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THE ASTORIAN • TuESdAy, JANuARy 21, 2020
OPINION
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OUR VIEW
A remarkable American life
M
artin Luther King Jr.
Day commemorates a
remarkable American
life. It also reminds us of a transfor-
mational moment in recent Ameri-
can history. The federal holiday is
especially full of meaning at a time
when American politics have dete-
riorated on the matter of race.
Racism is always with us. The
question is what our leaders do
with it. The South during the 1950s
and ‘60s was marked by a set of
Jim Crow laws that codified racial
segregation. Through a set of poll
taxes and other barriers, blacks
were intimidated away from regis-
tering to vote. There was also a vir-
ulent culture of lynching.
Dr. King rose above this and
focused on what was possible to
make America a better place.
The movement that he led
caused changes that made life bet-
ter for African Americans. He also
liberated the South from a debilitat-
ing way of life. Though large parts
of it are still less successful than
the U.S. as a whole, desegregation,
voting rights and other initiatives
partially weaned Southerners of all
races from a crippling adherence
to outmoded economic and social
patterns.
There was a backlash to the
Civil Rights Act of 1964, which
King’s movement inspired. Oregon
State University political scien-
tist Bill Lunch discovered it during
interviews he did with an Ore-
gon Republican right-wing splinter
group in 1986. One of the group’s
adherents’ dominant motivations
was repeal of the Civil Rights Act,
as it pertained to the advancement
of blacks as well as women.
In his rise to power and as pres-
ident, Donald Trump has appealed
to those resentments.
Colin Murphey/The Astorian
People lighted candles in front of the Liberty Theatre ahead of a walk downtown for
Martin Luther King Jr. Day in 2018.
America crossed an important
line in 1964. We began rejecting
the politics of racial division and
set course for a future where every
child can aspire to greatness.
There is a biblical aspect to that
liberation. There is also a psycho-
logical side. Living without hate
is healthier than carrying it around
with you.
The important historical compar-
ison is between Trump and Pres-
ident Lyndon Johnson. The most
interesting historical characters
are those who move beyond the
bounds of the culture that spawned
them. When Johnson in December
1963 told a joint session of Con-
gress that he wanted a civil rights
bill, he rose above being a member
of the Southern bloc, in which he
had toed the line on civil rights. He
closed that speech with a line bor-
rowed from the civil rights move-
ment. “We shall overcome,” he
said.
Johnson found the vision and
courage to move beyond the world
of Jim Crow politics in which
he had risen. Many other South-
ern leaders lacked his moral clar-
ity. Johnson observed in 1964 that
any time a Southern politician felt
threatened, he would resort to vil-
ifying African Americans with a
spiteful litany about the purported
misdeeds of the “nigra, nigra,
nigra.”
The language of mainstream rac-
ism tends to be more subtle now.
But we find ourselves in an era
of concerted efforts that seek to
undercut African American politi-
cal empowerment via gerrymander-
ing, manipulation of voter rolls and
other underhanded strategies.
Some even fear a rollback of
Brown vs. Board of Education, the
1954 U.S. Supreme Court deci-
sion that ended state-sanctioned
racial segregation in public schools.
Although a clearcut repudiation
isn’t likely — even Trump appoin-
tee Brett Kavanaugh calls it “inspi-
rational” and “the single greatest
moment in Supreme Court his-
tory” — there is a risk that its safe-
guards face erosion from Trump
appointees to lower-level federal
judgeships. Some of these appoin-
tees have signaled ambivalence
by refusing to say during confir-
mation hearings that they consider
it to have been correctly decided.
Their decisions will be governed by
Supreme Court precedent, but there
is danger of much mischief at the
margins.
With his appeals to white nation-
alism, President Trump generates
concern about the future of aspir-
ing to racial equality. His chaotic
speeches at campaign rallies feed
our nation’s most corrosive, worst
and base instincts. He makes it dif-
ficult to believe his disavowals
of racism. Pandering for the sake
of power, he gives voice to dark
undercurrents in American society
that most of us hoped lingered only
in forgotten backwaters, if at all.
This throwback to wicked times
will not long prevail. We are not
going back to a nation where big-
otry is set in statute.
The truth is that American blacks
will not return to servility, nor will
women become passive, nor will
gays return to the closet. Those
trains have been out of the sta-
tion and down the tracks for a long
time.
There is a reason why the mem-
ory of Dr. King matters and why
Johnson mattered. They rose above
the world into which they were
born. Their dreams are our true
future. So far, Trump has missed
that opportunity.
MARTIN LUTHER KING JR. DAY
‘I Have A Dream’
Excerpts from Martin Luther King Jr.’s
speech at the March on Washington on Aug.
28, 1963.
I
am happy to join with you today in what
will go down in history as the greatest
demonstration for freedom in the history
of our nation.
Five score years ago, a great American,
in whose symbolic shadow we stand today,
signed the Emancipation Proclamation.
