b, 217).
In “I Have a Dream,” King argued that, taken together, the three founding documents of modern American democracy—the Emancipation Proclamation, the Constitution, and the Declaration of Independence—were a “promissory note to which every American was to fall heir … a promise that all men — yes, Black men as well as white men — would be guaranteed the unalienable rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” (King, Reference King and Washington1986b, 217).
King had long argued that segregation was a moral stain on America that debased the inherent human dignity of Black people. Following Kant, King argued that full recognition of the inherent worth and dignity of all men required that “all men must be treated as ends and never as mere means” (King, Reference King and Washington1986a, 119). Segregation, he argued, violates this categorical (moral) imperative, because it treats Black men and women as mere means rather than as ends in themselves. It reduced them to things rather than persons, substituting what Buber called an “I-it” relationship for an “I-Thou” relationship (King, Reference King1963b, 94). Segregation accomplishes this by giving a false sense of superiority to the segregator and a false sense of inferiority to the segregated—what King called “the slave chains of today” (King, Reference King1963a, 92). King believed that the deleterious effects of this sense of inferiority would only worsen over time. This is why King repeatedly appealed to President Kennedy to issue a second Emancipation Proclamation and executive orders prohibiting segregation, believing executive action was necessary to honor America’s democratic commitments (Bernhard, Reference Bernhard1962).
Despite segregation’s persistence, King believed some steps toward realizing this democratic dream for Black Americans had already taken place. The Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board of Education decision, which declared racially separate facilities to be inherently unequal and unjust, marked the beginning of what King called a new era of “constructive integration”—a creative period in which “men seek to rise to the level of genuine intergroup and interpersonal living” (King, Reference King and Carson2007d, 2). Brown represented real progress, but as King saw it, the post-Brown moral challenge was to work toward the complete realization of the ideals and principles expressed in the Constitution, the Declaration, and the Proclamation—ideals the Court had reasserted in its decision.
To fully realize this democratic dream required two things: “desegregation” and “true integration” (King, Reference King, Clayborne, Armstrong, Carson, Clay and Taylor2005b, 569). Desegregation is “eliminative” and “negative,” simply removing the legal barriers to equal access to schools, parks, restaurants, and libraries to bring Black and white people together physically in the same spaces (King, Reference King and Washington1986a, 118). However, as King argued, a desegregated society is not the same as an integrated one. Desegregation “leads to ‘physical proximity without spiritual affinity’. It gives us a society where men are physically desegregated and spiritually segregated, where elbows are together and hearts are apart … It leaves us with stagnant equality of sameness rather than a constructive equality of oneness” (King, Reference King and Washington1986a, 118). White Americans could have daily interactions with Black Americans but view these interactions through lenses of fear and ignorance. A society could be fully desegregated in a legal, material sense without accomplishing the internal individual moral change required for true equality (King, Reference King2017b, 33).
True integration requires a change of heart: white people must treat Black people as equals not because the law requires it but because they genuinely see them as brothers and as equals (King, Reference King1966, 3). King defined true integration as a “personal and intergroup feeling,” comprising positive acceptance of desegregation and the “welcomed participation” of Black Americans in “the total range of human activities” (King, Reference King and Washington1986a). King called this kind of truly integrated society “the beloved community,” a society founded on the democratic ideals of liberty, equality, and fraternity (King, Reference King and Carson1997, 344). This was King’s American dream: the fulfillment of the promissory note embedded in the Declaration, the Proclamation, and the Constitution. It required a change of heart among white Americans, one that could not be legislated or enforced by the law (King, Reference King and Washington1986a, 124; King, Reference King1966, 3). The era of constructive integration that King envisioned would remove not only the legal barriers to equality and freedom but also the psychological barriers that persisted long after emancipation.
King was neither an optimist nor a pessimist about racial progress: he did not believe that it was inevitable, nor that it was impossible. King called himself a realist: he believed that real progress was possible (King, Reference King1957). He took this lesson from his enslaved ancestors who gained freedom through their concerted action. Abolition was evidence that great strides had been made and could be made again. But, King believed there was still a long way to go, and sustained action was again required.
2. The Disappointment of “Shattered Dreams”
Ultimately, the period of constructive integration did not fully live up to its promise: desegregation remained incomplete, and true integration—the change of heart King envisioned—had scarcely begun. A century after the original Proclamation, Black Americans were still not living as free and equal citizens: many Black Americans lived in poverty, experienced color and race-based discrimination, and were deprived of educational, social, and economic opportunities. The American dream was in tatters.
King tells us that one of the most agonizing problems of human experience is unfulfilled dreams and the “disappointed hopes” that result when our dreams go unrealized. In his explanation of disappointment, King turns to the life of the Apostle Paul, who wished to visit Spain to spread the Christian gospel and commune with the Christians of Rome on his way. Paul devoted much attention to preparing for the trip. This, said King, was a noble dream that “gripped Paul’s life” and saturated his being (King, Reference King and Carson2007b, 517). Sadly, Paul never went to Rome in the way he had hoped. He arrived as a prisoner, spending his time in a cell, held captive for his faith. Paul was disappointed—his expectations and desires remained unsatisfied. King characterizes Paul’s story as one of a “shattered dream and blasted hope” (King, Reference King and Carson2007b, 517).
