Dreams and nightmares

A reader writes, "I'd like your take on the enduring value of MLK's contributions because I don't think they're fully understood or appreciated. Falling on inauguration day is (to me) poetic."

Yes, the second inauguration of our first African-American president is falling on Martin Luther King Jr. Day. Most Americans, even black Americans, know little of King or the civil rights era. A better understanding can be gained by reading all three volumes of Taylor Branch's magisterial examination of America in the King years. And reading King's collected speeches and writings. Otherwise, this holiday remains a proxy for feel-good idiocy based on a few lines of the "dream speech," a magnificent piece of rhetoric but one that barely grazes the surface of the man and his message.

King was not alone in killing Jim Crow and achieving basic rights for all Americans in the 1960s. Students and sharecroppers seeking to register blacks or integrate buses and lunch counters were bludgeoned and sometimes killed by racist Southern cops and white mobs. Among the survivors is Rep. John Lewis, who was a young organizer for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and one of the Freedom Riders. Every American should know the names of such giants as Thurgood Marshall, James Farmer, Roy Wilkins, Fred Shuttlesworth, A. Phillip Randolph, Ralph Abernathy and Whitney Young. The little girls who died in the 1963 Birmingham church bombing. Lyndon Johnson, willing to lose the South to the Democratic Party (for a generation, he thought) in order to push through civil-rights legislation. All of these and more are the shoulders on which President Obama stands. But King, probably rightly, looms largest in the collective memory. Or at least a version of King.

I can add little to the many articles and reflections that one can find marking this day, the achievement of greater opportunity, a black middle class and the end of de jure segregation.

Except for the suggestion that, had he not been martyred, Martin Luther King Jr. would be unsatisfied with today's America. Most who know something of King beyond the "dream" lines prefer to remember the MLK of the Montgomery bus boycott, the march on Washington and nonviolence. They are less comfortable with the MLK who came out in opposition to the Vietnam War, spoke out forcefully against excessive military spending instead of using our resources to lift up all Americans, the King who embraced the Poor People's Campaign for social and economic justice. This is an MLK, who emerged in the years before his assassination, who even lost substantial support among African-Americans at the time.

One needn't ask what he would think of our wars, one of which is on track to be the longest in American history. The drone strikes carried out by President Obama that invariably kill innocents. Spending a trillion dollars a year on defense and "national security" while also discussing, not whether, but how best to cut the social safety net. Gitmo and torture enshrined as national policy, as well as the extra-judicial killing of American citizens. One in three black men can expect to go to prison some time in his life, facing sentences far harsher than those given to whites for the same crimes. Schools as segregated as before Brown vs. Board of Education and the ones serving children of color likely to be inferior. Historic and growing income inequality. Far from being a "post-racial" society, we saw President Obama elected without a majority of white votes. Polls show whites' negative opinion of blacks actually increased over Obama's term. American exceptionalism, indeed.

King would not approve of what has become of the Republican Party, for which his father reliably voted — and which supplied the critical votes to pass civil rights legislation in the mid-1960s. He would be shocked that after all this time a state would enact the cruel, hypocritical and racist policies of Arizona.

The sentiment would no doubt be returned. Most Americans would not be comfortable with the man who said, "A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on social uplift if approaching spiritual doom." Most wouldn't want to live the implications of our "web of mutuality" encompassing all of God's children.

But King was a minister of the Gospel who believed that all might be redeemed (if they were willing to repent and walk a different path). "The arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice." King used this quote from the 19th century abolitionist Theodore Parker so often that it is attributed to him. But he believed it and so do I. For now, however, America lacks the (often feuding) giants and armies of protesters that brought about the progress that we now take for granted. If anything, we face a retrograde move into darkness, ignorance and hate.

Best to leave with the full speech King gave the night before he was shot dead. It is one of his best and most moving. One of his most searchingly provocative. It is speaking to us today with urgent relevance, whether we want to listen or not.

