Lessons from MLK’s Mentor: Howard Thurman & The Battle for the Minds of Young Men
Written by Dewayne Martin, Director of Alumni Engagement and Special Projects at Men4Choice
This piece reflects the author’s personal views and lived experience. It does not necessarily reflect the official policies or positions of Take Back Trust.
I remember Election Night.
Young men who voted for Trump were being interviewed on the street, expressing their surprise at the results. Even Trump himself seemed shocked by the outcome. I remember the absurdity of watching Dana White thanking folks like streamer Adin Ross during a presidential victory speech on YouTube. Although the nation was stunned, there was also this quiet sense that everyone already felt this outcome was likely.
It became clear for me after the first presidential debate when Biden was still the Democratic nominee. By day, I was working overtime in support of progressive causes. However, when I opened social media—whether it was Instagram or YouTube shorts—I was continuously inundated with culturally conservative content. This content often aligned with basic values of dignity and becoming a better and stronger person but subtly and dangerously attached that vision to an authoritarian worldview. There was never, with the exception of a Men4Choice ad, progressive messaging that targeted me. Moreover, I became the most partisan that I’d ever become. I could only think through Blue or Red. I despised it. Throughout the election cycle, although legacy media portrayed scenes of victory, these moments on my algorithm and the general sense of folks I talked with showed that a Trump victory was approaching. And that’s exactly what happened.
2024 provided three major insights:
There is a male-loneliness epidemic that has created an appetite for informal community.
With 56% of young men voting for Trump, it is clear that although legacy media shapes perception, the algorithm shapes behavioral reality.
Progressive framings like ‘Pro-Choice’ are not resonating with young men, with less than 50% identifying with the label (despite the majority of young men still supporting abortion access).
These insights, although frustrating, are not surprising to me. Cultural conservatism is filling a vacuum of belonging and desire to become better. Amid my post-election depression, I looked to Howard Thurman to make sense of this moment. Written in 1949, Howard Thurman’s Jesus and the Disinherited was the book that Dr. King carried during almost all of his travels, including the March on Washington and the Mississippi Bus Boycott. In this book, Thurman bifurcates Christianity from the religion of Jesus to emphasize how the poverty and oppressed identity that informed the lived experience of Jesus provides a playbook for the contemporaries of said violence.
The American Loneliness Epidemic, Economic Instability, and the State of Gen-Z :
The progressive movement is losing young men to culturally conservative ideology—not because of deep-seated bigotry every man is allegedly born with, but because of loneliness, economic instability, and a lack of compelling community or identity offered by the left. Thurman's take on the social fabric of 1949 America was strikingly applicable to the America I was experiencing in 2024. He argues that the first step in the development of hatred is contact without fellowship, saying in this section entitled Hate: “...much of modern life is so impersonal that there is always opportunity for the seeds of hatred to grow unmolested.”
The perception of American social life does not resonate with the reality many experience. According to a recent national Harvard Youth Poll, only 17% of young Americans say they are deeply connected to a community. College dorms do not look the way movies depict them anymore. Oftentimes, if you are not already a part of a social group (fraternity, club sport, etc.), there are no spaces to meet new students on campus. The story that many students–especially in a post-COVID America—have of their college experience is one of longing for an invite or sense of community on Saturday nights from their dorms or doom scrolling on social media and dating apps. Walking on campus, it is commonplace to experience eye contact aversion as opposed to a greeting. Today, it is weird to tell a stranger “Good morning.” Our workplaces reflect a similar dynamic. Many folks, although they may interact with a host of individuals in the workplace, do not have those relationships or social spaces to establish said relationships beyond the workplace. The resonance of shows like Adolescence highlights how deeply rooted this sense of loneliness and lack of identity is within our culture alongside the oddity of the digital world shaping behavioral outcomes.
Furthermore, the traditional pathways toward the American dream are growing invalid. Countless friends who’ve attended elite universities are without work, many moving back home with their parents. Jobs for everyday young Americans, primarily Uber and Lyft, are unsustainable. Gen-Z may be the first generation of Americans who will earn less than their parents. This growing sense of financial insecurity is undermining hope and breeding an America that doesn’t dream anymore.
Spillage from the Progressive Movement
The line between loss of community and identity alongside economic instability is difficult to disentangle from the trend of young men’s growing support for Trump and a culturally conservative vision of the world—as illustrated through ‘new media’ and trends like ‘TradWife’, etc.
The culture of our movement often positions the identity of men within a binary that is contingent upon something else. As a man in the progressive movement, you are either a perfect ally or a bad person who must be removed from our spaces with no recourse. No person will feel fully accepted in a community or present with their work if who they are allowed to be is rigid and there is no clear pathway towards becoming a better human. Conversely, as noted by Thurman, “if a man’s ego has been stabilized, resulting in a sure grounding of his sense of personal worth and dignity, then he is in a position to appraise his own intrinsic powers, gifts, talents, and abilities.”
This culture of demarcation within the progressive movement came from a well-intentioned period of progressive movements in the 2010s working to name the violence facing oppressed peoples. However, this recognition of an epidemic amongst young men eventually became acculturation and labeling which operated as an eerie acceptance of what we were facing as Reality. This resulted in lowered interest and capacity to actually produce a thorough solution. In other words, if we cast out and/or look away, it will disappear or get better. Around the time when movement became cool and anyone who reposted something or attended one protest told themselves they were a “community organizer”, we also birthed a liberal culture where being accepted meant being seemingly intellectually and morally pure. As Loretta Ross, co-founder of Reproductive Justice as a framework, notes “we taught people radical politics without teaching them the radical love necessary to handle those politics.”
Thurman explains the outcome of this void through the eyes of a friend who escaped Nazi Germany when explaining the state of the minds of young men.
“She described for me the powerful magnet that Hitler was to German youth. The youth had lost their sense of belonging. They did not count; there was no center of hope for their marginal egos. According to my friend, Hitler told them: “No one loves you—I love you; no one will give you work—I will give you work; no one wants you—I want you.” And when they saw the sunlight in his eyes, they dropped their tools and followed him. He stabilized the ego of the German youth, and put it within their power to overcome their sense of inferiority.”
It is a dreadful thing to watch a generation of young men search for meaning in the ruins we left behind, and find only mirrors — cruel, distorted things — that tell them they are nothing unless they harden, conquer, or disappear. If we have made them invisible in our vision of progress, why are we shocked when they reach for the fire instead of the light?
Howard Thurman told us that hatred begins when contact lacks fellowship. But what happens when even that contact is denied? When the world speaks to you only in slogans, warnings, or silence? You listen to the ones who speak clearly, even if what they offer is death in a mask of love.
We can no longer afford to be a movement obsessed with the righteousness of our enemies if we are unwilling to offer a life to the lonely, the broke, the broken. We must ask ourselves not what we are fighting against, but what we are building — and for whom. Are we only about calling out the bad people for our own sake of moral purity, or are we seriously about creating pathways for better people—where ordinary people can live decent and fulfilling lives?
Because if we do not give these young men a reason to stay, to hope, to love—someone else will give them a reason to burn it all down.
If you are or know a young man looking to get off the sidelines and into the fight for reproductive freedom alongside a community of young men who are grounding their values through action, here are three ways you can step up:
Follow @Men4Choice on all platforms
Join our Instagram Broadcast Channel at @Men4Choice
Apply to the Fall 2025 Men4Choice Virtual Organizing Fellowship