Dreams, as King understands them, are not mere wants. They are something loftier: they are aspirations–things we believe are worthy of pursuit, expressive of our most deeply held values. Dreams, in his view, give shape and meaning to our lives because we are actively working toward them. They take attention, planning, and organization, and satisfying them requires action in the world (not just mental effort). Paul did not merely plan his route to Spain; he collected provisions, packed his bags, and set out on his journey. It is because dreams are so central and orienting to our lives that it can devastate us when, despite our best efforts, they go unfulfilled.
Human life is, of course, replete with these experiences. King tells us that “our dreams are constantly tossed and blown away by staggering winds of disappointment” (King, Reference King and Carson2007b, 517). King explains the unfulfilled dreams of other great figures besides Paul. For example, “Gandhi … dreamed of a united India, only to see that dream trampled over by a bloody religious war between the Hindus and the Moslems, which led to the division of India and Pakistan” (King, Reference King and Carson2007b, 517). Woodrow Wilson “dreamed of a league of nations, but he died with the dream shattered” (King, Reference King and Carson2007b, 517). Enslaved Black Americans yearned and fought for freedom, but many died before this dream was fulfilled. King likens Gandhi, Wilson, and the enslaved Black Americans to Jesus, who prayed in Gethsemane that the cup would pass him by, but drank it to its last remnants. This is life, says King; we must so often live with our dreams unfulfilled.
King’s sermons on unfulfilled dreams make two significant points: first, the satisfaction of our deepest desires is never guaranteed; second, living with this uncertainty is psychologically grueling. This is the tragic element of King’s realism: moral progress is possible but never assured. As Paul Taylor reminds us, ethical life is both an experiment and a struggle (Taylor, Reference Taylor, Terry and Shelby2018, 44). We try different paths to satisfy our desires, knowing all the while that failure may be imminent. This knowledge dogs our trying, sometimes leaving us feeling dejected. As Taylor puts it, these experiences of disappointment are part of a human life–part of the “trials of tragic, earthly striving” (Taylor, Reference Taylor, Terry and Shelby2018, 44).
According to King, this tragic disappointment of unfulfilled dreams is perhaps felt most in moments where one’s dream feels closest to being realized. In 1963, King was called by the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) to Birmingham, Alabama, to desegregate its businesses. After King and his supporters threatened an economic boycott on Easter Sunday, Birmingham merchants promised to take steps toward desegregation, including permanent removal of signs that said “whites only.” After the success of the Montgomery bus boycott, King believed in the power of the boycott and he hoped that the merchants of Birmingham would take this concrete step toward realizing his dream of desegregation. Accordingly, he (along with Reverend Shuttlesworth and the other leaders of the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights, or the ACMHR) agreed to call off the demonstration. Unfortunately, as King wrote later, “as the weeks and months unfolded, we realized that we were the victims of a broken promise. The signs remained” (King, Reference King1963b, 88). Yet again, King explained, in an echo of Du Bois’s famous words from The Souls of Black Folk (Du Bois, Reference Du Bois and by2007), “we were confronted with blasted hopes, and the dark shadow of a deep disappointment settled upon us” (King, Reference King1963b, 88). Why did King harken back to Du Bois here? Like Du Bois, who was devastated when the promise of Reconstruction went unfulfilled, King experienced deep disappointment when the Birmingham merchants broke their promise. Both men felt the particular pain of betrayed expectations–sadness and frustration that comes when those in power fail to honour their commitments to racial justice.
As Bill Lawson points out, disappointment is unlike mere dissatisfaction, for “disappointment presupposes some expectations” (Lawson, Reference Lawson and Gordon1997, 149). To illustrate: if someone wants to win the lottery but does not buy a ticket, she cannot sensibly be said to be disappointed—she is merely dissatisfied, for she did not expect to win, she only desired to. In contrast, King both wanted and expected that the Birmingham merchants would keep their promise to remove the signs. King was disappointed because his expectations were not satisfied. After all, he had agreed to call off the demonstration based on the merchants’ promise—an action which suggests he believed they would follow through.
According to Lawson, however, King does not advocate for or express disappointment, only dissatisfaction, for, like many other Black Americans, King no longer had any expectations that white Americans would behave positively toward Black Americans.Footnote 3 He could not be disappointed by anti-Black racism because he expected nothing different. Of course, even in Lawson’s reading, King and other Black Americans were still dissatisfied, yearning for better conditions for Black Americans. On Lawson’s account, they still believed in the American dream, but were not disappointed when it was not realized because they did not expect anything different. Here, Lawson seems to conceive of “expectation” in a probabilistic sense–as a belief that something is likely to happen. In Lawson’s reading, King does not have this kind of expectation of the merchants because he did not think it was likely that they would live up to their promise. Therefore, he cannot be said to be disappointed when the merchants fail to keep their promise. What Lawson misses, however, is that there are other ways of conceiving of expectations, ways that King can rightly be said to have maintained, despite his realism about white Americans’ seeming inability and unwillingness to change.
