In good journalistic fashion, I attempted to write a column about Martin Luther King on the recent holiday named in his honor. But my not starting it in a timely fashion—I waited until that morning—coupled with distractions during the composition (there was a handyman working in the next room), and struggling to piece together the narrative proved to be a lethal combination that resulted in my failure to finish before early afternoon.
Which was my self-imposed deadline.
Still, not wishing to abandon the effort, I decided to give it another shot. After all, the relevance of Dr. King’s life and legacy—the injustice and inequities he sought to correct—are not limited as a topic to the anniversary of his birth. Nor are they a long-ago history, with no current importance.
So here it is.
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When I think of Martin Luther King, there is his eloquent ‘I Have a Dream’ speech, given in August of 1963 during the ‘March for Jobs & Freedom’ in Washington, D.C.—the highwater mark of the Civil Rights Movement he had led for several years and would continue to lead until his death.
There is also the ‘Letter from Birmingham Jail,’ an essay he had penned earlier in the same year after being arrested during a demonstration in that Alabama city and while being held in a cell. In his composition , he explained the need for immediate action against legalized segregation and unequal treatment, noting that “justice delayed is justice denied,” and how civil disobedience was being used for the purpose of awakening the nation’s conscience.
There are the images (captured in news photographs) of him walking arm-in-arm with others as they led one of the many marches during this era—a vanguard that included other black leaders of the movement as well as white supporters—the latter often being a northern governmental official, labor union leader, or entertainment celebrity. Almost always he was wearing a dark suit and white shirt—the uniform I suppose of the Southern Baptist pastor.
Of course, there were the additional photographs of police dogs attacking the demonstrators, the marchers being blasted with the water from fire hoses, and black men and women being struck with billy clubs as they were dragged into police vans.
Most important, perhaps, as far as my thoughts about Dr. King go, is not any of those past images and memories, important as they are to what he accomplished, but rather the speech given by U.S. Senator Robert Kennedy several hours after King’s assassination.
This date—both of Dr. King’s murder and Kennedy’s remarks—occurred on April 4, 1968.
The senator from New York had announced his presidential candidacy earlier in the year, taking on the incumbent Lyndon Johnson—a fellow Democrat. His opposition to Johnson’s Vietnam War policy and a dissatisfaction with the state of the country were given as reasons for launching the effort. Johnson’s subsequent decision to not seek re-election had suddenly made his seemingly long-shot bid a plausible possibility.
Kennedy was campaigning in Indiana since the state was holding the next presidential primary on the schedule. He had spoken at two universities earlier in the day. Then, before boarding a plane to attend campaign rallies in Indianapolis, he learned King had been shot in Memphis, Tennessee. Upon his arrival at the airport, Kennedy was informed King had died from his wound.
An historical account notes that “Despite fears of riots and concerns for his safety, Kennedy went ahead with plans to attend a rally at 17th and Broadway in the heart of Indianapolis's African-American ghetto,” adding “That evening he addressed the crowd, many of whom had not heard about King's assassination.”
Given the gravity of the situation, the presidential aspirant did not give his usual stump speech. Instead, he offered some improvised remarks, talking “off the cuff” if you will, although perhaps “from the heart” would be a better description. His impassioned plea for peace and the cause of brotherhood are considered among the great public addresses of the modern era.
I came across this speech in late 1968, a few months after not only King’s assassination, but also Kennedy’s in early June. I had purchased a two-set memorial record album containing several of the senator’s speeches as well as his funeral service. The remarks he gave in Indianapolis—delivered in a quiet and halting voice, reflective of his searching for the right words—were among the selections.
As much as anything, it’s informed my thoughts about human rights—then at the tender age of 17 and still today.
“What we need in the United States is not division; what we need in the United States is not hatred; what we need in the United States is not violence and lawlessness, but is love, and wisdom, and compassion toward one another, and a feeling of justice toward those who still suffer within our country, whether they be white or whether they be black,” Kennedy told his audience on that long-ago evening.
He added that “…the vast majority of white people and the vast majority of black people in this country want to live together, want to improve the quality of our life, and want justice for all human beings that abide in our land.”
The following day Kennedy gave a longer address, delivering it at a luncheon previously scheduled in Cleveland. It was his only campaign stop that day. While the text contains many passages worth quoting, here are a couple which still resonate… at least for me.
“For there is another kind of violence, slower but just as deadly, destructive as the shot or the bomb in the night. This is the violence of institutions; indifference and inaction and slow decay. This is the violence that afflicts the poor, that poisons relations between men because their skin has different colors. This is a slow destruction of a child by hunger, and schools without books and homes without heat in the winter.
