Some thoughts on Martin Luther King Day
A few thoughts on Martin Luther King, Jr. day:
--MLK was assassinated in April 1968 while working with striking Memphis sanitation workers, black and white, organizing for a living wage. Yesterday Jo-Ann Mort mentioned the NYT Magazine's article about the contemporary living wage movement as a moral values issue for 2006. I second her emotion; it's well worth reading.
--MLK was profoundly religious; he felt called by God to speak out about social justice in highly moral terms, even though it meant his life was perpetually in danger. Here's a clip from his last speech, which sends chills up my spine.
--MLK was immensely frustrated with white moderates who worried that civil rights activists were pushing too far too fast. Some of my favorite quotes from the Letter from Birmingham Jail are after the jump.
From MLK's "Letter from Birmingham Jail":
I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate.... who is more devoted to "order" than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: "I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action"; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man's freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a "more convenient season." ....
Let us consider a more concrete example of just and unjust laws. An unjust law is a code that a numerical or power majority group compels a minority group to obey but does not make binding on itself. This is difference made legal. By the same token, a just law is a code that a majority compels a minority to follow and that it is willing to follow itself. This is sameness made legal....
Frankly, I have yet to engage in a direct-action campaign that was "well timed" in the view of those who have not suffered unduly from the disease of segregation. For years now I have heard the word "Wait!" It rings in the ear of every Negro with piercing familiarity. This "Wait" has almost always meant "Never." We must come to see, with one of our distinguished jurists, that "justice too long delayed is justice denied."
I mentioned in a post last week that King warned of the triple evil of "racism, materialism, and militarism". Where are we today on those issues? Opposition to racism ranges from strong, to lip service, to closet racism, to open racism in the USA. To even mention materialism as a problem to the powers- that-be would invite scorn. The Bush/Cheney team is doing everything they can to militarize our country and our responses to international problems. MLK would not be pleased.
January 16, 2006 8:05 AM | Reply | Permalink
My local paper, the Sacramento Bee, published Dr. King's letter from a Birmingham jail today. On reading it my first thoughts were how extraordinary that man was, and how universal his writing is. His subject was racism, especially in the South, but his logic is just as applicable to the discrimination against gays. That puts the "spectacle" of thousands of gay couples getting married in San Francisco into perspective. Those couples were doing much as Dr. King did - setting up a tension to try to force people to confront their bigotry, and realize the need for change. After all these years most of us still don't get the basic message of Dr. King - "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly." Those are powerful words!
January 16, 2006 8:37 AM | Reply | Permalink
I will always remember seeing MLK on TV as a child and thinking that I have finally seen something real on TV.
But did you know that the index to David McCullough's biography Truman does not include a specific reference to Trumans's historic desegregation of the armed forces -- even though the book's jacket did highlight this event?
And did you know there was not a single mention of Rosa Parks in the The New York Times Almanac, Millenium Edition?
January 16, 2006 8:42 AM | Reply | Permalink
We need to take this message to the African-American community. It is my experience support for gay rights is not particularly strong there. To paraphrase MLK "We should long for the day when people are judged by the content of their character not their sexual orientation."
January 16, 2006 9:55 AM | Reply | Permalink
Dr. King was a great leader. Rosa Parks was a great hero! I just can't imagine ever finding the courage to do such a simple act, with such potential consequences, as she did. In my opinion, no American History book can ever be complete without a chapter about each of them.
January 16, 2006 10:43 AM | Reply | Permalink
I sometimes despair at both political parties but maybe the real vaccuum we have today is from forces external to the political parties forcing them to recognize the issues today. Is our only external force to come from right-wing fundamentalist churches?
Where are our young leaders? Where are leaders who know that there is more at stake than just the next election?
January 16, 2006 10:43 AM | Reply | Permalink
The editor of the Atlanta Constitution made the point that Republicans should ideally be able to get Black votes on social grounds. She pointed out that Blacks, by and large, are opposed to Gay Rights, abortion and pro-death penalty. However, Republicans cannot get out of their anti-poor way in order to cultivate Black voters.
January 16, 2006 11:27 AM | Reply | Permalink
The September anti-war rally in Washington had quite a few young people at it.
January 16, 2006 11:32 AM | Reply | Permalink
Katrina blew Mehlman's plan to court African-American social conservatives out of the water, so to speak.
January 16, 2006 11:34 AM | Reply | Permalink
In recent years a disastrous trend has appeared on all sides of the political spectrum: it's become fashionable to believe that it doesn't matter whether or not your facts are right as long as your intentions are good. Let us never forget that MLK told us that nothing in the world was more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.
January 16, 2006 1:52 PM | Reply | Permalink