Disappointment itself can come in different forms. We can be disappointed that some state of affairs has not obtained and disappointed in someone for failing to help bring about that state of affairs. When I am disappointed that it rains, I am responding to an unwelcome state of affairs; no one has failed me, and no expectations of another person have been frustrated. When I am disappointed in Sam for breaking his promise, I am responding to a relational failure between moral agents.
This distinction between being disappointed that and being disappointed in maps onto what Stephen Darwall calls the difference between third-personal and second-personal standpoints (Darwall, Reference Darwall2006, 3). When we evaluate a situation from a third-personal standpoint, we judge it as observers, noting that some state of affairs is unfortunate or bad. The second-personal standpoint is distinct because it involves “mak[ing] and acknowledg[ing] claims on one another’s conduct and will,” recognizing each other as moral agents with authority to make demands based on shared commitments (Darwall, Reference Darwall2006, 3). For Darwall, being disappointed in requires this second-personal standpoint: it presupposes that the other person had an obligation to us, grounded in a relationship of mutual accountability.
King’s disappointment had precisely this second-personal structure. He was not merely observing from outside that desegregation hadn’t occurred; he was holding the merchants accountable for failing to meet their obligations to him and to Black citizens. This accountability was grounded in shared commitments: the merchants had made explicit promises to remove segregationist signs, and both King and the merchants’ professed commitment to democratic ideals of equality and justice. King’s disappointment in the merchants thus presupposed that he and they stood in a relationship where each had authority to make claims on the other’s conduct.
King himself tells us that he felt disappointment after his “hopes” in Birmingham were “dashed.” King had hoped–he had both wanted and expected–the merchants to keep their promises.Footnote 4 He had predictive expectations of the merchants: beliefs about what could happen in the future. Although he knew from experience that it was not likely that the merchants would keep their promise, King believed that their doing so was at least possible. Footnote 5 Why does King maintain this expectation? He believed that, because of God’s goodness, there was always the possibility of grace—the possibility that “we can be better than we are” (King, Reference King and Carson2007a, 353). This expectation remains even if in past “circumstances” the merchants may have failed to live up to their promises. In King’s view, it is always possible that they could, now or in the future, do something different.Footnote 6 Lawson’s probabilistic sense of expectation is predictive: it is a belief about whether something is likely to happen or not in the future. King’s possibilist sense of expectation is also predictive, but it is something much weaker: it is merely a belief about whether something could happen, not whether it will happen for certain or even that it is very likely to happen.
Second, King also had a prescriptive expectation: an expectation of someone, a belief that the other person ought to do something. King believed the merchants should do what they promised. King starts the “Letter” by explaining that he is in Birmingham because he made (and kept) a promise:
Several months ago our local affiliate here in Birmingham invited us to be on call to engage in a nonviolent direct-action program if such were deemed necessary. We readily consented, and when the hour came we lived up to our promises. So I am here, along with several members of my staff, because we were invited here (King, Reference King1963b, 86).
Here, King establishes his moral authority to be in Birmingham by showing that he is an honorable person: he is someone who does what he should do by “living up” to his promises, even when doing so is difficult, and he expected others to do the same. In short, both forms of King’s expectations—predictive and prescriptive—were unmet. As he says, his “hopes had been blasted”—his aspiration to desegregate Birmingham remained unfulfilled, his dream for the city was shattered (King, Reference King1963b, 88). He was disappointed by the failure of the possible future he had envisioned for Birmingham.
The disappointment of Birmingham was, as King understood it, not an isolated instance but part of Black Americans’ broader and more enduring experience of democratic disappointment in the United States. Like Du Bois, King believed in the democratic value and potential of the Emancipation Proclamation, the Constitution, and the Declaration, as well as the Supreme Court’s civil rights decisions of the 1950s. They were promissory notes that, in King’s view, all Americans were obliged to redeem as part of their commitment to ensuring a just and democratic America. The white merchants of Birmingham, like the rest of white America, had failed to live up to their promises of liberation. As King wrote, “instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check, a check which has come back marked insufficient funds” (King, Reference King and Washington1986b, 217).
There are many different forms of disappointment, but King’s disappointment here is distinctly democratic in nature. In failing to uphold the democratic commitments embedded in the Proclamation and in Brown v. Board of Education, King believed white Americans had failed to satisfy their civic duty–that is, their obligations as democratic citizens bound by shared commitments to the Declaration of Independence, the Emancipation Proclamation, the Constitution, and the decisions of the Supreme Court’s civil rights decisions. King believed that his disappointment was appropriate: he was justified in expecting and even demanding of his fellow white citizens that they take action to end racial segregation.Footnote 7 This is perhaps why, as Jonathan Rieder suggests, King’s disappointment is infused with a sense of righteous indignation–an emotion driven by the belief that justice has not been served (Reider, Reference Rieder2010, 76). As King wrote, disappointed dreams rightly leaves us “frustrated, wondering if life has any justice” (King, Reference King and Carson2007e, 361). Indeed, as time passed, King became so thoroughly disappointed that he came to wonder if his American dream had turned into a nightmare (King, Reference King2017a).