“We must admit the vanity of our false distinctions among men and learn to find our own advancement in the search for the advancement of all. We must admit in ourselves that our own children’s future cannot be built on the misfortunes of others. We must recognize that this short life can neither be ennobled or enriched by hatred or revenge.”
“Our lives on this planet are too short and the work to be done too great to let this spirit flourish any longer in our land. Of course, we cannot vanish it with a program, nor with a resolution. But we can perhaps remember—even if only for a time—that those who live with us are our brothers, that they share with us the same short movement of life, that they seek—as we do—nothing but the chance to live out their lives in purpose and happiness, winning what satisfaction and fulfillment they can.”
* * *
Civil rights, of course, entails more that American race relations. In the past and still today, in our nation and around the world, there has been discrimination—often accompanied by oppression and violence—based on religious belief or non-belief, national origin, skin color, gender, sexual orientation, and having a handicap. A more recent target has been gender identity.
There have been gains in the cause of civil rights over the years, in part from the work of Dr. King and many others and with the passage of such legislation as the Civil Rights Bill of 1964 and the Voting Rights Bill of 1965. Attitudes changed and, with this change, so did behavior. But there has also been stalled progress on those and other fronts, along with retreats and even reversals. The battle lines have proven fluid.
At present there are dozens of anti-transgender bills that have been introduced at the state level, with some measures already passed. While I won’t harshly judge the merits of each proposal without better study, the overall flavor (and perhaps intent) seems reminiscent of the Jim Crow Laws used against people of color in an earlier time…still another example of employing the law, with the power of legal enforcement backing it up, to create a wall of separation and ostracization.
A compassionate or empathic approach is once more, it seems, getting trampled in the rush by many to draw lines of division.
I try as best I can to take a ‘live and let live’ attitude in regard to others—an expansive view of “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”—but with the caveat that injustice visited upon others, whether benignly or overtly, cannot be silently witnessed.
While I realize that how we live our life can impact another’s, as long as it’s an ethical exercise of daily routine and belief, then tolerance and accommodation would be (in my view) the better alternative than these ongoing attempts to marginalize, oppress, or demonize others for those above-mentioned physical traits and personal choices.
Of course, tolerance and accommodation ought to be an exchange between equals rather than a favor granted. Civil rights, in its many aspects, is not something I bestow in a benevolent manner on others who are different from me either in looks or belief —as if I were donating to a charity—but rather a common and shared cause. A mutually beneficial arrangement.
After all, what goes around, can come around. The shifting sands of circumstance can undo our individual certainties. Better to break the cycle of animosity and transgression than to continue embracing ‘the false distinctions.’
I try to remember as well, particularly when deciding whether to speak about a supposed injustice, that the victims of discrimination or oppression, the targets of hateful speech or derogatory comments, are ordinary people: kids struggling to find themselves, parents who love their children, men and women who go to work every day or are looking for a better opportunity, people with their own spiritual beliefs, neighbors who need to pay the bills and also try to support their communities, folks who have grown up with their own cultural traditions, and all those who, like me, share this “same short movement of life.”
I try to envision as well of the fear, uneasiness, frustration, and even terror people would feel if or when they are targeted. And be mindful also that there are those who live with these shackles each and every day.
Poetry and song can often better articulate such feelings and convictions.
I remember a song from when I was young: He Ain’t Heavy, He’s My Brother. The beginning goes: “The road is long, with many a winding turn, that leads us to who knows where? Who knows where? But I’m strong, strong enough to carry him.”
When I think of Martin Luther King—his life and legacy—when I reflect on the eulogy given by Robert Kennedy upon Dr. King’s death, that’s the image I have…that the burdens we have are best shared and sometimes we need to carry the load of those less fortunate, that we all have the same rights of “winning what satisfaction and fulfillment we can,” and that (as the song also says) “His welfare is my concern, no burden is he to bear, we'll get there.”
Steve Horton is a mid-Michigan journalist and editor-publisher of the ‘Fowlerville News & Views’—a weekly newspaper.
Revised: Thinking of Martin Luther King
How true and on the mark about sharing; our grief, our hopes and dreams. Made me think of the interaction I had on April 9, 1968 when King was buried. I had just given birth that morning at the hospital where I worked as a Labor and Delivery RN and one of the aides I worked with, she was black, came in the two bed room and pulled the curtain and told me of her grief and we cried together.