An Historical Perspective

Chicago, Oct. 19—For the Rev. Martin L. King to win the Nobel peace prize for 1964 is, in my opinion, a major fraud foisted on real peace-loving people throughout the world. —Thomas Biety.

When did conservatives first begin questioning the prestige of the Nobel Peace Prize? Steve Benen and James Fallows point out that would be 1964, when the Prize was won by Dr. Martin Luther King.

Fallows reaches back to his youthful recollection of how his hometown, which went for Goldwater over Johnson, considered the notion of Dr. King as Nobel-worthy as something merely to sneer at. Looking in on my favorite research tool, Proquest Historical Newspapers, I found documentation for Fallows' recollection—like this letter to the editor of the Chicago Tribune (whose flagship right-wing editorial page's reaction to the honor of an American winning the Peace Prize that year was to simply ignore it).

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William F. Buckley columnized on King's prize with a nastily condescending open letter to the winner (from, apparently, white America itself), headlined, "Dr. King's Position Is Now So High It Includes Responsibility":

We don't expect that,in return for the Establishment's favor, you will become an Uncle Tom. But we do expect that for so long as we agree that you will be the reliquary for the world's inter-racial conscience, you will say something relevant tnow and then about the persecution of people even if they aren't Negroes. Is it a deal, Reverend?

If so, maybe we can go a long way together to make a better world. If not, kindly remember that the Nobel Committee is not a court of canonization, that it is merely one of those riches of the world which in your sermons you have so rightly disdained as of ephemeral importance.