King rejected bitterness, escapism, and fatalism as responses to this profound disappointment. The question remained: how could disappointment be channeled constructively—transformed from a potential source of despair into fuel for continued political action?
3. Channeling Disappointment into Determination
For King, the answer to the question of what we should do with our disappointment lies in disappointment itself. Within disappointment, King sees “the opportunity to transfigure both ourselves and American society” (King, Reference King2010, 94). Like Gandhi, he believed that individual and political transformation begin with negative emotions such as discontent and disappointment. As Gandhi explicitly says, “discontent is a very useful thing. As long as a man is contented with his present lot, so long is it difficult to persuade him to come out of it. Therefore it is that every reform must be preceded by discontent” (Parel, Reference Parel2009, 24-25). In Gandhi’s view, discontent is a necessary precondition for political action: we must first move from a state of acceptance to a state of non-acceptance. Gandhi believed that Indians must become discontent with British rule to gain the motivation to remove the British from India, which is why he wrote his treatise, Hind Swaraj , to “arouse among the people certain desirable sentiments,” such as discontent (Parel, Reference Parel2009, 13).
King, too, aims to cultivate discontent—or what he calls “constructive nonconformity”—in his Black audience (King, Reference King2010, 17).Footnote 8 King believed that Christians have a mandate to be nonconformist—a moral imperative to live differently and to follow a higher moral code than the status quo. He writes, “the christian owes his ultimate allegiance to God and if any earthly institution conflicts with God’s will it is the christian duty to revolt against it” (King, Reference King and Carson2007c). It is also our civic duty, as American citizens, to revolt against institutions that conflict with the democratic values expressed in the Declaration, the Proclamation, and the Constitution. To be nonconformist, we–as Christians or as citizens–must not complacently adjust to the way things are but transform our minds and engage in nonviolent resistance.
For King, disappointment itself is a form of nonconformity. At its heart, disappointment stems from an unsatisfied desire for things to be different from what they are and an expectation that things could and should be different. Like discontent, disappointment expresses desires and expectations that are unfulfilled and likely to remain so. Disappointment does not just look backward to what has already happened. It also looks forward to what could and should happen. It carries our unfulfilled aspirations into the future, where they continue to seek satisfaction. The feelings of being let down, frustrated, sad, and angry linger. Our disappointment continues, persisting as a reminder, drawing our attention to the fact that these desires and expectations still exist and seek satisfaction. With this added attention, the desires and expectations become inflamed, pulsing with motivational force.
We can see disappointment motivating King throughout his life: although King’s desires for and expectations of racial integration are unfulfilled, they persist. In addition, King returns over and over again to the topic of disappointment; it seems from his writings almost as though King has been ruminating about what disappoints him, as though his disappointment itself is drawing his attention to his frustrated desires and expectations again and again. For example, in his last book, Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community?, King offers a litany of “disappointments” (King, Reference King1968). He is disappointed in the Federal Government, the Legislature, the Clergy, and the middle class, all of whom have continually failed to address the economic plight of the masses and the ever-constant threat of white supremacist violence (King, Reference King1968, 35-36). This same sense emerges in his sermons on “Shattered Dreams,” where he seems dogged by a sense of lament–a sense of what could have been but was not. His belief in the possibility–“what if” the future does not deliver the justice he dreams of–stays with him throughout his life, coloring his engagement with the world with both pain and urgency.Footnote 9 By keeping the possibility of his unfulfilled dream alive in his mind, disappointment motivates King to continue to fight for a better–if uncertain–future.
King believed that his disappointment could motivate other Black Americans to continue his work after he was gone. Like Gandhi, King sought to rouse his people to action by encouraging them to remain nonconformist. This is why King speaks so often about his dream for Black people, its constant frustration, and his continued longing and sense of hopeful expectation: he aims to spark disappointment among his people. King wants his listeners to have the same desires and expectations that he does, to yearn for and expect racial justice as he does. He wants to draw their attention, as his own has been drawn, to the sources of his disappointment, so that his unfulfilled American dream can continue to motivate his audience, living on through Black Americans, even after he is gone. He hopes their disappointment will move them to continue the struggle to end racial segregation.
Does prolonged disappointment of this type not lead to despair, and in turn to the paralysis and donothingism that King constantly worried about? King sought to avoid this outcome by urging his listeners to make their disappointment productive through “dogged determination”–but this raised a crucial question: how does one transform disappointment into determination? The answer, for King, lies in hope.
As we know, hope, as King understood it, is not mere optimism or wishful thinking. It is the belief in the possibility of change–the conviction that, despite repeated failures and frustrated expectations, continued action could still bring about the American dream. This belief in possibility is what makes hope so powerful: it provides a channel for disappointment’s energy.Footnote 10 When we experience disappointment, we feel the intensity of our unfulfilled desires, the pain of dreams not yet realized. This emotional energy must go somewhere. Without hope, it turns inward, curdling into the despair and bitterness that King feared. But when hope is present–when we believe that change remains possible–this energy finds an outlet. It flows outward, through the channel of hope, into the will to act.