This momentous decree came as a great
beacon light of hope to millions of Negro
slaves who had been seared in the flames of
withering injustice. It came as a joyous day-
break to end the long night of their captivity.
But one hundred years later, the Negro
still is not free. One hundred years later, the
life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the
manacles of segregation and the chains of
discrimination. One hundred years later, the
Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in
the midst of a vast ocean of material pros-
perity. One hundred years later, the Negro is
still languishing in the corners of American
society and finds himself an exile in his own
land. So we have come here today to drama-
tize a shameful condition.
In a sense we have come to our nation’s
capital to cash a check. When the archi-
tects of our republic wrote the magnificent
words of the Constitution and the decla-
ration of Independence, they were signing
a promissory note to which every Ameri-
can was to fall heir. This note was a promise
that all men, yes, black men as well as white
men, would be guaranteed the unalienable
rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of hap-
piness ...
It would be fatal for the nation to over-
look the urgency of the moment. This swel-
tering summer of the Negro’s legitimate
discontent will not pass until there is an
invigorating autumn of freedom and equal-
ity. Nineteen sixty-three is not an end, but a
beginning. Those who hope that the Negro
needed to blow off steam and will now be
content will have a rude awakening if the
nation returns to business as usual. There
will be neither rest nor tranquility in Amer-
ica until the Negro is granted his citizenship
rights. The whirlwinds of revolt will con-
tinue to shake the foundations of our nation
until the bright day of justice emerges.
But there is something that I must say to
my people who stand on the warm thresh-
old which leads into the palace of justice.
In the process of gaining our rightful place
we must not be guilty of wrongful deeds. Let
us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom
by drinking from the cup of bitterness and
hatred.
We must forever conduct our struggle
on the high plane of dignity and discipline.
We must not allow our creative protest to
degenerate into physical violence. Again
and again we must rise to the majestic
heights of meeting physical force with soul
force. The marvelous new militancy which
has engulfed the Negro community must not
lead us to a distrust of all white people, for
many of our white brothers, as evidenced
by their presence here today, have come to
realize that their destiny is tied up with our
destiny. They have come to realize that their
freedom is inextricably bound to our free-
dom. We cannot walk alone ...
I say to you today, my friends, so even
though we face the difficulties of today and
tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream
deeply rooted in the American dream.
I have a dream that one day this nation
will rise up and live out the true mean-
ing of its creed: “We hold these truths to
be self-evident: that all men are created
equal.”
I have a dream that one day on the red
hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves
and the sons of former slave owners will
be able to sit down together at the table of
brotherhood.
I have a dream that one day even the
state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with
the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat
of oppression, will be transformed into an
oasis of freedom and justice.
I have a dream that my four little chil-
dren will one day live in a nation where they
Associated Press
Martin Luther King Jr., head of the Southern
Christian Leadership Conference, addresses
marchers during his ‘I Have a Dream’ speech
at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C.
will not be judged by the color of their skin
but by the content of their character.
I have a dream today.
I have a dream that one day, down in
Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its
governor having his lips dripping with the
words of interposition and nullification; one
day right there in Alabama, little black boys
and black girls will be able to join hands
with little white boys and white girls as sis-
ters and brothers.
I have a dream today.
I have a dream that one day every val-
ley shall be exalted, every hill and moun-
tain shall be made low, the rough places will
be made plain, and the crooked places will
be made straight, and the glory of the Lord
shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it
together.
This is our hope. This is the faith that I
go back to the South with. With this faith we
will be able to hew out of the mountain of
despair a stone of hope. With this faith we
will be able to transform the jangling dis-
cords of our nation into a beautiful sym-
phony of brotherhood. With this faith we will
be able to work together, to pray together,
to struggle together, to go to jail together, to
stand up for freedom together, knowing that
we will be free one day.
This will be the day when all of God’s
children will be able to sing with a new
meaning, “My country, ‘tis of thee, sweet
land of liberty, of thee I sing. Land where
my fathers died, land of the pilgrim’s pride,
from every mountainside, let freedom ring.”
And if America is to be a great nation this
must become true. So let freedom ring from
the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire.
Let freedom ring from the mighty moun-
tains of New york. Let freedom ring from the
heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania!
Let freedom ring from the snowcapped
Rockies of Colorado!
Let freedom ring from the curvaceous
slopes of California!
But not only that; let freedom ring from
Stone Mountain of Georgia!
Let freedom ring from Lookout Mountain
of Tennessee!
Let freedom ring from every hill and
molehill of Mississippi. From every moun-
tainside, let freedom ring.
And when this happens, when we allow
freedom to ring, when we let it ring from
every village and every hamlet, from every
state and every city, we will be able to
speed up that day when all of God’s chil-
dren, black men and white men, Jews and
Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be
able to join hands and sing in the words of
the old Negro spiritual, “Free at last! free
at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at
last!”