 

Comments

[cal Lash]

Jon, I have to agree with your assessments of MLK, however my attempts to find him interesting never came to fruition. My interests gravitated more to Malcom X, Angela Davis, Huey Newton and Rosie Parks.

[Suzanne]

I read an article describing the Sunday service that President Obama attended before he went to his required taking of the oath of office. The pictorial insert brought the words to life in a way that was, for me, powerful, as the full congregation rose to the prayer and the intent to move ‘forward’.

M.L.King had a coalescing voice, a voice that moved the arc to bend toward justice. For that he can be admired. He needed lots of help, roles played out by supporting personalities that rarely receive the recognition they too deserve. Thank you, cal Lash, for mentioning Rosa Parks ‘the first lady of the civil rights movement’. I will also give a shout out to Harriet Tubman and Harriet Beecher Stowe.
I love how fate sometimes moves in “poetic” ways.

[Petro]

Thanks for this post.

And good on Lupe Fiasco.

[Diane D'Angelo]

Thank you, Jon. I find myself feeling overwhelmed and especially powerless to effect change these days. I don't know if it's permanent or the sign of temporary burnout that comes with being an activist in Phoenix. I'm not a huge fan of Cornel West's delivery (I find it distracting from his message), but someone posted a video of his remarks regarding President Obama's use of MLK's Bible for the swearing in ceremony. His points matched yours. I agree.

For several years, I attended the Phoenix MLK breakfast as a member of the Human Relations Commission. It is unsettling (to say the least) to see corporate underwriting of tables, spun as proof of that company's commitment to "diversity", and backslapping among community leaders who, frankly, gave up on the message of economic justice long ago for happy talk and complicity in sanitizing Dr. King's message into a drive for community volunteering.

[Petro]

17 Martin Luther King Jr. Quotes You Never Hear

[eclecticdog]

I came across a Kook site yesterday crowing about MLK's registration as a Republican and how he would fully support the Tea-Bagger agenda and the fight for the 2nd Amendment too! For me it was disgusting how little thought -- historical, racial, social, economic -- was on display.

[Petro]

Yeesh, e-dog - these people have no shame, do they?

[morecleanair]

Thanks Jon! Frequently, I'm reminded about how many folks can't get past their deep-seated prejudice about a black man in "their" White House. Let's hope President O actually turns out to be transformational vs. a latter day version of Gumby!

[cal Lash]

Color must become a non issue.
A two minute read of the FP article
on the Front Page is enough to set aside the DC crap of the last 12 years and pay attention to problems that are tantamount to survival regardless of color.

[morecleanair]

cal: there's a song, "You've Got to be Taught to Hate" which may sound negative but explains a lot. Sort of a sequel to Kermit's "It's Not Easy Being Green".

My grandchildren are color-blind . . . always have been. Grand-daughter's recent 10th birthday party had girls from all descriptions with names I could hardly pronounce. Looked like the junior UN to me!

[cal Lash]

Why did I think this column would generate more than 8 responses plus my two?

[AzRebel]

Cal,

I knew that FAUX news viewers were dumb as rocks, but the dialogue on that channel ever since the shooting of all those little kids has me so upset with the willfully ignorant of this country that any comment is just like farting into a hurricane of stupidity. I don't think the brain damage can be undone. And just think about this, the children of the FAUX news views are dumber than their parents.

Anyway, that's comment 12.

[cal Lash]

AZ Reb, Re MLK, moving speeshes and the black religious community.
My girl friend and I went to Changing Hands book store yesterday to browse and for lunch.
I could not pass up the small tome, "Religion for Atheists by Alain de Bolton after I read the last line in the book.

"Religions are intermittently too useful, effective and intelligent to be abandoned to the religious alone."

and it has some really good photos and one liners.
For example a photo of a Black Southern Baptist singing and prayer service with a statement. "Could a lecture on Walt Whitman be as moving?"