This is why King insisted that Black people must “accept disappointments and cling to hope.” Disappointment without hope leads to paralysis; hope without disappointment lacks motivational force. But disappointment channeled through hope becomes determination–the dogged refusal to stop fighting even when the outcome remains uncertain. The question then becomes: how do we generate and sustain the hope needed to channel disappointment productively? King’s answer was music.
4. We Shall Overcome: Generating Hope Through Song
King believed that music and collective singing were essential tools for generating the hope that channels disappointment into determination. Music works not by eliminating disappointment or promising victory, but by creating the conditions for hope to emerge. When people sing together about their unfulfilled dreams, several things happen simultaneously: they give voice to their disappointment, they assert the possibility of change (in the future tense–“We shall overcome”), and they create collective belief in continued struggle. This collective belief is a form of hope, and this hope provides the pathway through which disappointment’s energy flows into determination.
To explain the particular power of spirituals, King tells us of his enslaved ancestors, who experienced the most tragic shattering of dreams. They were ripped from their roots, their languages, and their families, and beaten and sexually exploited. Yet, they still found a way to continue fighting for their dreams. They would sing, “I’m so glad that troubles don’t last always” and “And I know my robes going to fit me well because I tried it on at the gates of hell. By and By, by and by, I’m gonna lay down my heavy load” (King, Reference King and Carson2007e, 365). King believed that his ancestors’ dynamic will allowed them to develop a novel practice—singing that gave voice to their disappointment while channeling the intensity of unfulfilled desires into the determination needed to sustain their struggle.
How did singing accomplish this channeling? By generating hope in the midst of bondage. When enslaved people sang “I’m so glad that troubles don’t last always,’ they were not denying their suffering—they were asserting the possibility that it would end. This assertion of possibility, sung collectively, created hope; and, hope gave their disappointment somewhere to go besides despair. The energy of their unfulfilled desire for freedom—their profound disappointment in bondage—flowed through the hope generated by singing into the determination to keep fighting for liberty.
Drawing on Black spirituals, Black Americans created “freedom songs,” which became the basis of the movement. King wrote, freedom songs,
are the soul of the movement. They are more than just incantations of clever phrases designed to invigorate a campaign; they are as old as the history of the Negro in America. They are adaptations of the songs the slaves sang — the sorrow songs, the shouts for joy, the battle hymns and the anthems of our movement. I have heard people talk of their beat and rhythm, but we in the movement are as inspired by their words. “Woke up This Morning with My Mind Stayed on Freedom” is a sentence that needs no music to make its point. We sing the freedom songs today for the same reason the slaves sang them, because we too are in bondage and the songs add hope to our determination that “We shall overcome, black and white together, we shall overcome someday” (King, Reference King and Carson1998, 177-178).
For King, these freedom songs served a dual purpose: they acknowledged the “sorrow” and bondage that Black Americans continued to experience—giving voice to disappointment—while simultaneously “add[ing] hope to our determination” to overcome that bondage. Singing the words “We Shall Overcome” together was important for King precisely because it held disappointment and determination together, with hope serving to strengthen determination. Rather than eliminating disappointment, the song channels it: the song recognizes that, despite their hopes, freedom has not yet arrived (“We shall overcome”—not “we have overcome”) but it will come—acknowledging disappointment while also generating the hope-infused determination needed to continue struggling toward it. By singing “Black and white together,” the song articulated King’s vision of the beloved community—the expectation that white Americans would work alongside Black Americans to realize the American dream.
Singing “We Shall Overcome” generates hope through the collective nature of the practice. When individuals experience disappointment alone, the energy of their frustrated desires has nowhere to go—it can easily turn inward as despair. But when people sing together about their unfulfilled dreams, something transforms. Hearing hundreds or thousands of voices sing, “We shall overcome”—asserting in unison that victory will come—generates collective belief in that possibility. This shared belief is hope. The future tense is crucial: “We shall overcome” acknowledges that freedom has not yet arrived (disappointment persists) while asserting it will come (hope emerges). Moreover, singing “black and white together” expands the scope of hope by envisioning the beloved community—not just as a distant dream but as something being enacted in the present moment through integrated singing. Thus, singing generates hope through collective assertion of possibility, and this hope provides the pathway through which disappointment’s energy flows into determination.
The song “We Shall Overcome” had a long history by the time the movement began to use it in the 1960s. Enslaved people originally sang, “I’ll be all right someday,” which was later adapted by Charles Albert Tindley in 1901 as “I’ll Overcome Someday” (Adams, Reference Adams2013). The song was further adapted at the Highlanders Folk School and taught to unions across the South before Wyatt T. Walker, as chief strategist for the SCLC, taught it to civil rights activists. Walker explains the song’s power:
One cannot describe the vitality and emotion this one song evokes across the Southland. I have heard it sung in great mass meetings with a thousand voices singing as one; I’ve heard a half-dozen sing it softly behind the bars of the Hinds County prison in Mississippi; I’ve heard old women singing it on the way to work in Albany, Georgia; I’ve heard the students singing it as they were being dragged away to jail. It generates power that is indescribable (Carawan and Carwan, Reference Carawan and Carawan1963, 11).
