4
April 2018.
Fifty years.
I
cannot remember where I was or what I was doing when I heard the news
that the Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King, Jr., had been killed.
Certainly
I am old enough to remember. I recall with horrific clarity the
elementary school classroom where I sat when news came of President
Kennedy's death in Dallas, and the crackling of my transistor radio,
tucked under my pillow, when I startled awake to voices reporting the
late night murder of the presidential hopeful so many of us felt
close enough to called Bobby, two months after the assassination of
Dr. King.
I
have long surmised that the death of the Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King, Jr., a towering figure in human
rights, peace and justice, so deeply traumatized me that I wiped the
details from my mind.
In
the aftermath, my mother wept and wept, my father was grim-faced and
silent, my siblings, my friends and I were stunned and shaken to the
core.
This
country – indeed, this world – simply could not afford to lose
Martin Luther King.
It
is said that, though you kill the dreamer, you cannot kill the dream.
It is a lovely sentiment, but it is only true in part. The truth is
that Dr. King was such a titan on the world scene, such an essential
figure in the fight for civil rights and voting rights, such a
catalyst for change in the waging of unjust wars and the treatment of
workers, that no single person could replace him. Coretta Scott King
carried the family legacy, John Lewis got into good trouble and was
elected to the House of Representatives, Thurgood Marshall remained
on the Supreme Court, Andrew Young and Julian Bond and Jesse Jackson
continued to raise their voices, Myrlie Evers and Dorothy Height and
Barbara Jordan and Shirley Chisholm proved that leadership was never
just a man's game.
And
yet there was, and forever will be, just one Dr. King.
2012 Photo (c) McCloud, Living in Turnaround blog
This
country has made undeniable progress. From the boardroom to the
classroom to the courtroom, from the playing fields to the science
labs, from Wall Street to Sesame Street, from the stage to the screen
to outer space, people of color and women have taken advantage of the
hard-won broadening of opportunities to distinguish themselves and
elevate the American scene. This includes fuller participation by
LGBTQ Americans, out and proud the way Bayard Rustin, the architect
of the March on Washington, could not be in those times.
And
the wildest dreams of the enslaved people who built so much of our
nation's capital came true when Barack Hussein Obama became the 44th
President of the United States of America.
So
why am I still both sad and angry tonight? In the world of what we
will never know, Dr. King's additional accomplishments might have
humbled the prodigious achievements of his 39 years. My father and
mother were both a little older than MLK; Dad outlived him by almost
three decades, and Mom passed away just two years ago.
Had
King survived, perhaps voting rights would have become a permanent
fixture in America law. Maybe
Vietnam would have ended a bit sooner and claimed fewer lives and, in
his pressing for peaceful solutions to conflict, Iraq and Afghanistan
would have been distant places on a map, and not the perpetual
battlefields where Americans, allies and too many others suffered and
died. It could
have been that economic justice would have advanced far enough that
“union” and “worker” would not have become pejoratives.
Perhaps his ongoing reminders of what people lived through and died
for to earn access to the voting booth would have influenced our
pitiful, paltry turnout at the polls. It could have been that
advances in equality would have proceeded at such a rate that Obama
would have been the second black President. Maybe King's moral
authority could have been brought to bear on the Equal Rights
Amendment, and his power of persuasion in rectifying injustices
between law enforcement and civilians would have rendered it
unnecessary for anyone ever to have to say, “Black Lives Matter!”
Maybe
we even could have done something about gun violence.
But
a woman lost her husband, four children were robbed of their father,
and the kind of moral leader who comes along once in a hundred years
was stolen from this world.
Take
a good look at the American scene today.
If
a million of us take up Martin Luther King, Jr.'s mantle, if ten
million put his words into action, if one hundred million say that
enough is enough, and that what we have become is too small and too
mean, that will be a start.
I
can reach no conclusions tonight, because this weary world is forever
a work in progress.
But
the Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King, Jr., was never a Kumbaya
dreamer, he was a man of action.
Though
he was not perfect, he was the measure of a man.
He
knew that hate is poison, that love is power, and that it takes
strength to love.
Let's
find that strength.
Let
us be the peaceful warriors of freedom for all.
And
may we always, always refuse to be silent about things that matter.
Photo by the National Park Service