For Walker, singing the song generated the very determination that King believed was needed; it channeled all the yearning and longing of disappointment, through hope, into determined concerted action. Walker’s description reveals precisely how this channeling works. The “vitality and emotion” he describes—hearing it sung “with a thousand voices” or “softly behind bars”—shows hope being generated in real time through collective singing. Whether in mass meetings or prison cells, singing created the shared belief in possibility that allowed disappointment’s energy to flow into action rather than despair.
Elaborating on the song’s motivational power, Congressman John Lewis said that “We Shall Overcome” sustained him throughout his work with the movement. It was especially powerful, he said, when those who had been beaten, arrested, or detained stood and sang it together (Adams, Reference Adams2013). He said that it gave participants a sense of strength, to continue to struggle, to continue to push on (Adams, Reference Adams2013). King believed, like Lewis, that “We Shall Overcome” would serve the same purpose as the spirituals of his Black ancestors had: to move Black people, channeling their disappointment, through hope, into the determination they needed to not only face their disappointment head on but to carry it forward into political action.
We Shall Overrun: The Challenge of Black Power
By 1966, however, “We Shall Overcome” faced a serious challenge during the March Against Fear, which was organized by James Meredith. Meredith intended to walk from Memphis, Tennessee to Jackson, Mississippi as a way of expressing his disappointment in the slow pace of change that followed the passage of civil rights legislation in 1964 and 1965. On the second day of the march, Meredith was shot. After the shooting, King and other civil rights activists such as Stokely Carmichael rallied to the cause and joined Meredith on the walk. The march is famous in part because it is where Carmichael introduced the chant “Black Power” to a broad audience. The confrontation between “We Shall Overcome” and “Black Power” would reveal competing visions of how to transform disappointment into action.
At a particularly tense moment during the march, Carmichael’s supporters chanted “Black Power” while King and his supporters attempted to sing, “We Shall Overcome.” As King tells the story,
Once during the afternoon we stopped to sing, “We Shall Overcome.” The voices rang out with all the traditional fervor, the glad thunder and gentle strength that had always characterized the singing of this noble song. But when we came to the stanza which speaks of “black and white together”, the voices of a few marchers were muted. I asked them later why they refused to sing that verse. The retort was: This is a new day, we don’t sing those words anymore. In fact, the whole song should be discarded. Not ‘We Shall Overcome,’ but ‘We Shall Overrun.’
As I listened to all these comments, the words fell on my ears like strange music from a foreign land. My hearing was not attuned to the sound of such bitterness (King, Reference King1968, 26).
Carmichael and Malcolm X were channeling their disappointment differently than King. They were disappointed in the results of King’s nonviolent tactics and believed that continuing to sing “We Shall overcome” would not achieve freedom. Carmichael said, “we been saying freedom for six years and we ain’t got nothin,” and Malcolm said, “We want freedom now, but we’re not going to get it saying ‘We Shall Overcome.’ We’ve got to fight until we overcome” (Carmichael, Reference Carmichael1966; Malcolm X, Reference Malcolm1964a). Neither Carmichael nor Malcolm wished to continue to submit passively to blows and dog bites in the service of unrealized dreams of freedom. They wanted “Black Power” now–immediate, forceful action rather than patient singing and suffering.
King understood that “Black Power” was a cry “born from the wounds of despair and disappointment” (King, Reference King1968, 33). He saw the call for Black power as a response to the obvious failure of the American dream, and even came to sympathize with the need for Black Power, understood properly, in his view, as power for Black people tempered by love. He did not agree that the slogan was appropriate for the movement. Why? King saw “We Shall Overrun” and statements of “Black Power” as expressions of “bitterness” and “despair”–both of which, in his view, were the wrong responses to disappointment. He argued that the Black Power slogan stemmed from a
nihilistic philosophy born out of the conviction that the Negro can’t win. It is at bottom, the view that American society is so hopelessly corrupt and enmeshed in evil that there is no possibility of salvation from within. Although this thinking is understandable as a response to a white power structure that never completely committed itself to true equality for the Negro, a die-hard mentality that sought to shut all windows and doors against the winds of change, it nonetheless carries the seeds of its own doom (King, Reference King1968, 45).
King worried that Black Power represented a “dashing of hope”, a litany of Black despair that did not offer “any positive, creative alternative” (King, Reference King1968, 48-49). King felt that this did Black people a great disservice. Because it presented Black people with no concrete alternatives or actions to take, people were left without hope, believing there was no way out–nothing concrete to work toward. Without hope to channel their disappointment into determined action, King argued, their disappointment would turn into despair and bitterness.
In making this criticism, however, King misunderstands (or at least mischaracterizes) Carmichael and Malcolm X’s position. It is true that Malcolm X, unlike King, did not often offer policy solutions to the problems that Black Americans faced. This was for good reason: he believed that people should not passively accept policy plans handed to them by someone like King; they themselves must decide together what the program would be (Malcolm X, Reference Malcolm and Breitman1964b). This, he believed, was essential to bolstering Black self-reliance, and thereby Black dignity and self-love, both of which were needed for sustained Black political action, in Malcolm X’s view (Malcolm X, Reference Malcolm and Breitman1964b). In fact, Carmichael did offer some concrete suggestions about how to materialize Black power, such as buying Black to bolster the Black economy and developing “parallel political structures” to those excluding or discriminating against Black Americans (Carmichael and Hamilton, Reference Carmichael and Hamilton1967). King didn’t believe that either of these plans was feasible or desirable, and, for this reason, thought they would only foster further despair.
Bitterness, Despair, and the Wrong Responses to Disappointment
Even as he misunderstood their actual proposals, King’s concern about what he saw as Black Power’s lack of programs was rooted in his belief that lack of action would encourage disappointment to curdle into despair and bitterness. In his later writings, he elaborated on the problems with bitterness, which he saw as leading to “blindness”–a moral and practical failing (King, Reference King1968, 26). Bitterness, he wrote, lacks the capacity to distinguish between some and all: “When some members of the dominant group, particularly those in power, are racist in attitude and practice, bitterness accuses the whole group” (King, Reference King1968, 26). Bitterness is particularly bad for Black people, King argued, because it led them not to build coalitions with progressive white Americans but instead to violently confront them. King believed there could be nothing more disastrous for Black people: Malcolm X’s “fiery, demagogic oratory in the black ghettos, urging Negroes to arm themselves and prepare to engage in violence […] can reap nothing but grief” (King, Reference King and Carson1998, 266). King feared that whites of the South would use this kind of violent confrontation as an excuse to wipe Black Americans out. For him, the main flaw of bitterness is that it harms Black people most.
King also believed that, like bitterness, despair is a damaging response to disappointment:
revolution, though born of despair, cannot long be sustained by despair. This is the ultimate contradiction of the Black Power movement. It claims to be the most revolutionary wing of the social revolution taking place in the United States. Yet it rejects the one thing that keeps the fire of revolutions burning: the ever-present flame of hope… . The negro cannot entrust his destiny to a philosophy nourished solely on despair, to a slogan that cannot be implemented into a program (King, Reference King1968, 46).
As King himself knew from his own moments of despair, when he considered leaving the movement, it was often paralyzing. Despair, he wrote, brought with it a “nagging sense of nobody-ness”, which can leave one without a robust sense of self-worth and dignity (King, Reference King and Carson1998, 266). This, in turn, can lead to political passivity and stagnation—what he called do-nothing-ism. King saw this as the worst outcome possible. Without concerted action, the American dream would remain unrealized.
This is why King urged people to respond to disappointment not with bitterness and despair but with “dogged determination” strengthened by hope. He believed that Black people must engage in a “determined refusal not to be stopped”—they must “accept disappointments and cling to hope” (King, Reference King1968, 48). In the face of disappointment, it is crucial to retain hope—the belief in the (moral) necessity and (metaphysical) possibility of constructive transformation. Hope keeps despair at bay and prevents bitterness. It is the only thing that can sustain us, leading us to work to fulfill the American dream while facing our continual dissatisfaction and disappointment.
Tramp, Tramp, Tramp: Hope Without Guarantee
In his later speeches in Chicago, King adapted his approach to expressing and channeling disappointment. Rather than emphasizing “We Shall Overcome,” he invoked a different image: “I am still convinced there is nothing more powerful than to dramatize and expose a social evil … than the tramp, tramp, tramp of marching feet” (Marcus, Reference Marcus2023, 109). This phrase echoed a Civil War-era song in which prisoners of war sing, “tramp, tramp, tramp”—the sound of liberating forces they hope will arrive—even though no rescue is coming. The prisoners sing to encourage each other through their sadness, as if singing could call forth liberation itself. The song closes with the haunting image of prisoners still waiting for their cell doors to open, imagining freedom that may never come. The song does not depict the actual arrival of liberating forces; it is a song about people who hope for victory but nonetheless remain imprisoned.
King’s reference reveals the deeper significance of his continued commitment to music. By invoking “tramp, tramp, tramp”—a song, not a chant—King reaffirmed his belief in the motivational power of music. He was not abandoning song or seeking to relieve disappointment but rather expressing a deeper truth about the Black freedom struggle: like the prisoners, Black Americans would keep marching—keep singing the sound of liberation—even while freedom remained uncertain. King believed that Black spiritual music was spirit-building, drawing on common Black experience to channel the intensity of years of dashed hopes and suffering, through cultivated hope, into the courage and determination needed to sustain the struggle.
“Tramp, tramp, tramp” cultivates hope in a particular way—through the collective act of singing about imagined liberation even when rescue isn’t coming. The prisoners in the Civil War song sing the sound of liberating forces—“tramp, tramp, tramp”—as if by singing they could call liberation into being. This is hope: not the certainty that freedom will arrive, but the belief that continued struggle could lead to liberation, combined with the determination to act as if that outcome were possible. When Black Americans sang spirituals that channeled this same energy, they were generating hope in the midst of oppression. The act of singing together about freedom—asserting its possibility even while it remained absent—created the collective belief needed to transform disappointment’s energy into action.
In the Southern United States, where Walker notes that music is inextricably woven into the fabric of the church and central to rallying the Black masses, song was a way for preachers to communicate and mobilize communities. Music sustained the movement not by promising victory but by channeling disappointment, through hope, into determined action—by keeping both the pain of unfulfilled dreams and the hope-infused resolve to keep fighting alive together.
King’s choice to echo this song reiterates his views of disappointment. As the song suggests, victory is not guaranteed. It is elusive. This is part of what it is to acknowledge the disappointment that accompanies unfulfilled dreams—after all, King is not trying to “relieve” disappointment, but to express and channel it. He knows that his dreams of freedom may never be fulfilled. He may never free himself or his children from racial oppression. Despite this tragic reality, he must go on and act as if his dream can and will be fulfilled. Although we may remain imprisoned, like Paul, unable to reach life’s Spain, we must still find a way to transform the prison cell from a dungeon into a haven of freedom and justice. King must–indeed we all must–tramp, tramp, tramp on, working ceaselessly to fulfill the American dream, even when the outcome looks uncertain. This is the power of “tramp, tramp, tramp,” in King’s view–it expresses and fosters hope-infused determination to go on even while acknowledging the disappointment of unfulfilled dreams.
In focusing on what he saw as Black Power’s failings, however, King failed to see that the Black Power movement also sought to encourage determined action, but a different type of action—one grounded in the belief that Black self-reliance and self-determination would lead to racial progress. As Ta-Nehisi Coates has argued,
Integrationists hold that if black people push hard enough then surely some critical mass of white people will recognize our humanity. Black nationalists believe that if black people only built up their own institutions, protected their communities, pooled their own their resources, and started and supported their own businesses, racial progress would happen. Even if they take different roads, both nationalists and integrationists have abiding faith in the primacy of black politic, or rather what black people, themselves, can achieve (Coates, Reference Coates2015).
What King failed to recognize, as Coates observes, is that both King’s and Black Power’s traditions are “essentially hopeful.” Carmichael and Malcolm X, like King, sought to channel Black disappointment through hope into determined action (though a different type of action than King preferred) to generate political change.
Conclusion
Today, Black Americans continue to experience profound disappointment with American democracy. Despite the historic protests following George Floyd’s murder in 2020—some of the largest in American history—and the widespread adoption of the #BlackLivesMatter slogan, substantial political change has not materialized. According to a 2022 PEW study, 65 percent of Black Americans say increased national attention on racial inequality has not led to changes that improved their lives, and 44 percent say equality for Black people in the United States is not likely to be achieved (Cox and Edwards, Reference Cox and Edwards2022). This disappointment appears to have contributed to rising despair: nearly half of all Black Americans report feeling angry or sad in the wake of Floyd’s death, and nearly one million more Black Americans screened positive for depression (De Witte, Reference De Witte2021).
In response to this deepening disappointment, some contemporary organizers and artists have returned to music. Vincent Harding, King’s colleague, posed a persistent question to young activists: “Where are the songs?” (Engler, 2022). He believed, like King, that collective singing was central to sustained political action. His question echoes through contemporary movements as a challenge: “How can music channel disappointment, through hope, into determined action?”
Kamala Harris’s 2024 presidential campaign chose Beyoncé’s song “Freedom” as its anthem—a song that exemplifies King’s framework of channeling disappointment, through hope, into determination. “Freedom” samples Jim Crow-era spirituals and prisoners’ songs, placing itself within the tradition of Black sacred music (Sherman, Reference Sherman2024). In the chorus, Beyoncé calls out for freedom repeatedly—“Freedom! Freedom! Where are you?/’Cause I need freedom, too!”—expressing both profound desire for freedom and frustrated recognition that freedom remains absent. Yet the song simultaneously expresses fierce determination: “I break chains all by myself / Won’t let my freedom rot in hell / Hey! I’ma keep running/’Cause a winner don’t quit on themselves” (Beyoncé, 2016). The repeated declaration, “I’ma keep running” and the assertion that “a winner don’t quit” express a hopeful refusal to surrender–the belief that continued struggle can lead to liberation. Like King’s spirituals and “tramp, tramp, tramp,” “Freedom” channels disappointment, through hope, into the determination needed to continue fighting. When Beyoncé performed it at the 2016 BET Awards, she began with a voiceover of King’s “I Have a Dream” speech—his reminder that “America has defaulted on this promissory note” to Black citizens. This choice linked contemporary Black disappointment directly to King’s own disappointment.
I have elucidated Martin Luther King Jr.’s views on the value and function of democratic disappointment. First, disappointment is intrinsically valuable as a morally appropriate emotional response to frustrated desires and expectations. Second, it is instrumentally valuable as a necessary precondition for political action. The question of how to express and channel disappointment into political action remains as pressing today as it was for Du Bois and King. In the face of growing Black disappointment, perhaps a return to song is needed to sustain determination through deepening frustration. King’s belief in music’s ability to channel disappointment, through hope, into determined action can help us recognize these returns to song as they occur. It reveals how relevant his views remain today, as contemporary movements rediscover what King knew: that music can channel the energy of disappointment, through cultivated hope, into the determination needed to more fully realize the American dream.
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